Here’s another example that shows just how ‘accepting’ liberals are of people from all walks of life.

High School teacher Al Levie refused to accept an MLK award from Rep. Paul Ryan because, well, Paul Ryan is a conservative no matter how Levie tries to frame it. Levie stated that “Paul Ryan has no business being at an MLK event.” That’s a pretty bigoted action.

Levie’s speech can be found here.

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The U.S. Coast Guard will escort the first ship coming to the EGT grain terminal at the Port of Longview this month, and the Occupy movement and local labor groups say they are planning to greet the vessel with a massive protest.

EGT officials say they have not scheduled a date for the ship’s arrival. The freighter is expected to haul thousands of tons of grain to Asia, but opposition groups are already marshaling their forces to support the lengthy protest by union dock workers at the grain terminal.

“We just want to swell the population of the city to show there are people behind us,” said Jeff Washburn, president of the Cowlitz Wahkiakum Central Labor Council, which passed a resolution calling for a protest this week.

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – A Republican-dominated Indiana Senate committee endorsed the right-to-work bill that has prompted a three-day standstill in the Indiana House.

The Senate labor committee voted 6-4 to send the bill to the full Senate, where the GOP holds a 37-13 majority and the party’s leader has made its passage a top priority. The bill would prohibit contracts between companies and unions that require workers to pay representation fees.

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Indiana’s Republican House leader on Tuesday promised swift movement on a push to make his state the first in more than a decade to ban labor contracts that require employees to pay union fees.

Speaker Brian Bosma of Indianapolis told the Associated Press he is confident he can push the “right-to-work” bill through his chamber during the 2012 session that begins Wednesday and is spending a lot “personal capital” to do so.

“We assume nothing,” Bosma said. “I don’t assume we have all the Republicans votes, in fact I know I don’t and I don’t presume we don’t have some Democrat votes either.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) – The National Labor Relations Board on Friday dropped its high-profile challenge of Boeing’s decision to open a nonunion aircraft manufacturing plant in South Carolina.

The board acted after the Machinists union approved a four-year contract extension with Boeing this week and agreed to withdraw its charge that the company violated federal labor laws.

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In a video shot at #Occupy Chicago, Aisha Karim, a professor from Saint Xavier University, is shown preaching the gospel of Karl Marx to a cheering crowd in a display of stunning economic and historical ignorance – but was her speech part of a wider effort to unionize St. Xavier?

The video titled Communist Manifesto Teach-In @ Occupy Chi showing a speech by Professor Aisha Karim has flown under the radar for a couple of months – it had fewer than 400 views when I found it – but it’s another clear example of the explicitly Marxist strain in the #Occupy movement, how it relates directly to unionization, and how just plain silly its ivory tower thinking actually is.

Professor Karim is molding the minds of American’s young adults through her work as a teacher at places like the University of North Carolina, Greensboro where parents have spent their hard earned money so their kids can sit through classes like English 209: The Terrible Logic of Capitalism: A Survey of Postcolonial Literature.

Currently, Professor Karim teaches at Saint Xavier University, Chicago’s oldest college. In this video of her teach-in, she begins by asking the Occupy Chicago crowd whether it’s time to reconsider whether Marx, socialism and communism aren’t actually pretty awesome after all (1:33 to 2:00):

And what we want to do at point is to wonder (unintelligible) if we are still skeptics about socialism or communism, we need to wonder if Marx was also right about socialism and the necessity for capitalism to turn into something completely different.

(Whoops and applause from audience)

Professor Karim then goes on to discuss Marx’s central concept of the exploitation of labor, and she makes an revealing choice for her example of an exploited worker: Professor Karim herself (2:30):

I’m going to take my example of what I do and how my labor is actually taken away from me–the fruits of my labor is taken away from me–but it is not just me. This is representative of every single person in this world who works for wages in this world right now.

(Audience member – “That’s right.”)

Professor Karim goes on to disclose her shocking plight:

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Our nation will spend more than $40 trillion over the next ten years with at least $15 trillion in deficit spending, while Congress is arguing about how to reduce that deficit by all of 8% – really?  With this nonsense debate going on, Mr. Obama has abdicated his presidency and is now campaigning for reelection on a full-time basis.  The rest of the world, meanwhile, is simply falling apart.

