Yet, that’s what mandatory PLA’s do. So why are the following Republicans considering casting votes today against an amendment by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (Amendment 182 in the National Defense Authorization Act), which would block mandatory union-boss giveaways on federally funded construction projects?

So far these Republicans appear to be headed the wrong direction:

• Rep. Jon Runyan of New Jersey — Contact Rep. Runyan now!
• Rep. Michael Grimm of New York
• Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois — Contact Rep. Walsh now!

Why would these Members of Congress — freshmen who swept into office promising to look out for taxpayers and change Washington — oppose legislation that would eliminate inefficiencies in the federal contracting procurement process, increase competition, reduce costs and create construction jobs–while protecting the public interest?

Some Representative you’ve probably never heard of thinks you’re evil.

Why? Well, Rep. Marcia Fudge thinks you’re a big ol’ meanie if you actually stand up for what you believe in, especially if what you believe in happens to butt up against the desire for Big Labor union bosses to force more employees into dues-paying memberships and failing pensions.

So now the right honorable Rep. Fudge is taking out the big rhetorical bat to demonize House Members who disagree with her — and, more accurately, disagree with taking away the right of employees to get real information and have a real vote to decide if they want to join a union. She told a labor policy-focused outlet:

“House Republicans have introduced bill after bill to destroy collective bargaining rights and strip away the power of the National Mediation and the National Labor Relations Boards,” she said. “You tell me these aren’t evil people? There is a cold and evil wind blowing in this city.”

So much for a new tone of civility!

Sometimes you think it can’t get worse and then you pick up the newspaper. That the story of retirement security. Even as Americans struggle to keep roofs over their heads and their kids in college more than ever have to worry about their nest egg — either their pension fund itself or the stocks inside it. The news is getting worse, especially in the world of multi-employer pension funds.

Multi-employer pension funds are defined benefit plans in which several companies contribute to cover a unionized workforce. This worked well for a long time but has obvious problems, especially as a smaller percentage of young employees are going into that part of the workforce. This is a demographic problem that means fewer young employees pay the benefits promised to older and retired workers.

Now comes a new part of the story: some public companies have not been highlighting their massive unfunded liability to their pension plans, which serves to inflate the value of their enterprise. Thankfully, laws governing this accounting have been improved and firms are now being required to fully disclose these issues, as the Wall Street Journal notes in “The Union Pension Bomb“:

In “Crawling Out of the Shadows,” analysts David Zion, Amit Varshney and Nicole Burnap address the big but opaque world of pensions in which companies across an industry pay into a single asset pool. These 1,400 union-run retirement vehicles have long been poorly run and underfunded. (See “The Next Pension Bailout,” August 16, 2010.) But Credit Suisse has dug deeper and found how really big the mess is.

Among the findings: Multi-employer plans in the U.S. are underfunded by some $369 billion. An estimated $43 billion of that off-balance-sheet liability belongs to the 44 S&P 500 companies that are exposed to multi- employer plans. The other 88% of the $369 billion is borne by small, mid-cap or private firms that may be even less prepared to cover the obligations. The report says Safeway’s $6.9 billion in liabilities amount to 76% of the company’s market cap, for example.

It’s good that we are closer, finally, to a real reckoning of costs that companies face. As the numbers add up, it’s easier to see why so many employers have shifted to defined contribution plans and why so many employees opt out of joining a union where they can be forced into retirement plans that are less than secure.

A prime suite at Kansas Speedway. First-class travel. Six-figure salaries for half the staffers. Plenty of plum jobs for family members.

Life is good at the top of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers.

The union, with its headquarters in Kansas City, Kan., represents about 59,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada who make and repair boilers, fit pipes and work on ships and power plants. The recession has hit their trade hard, reducing union membership.

At the same time, the president’s salary has surged 67 percent in the past six years, not counting a recent raise. Add in travel and some other expenses, and Newton B. Jones totaled more than $600,000 last year, putting him at the absolute top of the presidents of the dozen biggest unions in the country.

Perhaps that money would have been better spent on shoring up the union’s struggling pension plan currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor for “waste and mismanagement” and acts of cronyism and nepotism.

To learn more, visit www.shameonunionbanners.com.

With deficits as far as the eye can see a debt problem to the tune of $14 trillion, you would hope that “public servants” would be leading the war against waste, fraud, and abuse. Instead, they seem to be living the good life and wielding regulatory power with little regard for impacts on citizens and the economy.

The most recent scandal, of course, involves the infamous reference of a government bureaucrat talking about crucifying business owners to make examples of them:

Congress and the media should renew their interest in the GSA’s anti-competitive procurement practices and call for reform. The GSA needs to be held accountable for any instance of waste, whether it be procuring conferences or construction services

The reason I bring up RTW laws in context of the Republican primary, is that there seems to be a tendency for the states that are used to battling with labor unions (like Illinois, Michigan, Ohio) to back Romney and states where unions are virtually a non factor (like Oklahoma, Alabama, Tennessee) to move towards Santorum.

Sort of like if you’ve had a very unpleasant social disease, you’re apt to stay away from it in the future.

Reader Brett McMahon, who has a concrete construction business, is puzzled why Rick Santorum’s votes on union issues have not proved a political liability in Southern states. I am not sure I share his characterization of Santorum’s record, but I pass along, with his permission, the contents of his email, which strike me as an interesting observation:

“Santorum’s rather abysmal record in support of organized labor does not register as a serious flaw in many southern, ie RTW [right to work], states. I am a DC native who spent 8 (glorious) years in NC and was struck by the honest ignorance of union excesses by my new business colleagues and neighbors. To them, unions were a kind of hypothetical threat. They did not understand they way they worked, their legislated special privileges, or their relentlessness. When I railed about them as chair of the newly formed chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors, I was met with sympathetic, but still blank, stares. I wonder then if Romney’s consistent pitch against organized labor just does not register in those places. Conversely, perhaps it does register with the GOP voters in states that have an up close and personal history with their influence.

“Milton Friedman knew what President Obama still has not learned, even after three years and hundreds of billions of dollars in spending: The government does not create prosperity; free markets and free people do,” Romney told a room full of students and fans … “Instead of expanding the government, I will shrink it,” he said. “Instead of raising taxes, I’m going to cut them. Instead of adding more regulations, I will reduce them.”

Sounds pretty good to us.*

* In fact, Associated Builders and Contractors, the original founders of the Free Enterprise Alliance, has endorsed Romney.

And while we’re at it, don’t forget: not all politicians stand up for free enterprise against special interests …

Mark Flatten of the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank, says that all six of the top PLEA officers derive full pay and benefits from the city, although each is assigned full time to the union — and each is also entitled to 160 hours of annual extra-pay overtime. Officials of the six other public employees unions also have full-time city jobs. All told, the annual bill for 73,000 hours of release time is $3.7 million.

See Mr. Will’s call for a halt to this assault here.

Nationally, this represents a tremendous problem. As LaborUnionReport.com reported in June:

To give you an example of how much of taxpayers’ money is blown on “official time,” in 2008, there were 2,893,922 hours spent doing union at a cost of nearly $121 million. In 2009, however, as noted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Vincent Vernuccio (a former Labor Department official), the number of hours union representatives did union work at taxpayer expense increased to 2,911,378 paid hours at a cost of $129,100,798.

