Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Posts Tagged ‘Socialized Medicine’

To reform the culture, take back our children’s education from the socialist indoctrinators! 

Can all of America’s political problems be solved by returning to constitutional, limited government? The answer given by many conservatives and libertarians is a resounding yes. Reading the Founding Fathers, the answer would generate a more complex answer.

In the Federalist Papers, the authors dedicate considerable space to history’s failed experiments in self-government. John Adams wrote in 1798, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

What Adams suggests is the people’s character impacts our government’s character. The early generations of Americans were independent-minded folks. Help for those in need came from the church, the family, or the community. Citizens expected only a few limited functions to be performed by the state.

In 21st century America, we expect the government to provide Social Security retirement and disability, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, student loans, and Pell Grants. Parents expect their children to have a free public education through thirteen years of school.

Two tactics for dealing with this are popular. The first, the rationalistic approach, tries to challenge people with a debate about numbers and the effectiveness of government solutions. The second, the pragmatic approach, avoids taking on any popular program, other than fleeting attempts to reform Social Security. The last administration chose the latter tactic.

The pragmatic approach fails because the areas most in need of the reform are politically difficult to address. The rationalistic approach fails because it doesn’t address the culture. For example, many elderly Americans rely on Medicaid to take care of their long-term-care expenses once their net worth has dropped to nothing. The key problem here, however, is the culture that considers it acceptable for us to allow our parents to go into poverty so the government can step in.

Conservatives talk about the church and the community returning to its proper role of caring for the poor, but this effort is easier said than done. Pastors complain about the poor viewing churches as welfare agencies. Judging by donation reports, churches would be overwhelmed if they had to take on all the people dependent on the government. We cannot effect a permanent reduction in the size and scope of government, or meaningful government reform, unless we change our culture’s demand for the government to provide our every need.

Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly identified how cultural issues impact voting with her politically incorrect declaration: “Seventy percent of unmarried women voted for Obama. And this is because, when you kick your husband out, you’ve got to have Big Brother government to be your provider.”

The statement angered liberals and embarrassed some conservatives, but CNN’s 2008 exit poll does show that 74% of unmarried women with children, and 69% of unmarried women without children, voted for Obama. In fairness, however, 68% of unmarried men with children also voted for Obama. And 56% of unmarried men without children voted for Obama; compare that to the 53% of married men who voted for McCain.

The poll also showed those who attended religious services at least weekly voted for McCain, while those who attended less frequently or not at all voted for Obama. A more religious, more marriage-minded America would have voted quite differently.

In the end, the majority of the world has little in common with the libertarian archetypes of Howard Roark or John Galt. We will either have strong families, strong houses of worship, and strong communities, or we will have strong government to take the place of all three.

This isn’t to say government must or can solve our culture’s problems. However, those on the right who think conservative goals for limited government can be achieved through passing economic legislation are spitting in the wind. We will never have a limited government until we have a culture that allows for one.

To change our culture, we must take a more holistic approach to the issues America faces. Even more than conservative candidates and activists, we have a great need for conservative writers, artists, schoolteachers, Boy Scout and American Heritage Girls troop leaders, ministers, and volunteers in organizations that seek to strengthen marriages.

Read more at Pajamas Media

TEA-Party Hypocrisy: How Much Socialism Is Acceptable?

Religion and Morality: Indispensable Supports

Principium Imprimis – First Principles

Death panels?  What death panels? 

From the Doug Ross Journal:

Just days after the recess appointment of Donald Berwick, the controversial new head of Medicare and Medicaid, the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance posted the following grim news: for the first time in history, an FDA-approved anti-cancer therapy may not be covered by Medicare.

Provenge, a vaccine to treat the recurrence of prostate cancer, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)… Medicare usually covers the cost of FDA-approved anti-cancer therapies. However, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is still reviewing whether it will cover Provenge, and at what rate.

The CMS statute states that Medicare must cover therapies that are reasonable and necessary, while the FDA is instructed to approve drugs that are safe and effective. Because of the conflicting Federal coverage and approval requirements, there are some non-FDA approved drugs (called off-label drugs) that are paid for by CMS. However, with respect to Provenge, it appears that CMS is arguing that while the treatment is safe and effective, it may not be reasonable and necessary. For the first time, an FDA approved anti-cancer therapy may not be covered by Medicare.

