REDNECK RANTS

**Written by Doug Powers

On Monday I wrote a bit about President Obama’s now semi-notorious “they talk about me like a dog” line that was supposedly improvised during a speech in Milwaukee.

As it turns out, some intrepid researchers are speculating that Obama might have been channeling a line from the Jimi Hendrix song “Stone Free.”

I was skeptical at first, but it kind of makes sense, because another line in that song is “I got to, got to, got to get away” — perfect for somebody who just came off several weeks worth of vacations.

Not only that, but the Hendrix song “Spanish Castle Magic” would cover the first lady’s Antoinette-esque trip to Costa del Sol.

“Hey Joe” creates a nice parallel with Vice President Biden, and “Purple Haze” has the SEIU written all over it.

If that’s not enough, Obama is left-handed, and so was Jimi. I’m officially creeped out!

If you’re still not convinced, consider the fact that Jimi Hendrix once also recorded a song called “I will not extend the Bush tax cuts” — or so I hear.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

How would the Founding Fathers react to the fall of the constitutional republic and the rise of Barack Obama? Artist Jon McNaughton
puts it on canvas. Watch the video (I especially appreciate the criticism of Obama’s predecessor implicit in the clip and painting. As I’ve observed many times, the Big Government Republican paved and pre-socialized the way for the Big Government Democrat.)

(h/t reader Seth Adam Smith)

Click on the image to buy the print:

***

Flashback: A better “Miss Me Yet” billboard

Nope, he won’t get to close out his tenure with the Crony-lympics, but Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is riding off into the sunset.

Via the Chicago Tribune: “Mayor Richard Daley says he will not run for re-election in 2011. ‘The truth is I have been thinking about this for the past several months,’ Daley said at a City Hall news conference. ‘In the end this is a personal decision, no more, no less.’”

He leaves behind bankrupt government coffers, crime-infested public housing, and one of the “most stressed cities” in the nation.

Time to make way for another corruptocrat (paging Rahm Emanuel)!

Transnationalist billionaire George Soros is spreading his left-wing wealth across the globe. The NYTimes reports a record Soros donation to Human Rights Watch:

George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist, plans to announce on Tuesday that he is giving $100 million to Human Rights Watch to expand the organization’s work globally.

It is the largest gift he has made, the largest gift by far that Human Rights Watch has ever received, and only the second gift of $100 million or more made by an individual this year, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

…Human Rights Watch will use the gift to add about 120 staff members to its team of 300 around the world, expand translation of its reports and open new offices. The intent, said Kenneth Roth, the advocacy group’s executive director, is to increase its influence in emerging power centers. The group, which is based in New York, investigates and draws attention to human rights abuses around the world.

Mr. Roth said that South Africa had more sway in Zimbabwe than the United States and other Western powers. Similarly, India, China and Japan are more influential in Sri Lanka. “We need to try to generate pressure on those governments, those emerging powers, now, which means expanding our capacity to deploy our information,” Mr. Roth said.

Mr. Soros put it differently. “I’m afraid the United States has lost the moral high ground under the Bush administration, but the principles that Human Rights Watch promotes have not lost their universal applicability,” he said. “So to be more effective, I think the organization has to be seen as more international, less an American organization.”

The anti-Israel bias of HRW is so brazen that liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz took to the blogosphere to denounce it:

“Who will guard the guardians?” asked Roman satirist Juvenal. Now we must ask, who is watching Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s best-financed and most influential human rights organizations? It turns out that they cook the books about facts, cheat on interviews, and put out pre-determined conclusions that are driven more by their ideology than by evidence. These are serious accusations, and they are demonstrably true.

…Many former supporters of Human Rights Watch have become alienated from the organization, because of, in the words of one early supporter, “their obsessive focus on Israel.” Within the last month, virtually every component of the organized Jewish community, from secular to religious, liberal to conservative, has condemned Human Rights Watch for its bias. [HRW head Kenneth] Roth and his organizations willful blindness when it comes to Israel and its enemies have completely undermined the credibility of a once important human rights organization. Human Rights Watch no longer deserves the support of real human rights advocates. Nor should its so-called reporting be credited by objective news organizations.

Closer to home, HRW has spearheaded attacks on Arizona’s immigration enforcement policies, pushed for closure of Gitmo, and is crusading for civilian trials of Gitmo detainees on American soil.

Now, HRW will reap the benefits of Soros’s very good crisis. Recovery Summer indeed.

***

Related must-read from Ezra Levant:

George Schwartz was born in Hungary in 1930 — not the luckiest time and place to be born a Jew.

George’s father Theodore tried to change the family’s fortunes by changing their name to something less Jewish-sounding. It didn’t help. And soon war came.

