A few weeks ago we reported on how the Services Employees International Union was attempting to fix the vote in Sonoma County, California so that Sonoma’s in-home healthcare workers would end up with SEIU representation instead of NUHW representation.

Well, Sonoma wasn’t an isolated case. The SEIU used the same vote fixing tactics in Fresno County.

Andy Stern’s SEIU is playing hardball, using techniques that harken back to the mob-infested old days in order to win the game of representation. And THIS is the guy that President Obama is taking close counsel from? A goon. A thug. A mob-like hitman.

It’s the Chicago Way, alright. From Chicago to Fresno and Sonoma Counties all the way to the White House. This president and his cronies are instituting mob action everywhere they go.

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Obama’s purple shirted SEIU cronies are his favorite people. They’re his most frequent visitors, after all, and they stand ready and willing to do whatever Comrade Obama asks of them. If you want to know what direction this country is headed in, just look at the shenanigans the Service Employees International Union thugs are pulling.

For example, Obama is supposedly all about volunteering. He wants young people to be willing to devote their lives to service. He likes that idea so much, that he even floated the idea of instituting a Hitler youth brigade, and for all I know, is still keen on the idea. But Obama and his SEIU pals are only fans of volunteer service performed by young people if they toe the Obama line. Boy Scouts, for example, are far too traditional and they cling to such old, antiquated, conservative values — and therefore, they must be destroyed.

Starting with a seventeen-year-old boy who was doing volunteer work to try to earn his Eagle Scout badge.

In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.

Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city’s largest municipal union.

Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

“We’ll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails,” Balzano told the council.

Balzano said Saturday he isn’t targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city’s decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said “there’s to be no volunteers.” No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.

“We would hope that the well-intentioned efforts of an Eagle Scout candidate would not be challenged by the union,” said Mayor Ed Pawlowski in an e-mail Friday. “This young man is performing a great service to the community. His efforts should be recognized as such.”

Balzano said Saturday the union is still looking into the matter and might cut the city a break.

“We are probably going to let this one go,” Balzano said .

The possible entanglement of a local Boy Scout in a union dispute underscores the frustration and anger SEIU members feel after being the lone city union to suffer layoffs in the ongoing financial crisis. It may also serve as a preview of future labor battles as the city tries to outsource some necessary jobs as a result of the layoffs.

Anderson, a junior and varsity soccer player at Southern Lehigh High School, is a member of Boy Scout Troop 301 of Center Valley.

He got the idea for the trail while taking hikes along the partially complete, 165-mile Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor. He noticed there were a few missing connections to the trail in Kimmets Lock Park, which is on the Lehigh River near Dauphin Street. He already has logged 250 hours trying to carve out a walking and biking trail along the river.

“I decided to do my part in completing this part of the trail. In that way, others could enjoy walking along the river, without having to walk on the busy road,” Anderson said in an e-mail Friday.

Selfless service? Apparently, this poses some kind of imaginary threat to SEIU workers. And if Balzano isn’t targeting the Boy Scouts, then what is he targeting? People who just do things for the sake of others without asking anything in return? This is typical of liberals to attack the Boy Scouts and a teenage boy trying to do a good thing. And what comes next? Will SEIU members be the only people allowed to mow our lawns? Paint our walls? And then of course, if we do it ourselves rather than letting Obama’s crony pals do it, will Balzano threaten to come after us, too?

Balzano said that he would let this one go — because of the holiday spirit. It’s more likely that he let it go because of all the bad PR he’s getting. It’s sad, though, when you think about it. What would’ve happened if he hadn’t been threatened by bad press filled with the holiday spirit? We all know the answer — he happily would have persecuted a seventeen-year-old kid who was just trying to do a good thing, and Obama would just look the other way. And if we don’t stand up to their thuggery, then our capital could remain looking like this.

Hat Tips: Moonbattery and Michelle Malkin

Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary or follow her on Twitter!

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SEIU has earned its face time with the POTUS by donating $60 million and 100,000 volunteers to Obama’s campaign. Although Stern has made it clear that every single member of SEIU is to devote time to helping elect Democrats, the union is designated a 527, meaning that it is supposedly apolitical and therefore is not limited in the soft money it can shovel at sleazy politicians, unlike honest institutions.