The same story pointed to Vincent Vernuccio’s appearance on the Fox Business Channel to provide greater explanation:

However, today, as in the 1930′s, the concepts of the Founding Fathers are under assault by a small percentage of the population that wishes to exploit the power of government for their own economic and intellectual benefit. Union leaders want the government to force more people to join their unions to help pay their salaries and fund their deteriorating health and pension plans. Environmentalists want to use the power of regulation to impose their urban views of resource and land utilization on the rural population. Some large corporations want to use their political contributions to obtain an advantage in the marketplace.

The Founding Fathers idea of citizen legislators has largely been abandoned as career politicians of both parties benefit from retirement plans that encourage them to stay in office as long as possible.

This assault on the God given rights of ordinary citizens, i.e. the middle class, would not be possible if the middle class was factually informed of the events occurring around them. Unfortunately, a 2007 MSNBC Survey of the political contributions of print, radio and television journalists, found that 90% contributed to the Democratic Party. This bias is reflected in the stories that the American public sees or doesn’t see and the editorial slant of those stories.

However, unlike the 1930′s, the American public does not need to rely solely on biased journalists for their news. News sources like the Wall Street Journal and Real Clear Politics try to adhere to provide both sides of a story. When journalists believe that the role of journalism is to shape public opinion rather than report the facts and 90% of journalists subscribe to one political theory, is it surprising that so many media outlets are having financial difficulties?

Middle class Americans just want the facts. John Locke and the Founding Fathers were correct, we are capable of making our own decisions.

Charen’s argument, and it ends on this rather clever bit of analysis:

So he’s for a free market reform of health care, cutting spending, tackling the soaring debt, reducing taxes, simplifying the code, eliminating regulations, drilling for domestic energy, appointing conservative judges, and keeping our military the strongest on Earth. And Romney has not attacked his competitors from the left but from the right because that’s where they, far more than he, are vulnerable.

Read the entire article here.

How can an organization that represents a small minority the workforce, just over 10%, but whose actions force the other 90% to pay higher prices for everything they purchase and in addition, higher local, state and federal taxes, claim they are helping the middle class? Yet that is exactly the claim that unions and their political supporters have made for decades.

Even in times of greatly expanding union membership, the middle class paid a price for union expansion through higher unemployment and higher prices. Starting in 1933, FDR used the National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA) to encourage companies to establish cartels in most industries and set the minimum prices that could be charged in exchange for favorable unionization policies in their companies. These policies more than doubled the number of union members in just one decade. The Supreme Court ruled that the NRA was unconstitutional 2 years later, but the damage had already been done.

The NRA increased the cost of products by 40% at a time when few people could afford higher prices. Consequently, industrial production fell by 25% after the NRA was enacted. To put this into perspective, by 1930 the economy had already started to recover from the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Unemployment which was 5% before the crash had spiked at 9% in the winter of 1929 and then started to fall. Once the Smoot Hawley Tariff, NRA and other progressive policies were enacted, however, unemployment rose from 9% to 20% and stayed above 15% for the rest of the decade. It was not until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and 12 million people were inducted into the military, that employment returned to pre-Stock Market Crash levels.

Today, union membership is a far cry from its peak in the 1950’s when 30% of the workforce was unionized. Only about 10% of the workforce is unionized and approximately half of that total works for local, state and federal governments.

When unions in a manufacturing company make wage or benefit demands or impose restrictive work rules, they raise the cost of products that the company makes. If few other companies make that product, the other 90% of the middle class is forced to pay higher prices. However in many cases, suppliers in other countries are able to provide that product at a lower cost. This eliminates American middle class jobs. The demise of the steel and auto industries is a perfect example of what happens when union demands exceed the realities of the market place. When an entire industry is decimated by the exorbitant wages and benefits of a few unionized companies, the middle class is hurt by lost jobs throughout that industry.

Unions in the public sector are even more damaging to the middle class. As the result of unions using member dues to help elect both Democratic and Republican politicians that will support union wages and benefit demands, only 10% of the workforce is able to impose costs that the other 90% of taxpayers must pay for. When these same politicians allow extravagant retirement benefits in union contracts, but fail to fund the benefits to avoid making the taxpayers aware of the true costs, the middle class is hurt even more. Many states will not allow the modification of union retirement benefits regardless of the extravagance of the benefits or the cost to the taxpayers. The middle class taxpayer is ultimately left to fund the benefits promised by union supported politicians but never funded.

Unions have done an excellent job of portraying themselves as the defender of the middle class. In reality, whether the union concentration is 30% or 10%, the only people that have benefited from unionization are union members and union leaders, to the detriment of the rest of the middle class.

There’s too much good stuff to do justice to in one recap, but the conclusion is also too good not to share:

Alexis de Tocqueville reputedly said that the American republic will last only “until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.” Indeed, political philosophers have warned since Aristotle that the worst flaw of democracy is the tendency of the majority to oppress the minority. That is what happens when takers become the majority and use their political power to force makers to hand over the fruit of their labor in the form of taxes. The time remaining for America to reverse this debilitating ratio is rapidly disappearing.

Hoppman, whose business is in Dallas, looks at regulations and finds that many are going to be bad for Texas, which is one of the few states that has actually been creating jobs:

A new report issued this week by the Texas Public Policy Foundation details the looming job killers the Feds have in store for businesses everywhere. The report, titled The EPA’s Approaching Regulatory Avalanche, finds that specifically there are ten new rules currently in the pipeline from the EPA alone that could potentially cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs. Further, they are calling it “A Regulatory Spree Unprecedented in U.S. History.”

But as Hoppman notes:

EPA is just part of the problem. The National Labor Relations Board-where three individuals have been illegally installed by the Obama administration as part of a plan to continue pushing through an unpopular agenda by Big Labor Bosses-is making life uncertain and unpleasant for honest employers. Even the long-quiet OSHA juggernaut is making rumbles again.

It’s the regulatory avalanche that is starting to awaken small business owners. A recent Gallup poll said contending with federal rules was the top concern for entrepreneurs. That is just plain wrong. Is this what we want? Business owners more worried about regulations than they are about findings ways to start or grow their businesses and adding new jobs as a result of that entrepreneurial activity?

Click through for five eye-opening charts in “Reassessing The Recovery”

If you’re interested in helping spread the word about Reagan’s legacy, sign the Facebook birthday tribute from The Heritage Foundation.

Check out the rest for some very unpleasant pictures.

There’s plenty of good material, but here’s the gist:

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

So, take a chill pill — and, politicians, get back to focusing on jobs.

Timmons briefed writers today on efforts to educate our nation’s policymakers to create a better environment with respect to taxes, regulation, energy, and torts — the “main drivers” of the excess costs that are making America less competitive. And since less competitive = fewer jobs and a slouching economy, it’s a message to which we should all listen, since as Timmons says, it’s “something we’ve done to ourselves.”

Timmons touched on one of our favorite topics: regulation. The agenda for red tape has “been highly aggressive” and “highly detrimental to manufacturers … and has added costs to cost of doing biz in United States,” he said.

On another of our favorite issues, Timmons said said flatly of the National Labor Relations Board, “their goal quite simply is to make a more hostile workplace.” And hey, who can argue otherwise with a straight face? (For more on his group’s lawsuit, click here — and for the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the President’s recent appointments, click here).

Manufacturing — like construction and retail and energy and agriculture and so many others — is key to creating jobs. But it won’t work if manufacturers have to leave America because there are too many hurdles.

For more reading, check out NAM’s blog at Shopfloor.org or its Twitter handle, @shopfloor_nam.

Check out the details here.