A life-saving cancer treatment “may not be reasonable and necessary”? Gee, that kind of decision-making by an unelected federal bureaucracy certainly sounds like a death panel to me.

Say, I thought the President said that pre-existing conditions would always be covered. Isn’t cancer a pre-existing condition?

Oh. What’s this?

Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Ovarian Cancer National Alliance Appeal to FDA and Key Lawmakers on Avastin Issue

Patient Access and the Impact on Development of New Treatments at the Heart of Komen for the Cure’s Concerns

Susan G. Komen for the Cure® and the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance (OCNA) today urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to continue to allow the use of the drug bevacizumab, commonly known as Avastin, for metastatic breast cancer patients, noting that it is effective for some patients and warning of a chilling effect on new drug development if approval is withdrawn…

…In a joint letter sent to the FDA and key Congressional lawmakers Thursday, Komen for the Cure and the OCNA wrote, “We are particularly concerned about patients who are presently receiving bevacizumab and the message that this decision sends about drug development for women with advanced breast cancer.”

…According to Komen, the decision to use Avastin should be made between a woman and her doctor after a thoughtful conversation that carefully considers the drug’s benefits and risks. Komen does not want to see access limited by Medicare and Medicaid.

Gee, and I thought no one would be denied coverage by ObamaCare.

Didn’t the President himself say, “I want seniors to know, despite what some have said, these reforms will not cut your guaranteed benefits.”

That’s what President Obama told us, endlessly and repeatedly, for months on end.

Do you mean to say he was lying?

Folks, this is precisely why the cancer survival rate for the U.K. is so much lower than that of the U.S. — and, in some cases, lower than Eastern Europe’s. And why Donald Berwick’s nickname is Dr. Death.

America’s seniors are about to find out that having coverage is not the same thing as receiving care. And our seniors are about to pay the piper.

This is eerily similar to an incident last year, where the state-run Oregon Health Plan offered to pay for a woman’s physician-assisted suicide, but not life-saving cancer drugs.

I’m getting flashbacks of Monty Python: “I’m not dead yet!”

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Rationing health care is now official Obama policy

Administration comes clean, explains death panels

You know you’re making a difference when Obama views you as enough of a threat to start launching his Alinskyite smear tactics on you, by name!  

Here are the choice excerpts from Obama’s speech in Austin, Texas:

Right now all around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates all across the country.  And they don’t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are.  You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation.  You don’t know if it’s a big oil company, or a big bank.  You don’t know if it’s a insurance company that wants to see some of the provisions in health reform repealed because it’s good for their bottom line, even if it’s not good for the American people.

Actually, Obama, it’s not that hard to figure out who we are.  Just show up at any meeting – if you have the guts – and you’ll discover it’s full of patriotic Americans and first-time activists who were motivated to get off the bench and do something to save this country before you ”fundamentally transform” it into your version of a perverse socialist utopia! 

Last winter our local AFP group met in a church that was willing to donate the space though they couldn’t afford to turn the heat on.  We stayed in our overcoats for most of our meetings and took a small collection from our own pockets to help cover the cost of running the heater for next time.   No corporate funding for us – just everyday Americans who are FED UP with your policies and ready to fight for our liberties!

And as for accusing us of hiding behind “innocent sounding names” – that’s a RIOT coming from you!  An entire website, Discover The Networks, is dedicated to helping untangle and expose your corrupt web of front groups, subgroups and funding sources hiding behind thousands of  ”innocent sounding names”.   Talk about projection! 

A Supreme Court decision allowed this to happen.  And we tried to fix it, just by saying disclose what’s going on, and making sure that foreign companies can’t influence our elections. Seemed pretty straightforward.  The other side said no.

Same old worn-out playbook: if you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it.  Democrats are so predictable.

They don’t want you to know who the Americans for Prosperity are, because they’re thinking about the next election.  But we’ve got to think about future generations.  We’ve got to make sure that we’re fighting for reform.  We’ve got to make sure that we don’t have a corporate takeover of our democracy.

Actually, we want everyone to know EXACTLY who Americans for Prosperity are!  Thanks for the free plug! 

AFP President Tim Phillips responds:

The President and his friends on the Left are back to accusing you and me of being front groups for “foreign-controlled corporations” or for “big banks” or a “big oil company” – the President personally denigrates the integrity of over 1,200,000 Americans just because he’s angry that we’re taking an effective stand against his liberal policies.

