HEY LABOR UNIONS:TAKE YOUR CARD CHECK AND SHOVE IT ! YOU SCUMBAGS !

The labor movement is taking aim at Wall Street with a new tool in its fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

Labor pushes Wall St. on card check

The labor movement is taking square aim at Wall Street with a new tool in its fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act: the hundreds of billions of dollars in pension funds it manages for union workers and retirees, some of it held by the same firms that are fighting the provision known as "card check."

"Has your company made any public statements in support or opposition to EFCA?" asks one of nine pointed questions in a polite, detailed four-page questionnaire.

"If 'Yes,' please explain."

The detailed questionnaire has three parts. The first asks about fund managers' public positions, lobbying and political contributions. The second asks managers to "disclose any relationships during the past five years between your company and any organization(s) opposing the passage" of EFCA. The form lists 14 organizations, from anti-EFCA organizations like the Workforce Fairness Institute to trade groups that oppose it, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Roundtable.

A third passage asked whether other any trade association to which the fund managers belong has taken a position on the bill.

While the survey assures managers that it doesn't intend to impose "requirements or limitations" on their political activity, a cover letter from Teamsters union leaders tells another story: The leaders are concerned, according to a copy of the local's letter obtained by POLITICO, that Wall Street is "undermining the interests" of union retirees.

The letter, from the two top officials of Teamsters Local 507 in Cleveland, Albert Mixon and Carl Pecoraro, who are also trustees of the union's health, welfare and pension funds, says some pension fund managers "are undermining the interests" of the union:

Munroe said the letter from Cleveland Teamsters leaders that POLITICO obtained was part of an effort spanning the entire Change to Win federation, which includes SEIU and five other major unions. (A Change to Win spokeswoman didn't respond to questions about the campaign.)

Another labor official said the AFL-CIO, the largest labor federation, is set to ask its own pointed questions of money managers soon.

Munroe said the survey was inspired by the decision by the Financial Services Roundtable, a leading industry group, to lobby against the Free Choice Act. Another section of the questionnaire asks companies if they have any ties to a set of trade organizations and advocacy groups, including the Roundtable.

"We're happy to openly debate the merits of any issue," said a top lobbyist for the Roundtable, Scott Talbott. "What's not up for debate is our Constitutional right to petition our government.

The EFCA, which has so far failed to find the 60 votes it needs to clear cloture in the Senate, would allow unions to recruit workers by signing cards as an alternative to voting with a secret ballot. The bill could also force employers into binding arbitration in contract negotiations.

"In the coming weeks, we will be rolling out initiatives from shareholders, investment groups and businesses in support of the Employee Free Choice Act," said AFL spokesman Eddie Vale, who declined to discuss targeting Wall Street. "This issue isn't just about workers; it's about fixing our economy and growing the middle class."

Financial industry officials took a darker view of the survey. "The fact that union bosses would try and shake down financial institutions by asking that they disclose information" about the bill "is beyond outrageous," said an aide to one trade organization, who – like other industry officials rattled by the letters – refused to speak on the record. He also called it "troubling that Big Labor would use their pension plans as the bargaining chip."

Unions and other large institutions, like universities, have long selectively used board seats and investment positions to advance causes from shareholder rights to democracy in South Africa and human rights in Sudan. Less common is for the institutions to target the behavior of their own money managers.

So far, it's not clear than any of the unions have pulled their pension funds from firms supporting EFCA, or are close to doing so. But it's also clear the threat -- implied but not made explicit in the letters -- has gotten the attention of the firms, who fear that's the next step. So far, there's no sign of firms backing out of the card-check fight because of the survey.

Labor backers have nonetheless cheered the new tactic in the no-holds-barred fight for EFCA.

"It's entirely appropriate for the labor movement to say, basically, 'Look, if you are working to kill our No. 1 legislative priority, we're not going to help you make a buck by profiting from our investments, investments that come from the hard-earned money of union members,'" said Jonathan Tasini, the executive director of the pro-union Labor Research Association.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22895.html

Rick Santelli and the "Rant of the Year" THANK YOU RICK

Rick Santelli and the "Rant of the Year" THANK YOU RICK
An instant classic...rick captures the mood of the country

FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC CAUSED THE ECONOMY PROBLEM !

The Economy problem is NOT President Bush's fault !!! LET'S TELL THE DAMN TRUTH HERE !!!





















CONTRARY TO A VIEW POPULARIZED DURING THE 2008 presidential election season, the current economic crisis was not the result of deregulation.

The Bush administration made many mistakes, but deregulation was not one of them.

Not only was there no major deregulation passed during the past eight years, but the Bush administration and a Republican Congress approved the most sweeping financial-market regulation in decades.