Given Stern’s radical background, it’s unsurprising that his tactics are thuggish:

Under Stern’s leadership, SEIU commonly bullies and pressures companies into signing agreements to make SEIU the representative of their employees. If a company resists joining the union, Stern and his political, media and activist allies conspire to launch “corporate campaigns” aimed at breaking down that resistance through what they term the “death of a thousand cuts.” In such campaigns, the cabal of attackers harasses and disrupts company activities, sends vicious emails and letters to stockholders, intimidates customers, stalks and frightens employees, files baseless lawsuits, and plants false stories with media allies to smear the company’s reputation.

These pressure tactics are often successful in bringing companies into SEIU’s fold. When this occurs, all of their employees are required to join the union. SEIU prefers this arrangement (which Stern calls “Union Democracy”) because, in times past, a large percentage of workers who were given a choice voted against joining the union.

This is also why Chairman Zero & friends favor card check.

SEIU stands to make out big from healthcare nationalization, so when patriots spoke out against it at town hall meetings, even high-level SEIU thugs turned out to rough them up.

Another favored White House visitor is the radical financier George Soros, who only has to snap his fingers for a sit-down with the Manchurian Teleprompter. Investors.com reports:

Like the sociable Stern, administration records show Soros’ appointments were officially scheduled within hours of his actual visit. It looks like fast service.

Soros not only has made statements critical of free-market capitalism, he’s also a philanthropist whose hobbyhorse MoveOn.org tried to smear Iraq war commander Gen. David Petraeus as “Gen. Betray-us” in a full-page ad in the New York Times.

Both Soros and Stern are prominent partisans in the Shadow Party, a network of ultra-left activist groups working feverishly toward the destruction of liberty in favor of collectivist statism. They have a comrade at the top.

On tips from Milton and Edward. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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The free market is nonsense? How many communist leaning associates have to be exposed before America wakes up to realize we put a radical in power of our country?

Naked Emperor News:

Ron Bloom is the Manufacturing Czar. In the video he admits, “We kind of agree with Mao that power comes largely from the barrel of a gun.”
Doesn’t that make you feel secure?

JMF tells us more about Ron Bloom:

The name Ron Bloom is one that we need to start paying attention to. He has a long history of being the negotiating face of unions in a suit. He is a Harvard Business School graduate who has worked for the unions beginning with SEIU for decades. The most recent union he represented was the United Steel Workers (USW) before becoming a part of the automotive team that Obama put together. You know the one that had the head Steven Rattner having to resign over some questions about his personal finances mixed in with a little fraudulent money gifts. Rattner was replaced by Ron Bloom, and voila the United Auto Workers (UAW), got a sweetheart deal backed up by the power of the federal government to try and stave off bankruptcy.

Hat tip: Jim Hoft

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If CBS News has it right, the majority of in-home healthcare workers in Illinois voted not to join a union despite the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Governor Quinn’s best efforts to force the issue.

Earlier in the year, Governor Quinn signed Executive Order 09-15 that gave away the private information of every in-home healthcare worker in the state to several unions so that they might begin a campaign to cajole these workers into joining a union by calling them on the phone and visiting them at their homes.

In-home healthcare workers receive a stipend from the state in order to help them care for developmentally disabled or medically at risk family members.

Quinn’s EO gave these unions the right to fight over these in-home workers. The workers were asked to vote this week on whether they wanted to join the American Federation of State, County of Municipal Employees (AFSCME) or the SEIU, but more than half voted not to join any union at all, the third choice on the ballot.

Quinn planned to take away some of the money these workers received from the state and hand it to the unions as “dues” whether the workers agreed to join the union or not. It is not known if Quinn plans to carry through with this plan now that the majority of these workers turned down union representation.

If Illinois goes the route of several other states, the Governor will just declare these workers in a union no matter what they voted to do and begin taking their money for dues regardless. This is the sneaky route being taken in several states across the nation to unionizing millions of workers that neither are aware of, nor want union representation. It is also little else but a direct transfer of state money to union coffers.

Whatever the future holds for unionizing in-home healthcare workers in Illinois, this voting down of union interference in their lives is a first, but likely temporary, victory. Only political pressure against these unions can prevent further interference in the lives of Illinois’ in-home healthcare workers.

The nature of the intertwined association between government and ACORN is why we ask that you join us and Say NO to ACORN.

Sign the petition and tell Governor Quinn that you want a real investigation to end corruption for good.

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If you want to know how “connected” the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is to the White House, a video of then candidate Obama’s appearance at an SEIU campaign rally event is revealing. Obama revealed his intimate connection to the SEIU (from even before he ran for office) and promised to “turn the nation purple,” in an allusion to the SEIU’s corporate color scheme.

This is how close President Obama is to the SEIU and how engaged SEIU Local 880 is in politics in Illinois.

