Thaddeus McCotter Supports $165 Billion Union Bailout: John Linder Supports $165 Billion Union Bailout

As we have been cautioned this week by various conservatives, headed by Ann Coulter, don't get comfortable with the conservative movement in America. There are always those claiming to be conservative, yet all to willing to do just about anything for a few votes.

Thaddeus McCotter and John Linder

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) heads my list. He is a man I have quoted numerous times and have admired. No longer.

According to Americas for Limited Government (ALG), McCotter is one of nine Republicans supporting H.R. 3936, the Preserve Benefits and Jobs Act of 2009. In fact, I find that McCotter is a co-sponsor along with 8 other Republicans: Virginia Brown-Waite (FL), Jo Ann Emerson (MO), Steve Latourette (OH), John Linder (GA), Tim Murphy (PA), Peter Roskam (IL), Aaron Schock (IL), and Patrick Tiberi (OH). The bill's sponsor is shown to be Earl Pomery (ND),

Rep. John Linder co-authored The Fair Tax with Neal Boortz, and is also a co-sponsor.

My question, in particular to McCotter and "The Fair Tax" guy, John Linder, is, how does this bill separate itself from redistributing my wealth? Check out McCotter's YouTube page, pick any video and you'll see the hypocrisy, and understand why I was sickened to see his name on this legislation.

The bill proposes to bailout unions, specifically multi-employer pension fund unions. Listed among them is the MLBPA (Major League Baseball Players Association, NFLPA (National FootballLeague Players Association and more than 100 other union-run funds, according to ALG. H.R. 3936 allows for bailouts of SEIU, Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) and the Teamsters. All are underfunded and they are coming at our wallets.

Barack Obama will be chuckling this Memorial Day weekend in Chicago, as he enjoys his visits his beloved pizza joint there - you know, that pizza that he serves at the White House - flies the chef in, and all that. If Democrats can get staunch Republicans like McCotter to sponsor this horrible legislation, what can't he do?

From ALG:

“HR 3936 does not require that a union cut benefits, have participants pay part of the pension costs, change retirement ages, limit access to younger employees, or use union dues to supplement the plan. It doesn’t require that unions negotiate for higher pension payments from employers in lieu of other benefits. Instead, it merely throws the unfunded liabilities onto the backs of taxpayers – a potential $165 billion dollar bailout,” Wilson explained.

Citing the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by labor bosses to support Obama, the Democratic majority, and the 9 House Republicans (see attachments below), Wilson decried unions’ “audacity to try to cash in on their political investment by foisting these unfunded liabilities accumulated under their watch onto the backs of taxpayers, who are struggling to fund their own retirements.”

The Senate version of the bill, SB 3157, was to be heard in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on May 27th. The Senate Committee titled their bill Building a Secure Future for Multi-employer Pension Plans or Create Jobs and Save Benefits Act of 2010. It shows a full Committee hearing but no report on those hearings. Democrat Sen. Robert Casey (PA) is the sponsor. ALL CO-SPONSORS ARE DEMOCRAT in the Senate.

The House version of the bill sits in the House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions and in the House Ways and Mean Committee.

I don't care that the unions are under-funded. I don't care that some of these states, especially Michigan and Ohio are hard-hit. The fact is that it should be a criminal matter that legislators may tell me to come to the rescue with my hard earned dollars.

I've had enough. I bet you've had enough. The ALG report on this is excellent and includes a line to PAC donations for each of the nine, as well as a link to a pdf of ALG president William Wilson's letter to the nine GOPers. Contact them here and here.

Among the PAC donations to McCotter, I notice there were many who really believed he believed in the tenets of our Republic, i.e. the Committee for the Preservation of Capitalism, the Free and Strong America PAC, the Freedom and Security PAC, the Freedom Project, Friends of Jeb Hensarling, Friends of John Boehner, the Growth and Prosperity Political Action PAC, Help America's Leaders PAC, the Texas Freedom Fund, and the Win Back America PAC.

Sending American Wealth Overseas: Saving Trees Everywhere

The Waxman-Markey Man-Made Disaster Bill will send American wealth overseas to save trees - everywhere. Translation: we will pay other countries for them to refrain from cutting down trees. In Gore-speak, this is known as "offsets."

Saving Trees in Venezuela

Question: If a tree is saved in Venezuela, will the American taxpayer pay for it? According to a Washington Times exclusive, The Center for American Progress (a Liberal think tank) says the plan "will be pricey." One of the Center's "climate experts," Joseph Romm, says "By 2020, the U.S. could be spending $4 billion on international offsets." We (you and I - citizens of the United States) "would reward domestic and international companies that perform approved "green" actions with certificates, called permits."

Those companies could, in turn, sell the permits to other companies that emit greenhouse gases. The permits would be, in effect, licenses to pollute - and potentially very valuable.

Here's a short entry at World Prout Assembly, subtitled "Eco-Democracy - Neo-Humanism" calls for "Moralists of the world" to "unite!"

100 Million Trees for Venezuela Monagas trees in Venezuela [see above photo]. The great Hugo Chavez is making his beautiful country still more beautiful!

Venezuela has launched a five-year reforestation project for Orinoco headwaters and tributary rivers in which more than 900 conservation committees and students from more than 100 schools will help plant 100 million trees in a 150,000-hectare area. "Campesinos who used to clear land for crops or cow pasture are now turning to agroforestry, which is more profitable and better for the local environment,"...

I can see an evil, grinning Chavez presenting his bill to his friend Obama, for all the trees saved in Venezuela, and Obama handing back America's chit. Our Congress is churning out American man-made disasters.

Obama: 2001 Constitution a Negative Charter - Redistribution of Wealth

In this video, Barack Obama, then an Illinois Senator, explains:

 1) That political and economic justice - through "redistribution of wealth" was not addressed by the Supreme Court in the Civil Rights movement. 

2) Our Constitution DID NOT BREAK FREE of constraints, at the time of the Civil Rights movement, placed there by our Founding Fathers 

 3) At the time of the Movement, the Warren court interpreted our Constitution as a "charter of negative liberties." 

 4) The focus was lost during the Movement that would have channeled "community organizing" into changes for "redistributive change." 

Obama on Changing the U.S. Constititution

 PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT: 

MODERATOR: Good morning and welcome to Odyssey on WBEZ Chicago 91.5 FM and we're joined by Barack Obama who is Illinois State Senator from the 13th district and senior lecturer in the law school at the University of Chicago. 

 OBAMA: If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I'd be okay. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. 

And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn't that radical. It [the Constitution] didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you, it says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn't shifted. 

One of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributed change and in some ways we still suffer from that. 

MODERATOR: Let's talk with Karen. Good morning, Karen, you're on Chicago Public Radio. 

KAREN: Hi. The gentleman made the point that the Warren court wasn't terribly radical with economic changes. My question is, is it too late for that kind of reparative work economically and is that that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to take place – the court – or would it be legislation at this point? 

 OBAMA: Maybe I'm showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn't structured that way. You just look at very rare examples during the desegregation era the court was willing to for example order changes that cost money to a local school district. The court was very uncomfortable with it. It was very hard to manage, it was hard to figure out.

You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time. The court's just not very good at it and politically it's very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard. So I think that although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally. Any three of us sitting here could come up with a rational for bringing about economic change through the courts.