(MSNBC) Police in riot gear clashed with protesters in Oakland in the early morning hours on Thursday, firing tear gas to disperse demonstrators lingering in the streets after a day of mostly peaceful rallies against economic inequality and police brutality.

The clash and standoff came only hours after protesters shut down the Port of Oakland late Wednesday.

The confrontation, which erupted after midnight, appeared aimed at preventing the protesters from expanding their foothold in the streets around a public plaza that has become a hub for demonstrations in the northern California city.

More than 200 officers, some of them ferried in aboard buses, lined up shoulder to shoulder and donned gas masks, then declared the crowd to be an unlawful assembly and fired volleys of tear gas as protesters turned and ran.

Heck, all they were doing was gathering peaceably…..except for that shutting down the Port of Oakland thing. Was there any reason for such a heavy handed response? Well, the accompanying photo at MSNBC should give you a clue, with an Occupier standing on something that looks turned over waving a flag in front of a bonfire in the street.

The nearly 5-hour protest at the port, the nation’s fifth-busiest shipping port, was intended to highlight a daylong “general strike” in the city, which prompted solidarity rallies in New York, Los Angeles and other cities across the nation. Some had marched from the city’s downtown, while others had been bused to the port.

There’s that commie word “solidarity” again. But, consider, they shut down a port where mostly blue collar workers were just attempting to put in a days work and earn some money to take care of themselves and their families. The Occupiers made that rather difficult.

The crowd disrupted port operations by overwhelming the area with people and blocking exits with chain-link fencing and illegally parked vehicles. The demonstrators also erected fences to block main streets to the port. No trucks were allowed into or out of the area.

Doesn’t sound particularly peaceable to me. And by not allowing trucks out, the Occutards were harming people with small businesses, who needed those products. And harming the truck drivers, who do not get paid if they aren’t delivering. So much for caring about the “99%.”

Prior to marching on the port, protesters had blocked the downtown intersection of 14th street and Broadway, where the a former Marine turned peace activist Scott Olsen was wounded on the night of October 25.

These are your folks, Obama and Pelosi: do you still stand by them? Will you call for them to keep it peaceful and stop violating the law?

As protesters left the area on foot some stopped to burn money, others bickered, and one burned an American flag.

Zachary RunningWolf, a well-known Bay Area activist, said he burned the flag “to start an educated discussion among us.”

Well, he got a discussion, one which the Oakland PD won. What better way to get people on to your side than by burning the flag of your country?

What’s missing from the article is the actual damage caused by the Occupiers. Michelle Malkin has many pictures and descriptions of the violence and destruction from the Democrat voting Occupiers, including

A big mob dressed in black is roaming around the streets. They’ve sprayed graffiti on the walls of businesses.

Wells Fargo windows have also been reportedly smashed.

Chase Bank vandalized.

Still supporting this movement, liberals? Another question is, will this be the catalyst for the nationwide violence and destruction we have all been expecting?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. Please sign the drill now petition.

Despite a pledge not to take money from lobbyists, President Obama has relied on prominent supporters who are active in the lobbying industry to raise millions of dollars for his re-election bid.

At least 15 of Mr. Obama’s “bundlers” — supporters who contribute their own money to his campaign and solicit it from others — are involved in lobbying for Washington consulting shops or private companies. They have raised more than $5 million so far for the campaign.

Because the bundlers are not registered as lobbyists with the Senate, the Obama campaign has managed to avoid running afoul of its self-imposed ban on taking money from lobbyists.

But registered or not, the bundlers are in many ways indistinguishable from people who fit the technical definition of a lobbyist. They glide easily through the corridors of power in Washington, with a number of them hosting Mr. Obama at fund-raisers while also visiting the White House on policy matters and official business.

How mean of Fox News to point this out. They’re making a mountain out of a molehill, especially since these bundlers are not registered as lobbyists. As usual, Fox News is a bit overwrought and hysterical, trying to impugn the president who hasn’t technically done anything wrong.

