On Sunday, September 3, in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, Tea Partiers marched with the Wheeling Township Republicans at the town’s Labor Day Parade. Upon passing the home of AFL-CIO member and retired Buffalo Grove Fire Department Lt. Larry Andres’s house, they were harassed by Andres and his friends watching the parade at his property on Bernard Avenue.

Lt. Andres and his comrades, clutching overflowing plastic cups and wearing stickers to support Democratic candidate Brad Schneider, shouted “Republican-free zone….Go union!!” and the sexually explicit epithet, “move along Tea-baggers!!!”

Lt. Andres, a pillar of the Buffalo Grove community, was given a “lavish” retirement ceremony in 2007, which included the presentation of an American flag from Buffalo Grove fire chief Tim Sashko. He has been quoted as leaving the public sector at age 56 in 2007 to pursue an acting career in a “Scrooge” play.

We stopped to find out why these individuals were so hostile to the Tea Partiers marching in the parade, but all we could get out of these goons were the usual responses, “They [the Tea Parties] breed hate….They are against everything we stand for.” But when questioned about any specific examples, these agitants were, as usual, not prepared to give a coherent answer. You can see how things went downhill quickly, in the following video.

Is this an example of how the Tea Party “breeds hate,” or the how the unions do?

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Can’t remember what Barack Obama said when he spoke in Tuscon, Ariz., at the Jan. 12 campaign rally disguised as a memorial service to honor the people killed in Tucson four days earlier? You’re not alone. After hearing AFL-CIO President Jimmy Hoffa call for war on the Tea Party Monday, the president seemed as if he had forgotten his words, too. Those words, by the way, surface at the 1:01:19 mark of the video below:

His exact words:

“But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

Now, fast forward to Monday when AFL-CIO President Jimmy Hoffa spoke to a mostly-union crowd at a Labor Day rally in Detroit before introducing President Obama. The video below captures the first “lowlight” of the event:

Hoffa used the following inflammatory rhetoric:

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Hoffa:

Obama:

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss complaints by big labor’s James P. Hoffa about the patriotism of American companies, the role labor plays in today’s business climate and whether Obamanomics have made the economy worse.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Union chief calls Apple ‘unpatriotic’ for not hiring more workers
Labor unions adjust to new reality under Obama
Have shrinking union rolls eroded the middle class?
Did Obama Make It Worse?

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When Congress created Labor Day in the late 1800s, it was to placate an increasingly hostile labor movement.  At a time when American workers needed protection from heavy-handed industrial bosses, labor unions made sense.

But with the growing effort by Big Labor to unionize public employees, it’s left its mission of worker protection from dangerous conditions and now has increasingly become a leech on the taxpayers.  Public employees hardly need protection from their employer, the government.

If there’s any segment of society that needs protection from the government it’s taxpayers, not their employees.

Big Labor’s legacy today is that of creating pension systems that are continuing to plunge deeper into the red.  Some reports indicate the collective debt, just of school employee pensions, is around $1 trillion.

Public employee unions have also created scenarios where the health benefits of their members now cost school districts nearly $24,000 in places like Milwaukee.

And they’ve instituted schemes where teachers receive raises for not dying over the summer.  With negotiated “step raises,” increases are based on years of service, not value added to the “company.”

Big Labor is bankrupting government – and we should continue honoring that?

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