The original claim of the Occupy Whatever Street (OWS) movement, that large banks got a bailout while middle class America struggled as the result of high unemployment, had merit. However, that legitimate grievance was cast aside as the OWS movement was taken over by Big Labor and the Democratic Socialist Party.

Their goal was to divert attention away from the prolific spending of the Obama administration that is threatening our financial future. Thanks to a sympathetic media, they were able to influence public opinion to reflect their view that the rich are not paying enough taxes, and this is creating our budget shortfalls. In reality, we should be looking at Washington and their outlandish self-serving spending of the American taxpayer’s money.

However since most people do not own a calculator with 13 digits or look at IRS data, their fraud has gone largely undetected and unreported. Let’s examine the facts.

The 2011 budget deficit is $1,300,000,000,000 or 1.3 trillion dollars and the accumulated National Debt is $15,000,000,000,000 or 15 trillion dollars.

Using the OWS definition, the top 1% or 1.38 million people (out of 138 million taxpayers) are considered rich. This group earned 17% of all income but paid 37% of all income taxes. Clearly that is not the message being spread by OWS and their supporters.

Their claim that taxing the rich will help to solve the budget deficit is even more preposterous. The top 1% already pays $320 billion in income taxes annually. To eliminate the 2011 Obama budget deficit of $1.3 trillion, they would need to pay 98% of their earnings in taxes. At that tax rate, they will not continue to own and expand their companies, which include hiring more employees. Even a 98% tax rate on the rich does nothing to reduce the remaining National Debt of 13.7 trillion dollars.

Unless there is an awakening in Washington by members of both parties that their spending is the cause of our budget deficits and no amount of taxes on the rich, or even the middle class, will solve the problem, we are destined to repeat the mistakes of Greece, Italy and most of Europe.

Promoting class warfare based upon misrepresenting the facts may help to get politicians elected, but it does nothing to put us on the path to prosperity.

Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal.

Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Northwest has mandated a project labor agreement (PLA) on the construction of a $450 million to $550 million explosives handling wharf #2 (Solicitation No. N4425511R9004) at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in Washington.

The PLA mandate harms Washington’s experienced and skilled nonunion construction workforce and will discourage competition from qualified contractors that have successfully built federal projects in Washington and across the country without PLA mandates. It will also needlessly increase costs.

Unsurprisingly, labor’s deep political ties may be a driving factor in the PLA mandate, as Ben Brubeck writes that four Washington Democratic legislators wrote the Navy seeking to force a PLA onto the project. He also notes: “According to information obtained from opensecrets.com, construction trades unions have donated the following political contributions totaling $814,375 to the four Washington Democrats who signed the letter:

Rep. Inslee: $340,000 from 2000 – 2012
Rep. Dicks: $183,125 from 1998 – 2012
Sen. Murray: $279,250 from 1998 – 2012
Sen. Cantwell: $ 12,000 from 2002 – 2012
Total: $814,375″

That’s more than three quarters of a million dollars in donations—which could lead to tens of millions of dollars in extra costs to taxpayers, torpedo-ing our military budget.

Click through for more information.

The project Economic Freedom also has used an incredibly popular video to make its case:

And it released a sequel:

So we weighed in over at The American Thinker to explain the issue and our guy concludes, simply: “To those in Big Labor who argue that they will lose dues and power if people have the option to pay for their ‘service,’ I say, too damn bad.”

… bad rules are usually badly written, as seems to be the case here. Rather, quality refers to a deliberative process: defining the problem; measuring costs, benefits and risks; weighing alternatives, making trade-offs, avoiding duplication; and giving the public opportunity to comment. If all goes well a quality rule will promote or at least not impair “economic growth, innovation, competitiveness and job creation,” as Mr. Obama’s January 2011 executive order on regulation had it.

It’s too boring for the press corps to notice, but a growing body of evidence suggests that the Obamanauts are undermining these basic due diligence practices that have been commonly accepted by whatever party happened to be in power.

Definitely click through for more info.

So today, a couple more quotes along those lines. First, Walter Williams writes:

What human motivation gets the most wonderful things done? It’s really a silly question, because the answer is so simple. It turns out that it’s human greed that gets the most wonderful things done.

When I say greed, I am not talking about fraud, theft, dishonesty, lobbying for special privileges from government or other forms of despicable behavior. I’m talking about people trying to get as much as they can for themselves.

Then there’s this quiz, courtesy of the Institute for Humane Studies Facebook page:

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm– but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

There is the “face” of greed:

And a better explanation:

The events of the 1980s clearly demonstrate that the middle class benefits from government policies that promote prosperity rather than programs that promote dependency at the expense of prosperity.

The real question going into to the 2012 election is whether middle-class voters will see through the marketing efforts of the Democratic Party and its media supporters to recognize that policies of prosperity, not redistribution and dependency, truly help the middle class.

Read more at The American Thinker.

Bob Bertsch’s story should make you mad, then make you angry:

Bertsch’s Kennewick-based Ashley-Bertsch Group went on the auction block Friday at 9 a.m. By 4 p.m., Booker Auctions had sold off almost two dozen vehicles and trailers, tons of power tools and supplies, even the gas-fired fireplace in the office.

Bertsch, 65, said he is down-sizing because the tax burden got too expensive to stay in business.
After a quarter of a century of building a successful enterprise at 5903 W. Metaline Ave., Bertsch sat back and watched as about 200 people bid on what was left of his company — boxes of electrical parts, a drafting desk, high-end office furniture, TVs, computers and even the phone system.
Anything that could be carried away, was.

“I am tired of carrying all the tax load,” Bertsch said. “I renew 13 licenses here every year just so I can spend money in this city.”

Bertsch makes no attempt to conceal his frustration with the costs government imposes on small businesses like his.

“Government is killing small business. We used to have 24 employees at our peak. Now, all of those people who used to work here are in unemployment lines,” he said.

Recently, the lone Republican NLRB member, Brian Hayes, took an unusual step of sending a letter to Congress saying Democrats on the board “plainly intend to contravene the board’s own internal rules regarding the circulation and issuance of majority and dissenting opinions.” By this, he meant the rules were conceived and promulgated without his input.

Mr. Hayes‘ letter confirms the worst fears about the overt, special-interest political agenda of the NLRB. Many of its decisions have tilted the scales so far as to effectively drop the pretense of fairness. The goal is simply to manipulate the rules of the game in order to increase unions’ market share. Those same unions bragged in the last election about the hundreds of millions of dollars they spent to get President Obama elected.

It’s more evidence that it’s so important to make your voice heard and tell DC to halt the assault on small business, jobs, and the economy!

UPDATE: See our article at Townhall.com explaining why your action TODAY is so important:

Many of us spent this weekend with families and focused on the thanks in our hearts for our blessings, but once again Obama’s job-killing National Labor Relations Board is giving us plenty to remain un-thankful about.

For those not entirely familiar with all of the Board’s recent havoc, you are no doubt aware of the NLRB’s most high profile job attack of going after a brand new Boeing manufacturing plant that dared to open up and hire employees in a “right to work” state where employees can work without being forced to pay for union representation.

While the Boeing case is definitely a telling example of the Big Labor agenda being driven by the agency, there are other structural attacks by the NLRB that seek to change the way the game is played by shortening the time period and process of unionization at a company. A shortened time period effectively filibusters management from ever getting to respond to concerns or issues raised by employees before a vote to unionize is held. A hearing is scheduled by the NLRB for this Wednesday to presumably enact these measures into law.

Wouldn’t you say the third has an awful lot to do with the first two?

