Firestone Revisited: Was Toyota a Takedown Target in the Name of NUMMI?

As a gloomy, snowy February came to a close in the nation’s capital, so did the most recent circus attraction on Capitol Hill.  Several days of congressional hearings on the Toyota recalls didn’t exactly deliver many more facts for Americans but they did leave behind a plethora of speculation and opinion to feast upon.  While the saga now known as GasPedalGate flailed around quietly for several years, it’s suddenly taken center stage and today plays out like a bad made-for-TV-movie, complete with its villain, its victims, and most telling, a very long list of opportunists.

To see the full picture, the story begins in California with the history of General Motors and the United Auto Workers in the 1980’s, and GM’s rescue by Toyota through a little venture called NUMMI.  Today, in 2010, the NUMMI chapter nears its close.  But before it does, the Fremont, California plant and its rank and file workers will serve as unwilling pawns in what could turn out to be an orchestrated blueprint for incapacitating the strongest competitor to Government Motors and one of the most significant threats to labor unions here and around the globe.

Today’s rendition has been so manipulated and so propagandized, the facts have all but been removed from the storyline.  The bread crumb trail of truth has been trampled upon and so broadly scattered about, the trail is almost beyond the point of recognition.

The story that emerges is the collusion of forces in Big Labor, Big Government, Big Journalism, Big Litigators and Big Progressive Philanthropy.  And no, I’m not talking Breitbart sites.

The History of NUMMI

When a bankrupt and bailed out General Motors officially announced in June 2009 that it would be pulling out of its joint venture with Toyota, it marked the end of another era.

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Tags: Andy Stern, Brent Blackwalder, bridgestone, center for auto safety, Change to Win
Posted Mar 9th 2010 at 5:28 am in Big Labor, News, Politics | 8583882 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/libertychick/2010/03/09/firestone-revisited-was-toyota-a-takedown-target-in-the-name-of-nummi/Firestone+Revisited%3A+Was+Toyota+a+Takedown+Target+in+the+Name+of+NUMMI%3F2010-03-09+13%3A28%3A24Liberty+Chick

Unions Out for Blood at the Red Cross – Time for a Hostage Negotiator?

As one Change to Win labor union blocks a Red Cross blood delivery today, what will a health care system taken hostage by labor unions look like tomorrow?

As Change to Win’s Anna Burger is leading her coalition of unions to lobby all around the country “until every man, woman and child has quality, affordable care they can count on,” one of her unions is busy blocking the delivery of a Red Cross blood donation to a hospital and picketing private companies’ blood drives.

The Red Cross, which has union workers in various locations who are covered both by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and SEIU, says union leaders are trying to disrupt the Red Cross Blood Services operations by going on strike.

That’s right.  At a time of year when blood donations are at their lowest levels and are the most urgently needed, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, SEIU’s sister union and member of Burger’s Change to Win labor coalition, took advantage of the opportunity to go on strike on December 4th against the American Red Cross Blood Services Penn-Jersey Region.  Local 929  initiated the strike at midnight just as their contract expired.  Hours later, the Red Cross was forced to take legal action when some strikers illegally blocked one blood delivery in particular

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Tags: Anna Burger, Anthony Tornetta, blood, Change to Win, contract
Posted Dec 14th 2009 at 9:51 am in Big Labor, Healthcare, News | 45366116 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/libertychick/2009/12/14/unions-out-for-blood-at-the-red-cross-time-for-a-hostage-negotiator/Unions+Out+for+Blood+at+the+Red+Cross+-+Time+for+a+Hostage+Negotiator%3F2009-12-14+17%3A51%3A20Liberty+Chick

Using Unions As Weapons: UPS v. FedEx

You may have heard the UPS is in quite the political fight with FEDEX. Though both are package-delivery companies, they’re governed by totally different federal labor rules. As a result, UPS’s workforce is much more heavily unionized than FEDEX’s-and more than twice as expensive.

So now UPS is trying to get FEDEX reclassified under federal law as a way of screwing a competitor. That’s horrendous, but it also makes a sick kind of business sense. And it also reveals the real villain: A government that is big enough to absolutely, positively guarantee it can screw any business. Overnight.

