Andrew Breitbart, proprietor of this here outlet, is already getting plaudits for his presentation at this year’s RightOnline convention (you can see his speech here). But the weekend event also held lots of policy and digital advocacy conversations, including one on the issue of union thugs trying to kill American companies and jobs.

A hot topic, of course, is the NLRB’s threat to kill jobs at a Boeing plant in South Carolina (because of which legislators are considering the Job Protection Act). But, sadly, there are many other concerns on the horizon, including “project labor agreements” that shut out the vast majority of the construction workforce and a host below-the-radar issues before the Big Labor-stacked National Labor Relations Board that threaten to kill jobs and slow our economy in the name of helping President Obama’s biggest political backer. For the latter, take a brief gander at a cleaned-up version of my presentation, which includes case citations for those who are interested in digging further.

Or you can check out the video in this post, which includes fellow panelists Brett McMahon of Miller & Long Concrete Construction and Halt The Assault and Don Loos of National Right To Work and my fellow blogger at Big Government.

(more…)

One year ago today, we launched BigGovernment.com. As you probably know, our first posts dealt with the video sting of ACORN, orchestrated by the new citizen journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. It had an impact.

It also marked a new chapter in on-line media. Most of the conservative on-line media are scorekeepers. The provide opinion, but don’t really move the ball forward. I know that sounds both hyperbolic and self-serving, but consider: after the second day of our video release the U.S. Senate voted to defund ACORN and the Census Bureau severed all ties with the embattled organization. All of this happened before either the Washington Post or New York Times had devoted a single column inch to the burgeoning scandal. I’ve been in Washington D.C. for 16 years. Nothing politically happened until one of those papers weighed in. Until last year. The game totally changed and, even today, neither the JournoList-supporting Post nor the hemorrhaging Times understands this. Newsweek is dead. USA Today is shedding staff as fast as it can while Time clings to life as something to glance at on an airplane and every other part of the legacy media retires to “background noise.”  Simply put, no one cares about them anymore.

There was a time that news organizations like the Post and the Times could set the national agenda. They were the arbiters of what was news and what was “important.” A wink from one of their reporters would set off a national debate. If they ignored a story, well, it went nowhere. They were the “casting couch” of all possible news. Those days are over.

(more…)

Remember Brent Southwell, the business owner who says SEIU threatened to “kill” his company? Sadly, his experience isn’t unique. While BigGovernment.com readers have become increasingly acquainted with the tactics of unions like SEIU (and their allies in ACORN) to demonize American employers, the practice remains unknown to millions of Americans. Yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce held an event in Washington to spotlight smear campaigns (known in the jargon as “corporate campaigns”).

David Bego, a business owner in Indianapolis whom my fellow BG bloggers have referenced, gave an often emotional keynote speech outlining in great detail the nightmare experience of SEIU attacking his company. After telling the union he would not sign away the secret-ballot rights of his employees, he says the union responded that it would begin its attack, warning: “We enjoy conversation, but we embrace confrontation.”

In his book, The Devil At My Doorstep (Amazon), Bego writes:

One minute, we were enjoying the fruits of our labors minding our own business, and the next attacks begin lambasting the company as a “rat contractor” that cleaned buildings dubbed “Houses of Horror” for janitors who were exploited, intimidated, threatened, and abused all in the name of corporate greed. For the first time in our history, multiple National Labor Relations Board filings, frivolous charges with questionable evidence, would be filed against us for employee rights violations and for firing union supporters as the EMS image was dragged through the mud.

(more…)

As a frequent contributor to Big Hollywood and Big Government, I was so proud to read Andrew Breitbart’s full-throated correction posted front and center at Big Government the other day.  I was not proud that we had made an error that required correcting, but I was proud that we treated it up front and loudly for all the world to see.  It is a stark contrast to corrections in the New York Times that are hidden somewhere between the crossword puzzle and the obituaries (which soon will include the Times, itself).

But, the more I thought about the story that prompted the correction (the fact that our headline stated that ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis visited the White House but it appeared that it was a different Bertha Lewis), the more I kept thinking to myself:  “What are the odds?”  You see, it isn’t just Bertha Lewis who has a name doppelganger out there.  The White House also claimed that the Jeremiah Wright who visited there was a different Jeremiah Wright.  And, even more credulity-defying, a different Malik Shabazz visited the White House this year as well. (more…)

Over the last week, Big Hollywood and Big Government have been extensively covering the August 10 conference call between the National Endowment for the Arts and a group of artists – a call on which the artists were encouraged to support President Obama’s agenda, with the tacit promise that they would be handsomely rewarded with government grants.  The NEA representative on the call was then-Communications Director of the NEA Yosi Sergant.

Now we have new evidence that the White House itself has been using its sway to recruit artists – not just to support President Obama’s “volunteerism” initiatives, but to support basic planks of his political agenda, including health care.  In fact, the White House has been tapping its extragovernmental political allies to work with artists with the tacit promise that NEA funds will be in the offing for those who join the Obama Administration political program.

According to a briefing report from Arlene Goldbard, the Pratt Center for Community Development, State Voices, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation, on May 12, 2009, “more than 60 artists and creative organizers engaged in civic participation, community development, education, social justice activism, and philanthropy came together for a White House briefing on Art, Community, Social Justice, National Recovery.”  Each of the sponsors of the meeting was contacted by – yes, you guessed it – Yosi Sergant, who had just been promoted from the Office of Public Engagement to serve at the NEA. (more…)