Apparently having resolved the financial crises facing the state, Oregon Democratics in the Senate passed a new "prevailing wage" bill (all for the sake of "clarity").
State law already requires prevailing wages be paid on publicly funded projects on Oregon University System property, but the bill would ensure prevailing wages for projects that might be privately funded.
Meanwhile, tuition rates increase - especially for out-of-state students - while the bozos hand illegal aliens in-state tuition. On the one hand, Oregon Democratics "think" that everybody should go to college - while on the other, they deliberately and artificially inflate construction costs on campuses (campii?) across the state. Really, it's fortunate for Democratics that heartbeat and respiration are involuntary.
The ILWU thugs and whiners are at it again. It seems that every six months or so, they have some new "injustice" to yammer on about. At least they haven't started vandalizing things - yet.
Now they're crying because after several weeks of deliberately gumming things up by staging work slowdowns and demanding multiple inspections of the same equipment, Columbia Grain decided they've had enough. So they locked the union "brothers" out of the export facilities at the Port of Portland's Terminal 5.
You can actually find their contract online. All of the full time "A" men make well in excess of $100,000 per year. It is one of the highest paid blue collar jobs in the world.
But it's never enough for the poor, downtrodden little guys.
California teachers who say they are tired of paying for political causes they do not support – such as Democratic campaigns and gay and lesbian conferences -- are suing the National Education Association, the California Teachers Association, and 10 local union affiliate organizations.
As has been noted here on a number of occasions, unions in general and public employee unions in particular are essentially nothing more than Political Action Committees that are empowered to forcibly garnish employee wages. It's heartening to see the beleagured employees increasingly taking steps to fight back against the oppressive thugs.
Immigrant rights march for amnesty in downtown Los Angeles, California on May Day, 2006. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Wednesday is the long-celebrated Communist holiday known as May Day, and all of the usual suspects are gearing up for demonstrations and "protests". Look for heavy turnouts in New York City and around California in particular; in NYC, occutards plan to kick things off with a "solidarity march" in support of the Transport Workers Union, followed by an illegal alien "immigrant justice tour" and other activities. California can look forward to numerous demonstrations across the state by occutards and illegal aliens:
In California, large protests are expected because some undocumented immigrants and their supporters view this as their best chance in many years for immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.
Meanwhile, as the "reform bill" pushed by the Gang of Eight continues to shuffle along toward passage, some interesting provisions have emerged; specifically, while it requires illegal aliens to pay a small fee, the businesses that have been employing them get a free pass:
Employers who have allowed illegal immigrants to work off the books can come forward safely and provide their work history without fear of prosecution, and businesses that knowingly employed someone using a bogus or stolen Social Security number likewise would get a pass, according to an analysis of the bill by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that wants a crackdown on immigration.
And Nanny Pelosi has come out with a new "next pillar of government" (another entitlement): "free" childcare for all.
“I need your help on this because we talked about - Social Security a pillar of economic stability for America’s families,” Pelosi said at the City Club of Cleveland on April 15. “Medicare and Medicaid another pillar of health security. Affordable Care Act -another pillar, we put it in that league as making a difference. “
“What we have to do and not necessarily as, shall we say, as transformative as Social Security and Medicare and the Affordable Care Act for everybody– but I think very important to our country is to have affordable quality childcare for all of America’s children. If we are going to unleash all that women have to offer we have to really get to this point.”
She's absolutely convinced that we're never going to run out of other peoples' money to spend on entitlements and kickbacks. The fun just never stops. Suddenly, just about everything (except guns) are fundamental civil and human rights. Just ask Eric Holder.
Their Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the state's school voucher program, the broadest in the USA, is constitutional despite arguments from opponents who claimed that it would funnel dollars into religious schools at the expense of public schools.
But the program's supporters say parents can send their children to any school they want, whether it's public or private, religious or not, and the Supreme Court agreed with that Tuesday.
The horror! Imagine: parents may actually be able to choose to use tax dollars (which they pay into) to send their kids to high-quality education institutions rather than unionized, chronically underachieving institutions of public vegetation.