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Tags: federal oversight, FedEx, labor costs, national labor relations act, rent seeking
Posted Nov 10th 2009 at 12:57 pm in Big Labor, Congress, Politics | 2843043 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/ngillespie/2009/11/10/using-unions-as-weapons-ups-v-fedex/Using+Unions+As+Weapons%3A+UPS+v.+FedEx2009-11-10+19%3A57%3A34Nick+Gillespie

From the Archives II: ACORN Corruption Runs Deep

In politics the media seems to have a tier system for how they report on scandals. Republicans who fall from grace are vilified. They are the butts of countless inappropriate jokes and cartoons and expected never to be heard from again. Recent right scandals (examples, Governor Mark Sanford and Mark Foley) dominated the news, but, besides Fox News, the media barely covered Obama adviser Van Jones or delved deeply into the dealings of Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson.

Unfortunately for America, the media has been filtering news for years and this practice has allowed some of the main figures in the Teamstergate scandal to assume top spots in the Democrat party. Part 1 of this series reviewed the history of the scandal and its strong ties to ACORN and President Obama.  In order to help readers fully appreciate the connections, I discuss below some of the major players in the Teamstergate saga who were named in indictments and a Congressional report on in a scheme that reached all the way into the White House.

The Congressional report, on Teamstergate, reached a number of damning conclusions that implicated organizations like Project Vote  and Citizen Action. It also raised a number of questions about campaign finance and “soft money” donations. Something that ACORN seemed concerned with as detailed in a spring blog post here. Were these questions raised by ACORN political director Zach Polett a result of the following statement in the Congressional report:

The issue of soft money abuses is inevitably tied to the question of how access to political figures is obtained through large contributions of soft money. It is also tied to the question of how tax-exempt organizations have been used to hide the identities of soft money donors. A system that permits large contributions to be made for partisan purposes, without public disclosure, invites subversion of the intent of our election law limitations.

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Tags: ACORN, acorn scandal, ACORN videos, Andy Stern, Barack Obama
Posted Oct 12th 2009 at 11:16 am in ACORN, Big Labor, Featured Story, History, Obama, Politics | 1563854 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/amoncrief/2009/10/12/from-the-archives-ii-acorn-corruption-runs-deep/From+the+Archives+II%3A+ACORN+Corruption+Runs+Deep2009-10-12+18%3A16%3A39Anita+MonCrief

From the Archives: ACORN Corruption Runs Deep

In what obviously was part of a concerted effort, former President Bill Clinton appeared recently on Sunday’s Meet the Press to discuss – wait for it – the “real” forces behind President Obama’s falling poll numbers and increasing opposition:

Former President Bill Clinton says the right-wing conspiracy that attacked him during his presidency now is after President Obama.

Democrats–no strangers to major scandal–do not hesitate to divert attention away from the corruption and “pay to play” tactics being exposed or simmering just under the surface. Clinton deliberately inserted himself into a critically important national debate and thereby unwisely opened the tomb of similar scandals, potentially more explosive than his unwise dalliances with Monica Lewinsky.

For most of the 1990’s, the White House, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Citizen Action and ACORN’s Project Vote were embroiled in what would become known as “Teamstergate.”

That scandal involved disgraced former union crusader and Teamster national president Ron Carey. According to New York Times Archives:

Three of Mr. Carey’s campaign aides have pleaded guilty to a web of illegal fund-raising schemes, including having the union donate $735,000 to three liberal grass-roots groups for a get-out-the-vote effort during the 1996 Congressional elections. In return, those groups and their supporters were to channel money to Mr. Carey’s re-election campaign…

Insisting that he delegated decisions on political gifts, Mr. Carey repeatedly denied knowing about the large donations to the three liberal groups: Citizen Action, Project Vote and the National Council of Senior Citizens.

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Tags: ACORN, AFSCME, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Carol Moseley Braun
Posted Oct 11th 2009 at 2:00 pm in ACORN, Big Labor, Obama, Politics, State Politics | 15474109 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/amoncrief/2009/10/11/from-the-archives-acorn-corruption-runs-deep/From+the+Archives%3A+ACORN+Corruption+Runs+Deep2009-10-11+21%3A00%3A23Anita+MonCrief