Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Union Pawn

Something of a related item to the previous post which discussed the very dangerous notion that justice should not be blind to a person's wealth, race or gender.

Here we have an example of the President of the United States using his power to favour a certain segment of society. Not only has he strong-armed investors into losing out on what was legally due to them in favour of the auto-workers union, he is now withholding funds from California- again, so that union workers can benefit.

In a show of what can only be described as Brass Balls, yesterday President Obama jerked on the stimulus money, setting the hook, which will now allow him to control the state’s budget. Specifically, $74 million dollar budget cuts to the pay of unionized home healthcare workers.

In other words, Obama is doing the same thing to California that he is doing to the auto and banking industries. Do what we want, because we gave you money. You took money, therefore we own you. The citizens of California are unimportant. The projects that would be paid for with the $7 billion, also not important. The taxpayers, many yet to be born, that are paying for the stimulus cash, definitely not important. The home health care union workers, who I’m sure would rather take a pay cut than lose their jobs, they’re important.

As Atlas Shrugs reported, SEIU actually spent $18 million dollars campaigning for Barack Obama. (UPDATE- SEIU now puts the figure at more than $60 million dollars.)

The unions own Obama. It's that simple. Not only has he taken a vast sum of money from one group and given it to another but he threatened to abuse the power of his office to get his way.

I can only imagine the 24/7 screeching if Bush had intervened in private business and then a state budget to demand that a group which strongly supported him received preferential treatment. Especially in such a manner as this.

One last thought- it's clear from all economic indicators that the stimulus has failed in a dramatic way. Unemployment, for example, is worse now that it would have been had the stimulus bill not been passed.

So, where are the commentators in the MSM blasting the government for a trillion dollar plus deficit with more to come? Where are the Republicans- who voted against the stimulus- saying, "I told you so"? Why aren't they kicking up a huge fuss about this? The reason we were told the bill had to pass before anyone had even read it was so that it could get to work straight away and save jobs- well, here we are and unemployment is getting worse, the economy isn't growing and the deficit is getting bigger and bigger.

Come on, GOP- is it so hard to explain why Obama, Reid and Pelosi got it so wrong at such colossal expense??

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