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Unionized phone company employees say they were beaten or threatened after they accused their labor bosses of looting their coffers through various scams. One member of Communications Workers of America Local 1101 said that after he reported a time-sheet padding scheme, a thug beat him so badly his spine was injured. * * * "This was union greed and that's worse than corporate greed," said Kevin Condy, a reform movement leader of the 6,700-member local that represents mostly Verizon workers in Manhattan and the Bronx. "These guys acted like they felt they were entitled."

While University of Missouri – Kansas City Professor Judy Ancel has yet to explain her false and misleading defense of classroom statements suggesting violence is an acceptable tactic with an appropriate place in advancing the labor movement, new video reveals Ancel giving students insight into how to put non-union companies out of business. The tactic Ancel recommends to students is based upon deception and designed to burden a non-union company with a costly labor action under false pretenses.

States are $1.26 trillion in the hole when it comes to their pension and retiree health obligations, according to a report released Tuesday. And taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for this shortfall, which soared 26% in one year. The Great Recession has wreaked havoc on states' pension and retiree health systems, the Pew Center on the States found. The report covers fiscal year 2009, which began July 1, 2008 in most states. States are largely responsible for this predicament. As tax revenues plummeted, many skipped part or all of their annual retiree benefits contributions as they struggled to...

Thuggery 101: Union Official, Professor Teach College Course in Violent Union Tactics

A Sheboygan gas station owner is baffled after a mystery caller tells a clerk it's a bad idea to do business with a Sheboygan-area state senator. It started Tuesday when a woman called Dick Hiers's Northeast Standard gas station after she thought she saw Senator Joe Leibham there. Her call was caught on the answering machine. "I think that this whole thing has to end. It has to stop," said Hiers. Hiers never thought his little gas station in the heart of Sheboygan would be the stage of political controversy. Then again, his week has been full of surprises. "I...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- A Wisconsin woman charged with making death threats to Republican state lawmakers has pleaded not guilty to charges, but has been barred from the Capitol building and is to have no contact with those involved. Twenty-six year old Katherine Windels entered the plea to two misdemeanor counts of making threats over a computer and two felony counts of making bomb threats during an appearance in Dane County Circuit Court Thursday. A criminal complaint alleges Windels threatened to shoot the senators and plant bombs around their houses and the Capitol because of their votes in favor of...

The tab to keep Madison operating through the weeks of union attempts to shut down the legislature has yet to be calculated entirely, but it has already run into the millions, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The bill from the Department of Natural Resources alone for its personnel topped $350,000, and the parking tab for police to park their vehicles approached $100,000: The state Department of Administration is still tallying up the expenses run up by law enforcement agencies and other departments during the weeks of protests at the Capitol. For many days on end, there were hundreds of law...

The commie counter-Tea Partiers Andrew Breitbart appropriately invited to go to hell in Madison were also out in force in Portland. Here an enlightened progressive shares with us what he does with Old Glory. Warning — the obscene screechings of moonbats are not for innocent ears:

This is what thuggery looks like. They don’t want to hear your side. They don’t want to discuss your views. They want you to shut up and be silent. This is today’s TrumkaObama American left. They must be soooo proud. Via Breitbart TV:

Sarah Palin rides to the sound of the guns. It was a chilly, wet and blustery afternoon in Madison, Wisconsin — one more appropriate for a late-season Packers game than a springtime political rally. The stirring NFL Films theme,  “The Classic Battle,” would’ve been a more apt musical choice than Van Halen’s “Right Now” to accompany Palin as she entered the stage outside the state capital building to address thousands of Tea Party members, along with a good number of extremely hostile, expletive-hurling government union rowdies. In the last few months, political professionals and insiders have been writing off the...

There haven't been any major earthquakes or wildfires in California recently, but teachers apparently think that the potential budget cuts to education merit a "State of Emergency Week." The California Teachers Association, the state's largest teachers union, is planning a week of activities in May. The goal is to pressure Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and the state legislature to raise taxes rather than cut education spending. Earlier this week the union posted a 10-page list of potential activities on its website, CAstateofemergency.com. Ideas included stalking legislators for a day; boycotting corporations like Microsoft that advocate for education reform; attempting to...