The bipartisan Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in 2002 to prevent corporate fraud and restore investor confidence after the collapse of Enron and WorldCom. It failed to prevent the accounting fraud and influence-peddling scandals at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And even after those scandals were widely understood, regulators sent Fannie and Freddie back into the market to continue buying subprime loans, lending and borrowing with implied taxpayer backing.

Across the government, the Bush administration supported new regulations that added almost 1,000 pages a year to the Federal Register, nearly a record. If this is insufficient regulation, it's hard to imagine a scope that would be effective.

Powell of course was spot on. Sarbanes-Oxley was indeed a comprehensive and encompassing piece of legislation specifically designed to prevent a repeat of the tech bubble and Enron. Yet, as the financial crisis raged last fall, media members who wanted to blame the problem on Bush and deregulation conveniently forgot this sweeping bill.

But there's more:

Our present crisis began in the 1970s, during the Carter administration, with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act to stem bank redlining and liberalize lending in order to extend home ownership in lower-income communities. Then in the 1990s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development took a fateful step by getting the GSEs to accept subprime mortgages. With Fannie and Freddie easing credit requirements on loans they would purchase from lenders, banks could greatly increase lending to borrowers unqualified for conventional loans. In the name of extending affordable housing, this broadened the acceptability of risky loans throughout the financial system.

The risk lurking in the GSE portfolios was acknowledged in the Bush administration's first fiscal-year budget, released in April 2001. It stated that Fannie and Freddie were "a potential problem" because "financial trouble of a large GSE could cause strong repercussions in the financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity." Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan issued repeated warnings that the GSEs "placed the total financial system of the future at substantial risk." Such warnings went unheeded even after accounting scandals rocked Fannie and Freddie.

Yep. The Bush administration began warning of problems with Fannie and Freddie just three months into its first term, and continued doing so for years. But you wouldn't know that from how the press reported things last fall, would you?

However, what's done is done. The press wanted Obama to be president, and by dishonestly blaming Bush for the financial crisis, so-called journalists were able to paint John McCain as also being at fault thereby making it impossible for him to win.

Yet, Powell left us with a warning concerning this matter that is quite important given economic stimulus plans currently being discussed:

But the lesson should be clear that socializing failed businesses -- whether in housing, health care or in Detroit -- is not a long-term solution. Expanding government's intrusion into the private sector doesn't come without great risk. The renewing and self-correcting nature of the private sector is largely lost in the public sector, where accountability is impaired by obfuscation of responsibility, and where special interests benefit even when the public good is ill-served.

George Washington also warned against excessive partisanship, which distracts public councils and enfeebles public administration. Rather than blaming the party in power or the party formerly in power, the nation should stop living in denial of the mistakes of both parties.

Spreading failure across the entire economy risks turning a recession into a depression. Regulatory reform now must foster responsible behavior and financial accountability. Far better for our citizenry and businesses to have a strength and resourcefulness that comes from creativity, honesty and self-reliance than to have a growing dependence on a profligate government.

Powell touched on a lot of issues here that should be at the front of the current stimulus debate but sadly aren't.

In particular, the partisanship in the nation today prevents an honest assessment of the past thereby dooming us to repeat the same mistakes.

Take for example the Great Depression. For almost 80 years the left and their media minions have done everything within their power to blame all that era's ills on Herbert Hoover while crediting Franklin D. Roosevelt with the eventual economic recovery despite the former presiding over only two years of the Depression.

Yet, after eight years of unprecedented federal spending under Roosevelt, the unemployment rate was still a staggering 14.6 percent in 1940, and the Gross Domestic Product was still under its pre-Depression level.

Isn't this important, especially since our federal debt is already quite high?

Unfortunately, because of the partisanship, such can't be discussed. The left have so much time and money invested in Roosevelt supposedly being the greatest president of the 20th century that an honest assessment of what did and did not work back then is verboten.

But isn't that absurd? Assuming we really are on the verge of another Depression -- an assumption I don't necessarily agree with yet, mind you -- shouldn't we be examining everything we did before and during the last one in order to chart a more effective course this time?

The fact is the last Depression began in 1931 and despite all Roosevelt's good intentions didn't end until America entered World War II in 1941. Once the war ended, we went back into a very serious recession suggesting that nothing Roosevelt implemented had a lasting positive economic impact.

Isn't this relevant, especially given the Congressional Budget Office's report last week predicting current stimulus plans will actually hurt the economy in the long run?

Sadly, the answer is "No," for the left are so protective of Roosevelt's legacy that any analysis of his economic policies is totally unacceptable even as our nation grapples with solutions to our current financial problems.

Is this the way adults should behave? Is this really the best we can get from our elected officials?

Given the known failings and wastefulness of last year's TARP, wouldn't we be well-advised to halt all current stimulus discussions until a thorough and impartial analysis of previous plans -- INCLUDING those implemented by us during the '30s and by Japan during the '90s -- was accomplished thereby increasing the likelihood of success while reducing the chance of us making exactly the same mistakes?