When the Nazis took total control of Hungary in 1944, the Holocaust followed. In two months, 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to death camps.

To survive, George, then a teenager, collaborated with the Nazis.

First he worked for the Judenrat. That was the Jewish council set up by the Nazis to do their dirty work for them. Instead of the Nazis rounding up Jews every day for the trains, they delegated that murderous task to Jews who were willing to do it to survive another day at the expense of their neighbours.

Theodore hatched a better plan for his son. He bribed a non-Jewish official at the agriculture ministry to let George live with him. George helped the official confiscate property from Jews.

By collaborating with the Nazis, George survived the Holocaust. He turned on other Jews to spare himself.

George moved to London after the war and then to New York, where he became a stockbroker. He’s rich now. Forbes magazine says he’s the 35th richest man in the world. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He goes by the name his father invented: George Soros.

How does Soros feel about what he did as a teenager? Has it kept him up at night?

Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes asked him that. Was it difficult? “Not at all,” Soros answered.

“No feeling of guilt?” asked Kroft. “No,” said Soros. “There was no sense that I shouldn’t be there. If I wasn’t doing it, somebody else would be taking it away anyhow. Whether I was there or not. So I had no sense of guilt.”

A Nazi would steal the Jews’ property anyways. So why not him?

That moral hollowness has shaped Soros’ life. He’s a rabid critic of capitalism, but in 1992 when he saw a chance, he speculated against the British pound, causing it to crash, devastating retirement savings for millions of Britons. Soros pocketed $1.1 billion for himself. If he didn’t do it, someone else would, right?

…

Photoshop: Conservative Arts

America’s voter rolls are a mess. But you can’t count on the Department of Social Justice and corruptocrat Attorney General Eric Holder to clean them up. It’s another job the feds won’t do. Time for ordinary citizens to step up to the plate. Thanks to a provision in federal law, you can pick up the slack.

Former DOJ attorney/whistleblower J. Christian Adams fills you in at Pajamas Media:

In November 2009, political appointee Julie Fernandes told the entire assembled DOJ Voting Section that the Obama administration would not enforce the list maintenance provisions of Section 8. Section 8 “doesn’t have anything to do with increasing minority turnout,” Fernandes said. “We don’t have any interest in enforcing that part of the law.” End of story.

At the same time, Fernandes stressed that the DOJ would vigorously enforce the welfare agency registration provisions of Section 7.

She made these lawless instructions in front of me and dozens of other shocked Voting Section lawyers. The DOJ has never once denied that Fernandes gave these instructions, nor has the DOJ countermanded them.

This lawless policy couldn’t have a partisan motivation, could it?

Now, Americans are left to clean up the voter rolls on their own. Thankfully, Motor Voter provides a private right of action — that means private citizens can bring lawsuits against states and voter registrars who are allowing dead and ineligible voters to taint the voter rolls.

Americans are used to getting the job done themselves. Reliance on government tends to disappoint.

Using this private right of action, I have given sixteen states the legal notice required to alert them that they have violated Section 8 of Motor Voter. I am working with private citizens across the nation to help ensure that the elections in November aren’t plagued by ineligible voters…

…Every two years, states must report to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) information about their voter rolls. The latest report is troubling. South Dakota, Texas, Mississippi, Kentucky and Indiana report in excess of a dozen counties with more registered voters than living people old enough to vote. Having more voters than living humans tells you something is wrong. In West Virginia, one county reported 113% of the voting age population was registered to vote. Baltimore, Maryland, reported 104% of voting age citizens on the rolls. Iowa and North Carolina also reported counties with more voters than living citizens of voting age.

All of these states received a notice letter.

Ponce de Leon wasted his time looking for the fountain of youth in Florida — he should have gone to Maryland, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oregon, or Tennessee. These states report that they didn’t remove a single dead voter from 2006 to 2008. Some of the dead registered voters were resurrected on election day and cast ballots.

These states also received a notice letter.

Much more at Election Law Center.

Nicole Marrone, another former DOJ attorney, has related reporting at PJM on Philly’s dirty voter rolls.

Another swamp in need of do-it-yourself grass-roots draining.

***

More from Washington Times: Dead in Ohio, but still voting

And much more from Washington Times’ Quin Hilyer:

This developing scandal of mystery voters and dead voters resurrects the story about the Justice Department’s own website showing more substantial efforts to help felons reacquire voting privileges – even though the department has no statutory authority to do so – than to help ensure the opportunity for military personnel overseas to have their votes cast and counted on time.

From top to bottom, the Justice Department appears to be rigging voting-law enforcement in favor of interest groups usually seen to favor Democratic candidates. If so, the department is aiding and abetting vote fraud. Either way, this a major scandal that shouldn’t be buried.