The head of the California Teachers Association said Tuesday he wants state leaders to drop Gov. Jerry Brown's idea of asking voters to extend higher taxes and instead approve the taxes themselves in the Capitol. "I believe that as much as our governor has been extremely transparent and honest in doing what he told folks he'd do - which is let the people decide - it's too late for that," said CTA President David Sanchez in a phone interview. "Once you put it on the ballot after June, it's no longer an extension, it becomes new taxes. And once they're...

Led by union workers from across Texas, thousands of chanting marchers converged on the Capitol on Wednesday to protest the recently passed House budget's deep spending cuts to education, health care and state jobs. "We are all in this together," Judy Lugo, president of the Texas State Employees Union, told the raucous, cheering crowd on the south steps of the Capitol. "Every Texan, now and for years to come, will suffer the consequences if the Texas Legislature does not change course." Shortly before the rally, conservative and tea party activists held a news conference on the other side of the...

Bomb Threats: Wisconsin News Omits That Katherine Windels, Woman Charged in Making Death Threats Against Republican Senators, Is a School Teacher (video) So much for the age of civility and balanced media… when will the leftists at MSNBC or Media Matters cover any of this? In Wisconsin, a 26-year-old woman has been charged in sending death threats, via emails, to WI Republican senators because of their support of Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill. What Wisconsin news sources have conveniently omitted in much of their coverage is that Katherine Windels is a SCHOOL TEACHER. A pre-school and kindergarten teacher. Click here...

Albany, NY (WBEN) -- State Police in the Capitol region are investigating a series of threatening emails that were sent to numerous state and local lawmakers in Albany on Friday. The emails are "similar in content," according to investigators. Troopers are not officially releasing any further information, citing the sensitivity of the investigation. But an Albany-area television station obtained a copy of the email Friday evening, from Assemblyman James Tedisco. (Click here read the entire text of the email, courtesy of WTEN-TV). [email Text near the bottom of the WTEN page that opened] In it, the writer expresses outrage over...

Madison - A 26-year-old woman was charged Thursday with two felony counts and two misdemeanor counts for allegedly making email threats against Wisconsin lawmakers during the height of the battle over Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill.Katherine R. Windels of Cross Plains was named in a criminal complaint filed in Dane County Criminal Court.According to the criminal complaint, Windels allegedly sent an email threat to State Sen. Robert Cowles (R-Green Bay) March 9. Later that evening, she allegedly sent another email to 15 Republican legislators, including Senate Majority Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau).The subject line of the second email was: "Atten.: Death Threat!!!! Bomb!!!" In...

Members of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, have begun circulating letters to businesses in southeast Wisconsin, warning that they will face a boycott if they don't support collective bargaining for public employee unions.

On March 25, 1911—exactly 100 years ago—approximately 500 workers were crafting “shirtwaists,” blouses with puffy sleeves and tight waists. These garments were the height of feminine fashion in America during the years before World War I and worn by “Gibson Girls.” It was part of an image personifying beauty, with a touch of independence, popularized by illustrated stories developed by a guy named—yep, you guessed it—Charles Dana Gibson. But the women and girls (primarily) working long hours to produce the “shirtwaists” were not likely to actually wear them. They were immigrants for the most part, underpaid and overworked. They labored...

Presidential Proclamation--100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire On March 25, 1911, a fire spread through the cramped floors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in lower Manhattan. Flames spread quickly through the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors -- overcrowded, littered with cloth scraps, and containing few buckets of water to douse the flames -- giving the factory workers there little time to escape. When the panicked workers tried to flee, they encountered locked doors and broken fire escapes, and were trapped by long tables and bulky machines. As bystanders watched in horror, young workers began jumping out of the...

This column is based on eyewitness accounts, trial transcripts, testimony, and information from the New York City Fire Dept. and the New York Historical Society. It is the harrowingly small amount of sidewalk that may hit you when you stand in front of the building that housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, where 100 years ago this March 25, 146 garment workers -- 129 women, 17 men -- perished in a murderous fire that ranks as one of the worst this nation has ever known.