Really, this is just typical of Obama: style over substance. He makes some grandiose pronouncement, then fails to actually keep it.

He said that while Republican candidates were actively raising money from special interest groups, Mr. Obama “drew a bright line” by rejecting contributions both from political action committees and from “Washington lobbyists whose job it is to influence federal policymakers.”

It’s all in the nuance. He will surely take money from MoveOn, the Center for American Progress, the ACLU, SEIU and other unions, and any company/group that lobbies the federal government. These donations will certainly be hidden, much like he did with so much of his 2008 money.

Must be nice to be a member of the “in” crowd, the crowd of crony capitalists to whom President Obama has given so much of the taxpayer’s money. And not just money but positions of power in the government.

Take, for instance, Obama’s newest czar, Judith Faulkner, recently named Obama medical records czar. She was not only put in charge of deciding which company would be used for Obama’s official electronic medical records system, but she also just happens to have an electronic medical records company of her own. And, gosh, it seems her company is suddenly quite busy and just might be in line to become THE electronic medical records company. Imagine that.

Only a few weeks ago news of Faulkner’s elevation to Obama’s Health Information Technology Policy Committee. This committee is charged with deciding how $19 billion in Obama bucks is spent on healthcare IT systems.

It was known then that Faulkner ran a company called Epic Systems Corp., a company that specializes in electronic medical records. It was also known that Faulkner stands squarely against Obama’s idea that his IT solution has to have “interoperability,” or a way to integrate over several different platforms made by different companies.

Faulkner thinks that only her company, Epic Systems, should be the one to host all electronic medical records. Other companies need not apply.

Of course Faulkner’s company has been getting quite a lot of government contracts of late.

There’s the $14 million contract Epic got from the Coast Guard.

Or we can look at the $122 million project for the University of Virginia Medical Center.

Then there’s the prediction by industry watchers that Epic will get a fat contract from the Department of Defense.

Of course, Faulkner’s company isn’t just working on various government contracts. She also has some big union contracts, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) for one… one of the biggest government employees unions.

• Kaiser Permanente (SEIU-UHW)
• Cleveland Clinic (SEIU)
• Cedars Sinai (SEIU-UHW and CIR-SEIU)
• NYU Langone Medical Center (SEIU)
• Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (SEIU)
• Harvard Community Health Plan (SEIU)
• Sutter Health (SEIU)
• Geisinger Health System (SEIU)

I suppose with her close connections to the SEIU, a big Obama supporter, it shouldn’t surprise that she is suddenly favored by Obama for appointment to one of his big “committees,” one responsible for spending big Obama bucks.

If her work for the government and her close ties to Big Labor wasn’t enough, she is also a big donor to Democrats in general and Obama in particular.

In 2008 Faulkner gave at least $110,000 including a $57,000 to the DNC and $2,300 to Barack Obama. (source Center for Responsive Politics)

After her appointment to the health records committee, Faulkner donated $85,000 through the 2010 election to Democrats. This included $50,400 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and $7,500 to the DNC. (source Center for Responsive Politics)

Faulkner has also given at least $7,000 to Wisconsin Democrats. (Source Center for Responsive Politics)

So, Judith Faulkner is a woman that is very connected to the Democrat Party, is in deep with Big Labor, has her own electronic medical records company that she thinks should be the only such company to handle the nations records and this is the woman that Obama is asking to be impartial enough to help choose which company should get billions of tax dollars?

Instead of having the market determine which electronic medical records system will work best, Obama and his industry favorites will make the choice for us. It’s just another example of the sort of crony capitalism that Obama has become famous for.

In one of the most disgusting examples of the self-absorption of the union mind set, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka decided that his 9/11 memorial would not be much about 9/11, but would instead be just another excuse to say how great unions are and how evil conservatives are. This isn’t just gauche, but insulting, infuriating, and just plain ignorant. Not only that, but it is most certainly disrespectful of the fallen and just plain un-American.

But, then again, that describes unions in just about every instance, doesn’t it?