How sad. How outrageous.

Across the nation, literally thousands of our fellow Americans are turning out for our November is Coming bus tour events and grassroots training sessions. I was in Michigan earlier this week and across Pennsylvania last week. The atmosphere is electric. CLICK HERE for pictures of these events and our upcoming schedule.

The President is right about one thing – Americans for Prosperity is running ads across the nation urging Americans to call their member of Congress to tell him or her that they better stop supporting big government legislation like the health care takeover, cap-and-tax, and yet more big bloated spending. CLICK HERE TO SEE SOME OF THESE ADS.

President Obama can continue his attacks but that won’t change the fact that November is Coming. Commit today to doing your part to make sure our fellow Americans send a powerful message to our fellow citizens and to Congress on behalf of freedom and prosperity. You can knock on doors, call citizens, become a neighborhood leader and so much more. CLICK HERE to sign up for our November is Coming efforts.

Take heart — the President is attacking us by name. He knows, and the Left knows, we are making a crucial difference.

Tell us your story about your grassroots activism by clicking here. We’ll share the stories and let Obama and the Left know you’re not “big oil” or “big banks”.

Let’s keep fighting because much lies ahead.

Join the fight with Americans For Prosperity!

Obama’s Unpresidential Attack On Dissenting Citizens

Attacks and smears of Tea Party more likely to energize it

Four months after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously declared “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it,”a congressional panel has released the first chart illustrating the 2,801 page health care law President Obama signed into law in March.

Developed by the Joint Economic Committee minority, led by U.S Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the detailed organization chart displays a bewildering array of new government agencies, regulations and mandates.

“For Americans, as well as Congressional Democrats who didn’t bother to read the bill, this first look at the final health care law confirms what many fear, that reform morphed into a monstrosity of new bureaucracies, mandates, taxes and rationing that will drive up health care costs, hurt seniors and force our most intimate health care choices into the hands of Washington bureaucrats,”said Brady, the committee’s senior House Republican. “If this is what passes for health care reform in America, then God help us all.”

Brownback, the committee’s ranking member, added, “This updated chart illustrates the overwhelming expansion of government control over health choices and the bewildering complexity facing everyone affected by this law. It doesn’t take long to see how the recently signed health care bill causes a hugely expensive and explosive expansion of federal control over health care. Personal choices that should be between a doctor and a patient will quickly be strangled in a never ending web of bureaucracy.”

Read more at the New Patriot Journal

ObamaCare Looks Worse Upon Further Review

Obamacare’s disastrous effects are already showing

The Problems with Socialized Health Care

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Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) is one of the more honest members of the left in Congress. Long before President Barack Obama first started pushing Obamacare, Rep. Stark was advocating for a government “Medicare for All” takeover over our nation’s health care system.

Rep. Stark’s honest view about the proper role and power of the federal government were on display again last month at a townhall in Hayward, CA.  In the video posted, a constituent asks Stark: “If this legislation is Constitutional, what limitations are there on the federal governments ability to tell us how to run our private lives? … If they can do this, what can’t they?”

Stark eventually answers: “The Federal government can, yes, do most anything in this country.”

Stark’s logic, if not his understanding of the Constitution, is dead on.

Read more at The Foundry

Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Obamacare

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From ObamacareClassAction.com:

The purpose of this lawsuit is to reverse Supreme Court precedent related to the Commerce clause and thereby overturn Obamacare. The Supreme Court has historically erred in its interpretation of the Constitutional role of the Federal Government. Recent Supreme Court rulings hint that they may be willing to take another look at Commerce clause precedent. Obamacare is so over reaching and so onerous, that it must either be repealed in Congress or struck down in the courts. We must fight this on both fronts. This is our historic opportunity to reverse America’s trend toward Socialism by overturning this unconstitutional precedent.

Private Citizen Sues The Feds

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American citizens appeal ObamaCare

When Commerce is not Commerce

Britian’s National Health Service forced to make sweeping cuts to services: restrictions on the most basic treatments for sick and injured

Many voters are looking forward to 2011, hoping a new Congress will put the country back on the right track. But unless something’s done soon, the new year will also come with a raft of tax hikes — including a return of the death tax — that will be real killers.