Every year for the past few years, I’ve noted the annual Al Sharpton Suck-Up — the annual grievance-mongering convention held by the race hustler’s non-profit “National Action Network.” It’s a purported grass-roots activist network that only seems to surface in the news once a year when Democrat leaders — and at least one RNC chairman — show up to the convention to pay homage and kiss Sharpton’s ring.

Biggest non-shocker of the year: The “National Action Network” is a fiscal mess, delinquent on taxes, and has run afoul of campaign finance laws. The NY Post reports:

An accounting firm hired by Al Sharpton’s National Action Network found the civil-rights group in such financial disarray that it flunked its record-keeping — and may not even survive, The Post has learned.

The scathing critique was spelled out in a hard-hitting internal audit of NAN’s books, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.

“The organization has suffered recurring decreases in net assets — and has been dependent upon advances from related parties and the nonpayment of payroll tax obligations — to maintain continuity,” the firm KBL concluded in an April 2 audit of NAN’s 2008 financial records, the most recent available.

The audit, which was submitted to NAN’s board of directors, warned, “These circumstances create substantial doubt about the organization’s ability to continue.”

KBL said it was “unable to form an opinion” on the accuracy of NAN’s financial figures “because of inadequacies in the organization’s accounting records.”

In 2008, federal prosecutors decided to drop a criminal probe into the finances of Sharpton and NAN. But Sharpton — who also has a lucrative syndicated radio show and a speech-making and consulting business — agreed to pay back more than $2 million in overdue personal and NAN taxes.

The audit said NAN still owed $1.348 million in delinquent city, state and federal taxes and penalties at the end of 2008. The IRS has filed dozens of liens against NAN over the past decade, including one as recently as April of this year.

Last year, the Federal Elections Commission slapped Sharpton with $285,000 fine, in part for illegally using NAN funds to cover the costs of his 2004 presidential campaign.

Thanks to Sharpton’s race shield, NAN has engaged in financial monkey business for years with impunity.

Yes, monkey business. Sue me.

***

Heh. JWF on Sharpton’s money troubles: “This ought to qualify him as a financial adviser to his pal Obama.”

It’s actually not a “new” idea. It’s an old, recycled one borrowed from corruptocrat Democrat Sen. Chris Dodd, who sponsored a bill to create a federally-operated “infrastructure bank” in 2007. President Obama tried to get $5 billion in funding for one in his 2010 budget and $4 billion is proposed for one in his 2011 budget. Democrat Rep. Rosa De Lauro is pushing a House version — and her expansive, pipe-dream plans tell you all you need to know about what a disastrous, costly slush fund this thing would inevitably grow into:

Ms. DeLauro’s plan would create an infrastructure bank that would be part of the United States Treasury, where it would attract money from institutional investors, then channel the funds to projects selected by a panel. The program, which would make loans much like the World Bank, would finance projects with the potential to transform whole regions, or even the national economy, the way the interstate highway system and the first transcontinental railway once did.

The outside investors would expect a competitive return on their money, so many of the completed projects would have to charge fees, taxes or tolls. In an interview, Ms. DeLauro said she would be “looking at a broader base,” meaning the bank would finance not just roads and rails, but also telecommunications, water, drainage, green energy and other large-scale works.

But if the projects did not raise enough money, the Treasury might get stuck paying back the investors, a prospect that gave pause to so-called deficit hawks like Mr. Tiberi. In an e-mail last week, he said he agreed the nation’s road and communications networks needed to be improved but was concerned about creating another company like Fannie Mae that might need a bailout.

Inside the White House, the idea for a transportation initiative, and in particular an infrastructure bank, is one that the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has been promoting.

(Fun fact reminder: Rahm lived rent-free for five years in the D.C. basement of De Lauro and her Democratic pollster hubby Stanley Greenberg. But I digress.)

So, like Stimulus I, which was initially intended to put infrastructure spending first, but evolved into a multi-purpose slush fund that put infrastructure last, the “infrastructure bank” envisioned by progressives on Capitol Hill would be “looking at a broader base” to finance “green energy” and “other large-scale works” based on “social benefits” determined by a panel appointed by the president.

Moreover, this “bank” would be anything but a bank in the normal sense of the word. Ron Utt at Heritage exposed the farce in March:

This bank would be capitalized by federal appropriations to leverage a greater volume of debt borrowed under the full faith and credit of the federal government. In turn the bank would use these funds to finance eligible infrastructure projects. While these proposed entities—and similar ones that exist in the states from earlier legislation—are described as “banks,” they are no such thing.