Disgustingly, the AFL-CIO’s Trumka turned a “memorial” to 9/11 into a union snake-oil sales pitch. Worse he began with an almost dismissive attitude to the memory of the attacks on our homeland.

Trumka begins by saying “we need no reminding” of the “horror and anguish we experienced 10 years ago.” This is his first paragraph and from here he launches into doing just that, not bothering much about what happened that day, suffice to say that the “solidarity” we experienced is the “cornerstone of the union movement.”

Yeah. I don’t know about you but as the towers were falling and thousands were dying, all I could think about was the cornerstone of unionism.

Oh, and guess what? Instead of waking us to the dangers of Islamofascism, all 9/11 did was open “doors to hate, suspicion of ‘others’ and self-centered greed. Our fear was twisted into something much more dangerous.”

Then this moron goes on to claim that as a society we have gone from treating our firemen, police and other first responders as heroes to “vilifying them.”

Just 10 years after 9/11, despite our vows, the public servants, construction workers and others who lost their lives or still suffer with the cancerous remnants of the Twin Towers haven’t just been forgotten. They’ve been vilified. The extremist small government posse has turned them into public enemy No. 1, as though teachers and firefighters, EMTs and nurses and union construction workers ruined America’s economy.

This is a bald-faced lie. No one is “vilifying” first responders. And notice how he slipped “teachers” into the same category as 9/11 first responders. Sorry, pal, but teachers are not just like cops, firemen, and EMTs.

Even more specifically, no one is saying that police, teachers and other public servants have “ruined America’s economy.” It is their unions and their handmaidens in the Democrat Party that are responsible for that. We who are against public employees unions are against the unions, not the public workers that the unions bully and steal from.

Then this creep gets into name calling…. yes, name calling in a 9/11 memorial address.

Wealthy CEOs, anti-government extremist front groups and frothing talk show hosts—from the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks to the Koch brothers, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads group, Americans for Prosperity, the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and the American Legislative Exchange Council—also pushed open the door to hate.

Shameless.

But wait he gets worse. Now he goes into a rant of non-sequiturs:

We’ve seen the costs of hatred in ill-thought wars, in shameful attacks on immigrants and our LGBT neighbors. We saw it in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. We saw it in the racism that has found overt and covert expression since Barack Obama began his run for office—from outright declarations of people who said out loud they would never vote for a black man to the ridiculously persistent obsession with our president’s birth certificate. Regardless of his policies or priorities, President Obama is shadowed by the drumbeat of suspicion based on his “other”-ness. And those suspicions are fed and watered constantly by forces that were threatened by his message of “hope and change.”

Then Trumka goes on to invoke the memory of those first responders that died on 9/11 and bends their deaths to his own petty cause to rape the public treasury for high salaries and overly generous pensions and benefits lans his fatcat pals created with pliant Democrat politicians over the last forty years.

It is a disgusting display of ignorance.

Now, just imagine how the extremists on the far left, those shrill voices on the left would be screaming bloody murder if some Tea Party guy, a conservative radio host, or a Republican had used the deaths of over 3,000 Americans on 9/11 for his petty political agenda? Imagine how they’d be calling foul and saying how disgusting it would be. And they’d be right, too.

But here we have a union thug, a man with a long, long history of violence and incitement of the same, using the heroes that fell on 9/11 as a foil for advancing his union agenda.

Trumka is using the heroes of 9/11 to shore up his agenda of high taxes, big government waste, and big money for himself and his other union boss pals.

Trumka is using an incident perpetrated by people that hated capitalism and tried to strike a blow against it. He is using that murderous act to promulgate his own attack on capitalism. In essence, Trumka is announcing his sympathies with the Islamofascist terrorists that attacked us on 9/11.

Remember this, as well: Democrats and Obama support Trumka and his actions.

If this isn’t appalling, what is?

The Hill has an interesting, if not a bit slanted, report about the faux grassroots efforts of unions and left-wing advocates to pretend they are somehow just like the Tea Party by attacking the town hall meetings of various GOP congressman across the country this Summer.