If the answer is "No," the only conclusion is that Party, at this critical juncture in our nation's history, is indeed more important than policy, and partisanship is asphyxiating our capital.

George Washington must be rolling over in his grave.
~~~~~
The Culprit Is All of Us
By SCOTT S. POWELL

The government's meddling got us into this mess.


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CONTRARY TO A VIEW POPULARIZED DURING THE 2008 presidential election season, the current economic crisis was not the result of deregulation.

The Bush administration made many mistakes, but deregulation was not one of them.

Not only was there no major deregulation passed during the past eight years, but the Bush administration and a Republican Congress approved the most sweeping financial-market regulation in decades.

The bipartisan Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in 2002 to prevent corporate fraud and restore investor confidence after the collapse of Enron and WorldCom. It failed to prevent the accounting fraud and influence-peddling scandals at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And even after those scandals were widely understood, regulators sent Fannie and Freddie back into the market to continue buying subprime loans, lending and borrowing with implied taxpayer backing.

Across the government, the Bush administration supported new regulations that added almost 1,000 pages a year to the Federal Register, nearly a record. If this is insufficient regulation, it's hard to imagine a scope that would be effective.

We are in this mess largely because critical thought and moral judgment have been subordinated to the politicization of our economy, resulting in regulatory gaps and excessive controls of the wrong kind.

Government regulations should be limited to those that increase and protect transparency and competition, protect public and private property, promote individual responsibility and enforce equal opportunity under the law. Even if the right laws and regulations could be found, they would prove insufficient to protect freedom and prosperity.

The Foundation of Economics

In his farewell address, George Washington said that religion and morality are essential to sustain democracy in America. He might well have added that virtue is just as indispensable to its economy. When the captains of banking and finance and their congressional overseers fail in moral judgment, the results are disastrous for everyone. As we are now witnessing in the real-estate, stock- and bond-market dislocations, once trust is lost, markets freeze and long-standing relationships break down, resulting in illiquidity, irrational pricing and severe losses.

Today's problems have their roots in programs and financial instruments that shifted the locus of moral responsibility away from private individuals and institutions to wider circles that were understood to end with a government guarantee. Heads of the top banks and financial institutions could approve substandard home-mortgage underwriting -- prone to increased default -- because those loans could be securitized by Wall Street and sold off to investors or to government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), with no likely recourse to the financial institution of origin.

Our present crisis began in the 1970s, during the Carter administration, with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act to stem bank redlining and liberalize lending in order to extend home ownership in lower-income communities. Then in the 1990s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development took a fateful step by getting the GSEs to accept subprime mortgages. With Fannie and Freddie easing credit requirements on loans they would purchase from lenders, banks could greatly increase lending to borrowers unqualified for conventional loans. In the name of extending affordable housing, this broadened the acceptability of risky loans throughout the financial system.

No Surprise

The risk lurking in the GSE portfolios was acknowledged in the Bush administration's first fiscal-year budget, released in April 2001. It stated that Fannie and Freddie were "a potential problem" because "financial trouble of a large GSE could cause strong repercussions in the financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity." Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan issued repeated warnings that the GSEs "placed the total financial system of the future at substantial risk." Such warnings went unheeded even after accounting scandals rocked Fannie and Freddie.

The collapse and government seizure of Fannie and Freddie in September 2008 ended the experiment in partial socialization of the U.S. housing sector. Before we try complete concentration of federal financial power, we should understand that power and political corruption abrogated moral judgment on every level.

The poor and middle class were encouraged to live beyond their means and buy houses they couldn't afford; speculators were lured into excessive risk-taking; banks were rewarded for lowering their loan standards; and Wall Street found new windfall profits from securitizing and reselling bad loans in bulk. With the support of regulators, credit-rating agencies provided cover for the whole charade.

Spreading Failure

There is plenty of blame to go around on both sides of the political aisle. But the lesson should be clear that socializing failed businesses -- whether in housing, health care or in Detroit -- is not a long-term solution. Expanding government's intrusion into the private sector doesn't come without great risk. The renewing and self-correcting nature of the private sector is largely lost in the public sector, where accountability is impaired by obfuscation of responsibility, and where special interests benefit even when the public good is ill-served.

George Washington also warned against excessive partisanship, which distracts public councils and enfeebles public administration. Rather than blaming the party in power or the party formerly in power, the nation should stop living in denial of the mistakes of both parties.

Spreading failure across the entire economy risks turning a recession into a depression. Regulatory reform now must foster responsible behavior and financial accountability. Far better for our citizenry and businesses to have a strength and resourcefulness that comes from creativity, honesty and self-reliance than to have a growing dependence on a profligate government.