The common meaning of a “bank” describes an entity that borrows money at one interest rate and lends it out to creditworthy borrowers at a somewhat higher interest rate to cover the borrowing, administrative, and bad debt costs incurred in the act of financial intermediation. In contrast, many of the federal infrastructure bank proposals (and those already in existence) follow only the borrowing part. Instead most allow the infrastructure bank to use borrowed funds to provide grants and subsidies to approved infrastructure projects. A grant, of course, is not paid back and does not require interest payments. So this raises an important question: How can the bank service its debt if it has no earnings?

Alert readers will recognize that this sounds alarmingly similar to the predicament of the federally sponsored lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when their earnings failed to cover debt costs, thereby necessitating a taxpayer bailout that now totals $126 billion.[1] Oddly, such apparent parallels were acknowledged by Representative Rosa DeLauro (D–CT), sponsor of current infrastructure bank legislation, when she noted that her bank would be “an innovative public-private partnership like Fannie Mae.”

“Innovative” = another massive taxpayer sinkhole. Heaven help us.

***

More on the elastic “economic development” projects that will undoubtedly be funded under the guise of infrastructure spending, via Kevin Williamson at NRO. (h/t commenter Netfest)

**Written by Doug Powers

President Obama apparently strayed off-prompter briefly Monday. This somewhat whiny reference seems like something that would come from a politician exhausted by marathon campaigning and beaten down by the opposition, which is odd for someone whose party is still in control of Washington and who spent the better part of the summer on vacation:

Obama was in Milwaukee to speak at the Milwaukee Laborfest, attended by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. He used the speech to promote his $50 billion infrastructure plan and to criticize Republicans ahead of crucial midterm elections.

“Some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time and they’re not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog. That’s not in my prepared remarks, but it’s true,” he told the union crowd.

If by “like a dog” Obama means that every one year of his presidency feels like seven, I’m forced to agree with him. Otherwise it’s a little insulting, if for no other reason than that there are many breeds of dogs that could run the country at a lower unemployment rate.

How exactly does one talk about somebody like a dog? Or are the “powerful interests” talking to a dog — or are they speaking as a dog? Are the “powerful interests” dog haters? Are the “powerful interests” democrats who are trying to get re-elected? It’s anybody’s guess.

Here’s the video:

I officially take back everything I wrote this summer — I liked him better when he was on vacation.

(h/t HAP)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

**Written by Doug Powers

The $75.5-million Carson-Gore Academy of Environmental Sciences in Los Angeles is set to open on September 13th — maybe.

The school is named after uber capitalist hyper-hypocrite Al Gore, as well as Rachel Carson, who championed a DDT ban that was responsible for millions of malaria deaths but somehow saved the planet, thus earning her a prime position on the mantle of eco-humanitarianism.

The school will open, provided all the toxic dirt (enough to almost fill a pair of Gore’s pants) can be removed and replaced in time:

Construction crews were working at the campus up to the Labor Day weekend, replacing toxic soil with clean fill. All told, workers removed dirt from two 3,800-square-foot plots to a depth of 45 feet [what's the carbon footprint of this excavation & refill? - DP], space enough to hold a four-story building. The soil had contained more than a dozen underground storage tanks serving light industrial businesses.

Additional contamination may have come from the underground tanks of an adjacent gas station. A barrier will stretch 45 feet down from ground level to limit future possible fuel leakage.

An oil well operates across the street, but officials said they’ve found no associated risks. Like many local campuses, this school also sits above an oil field, but no oil field-related methane has been detected.

Groundwater about 45 feet below the surface remains contaminated but also poses no risk, officials said.

Some environmentalists are aghast:

“Renaming this terribly contaminated school after famous environmental advocates is an affront to the great work that these individuals have done to protect the public’s health from harm,” an environmental coalition wrote in a letter to the Los Angeles Unified School District. Making sure the school is safe “would be an even better way to honor their contribution to society.”

An affront to the great work they’ve done? All in all, I’d say that putting Al Gore’s name on a contaminated school is just about the most intellectually honest thing to come from any educational institution in the history of the United States. Potayto, potahto.

Speaking of vegetables, who wants to be the first to take a bite of something from the Carson-Gore Academy’s garden?

The principal also envisions an organic garden that could produce a student-led farmer’s market.

Suwol said Lowry sounds “incredibly wonderful,” but added that she’d feel better if the vegetables were grown in planters above the ground.

Why not grow them in the ground? A “consensus of scientists” say the soil is clean. Grow ‘em in the ground and let Al have the first bite so we can see how seriously he values scientific consensus when it comes to eating something that may or may not make his second chakra glow in the dark.

