Well, I wonder.
Via Michelle Malkin, who has been indefatigable on this subject:
Meet Eddie York. He was a workingman whose story will never scroll across Obama’s teleprompter. A nonunion contractor who operated heavy equipment, York was shot to death during a strike called by the United Mine Workers 17 years ago. Workmates who tried to come to his rescue were beaten in an ensuing melee. The head of the UMW spearheading the wave of strikes at that time? Richard Trumka. Responding to concerns about violence, he shrugged to the Virginian-Pilot in September 1993: “I’m saying if you strike a match and you put your finger in it, you’re likely to get burned.” Incendiary rhetoric, anyone?
A federal jury convicted one of Trumka’s UMW captains on conspiracy and weapons charges in York’s death. According to the Washington, D.C.-based National Legal and Policy Center, which tracks Big Labor abuse, Trumka’s legal team quickly settled a $27 million wrongful death suit filed by York’s widow just days after a judge admitted evidence in the criminal trial. An investigative report by Reader’s Digest disclosed that Trumka “did not publicly discipline or reprimand a single striker present when York was killed. In fact, all eight were helped out financially by the local.”
In Illinois, Trumka told UMW members to “kick the shit out of every last” worker who crossed his picket lines, according to the Nashville (Ill.) News. And as the National Right to Work Foundation (pdf), the leading anti-forced unionism organization in the country, pointed out, other UMW coalfield strikes resulted in what one judge determined were “violent activities … organized, orchestrated and encouraged by the leadership of this union.”
Trumka washed off the figurative bloodstains and moved up the ranks. As AFL-CIO secretary, he notoriously refused to testify in a sordid 1999 embezzlement trial involving his labor boss brethren at the Teamsters Union. No surprise. Thugs of a feather: Trumka’s violence-promoting record echoes the riotous Teamsters strikes dating back to the 1950s, when the union organized taxicab companies to target workers with gas bombs, bottles and fists.
And now, Trumka is spearheading a Democratic Party get-out-the-vote campaign by far-left groups — publicized in the revolutionary Marxist People’s World — to “energize an army of tens of thousands who will return to their neighborhoods, churches, schools and voting booths to prevent a Republican takeover of Congress in November and begin building a new permanent coalition to fight for a progressive agenda.”
Take those as literal fighting words. The bloody consequences of compulsory unionism cannot be ignored.
Also, according to the FBI, “four of the last eight Teamsters presidents have been criminally indicted and since FY 2001, racketeering investigations have yielded more than 2,000 indictments and awarded more than $3 billion in fines and restitution. In past union elections, Hoffa’s team was caught laundering union funds for electioneering and for campaign polling on dues-payers’ dime.”
(Link)
And here’s more:
AFSCME, UFCW, and SEIU corner Republican Congressman and shout: “Fuck you!” “Shame!”
Union thugs in front of Verizon Vice President Bill Foshay’s private home yelling: “We’re here to fight, Bill!”
Union thug to Jewish guy: “Bad Jew!”
Union thug to Fox News reporter: “I hate you because it makes me feel good.”
Union thug in Ohio: “The tea party is a bunch of dick-sucking corporate butt-lickers who want to crush the working people of this country…. You’re fucking hypocrites.”
And in Denver, racist SEIU supporters taunt gay black entrepreneur Leland Robinson, who had the nerve to (correctly) criticize teacher’s unions at a Capitol rally: “Get behind that fence where you belong! Do you have any children? That you claim?”
Yes, poor misunderstood teamsters indeed.
You missed one, dated 9/8/2011, “Unionized Longshoreman Revolt: Guards Held Hostage, Reports of Strike” click-click, as Ray is fond of saying, my name.
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I was forced to join a union once, many years ago, for a short time, by the same thugs that threatened my mom when I was a kid and we escorted her over the line with our 22s.
Since then, I have and still do work my ass off. According to these thugs, though, I’m not a “working man” because I’m not a unionized thug.
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Explicatives deleted.
I was a union Ironworker for 3 years. Two of those three years was an apprenticeship requiring 2 weekends a month of instruction where violence in opposition to non union entities was put in a favorable light but never really stated blatantly in black and white.
In less words it was made clear how scabs were to be treated.
And yours truly, ignorant as he was back in the day bought into it.
Looking back theres no doubt the union had the company “Fontana Steel” by the balls as some conditions meeting special pay were outrageous. Cases of rain or driving 1/4 mile outside your residence perimeter entitled you to ridiculous pay hikes of 50 to 100%
If an apprentice had to read a blue print (journeymans job) for a few seconds he received a whole days pay at journeyman rates.
Its not hard at all to see how this force effects prices in the market. You’d have to be an idiot not to notice.
In all fairness I can see to a certain extent why Ironworkers need more protection than most professions.
It is the most dangerous construction work there is with the highest mortality and injury rate that somehow doesnt rank next to maids changing sheets.