The Muslim Brotherhood is coming to power in Egypt, Iran is moving deliberately toward nuclear armament and Europe is proving that socialist democracies will fall at their own hand.  In the midst of this turmoil, the media has our people focusing on why the top 1% paying 50% of all federal taxes falls short of “their fair share” and why entitlements and government needs to keep growing.  We are missing the point – eliminate the noise and the real debate is simply whether our children live free or for the benefit of the state?

Let’s forget all the facts and figures about our growing debt and the increasing involvement of government in our lives and focus on the fundamental definition of liberty: liberty is the freedom from arbitrary control; it is freedom to exercise the unalienable rights endowed upon us by our Creator; it is freedom from oppressive power exerted by government; and it is freedom from all forms of tyranny.  While people demand that their neighbors who may be better off economically should be ordered – by law – to share their success with them, what they are really promoting is the ascendancy of the state over the people.  What they are missing is that they are demanding the suppression of liberty for their neighbors, themselves and their own children.

The systematic destruction of our economic strength through increased regulation, increased taxation on the job creators, a 50% increase in the national debt in just the last three years and an equal increase in the dependency on foreign governments to fund our debt has turned our nation upside down.  We have gone from the world’s last hope to a sideshow and find our great country powerless to help prevent ally nations from economic decline and powerless to stop the rise of tyrannical regimes.

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In another sign of the #Occupy movement flying off the tracks of relevancy, the movement’s next major campaign – a planned shutdown of shipping ports on the entire west coast – is explicitly opposed by International Longshoreman’s Union, the union that the shutdown is purporting to support. However, statements from an Occupy leader indicate that the Union may be bluffing in order to avoid further legal trouble in an ongoing dispute they have with a Portland grain export facility.

The website WestCoastPortShutdown.org says that the planned direct action on December 12^th is being coordinated by at least ten different Occupy movements, including the recently decamped Los Angeles, Oakland and Portland movements as well as scrawny groups like Occupy Oxnard. More specifically, the Port Shutdown is being spearheaded on by Occupy Oakland and activist / artiste Boots Riley.

The site lays out some big goals…

On December 12, the occupy movements in different cities will stage  mass mobilizations to march on the ports, create community pickets, and effectively shutdown the hubs of commerce, in the same fashion that Occupy Oakland shut down the Port of Oakland on November 2nd, the day of our general strike.

And their raison d’être is, as always, ‘solidarity with the 99%.’

We present this call to you because we believe it is time the occupation movement begins to work together to carry through coordinated, pinpointed actions. We want  to disrupt the profits of the 1% and to show solidarity with those in the 99% who are under direct attack by corporate tyranny.

But apparently the anarchy loving Occupy movement didn’t clear all of this with the heads of the unions theey are supposed to be in solidarity with. A Portland Trubune article headlined Unions: We don’t support Occupy port shutdown and subtitled Longshoremen say they will not participate in planned Dec. 12 West Coast protest appears to lay out a case for conflict between Occupy and the ILWU.

“We support the goals of the Occupy protesters but we are not supportive or participating in the shutdown of the West Coast ports,” says Jeff Smith, president of the International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union Local 8. The union represents workers who load and unload ships at the port, and also move freight in and out of it.

And the same article later quotes ILWU Local 8 president Smith saying succinctly…

“This is a third-party strike. We have to go to work,” says Smith.

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From CBC News:

Workers at a Wal-Mart in Gatineau, Que., are officially decertified from their union after just more than a year with their first collective agreement.

Quebec’s Labour Relations Commission removed the more than 150 workers, who are employed at a store on du Plateau Boulevard in the city’s Hull sector, from their union.

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From The New York Post:

Former Long Island Rail Road workers who lied about being disabled rode a “train of lies’’ to golden retirements in an audacious, $1 billion pension scam, the feds said yesterday.