(h/t Newsbusters)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

**Written by Doug Powers

As the Obama administration continues to founder, administration “insiders” will write more and more “tell-all” books — not that I’ll buy any of them. I refuse to give any money to anyone who signed on to help sell a sham but then bailed out when it all went south and later tried to profit from telling everybody how awful the sham was.

Former “Car Czar” Steve Rattner has written the first book of this nature, and there’s an item alleged in Rattner’s book that piqued my interest, mainly because it has a certain “Three Stooges questioning the competence of the Keystone Cops” feel to it:

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D), dejected about the possibility the automakers would have to file for bankruptcy, tells Obama in a voice barely above a whisper: “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Of course he knew what he was doing — it was a huge union bailout without regard to the economic consequence to the rest of the country. Besides, Obama didn’t have to know how to run a car company, he did the logical thing and hired a telecommunications executive with no auto background to do that. What’s the problem?

This comment is alleged to have come from one of Obama’s economic advisors (I guess Obama wanted to make the economy of the whole country look like Michigan’s and needed Jenny to serve as a road map for how to get there) from an auto-producing state — shouldn’t she have known if what he was doing was the right thing or not? Trick question — of course not — look at Michigan’s economy after many years of Jennifer Granholm’s leadership.

The Blog Prof examines a few more choice quotes from Rattner’s book that paints Obama as an economically clueless community organizer.

With that in mind, in his speech in Milwaukee today, President Obama will announce an additional $50 billion in infrastructure spending. Yeah, that’s what voters have been waiting for — more spending. Should be a good sell on the campaign trail.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

**Written by Doug Powers

Todd Palin can take down the fence, at least until this guy moves back in next spring:

Palin’s neighbor of three months on Wasilla’s Lake Lucille, author Joe McGinniss, is packing his bags and notebooks and leaving Sunday for his home in Massachusetts to write the book he has been researching on the former governor and GOP vice presidential candidate.

The book’s angle is apparent: Evil Sarah and her henchmen have such a grip on her town that McGinniss was denied a peek behind Wasilla’s Iron Curtain due to a climate of fear in You-Bet’chaville:

McGinniss would not reveal what his book will say about the former governor. But he did get a taste of the support Palin has inspired.

“It’s just a peculiar thing, but she does, as I found out in May, she presses a button and what comes back is hate,” he said. “The people who respond when she complains about something are just so filled with hate. I got some of the ugliest, most vile e-mails directed at me, my grandchildren, my children, my wife — just ugly, ugly stuff.”

As for his interviews, most people he approached in Palin’s hometown were willing to speak, but he said there was what he calls an “undercurrent of fear.”

“People — I don’t know if they’re afraid of shadows or whether there’s something real there — she’s no longer in a position of governmental influence but there are people up there who are scared to death to talk because if Sarah ever found out they talked, oh, something terrible would happen to them,” he said.

So if you want to know what the book’s about without buying it, just rent Road House and substitute Sarah Palin for Brad Wesley, and put Joe McGinniss in the role of Patrick Swayze’s character Dalton — except have Dalton give up and move out at the end instead of saving the town.

McGinniss calls it “hate,” but some of us rubes in flyover country simply consider not being very helpful to some jackwagon who’s only in town to smear one of our residents “sticking up for our neighbors.” A foreign and frightening concept to some.

(h/t JWF)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

**Written by Doug Powers

This morning, President Obama was asked if he regrets his administration branding the past three months of economic misery as “Recovery Summer.”

His answer: “I don’t…”

I can’t blame him, really. Who couldn’t be fully recovered after this kind of a summer:

I feel more rested & recovered just looking at the pictures.

When they dubbed it “Recovery Summer,” nobody thought they were talking about us, did they?

Update: By way of HotAir, here’s an actual Time headline: What’s good about rising unemployment

Note the distinct lack of a question mark at the end.

Update II: Robert Reich didn’t get the memo that Recovery Summer was a huge success.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

**Written by Doug Powers

Harry Reid is a genius when it comes to military tactics — just ask him.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal recently questioned the Harry Reid and Sharron Angle campaigns on various issues.

Here’s part of the Reid campaign’s explanation for why the Nevada Senator once said “the war is lost”:

On REID’S COMMENT THAT THE IRAQ ‘WAR IS LOST’

REID: At the time Sen. Reid made this comment, President Bush had been pursuing a failed, stay-the-course strategy that had cost thousands of American lives and billions of taxpayer dollars. Iraq appeared to be on the verge of a sectarian civil war. He was simply pointing out what our military leaders, including Gen. Petraeus, had been saying for months: that we could not win by staying the course; the war needed to be won diplomatically, politically, and economically. Sen. Reid and his colleagues were successful in forcing President Bush to finally abandon his failed approach and refocus on political reconciliation. This is what ultimately paved the way for the Iraqi government to take greater responsibility for Iraq’s future.

