Boeing labor case

House to vote on bill targeting Boeing labor case

Workers at Boeing Co.'s paint mix facility in Auburn, Wash. hold up their strike sanction vote ballot in 2008. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Associated Press

6:24 a.m. CDT, September 15, 2011

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AFL-CIO

John Kline

Work Relations

The House is poised to pass a measure that would undermine the government's high-profile labor case against Boeing Co. by curtailing the National Labor Relations Board's enforcement power.

The bill would prohibit the federal agency from ordering any employer to shut down plants or relocate work, even if a company illegally retaliates against unionized employees. 

House Republicans say the board should not have the power to dictate where a private business can locate. GOP lawmakers have vilified the NLRB for filing a complaint in April that alleges Boeing punished union workers in Washington state when it opened a new production line for its 787 airplane in South Carolina, a right-to-work state.

"This action is having a chilling effect on businesses all across the country," said Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

The bill is likely to pass the GOP-controlled House easily on Thursday, but it isn't expected to get far in the Senate, where Democratic leaders have no plans to let it come to a vote.

Republicans and their allies in the business community have gone after the NLRB for more than a year, as the agency has issued a spate of union-friendly decisions and rules. But the Boeing case has become a major political issue and a rallying cry for GOP presidential candidates courting voters in South Carolina's early primary stakes.

Union leaders say the bill would eviscerate the board's ability to enforce labor laws when companies simply eliminate work to get rid of employees who are pro-union.

The legislation "would undermine the basic rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively by permanently eliminating the NLRB's only effective remedy against a wide range of illegal conduct," Bill Samuel, government affairs director at the AFL-CIO, said in a letter to lawmakers.

Boeing has denied the allegations, saying it opened the Charleston, S.C., plant for valid economic reasons. The case is pending before an administrative law judge in Seattle and could last years.

The complaint by the board's acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, does not seek to shut down the Boeing plant. The company would be required to move the new 787 production lines back to Washington state. But Boeing officials say the South Carolina facility was built specifically for construction of the 787. The company claims a ruling for the government would effectively require the company to close the $750 million plant and lay off more than a thousand new workers there.

Solomon said the decision to file a complaint was not politically motivated, but based strictly on evidence that Boeing violated the law. He said Boeing executives made a number of public statements indicating the new plant was built in South Carolina out of frustration over costly strikes by the Machinists union in Washington state, including a 58-day work stoppage in 2008.

"The decision had absolutely nothing to do with political considerations, and there were no consultations with the White House," Solomon said in a statement this week. "Regrettably, some have chosen to insert politics into what should be a straightforward legal procedure."

Boeing officials claim the board took the statements out of context and say they can point to a number of legitimate reasons for locating the new production line in Charleston.

President Barack Obama has not taken a formal position on the case, saying he is reluctant to interfere with an independent government agency. Obama has said companies need to have the freedom to relocate but must follow the law when doing so.

The Obama 2013 Tax Cliff

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904353504576567460396287134.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Business had better enjoy the next 16 months.

President Obama unveiled part two of his American Jobs Act on Monday, and it turns out to be another permanent increase in taxes to pay for more spending and another temporary tax cut. No surprise there. What might surprise Americans, however, is how the President is setting up the U.S. economy for one of the biggest tax increases in history in 2013.

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Mr. Obama said last week that he wants $240 billion in new tax incentives for workers and small business, but the catch is that all of these tax breaks would expire at the end of next year. To pay for all this, White House budget director Jack Lew also proposed $467 billion in new taxes that would begin a mere 16 months from now. The tax list includes limiting deductions for those earning more than $200,000 ($250,000 for couples), limiting tax breaks for oil and gas companies, and a tax increase on carried interest earned by private equity firms. These tax increases would not be temporary.

What this means is that millions of small-business owners had better enjoy the next 16 months, because come January 2013 they are going to get hit with a giant tax bill. Let's call the expensive roll:

• First comes the new tax hikes that Mr. Obama proposed on Monday. Capping itemized deductions and exemptions for the rich would take $405 billion from the private economy for 10 years starting in 2013. Taxing carried interest would raise $18 billion, and repealing tax incentives for oil and gas production would get $41 billion.

• These increases would coincide with the expiration of the tax credits, 100% expensing provisions and payroll tax breaks in Mr. Obama's new jobs program. This would mean a tax hit of $240 billion on small business and workers. That's the downside of temporary tax breaks and other job-creation gimmicks: The incentives quickly vanish, and perhaps so do the jobs.