Political genius, yes, because it found a third party — us, as taxpayers — to pay for costlier goods and services if they were designated as environmentally friendly. You know, it’s how we got into the business of loaning money to Solyndra. That way environmentalists got what they wanted and union bosses could fight off declining rolls of dues-paying members.

Of course, there’s a problem when we say we’re creating “new” jobs by having someone install a low-flow toilet instead of a normal john, as HTA spokesman and Miller and Long DC president Brett McMahon testified yesterday before a House Committee on Government Reform subcommittee on the issue of green jobs (see him starting at about the 22 minute mark).

Video of the proceedings:

Mr. McMahon’s written testimony can be found here.

Also testifying was highly esteemed economist Dr. David Montgomery. We’ve attached his testimony, but you can get the gist by his flat summation: “The entire concept of using stimulus money to create a Green Economy is unsound.” But if you’re one of those who like words and thoughts, Dr. Montgomery added that the rush of spending in a boom-and-bust mode is bad, but:

It is even worse when Green programs are authorized in a frenzy of spending that invites rent- seeking and political influence over the selection of projects. This process shortchanged basic research where additional funds could be put to good use but on a slower and less politically profitable pace, and pushed funding into areas of energy technology demonstration and commercialization where the role of government should be smallest and where we have had a long history of immense failures.

Learn more at the website for the hearing.

BONUS TREAT! Note the final panelist and moderator!

According to the letter, five big steps for small business would be:

1. Small businesses deserve a greater voice in the federal regulatory process
2. Providing assistance to small businesses before assessing penalties
3. Subjecting every major regulation to a rigorous benefit-cost analysis
4. Regulations should be based on objective data and hard science
5. The regulatory process should require more transparency and accountability

See the full letter here.

And he even has a great look back from Calvin Coolidge:

“After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of the opinion that the great majority of our people will always find these are moving impulses of our life. . . Wealth is the product of industry, ambition, character and untiring effort. In all experience, the accumulation of wealth means the multiplication of schools, the increase of knowledge, and dissemination of intelligence, the encouragement of science, the broadening of outlook, the expansion of liberties, the widening of culture. Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence. But we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well-nigh every desirable achievement. So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it.”

Check out the whole article!

But here’s a memo to those who may be occupied with pressing matters: having union bosses pushing your cause is only ensures you aren’t really with the majority of Americans. That’s because union bosses continue to push a radical agenda that harms working Americans and the small businesses that should be creating jobs.

It’s not just us saying that; polls show Americans don’t trust self-interested union bosses:

In fact, Americans trust union bosses significantly less than they trust business leaders:

And the term “business leaders” doesn’t even delve into the real issue, which is that the small businesses that are harmed by Big Labor-pushed regulations and rules are more popular than any other major group in America.

Can’t wait to see how popular Big Labor can make the Occupiers!

Halt The Assault is constantly trying to get the word out to more and more Americans about the dire threat to our economy posed by increasing taxes, spending, and plain-old-dumb rules that make it harder for small businesses to operate. As such, we’ve taken to a leading online site to explain our nation’s “Leadership Recession“:

Government is always going to be many steps behind. Ideas, innovation, creativity, ingenuity, all the important ingredients to economic growth and job creation, are not found in government, only taxed and regulation by government.

Our current leaders would do well to heed the words of another President, John F. Kennedy, who said that “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” Our leadership recession could be turned around by learning that as long as you assault the private sector it will continue to be stunted. Here’s hoping (and praying) for a leadership turnaround—for we only have until 2012 to avoid a “double dip” leadership recession.

Click here to read the entire article, which looks at the words of Harry Truman, and be sure to “like” it and share it to spread the word!

Photo courtesy of flickr, Bob Gorrell from Creators Syndicate www.creators.com/editorialcartoons/bob-gorrell/15857.html

President Obama yesterday sent three free trade agreements to Congress after years of stalling. A new report shows how the delay was a direct result of the administration’s efforts to appease labor union demands, at the expense of actual job creation in the U.S. It’s estimated that the three free trade agreements (FTAs) would lead to 250,000 new U.S. jobs.

Here’s the video recap — warning, not necessarily for all audiences:

So it caught our attention when the tagline of a video from Oregon is to the effect of “and you thought David Wu was nuts …” Here’s the video, which shows those seeking to replace Wu are kowtowking to union bosses and supporting the ill-conceived, unfair, job-killing Employee Free Choice Act, promising to do away with protections that allow workers to keep their jobs without paying for union representation, and generally bashing employers (which, sadly, will actually play well with a large section of the Oregon electorate).

Citing as an example a new, mean, anti-employer attitude from OSHA, HTA spokesman Brett McMahon writes:

Think of the impact as the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor. Every government inspector approaches their work now as if businesses are not just guilty, but that we are deliberately trying to break their increasingly onerous and bewildering regulations and probably are covering up other actions as well. It is as if we are merely organized conspirators, rather than honest Americans trying to run a business to feed our families and contribute to the community.

Ironically, this will lead to less-safe workplaces, as employers will be unlikely to want to seek out connections with OSHA and may accidentally run afoul of more important measures to protect employees. And it will, at a minimum, force employers into more costly litigation against the government—money that could be going to hiring, training, and ensuring the safety of employees.

Many thanks indeed to the fine folks at A Line of Sight, where you can read the entire article.

(UPDATE: Solyndra offices have been raided by FBI agents)

Solyndra is the California solar-cell company that received the president at their facilities and was more than happy to take in more than $525 million in federal loans to build a costly new plant. Now, they have declared bankruptcy and, as the Washington Examiner has reported, “not only has Solyndra failed to create the 4,000 jobs that Energy Secretary Steven Chu promised when he gave the company the very first Energy Department stimulus award of its kind, but the 1,100 employees that Solyndra had employed are now jobless as well.”

So before the president goes spending another $300 billion, it’s worth examining whether his (reported) plan will do much good.

1) Continuation of an employee payroll-tax reduction: It’s certainly good to allow people to keep more of their money, and raising the tax back to its previous levels will not be helpful, but it’s hard to argue that a simple extension of the current payroll-tax level for employees will boost jobs.

2) A reduction in employer-paid payroll tax: This is actually the only idea in the president’s plan as currently reported that has the potential for spurring private-sector job growth. The job-creating benefit comes from the simple truth that “if you want less of something, tax it.” That’s true for people and their jobs, which are made more expensive through the payroll tax. Lowering that burden makes hiring a new employee more attractive.

3) Throwing money at the states: Here’s the political payoff for the president, and it’s a big one. While some money would go to capital improvements such as bridges, roads, and school construction, expect a steady flow of cash to head to stopping layoffs of public employees at the city, county, and state levels—heavily unionized public employees that are a key financier of the president’s re-election.

All told, the president’s “jobs” plan is really just a recipe for more spending and more debt. And, as you might expect, “Obama will call on Congress to offset the cost of the short-term jobs measures by raising tax revenue in later years.” We will end up paying for unsustainable, Solyndra-like jobs that disappear as the private-sector shifts needs and spending and the public coffers are finally too bare to borrow against.

Throw in the administration’s war on domestic manufacturing jobs (see: Boeing and Gibson Guitars), and the looming threat of a strike against Ford, the one major U.S. automaker that wasn’t taken over by Big Government and Big Labor, and it’s unlikely employers will be bailing out the government by creating new jobs in a world of punitive regulation and uncertainty.

So as the president says “jobs” think “Solyndra.” And let’s ask Washington to think of better—real—ways to create jobs and get our economy moving.