Sun Tzu himself couldn’t have thought up a more brilliant strategy. Congratulations, General Reid.

And all along we thought Reid was being pathetic and weak — I for one feel bad for ever criticizing him.

Here’s a flashback to when Harry “Patton” Reid rallied our brave men and women to victory with his trademark Churchillian leadership style:

There’s a big difference between “we can’t win unless…” and “we lost.” Harry Reid hopes nobody can tell the difference.

(h/t WZ)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Thugs-in-chief

My syndicated column today takes on the rise of President Obama’s best new Big Labor buddy, Richard Trumka — whose looming presence on the political scene I first flagged in April. As we noted last week, he’s got a combined $88 million war chest with his labor alliance and a Marxist get-out-the-vote force behind him. When they are through, they’ll make the SEIU Purple Army’s political expenditures (and its thuggery) look like a pittance.

On a related note, the NLRB (with SEIU attorney Craig Becker recess-appointed onto the catbird’s seat) is set to launch an assault on workers’ rights to a secret ballot to remove an unwanted union. See here. Card check through the back door. Who needs the legislative front door?

And yesterday on Megyn Kelly’s show, I noted that union members can opt out of having their hard-earned dues used for political purposes. Several readers e-mailed that they had never heard of the process by which this was possible and wanted to know how they could do it. Here are your rights as a union worker. Here is a backgrounder on the permissible use of forced dues. Here’s my 1999 column on how public school teachers in Washington state challenged their union over their political dues power grab. Free speech not only means the freedom to voice your political views, but also the freedom from being forced to pay for someone else’s. U.S. Supreme Court precedent established by the D.C.-based National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation guarantees the right to full financial disclosure from a union and a right to challenge the figures in court if they disagree. Spread the word.

***

Big Labor’s legacy of violence
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

To mark Labor Day 2010, President Obama will join hands with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in Milwaukee and pose as champions of the working class. Bad move. Trumka’s organizing record is a shameful reminder of the union movement’s violent and corrupt foundations.

The new Obama/AFL-CIO power alliance — underwritten with $40 million in hard-earned worker dues — is a midterm shotgun marriage of Beltway brass knuckles and Big Labor brawn. Trumka warmed up his rhetorical muscles this past week with full-frontal attacks on former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. He indignantly accused her of “getting close to calling for violence” and suggested that her criticism of Tea Party-bashing labor bosses amounted to “terrorizing” workers.

Trumka and Obama will cast Big Labor as an unassailable force for good in American history. But when it comes to terrorizing workers, Trumka knows whereof he speaks.

Meet Eddie York. He was a workingman whose story will never scroll across Obama’s teleprompter. A nonunion contractor who operated heavy equipment, York was shot to death during a strike called by the United Mine Workers 17 years ago. Workmates who tried to come to his rescue were beaten in an ensuing melee. The head of the UMW spearheading the wave of strikes at that time? Richard Trumka. Responding to concerns about violence, he shrugged to the Virginian-Pilot in September 1993: “I’m saying if you strike a match and you put your finger in it, you’re likely to get burned.” Incendiary rhetoric, anyone?

A federal jury convicted one of Trumka’s UMW captains on conspiracy and weapons charges in York’s death. According to the Washington, D.C.-based National Legal and Policy Center, which tracks Big Labor abuse, Trumka’s legal team quickly settled a $27 million wrongful death suit filed by York’s widow just days after a judge admitted evidence in the criminal trial. An investigative report by Reader’s Digest disclosed that Trumka “did not publicly discipline or reprimand a single striker present when York was killed. In fact, all eight were helped out financially by the local.”

In Illinois, Trumka told UMW members to “kick the s**t out of every last” worker who crossed his picket lines, according to the Nashville (Ill.) News. And as the National Right to Work Foundation (pdf), the leading anti-forced unionism organization in the country, pointed out, other UMW coalfield strikes resulted in what one judge determined were “violent activities … organized, orchestrated and encouraged by the leadership of this union.”

Trumka washed off the figurative bloodstains and moved up the ranks. As AFL-CIO secretary, he notoriously refused to testify in a sordid 1999 embezzlement trial involving his labor boss brethren at the Teamsters Union. No surprise. Thugs of a feather: Trumka’s violence-promoting record echoes the riotous Teamsters strikes dating back to the 1950s, when the union organized taxicab companies to target workers with gas bombs, bottles and fists.