The Hill dutifully reports without complaint the union’s claims that they are organizing just like the Tea Partiers and forcing GOP congressmen to face “angry protests at home” this month in a “replication” of the Tea Party backlash that “bit” Democrats in 2009.

“Liberal groups have been planning these protests for months,” trumpets The Hill, “One organizer told The Hill in February that the campaign would ‘build to a crescendo’ in August.”

These protests have been organized by Obama’s supporters in government unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO as well as far left NGOs such as MoveOn.org, Campaign for America’s Future and others.

The report goes on to note that several congressmen have faced unruly audiences this August.

At least ten other House Republicans have been the targets of protests or angry questions at public events in the last two weeks. Many of the protests are the outcome of a months-long effort by labor unions and liberal advocacy groups to turn up public pressure on GOP lawmakers.

These groups have taken a page from the Tea-Party playbook and are trying to replicate the August of outrage that nearly sunk President Obama’s healthcare reform initiative in 2009.

“This is very similar to what the Tea Party did,” said Roger Hickey, co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, which has worked with labor unions and liberal groups to help organize a public backlash to the House GOP agenda.

Only these orchestrated attacks are nothing like what happened in 2009 as the Tea Party movement first started gaining steam.

The Tea Party events were not organized by unions, they did not have millions of dollars behind them, they had no national organizations, no formal groups to which to belong or by which to organize. The protests that Democrats faced in 2009 were real citizens gathering on their own hook not organized from the top like these faux protests are being raised today.

There is no parallel at all between these fake, astroturfed protests funded by Democrat operatives and union thugs and the spontaneous protests peopled by real voters that occurred in 2009, gatherings that eventually became the full-blown Tea Party movement.

Once again we see that these unions have had to spend untold dollars and months organizing to get the “dozens of constituents” that have turned out to this Summer’s meetings. By contrast Tea Party events have turned out millions of participants over these last few years few funded by anyone but the participants themselves.

What this shows is that unions and leftists have to employ a top down sort of organizing to get any support for their ideals. It shows that there is no real enthusiasm among regular Americans for the left-wing agenda.

Above all it shows that the left is still no closer to replicating the true enthusiasm and verve and the true grassroots efforts of the Tea Party movement… despite The Hill trying to give them the legitimacy of the claim.

In Pennsylvania union thuggery, violations of the law, and criminality is abundant in the strike by the Communications Workers of America against Verizon. It’s expected that unionistas don’t respect businesses, of course, but not to respect the safety of children? That’s beyond the pale.

Sadly, theft, property destruction, and otherwise breaking the law is no hurdle union thugs won’t jump. In fact, it is threats of and use of violence and thuggery that unions have always relied on to extort money from the business community. The situation in Pennsylvania is no exception to the illicit rule of unionism.

Yes, law breaking prevails. These Penn. union members, for instance, are breaking the law by preventing other workers from entering their place of work. It is illegal to do this according to the National Labor Relations Act.

As the Pittsburg Post-Gazette reports:

An Allegheny County judge today signed an order prohibiting striking Verizon workers from blocking the entrance to any company offices or job sites.

The order, signed by Judge Michael E. McCarthy, specifies that the unionized workers with the Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, are enjoined from “picketing, other than peacefully, and by no more than six pickets spaced, at any entrance to any Verizon facilities . . . or at any worksite of any Verizon employee or contractor performing company work.”

In addition, the order prohibits the strikers from “interfering with business, by threatening, obstructing, intimidating or harassing” customers or other employees.

As to the safety of children? Even fatherhood seems to come second to unionism.

A union creep dangerously placed his own daughter in front of a Verizon truck in New Jersey.

There are a lot of other illegal intimidation tactics being perpetrated by these union cretins in this strike.

This is what they do.

Since Obama began his run for the White House he has been Big Labor’s best friend. And they loved him for it, too. As Obama ran and as soon as he got into office the unions had stars in their eyes. They thought that with a bought and paid for president in their hip pocket, every long dreamed of union wish was about to be fulfilled.