Join us and Say NO to ACORN.

Sign the petition and tell Governor Quinn that you want a real investigation to end corruption for good.

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On the website of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) a press release from Obama’s U.S. Census Bureau Director, Robert Groves, can be found. That press release appears to make obvious that the Bureau plans to count illegal aliens in our census. The press release was issued to America’s Hispanic organizations to urge them to help with the coming census.

In that press release, Groves says the following (my bold):

We have the enormous challenge of convincing everyone in the country to participate in the national count – regardless of race, ethnicity or citizenship status. To reach the Latino community, we are counting on community-based initiatives like ya es hora to partner with us in spreading the word that the 2010 Census is easy, important and safe,” said U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves.

Notice that Graves says “regardless of citizenship status.” With this comment it is clear that Graves intends to count illegals in our census.

The Census Bureau intends to work closely with groups that cater to illegals in this country to calculate the national count. The Census Bureau hopes to have success by launching a campaign that will “enhance the Bureau’s efforts to count Latinos through a sustained and aggressive community education initiative to mobilize hundreds of local organizations.”

Why is this such a big deal? Because this will add to the federal funds that will flow to areas that now have officially counted, lower income people, federal funds that will naturally flow into the coffers of Democrats and their cohorts.

Worse, it will add false numbers to our national count and will be one more step toward legalizing people that have broken our laws to get here. Once these people become instant American citizens they will, of course, largely vote Democrat and we will have millions more voters that will be amenable to voting for programs of federal giveaways and freebies to themselves. The Democrat’s power will grow exponentially and our country will be lowered even further as a result.

Illegal aliens should not be counted in the census. Their presence here is illegal and must not be used to direct federal dollars to the areas in which they serve as illegal squatters. Unfortunately, it looks like Obama’s Census Bureau intends to illicitly count illegal aliens as American citizens.

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The Washington Times has a great piece that coincides with several we’ve had here on the blog that shows that unions have become Obama’s healthcare shock troops. From the SEIU announcing its drive for Obamacare and sending one of its own to beat up citizens at townhalls, to the mountains of cash that unions have given to Obama and his efforts, to the AFL-CIO’s drive for Obamacare, unions have suddenly become the president’s shock troops filling audiences at townhalls and beating the streets for his policies.

Members of the nation’s labor unions have made up a hefty segment of the audiences that flocked to town halls Mr. Obama held in the past week, and they have played an even larger role in a nationwide campaign for an insurance overhaul. Financially, and with boots on the ground, unions have become the backbone of the president’s effort.

Of course, this hadn’t happened until that last week. In previous weeks, Obamacare opponents had held sway over the news cycle by protesting Obama’s healthcare ideas at townhalls across the country. But now the unions have kicked into gear.

The Obama administration decried the opposition movement as a cynical, fake grass-roots campaign manufactured by the insurance industry to undermine his effort. To respond meant galvanizing a movement of his own. That began to take shape, at least visibly, when AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney sent an Aug. 6 memo to union officers across the country to mobilize.

It is amusing to me that the Obamaites have spent the last three weeks dismissing Obamacare opponents as but “organized efforts.” And to counter them what does the White House do but set up its own “organized efforts” and with the most organized of organized groups, unions.

While the left has no real proof of shadowy groups behind the anti-Obamacare folks to credit these supposedly organized Republicans to it is quite easy to pinpoint the organized efforts by Obama’s supporters. In fact, they pinpoint themselves with all sorts of emails and websites urging their membership to organize in support of the presidents socialist healthcare policies.

But, isn’t it one of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals to accuse your enemy of doing precisely what you are doing already?

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USA Today is attempting to pass off an effort to push a higher minimum wage law as an effort by “churches” when in reality it is a left wing effort sponsored by ACORN, unions and the extremist group American Progress headed by former Clinton front man, John Podesta.

With a misleading headline and an artfully vague first paragraph, USA Today tries to make this effort seem to be headed up by churches and religious figures. The headline, “Churches push for $10 minimum wage by 2010,” pins this effort squarely on churches even as the first paragraph walks that claim back in an artfully vague way.

Religious leaders and advocates, not satisfied with the 70-cent rise in the federal minimum wage that went into effect on Friday, are calling on congressional leaders to hike it up to $10 by 2010.

Notice how the headline doesn’t quite match up to the “Religious leaders and advocates” of the first paragraph. Notice that it goes from “churches” to “advocates.” We all know that churches and advocates are not necessarily one and the same. And when it comes to left wing “advocates,” actual churches are rarely anywhere involved.