Eleven suspects were charged: six retired workers, two orthopedists and three so-called “facilitators’’ — a former union official, an ex-federal railroad administrator and a doctor’s-office manager.

More arrests are likely down the line, authorities said.

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The following video features the demands made by Occupy Chicago activists Andy Thayer and Joe Iosbaker during the invasion they led into City Hall yesterday.

The march of the moochers stormed the building and marched clockwise in the lobby, rather than their usual counter-clockwise marching. The angry mob then proceeded to the 5th floor and continued their protest at the doors to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office.

Thayer’s demands included being granted permits to protest the G-8 and NATO Summit being held in Chicago this coming May as well as dropping the charges against fellow “occupiers.” He was followed by Iosbaker with statements on an SEIU resolution to support their demands and comments on his current investigation by the FBI.

Iosbaker also noted that they were notified that Northwestern University Law School has changed their graduation so that the students will not be downtown during the G-8 and NATO protests next may. They were reportedly warned by the FBI that it would be too dangerous.

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On Tuesday, militant, Marxist, anti-war, and gay-rights activists–including some suspected of providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations–led the Occupy Chicago protesters into City Hall to stage an “in your face” protest directed at Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

We caught up with one protester, Roger Fraser, a retired Palatine, Illinois school teacher. Fraser is a proud member of the “99%” who earns a modest $7,792.75 a month from his pension.

Fraser is also known as a militant gay rights activist and a member of the Gay Liberation Network–the same organization founded by Chicago G-8 and NATO protest organizer–and militant, anti-war, social-justice radical–Andy Thayer.

You may remember a previous interview from earlier this year, released by Andrew Breitbart, filmed at a Code Pink-led protest against the Koch brothers in Palm Springs, California–where Fraser called for “Revolution now,” and exclaimed, “Just like in Egypt!“

In the following interview, conducted yesterday inside City Hall, we asked Fraser if “this” was the kind of revolution he was talking about. Fraser told us, “This is the beginning.”

When asked what he thought it would take to achieve the activists’ goals, he remarked: “This kind of thing on a massive scale.“ He also answered in the affirmative as to whether or not the revolution would require collapsing the American government, and explained: ”Because….the resistance against this will be overwhelming…very strong….and relentless.”

Cross Posted at: RebelPundit

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Last month, the Chicago Tribune broke the story of a union leader who was re-hired for one day at the City of Chicago and then retired with a $158,000 city pension. Yesterday, the Tribune broke the story of the union leader accruing three pensions off of the same work credit: a city pension, a local union pension and a national union pension.  Combined, his annual pension income exceeds $400,000-  with anticipated lifetime benefit of $9 million.

There is debate as to whether these rotten scams could even be legal in Illinois!  But, we’ve discovered that sweetheart union leader access into our Illinois state pension system is an even larger scam.

On September 29^th, we broke this story nationally on the third largest conservative talk radio program: 34 union leaders who are not government employees are draining nearly $340 thousand per month from the state teachers’ pension system.

Last Sunday, the Illinois Statehouse News was the first Illinois newspaper to investigate.  No other newspaper has covered the statewide angle.

Former employees of the National Education Association (NEA), Illinois Education Association (IEA), Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT), and Illinois Association of School Boards (IASB), drawing pensions have collected more than $47 million from the Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS), to date.

It’s an on-going $47 million pension scam.  Union leaders who are not government employees are draining millions in teacher retirement pensions.

How did we unearth this pension abuse?

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An example of the high level of debate occurring in New York during the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations.  And the man claims to be a union member.  As always, name that h8ful h8er if you can.

Taxpayers across the nation are spending millions of dollars to pay the salaries and benefits of government employees to work exclusively for labor unions, an investigation by the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute has found.

The practice is called “official time” in federal law, or “release” time in local labor agreements reviewed by the Institute. At the federal level, it cost taxpayers more than $129 million in 2009, the last year for which figures are available, according to a report from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Similar provisions have become standard in labor agreements between unions and governments at the state and local level. Finding the total cost would require analyzing every government union contract in every state, county, city and school district in the country, a monumental task that those who have studied the issue say has not been done.

