Rather than seeing the Super Bowl as a big event for Indiana, Maddow’s guest, Indiana State Rep. Scott Pelath, sees it as a “national platform” for Big Labor “education” through disruption.

Indiana AFL-CIO union boss Nancy Guyott pulls no punches describing the chaos she intends to create; she has declared war on Super Bowl spectators. From Sterling Wong at Minyanville.com:

“They think they won a war because you fought this little skirmish like it was a war,” said Indiana AFL-CIO President Nancy Guyott. “I know the Indiana labor movement and our opponents haven’t seen nothing yet.”

So Super Bowl fans, the storming of Super Bowl Village on Wednesday was just a warm up for Big Labor’s Sunday fracas. Rather than working to make their current union members want to remain union members, Big Labor thugs would rather use their forced-dues-filled coffers to create chaos at the Super Bowl and in the streets of Indiana. Their goal is to disappoint millions of Americans and bring back legislation that compels people to pay to unions.

These Super Bowl shenanigans may become a game changer. Big Labor intimidation tactics may finally be seen for what they are: an attempt bully the nation. Maybe politicians like Pelath and commentators like Maddow will begin to feel the heat for embracing Big Labor’s thuggish tactics.

And, congratulations Indiana for giving Right To Work freedom Hoosiers so they can choose to join and pay for these thugs, or keep their own wages from them.

*** Just In *** Washington Post reports unions have backed down and will not disrupt the Super Bowl.  “The president of Indiana AFL-CIO is promising union members will not disrupt the Super Bowl festivities in Indianapolis”

Facing a legislative vote that would make Indiana a right-to-work state … Labor activists are deciding whether to go ahead with protests that could include Teamsters clogging city streets with trucks and electricians staging a slowdown at the convention center site of the NFL village.

“The last thing the city needs is a black eye,” said Jeff Combs, organizing director for Teamsters Local 135.  [But, apparently Combs is willing to give it one.]

“You can tell them we’ll take the Super Bowl and shove it,” said Combs, the Teamsters organizer. Teamsters gathered at the Statehouse Wednesday wearing T-shirts with the roman numerals 46, referring to the Super Bowl, crossed out on the back.  He said truckers would be willing to risk arrest by causing traffic jams.

Why does Big Labor from across the USA plan to converge on Indianapolis?  Union bosses fear ‘Voluntary Unionism’ and the freedom that Right To Work will bring to Hoosiers.  Without ‘Compulsory Unionism,’ currently imposed in Indiana, union bosses will have to create reasons for employees to join their union; and, that is a lot more work that state-sanctioned compulsion.

In an expected vivid example of “union organizing,” international and state union bosses are about to disrupt and diminish what should be one of the most important weeks in football players’ lives. Super Bowl Week is the week of festivities that leads up to the Super Bowl kickoff on Sunday, February 5^th.

The Big Labor irony is that both teams playing the game contain players from compulsory unionism states, New York (New Jersey) and Massachusetts.  This means both teams are loaded with union members and/or forced fee-payers.  These few players appear to be nothing but pawns in the Big Labor machine as it poises to crush one the biggest weeks of these players’ lives, and disappoint the thousands of fans in the stadium, as well as the millions of football fans who will be watching the game on television.

Perhaps, the real Super Bowl is playing right now underneath the Dome of the Indiana State Capitol:  the bulky old Compulsory Unionism team versus the freedom embracing Voluntary Unionism team.  Maybe, this Super Bowl will be settled before Big Labor tries roll over the NFL’s Super Bowl.

Apparently, the Big Labor-related death threats aren’t limited to Wisconsin.  Or to lawmakers.

This following email is just in from our friends at The Mackinac Center for Public Policy:

<start email>

“The Mackinac Center for Public Policy received numerous death threats and bomb threats in the aftermath of national publicity about a Freedom of Information Act request it sent to three public universities.

The messages were left on the Center’s voice mail Thursday night and early Friday morning, but it is unclear at this point if one or two women were responsible for the threats.

Mackinac Center President Joseph Lehman said the Mackinac Center has contacted law enforcement about the threats.

“We, along with the authorities, are doing everything necessary to protect ourselves,” Lehman said. “No threats will prevent us from showing the public how universities spend tax dollars.”

There were five messages left containing death or bomb threats. Four of them appear to be from the same caller. A fifth message was from a woman who left a death threat and, unlike the previous caller, left her name and indicated she lived in a neighboring state. It was unclear if the second caller was the same as the first caller.

A female voice said:

“Scotty Walker is dead. So are you. We know where you live.” The woman then recited the Mackinac Center’s address and said, “We are coming up to destroy you.”

In another message, a female who left her name said:

“You are on Main Street. You are the first place to be bombed.”

In another message, a female voice said:

“We are going to destroy everybody. We are going to destroy all of you. All of you die. Midland, Michigan. Get ready. We are going to destroy all of you.”