Over at the Washington Times, Mike Whalen explains:

… as a business owner, I can tell you an additional stimulus would create more fear and further dampen demand in the private sector. Keynes was correct in focusing on aggregate demand as critical, but the confidence context and potential behavior responses have to be considered, and that requires real-world, Main Street knowledge – not just textbook theory. In this environment, if the federal government announced a real road map to fiscal soundness, the impact would be truly stimulating. If American businesses and consumers saw that Washington was really cutting, not just reducing future increases, there would be tremendous relief and an increase in confidence across the country. Job creators would sing “hallelujah”; they would get off their wallets, start hiring, and then you’d see that Keynesian multiplier kick in.

But that’s not the case, yet, as Washington has yet to get serious about getting its financial house in order.

Now, with the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen, that understanding has been upset. A Labor Department regulator has ruled that Davis-Bacon covers the CityCenter DC project, a $700 million private-sector complex under construction downtown at the site of the former convention center. The decision is astonishing, both because it is such a stretch legally and because of its implications — which range from a financial hit for the District to higher costs for development across the country.

CityCenter’s developers, not the District or the federal government, are paying to build the 2.5 million square feet of office, residential and retail space — none of which will be occupied by government. Such considerations led lawyers for both the city and the developers to conclude during their negotiations that Davis-Bacon would not apply. Investors were assured of the same thing. And that common-sense understanding was confirmed a year ago, when a career Labor Department official denied the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters’ 2009 petition to apply the Davis-Bacon Act.

The paper takes the Department of Labor to task in no uncertain ways. While we will not reproduce the article in its entirety, we HIGHLY recommend you take a moment to digest the whole piece.

That’s the story for Dale Kaplan, who owns Kaplan’s Careful Cleaners, a dry cleaning company in Pennsylvania. Government regulators are looking to push new rules — unsubstantiated by science — that will cost Kaplan dearly, according to a report by the Washington Examiner’s Conn Carroll. Kaplan told the paper, “I would have a real tough time operating because I’d have to put up $50,000 for a new machine.”

But Kaplan’s not alone. The rest of us are in for a doozy of a bill from EPA regulations, with the paper reporting: “Seven proposed rules pending before the agency are poised to inflict more than $125 billion in costs on the U.S. economy annually, according to EPA’s own estimates.” That’s ANNUALLY. Not total. ANNUALLY.

He got picketed. And he got threatened. The response from a union official:

“We just wanted Mr. Kfoury to know if he’s going to be out there saying things that aren’t true about right–to-work, that unions are bad for business in New Hampshire, there’s going to be a price to pay for that,” said Kurt Ehrenberg, spokesman for the New Hampshire AFL-CIO, which organized the protest in response to the video.

But hey, these are just words right? It’s not like they shot the guy or anything.

Today, Warren Stephens takes to the pages of the Wall Street Journal with a specific example of how one major piece of regulation-by-legislation is affecting business: in fact, the Sarbanes-Oxley rule is preventing companies from going public. These are not the major goliaths that most of us have heard of, and Stephens argues: “If we ever expect to restart the American economy, we need to focus our attention on the forgotten middle—that is, “middle market” private and public companies, which are the true growth engines of our economy.” Be sure to check it out.

Over at the Washington Post, George Will declares it “Liberals Wisconsin Waterloo” and looks at the failed attempts to recall the state’s governor, Scott Walker. The union drive failed and Will notes:

Democrats furiously oppose Walker because public employees unions are transmission belts, conveying money to the Democratic Party. Last year, $11.2 million in union dues was withheld from paychecks of Wisconsin’s executive branch employees and $2.6 million from paychecks at the university across the lake. Having spent improvidently on the recall elections, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the teachers union, is firing 40 percent of its staff.

The threat email occurred last week and got a significant amount of publicity. During the same news cycle, the King shooting occurs. We can therefore presume that the IBEW international condones the actions by both of their members in both incidents. If they did not condone the threatening email, they would have made it known directly to all of their Ohio affiliates. Presumably, their Ohio affiliates would take their scolding seriously and would not engage in other attention getting thuggery in the same geographical area. Therefore, the IBEW condones and in fact endorses these criminal acts. Their silence seems to be an approval of maintaining the status quo.

For the entire article, click here.

Until Wednesday, the worst of the union attacks on King and his business came in the mid-eighties during the UAW strike at AP Parts. During a lull during the lengthy strike, King’s business was picketed by more than 50 IBEW picketers. This was at a time when he only had eight or nine employees. One of his employees, whose car was trashed by the union picketers, was also beaten up by IBEW thugs.

Unfortunately, the vandalism has never stopped. This year alone, he’s had to report three incidents of damage to police. This doesn’t include the incidents of stalking he and his men have to go through while they’re working.
In one incident earlier this year, rocks were thrown through the front windows of his shop, one of which had the word “kill” written on it.

Last Wednesday, however, the attacks on Mr. King became much more serious when he was awakened late in the evening at his home in Monroe County, Michigan and saw that the motion lights in his driveway had come on. When he looked out his front window, he saw a figure near his SUV and went outside.

As soon as he got outside his front door, King yelled at the individual who was crouched down by King’s vehicle. As soon as King yelled, the suspect stood and, without hesitation, fired a shot at Mr. King.

Luckily for King, as he yelled, he also stumbled. If it weren’t for that, however, John King’s injuries might have been much, much worse. In fact, he might have been killed.

From the Journal (subscription required):

The National Association of Manufacturers asked its members last month how the National Labor Relations Board’s decision against Boeing’s Sourth Carolina plant case is affecting their decision-making. Some 60% said the government’s case already has—or could—hurt hiring. Sixty-nine percent said the case would damage job growth. And 49% said capital expenditure plans “have been or may be impacted by the NLRB’s complaint.”

That won’t be news to employers, but it still seems to be hard for Beltway bureaucrats to grasp.

UPDATE (8/13/2011 — 5:29 EST): More details on the NAM poll

Case in point, the major setback for organized labor strategists who spent $30 million trying to unseat several Republican state legislators in Wisconsin whose only sin was voting for Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to rein in spending and the ridiculous power of public-sector union bosses. And a funny thing happened: voters weren’t buying what the union bosses spent tens of millions of their members’ money to sell. The lesson was clear to one insider:

“The unmistakable lesson is that every time labor makes it about labor, they lose,” said one senior Democratic strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It’s a messenger problem.”

By “messenger problem” we assume he or she meant that fewer people trust paid power-mongers who tax their own small group of members to fund lavish lifestyles and massive political machines and then ask their political friends to pass opprobrium-worthy efforts such as “card check,” special exemptions for unions, socialized healthcare, and a rash of job-killing regulations … but we’re just guessing here. Certainly, polls show voters haven’t been pleased with organized labor in recent years.

And, just perhaps, it’s because Americans know that Big Labor really hasn’t outgrown its menacing habits. As a Halt The Assault spokesman wrote in The Daily Caller yesterday, “Big Labor is literally threatening businesses.” Building on other recent examples, we highlighted a threat from a union boss to a construction company whose employees remained union-free:

“We are aware that you chose a different path in the Toledo area,” read the message, which expresses displeasure at the business’s unwillingness to acquiesce to union demands, “and this has possibly led to some problems for your company.”

The email continues: “To be 100% clear, should you opt for the same business practices in the greater Cleveland area as you chose to use in the Toledo area, your problems will multiply exponentially.”