And now, Trumka is spearheading a Democratic Party get-out-the-vote campaign by far-left groups — publicized in the revolutionary Marxist People’s World — to “energize an army of tens of thousands who will return to their neighborhoods, churches, schools and voting booths to prevent a Republican takeover of Congress in November and begin building a new permanent coalition to fight for a progressive agenda.”

Take those as literal fighting words. The bloody consequences of compulsory unionism cannot be ignored.

***

Related Labor Day weekend reading: Compulsory Unionism as a Fraternal Conceit? Free Choice for Workers: A History of the Right to Work Movement by Harry G. Hutchison, UC Davis Law Journal.

**Written by Doug Powers

You know it’s been a long year and a half when you can sit back, watch a pitch for Hillary Clinton for president, and fool yourself into thinking that she (and her husband) looks like Reagan compared to Barack Obama.

From CNN:

We’ve still got two months left until the 2010 midterm elections, but we now have our first television commercial of the 2012 presidential campaign. And the ad advocates for a person who says she has no intention of running for the White House.
[...]
The commercial was paid for by a Chicago dentist named William DeJean.

When asked why he put the ad up, DeJean told CNN Thursday that “I’m a dentist and I don’t think this country is headed in the right direction.”
[...]
DeJean adds that he thinks people are having buyer’s remorse about President Barack Obama and says the current administration is ruining the Democratic Party. He says he spent $5,000 to create the commercial and tells CNN that besides New Orleans, the ad will run in Washington, New York and Los Angeles, and possible Houston. DeJean says he chose to first run the ad in New Orleans because he’s a native of the city and because the city’s in the news due to the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

DeJean sunk some money into Hillary’s efforts in the past, so what’s a little more root-canal cash spent trying to ensure that the 3 a.m. phone call isn’t answered with “we’re buying shrimp here guys, call back later”?

This has more overstatements than an ad for x-ray glasses in a comic book, but hey, it’s a start:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

**Written by Doug Powers

By now you can probably read all about this in a revised report to the UN’s Human Rights Council that the Obama administration couldn’t wait to file like a nine year old girl tattling to momma after catching her brother behind the barn reading Playboy, but if you haven’t yet heard, here it is:

PHOENIX – The U.S. Justice Department sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday, saying the Arizona lawman refused for more than a year to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics.

The lawsuit calls Arpaio and his office’s defiance “unprecedented,” and said the federal government has been trying since March 2009 to get officials to comply with its probe of alleged discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and having English-only policies in his jails that discriminate against people with limited English skills.

If putting warning signs up in parts of Arizona to deter legal US citizens from travelling through certain areas where they might encounter dangerous illegal activity is an acceptable response to crime, can’t the government just put up signs warning illegals not to travel through Sheriff Arpaio’s jurisdiction and leave it at that?

In an additional border security measure, the Feds are also investigating the national security threat that is Chuck E. Cheese. Apparently the manager of the Bensonhurst franchise was overheard calling a pizza “Italian food” and has been accused of profiling.

At a Robert Gibbs’ press conference, reporter Bill Plante asked Gibbs why President Obama has been AWOL while Democrats poll numbers have been nosediving. The fact is, Obama hasn’t been AWOL during the nosedive at all — he’s been the one pushing forward hardest on the stick.

Update: Arpaio’s office responds — “Not backing down” is an understatement:

The Obama administration has filed three lawsuits against Arizona in the last few weeks … one against a college district, one against the state of Arizona and now one against my office. Each lawsuit centers on something to do with alleged racial discrimination.

These actions make it abundantly clear that Arizona, including this Sheriff, IS Washington’s new whipping boy. Now it’s time to take the gloves off. As for today’s lawsuit against my office: These people in Washington met with my attorneys only a few days ago. And in that meeting, Washington got our cooperation; they admitted they already have thousands of pages of the requested documents; and they were given access to interview my staff and get into my jails. They smiled in our faces and then stabbed us in the back with this lawsuit. The Obama administration intended to sue us all along, no matter what we did to try to avert it.

Washington isn’t playing fair and it’s time Americans everywhere wake up and see this administration for what it really is. Calculating, underhanded at times and certainly not looking out for the best interests of the legal citizens residing in this country.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

New Orleans TV station WDSU is reporting on a new mishap off the Louisiana coast involving a shallow water rig.

One person is missing after a rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, about 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

It happened around 9 a.m., and as of 10:15 a.m., the rig was still burning, the Coast Guard said. Rescue crews from New Orleans and Houston are responding.

Officials said there were 13 people aboard the rig, and all but one are accounted for.

Pray for the workers. Brace for the political aftermath.