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy has been in the spotlight after some national news organizations reported that the Midland-based think tank submitted a FOIA request to Wayne State University, Michigan State University and the University of Michigan. The FOIA asked for specific emails from professors in the labor studies departments that referenced Wisconsin collective bargaining, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker or MSNBC talk show personality Rachel Maddow.

Maddow had made comments on her show critical of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s emergency financial manager act.”

<end email>

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is an organization I’ve written about previously.  They are a non-partisan research and educational center in Michigan that focuses on sound fiscal policy based on free market principles.  The Center’s Legal Foundation is a public interest law firm that has assisted many residents and business owners in Michigan in protecting their liberties right as individuals.  You may remember their role in the lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Human Services in a fight against the state’s forced unionization of private, self-employed home-based child care providers.  We also wrote about the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation in a related post that detailed how union bosses and some state governors have abused the tool of Executive Order to move private sector employees under the stewardship of the state government, thereby creating compulsory union membership for previously privately employed individuals and entrepreneurs.

These folks are in the heat of the battle, and it’s going to be a long haul.

“The nation is not broke, my friends,” opines guerilla filmmaker and amateur accountant Michael Moore. “Wisconsin is not broke. Saying that the country is broke is repeating a Big Lie.”

Relax, America, it turns out that all that talk about local, state, and federal government being broke is just total B.S. or, as The New York Times puts it, “obfuscating nonsense…a scare tactic employed for political ends.”

Moore is a bit skimpy on evidence, simply asserting that all we need to do to make things right is to shake down rich people who “have diverted…wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates.” The Times’ case isn’t much more compelling. “A country with a deficit is not necessarily any more ‘broke’ than a family with a mortgage or a college loan,” says the paper of record. “And states have to balance their budgets.”

OK, but what should you call a family or a country that spent about 20 percent of GDP for each of the past 60 years while raising less than 18 percent of GDP each year? And that is facing a massive balloon payment (let’s call it entitlement spending on Medicare and Social Security) in the not-too-distant future? And has to keep borrowing money just to pay today’s bills? And has no chance of increasing its take-home pay to cover its expenses?

It’s a pretty safe bet that most of us would call that family or country broke. Or something along those lines.

Here are federal deficit projections from President Barack Obama’s own proposed 2012 budget. He predicts that the red ink will continue to flow for as long he may be in office.

And what about the states? It’s true that states have to balance their budgets each year by law. But that doesn’t mean they don’t spend more than they take in. Wisconsin alone is looking at a shortfall of $1.8 billion in the next year. Here’s what the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says about the mismatch between spending and revenue: ”2012 is shaping up as states’ most difficult budget year on record. Thus far some 45 states and the District of Columbia are projecting budget shortfalls totaling $125 billion for fiscal year 2012.” Here’s a picture that suggests broke is a pretty good description of state finances:

Then there’s local government. The National League of Cities is estimating that aggregate revenue shortfalls between 2010 and 2012 will end up totaling somewhere between $56 billion and $83 billion.

As President Obama put it plainly in his State of the Union Address just a few weeks ago, “We have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in. That is not sustainable.”

So call us broke or call us flush with cash. Whatever. Unless you think our elected officials are like Charlie Sheen – able to cure our problems simply willing it – our fiscal reality isn’t going to get better by pretending that we’re not in deep trouble.

Maybe acknowledging that you’ve got a problem really is the first step to fixing it. If that’s the case, we’ve still got a ways to go before we even start doing the hard work of cutting out of control spending at every level of government.

In the meantime, read “The 19 Percent: How to balance the budget without raising taxes,” “Failed States: After a long spending binge, governors go begging for a handout. It won’t be their last,” and “How to Save Cleveland: Turning around America’s dying cities is difficult, improbable, and necessary.”

“Are we broke yet?” is written and produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie. About 1.30 minutes long. Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions of our videos and subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive automatic notifications when new material goes live.

One other story that Maddow called out was from RedState.com, to which she mocked the suggestion that unions and the U.S. state department are involved in the Egypt protests and quipped, “What, no ACORN?”

The author of that post is a friend of mine and fellow BigGovernment contributor, who, in addition to blogging at RedState.com, also runs Labor Union Report.  I was surprised when I saw his post called out on Maddow’s show.  Not only is he not usually a typical target of MSNBC’s brand of snark, but it was obvious that Maddow – or whomever does her research – had not even read the post beyond paragraph two.  If they had, they would have noticed that the information came from a few familiar sources:  the Huffington Post and WikiLeaks. And those sources contained some potent information that’s directly related to the current uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

The post in question, “The American Left’s Role in Leading Mid-East Regime Change,” essentially establishes two key points:

1. Labor unions played a large role in the recent Tunisian revolution and are actively engaged in similar future protests
2. According to one of the Wikileaks cables, the U.S. State Department appears to have had a hand in supporting, training and networking with Egypt’s protesters

As much as Maddow would like them to be, these aren’t conspiracy theories. The author did a thorough job of laying out all the supporting pieces.  To make it easy, let’s recap some of these.