You can read the rest, including the other examples, over at The Daily Caller. With Big Labor bosses still acting like big … er, special interests, we imagine their approval numbers won’t jump up too much this year.

“These acts of sabotage are reprehensible,” said Verizon Chief Security Officer Mike Mason. “In addition to inconveniencing our customers, these deliberate disruptions of our network have affected hospitals, paramedics, fire fighters, law enforcement and other first responders. Verizon is working closely with local authorities to investigate these sabotage incidents, and identify and prosecute those responsible to the fullest extent of the law. And we will not hesitate to terminate any employee who may be involved in these acts.

1) Obama adds $9.5 billion in red tape in July: At Tuesday’s GOP Senate caucus lunch, the lawmakers said that they will renew their efforts, supported by business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In a memo Barasso handed out to the lawmakers, he claimed that the administration in July only has put in $9.5 billion in new regulatory costs by proposing 229 new rules and finalizing 379 rules. Among those he cited were EPA, healthcare reform, and financial regulatory reform rules.

2) Debt now equals GDP: US debt shot up $238 billion to reach 100 percent of gross domestic project after the government’s debt ceiling was lifted, Treasury figures showed Wednesday.

***Editor’s note: paying for the president’s campaign tour doesn’t seem to be helping

3) And the spending—we’ve told you it’s nuts!—is only encouraging the honey badgers:

This legislation had its origins in Jim Crow America, a time when the Democrat controlled Federal government openly discriminated against blacks by enacting laws that restricted opportunities available to them. An Alabama contractor used black workers to build a Veteran’s Bureau hospital in Representative Robert Bacon’s district on Long Island in the mid 1920’s. Starting in 1927, Representative Bacon introduced 13 separate bills to prevent black workers from working on Federal construction projects. Finally in 1931, he and Senator James Davis from Pennsylvania were able to pass a bill that required the payment of “prevailing” wages on Federal construction projects. Since the American Federation of Labor was instrumental in the passage of this bill, the term “prevailing” wages really meant union wages. The initial threshold for paying “prevailing” wages was $5000, but that was lowered to $2000 in 1935.

The Department of Labor was given the task of determining what the prevailing wages were in each county in America. In areas where over 30% of the construction workforce was union, the law mandated that “prevailing” wages were automatically union wages. Even in other areas of the country, this became the Department of Labor standard.

Representative Bacon achieved his goal of preventing black workers from working on government projects. Before the passage of the Davis-Bacon Act, black unemployment was at the same level as white unemployment. After the passage of this Act, as well as other New Deal legislation, black unemployment rose to double the rate of white unemployment. After being shut out of construction employment, many blacks were forced to rely on government assistance programs for their survival.

Even today, the close association between “prevailing” wages and unions, to ensure that construction jobs go to union workers, excludes minority workers from opportunities on government construction projects. The Federal government has created special contracting programs for minority contractors at the taxpayer’s expense rather than allowing minority contractors and minority workers to compete for work through the Free Enterprise System unencumbered by prevailing wages.

In addition to discriminating against minority workers, Davis-Bacon has cost the taxpayers billions of dollars every year. The estimated annual cost of Davis-Bacon legislation was 11 billion dollars for the year 2010 alone. This 80 year program has blatantly discriminated against not only minorities, as it was originally intended, but also against the taxpayers by forcing them to subsidize a 20-25% cost premium on every government construction project.

This abuse of the taxpayer is made even worse because of the enactment of similar legislation by 32 states that require the payment of “prevailing” or union wages on state and local funded projects. The net effect is that the taxpayers are paying 20-25% too much for every school, bridge, road, sewer line or water line constructed in those states.

After 80 years, isn’t it time to end government sponsored discrimination against minorities and taxpayers?

Good afternoon. My name is Brett McMahon. I am Vice President of Business Development for Miller & Long Company, Inc. I have been employed in the construction industry for 19 years.

Were it to adopt this rule, the NLRB will have firmly planted itself on the side of unions and in opposition to employers and workers and reason. Unions have been winning over 60% of the elections that are held, so what is the need for this change? What would a satisfactory percentage be? 70%, 90% or is it 100%? It is foolish to think that this body can force lasting change on the marketplace. It has never worked. All the Board is doing is increasing the risk of success of America’s employers. The NLRB is making itself a hazard to the economic well being of working people by chilling the entrepreneurial spirit of free enterprise that has brought more prosperity to more people than any other system in human history. It is not now, nor will it ever be, the single catalyst that causes large lay offs or stifles job creation. Rather it is the series of actions that this Board takes that add to the weight that hurts businesses today. Don’t adopt this rule. It is unwise in this economic climate and it is unfair to workers and employers.

We will add video when the NLRB makes it available.

Today’s article by ABC’s Geoffrey Burr, who serves as the chairman of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, coincides with today’s hearing at the NLRB for its rule that would dramatically reduce the amount of time that employers have to discuss key union issues with their employees when presented with a union organizing campaign. It will mean employers have a more difficult time talking to employees and employees won’t have the opportunity to hear both sides of the story before making a decision that will affect their pay, hours, work rules, opportunity for advancement, and the health of their company.

The story:

Before joining NLRB, Becker infamously wrote that it should be possible to “eliminate the formal role of employers in union elections,” and argued that “employers should have no right to be heard in either a representation case or an unfair labor practice case, even though Board rulings might indirectly affect their duty to bargain.”

Becker’s plan is clear: Remove, as much as possible, the ability of employers to talk to employees and operate their business.

It appears Becker is making manifest his radical vision in which employers have little ability to discuss core workplace issues, such as unionization and its attendant costs, with employees.

Thus the NLRB’s already-rushed hearing Monday on its recently announced effort to speed up the current workplace representation election process so much that it will leave employers as few as 10 days to respond to and discuss the issue with employees.

Click through for the entire article.

UPDATE: Be sure to not miss Bloomberg’s coverage of today’s hearing — Speeding Labor Elections Unfair to Companies, U.S. Employers Say — which includes this nice inclusion of HTA spokesman Brett McMahon:

The proposed rule will force elections “in 10 to 21 days after the filing” of a petition to unionize, according to a dissent written by Brian Hayes, the NLRB’s only Republican member. The board voted 3-1 to issue the proposal.

Deadlines that tight would be “patently unfair” because workers may be told falsehoods in an organizing drive, Brett McMahon, vice president for business development at Bethesda, Maryland-based Miller & Long Co., said in prepared testimony. Employers should have adequate time to provide a full picture, he said.

Union contractors, who are increasingly losing projects to non-union contractors, are intent on getting contracts that will enforce a fully productive eight-hour workday earning an eight-hour paycheck. This means abolishing the contractual overstaffing mandating that two or more workers do the work of one. Union workers are voting this week on recently negotiated contracts proposing work rule reforms.

Click through for the gory figures.

The truth is that the “independent agency” argument is a canard. The Board Members who have cried havoc and let slip the dogs of war against employers and employees (and, heck, common sense) were appointed by the President and would potentially be re-appointed by him at some point. This is *his* NLRB and he ought to halt its assault right now.

H/t: Business Roundtable

Author Iain Murray

Dear HTA readers,

We strive to bring you the best in intellectual and advocacy materials as you fight to halt the assault on free enterprise. Today, we publish an email interview exchange with Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Iaim Murray regarding his fantastic new book. We hop you enjoy! — Free Enterprise Alliance team

Halt The Assault: Hi Iain, tell our readers briefly about yourself and what you do at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Iain Murray: I’m originally from the UK, where I worked for the British government during a period when we were trying to slim down bureaucracy and make government good value for money for the taxpayer. That ended when I privatized myself out of a job and was able to come over here to get married to my long-distance girlfriend (we’d met at college). After specializing in energy and environment issues for a while, these days I head the Center for Economic Freedom at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. We look at how the government burdens the economy with regulations in areas like labor, finance, trade, transportation and the “nanny state.” We’re a little different from your average think tank – we like to have fun while we argue for limited government.