***

Meanwhile, in Greenland (hat tip: reader Lynn S.), eco-radicals are obstructing oil rig operations and threatening more:

Four Greenpeace activists who climbed a Cairn Energy oil rig in Greenland waters were arrested this morning and are now being held in police custody in Greenland.

The activists first scaled the oil rig Stena Don on Tuesday. They attached hanging platforms to the underside of the rig where they camped out in tents with self-heating meals until last night.

Freezing gale-force winds forced the climbers and Greenpeace campaigners on the ship Esperanza anchored one kilometer from the rig to decide to end the occupation.

It took the Greenpeacers four hours of climbing in bitter winds to scale the rig from their hanging platforms up onto the platform gantry, where police were waiting for them. They were taken into custody and flown off the oil rig by helicopter at 2 am.

…Ben Stewart, communications officer onboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza said, Looking out of my porthole at the massive waves, and feeling the movements of the Esperanza, there is no doubt in my mind that they took the right decision.”

“I hope and believe that this action will be remembered as the first step against our blind and reckless hunt for the last drops of oil on the planet,” Stewart said.

**Written by Doug Powers

Every now and then, a politician goofs and reveals more than he or she intended, providing a window into the true motives or beliefs. Michigan’s John Dingell claiming that Obamacare is a peachy way to “control the people,” and President Obama saying that America is a world super power “whether we like it or not” are recent examples.

Yesterday, Massachusetts Governer Deval Patrick let another cat out of the bag. Darn that freedom:

Independent gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill blasted Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday for appearing to suggest he wished America wasn’t as free so that last week’s Glenn Beck rally at the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King Jr. once spoke would never have happened.

“It’s a free country. I wish it weren’t, but . . . it’s a free country,” Patrick said on the “Jim & Margery Show” on WTKK-FM. “You know, you got to, you got to respect that freedom.”

“Psst, Dr. Freud… your slip is showing.”

Here’s audio:

(h/t Sister Toldjah)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

In Invasion, published eight years ago, I pointed out that the Bush administration’s lame immigration enforcement measures included orange rubber cones and useless “No Entry” signs posted at the border.

Well, file this under “The more things change.” The Washington Times reports that the Obama administration is posting new signs at the border warning travelers and illegal aliens about violent smugglers.

The federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state.

The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.

They warn travelers that they are entering an “active drug and human smuggling area” and they may encounter “armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed.” Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to “use public lands north of Interstate 8″ and to call 911 if they “see suspicious activity.”

As Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer noted earlier this summer, the signs are empty gestures without real physical deterrents to back them up:

And why bother calling 911 when you know DHS/ICE is backing off deportations?

Don’t let the White House spin on illegal alien statistics distract you. The bipartisan open-borders end game is amnesty. Always has been. Always will be.

***

GOP Rep. Gus Bilirakis:

If the administration would take meaningful steps to secure our border, it wouldn’t need to put up signs in Arizona warning citizens that travel 100 miles from the border is unsafe (“Signs in Arizona warn of smuggler dangers”).

Likewise, the Department of Homeland Security should not spend its time writing memos about how to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants or dismiss thousands of deportation cases.

As Ranking Member of the Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Management, Investigations and Oversight, that is why I’m asking for hearings and answers from DHS on what it’s doing to protect the border.

The administration continues to take actions that seem counterproductive to border security, and we need to know why that is the case. We need to make sure DHS is complying with, and enforcing, our nation’s immigration laws.

Right on:

(h/t Sissy Willis via F.A.M.)

And right on again, from Jerome Hudson via Human Events:

Like most Americans, I’ve had enough with this administration’s policies. I was fed up and fired up.

I am even more so in the wake of the most moving gathering I’ve ever been privileged to be a part of.

At one point, some of the people attending the Rev. Al Sharpton’s “counter rally,” coined “Reclaiming King,” stopped me. I guess they must have been judging me by the color of my skin not the content of my character, because they asked if I was going to come join them.

“No, I won’t be there,” I told them. “Why?” one of them asked with a grimace on his face. I looked at him and said, “I want to be where the Lord is and the Lord is in this place.”

One of the older black women in the group asked me if I felt like I was “selling out” for being one of the “tokens” in the Beck rally crowd?

I laughed and said “Ma’am, Al Sharpton is a pretender. He is going to tell you to pretend that the color of your skin matters. He is going to ask you to ignore the now overwhelming proof that 50 years after the Civil Rights movement, blacks are now destroying each other faster than the KKK could have dreamed.”

As I walked away, the group stood frozen, not knowing how to reply.

Three cheers for hope and change from independent-minded minorities revolting against their self-appointed civil rights “leaders.”

It’s a long time coming.

See also: Tolerant liberals attacking minority conservatives – ““Christianity Is A White Man’s Religion.”