The RedState post makes good use of a January 25^th piece on the Huffington Post titled “Tumult in Tunisia: Labor Propels Protest.”  Its author, blogger Michelle Chen contributes to Colorlines.com, a magazine with investigative articles concerning minorities and organizing, and In These Times, a popular magazine that focuses on labor issues.  Chen discusses the crucial role that organized labor activists played in the days leading up to Tunisia’s protests:

Though the movement appears to be a mix of grassroots spontaneity and targeted direct actions, it has achieved political valence through the savvy of organized labor activists. In the days leading up to the uprising, unions were feeding the foment of the demonstrators by calling strikes nationwide, including an 8,000 strong lawyer strike that paralyzed the courts.

The entire piece pays homage to the power of organized labor in uprisings such as Tunisia, and the importance of the collaboration of so many involved in the movement.  It’s a very interesting read, and really zeroes in on how labor is fueling the youth movement, the “forgotten majority” in so many Maghreb/Arab countries.

In expanding upon the solidarity amongst the youth of Tunisia, Chen also cites Dyab Abou Jahjah, founder and former president of the Arab European League, who republished a 1/14/2011 piece at the Monthly Review Zine.  Several of Dyab Abou Jahjah’s accounts of the Tunisia protests are especially worth noting:

The youth played an important role in all this and cell phones combined with Facebook connected through proxy services was the media of the revolution.  The trade union (UGTT) played the role of the momentum regulator and political indicator.  It was clear that as long as the trade union kept on declaring strikes the battle was on, and that was the signal to the people to stick to the streets.

The global AFL-CIO of course has also been supportive of an overthrow of the Egyptian government, having been active there for quite a while.  In fact, the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center published this study just last year on the legislative, social and direct action that has been undertaken to change the Egyptian government and its views on workers rights.  Yesterday, the AFL-CIO announced that organizers were successful in defying the ban on unionizing in Egypt and have formed a new labor federation called the Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions.

Reflecting upon the recent success in overthrowing Tunisia’s dictatorship, Dyab Abou Jahjah describes the sentiments of the Tunisian protesters and their outlook for Egypt and the rest of the Arab world in the near future:

As for the repercussions on the Arab world and beyond…They are paramount.  All Arab dictators are now shaking on their thrones.  Especially in the Maghreb countries, but also Mubarak will have a sleepless night.  The Arab peoples now saw and know for sure what a people can do.  They saw another Arab people bring down the harshest of dictators in less than a month.  All that was needed was unity and determination to go all the way.  This will certainly lead to the revival of revolutionary dreams among the Arab oppressed classes (middle class and masses) and will start the dawn of democracy.  The Americans and the Zionists — and also France — are nervous today: their best friend in the area was kicked out. . . .  And the people is [sic] heading to govern itself in Tunisia with its own agenda with all the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist elements of that.  A free democratic Tunisia will not only be a model for democracy for all Arabs, it will also be a safe haven for revolutionary powers and a place of support for the resistance against Israel and the U.S. The international alliance against empire hegemony will have another member.

Place of support for the resistance against Israel and the U.S.?

While I’m fully aware of the disdain for the U.S. from some regions of the world due to our country’s perceived intervention and government meddling in their affairs, any American must admit, this statement seems a bit disconcerting for the U.S., no?

That leads us to the second point, which is, the level of involvement of the U.S. State Department.

The RedState post takes its lead on this particular part of the story from one of the leaked Wikileaks cables.  As the post notes, a Telegraph article titled “Egypt protests: America’s secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising“ claims that the U.S. was aware that a plan to overthrow the Egyptian government had been discussed.

The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police.

On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011.

Stunning details, including info related to the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups, are provided in the Wikileaks documents, specifically within the section titled, “Washington Meetings and April 6 Ideas for Regime Change.”

The Telegraph article also mentions that Egyptian security has already arrested this dissident in connection with the protests.  The paper says that it is protecting his identity; in following the #Jan25 hashtag stream on Twitter, there appears to be some discussion of this individual’s arrest.

The RedState post made special note of the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit (AYM) mentioned in the document (also referred to as Alliance for Youth Movements).  It indicates that based upon both the information from the Wikileaks document, as well as the AYM website, the U.S. State Department appears it may have been openly working with various private corporations to support and train grassroots activists involved in the current and future uprisings in support of human rights.

