Free Republic

During a speech today in Washington D.C., AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the looming debt disaster a "manufactured crisis" and said "there isn't a fiscal cliff." "There is no fiscal cliff," Trumka says in prepared remarks to the National Mediation Board Conference in Washington on Thursday. "What we’re facing is an obstacle course within a manufactured crisis that was hastily thrown together in response to inflated rhetoric about our federal deficit." Obama met with Trumka earlier this week, in addition to other far left leaders, to discuss economic policy. Apparently a $3500 tax increase on every family doesn't serve as...

Here they come again. California unions are once again meddling in Arizona politics on behalf of illegal aliens, and against the interests of their own American workers. The deceptively-named "Campaign For Arizona’s Future" - which was funded by the national mega-labor unions AFL-CIO and UNITE HERE is spending millions to try and defeat Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The group, which calls its campaign "Adios Arpaio", is mostly comprised of the same Los Angeles-based activists which protested in 2010 after the passage of S.B. 1070. They claim to have registered over 36,000 - mostly Hispanics - in Maricopa County, AZ to...

The domestic violence in Shepard’s past is both shocking and repulsive in detail. On February 15, 1998, police were called to then-Mrs. Shepard’s house (the couple had been separated since June of the previous year) by a girlfriend. According to the police report (.pdf file), Mrs. Shepard said of her husband: Read on. Joseph entered my home. I told him to leave. He came up to me looking angry. I put my hands up to protect my breasts as they are sore (cancer). He has hit me before in the breast. He grabbed my wrist and arm and pushed me...

As I reported yesterday , Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee Elijah Cummings is using intimidation and bully tactics to threaten voter integrity group True the Vote. As I also mentioned, he isn't alone in his attacks. On October 10, AFL-CIO Florida attorney Alma Gonzales sent a letter to local True the Vote leader, private citizen and volunteer Kimberly Kelly, threatening legal action should the group continue their efforts to get voter rolls cleaned up and to train poll watchers for Election Day. Gonzales also accused the group of violating the rights of voters. "According to press reports, True...

The Obama Administration has rewarded its big labor allies with lucrative federal grants, including millions of dollars to help them strengthen unions in Iraq, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch. The information comes straight from government records gathered in the course of a lengthy JW investigation into the administration’s tight relationship with the nation’s powerful labor movement. Since Obama moved to the White House federal funding for big labor has skyrocketed to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. A chunk of the money is being funneled to unions so they can increase labor organization around the globe,...

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis walks, talks and barks like a rootsy Occupy Wall Street activist. But this Big Labor loudmouth who's leading the abandonment of nearly 400,000 schoolchildren in the Windy City is just another power-grabbing union fat cat. Instead of academic excellence, she rails about "social justice." Instead of accountability, she fumes about "profits" and curses merit pay. Lewis has marched with the Occu-clowns denouncing capitalism and promoting "socialism (as) the alternative." She raves: "Occupy Wall Street and the whole concept of the 99 percent is an extraordinarily important movement." And she earned praise as a "fist-in-the-air,...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is leaving Charlotte on Thursday and will not attend President Obama's acceptance speech. Trumka is leaving early in order to avoid the travel crush at the Charlotte airport on Friday, according to a spokesman for Workers’ Voice, the AFL-CIO’s super-PAC. But there have been tensions between the Obama administration and organized labor for some time. Spokesman Eddie Vale said Trumka and others union officials' absence was not related to labor’s frustrations with Democrats. “Nope, this has nothing to do with that,” he said in an email. “We're looking forward to Obama accepting the...

The most influential money-mover of the modern labor movement is also affiliated with the secretive Democracy Alliance. Karen Ackerman launched two of the most expensive political operations of the 2004 and 2008 elections as political director of union giant American Federation of Labor-Congress Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). The union spent $150 million to defeat President George W. Bush in 2004 and pledged $200 million—more than 40 percent of the $450 million spent by labor groups that year—to elect Barack Obama in 2008. Ackerman’s ability to generate massive political capital made her a star of the left, leading to a $143,000 payday...

With a $2 million bankroll and heavy advertising, Elizabeth Esty won the high-profile Democratic primary for the 5th Congressional District. Now, she has to win a quieter, if still crucial campaign for the support of organized labor. The first test will come Wednesday when the Connecticut AFL-CIO's political committee meets to consider transferring its backing to Esty from Christopher G. Donovan, the union favorite she defeated in a three-way primary. Esty, who voted against labor on a handful of key items during her single term in the General Assembly, concedes she has little hope of defeating Republican Andrew Roraback in...

