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Obama picks
union flunky as Labor Secretary.
"Right-to-work" employees will not get a fair shake
from the new Obama Department of Labor.
Fifth
term Congresswoman Hilda Solis [D-CA], the daughter of Mexican
and Nicaraguan immigrant parents, a staunch supporter of forced union
membership, became President-elect Barack Hussein Obama's pick
for Secretary of Labor. Solis' Mexican father was a shop steward
for the Teamsters Union in Mexico, and her mother was an assembly line
worker in a Nicaraguan tire plant, and a activist member of the Rubber
Workers Union.
US labor unions,
which contributed heavily to Obama, the Democratic National
Committee and, in particular, Congresswoman Solis this year,
expect Solis to be a forceful advocate for union advocacy in right-to-work
Statesparticularly those where automobiles are manufactured. Union
lobbyists who shoveled millions of dollars at the Obama Campaign
(and into Solis' fifth campaign) expect the Democratic-controlled
Congress, the Obama Administration, and the new Secretary of Labor,
to push for federal legislation that would force businesses in right-to-work
States to recognize union representation when union recruiters get signed
union cards from 50.1% of the company's eligible employees instead of
waiting for secret-ballot elections (which would solve a lot of problems
for unions, which claim that plant managers intimidate employees into
rejecting unions in secret ballot elections. In reality, once they get
into the voting booth, employees, who are have been coerced and intimidated
by union representatives, are able to vote their own conscious and reject
the unions they do not want)
As a US Senator,
Obama co-sponsored an AFL-CIO crafted piece of legislation, HR
800, S.1041, the Employee Free-Choice Act which would have amended
the National Labor Relations Act by eliminating free-choice for
employees and making is easier to unions to unionize businesses. HR 800
and S1041 would have given the unions what they now expect Obama
and Labor Secretary Solis to deliver. Solis is committed
to its enactment.
When the
legislation was offered in 2007, Solis advocated on its behalf:
"Unions are vital tot he health and strength of our communities,"
she said, "In this day and age when the number of women and new
immigrants is increasing in the work force, it is important that they
become a part of the American fabric and one of the ways s to be a member
of a union." In reality, if new immigrants want to become a part
of the American fabric, they need to apply for, and become, citizens of
the United States. In the view of Solis, and many in the Hispanic
and Asian communities who are here illegally, union membership protects
them from the long arm of Immigration Control and Enforcement [ICE].
And, that has pretty much been reality.
When Obama
picked Solis, Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees
International Union [SEIU] (which represents over 2 million union
federal and State employees, as well as hundreds of thousands of healthcare
and property services employees across the country) praised Obama's
pick, saying that "...[f]or Representative Solis, serving
as Secretary of Labor will not just be a job, but the culmination of a
lifetime of action serving as the voice for people who work...[She is
the] daughter of two immigrant workers and union members...She will be
a Secretary of Labor [that] working men and women can finally count on
to stand up and fight for them."
AFL-CIO President
John Sweeney also praised Solis, saying: "We are
confident that she will return to the Labor Department one of its core
missionsto defend workers' rights. She's proven to be a passionate
leader and advocate for all working families.. In fact, she's voted with
working men and women 97% of the time." What Sweeney really
meant was that Solis and her new boss were the union's best chance
to cram forced union membership down the throats of right-to-work US workers
without letting them vote on whether or not they actually want to join
the union.
Solis
also comes with the Sierra Club stamp-of-approval as a greenie.
Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club endorsed
her appointment by saying: "We can think of no better person to
help President-elect Obama implement his plans for an economic recovery
fueled by the creation of millions of new green jobs." Solis
serves on the board of their pro-union American Rights at Work which advocates
mandatory union membership for all employed workers
In point of
fact, most of the US factory jobs lost in the initial phase of NAFTA were
lost because of the death grip that the labor unions have over industry
largely because of lopsided laws that favor the unions against industry.
In 1935 the Franklin D. Roosevelt socialist New Deal Congress
passed the National Industrial Recovery Act that would [a] force
industry to work without profit until FDR decreed the "Hoover
national emergency" to have ended; [b] created the minimum wage,
and [c] gave labor the right to collective bargaining with the White House
acting as the arbitrator for industry to negotiate "fair labor deals"
with the unions.
Solis
has backed every pro-union measure that has been introduced in Congress
since she won California's 32nd Congressional seat in 2000. Because Big
Labor, which signed onto NAFTA because they would be given the right to
unionize the third world. Only, they discovered, the industrialists in
the emerging economies had no intention of giving the unions collective
bargaining rights, believing that was what gave labor the upper hand in
the United States. Industry was forced to negotiate with labor but labor
was under no obligation to sit down with industry. And government negotiators
and the muscle to force industry to accept labor's terms.
Solis
was opposed to the Central American Free Trade Agreement promoted
by President George W. Bush. She voted against CAFTA, and correctly
told her constituents that it would further erode jobs in the United States
as even more union factories shed their collective bargaining rights like
a suit of clothes that no longer fit, and continued the never-ending job
exodus across the Rio Grande. But now, the factories were heading to Belize,
Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Solis
also staunchly opposed giving Bush "fast track" trade
negotiating authority because it would also harm the unions. She is popular
with the Hispanic and Asian low working class voters in the 32nd Congressional
District, and she is popular with the labor bosses
It's fair
to say that Solislike her soon-to-be boss in the Obama
White Houseis solidly ingratiated to Big Labor. Seventy percent
of her corporate contributions came from Labor. In real dollars, that's
$785,446.00or a lot of quid pro quos going to Big Labor after the
Obama inauguration when labor will find the doors to both the Labor
Office and the Oval Office open wide to their lobbyists.