But one example exposed by the Goldwater Institute’s investigation shows the City of Phoenix spent about $3.7 million to pay its employees to do union work last fiscal year, which ended in June. Phoenix has agreements with seven unions that represent city employees, allowing them a total of more than 73,000 city-paid hours annually to do union work.

Other cities in the area have similar provisions in their contracts with labor organizations that represent municipal employees.

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From the Chicago Tribune:

All it took to give nearly two dozen labor leaders from Chicago a windfall worth millions was a few tweaks to a handful of sentences in the state’s lengthy pension code.

The changes became law with no public debate among state legislators and, more importantly, no cost analysis.

Twenty years later, 23 retired union officials from Chicago stand to collect about $56 million from two ailing city pension funds thanks to the changes, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation found.

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Ten years ago at this exact time I was standing in my pajamas in my living room with tears streaming down my face, my hair a wreck. I was a 21-year-old newlywed and mother. My months-old infant sat in a bouncy seat, fascinated by his fists. My sobs startled him; he jolted in his seat, looked for my face, smiled and cooed, which made me cry harder.

The dichotomy of such innocence in my living room and the terror and evil unfolding on my television broke me in ways that I will never be able to explain. I wept for every single person as though they were cherished members of my own family. I wanted to reach through the television to make it stop, to catch the people jumping and falling with my hands.

As the second tower fell, the realization of what our country faced and what we would have to do as a nation hit me.

I had identified myself as a liberal my entire life, until this day. I had an early midlife crisis when I was around 19 years-old, when I began to think that I didn’t actually believe in the principles with which I was raised. I was raised by a very big southern Democrat union family. I was indoctrinated by years of pop-culture, educational bias, and family mantra. It was the only way. I did not vote for George W. Bush. I supported Gore. Even as I began to shed the beliefs of a Democrat, one thing remained: I still felt that America had a problem with the “military complex.” The only reason people were hostile to us, I surmised, was because they were intimidated by our military. I thought Bush was representative of this and it was the reason I didn’t support him.

That belief was blown to hell on 9/11.

“Thank God George Bush is president,” I blurted out in the middle of a furious sob. My husband, who was born wearing a Reagan shirt, looked at me with wide-eyed wonderment.

How foolish I had been.

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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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From the Associated Press:

Hundreds of Longshoremen stormed the Port of Longview early Thursday, overpowered and held security guards, damaged railroad cars, and dumped grain that is the center of a labor dispute, said Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha.

Six guards were held hostage for a couple of hours after 500 or more Longshoremen broke down gates about 4:30 a.m. and smashed windows in the guard shack, he said.

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President Barack Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is on a job-killing rampage. It’s claiming unprecedented powers far beyond what federal law allows. Taken with Obama’s other agencies, these executive actions paint a picture of what has become an imperial presidency.

A federal appeal is certain once NLRB’s shocking attack on Boeing Co. goes through the administrative process. In a free-market society, government bureaucrats cannot dictate to a private company where they can and cannot open factories or create jobs. Boeing—whose general counsel was formerly one of the most brilliant federal judges in America, Michael Luttig—should win this court battle.

NLRB’s power grab is not limited to Boeing. It’s also claiming jurisdiction over St. Xavier University, saying that the school doesn’t qualify for the religious exemption to NLRB’s authority because St. Xavier is not Catholic enough. NLRB cites to a 1979 Supreme Court case as giving it this authority, when that case instead makes clear that this government agency would be running afoul of the First Amendment by presuming to rate the religiosity of bone fide church organizations.

Just recently NLRB came down with three other far-left decisions. One was repealing an earlier NLRB ruling, stripping workers of the right to promptly contest the results of a vote to form a union. Another was ruling that employers everywhere must post signs on forming a union, giving the appearance that unionizing was encouraged both by the government and even the employer.

The third and most damaging ruling was to rule that even where unions do not exist, employees can form micro-unions in part of a company. This would make a mess of labor laws by creating countless possible entities with which business owners and management must constantly negotiate, seriously complicating efforts to have company policies that are stable, predictable, and profitable.

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