HTA: Tell us about your new book, “Stealing You Blind” (available at Amazon, or get a free chapter by visiting StealingYouBlindBook.com).

IM: The book is about the system that diverts over a third of our economy – close to half if you include the costs of regulation – away from private enterprise and into public administration. American government is out of control. It ignores the constitution and imposes massive burdens on the productive sector of the economy. If we don’t do something about it, it will consume more and more of our national wealth until it literally breaks the bank. Something like 1 in 4 Americans now works directly or indirectly for national, state or local government, and all the evidence suggests they make a better average living than their counterparts in the private sector – better wages, better benefits, better hours. But the private sector is the wealth creating part of the economy. The public sector has to reform – at the moment it’s just Stealing Us Blind.

HTA: What motivated you to write the book now? You touch on “evergreen” problems with Big Government types abusing taxpayers, but do you see things as better or worse now than in the distant or recent past?

IM: Things are much worse now, so much so that we’re approaching crisis point. For generations America has been able to cope with government taking around 18 percent of our economy, but we’re now reaching a stage where that isn’t going to be enough to cover the federal entitlement programs. To maintain anything discretionary, like the Navy for instance, we’ll have to raise taxes significantly. And there’s a similar problem in the states, where over-generous public employee pensions have left a $4 trillion unfunded liability. I don’t want my children paying half their wages so their teachers can retire at 50 on 90 percent salary.

HTA: How has the book been received so far? Any surprises?

IM: It’s interested me how many people have said that they don’t need a book to tell us that Government is stealing us blind! Yet the fact is that most people who know that don’t know quite the scale of the problem. I have an illustration in the book that shows that when we talk about a trillion dollar problem, it’s really something quite different from a billion dollar problem: “One million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years.” That’s concentrated a lot of people’s minds and I hope that people will realize that although they know government is a problem, many won’t know quite how much of a problem it is until they read the book.

HTA: What’s your level of confidence that Americans (and Britons) are knowledgeable and will take action to fight back against those stealing them blind?

IM: I think Americans have woken up from a national coma that afflicted them from around 2004 to 2010, which was the period when the problem went into overdrive. They want to see firm action and are prepared to punish those who promise action and don’t deliver. As for Britain, at least the government there is trying to reduce spending, but the Europeanization of the country may be too far advanced to let them do it. I have my fingers crossed for the old country, but unless America can solve its government issues, the world as a whole is in trouble.

Weep, weep for her! Of course, this is silly. Ms. Jackson is a professional political and bureaucratic fighter and while she may have a loyal band of lieutenants who support her, she lacks support from the basic tenets of economics — in other words, she is pushing a campaign that will have more negative tradeoffs than positive for taxpayers and workers in America.

When it comes to halting the assault on free enterprise, this is a good example of propaganda supporting a a regulatory colonel on the march for general pain.

The shift toward a more competitive economy has not hurt workers in general: Total employee compensation as a share of the economy held fairly steady during the second half of the last century even as unions were shrinking. (It’s true that wages as a share of the economy fell, but that was a result of the increased cost of benefits.) The shift has, however, increased inequality among workers, with more rewards going to those with higher skills.

If we want to reverse the unions’ decline, the kind of labor-law changes that the Obama administration’s appointees to the NLRB have in mind — such as speeding up elections — are unlikely to do the trick. We would have to reduce competition among companies, too, domestically and internationally. The economy would have to be far more regulated than anyone in the mainstream of American politics has advocated. And we would almost certainly have to be willing to be a poorer country. We shouldn’t want any of that.

Our country has plenty of economic problems. But we also have blessings, and the continued decline of labor unions is one of them.

Ronald Reagan: A Time for Choosing Speech and Election Clock

I’ve been warning anyone who would listen that the NLRB was out to do what the Employee Free Choice Act could not: force more employees into unions. The board’s proposed rule changes would speed up union votes so that voters have less time to learn about the consequence of unionization, hand out personal information so that union activists can find workers at their homes, and institute electronic voting so that labor bosses don’t have to worry about those pesky “private ballot” protections anymore.

And over at the New York Post, there’s a recap of some of the worst ideas the NLRB is pursuing:

* The board is pushing to give unions the right to enter a workplace even if their intent is to harass customers and employees. The NLRB says companies shouldn’t be allowed to treat union officials any differently than they do charitable organizations they let on their premises, such as the Girl Scouts or the Red Cross.

* It wants to force employers to post pro-organizing notices in about 6 million workplaces, most of which aren’t unionized, under the guise of informing workers about the National Labor Relations Act. But the posters wouldn’t inform these workers about aspects of the law the unions don’t like — such as the right to vote out a union or withhold union dues spent on politics.

* The board is moving ahead with lawsuits against Arizona and South Dakota over provisions in their state constitutions — enacted through ballot initiatives last fall — that require secret ballots for union-organizing votes. Labor unions, in an effort to expand their ranks, have been pushing hard for the opposite — a “card check” system that would let them know who has and hasn’t voted to organize. The NLRB’s lawsuit conveniently fits into this effort.

* The NLRB is also pushing to let unions cherry-pick groups of workers within a company to organize, without giving those who oppose the union the opportunity to vote, changing an established definition of a “bargaining unit” that has been in place for more than 50 years. The result would be a costly, chaotic mess for businesses trying to juggle multiple unions and different sets of work rules, benefits and wage rates.

Check out the video! (starts at 9:42)

RightOnline Job Creation from AFPhq on Vimeo.

Remember when “science-based policy” talk was all the rage? Heck, we’re all for making the best decisions available based on sound science, basic economic principles, and sticking to free enterprise.

And then there’s the EPA’s latest effort to push through costly new regulations based on interviews. Unfortunately, the interviews basically go like this: “Hello, I’m calling from the EPA … I’m fine, thank you. I just have a question for you. Don’t you wish everyone had access to ponies and rainbows? Don’t you think money should grow on trees and we shouldn’t have to worry about costs related to our regulations for clean air?”

Unfortunately, that little joke isn’t too far off. According to an article in Investors Business Daily, the EPA did a telephone survey and found out that people claim they’d pay $16,000 for cleaner air (whether they know how clean America’s air already is begs another question). But the main problem is that the EPA didn’t call and say “would you be willing to send us a check for $16,000 to carry out this regulation?” That would have been the question everyone in the marketplace must ask their clients: is the cost worth the benefit?

When government tries to push through costly regulation based on pseudo-economics, it should be a troubling sign for us all. Sadly, that seems to be happening on virtually every regulatory front right now, putting small business and job creators squarely in the crosshairs.

It’s another reminder that it’s time to halt the assault on free enterprise.

The man in the aisle seat is trying to tell me why he refuses to hire anybody. His business is successful, he says, as the 737 cruises smoothly eastward. Demand for his product is up. But he still won’t hire.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know how much it will cost,” he explains. “How can I hire new workers today, when I don’t know how much they will cost me tomorrow?”