You can’t really blame them, of course. Obama did nothing but work to let them believe he’d do everything they wanted once safely in the White House. They gave him millions of dollars and he gave them rosy promises. But they are starting to feel duped.

To be sure Obama has done more for Big Labor than any other president in American history. He’s stocked his entire regulatory edifice with union hacks, he’s issued executive orders to force federal contractors to pay union dues, wages, pensions and to work under union rules even when said companies aren’t unionized, and he’s used his powers to regulate to attack companies that dare to cross swords with Big Labor.

That seems like quite a lot of chips being cashed in, doesn’t it? It sure seems like Big Labor is riding high in the era of Obama, right?

While from the outside we can look at all the favors that Obama has doled out to Big Labor and imagine that unions have been given so very much, one has only to read what Big Labor itself has said about the Obama administration and you’ll find that all is not honey and roses in the land of Big Labor.

Take for instance the recent piece written by union author Randy Shaw. After scolding Big Labor for not putting any effort into fighting Obama’s signing of the debt deal, union writer Shaw lamented that the unions are so sold to the Democrat Party that they wont activate their members when the Democrats are pursuing policies bad for unions.

Shaw correctly notes that Big Labor has “lost” the big agenda that it went into the age of Obama expecting to see to fruition, namely the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Lamented Shaw, “EFCA died in 2009, immigration reform is off the political radar screen, and passage of job-killing free-trade deals candidate Obama once criticized will soon be the President’s next priority.”

Shaw also grumbles about Obama’s promotion of cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and his support of extending the Bush tax cuts, all issues that Big Labor generally opposed.

Because of these major failures, Shaw pointedly notes that if Big Labor began to note that the Democrats were failing them, it would begin a far reaching debate on whether labor should continue to support the Democrat Party.

So, why are labor’s most powerful leaders desperate to quash any dissent against the Democrats?

Labor stays loyal to Obama and Senate Democrats out of fear that what happened in Wisconsin could occur nationally if unions stay on the electoral sidelines and Republicans seize control of all three branches of government. Further, the Obama White House gives union leaders like Andy Stern and Richard Trumka “access,” which these officials confuse with actual power (to this end, Obama met with leaders of the AFL-CIO Executive Board on August 2 to reassure them that he is “the workers’ president.” The union leaders did not attack Obama’s anti-worker stances at the meeting).

Somewhat like a battered wife, unions come back again and again to the Democrats, smiling and asking for more.

This policy of sticking with Democrats no matter what is a “failed” strategy, Shaw says. Shaw urges Big Labor to abandon the Democrats-or-die policy and advises labor to campaign on issues and concentrate on organizing and growing their mightily depleted ranks.

Shaw is not alone in his feeling that Big Labor has lost its way. Long-time socialist and black activist Bill Fletcher has also been heard to slam the labor movement’s failings. During the height of the Service Employees International Union’s internal strife in California, Fletcher was unsparing in his criticism of SEIU leadership.

Shaw and Fletcher aren’t the only voices of complaint though. Despite his claim that Big Labor has refused to criticize Obama and the Democrats, some labor complaints have indeed reached the Old Media and some labor unions have acted on their displeasure.

In 2010 in North Carolina, for instance, the SEIU tried to start its own political party because it was upset at the failure of the Democrats to toe the union line. Also in 2010 The New York Times noted that labor was having major problems getting members out to rally for Democrats.

Not long ago, Bloomberg reported that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that his ardor for Obama’s re-election was fading. Trumka was also reported as pleading for unions to support Democrats in the late 2010 midterm elections knowing all along that it was a tough sell. And Trumka hasn’t been the only top labor leader decrying the failures under Obama and the Democrats.

So, despite all that Obama has done for labor, there are quite a lot of unhappy workers over on the far left. Quite a lot, indeed. Of course, it all tends to show another thing, too. It tends to show how voracious, how insatiable, and how ungrateful Big Labor really is.

