Only In The Obama Economy: Hostess Going Out of Business, 18,500 Workers To Be Laid Off

Remember it's Democrats who wholly support oft-corrupt unions. But its higher taxes, more regulations, less jobs, less freedom, more scandals and more "rights" for social liberals that American voted for when they decided to re-elect Barack Obama as President.  

RELATED: Twinkies – and 18000 jobs – fall victim to union-management dispute; Update: Teamsters throw bakers union under the bus?

Politiks As Usual: 7/2/12

Report: Roberts Switched His Vote On The Mandate

Congress OKs Highway Funds-Student Loan Bill 

Minnesota Reverend Loses Church Over Support Of Same-Sex Church

Why Roberts Deserves Conservative Scorn

George Will Argues Obamacare Ruling Was Victory For Conservatives

Racial Politics Thicker Than Justice

Candy Crowley Calls Out President Obama For Executive Privilege Hypocrisy On Fast & Furious

How Liberals Become Cover Girls in the Capitalist System They Oppose

CNN Promotes Stripper’s Claim that Catholic Church 'Dirtier Than What Goes on in Strip Clubs'

Romney-Trashing Reporter Joe Williams Done at Politico

Say Thanks To Stockton 

5 Reasons The Supreme Court’s Obamacare Ruling Helps the GOP

5 Reasons For Katie Holmes And Tom Cruise's Divorce According To Twitter

Phoenix Labor Union Targets Former Trustee Who Questioned How Taxpayer Money is Spent

These are the kind of thugs the Obama administration and the Left always protect, but fail to toe the line and you get results like these:

Natasha Nimer had a simple question: As a trustee in a local labor union representing City of Phoenix employees, did she have a duty to check the books of a taxpayer-funded insurance account it managed?


So she asked the executive board of AFSCME Local 2960. The response was an emphatic “no.”


She dropped the matter and thought it would end there.


She was wrong.


In the months that followed, union officials tried to strip Nimer of her duties as a trustee and steward. They tried twice to force her out of AFSCME, only to have the international headquarters order her reinstated.


Eventually union executives went after Nimer’s job as a civilian employee in the Phoenix Fire Department. They demanded her city phone records, personal and work-related emails, disciplinary files and performance evaluations; even a list of all of the Web sites she had visited. They wanted her computers seized and the hard drives searched for evidence she was doing something wrong.


The insurance fund Nimer asked about is one of many taxpayer-funded benefits worth millions of dollars that Phoenix provides to the seven labor unions that represent city workers with no accountability. The salaries of top union officials are paid by taxpayers. So are other cash benefits paid directly to the unions. Yet the city does not audit union accounts or require union officials to document how the time and money is spent.


As a trustee in AFSCME 2960, it was Nimer’s responsibility to monitor union spending. But she says her attempts to do so only led to retaliation from union officials.


Nimer eventually quit the union, saying she “felt beat down” by the board’s bullying.


Unions are supposed to protect workers. But Nimer says her battle with AFSCME 2960 shows they can also turn against their own members who challenge the union’s power or question its finances, even to the point of interfering with the worker’s job.


“I felt like I was being attacked,” Nimer said of her nine-month ordeal. “I just felt like every day was a fight. I felt I’ve worked really hard for this union, and now I’m being beat down and attacked because I raised a question. I put up with it because I care about people, I care about the membership. I care about the union. To have it turned around, it really hurt a lot.”


Nancy Gray, the former president of Local 2960, said there was no attempt to retaliate against Nimer for asking about the insurance account, something that she had a right to do under the AFSCME International constitution. What triggered the attempts to expel Nimer from the union were subsequent statements she made to fellow members, questioning whether money in the accounts was being misspent and whether union officials were paying taxes on money they received for managing the fund, said Gray, president of the local at the time the dispute with Nimer arose.


“That was such a falsehood and she was putting that out there to members and publicly,” said Gray, who left the union earlier this year. “So that’s why she had to have charges filed against her, so that she would stop that.”


