Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind (15 page)

The Big Daddy of the union-government partnership is the highly political SEIU, whose members wear purple T-shirts at rallies to identify themselves. The SEIU’s former president Andy Stern “said, ‘we believe in the power of persuasion, and if that doesn’t work, we believe in the persuasion of power,’ ” according to political strategist Pat Caddell. The persuasion of power describes the SEIU’s electioneering strategy, too. Caddell added, “Those guys are thugs, the SEIU.”
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He may call them thugs, but then they would be thugs with an awfully big checkbook.

SEIU is part of America Votes (AV), a coalition of labor unions and leftist organizations formed by a former SEIU official. America Votes was established as an umbrella organization to coordinate the get-out-the-vote effort among leftist organizations and labor unions and prevent duplication of effort. The organization claims to have built a “permanent advocacy and campaign infrastructure” for Progressive issues.
⁶²
Other America Votes members included the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN), the AFL-CIO, AFSCME,
the AFT, and the NEA. America Votes is just another organization that is part of the so-called Shadow Democrat Party, the coalition of labor unions, Hollywood, big donors, and leftist organizations that have been called the power behind the Democrat Party.
⁶³

The SEIU is just one union, but it conducts a huge amount of political activity. During the 2008 election season, the SEIU contacted approximately 4.5 million voters directly, especially in the top ten battleground states—many of which went for Obama by slim margins. According to the union, 88 percent of SEIU activities were person-to-person contact, comprising 40 percent of all voter contact in Indiana and 20 percent in Virginia, “exceeding even that of the campaigns and party committees.”
⁶⁴

As the SEIU gloats, “From the top of the ticket on down, SEIU members helped win 82 percent of the critical races and ballot measures we targeted. Most importantly, Barack Obama won 17 of the 20 states that SEIU targeted.”
⁶⁵
The SEIU’s impact in the Obama campaign perfectly illustrates how important union political support can be to candidates willing to fully embrace the unions’ agenda.

In alleged intimidation campaigns against companies (discussed in
chapter 2
) and even against other unions, the SEIU seems to be trying to stake out its claim to title of “bad boys” of the union movement. In April 2008, the SEIU allegedly came to bust up a labor union conference at which a rival union official was scheduled to speak and caught a lot of criticism even from labor movement leaders. John Sweeney, the President of the AFL-CIO, called the incident a “violent attack orchestrated by SEIU at the Labor Notes conference in Detroit,” and chided that “No union should understand the corrosive effect of violence better than SEIU.”
⁶⁶
Hundreds of SEIU representatives came by the busload allegedly for the purpose of intimidating rank-and-file members of other unions at “progressive union gathering.” These SEIU representatives allegedly stormed into the conference and precipitated a heated scuffle with conference goers, which resulted in at least one person going to the hospital.
⁶⁷

The reason for the fight? A rival union official that was battling the
SEIU to organize a group of hospital workers in Ohio was scheduled to speak at the conference. In other words, a fight over organizing workers and new union dues seems to have precipitated the SEIU’s alleged violence and intimidation tactics. The rival official head called the SEIU “the new poster child for bad union behavior” and said that “compared with the corrupt Teamsters of old, the ‘S.E.I.U. makes them look like choirboys,’ ” according to the
New York Times
.
⁶⁸

Michelle Malkin covered the story and wrote, “Team Obama and the Democrats—who together received more than $60 million in SEIU independent expenditure funds—remain mum about SEIU thuggery.”
⁶⁹
Malkin reminds us: “Obama, after all, promised the SEIU on the campaign trail: ‘We look after each other!’ ” And they certainly do.

Union money doesn’t just push forward pro-labor politicians—it advances liberal politicians that may take many views that are out of step with the views of the rest of America. Consider gun owners’ rights.

While many union members all across our nation support gun owners’ rights and the National Rifle Association—union members are even on the NRA’s board—union money flows exclusively to anti–Second Amendment candidates and groups.
⁷⁰
The contrast between union members’ views on guns and union officials’ views on guns is so extreme that the unions developed special advertising to persuade pro-gun union members to support the union’s political candidates—specifically, Barack Obama. One union ad to union members read, “Barack Obama
won’t
take away your gun; but John McCain
will
take away your union.”
⁷¹

Of course, it was a little hard to get some pro-gun union members into the Obama camp after Obama had proclaimed during his campaign in small Pennsylvania towns, “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
⁷²
Many pro-gun union members may have identified more with these small-town Pennsylvanians than with President Obama, which may explain why 39 percent of union households voted for John McCain while their unions endorsed Obama.
⁷³

Not surprisingly, Obama is fulfilling the dreams of the anti-gun
crowd; he’s advocated gun control and appointed numerous anti-gun federal judges. And he has more planned for a second term. He recently told an anti-gun activist, “I just want you to know that we are working on [gun control]. We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”
⁷⁴

The AFL-CIO has staked out a series of anti-gun positions on legislation.
⁷⁵
The teachers unions are also opposed to gun ownership; they explain their anti-gun positions in terms of curbing school violence. But the AFT, for example, is a member of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence—a group that goes much further than fighting gun violence, instead focusing on wholesale banning of manufacture, importation, sale, transfer, ownership, and possession of handguns.