From the leaked US Embassy document:

On December 23, April 6 activist xxxxxxxxxxxx expressed satisfaction with his participation in the December 3-5 \”Alliance of Youth Movements Summit,\” and with his subsequent meetings with USG officials, on Capitol Hill, and with think tanks. He described how State Security (SSIS) detained him at the Cairo airport upon his return and confiscated his notes for his summit presentation calling for democratic change in Egypt, and his schedule for his Congressional meetings. xxxxxxxxxxxx contended that the GOE will never undertake significant reform, and therefore, Egyptians need to replace the current regime with a parliamentary democracy. He alleged that several opposition parties and movements have accepted an unwritten plan for democratic transition by 2011…

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressing the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit in 2009.

On its surface, the Alliance for Youth Movements initiative and its partnership with the State Department seem relatively benign.  But, the Wikileaks document implies that there was potentially a deeper level of collaboration with the Alliance for Youth Movement and protests in Egypt, including at least some of its participating members/sponsors, several of which are crucial components to the protests we’re seeing today.  At this point in time, we simply have no way of knowing for sure and to what extent (unless of course all of the Wikileaks documents were suddenly validated as 100% fact).

[Oh, look at that – MSNBC is on the list!]

No one’s stating a position on Egypt one way or the other in this post.  But one thing’s for certain – if WikiLeaks was right, then so was RedState.  And we haven’t even scratched the surface on this yet.

** Read LaborUnionReport’s follow-up post, “Clinton’s 21st Century Statecraft a Success! AFL-CIO Applauds New Egyptian Unions“

At the genesis of the movement, David Axelrod couched criticism of the Obama agenda as “unhealthy” on national television.  Last April, the infamous “right-wing extremism” report released the week before the tax day tea parties by the Department of Homeland Security.  The report referenced “disgruntled veterans” and lumped those that believed in states’ rights in with white supremacists and militia members.  It was an embarrassment to the Department of Homeland Security and the administration.  Public apologies to veterans and regrets regarding the extremely broad language were issued.

A while back, “Law and Order” ran a ridiculous episode where a lawyer declared that Rush, Beck, and O’Reilly drive people to commit violent hate crimes.  Before that, there was an episode referencing a tea party in the context of discussing extremists. In February of this year, Marvel Comics issued an apology after a comic implicitly painted tea parties in a racist, violent light.

Countless guests have appeared on Keith Olbermann’s show to dissect the tea party movement psyche.  Most notable was budding amateur psychologist Janeane Garofalo who erroneously dismissed tea partiers as intellectually deficient violent racists.  More recently a guest on The Rachel Maddow Show, talking about the recent Midwest militia arrests, conflated the tea party movement and right-wing militant extremists and implied that the nation is somehow in danger of the tea party splintering into militia terror cells.

In recent days, the violence claim has been invoked in conjunction with the equally baseless racism claim to discredit those that oppose ObamaCare.  Yet, as John Steele recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal in a piece entitled “As Peaceful as a Tea Party,” “the only person arrested in recent days for threatening violence against a politician was held for threatening Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House.”  Last week, news broke that a man was arrested after threatening the life of Representative Eric Cantor and his family. The suspect, Norman Leboon, is an anti-Semite and an Obama donor.

As Mr. Steele accurately points out, the tea parties aren’t immune to odd sign bearers:

“To be sure, tea partiers have carried signs saying such things as “If [newly elected Massachusetts Senator Scott] Brown can’t do it, a Browning can,” referring to the American firearms manufacturer. But how do those differ from the signs regularly seen—if seldom reported on by the mainstream media—during the previous administration calling for President Bush to be tried for war crimes and shot as a traitor?”

They don’t.  The only difference is, these kooks wandered into a tea party and not a Code Pink rally, so they got an abnormal share of the spotlight from the leftist media.

Such messages are rare at tea parties and an inherent hazard of hosting an event in a public arena for both the left and the right.  It would hardly be fair to extrapolate from the Cantor threat that all Obama supporters are violent anti-Semites taking marching orders from the propagandists on MSNBC.  Yet such perverse logic is invoked to form the shoddy foundation of the left’s constant tea party attacks.  One odd sign somehow translates into a movement-wide sentiment linked to orders from Fox News.  Worse, these attacks typically don’t even invoke an actual incident or individual to reach the perpetrators’ unreasonable generalization.  Claims of racism and violence arise regularly with virtually zero supporting evidence.

In fact, from the St. Louis SEIU racist beating of tea party participant Keith Gladney to the recent Nevada bus attack and threats against Andrew Breitbart, the tea party opposition has perpetrated every instance of actual violence at tea parties over the past year.  Yet, time and time again, politicians intimate and media hacks declare that the tea partiers are the violent fringe. It is simply stunning.

It is often said that the best way to lead is by example.  Hatred and violence have no place in political discourse or civil society as a whole.  That’s why they have no place in the mainstream, non-violent grassroots movement exhibited in the tea parties. Period.  As tax day tea parties kick off this month, let’s hope that the tea party opposition comes around to the same way of thinking.