Current officials at Local 2960 and the AFSCME International organization did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

Liberal Wisconsin Teacher Charged With Threatening Republican Lawmakers

CBSNews.com:

A 26-year-old woman is being charged with allegedly sending email threats to a handful of Wisconsin lawmakers during the state's contentious battle over collective bargaining rights earlier this month.


The woman, Katherine Windels, is being charged with two felony counts and two misdemeanor counts, for sending computer messages threatening injury or harm, and for propagating bomb scares.


According to a criminal complaint filed in the Dane County Circuit Court, Windels, under the alias "Lisa Patterson," first sent threatening emails to State Senator Robert Cowles on March 9, stating that "Because of your actions today and in t=e past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me =ave decided that we've had enough. We feel that you and your republica= dictators have to die." (Spelling errors appear as in original complaint provided to CBSNews.com.)


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The email went on to outline a plan that involved "arriving at your house and=putting a nice little bullet in your head," as well as planting bombs "in various locations around =he areas in which we know that you frequent" - such as "your house, yo=r car, the state capitol, and well I won't tell you all of them becaus= that's just no fun."


In a second e-mail, sent by the same alias to 15 Wisconsin state Senators, Windels warns of having planted strategically-located bombs, and threatens, "you will be killed and your familes=will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks."


"Please explai= to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then =t will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the def=cit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell," says the e-mail, the subject line of which reads: "Atten: Death threat!!!! Bomb!!!!"


The woman, when questioned about the emails, said "I sent out emails that I was disgusted and very upset by what [Republican lawmakers] were doing," according to the complaint.


The report states that Windels told investigators she had not intended to follow through with her threats, and when questioned about a particular line in the email, she said, "I know I said that, but I don't know why I said that."

Somehow too, this crazy loon wasn't arrested. Can't imagine all the hype and controversy that would take place if this were a conservative woman threatening Democrat pols.

Wisconsin Union Law Published Despite Court Order

ABCNews.com:

Wisconsin officials couldn't agree Friday about whether an explosive law taking away nearly all public worker collective bargaining rights was about to take effect after a nonpartisan legislative bureau published it despite a court order blocking implementation.


The head of the Legislative Reference Bureau that made the move, as well as a nonpartisan attorney for the Legislature, said the action was merely procedural. But Republican legislative leaders, who encouraged the bureau's action, insisted it meant law would take effect Saturday.


Gov. Scott Walker's office, meanwhile, would issue only a vague statement saying simply that the administration planned to carry out the law as required.


The move is just the latest in a series of parliamentary and legal maneuvers employed over the past six weeks to enact a bill that prompted Senate Democrats to flee the state to block a vote and brought on waves of Capitol protests that grew larger than 85,000 people as Wisconsin became the center of a national fight over union rights.


Ultimately, the law's fate likely will be up to the state Supreme Court to decide. A state appeals court earlier in the week asked the Supreme Court to take up one of several lawsuits challenging its approval.

Just like the lamestream media to portray these union protesters as peaceful despite the facts.

Radical Leftist Wisconsin Protesters Teach Kids To Chant Against Governor Scott Walker

Despicable. Indoctrination at its lowest.

Source: Althouse

Politiks As Usual: In The News 3/14/11

Japan Tries To Prevent Multiple Reactor Meltdowns, 180,000 Flee

In Op-Ed, Obama Advocates For 'Common Sense' Gun Control

George Will: Michele Bachmnn Is Not A 'Serious Contender' For President

'Us vs. Them' Unions

Why Newt Gingrich Can't Win

20-to-1: Networks Go Crazy Over Sheen Story, Downplay Planned Parenthood Scandal

145,000 Public School Teachers Physically Attacked By Students

Sexual Abstinence -- Numbers Up, But Funding Down

TIME Magazine Headline: 'Wisconsin's Governor Wins But Is He Still Dead Man Walker?'

Bill Clinton Blasts Drilling And Permit Delays At Forum

Slavery Lesson Exposes Flaws In U.S. Education

ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC and NPR Ignore Death Threats to Wisconsin Republicans

Newsbusters.org:

Numerous death threats were made against Wisconsin Republican lawmakers last week, but you wouldn't know about it if your only news sources were ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC, and NPR.