Although many companies are fleeing the state and taking their jobs with them, California’s union membership grew by 110,000 as sales clerks, burger flippers, and government employees signed up.
Thanks to union member activism during the November elections, California’s legislature is occupied by a worker-friendly majority.
Which is to say, bought and in the pockets of union bosses, like good little Democratics. The state's already headed down the tubes; evidently not quite fast enough.
Once upon a time, unions achieved some positive things. However, they quickly became corrupt; affiliated first with organized crime and subsequently with a more powerful syndicate - the Democrat party. Unsurprisingly, their role in private enterprise has precipitously declined, while their influence in government has grown to such an extent that they effectively control, through forced conscription, municipal, state, and federal agencies nationwide.
As has been most recently demonstrated in Michigan, regular Americans have increasingly decided that they've had about enough of these thugs, and the freedom for workers to choose whether or not they wish to be associated with unions is on the rise. That's good news for everyone except the union bosses. It's no wonder that they've been growing ever more strident, ever more frantic, and have been casting about for associates that might be more favorable to their mentality.
Thus, we find them developing and nurturing stronger ties with communists and anarchists. During the ill-fated OWS "movement", such associations were on display following the discovery that, far from being the "grass-roots movement" that Nanny Pelosi and others embraced, SEIU and the american socialist party were organizers; even establishing communications and computing facilities for the useful idiots.
And as more Americans have become aware of their tactics, more are repulsed by them. Unions are fast becoming their own worst enemies.
Our hard-working SEIU members want pay raises and more vacation time. They also want managers to quit "bullying" them, and they'd like the state to stop doing business with banks that they believe committed "illegal acts" leading up to the financial crash of 2008. On the latter, they really ought to talk with Barney Frank.
Come on, taxpayers, pony up. Remember, It's For The Children™!
Two days after Senate Democrats claimed they would not seek a ban on modern firearms and feeding devices, Democrats in the Oregon House introduced just that.
HB 3200 not only bans most modern guns and magazines, it allows warrantless searches of your home, requires background checks and registration for a firearm you already own and as-of-yet undefined storage requirements. We say “a firearm” because even if you comply with the restrictions in this bill you may still only own one.
(Of course the bill does not apply to “government employees”.)
Naturally, lead players behind this are the idiotic Rep. Mitch Greenlick and Sen. Ginny Burdick. Ginny has a long history of attempting to abrogate the 2nd Amendment rights of Oregonians, while Mitch has largely confined his past activities to efforts to ban children from bicycle trailers and criminalizing tobacco products.
Both, it almost goes without saying, are Portland Democratics.
Philadelphia's Democrat mayor Michael Nutter has been trying without success to resolve labor cost issues with his city's largest public employee union, AFSCME, so he finally went to court:
Nutter is seeking permission from a Common Pleas judge to implement the plan he presented two weeks ago to District Council 33, which represents 11,000 blue-collar workers. The plan includes incremental pay raises, cost reductions in overtime rules, possible furloughs, a less-generous pension for new hires and other changes.
“Union leaders have held our public employees and the taxpayers hostage,” Nutter said at a news conference. “We are no closer to an agreement today than we were four years ago.”
AFSCME boss Lee Saunders
was quick to respond, calling Nutter and others "turncoats" and threatening to "make them pay". Apparently, Sauders feels that when he buys a politician, they should damned well stay bought - regardless of the damage his continuing demands might do to municipalities or states (and the taxpayers footing the bills).
To quote the unflappable Lee: "I'm here to tell you that's bulls*** and we're not gonna take it anymore."
This is a group whose bosses are straight out of the 1930's, both in their rhetoric and in their actions. It's time for taxpayers to vote to ban public employee unions.
The shrinking U.S. Union thug membership may be growing again soon, if the goon bosses get their way: they're unionizing marijuana distribution outlets. It makes sense; you've got to be high on something if you're willing to affiliate yourself with the thugs.
All views are welcome here, but there are a few rules that most understand intuitively. If you're stupid, you need them spelled out. So this note's for you:
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