F. Vincent Vernuccio had a great piece in the Washington Times a few days ago revealing the handbook written by the SEIU that teaches union thuggery to union operatives.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has a 70-some-page manual that came to light in a recent court case.

SEIU is in federal court defending itself against charges of racketeering and extortion filed by one of its unionizing targets, the catering company Sodexo Inc.Sodexo’s court discovery recently revealed an SEIU “Contract Campaign Manual” on “Pressuring the Employer.” Union pressure is nothing new, but what SEIU recommends is not limited to organizing drives and strikes. Rather, the pressure takes the form of a so-called corporate campaign, whereby the union allies itself with outside third parties to raise intimidation to a new level.

Vernuccio explained that the most recent efforts of the SEIU to push businesses to the edge of bankruptcy so that they are vulnerable to being taken over by union operatives even going to the point of secretly getting the businesses to agree to work with the SEIU to prevent other unions from trying to contact its employees.

The manual is meant to guide the SEIUs thugs to win the battle.

SEIU’s manual details how “outside pressure can involve jeopardizing relationships between the employer and lenders, investors, stockholders, customers, clients, patients, tenants, politicians, or others on whom the employer depends for funds.” The union advises using legal and regulatory pressure to “threaten the employer with costly action by government agencies or the courts.”

It details the use of community groups to “damage an employer’s public image and ties with community leaders and organizations.” SEIU recommends going after company officials personally. Not mincing words, SEIU states, “It may be a violation of blackmail and extortion laws to threaten management officials with release of ‘dirt’ about them if they don’t settle a contract. But there is no law against union members who are angry at their employer deciding to uncover and publicize factual information about individual managers.”

Mr. Vernuccio goes on to give several examples of how the SEIU has used the tactics in the manual. But what we have here is the perfect example of the thuggery perpetrated by the SEIU.

Now, we have to remember one other thing that is important. The SEIU is one of the biggest government employee unions, too. These same thugs are running our government through the back door with their union rules and contracts.

Also, don’t forget that the SEIU was one of the biggest supporters of President Obama, too.

This is why government unions should be made illegal like they used to be.

This is a novel approach. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), one of the largest government employee unions in the nation, has decided that they’ve had enough of all those darn Republicans that are… well… acting like Republicans. So, the union has lighted on a new way to be rid of all those darn Republican-like Republicans. They are going to sponsor their own Republican candidates in upcoming elections in the land of fruits and nuts.

The SEIU has created a new “Republican” political action committee (PAC) meant to recruit purported moderate Republicans to run for office to replace the Republicans now sitting in Sacramento. SEIU is calling this PAC the “Golden California Committee.”

The name of their PAC reminds me of the phrase, “don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” This golden shower that the SEIU is trying to pull off doesn’t fool anyone. The SEIU has no interest in helping Republicans. They have but one goal, to implement laws and government regulations that give to government employee unions payoffs, higher salaries, and outrageous benefits and pensions that exceed anything that the general public will ever see. They know that the only way to do this is to control government from both sides of the aisle.

After all, as weak as the Californian Republicans are, they are the only resistance to unions getting free reign to steal from the taxpayers with impunity. The SEIU knows this and they are trying to eliminate that last, tiny, little spot of resistance.

As it is the government in California is by the unions, of the unions and for the unions but if they can place in office faux Republicans whose loyalty is to unions and not the party or the people, then that will be the end of any chance that the Golden State could ever return to any fiscal sanity at all.

Now, by and large California has some of the least conservative Republicans in the country and the few real conservatives they have in office have next to no power. Yet, one of the spokesmen for this absurd new union effort is claiming that the “far right” is “hijacking” his party.

“I feel the far right, the tea party, is hijacking my party, and it’s saddening,” said John Orr, a parking officer at California State University, Fullerton. “I hope through this PAC, this effort and the open primary that moderates can regain their voice.”

This guy has to be kidding. Firstly, he himself is a liar to claim he’s a Republican. Secondly, he’s woefully uninformed to imagine that the Calif. GOP has been hijacked by “the far right.” One of the weakest, mushy moderate GOP parties in the country resides in California. To say it is the party of “the far right” is absurd in the extreme.