Bucking the boycott was Fox News's Bill O'Reilly Friday:

Not taking this seriously were ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC, and NPR. LexisNexis and closed-caption dump searches of "Wisconsin and 'death threat'" produced zero results for these so-called news outlets throughout the month of March.


Zero.


When you compare this to the hysterical coverage of last year's Tea Party rallies and town hall protests, where conservatives were regularly depicted as either hostile or fomenting violence, one has to wonder how actual death threats against sitting politicians would not be considered newsworthy.


This seems particularly curious after all the talk about hostile rhetoric immediately following the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in January.


Now, less than two months later, actual death threats against politicians are being investigated in Wisconsin, and five major news outlets are boycotting the story.

Michael Moore Is A Hypocrite: "Supports" Wisconsin Union Workers, But Doesn't Use Union Workers For Films Or Offer Health Insurance

Do as I say, not as I do:

With the spotlight on Wisconsin's union thugs rampaging across the state, one wonders why it took propaganda filmmaker Michael Moore so long to put himself in front of the news cameras to take some of their publicity for himself. But this weekend, Moore finally glommed onto the cameras making himself out to be a great supporter of the union's efforts in the Badger State. Once again, though, Moore proves to be a hypocrite. It was Moore, after all, that excluded using union workers in one of his recent films. Some supporter of unions!


Filmmaker Moore attend a recent Wisconsin pro-union rally and regaled the crowd with an address saying, "Madison is only the beginning."


"We're going to do this together. Don't give up. Please don't give up," Moore told the protesters, who have swarmed the Capitol every day for close to three weeks.


Oh, he's a great supporter, right? But let us drift back only a few years to 2009 when he was filming his last bomb, Capitalism: A Love Story. During that production we found that Moore didn't hire union stagehands (the IATSE) for his film.


According to his agent, Ari Emanuel, Moore claimed that he used non-union labor because the stagehands union doesn't "respect documentary filmmakers" or some such thing.


It made the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) mad enough that they refused all the free tickets Moore tried to offer them when the movie debuted. Yet here are these teachers in Wisconsin now falling all over themselves because Moore came publicity seeking in front of them. For shame that their institutional memory is so shallow, eh?


That wasn't the only time that Moore made a film snubbing union workers, either. Back in 2000 Moore directed a music video for the band Rage Against The Machine and non-union workers were also used in that production.

Wisconsin Senate OKs Governor's Proposed Limits On Collective Bargaining For Public Workers

Listen, I don't know if union bosses are as out-of-hand and self-serving in Wisconsin as they are here in NYC, but can one imagine the outrage by the MSM if GOP congressman had pulled the same stunt and fled their state for 3 weeks just to avoid a vote?

Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate voted Wednesday night to strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from public workers after discovering a way to bypass the chamber's missing Democrats.


All 14 Senate Democrats fled to Illinois nearly three weeks ago, preventing the chamber from having enough members present to consider Gov. Scott Walker's so-called "budget repair bill" - a proposal introduced to plug a $137 million budget shortfall.


The Senate requires a quorum to take up any measures that spend money. But Republicans on Wednesday split from the legislation the proposal to curtail union rights, which spends no money, and a special conference committee of state lawmakers approved the bill a short time later.


The lone Democrat present on the conference committee, Rep. Tony Barca, shouted that the surprise meeting was a violation of the state's open meetings law but Republicans voted over his objections. The Senate then convened within minutes and passed it without discussion or debate.


Spectators in the gallery screamed "You are cowards."


Before the sudden votes, Democratic Sens. Bob Jauch said if Republicans "chose to ram this bill through in this fashion, it will be to their political peril. They're changing the rules. They will inflame a very frustrated public."