So even if the White House is right that its latest stimulus plan will create "millions of jobs" through 2012, by this logic a $240 billion tax hike on small businesses in 2013 would cost the economy jobs. This tax wallop would arrive when even the White House says the unemployment rate will still be 7.4%.

• January 2013 is also the same month that Mr. Obama wants the

Bush-era tax rates to expire on Americans earning more than $200,000. That would raise the highest individual income tax rate to about 42%, including deduction phaseouts, from 35% today. Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation found in 2009 that $437 billion of business income would be taxed at higher tax rates under the Obama plan. And since some 4.5 million small-business owners file their annual tax returns as subchapter S firms under the individual tax code, this tax increase would often apply to the same people who Mr. Obama is targeting with his new tax credits.

The capital gains and dividend taxes would also rise to an expected 20% rate from 15% today. The 10-year hit to the private economy for all of these expiring Bush rates: about $750 billion.

• Also starting in 2013 are two of ObamaCare's biggest tax increases: an additional 0.9-percentage point levy on top of the 2.9% Medicare tax for those earning more than $200,000, and a new 2.9% surcharge on investment income, including interest income. This will further increase the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends to 23.8%, for a roughly 60% increase in investment taxes in one year.

The White House's economic logic seems to be that its new spending and temporary tax cuts will so fire up investment and hiring in the next 16 months that the economy will be growing much faster in 2013 and could thus absorb a leap off the tax cliff. But this requires its own leap of faith.

Related Video

WSJ Editorial board member Steve Moore on President Obama's plan to pay for temporary tax cuts by hiking income and business taxes over the long haul.

The White House also predicted a similar economic takeoff from the 2009 stimulus that was supposed to make a tax hike possible in 2011. Then last December Mr. Obama proposed new tax incentives only for 2011 because the economy was supposed to be cooking by 2012. Now it wants to extend those tax breaks so the economy will be cruising in 2013.

All of this assumes that American business owners aren't smart enough to look beyond the next few months. They can surely see the new burdens they'll face in 2013, and they aren't about to load up on new employees or take new large risks if they aren't sure what their costs will be in 16 months. They can also reasonably wonder whether Mr. Obama's tax hike will hurt the overall economy in 2013—another reason to be cautious now.

For the White House, the policy calendar is dictated above all by the political necessities of the 2012 election. Mr. Obama will take his chances on 2013 if he can cajole the private economy to create enough new jobs over the next year to win re-election, even if those jobs and growth are temporary. Business owners and workers who would prefer to prosper beyond Election Day aren't likely to share Mr. Obama's enthusiasm once they see the great tax cliff approaching. Look out below.

Obama's running out of people to blame.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/15/despite-stimulus-funding-solyndra-and-4-other-companies-have-hit-rock-bottom/

 

 

Carville to Obama: Fire Your Staff, Indict Wall Street

It’s becoming obvious to many in the Democrat part that Obama will not be reelected. Carville’s suggestion? Blaming American citizens, the Republican party, the Tea Party, American business, earthquakes, foreign countries, and on and on has not worked. So it’s time to throw some liberal saffers under the bus in a last ditch effort to blame someone other than Obama.

 

‘WASHINGTON (TheStreet) -- James Carville, the Democratic strategist, told President Obama in an op-ed piece for CNN.com that it's time some presidential staffers are shown the door.

 

" Mr. President, your hinge of fate must turn. Bill Clinton fired many people in 1994 and took a lot of heat for it. Reagan fired most of his campaign staff in 1980. Republicans historically fired their own speaker, Newt Gingrich. Bush fired Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. For God's sake, why are we still looking at the same political and economic advisers that got us into this mess? It's not working."

Carville said he was motivated to write the piece after results in two special elections Tuesday didn't go Democrats' way.

Carville said Obama should indict people, particularly those on Wall Street who "haven't been held responsible for utterly ruining the economic fabric of our country."

Obama should demand answers from Attorney General Eric Holder as to why no one has been indicted, and "his explanations aren't good, fire him too," Carville said.

"As I watch the Republican debates, I realize that we are on the brink of a crazy person running our nation," Carville wrote in his op-ed.

"The course we are on is not working," Carville said. "The hour is late, and the need is great. Fire. Indict. Fight." -- Written by Joseph Woelfel’

 

I bleed Ford blue.