Mark Mix,
president of the National Right to Work Committee was alarmed by
Obama's pick since the President-elect is sending a clear message
that he is committed to enacting card-check legislation that will negate
the need for secret ballot union elections by sanctioning representation
when union organizers successfully strong-arm 50.1% of the employees of
any company into signing enrollment cards by promising company employees
a big fat raise if they joined the union and assuring them that their
bosses will no longer be able to fire them. Mix noted that "...Solis
is a die-hard forced-union activist who apparently believes that all workers
should be gathered into union collectiveswhether they like it or
not."
Jim Bruite,
a former Republican leader in the California Senate said that "...business
groups will need to be very, very well prepared when they go and see her
because, in moving Obama's agenda forward, she won't be taking any prisoners."
Business groups need to be forewarned. When they meet with the new
Secretary of Labor, they will be an enemy groundand they will be
viewed as the enemy.
Solis,
a natural citizen of the United States, was born of immigrant parents
in Los Angeles on Oct. 20, 1951. She was the third of seven siblings.
She was also the first member of her family to attend college. Her education,
which ultimately netted her a Master's Degree in Political Science, was
funded by US government grants and her own sweat equity. Upon graduation
from California State Polytec University with BA in Political Science,
Solis secured a berth in the Carter Administration's newly-formed
Office for Hispanic Affairs. Carter advisors pointed out
to the president early-on that with the flood of immigrantsboth
legal and illegalHispanics were a rapidly growing constituency.
The Office of Hispanic Affairs was created in September, 1979.
Interestingly, there is an Office for Black Affairs, Women's Affairs,
Jewish Affairs, Culturally Diverse Affairs, Ethnic Affairs and an Office
on Aging to address the "affairs" of the elderly, but strangely,
there is no office for White Affairs or Caucasian Affairs of White Male
Affairs since the middle class conservative white male has now achieved
very distinct minority status in the United States. The reason there is
no "office" to address the concerns of the middle class white
taxpayer of America is twofold. First, government couldn't care less what
middle class whites think about anything, and second, the far left is
only concerned with their own constituency, who are not white malesparticularly
not conservative white males. The same is true about government
holidays or days of "special recognition." We now have holidays
or days of "social recognition" for every minority imaginable,
but there is no special social recognition for whiteswhich is now
a well-established global ethnic minority.
Obama's
cabinet lineup was completed on Friday with the appointments of Solis
and 7th term Catholic Arab-American Congressman Ray LaHood [R-IL]
(who has a "zero" conservative rating from the Club of
Growth) as Secretary of Transportation. Obama has tried
to portray his cabinet choices, from Sen. Hillary Clinton [D-NY]
as his choice for the State Department to Gov. Janet Napolitano
[D-AZ], his choice for Homeland Security as moderates when all of them
were selected to further the agenda of the far left. Napolitano
has been touted by the media as "strong on border security"
since Nov. 28, 2005 when she declared a state of emergency in Arizona
and demanded that the Bush-43 Administration cover the $1.5 million
she was spending to secure Arizona's four border counties by paying for
dozens of new State law enforcement officers to combat border-related
crime. But, in the final analysis, she remains an advocate of open borders
and a steady stream of illegals from Mexico. She will become the nation's
advocate for border security.
Napolitano's
media antics on border security were pure politics. Like all far left
Democrats in the election of 2008, Napolitano has refused to support
the border fence that was approved by Congress in 2006 since the far left
considers all Hispanicsboth illegal and illegalas constituents.
Despite increasing momentum in Washington to build the 50' fence along
the southern border of the United States, Napolitano said the border
fence was not well thought out, suggesting that it "...was too
expensive, [would] take too long to construct, and would be ineffective
once completed." She concluded: "Show me a 50-foot wall
and I'll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border That's the way the border
works." Napolitano prefers the virtual fence that utilizes
unmanned aerial drones, technology sensors that alert the Border Patrol
when people cross (and who will be long gone when law enforcement officials
arrive), and security cameras that record the crossings with just as effective
apprehension rates as motion sensors.
Obama
picked a former lobbyist in former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack [D-IO]
for Agriculture; Gov. Bill Richardson [D-NM] for Commerce; Bush
Defense Secretary Robert Gates for Defense (so he can continue
to blame Iraq and Afghanistan on Bush-43 policies long after Dubya
returns to Texas; Chicago School Superintendent Arne Duncan for
Education; green energy guru Steven Chu for Energy; former Sen.
Tom Daschle [D-SD] who lost his Senate seat to John Thune
[R-SD] in 2004 became Obama's pick for Health and Human Services;
and Shaun Donovan for HUD. Donovan, a former Clinton
HUD official is probably Obama's best cabinet pick. He predicted
the subprime meltdown and actually has new approaches to create affordable
housing. For Interior, Obama picked Sen Ken Salazar [D-CO]
even though environmentalists wanted Congressman Raul Grijavala
[D-AZ]. His pick for Attorney General is Eric Holder, a former
Clinton Assistant AG with the type of "Chicago ties"
that make Obama feel comfortable. For Treasury, Obama picked
NY Fed chief Tim Geither; and for the Dept. of Veterans Affairs,
he picked retired Asian-American Army Gen. Eric Shinseki who was
fired by the Bush-43 Administration.
Shinseki is the army commander who bought a ton of black berets
from China because he thought that soldiers who couldn't qualify as Green
Berets should at least have a black ones. Obama's
cabinet will look a lot like Bill Clintonwith a peanut twist.
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