Politiks As Usual: In The News 3/7/11

Opposition Repels Onslaught As Libyan Government Declares Victories

NASA Scientist Finds Evidence Of Alien Life

The House Moves To Defend The Law The President Won't

Union Power - Symptom Of What Ails Us

The Oscars: Class Warfare Wins Best Liberal Issue

Mexican President Joins Obama In Calling For 'Comprehensive Reform' In Legalizing U.S. Illegals

Ad Campaign: God Not Needed For Fulfilling Life

NYTimes Hit Piece On Glenn Beck: FOX May Not Renew His Contract

ABC's Andrea Canning Reveals She Was 'In A Fog' During Charlie Sheen Interview

Michele Bachmann: Dems Hid $105 Billion In Obamacare

What We're Talking About When We Talk About Big Government

College Degrees Won't Shield Blacks From Unemployment

Fox Interviews WI Democratic Rep. Brett Hulsey Who ‘Rescued’ GOP Senator Mobbed By Protesters

Mediaite.com:

In a refreshing demonstration of civility amid reports of mounting frustration, Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Brett Hulsey swooped in to stop a mob of protesters from closing in on Republican State Senator Glenn Grothman, telling those gathered that, while he and Grothman may disagree on political matters, he considers the man a friend.


Both Grothman and Hulsey spoke to Fox News about the incident, saying that, with such pervasive heated rhetoric, young people tend to get carried and behave “rudely.”

You certainly won't read or hear about this from the MSM.

No, Fox News Did Not Lie With “Wisconsin Palm Tree” Violent Protest Video

Mediaite.com:

The Internet is abuzz this morning with a story that Fox News has “lied” in showing a video of an angry union protester from California while claiming its from Wisconsin. The “Palm Tree lie” (described as such because the tropical trees in the background of the protest video are used as proof of the deception) was the top two stories on Reddit’s Politics board this morning. Even the Drudge Report picked up the story with the commenters bending over backwards to explain the discrepancy. They needn’t have tried so hard. While, in the 43-second clip that’s being linked to on YouTube, it does look like Fox News lied, but watching the entire segment for context makes it clear that they did not.


The segment in question occurred during The O’Reilly Factor as Bill O’Reilly was discussing the anger in the union protests. At the top of the piece, he rolled footage of a number of the “union thug” videos that have become so popular on Right Wing news sites in the past few weeks. O’Reilly clearly identified the videos as collectively coming from “all over the country.” As many shows do, this B-roll footage was replayed again during the rest of the segment, including during an interview with Mike Tobin, Fox News’ reporter who’s been on the ground in Wisconsin. Here’s where the problem occurred. Tobin was discussing Wisconsin (since that where he’s been) while the general footage played in the background. Taken out of context, these few seconds would seem deceptive. But, if you’d already seen the full segment, you’d recognize what the footage was (besides, this same clip has aired on other Fox News programs like Glenn Beck and been identified as coming from California).


Now, as much as O’Reilly wants to talk about how there are a bunch of “pro-union” guys on the network, this segment was clearly anti-union. Why else have a set series of footage showing just the clips of angry protesters pushing people and then get Tobin to talk about how the protesters attacked him? However, filtering a news story through an opinion during a show that is readily identified as an “opinion show” isn’t unethical. You can disagree with the Factor’s slant and how they presented it but, no, the show did not lie.

RELATED: Video: Wisconsin Dem Intervenes To Protect GOP Senator Threatened By Mob

Governor Scott Walker Gives Missing Wisconsin Democrats an Ultimatum

Newsmax.com:

Republican Governor Scott Walker Monday gave absent Democratic lawmakers an ultimatum to return to Wisconsin within 24 hours for a vote on a proposal to reduce the power of public sector unions or the state would miss out on a debt restructuring.


Walker stepped up the pressure on Senate Democrats as he prepared to unveil on Tuesday a two-year state budget that he said cuts $1 billion from funding to local governments and schools.


The 14 Democrats have been absent from Wisconsin since Feb. 17 when they said they were left with no choice but to flee to avoid giving the Senate a quorum need for vote on the union bill. It was approved by the state assembly last week.


What began as one small state trying to rewrite the rules of labor relations has blown up into what could be the biggest confrontation with American labor unions since then President Ronald Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981.


For the second time since the controversy erupted, President Barack Obama weighed into the debate Monday criticizing the Wisconsin plan without mentioning it by name.


"I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon," Obama told the nation's governors gathered in Washington.