I wasn't brand loyal, until GM became Government Motors. Now I bleed Ford blue.

James "will not be tied to any one political party" Hoffa is now a democrat.

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Hoffa's Fighting Words Show How Far Left He's Strayed

by  John Gizzi

09/08/2011

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By now, most Americans have read or heard about the remarks of James P. Hoffa in warming up the crowd in Detroit before President Obama’s Labor Day address.  In words that dwarfed those of the President himself, Teamsters President Hoffa denounced the Tea Party-backed Republicans in Congress and declared: “Let’s take these sonofabitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.”

Strong partisan words, all right, and—while it is certainly not the rhetoric of “civility” that Obama has long called for—it should not be all that shocking coming from the leader of a 1.4 million-member labor union and a partisan Democrat.

What makes Hoffa’s words shocking to those who have known and followed him is that he was not always a partisan Democrat.  In fact, one of the most notable factors in Hoffa’s rise in 1997 to the union helm once held by his legendary father was his promise “of a union  that will not be tied to any one political party."

In an exclusive interview with HUMAN EVENTS (Dec. 5, 1997), Hoffa—who was prepared to seek the Teamster presidency after incumbent Ron Carey was ruled ineligible because he violated union election rules—vowed he would join with other unions in helping Democrats overturn the Republican majority in Congress in 1998.

“No, we’re not going to do that,” Hoffa said.  “The Teamsters will not be dictated to by any one party, and instead we will talk to and support candidates individually—Democrat, Republican and independent—who share the goals of the Teamsters union.”

Hoffa went on to contrast his vision of the Teamster political agenda with that of Carey, who had edged him out in the 1996 election that was eventually voided by a court-appointed election monitor.  Carey, Hoffa told us, “was trying to make the union an appendage of the Democratic Party.”

In demanding a Teamsters Union that would not walk in lock-step with the Democratic Party, Hoffa was calling for a return to its pre-Carey days.  Dave Beck, Teamster president from 1950 to '58, was a registered Republican who in 1956 led the union in supporting President Eisenhower’s reelection.  Beck’s successor, the elder Hoffa, was an enthusiastic backer of Richard Nixon in 1960.  Frank Fitzsimmons, the man Hoffa handpicked as president when Hoffa went to prison in 1967, backed President Nixon for reelection in 1972.  Under Presidents Roy Lee Williams and Jackie Presser in the 1980s, the Teamsters twice supported Ronald Reagan for President.  Carey’s immediate predecessor, William McCarthy, endorsed George H.W. Bush in ’88.

“All that ended when Ron Carey took over in 1991,” Hoffa told HUMAN EVENTS in 1991.  He noted that Carey and his chief lieutenants at the “Marble Palace” (the union’s nickname for its national headquarters in Washington) twice took the union into Bill Clinton’s corner and “did so with no input whatsoever from the 580 Teamster locals.”

During that interview 14 years ago, Hoffa went on to praise then-Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R.-Mich.), a strong conservartive who, as chairman of the House Workforce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, pressed for an investigation of Teamster money-laundering under Carey.  He also cited Pat Buchanan, who, Hoffa felt, “perhaps more than any other candidate for President [in 1996], talked about issues of concern to American labor, mainly keeping good jobs in America.”

Under James Hoffa, the Teamsters Union has remained the “appendage of the Democratic Party” he charged it had become under arch-nemesis Ron Carey.  In 1998, Hoffa’s first year as president, the Teamsters gave $2,333,270, or 93%, of its political dollars to Democratic candidates, and only 6% ($149,650) to Republicans.  In this election cycle so far, the union has given 97% of its political dollars to Democrats and only 3% to Republicans.  (Figures provided by the Center for Responsive Politics).

And now comes the salvo about taking “these sonofabitches out.”

Simply put, it’s a far cry from the words of the union “reformer” in 1997 who promised “a union that will not be tied to any one political party.”

Reuters can’t do math.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/08/us-usa-economy-idUSTRE77U25D20110908?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=71

“a considerably narrower trade deficit for July offered a ray of hope for economic growth in the third quarter following a sluggish first half of the year.” Idiots. This is in no way a promising economic sign. The trade deficit is narrower because Americans are not buying anything. “U.S. imports slipped 0.2 percent in July“ You said it in your own report and still can’t put the pieces together? Is Reuters this economically incompetent, or is this propaganda?

DOJ under Obama picks and chooses what laws it likes.

