Posts Tagged ‘fight club’

Christian Hartsock

Project Mayhem, Part I: SEIU, Lies and Videotape

by Christian Hartsock

“The first rule of Project Mayhem: You do not ask questions.” –Tyler Durden, Fight Club

On November 8, Ohioans vote on Issue 2 – which determines the fate of SB 5, signed in March by Gov. John Kasich. The bill offers to save $191 million annually at the state level and millions more at the local level by asking public employees to contribute merely 10 percent to their pensions and 15 percent towards their health care (as opposed to the average 31 percent that private employees contribute).

While actually preserving collective bargaining “rights,” it brings the actual employer (the taxpayer) to the bargaining table by replacing unelected, unfireable binding arbitrators with elected officials directly accountable for budget solvency, and clarifies the collectively bargainable “terms and conditions” – the ambiguities of which have long been exploited by unions for Cadillac benefits at taxpayer expense.

But one must read the bill to know this – which its opponents apparently don’t want you to do.

At an SEIU rally outside the Ohio Capitol in Columbus, I approached a member for information. She responded that under the bill “we will soon not have any seniority benefits, insurance benefits will go out the window” (correction: 90 percent of her pension and 85 percent of her health care will still be taxpayer-funded), and “we won’t have any rights for bargaining for safety” (correction: SB 5 is the very first law to grant workers the authority to bargain on safety under Section 4117.08 – a right not clarified in the Democrat-sponsored Ohio collective bargaining law of 1983).

When I then asked how a law that specifically grants the right to bargain on safety is taking away the right to bargain on safety, an SEIU organizer interrupted the interview, insisting their members are not to answer questions.


One must wonder why the SEIU rank and file – whom their organizers recruit to “get out the message” – are not even trusted by their organizers to, well, explain the message. Like Project Mayhem, the first rule of SEIU is: You do not ask questions.

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Kurt Schlichter

Keeping on the Offense: More Lessons for Our Side

by Kurt Schlichter

If we are going to win this thing, this battle to retake our culture and our country, you are going to have to learn to love to fight.

This battle can’t be left to a few champions who do battle on the airwaves or on cable or on the Internet, or who just do their part tweeting and Facebooking.  While we Constitutional conservatives, Tea Partiers, or whatever we call ourselves have been punching above our weight – the merely crappy debt ceiling deal would have been an unholy abomination of a deal if not for the intransigence of our Congressional allies supported by our voices from outside the Beltway – the fact is that we need more warriors.  That’s you.


And to be a warrior you need to want to fight.  You need to need to fight.  I’m not talking about punching and kicking – though if someone wants to go there, hey, let’s rock.  This is spoken or written combat, whether the battlefield is a cocktail party or a Facebook page.  And it’s vital.  These are serious issues that are worth fighting over.   Our Founders didn’t think they were making a country for a bunch of simpering, goody-goody wimps who go all wobbly at a harsh word or a raised voice.  Democracy requires guts.  Nut up.

People whine about fighting, cry over “bickering,” stammer out clichés about “bipartisanship,” “compromise” and being “reasonable.”  Well, I reject bipartisanship, compromise and reasonability, and so must you.  I want to fight and to win; death or glory.  Compromise is for losers – half a turd is still 100% turd.  But enough about the debt ceiling bill.

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Publius

Playboy: Confessions of a Tea Party Consultant

by Publius

The July issue of Playboy (available on news stands Friday) has an awesome feature story, “Rogues of K Street: Confessions of a Tea Party Consultant.” The piece is by Anonymous. We bring you our first installment below. The whole article can be found here.

Everything I know about being a good consultant comes from Fight Club. Discretion is everything. Rule number one is you don’t talk about consulting for the Tea Party. Rule number two is you don’t talk about consulting for the Tea Party. The story about the wild characters who are shaping this campaign cycle is worth telling, but please excuse my anonymity.

WAS_REGI-loung-1

I hold as many meetings as possible over Tanqueray and tonics at the St. Regis hotel on K Street in Washington, D.C. The bar is dark and private, with comfortable couches. Even the gin tastes better there. On weekday afternoons the only people in the bar are foreigners and political consultants long past caring about who actually wins.

“You’re going to see something spectacular,” an old friend who has a knack for black-bag operations said as he proudly downed his vodka. “About a month from now you’ll see ACORN explode from within.” Right on schedule a video was released that showed undercover conservative activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles getting advice from employees at the Baltimore office of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now on how to smuggle underage El Salvadoran girls into a fictitious brothel.

That’s when I realized this isn’t an average fringe movement. This one is credible, legit and-for the first time in a decade-scaring the crap out of the left. In my years as a campaign hack and then as a consultant, I’ve created more than my share of fake grassroots organizations. Some were downright evil but effective beyond expectations. Did you get an automated call from the sister of a 9/11 victim asking you to reelect President Bush in 2004? That was me. Did you get a piece of mail with the phrase ’supports abortion on demand as a means of birth control’? That may have been me too.

Conservatives had been trying to take down ACORN for three decades. Where they failed, BigGovernment.com and my friends succeeded. In one magnificent explosion, a loose group of troublemakers, libertarians and Republicans took its first scalp. Sonja Merchant-Jones, former co-chair of ACORNís Maryland chapter, told The New York Times in March, “That 20-minute video ruined 40 years of good work.”

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