Wisconsin's Walker immediately issued a response, saying: "I'm sure that President Obama simply misunderstands the issues in Wisconsin."

RELATED: Indiana Democrats Refuse To Return

Wisconsin Unions vs. The Tea Party: A Classic Double Standard

WSJ.com:

Loud protests by Wisconsin public employee unions against a budget reform proposal from new Governor Scott Walker have drawn considerable national network news attention since Thursday, the day Democratic state senators fled the state in a last-ditch gambit to prevent the bill from becoming law. A story-by-story analysis by the Media Research Center shows the Wisconsin protests are a perfect case study in the media's longstanding double standard favoring left-wing causes while demonstrating much more hostility to the Tea Party and conservative protests.


Last March, as thousands protested on Capitol Hill in the days before the passage of ObamaCare, CBS's Nancy Cordes slammed it as "a weekend filled with incivility," while World News anchor Diane Sawyer painted the Tea Party as a violent gang, with "protesters roaming Washington, some of them increasingly emotional, yelling slurs and epithets." In August 2009, ABC anchor Charles Gibson complained how "protesters brought pictures of President Obama with a Hitler-style mustache to a town hall meeting," failing to mention that the signs were produced by Lyndon LaRouche's wacky fringe movement, not the Tea Party or conservatives.


Over the past several days, the liberal demonstrations in Wisconsin (bolstered by the national Democratic Party and President Obama's Organizing for America group) have included signs just as inflammatory as the ones that bothered the networks during the health care debate, including several showing Governor Scott Walker as Adolph Hitler. Others have likened Walker to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ("Scott Stalin") and recently deposed Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak ("Walker = Mubarak").


Another protest sign drew a cross-hairs over a picture of Governor Walker's head, with the caption "Don't Retreat, Reload; Repeal Walker" — an obvious parallel to a Facebook map posted by Sarah Palin last year, although that much-criticized graphic placed the target sights on maps of congressional districts, not any politician's face.


Yet none of these signs in the hands of liberal protesters have drawn the slightest complaint from network journalists. MRC analysts examined all 53 ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news stories, segments and anchor briefs on the Wisconsin protests from Thursday, February 17 (when they first drew major national coverage) through Monday, February 21. While eight of the 53 stories (15%) visually displayed one or more of the signs described above, none elicited a single remark from the network correspondents.


Instead, network journalists actually suggested the "Walker = Mubarak" theme of some of the more inflammatory signs. On Sunday's This Week, for example, ABC's Christiane Amanpour linked Wisconsin to the uprisings against oppressive dictatorships: "Populist frustration is boiling over this week, as we've said, not just in the Middle East, but in the middle of this country as well." So did NBC's Brian Williams on Friday's Nightly News: "From the Mideast to the American Midwest tonight, people are rising up. Citizens' uprisings are changing the world." NBC's on-screen caption: "The Uprising at Home."


ABC's Diane Sawyer opened Thursday's World News by empathizing with the protesters:


Today, we saw America's money trouble meet a reality, a human reality, as teachers, nurses, tens of thousands of state workers took to the streets in this country, protesting cuts by the governors, saying to these governors, a promise is a promise. One lawmaker looked out at the crowds gathered in the Wisconsin capital today said it's like Cairo moved to Madison.


The only time network journalists fretted about the Wisconsin protests getting out of hand was when their favorite bogeyman, the Tea Party, became involved — as ABC's Barbara Pinto did on Saturday's Good Morning America: "Today, those demonstrations are expected to get more intense and more polarizing — we're watching police officers arrive here this morning. And that is because the Tea Party is staging a counter-demonstration of its own today."

Liberal Blogger Ian Murphy Hates the Troops, Fantasizes About Killing Republicans

The real story behind the Left's newest darling is quite ugly:

Since lefty blogger Ian Murphy prank called Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on Wednesday, various media outlets have devoted significant coverage to the prankster. None have seen fit to mention some of Murphy's more colorful antics - proclaiming "f**k the troops," for instance, or pretending to be autistic to gain access for a story.