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Gibson Guitar CEO to be Honored Guest at Obama Speech

by  Neil W. McCabe

09/08/2011

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Gibson Guitar​ CEO Henry E. Juszkiewicz

The CEO of embattled Gibson Guitar will be the special guest of the leader of Capitol Hill’s Songwriters Caucus at the President’s speech to Congress on jobs tonight.

Rep. Marsha E. Blackburn (R- Tenn.) invited Gibson’s Henry E. Juszkiewicz as a gesture of support to her longtime friend and constituent, said Michael Reynard, her press secretary.

Blackburn, who plays both the guitar and the ukulele, founded the Songwriters Caucus in 2003 as a vehicle to promote her state’s music industry and protect creative property, Reynard said.

When House Speaker John A. Boehner (R.-Ohio) heard that Juszkiewicz would be in Washington, he contacted the congresswoman’s office and invited him to watch the speech from the speaker’s box in the House gallery, Reynard said.  Before the speech, Blackburn said, she will escort the guitar executive through the halls of the Capitol to meet Congress members and other business-leader guests of the speaker.

“Small businesses under the leadership of executives like Henry are the key to getting our nation’s economic engine running again,” she said.

“The best thing President Obama could do is seek their advice, then get out of the way.  Big government doesn’t create jobs, small businesses like Gibson Guitar do,” said Blackburn, whose favorite guitarist is Chet Atkins, who not only played Gibson guitars, but was a revolutionary designer for the company.

The company is seen as a victim of heavy-handed government tactics after it was overwhelmed Aug. 24 by more than two dozen Department of Justice agents in combat gear and armed with automatic rifles.  The agents executed search warrants at the company’s Memphis and Nashville facilities, seizing several pallets of rare wood, electronic files and guitars.

Although no charges have been filed against the company, Juszkiewicz said it is his understanding that the issue is the Justice Department’s interpretation of Indian export law and its enforcement of the 1900 Lacey Act, which prohibits the importation of materials that are illegal to export from the country of origin.

“Gibson has complied with foreign laws and believes it is innocent of any wrongdoing.  We will fight aggressively to prove our innocence,” Juszkiewicz said after the raid.

The CEO said in an Aug. 25 statement that he was told by Justice Department officials that he would have no more problems if he moved his operations to India.

“The use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India,” he said he was told.  “If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.”

This interpretation is not shared by officials in India, he said.

Blackburn said she wants to hold up Gibson as the model of what is correct about free enterprise in Tennessee and America.  “Gibson Guitar is at the heart of this jobs debate, and is an example of exactly why President Obama has it wrong when it comes to getting our economy back on track,” she said.

“Maybe if the President spent more time finding real solutions to empowering small-business owners and less time hindering businesses like Gibson, we'd see more new jobs being created,” she said.

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All the Wrong 9/11 Lessons

by  Michelle Malkin

09/09/2011

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Are your kids learning the right lessons about 9/11? Ten years after Osama bin Laden's henchmen murdered thousands of innocents on American soil, too many children have been spoon-fed the thin gruel of progressive political correctness over the stiff antidote of truth.
       
"Know your enemy, name your enemy" is a 9/11 message that has gone unheeded. Our immigration and homeland security policies refuse to profile jihadi adherents at foreign consular offices and at our borders. Our military leaders refuse to expunge them from uniformed ranks until it's too late (see: Fort Hood massacre). The j-word is discouraged in Obama intelligence circles, and the term "Islamic extremism" was removed from the U.S. national security strategy document last year.
       
Similarly, too many teachers refuse to show and tell who the perpetrators of 9/11 were and who their heirs are today. My own daughter was one year old when the Twin Towers collapsed, the Pentagon went up in flames and Shanksville, Pa., became hallowed ground for the brave passengers of United Flight 93. In second grade, her teachers read touchy-feely stories about peace and diversity to honor the 9/11 dead. They whitewashed Osama bin Laden, militant Islam and centuries-old jihad out of the curriculum. Apparently, the youngsters weren't ready to learn even the most basic information about the evil masterminds of Islamic terrorism.
       
Mary Beth Hicks, author of the new book " Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid," points to a recent review of 10 widely used textbooks in which the concepts of jihad and sharia were either watered down or absent. These childhood experts have determined that grade school is too early to delve into the specifics of the homicidal clash of Allah's sharia-avenging soldiers with the freedom-loving Western world.
       