Beyond all that there is simply no possible way to be a Republican and a union supporter at the same time. The two are wholly incompatible.

To be a union member you have to support an anti-democratic right for your union to use the law, the courts, and the government to steal from your fellow citizens. You support the end of the democratic tradition of the secret ballot for your fellows. You want to have higher salaries for no merit. You want there to be no legal way to fire you even if you’ve broken the law. You want to have free medical care when the people who you are forcing to pay your salary are lucky to have any healthcare at all. You want to retire at 50 and have the taxpayers (who can’t retire until they are 68 or later) pay to support you for the next thirty or forty years. In other words, you want to build a world where you are “kept” in a luxurious lifestyle all at the expense of others. No self-reliance. No hard work. No merit. These are the principles of a European, not an American and they are certainly not the principles of any Republican.

No candidate that this union operated PAC offers can ever be considered a Republican. The voters should know that these people are sold-out to the grasping, profligate unions before they even get into office. The candidates from the SEIU’s Golden California Committee will be nothing else but union puppets.

But the sad fact is that this new effort, should it be developed to the point where it does offer candidates, will likely fool the voters. Too many voters will imagine that the candidates this PAC offers are real, independent candidates. Too many voters will be blissfully unaware that these candidates are little else but puppets for the unions that will work assiduously against the best interests of the very people voting for them.

But here we have it. The unions once again leading with subterfuge, lies, and false fronts in order to steal as much from the voters as they can. It just goes to show that these people have no scruples. But it also goes to show precisely why government employee unions should be illegal like they were only a few short decades ago.

A few weeks ago AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka used the Civil Rights movement as a comparison for his union work. He wanted his audience to imagine that unionism is somehow just like the struggles for equality under the law that African Americans sought in the middle of the last century. This is a disgusting attempt by Trumka to steal the mantle of Civil Rights for his money-grubbing, union thuggery.

In Washington D.C. early in March Trumka tried to glom onto Martin Luther King’s legacy and apply it to union efforts to grab luxurious healthcare and pension benefits from businesses and taxpayers alike.

“April 4 [is] the day on which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life for the cause of public collective bargaining,” he pompously said.

Not only is this simply incorrect factually it is an outrage to say that King gave his life defending unions. We all know that King fought for the basic human rights of an entire people in a nation that had cast them into second-class citizen status, not for rich pensions, unduly high wages, and free healthcare.

It is appalling for anyone to attempt to steal the long, perilous struggle for civil rights and apply that heroic effort to other, lesser endeavors. Unionism is no more “like” civil rights than the so-called “war on drugs” is “like” a real war.

It’s been bad enough that the homosexual lobby has claimed that its efforts equate to a “civil rights” movement, but now unions are further degrading King to cover their desires to enrich themselves.

Byron York was right to question Trumka’s outrageous comments.

But was King fighting for the things that Trumka and his union forces are fighting for today? Is, say, the “right” for well-paid, unionized public employees to enjoy a health plan that includes coverage for Viagra —- a cause for which Milwaukee teachers waged a protracted court battle — the equivalent of King’s work in Memphis, much less his efforts for the right to vote and access to public accommodations?

Clearly the question answers itself. To equate King’s heroism to Trumka’s avarice is appalling.

Sadly, this sort of nonsense is all too common today. We have so badly misused our language that words hardly mean anything any more. These days we prattle on about “sports heroes,” we call reality TV goofs “stars,” we label any sort of conflagration a “genocide,” any old thing we want to do is called a “right,” and everything is “outrageous.”

The fact is that no era in America’s history with unions can be likened to the civil rights era. Even when unions were making great strides in the work place rules, fairness, and legal protections for workers — and, yes, those efforts were consequential and important –those efforts pale in comparison to protecting the basic human rights of an entire race of people.

Making sure the law protects someone from being lynched is far, far more important than making sure an employee has unfettered access to free Viagra.