Through the end of this year, the federal estate tax rate is zero — thanks to the package of broad-based tax cuts that President Bush pushed through to get the economy going earlier in the decade.

But as of midnight Dec. 31, the death tax returns — at a rate of 55% on estates of $1 million or more. The effect this will have on hospital life-support systems is already a matter of conjecture.

Resurrection of the death tax, however, isn’t the only tax problem that will be ushered in Jan. 1. Many other cuts from the Bush administration are set to disappear and a new set of taxes will materialize. And it’s not just the rich who will pay.

The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50% — to 15% from 10%. The next lowest bracket — 25% — will rise to 28%, and the old 28% bracket will be 31%. At the higher end, the 33% bracket is pushed to 36% and the 35% bracket becomes 39.6%.

But the damage doesn’t stop there.

The marriage penalty also makes a comeback, and the capital gains tax will jump 33% — to 20% from 15%. The tax on dividends will go all the way from 15% to 39.6% — a 164% increase.

Both the cap-gains and dividend taxes will go up further in 2013 as the health care reform adds a 3.8% Medicare levy for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and joint filers making more than $250,000. Other tax hikes include: halving the child tax credit to $500 from $1,000 and fixing the standard deduction for couples at the same level as it is for single filers.

Letting the Bush cuts expire will cost taxpayers $115 billion next year alone, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and $2.6 trillion through 2020.

But even more tax headaches lie ahead. This “second wave” of hikes, as Americans for Tax Reform puts it, are designed to pay for ObamaCare…

Read More at Investors Business Daily

The Obama Tax Tsunami is Here

Obamacare socks middle class with $3.9 billion tax increase

The Obama Tax Trap: How some Republicans are preparing to walk right into it

The Price of Obamacare

Over the years, words lose meaning and often take on new forms that in no way represent their original usage. This can be observed in the now taboo word “fascism.” Fascism is now most closely associated with the system of government that effected the slaughter of over 6 million Jews and other political prisoners. But at its core, fascism is really no more than a system where government, through agreements with the private sector, controls virtually all property and income indirectly.

Prosperity and economic growth become the domain of government. The philosophical aim is to eliminate recessions by eliminating robust growth — the underlying philosophy being that if there is no boom, there will be no bust. This system usually appeals to populations coming out of severe economic depressions and upheaval, as in pre-Nazi Germany during the period of the 1930s.

The problem with the system is obvious: property-owning democracy must take a back seat to the interests of the state. And, by blurring the distinction between the private sector and the public sector, individual liberty can often be conditioned on complicity with state aims, as manifested in the private sector sphere.

It is the go along to get along syndrome. With the right leverage, people will do anything. Think BP and Obama’s radical energy agenda. If threatened with destruction, BP will likely comply with any and every request of the brazen Obama Administration. This type of interaction is essential to the success of fascism.

Fascism is, however, correctly associated with tyranny since nations that employ the tenets of fascism almost always transition from a republican or parliamentary form of government to some sort of personality cult usually centered on an economic “savior.” Fascism requires extensive state control, and if this control is not centralized in a singular personality, the results will be muddied and plagued with excessive overlap. Many envisioned President Obama in this way prior to the election, and President Obama certainly did not hesitate to utilize workers’ paradise imagery during his campaign.

During an early period of popular expectation — for “hope and change,” perhaps — the savior can implement highly undemocratic and centralist policies simply by ignoring the existence of laws and constitutions that preclude this sort of behavior. Before citizens and their representatives have time to respond to these abuses, the savior has already opened new fronts and perpetrated new abuses. It is the finger in the wind method. If there are no outcries of public furor for the scrapping of, say, states’ rights, the savior will know that even greater violations are possible. President Obama has done just this.

Read more at American Thinker

Is Obama a Socialist?

Corporate or Government Takeover? Two Sides, Same Coin

To Own Or Be Owned—That Is The Question

The first time I was contacted for a Tea Party event was by a Pittsburgh woman named Patti. She called last spring. I asked: Who’s behind this Tea Party business? Is the Republican Party running this?

I learned no one was ordering Patti but herself. A mother of three daughters, wife of a physician, and a Harvard MBA, Patti calmly explained that she was so concerned about her country that she got involved. “This is completely grassroots,” she assured me.