Yet, many of the same protectors of fragile elementary-school pupils can't wait to teach them all the ins and outs of condoms, cross-dressers and crack addictions.
       
We pulled our daughter out of a cesspool of academic and moral relativism and found a reality-grounded, rigorous charter school where no-nonsense teachers refuse to sugarcoat inconvenient facts and history. Many of the students are children of soldiers and servicemen and women who -- inspired by the heroes of 9/11 -- have voluntarily deployed time and time again to kill the American Dream destroyers abroad before they kill us over here.
       
There's no better way to hammer home the message that "freedom is not free" than to have your kids go to school with other kids whose dads and moms are gone for years at a time -- missing births and birthday parties, recitals and soccer practice, Christmas pageants and Independence Day fireworks.
       
But instead of unfettered pride in our armed forces, social justice educators in high schools and colleges across the country indoctrinate American students into viewing our volunteer armed forces as victims, monsters and pawns in a leftist "social struggle."
      
A decade after the 9/11 attacks, Blame America-ism still permeates classrooms and the culture. A special 9/11 curriculum distributed in New Jersey schools advises teachers to "avoid graphic details or dramatizing the destruction" wrought by the 9/11 hijackers, and instead focus elementary school students' attention on broadly defined "intolerance" and "hurtful words."
       
No surprise: Jihadist utterances such as "Kill the Jews," "Allahu Akbar" and "Behead all those who insult Islam" are not among the "hurtful words" studied.
       
Middle-schoolers are directed to "analyze diversity and prejudice in U.S. history." And high-school students are taught "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" - pop-psychology claptrap used to excuse jihadists' behavior based on their purported low self-esteem and oppressed status caused by "European colonialism."
       
It is no wonder that a new poll released this week showed that Americans today "are generally more willing to believe that U.S. policies in the Middle East might have motivated the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon," according to Reuters.
       
To make matters worse, we have an appeaser-in-chief who wrote shortly after the jihadist attacks a decade ago that the "essence of this tragedy" derives "from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others." A "climate of poverty and ignorance" caused the attacks, then-Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama​ preached. Never mind the Ivy League and Oxford educations, the oil wealth and the middle-class status of legions of al-Qaida plotters and operatives.
       
9/11 was a deliberate, carefully planned evil act of the long-waged war on the West by Koran-inspired soldiers of Allah around the world. They hated us before George W. Bush was in office. They hated us before Israel existed. And the avengers of the religion of perpetual outrage will keep hating us no matter how much we try to appease them.
       
The post-9/11 problem isn't whether we'll forget. The problem is: Will we ever learn?

HSUS Wants to Waste $170,000 Tax Dollars

HSUS Wants to Waste $170,000 Tax Dollars

9/8/11

The Humane Society of the United States is pushing yet another deer contraceptive program in a national park that will cost U.S. taxpayers more than $170,000. The plan is being pushed by three U.S. Representatives.
The misinformed trio recently sent a letter to U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar requesting that the National Park Service (NPS) consider a contraception project to control deer populations in Rock Creek Park. Ironically, the HSUS touts this as a pilot project, offers to cover only half the expense, and then claims great successes in other deer and horse contraceptive programs. How can it be a pilot test program if they claim to have done it before?  And just how “humane” is this type of program?
The contraception delivery requires one-shot from a special firearm that could harm the animal and definitely punches a hole in the target animal’s skin. That open wound could be a source for infestation or result in the development of maggots living in the animal after flies lay eggs at the site.  Not good.

The NPS supports an alternative plan that uses archers to remove the surplus deer, bring the herd under control, and save many tax dollars. NPS information indicates that there are approximately 200 whitetail deer in the park and the only thing currently controlling their deer population is cars. The park covers approximately 1,700 acres.

HSUS has offered to only pay half of the $340,000-plus estimated expense that the project will cost.
“What really strikes us as calculating is that this 100-million-dollar-a-year-fundraising behemoth is only willing to pay a portion of the bill and put the rest on you and I,” said Bud Pidgeon, USSA president and CEO.  “Especially since hunters are willing to effectively take care of the problem and pay for the right to help.” 
In this time of budget cuts and economic woes, the NPS has a chance to earn funds by charging a bowhunting permit and letting hunters do what they do best—control overpopulated deer herds.

Obama doesn’t learn from his mistakes, still “F” student in economics.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/62792.html

The last stimulus worked so poorly Obama has decided to try it again, but by changing the name it will somehow work better this time.