On the gun issue and many others, government employee unions don’t care about the opinions of their members. Of the twenty congressional politicians most supported by labor union money in 2010, fourteen received a D or an F rating from the NRA, which the NRA reserves for politicians with spectacularly bad congressional voting records on Second Amendment issues. The unions are full-scale behind the anti-gun agenda, especially when the anti-gun politicians happen to be the Democrats that can best guarantee them their cash flow.

It makes good political sense for government employee unions to support their leftist allies, but it’s also clear that when unions spend to get their favored politicians elected, they undercut the beliefs of their own membership at the same time. And for the rest of us, even if you don’t mind the growth of government and goodies that pro-union politicians deliver to government employee unions, you may mind how these same politicians vote on issues of importance to you personally.

The financial disclosure of government employee unions is intentionally difficult to penetrate and unenlightening. Even if union members knew where their dues money was going, they have almost no rights to ask that their dues not go for political spending. Unions can even force members to pay for additional spending through assessments beyond even their regular dues. Forced dues make this crony system of political spending on Democrat politicians and leftist causes possible, leaving the taxpayer unrepresented in the halls of power.

The game of monetary musical chairs continues on a daily basis. When the music stops, the only people left without chairs are the taxpayers, who have to foot the bill for the growth of government. The people sitting in the chairs are the people who really matter in the Democrat Party—the Shadowbosses, liberal organizations, the Democrat Party officials and the candidates themselves—all funded on the backs of American workers and taxpayers.

As we have seen, the chief goal of the Shadowbosses when it comes to national politics is keeping their political allies—almost always Democrats—in office. The unions have many friends, but they have never had a better ally in the White House than President Obama. As you’ll see next, the unions paid up to get Obama into the White House, and President Obama paid them back many times over once he took the reins of power.

T
HE Shadowbosses largely run our political system. They pull the strings. But in 2008, they had the chance of a union lifetime: the opportunity to place a full-blown union advocate in the White House. One of their very own. A man who’d worked in Big Labor, drank the Big Labor Kool-Aid, and battled for Big Labor.

His name was Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is the most union-connected president in the history of the country, a partner of and true believer in the labor movement. From card check to closed-door meetings in which health-care policy was run past former Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president Andy Stern and other Shadowbosses, union connections define Obama’s presidency. He has stacked his staff and advisors with Chicago cronies—almost all of whom also have union connections. And the unions are betting that a second Obama term will bring them an even bigger payoff. After all, with a lame duck president who isn’t worried about reelection, the sky’s the limit.

The President doesn’t mince words when it comes to his support of labor unions. And the unions support President Obama right back. The unions reportedly spent from $300 to $450 million to elect Obama in 2008, and it seems to have been well worth their investment.
¹
For the unions, Obama’s presidency is an opportunity for a partner in the White House and “change” that doesn’t come around too often.

In 2007, Obama spoke to the SEIU. “I’ve got a history with this union,” he said. “When I was a young organizer, I had just moved to Chicago. I started with working with SEIU Local 880, home
health-care workers, to make sure that they were registered to vote.” He continued, “I will judge my first term as president based on the fact of whether we have delivered the kind of health care that every American deserves and that our system can afford. And I’m not going to be able to do it on my own, so I hope that the SEIU will partner in that process.”
²
The SEIU and every other government employee union have been more than happy to partner with the President in working toward a new “progressive” America that both the President and the unions believe in.

The SEIU is perhaps Obama’s closest labor union connection—and no wonder, since, according to Andy Stern, the SEIU sent out one hundred thousand “volunteers” to help Obama during the campaign in 2008 and spent $60 million toward getting Obama elected.
³
Several SEIU state councils were among the first labor unions to endorse Senator Obama for President in January 2008, when both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were still strong contenders.
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And Stern has no complaints. “We get heard,” he confirmed.
⁵
Stern celebrated Obama’s first hundred days in office with a video message to SEIU members, during which he said, “SEIU is in the field, it’s in the White House, it’s in the administration!”
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Obama’s relationships with the entire union movement go deep. As one who had worked inside the labor movement himself, Obama was able to make powerful pitches to the unions to work for his election. When Obama addressed the AFL-CIO, the federation of labor unions, in 2008, he promised his full support for the federation’s agenda: “I know the AFL-CIO is tired of playing defense,” he said. “We’re ready to play some offense… We’re ready to play offense for organized labor. It’s
time we had a President who didn’t choke saying the word
union
.”
⁷
President Obama certainly doesn’t choke on the word
union
. In fact, his administration is more likely to choke those who choke on the word
union
.