.........."As all of America now knows, the Obama SuperPAC has run an ad with former steelworker Soptic essentially accusing Governor Romney of killing his wife...... On September15, Leo Gerard's appointment to the Trade Advisory group was announced by -- yes indeed -- the Office of the Press Secretary. Said the White House of Gerard in its release:... >>>Leo W. Gerard is the International President of United Steelworkers. He is a member of the AFL-CIO's Executive Committee and chairs its Public Policy Committee. Mr. Gerard is co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance, and a board member of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for...

“For progressives and people of color, it’s hard to imagine a worse choice” than Mitt Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his running mate, writes Imara Jones on the blog Colorlines today. He says the pair:represent a retread of 40 years’ worth of Republican ideas on economics, race and the role of government. Not content to let failure remain dormant, they want to reanimate bankrupt concepts and take them to a whole, new level.Jones writes that “Romney’s and Ryan’s discredited proposals would take America back to a less-just, less equitable place.”To them, that era of racial and economic...

Unions hit Democratic convention where it hurts: In the wallet By: Robin Bravender and Anna Palmer August 9, 2012 06:44 PM EDT The Democrats are hitting up unions — their go-to cash cows — for last-minute donations to help pay for next month’s convention in Charlotte. The response from some big unions? Tough. Union leaders insisted from the start that they wouldn’t help fill the piggy bank for this year’s Democratic National Convention after the party picked a labor-hostile location and at the same time made fundraising tougher by banning corporate contributions and capping individual donations. And with the event...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Labor unions plan to send out more than 300,000 volunteers later this month to canvass voters to support President Barack Obama’s re-election. The effort begins on Aug. 25, when activists fan out across 27 states during a national ‘‘day of action.’’ AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says a record 400,000 union-based volunteers will be knocking on doors and talking to voters in all 50 states later this year.

The president of the AFL-CIO is worried that President Obama is doing poorly among white, working class, male voters -- and he plans on putting 400,000 of his troops in the field in six key states to change the equation. Recent polls show the president doing poorly with white males with less than a college education. Mitt Romney leads the president among white males voters by more than 2-to-1 in a recent Washington Post poll, with the president favored by only 28 percent of this demographic group. Other polls show similar results. Republicans have won a majority of white males'...

President Barack Obama made history in his 2008 election victory as the first black U.S. president, but he risks achieving another, less welcome, first if he wins again in November. Obama is on course to become the candidate with the lowest support from white male working class voters to win a U.S. election if he triumphs over Republican Mitt Romney on November 6. Polls show support for Obama from white males without college degrees at under 30 percent, well below the 39 percent he had when he defeated Republican John McCain four years ago. While he has overwhelming support from...

A group of prominent economists today urged President Obama and congressional leaders to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for three years. In a letter to the president and lawmakers they wrote: A higher minimum wage at this juncture will not only provide raises for low-wage workers but would provide some help on the jobs front as well. The group, including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University; former Labor Secretary Robert Reich; and Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), advocate a three-step raise of 85 cents a...

Democrats are abandoning Barack Obama’s ship. Last week Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi instructed Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives to not attend this September’s Democratic National Convention. Instead, Ms. Pelosi insisted, their time would be better spent campaigning at home, rather than partying in Charlotte, N.C. Ms. Pelosi’s announcement falls in line with the AFL-CIO, which announced the previous week that it won’t be spending money to bankroll the convention. And Pelosi and her Big Labor friends are in lockstep with Democrat U.S. Senators Jon Tester of Montana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia –...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Thursday that his union will not be at the Democratic convention, “do[es] not intend to put any money into the convention” and will be hosting its own convention — without Obama. Speaking in Washington, D.C., Trumka said the labor group “will not be doing extravagant events” at this year’s convention like “we’ve done in the past.” Instead of giving money to the Obama campaign and Democrats they are focusing on their own event that rivals the Democratic convention. The event, called “Workers Stand for America” will be held on August 11 in Philadelphia. “We will...

The AFL-CIO today filed a “friend of the court" brief asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to uphold a lower court’s ruling that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. The 1996 law denies federal benefits to same sex couples.In the brief, filed along with Change to Win (CTW) and the National Education Association (NEA), the three union groups say:The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), by intention and design, ensures that workers with same-sex spouses earn less money, are taxed more on their wages and benefits, and have available to them fewer valuable benefits and...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka celebrates Independence Day today by bashing freedom. The Examiner reported: AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has a 4th of July-themed column in the Huffington Post musing on the word freedom and how it is interpreted by the Republican Party. His conclusion is that they use the word to con people. Let’s call this right-wing “freedom” catch phrase what it really is: a grossly political strategy to dupe the public, which holds the word “freedom” as something sacred.