CNN has been out front covering the prank and its perpetrator. The channel named Murphy its "most intriguing person of the day" in one segment, and devoted an article on its website to Murphy's wild claims - that Walker is "delusional," as CNN's headline blared, and that market economics amounts to a "fairy tale."


In reaching out to Murphy for comment, however, CNN did not see fit to ask him - or even mention in its multiple stories about the prank - that he is not just a "liberal website editor," but is in fact a radical, foaming-at-the-mouth leftist whose work includes fantasies about killing prominent Republicans and other far-left memes popular during the Bush years.


For a taste of Murphy's style, observe this excerpt of a 2008 article in the Buffalo Beast headlined "F**k the Troops":


So, 4000 rubes are dead. Cry me the Tigris. Another 30,000 have been seriously wounded. Boo f**king hoo. They got what they asked for—and cool robotic limbs, too…


The nearly two-thirds of us who know this war is bull***t need to stop sucking off the troops. They get enough action raping female soldiers and sodomizing Iraqi detainees. The political left is intent on “supporting” the troops by bringing them home, which is a good thing. But after rightly denouncing the administration’s lies and condemning this awful war, relatively sensible pundits—like Keith Olbermann—turn around and lovingly praise the soldiers’ brave service to the country. Why?


You get the idea.


Many of Murphy's writings perfectly channeled the attitude of the frantic anti-war left during the Bush years. "If Rove is Bush’s brain," he wrote in another article, "may the 43rd president be lobotomized before we string him up."


But don't worry, Murphy has at least a few qualms with murdering elected officials. "Do I often fantasize of jamming a rusty shiv into the Vice President’s eye socket and twirling it around until he passes out from shock and slowly bleeds to death? Of course," he wrote in 2007. "Would I do it? No. This author does not torture." He does, however, engage in some pretty sick homicidal fantasies.

Fox News’ Megyn Kelly Takes On Milwaukee Teachers Union President

Mediaite.com:

America Live host Megyn Kelly took a look at the ongoing union protests in Wisconsin, paying special attention to the fact that doctors have been writing notes – on camera, no less – to excuse demonstrating teachers from having to work, despite the fact that some weren’t ill.


To get to the bottom of the matter, Kelly spoke with Mike Langyel, the president of the Milwaukee Wisconsin Teachers Union. She began the interview by asking Langyel whether he condoned union members lying about their health issues so that they could take days off without losing their jobs, to which he responded, multiple times, by talking instead about Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.


Kelly attempted to get a straight answer out of Langyel, telling him that while many viewers are sympathetic towards the plight of Wisconsin’s teachers, they’re less inclined to be sympathetic to acts of fraud and pleading with him to step away from his “vanilla, sort of plain Jane talking points” and simply answer her question directly.


Referring to the video of a doctor writing notes for a perfectly healthy teacher, Langyel told Kelly that “whatever happened there, I didn’t see it. I don’t know what it is” before informing Kelly that her question was the “wrong one” to be asking. And that’s precisely the point when Kelly told Langyel how, exactly, television news works:


For better or for worse, I’m the anchor and you’re the guest. So I’ll come up with the questions and you can answer them or not.

Politiks As Usual: In The News 2/21/11

African Americans Must Reclaim Black History Month

Donald Rumsfeld Criticizes Obama, Says He's 'Proud of America'

Wisconsin GOP Ups Pressure On Dems To Return And Vote

Amendments Passed To Eliminate Obama Czars And Defund FCC Net Neutrality Rules

Supreme Court To Give 2nd Look At Obama's Eligibility

Chicago Boasts Most Extensive Network of Police Surveillance Cameras

Border Patrol Has 'Controlled' Only 129 Miles of 1,994-Mile U.S. Mexico Border

George Soros: Rupert Murdoch and FOX Are Like Nazis

Rep. Michele Bachmann: "I Am Not The Queen of the Tea Party"

Mike Huckabee Infuriated By Christian Church Allowing Muslims To Pray There

Gadhafi's Son Warns of Civil War, Vows Dialogue With Opposition

Pat Boone: Christians Must Mobilize Now To Defeat Obama In 2012