He’s referring not to wages, but to regulation: He has no way of telling what new rules will go into effect when. His business, although it covers several states, operates on low margins. He can’t afford to take the chance of losing what little profit there is to the next round of regulatory changes. And so he’s hiring nobody until he has some certainty about cost.

Frankly, we’d love to rip the whole article but we’re believers in property rights so if you want to read the whole article — and we highly recommend you do — check it out here.

Unfortunately, it’s not just pro-union policies putting us at risk. This administration and Congress have helped make the long-term prospects for jobs and growth worse by vastly expanding the deficit, raising payroll taxes, fostering protectionism and creating massive new bureaucracies for health care. New ideas will bring America back to its rightful position as a global leader in economic strength and reliability. But in order for new ideas to flourish, we need to strip away the old, failing union policies that are holding us back.

We get so much innovation out of consumer electronics that Shapiro should know of which he speaks. Therefore his words, which should intuitively ring true, should carry all the more weight.

It’s another sign that it’s time to Halt The Assault on free enterprise.

You need to call Speaker Boehner’s office right now at 202-225-0600 and thank him for the extraordinary step he took this week to slow down President Obama’s radical agenda.

With the Obama legislative agenda stalled, the left has turned its attention toward using the Executive power to accomplish their socialist goals. The key to this strategy is to the pack agencies, boards, and commissions such as the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with leftists like Craig Becker and Elizabeth Warren who will advance the collectivist agenda, regardless of whether there is any legal authority to do so.

The Senate has blocked several of the more radical nominees, but under the Constitution, President Obama has the power to appoint them during a Congressional recess.

Republican Senators warned Obama not to use his recess powers to appoint Becker to the NLRB. He did it anyhow. Becker didn’t disappoint, leading the NLRB to accuse Boeing of violating workers rights by opening a plant in South Carlolina.

Observers expect him to appoint leftists to the Obamacare Independent Payment Advisory Board, they expect him to appoint liberal Peter Diamond to the Federal Reserve Board, along with Warren, Becker, and a host of other leftwing radicals. He can even recess appoint Federal judges to rubber stamp his agenda until the end of the Congress.

Obama needs two things in order to do this – (1) a pen (or, I suppose, an autopen), and a (2) a Senate recess. The Constitution is unclear how long a recess is required. Most constitutional scholars say ten days is the minimum. However, there is almost universal agreement among scholars that a recess of less than three days does not trigger the recess appointment power. In 2007, Reid held “pro-forma” Senate sessions every three days, which successfully prevented Bush from making recess appointments.

Which brings us to another provision in the Constitution. Article 1, Section 5 says “Neither House, during the session of Congress, shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days[.]”. This means that without the consent of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, the Senate cannot adjourn for more than three days, and thus President Obama cannot make any recess appointments.

On Wednesday, 20 Senators led by David Vitter and Jim DeMint wrote a letter to Speaker Boehner asking him to use his authority under Article 1, Section 5 to block the recess appointments.

On Friday, the Examiner reported that Speaker Boehner did not pass a resolution giving the Senate permission to adjourn. Therefore, as he did in 2007, Harry Reid will convene pro-forma sessions today, on Tuesday May 31, and on Friday June 3rd, in order to block his own President from doing recess appointments.

Reid was forced to do this because of the leadership of Speaker Boehner. We must thank our Speaker.

Call Speaker Boehner at 202-225-0600 and thank him for his leadership.

Tell him to continue to refuse to allow the Senate to adjourn for the remainder of the Obama Presidency.

We concur.

Aside from creating full employment for all CPAs, the Internal Revenue Service’s latest initiative of applying “gift” tax regulations to donors of 501(c)(4) organizations is another example of an out-of-control government on so many levels (“The IRS Gets Political,” Review & Outlook, May 18). This policy suffocates free speech while adding significant administrative tax compliance burdens on all taxpayers. I am sure New York State as well as other states that have an estate tax will soon follow the IRS’s lead on this, too.

I am curious why the IRS hasn’t applied the same logic to union dues, which individuals are allowed to take as an itemized deduction notwithstanding the fact that a significant portion of those union dues end up as political contributions.

Personally, I would much prefer to forgo the extra work and the additional fees related thereto.

Lawrence E. Beck, CPA

Good point, Mr. Beck (who shares the same name, incidentally, with a key court case that ostensibly protects unionized employees from having their dues used for political purposes).

Could it be that the Administration is playing favorites by targeting its political adversaries and allowing its friends in organized labor to continue unfettered? Well, that’s the takeaway from this article, “Obama skirts rule of law to reward pals, punish foes,” by esteemed columnist Michael Barone, who notes that Big Labor is getting special breaks from the White House in the case of investigating its political adversaries, using the National Labor Relations Board to harm employers (as we thoroughly document at Halt The Assault), and more:

Punishing enemies and rewarding friends — politics Chicago style — seems to be the unifying principle that helps explain the Obamacare waivers, the NLRB action against Boeing and the IRS’ gift-tax assault on 501(c)(4) donors.

They look like examples of crony capitalism, bailout favoritism and gangster government.

Visit the Office of the Speaker’s website for more info.

“If we can get to universal school vouchers … that would do more for this country than any other public policy issue”

“I am a crazy cooky tea party freshman”

“we came here to stop what this president is doing”

“I believe our country is going through a revolution”

We are having a “seismic argument” about the nature of government and Obama’s presidency “woke up the American people”

The House is “just trying to stop what he’s done”

“I think my Republican Party has got to be bold”

“If you believe in freedom, you better believe we’re at war”

“unless we turn this thing around quickly … our kids and our grandkids may never speak to us again because the debt we’re leaving them with will be unforgivable”

Click through to watch Rep. Walsh’s thoughts on video.

Since the failing of that legislation, many have warned that the next fight would be in the National Labor Relations Board, a small Depression-era agency designed in large part to balance the interests of unions and employers (and, when they have time, look out for workers). Union bosses, you see, have placed their friends high atop this small mountain and are working their anti-employee, job-killing agenda through the NLRB.

But now President Obama’s Labor Board has gone so far that it’s being noted in campaigns for the presidency, with top GOP candidate Tim Pawlenty saying in his announcement:

The truth is, people getting paid by the taxpayers shouldn’t get a better deal than the taxpayers themselves. That means freezing federal salaries, transitioning federal employee benefits, and downsizing the federal workforce as it retires. It means paying public employees for results, not just seniority – from the Capitol to the classroom, and everywhere in between. And in the private sector, it means no card check – not now, not ever. It means no more taxpayer bailouts just because you gave lots of money to a campaign. And it especially means the National Labor Relations Board will never again tell an American company where it can and can’t do business

Look out: this is just the beginning for halting the assault by Big Labor’s Board!

Earlier this month, with much self-congratulatory fanfare, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor recently rolled out what it probably thought was an awesome idea: an iPhone app that “allows employees to independently track the hours they work and determine the wages they believe they are owed.”

It’s always good to ensure people get what they deserve, as the vast majority of employers do (though it can be maddening and near impossible for small businesses to keep up with the thousands of regulations that govern every dotted “i” and crossed “t”). But inherent in the DOL’s release of their iOS app was the accusation that employers treat employees badly and attempt to deprive employees of wages which are due.

EXCEPT, in some cases…

worked are not accounted for because the app improperly excludes certain breaks from the total — ironically, breaks that employers are not allowed to deduct under the same federal laws that the Wage and Hour Division enforces. In these instances, employees who use this app could be losing out on pay to which they are entitled.

Who knew the DOL was was the wage thief in chief?

Read our retort to the president over at The Washington Examiner.