Revoking his union card?                                                                                        subscribe via RSS

Not famous for paying dues, left-wingers continue to harp on their socialistic anti-meritocracy argument that so-called corporatists (apparently that's anyone who works for a for-profit private sector company, especially an executive or CEO) have no right to be paid differently than rank and file workers whose brow sweat lubricates the private-sector's revenue machine for stockholders and profit sharers.

Those same anti-corporatists never criticize the overpayment, over-endowment and system-milking of civil servants and their bureaucrats; the worst offenders being federal and state administration appointees, public sector union officials and so-called "green company" executives and CEO's.  Of course, the words "greedy" and "selfish" are always part of liberals' anti-business diatribes but they are never attributed to anyone whose primary benefactor is the taxpayers.

Since unions ostensibly represent public sector employees — including all of those ungrateful civil servants who have recently been asked to make reasonable concessions in their wage/benefits packages to enable cash-strapped states to continue employing them — general anti-union sentiment has resulted.

Private sector unions have irked many of us for years by contributing to the uncompetitive-ness of such US-based entities as the domestic auto manufacturing industry as compared to its thriving non-union import brand counterparts.  Likewise, union corruption and the organized crime connections of many labor unions have turned people sour on those organizations.

In any case, the spectacle of union-led public service employees demanding continuation of cushy contracts while state governments (like their citizens) struggle to make ends meet was the straw that broke the camel's back for many formerly union-tolerant Americans.

The unions' unswerving financial support of this totally failed administration and the free-spending Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda are certainly factors that have contributed to union backlash.  Furthermore, it has amounted to funding the continued loss of jobs — including union jobs.

Fox News reports:

Federal records show labor unions spent close to $100 million in the 2010 midterm cycle — over $20 million more than what they spent in 2008 — but nonetheless saw their share of the electorate drop from one cycle to the next, from 21 percent to 17 percent.

That the unions may be spending more money to achieve diminished results would reflect their shrinking percentage of the population as a whole. In 1950, an estimated 38 percent of the American labor force belonged to a union; today, that figure stands at around 12 percent, and even lower — 7%— for the private sector. This diminution in labor’s ranks is all the more significant when juxtaposed with the tripling of the American labor force over the same time period.

Putting distance between themselves and Obama while threatening to de-fund his re-election campaign may be the only way for unions to regain credibility and membership.  It would also be wise for unions to begin cultivating better relations with the House majority, Republican senators and the next president.

Raven Clabough of NewAmerican writes about one major union leader who is flipping the script:

On May 20, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka told the National Press Club, “You can be a friend and make a mistake once in awhile. And we forgive you for that mistake. The different is this: that we’re not going to spend precious resources helping candidates that don’t stand up and help us.”

Last month, Trumka made similar assertions while addressing a Beltway audience.

“I have a message for some of our ‘friends.’ For too long, we have been left after Election Day holding a canceled check, waving it about [and saying] ‘Remember us? Remember us? -- Asking someone to pay a little attention to us. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a snootful of that BLEEP.”

My last rant mentioned Joe Biden's "official" acknowledgment (at the annual Brotherhood of Teamsters convention in Las Vegas last week) that non-support of Obama's re-election would mean the end of favored-nation status for the Teamsters. Biden admonished them: "And don't any of you, by the way -- any of you guys -- vote Republican.  I'm not supposed to say this [but] don't come to me if you do! You're on your own, Jack!"

Was Biden issuing an ordered preemptive threat in case James Hoffa was prepared to make similar comments to those of Richard Trumka's or was the loose-lipped #2 merely gaffing it up, as usual?

It's bad enough that Obama has lied to and ignored people he considers "the enemy".  But by biting the hand that feeds him, your Dear Leader shouldn't be surprised if his union card is revoked for non-payment of dues.

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