Not long after that conversation, I watched in awe as such unceasing fiscal insanity drove a huge swath of concerned citizens to Washington on September 12, 2009. In response to this massive “9/12” march, liberals were apoplectic. They exhibit an intense emotional attachment to Obama, lashing out at anyone who criticizes him. That reaction is particularly pronounced in their fits of rage at Tea Party people, who they denounce with ugly epithets: Nazi, racist, hate-monger.

The hysterics have only gotten worse. Smear groups like “CrashTheTeaParty.org” are infiltrating the Tea Party. The goal, according to Jason Levin, who spearheads the group, is to “act on behalf of the Tea Party in ways which exaggerate their least appealing qualities,” in order to “damage the public’s opinion of them.”

Alas, I don’t think the saboteurs and demonizers realize how this may backfire. Those within the Tea Party don’t seem to care about the nasty names. This is a movement with no single leader wedded to a political future or with politically sensitive ambitions. There’s no one face fearful of being maligned by the New York Times, NPR, and Keith Olbermann. Few movements are so huge and yet so anonymous.

Most significant, many Tea Party people, not to mention those who agree with them—even if they never attend rallies—are independents and Democrats. A recent Gallup poll found that 50 percent of “Tea Party identifiers” are Republicans while 43 percent are independents and 7 percent are Democrats. That’s a remarkably high number of non-Republicans.

 If independents, moderates, and Democrats are a notable element of the Tea Party movement, or sympathize with it, do you really want to inflame them, especially as November 2010 approaches?

This is a multifaceted movement, but one thing seems certain: Those taking pleasure assailing Tea Partiers may enliven the very movement they endeavor to destroy.

Read more at Townhall.com

34% Say They Or Someone Close To Them Is Part of Tea Party Movement

6 myths about the Tea Party movement

Media Myth Debunked: More People Agree With Tea Party’s Views Than Obama’s

Disgruntled Democrats join the Tea Party

Who are the Tea Partiers?

Media smear of Tea Party continues

“You can keep your own coverage and your own doctor.”  Obama, YOU LIE!

Obamacare DOESN’T lower costs and makes it appealing for businesses to dump their employees onto the government plan…and that’s EXACTLY what’s happening. This was a Trojan Horse for Single Payer, and they think you’re too stupid to recognize it.

The relentlessly rising cost of health insurance is prompting some small Massachusetts companies to drop coverage for their workers and encourage them to sign up for state-subsidized care instead, a trend that, some analysts say, could eventually weigh heavily on the state’s already-stressed budget.

Since April 1, the date many insurance contracts are renewed for small businesses, the owners of about 90 small companies terminated their insurance plans with Braintree-based broker Jeff Rich and indicated in a follow-up survey that they were relying on publicly-funded insurance for their employees.

In Sandwich, business consultant Bill Fields said he has been hired by small businesses to enroll about 400 workers in state-subsidized care since April, because the company owners said they could no longer afford to provide coverage. Fields said that is by far the largest number he has handled in such a short time.

“They are giving up out of frustration,’’ Fields said of the employers. “Most of them are very compassionate but they simply can’t afford health insurance any more.’’

Read more at the Boston Globe

Obamacare Side Effect: Top Corporations Consider Dropping Employee Health Insurance

The reality of Obamacare: nationalizing healthcare by proxy

Obama in his own words: Health Care Plan will ELIMINATE private insurance

Obamacare Deception – It’s Not About Choice

New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records–that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year–must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity.

The obesity-rating regulation states that every American’s electronic health record must: “Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.”

The law also requires that these electronic health records be available–with appropriate security measures–on a national exchange.
 
The new regulations are one of the first steps towards the government’s goal of universal adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) by 2014, as outlined in the 2009 economic stimulus law.  Specifically, the regulations issued on Tuesday by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, define the “meaningful use” of electronic records. Under the stimulus law, health care providers–including doctors and hospitals–must establish “meaningful use” of EHRs by 2014 in order to qualify for federal subsidies. After that, they will be subjected to penalties in the form of diminished Medicare and Medicaid payments for not establishing “meaningful use” of EHRs.

Read more at CNS News

Obamacare grants sweeping new powers to HHS Secretary

When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

Under the legislation signed by President Obama in March, most Americans will have to maintain “minimum essential coverage” starting in 2014. Many people will be eligible for federal subsidies to help them pay premiums.

In a brief defending the law, the Justice Department says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes.

Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said. For more than a century, it added, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can tax activities that it could not reach by using its power to regulate commerce.

While Congress was working on the health care legislation, Mr. Obama refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy insurance, enforced by financial penalties, was equivalent to a tax.

“For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” the president said last September, in a spirited exchange with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week.”

When Mr. Stephanopoulos said the penalty appeared to fit the dictionary definition of a tax, Mr. Obama replied, “I absolutely reject that notion.”

Congress anticipated a constitutional challenge to the individual mandate. Accordingly, the law includes 10 detailed findings meant to show that the mandate regulates commercial activity important to the nation’s economy. Nowhere does Congress cite its taxing power as a source of authority.

Read more at the New York Times

So they support radical leftist politicians and causes that help create economic chaos, and then hire the unemployed to picket and protest for more of their radical agenda?  Oh, the irony…

Billy Raye, a 51-year-old unemployed bike courier, is looking for work.

Fortunately for him, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters is seeking paid demonstrators to march and chant in its current picket line outside the McPherson Building, an office complex here where the council says work is being done with nonunion labor.

“For a lot of our members, it’s really difficult to have them come out, either because of parking or something else,” explains Vincente Garcia, a union representative who is supervising the picketing.

So instead, the union hires unemployed people at the minimum wage—$8.25 an hour—to walk picket lines. Mr. Raye says he’s grateful for the work, even though he’s not sure why he’s doing it. “I could care less,” he says. “I am being paid to march around and sound off.”

Protest organizers and advocacy groups are reaping an unexpected benefit from continued high joblessness. With the national unemployment rate currently at 9.5%, an “endless supply” of the out-of-work, as well as retirees seeking extra income, are lining up to be paid demonstrators, says George Eisner, the union’s director of organization. Extra feet help the union staff about 150 picket lines in the District of Columbia and Baltimore each day.

Online postings recruit paid activists for everything from stopping offshore drilling to defending the Constitution.

In California, one group is offering to pay $10 and up per hour to activists to hold signs in demonstrations against foam cups and plastic bags.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

Left-Wing Activist Hiring Spree

Let’s Talk Astroturf: Liberals Paying Your Teens For Activism

Unions Protesting Churches for Hiring Private Contractors

Bloody-Minded Unions Intimidate Boy Scouts, Churches, Blood Drives

One of the interesting things about the Obama administration is the strange dominance of labor unions. Yes, Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders do owe the unions something: Unions gave $400 million to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle, and they expect to get something in return.

What they haven’t gotten out of the Democratic Congress the thing they wanted most — the card check bill that would effectively abolish the secret ballot in unionization elections. Unions now represent only 7 percent of private sector workers, the lowest percentage since the early 1930s. Union leaders believe that with card check they could vastly increase their dues income.

But the unions have gotten lots of other things, as Peyton R. Miller reports in The Weekly Standard. Obama has appointed to the National Labor Relations Board a former union lawyer who once wrote that the NLRB could institute something very much like card check without congressional action.

Obama executive orders have encouraged unionization by employees of government contractors and the seniority-based promotion practices preferred by union leaders. Obama has granted a 35 percent tariff on Chinese tires sought by the United Steelworkers and, in contravention of the NAFTA Treaty, has blocked Mexican trucks from U.S. roads as demanded by the Teamsters union.

The Democrats’ stimulus package includes Davis-Bacon requirements that union wages be paid on construction jobs, which means that the government will pay more or get less production than it would if contractors were free to pay market wages. The complex Davis-Bacon process also means huge delays in getting supposedly shovel-ready projects under way.

And Obama Democrats are trying to force FedEx to become unionized by subjecting it to the same law as unionized UPS.

Meanwhile, one-third of the stimulus money went to state and local governments, with the effect of propping up the pay and saving the jobs of public employee union members. As a result, while 8 million private sector jobs have disappeared, the number of public sector jobs has barely budged.

Read more at the Washington Examiner

Contractor: Obama Project Labor Agreement Preference Hurts Construction Industry

Finance bill favors interests of unions, activists

Obama Plots Assault on Non-Union Businesses

Andy Stern’s America

Union General Counsel declares “it’s not about children, it’s about power”

Forced Unionization Bills Picking Up Traction In Congress

Public-sector employees are the new fat cats

Obama’s “job creation” agenda favors union and government workers