Unless its the sheets of Dominic Strauss Kahn.
Follow-up: the story above broke here before it did in the national media on O’Reilly’s show Friday night. So far, the Democrat media complex (NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, etc.) is blacking out this story.
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One need only ask how the Democrat media complex would be reacting if some Tea Party thugs took hostages – I am unaware of a single Tea Party thug BTW – to observe proof that the Democrat media complex is just that: a corrupt lying propaganda organ of the Democrat Party. All stories are through the lens of how to advance Democrat interests, commonly referred to as “progress” or “progressivism”, and many of those stories are activism, i.e. trumped up to drive home their lies.
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Each union holds a Democrat-endorsed monopoly on a specific commodity: a labor force. If you or I held a monopoly on a commodity, Democrats would call us all sorts of names and come down on us with the full force of all levels of government, including jack-booted thugs. Ask Gibson Guitars about that. They need the monopoly to exclude competition.
Or Boeing, trying to compete by opening a plant beyond the reach of the union’s monopoly.
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I agree, Micky, there has to be a way to protect workers, and I think there are times when collective bargaining makes sense. But there has to be balance, and the problem is Democrats, and their union thug bosses, are liars. They do not negotiate in good faith, they lie and engage in thuggish tactics, and they gladly ride the industries that pay them into the ground. Cite GM and Chrysler. Cite the Torpedo and the U.S.A.
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I had a couple specific Google searches to back that up, but now that the longshoremen story has broken, that’s always at the top. I’ll summarize. Unions here call Tea Party and Republicans hostage-takers, but there are no instances of it actually happening. Tweak your search, and you find that unions use physical hostage taking all the time, all over the world, it just had not happened here – until now. Get used to it, no way Holder is going to act on it.
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Guess I’m what those kind and caring folks call a son of a bitch.
So, who is the aggressor in this war we find ourselves in? I assert it is the Democrats, their media complex, and their union money laundries.
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It is they who call it a war: Torpedo wants to “punish our enemies”, the union openly declares “we are your army”, and they are inciting hate against any who do not support their policies of tax and spend, power and control, creation of the liberal dream of a Spartan Utopia, where we are their helots.
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I think it safe to summarize Ray’s one request of government in three words: “Leave Us Alone”. Hm. Does not sound aggressive to me.
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Ah, but the Democrats, they want to control and dictate every aspect of our lives:
Force our children into their indoctrination centers (a.k.a. public schools). Union monopoly on the labor force, virtually all Democrats.
Force us to conform to their rationing of our health care goods and services.
Force us account for our incomes so they can confiscate it.
Force us to drive the kind of cars they want us to drive, how fast, what economy.
Oh, they can rationalize all these things with their lies of good intentions, vitriolic attacks if you don’t go along.
But these are still acts of aggression! They get up, every day, looking for what they are going to limit, regulate, restrict, confiscate, and corrupt. Every day.
The reason they do not defend their actions is because they are on offense. All the time. They want more money, more power, more control.
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So, if I seem offended by the incessant aggression of Democrats, it is because they offend me by their constant state of aggressive offense designed to give them totalitarian control at the loss of Ray’s freedom.
Yeah, dont get me wrong, I despise unions for the most part and have traced their violent origins as far back as the original coal miners where the term “redneck” first originated.
Rednecks were actually black coal workers wearing red bandannas around their necks signifying their loyalty to violent opposition of non union labor.
Its the typical left fighting the market of free ideas in order to bolster social justices that apply only to their society.
Seems its just a matter of time as more and more unions are collapsing and less people are joining unions these days. Most people are getting hip to the proxy election machine that actually has no interest in workers rights but rather a totally collectivist society
As someone who grew up in the bowels of North Carolina, I should point out that the term “redneck” predates the the coal miners’ usage of it.
“Redneck” originally referred to what it sounds like it refers to: the sunburned necks of farmers.
But you’re right about the union folks later using the term and wearing red bandannas around their necks.
“The South Will Rise Again!” (Just no time soon.)
Yeah Nick, this is true.
The humor I focused on so poorly was that some of our oldest known rednecks were actually black men and other races within those unions. Who-da thunk ?
Nick, I clicked through to your photo, and to be honest I almost didn’t recognize you without your clothes on.
Ouch!
No doubt, yo!
Ever since I cut back to six bags of pork rinds a day, the weight’s just been falling off me!
The Gerbil hut next to the crapper is a nice touch
It’s a raccoon trap, dipshit.
Yeah, I likes my Raccoon meat too
A bag of barbecue raccoon jerky, a 1983 Radio Shack cordless phone and a quiet, private place to take a dump are all a man needs in life.
Although Keywork, (Raccoon war hero friend of mine running for president)might have adverse reaction to this.
I dont know about the phone but its safe to say some of our most important decision in history have been made during the solitude crap