Right in the first paragraph we must realize that it isn’t really “churches” that are involved in this effort but it is more likely the advocates of the first paragraph that is heading this min. wage movement.

USA Today names this group as “Let Justice Roll.” So, let’s take a look at the website of this group to see what we find.

There listed as “Current Let Justice Roll Member Organizations” are such groups as ACORN, the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Business for Shared Prosperity, Cleveland Jobs With Justice, and World Hunger Education, Advocacy & Training. In fact, there are almost no actual “churches” involved. Even the religious themed organizations involved are NGO styled advocacy groups that are not directly affiliated with any actual church but are left wing advocacy groups started for political, not religious, reasons.

No, what we have here is solidly built of “advocates” and few “churches.” Yet, USA Today tries to paint this effort as a religious movement.

But, even if we can all agree that some “churches” are involved in this effort, why did USA Today so quickly ignore the union connections and the extremist left wing organizations also involved with this? Why did USA Today conveniently forget to mention that it is backed heavily by left wing groups in order to make it appear as if churches are pushing this effort?

The truth is, it is a typical left wing NGO styled effort to further involve government in the economy and USA Today did its level best to hide that salient fact.

(H/T Bibleconomy.com.)

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However, it is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue. These tactics have included hanging in effigy one Democratic member of Congress in Maryland and protesters holding a sign displaying a tombstone with the name of another congressman in Texas, where protesters also shouted “Just say no!” drowning out those who wanted to hold a substantive discussion.

These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.

So, in their world, exercising your First Amendment Rights to protest and be heard is un-American. I wonder what they think of SEIU thugs who assault people exercising their 1st Amendment Rights? I remember when dissent was patriotic, even when those on the Left wanted the United States to lose in Iraq, simply because they hated George Bush.

Really, what else is there to say? This is what the Democrat leadership has come to. I wonder if any Democrats will revolt over this disgusting attack on the citizenry of the United States? Will any of them have the fortitude?

John Boehner (Republican) had this to say on the subject

“For months, House Democratic leaders have worked to silence any opposing views in this health care debate, both here in Washington and around the country where millions of Americans are struggling in this economy. Every poll taken in the last month shows that a majority of Americans are concerned about, if not outright opposed to, the Democrats’ plan because of the cost and consequences it would mean for their own health care. Each public forum should give every participant the opportunity to express their views, but to label Americans who are expressing vocal opposition to the Democrats’ plan “un-American” is outrageous and reprehensible.

“The American people deserve answers to basic questions about whether the Democrats’ plan will increase health care costs, add to the deficit, increase taxes on middle-class families and small businesses, put government between doctors and patients, force anyone to lose their current health coverage, kill jobs, promote taxpayer-funded abortion, or cut Medicare. The fact is Democrats have not been able to address the very real concerns the American people have.

“It’s time for Democrats to start listening. When we return to Washington in September, Democrats should scrap their costly plan and finally work on bipartisan reforms that give Americans what they are seeking: better access to affordable care.”

I was hoping he would go ballistic, but, I’m sure by the end of the day there will be a few elected Republicans who will not be as civil in couching their reply, nor should they.

Long list of others via Memeorandum: Weekly Standard, Gateway Pundit, The Huffington Post, Top of the Ticket, Moe_Lane’s blog, The Moderate Voice, JammieWearingFool, JustOneMinute, The Atlantic Politics Channel, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, The Jawa Report, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Swamp, Townhall.com, QandO, Sense of Events, Flopping Aces, American Power, Daily Dose, Confederate Yankee, Hot Air, Riehl World View, Patterico’s Pontifications, Political Byline, Below The Beltway, Politics Daily, Balloon Juice, YID With LID, Donklephant, Blue Crab Boulevard, Macsmind, Founding Bloggers, Scared Monkeys, Right Wing News, Think Progress, The Plum Line, Taylor Marsh, Atlas Shrugs, Don Surber, Raw Story, Perfunction, Pundit & Pundette, Dennis the Peasant, The Strata-Sphere, Michelle Malkin, Neptunus Lex, AmSpecBlog, Sister Toldjah, Cato @ Liberty, The Next Right, TPMDC, GayPatriot, Freedom’s Lighthouse, Arkansas News, Shot in the Dark, The Campaign Spot, Sam Adams Alliance, LewRockwell.com Blog, The Caucus, Politics Nation, The Page, Instapundit, msnbc.com, Weasel Zippers and Newsalert

“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform them.” — James Madison

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