ALG Urges Senate to Reject Craig Becker, Terms NLRB Nominee “Militant on a Mission”
February 8th, 2010—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today urged the Senate to reject Barack Obama’s nominee for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Craig Becker whom Wilson said “would work around the clock to force tens of millions of workers into unwanted unions.”
“Craig Becker is just the latest in a long line of radicals nominated by Barack Obama, and until the Senate actually rejects a nominee, the White House will not get the message,” Wilson said, terming Becker’s views as “far outside the mainstream.”
“For example,” Wilson noted, “Becker has stated that radical changes to the National Labor Relations Act, could be made by NLRB fiat even if Congress did not amend the statute. That alone should disqualify him.”
According to a report published by Americans for Limited Government, “Militant on a Mission,” Becker wrote in 1993 that “employers should have no right to raise questions concerning voter eligibility or campaign conduct” and “employers should have no right to be heard in either a representation case or an unfair labor practice case.” Both views conflict with longstanding interpretations of national labor relations laws.
Adding to the controversy, Becker has stated that his proposals could be achieved without Congressional approval: “The [National Labor Relations] Board should return to the principle that a union election is not a contest between the employer and the union... Unlike the other proposals, however, it could be achieved with almost no alteration to the statutory framework.”
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Editorial: The Mirage of Bipartisan Health Care Meetings 
With the seating of newly elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, Barack Obama has now agreed to hold televised meetings with Republicans and Democrats on health care reform. This feeble attempt by Obama and the Democrats to look bipartisan is nothing more than calculated damage control trying to prevent the inevitable losses in the coming 2010 mid-term elections.
According to Politico, Barack Obama stated that he wants to “look at the Republican ideas out there.” But the real question is, where was this idea six months ago when Congressional Democrats were having backroom meetings while crafting a bill like a one-party aristocracy?
This shows once again that Barack Obama and his Democratic colleagues in Congress will only listen to the American people when they are forced to. And in this case, it took the special election in Massachusetts.
If this government was truly created “by the people, for the people,” then why was it that the Obama Administration and Congress refused to drop their push for socialized medicine even though the American people were vehemently opposed to it? (Final Health care poll showed 58% opposed the current bill according to Rasmussen Reports)
And before we get all excited about Obama’s newfound ways, let’s remember he has only promised to “look” at Republicans and not to start over with bipartisan input. In fact, at the Obama-GOP Baltimore confab some weeks back, Obama explicitly said that he had “read every Republican bill.” Apparently, that gem now enters the growing repository of Obama “misstatements.”
This paper has repeatedly called for Barack Obama and his Democratic majority in Congress to go back to the drawing boards and take an honest and open look at ways to lower costs in the health care industry.
One major idea that has been ignored by Obama and his cohorts is to allow state-to-state competition. It’s simple, why should someone from North Carolina not be allowed to buy health insurance from South Carolina?
In almost every case, more competition equals lower prices.
Another major idea that has been ignored is tort reform. According to Legal Newsline, “the Congressional Budget Office director, Douglas Elmendorf, has said as much as $54 billion could be saved over the next 10 years if Congress enacts legal reforms including a $250,000 cap on damages for pain and suffering and a $500,000 cap on punitive damages and restricting the statute of limitations on malpractice claims.” And this doesn’t even include the likely savings that will occur based upon a reduction of defensive medicine often practiced by doctors today.
These are just two entirely obvious ideas that have been ignored by the Obama Administration and Congress. They should be included in the mix when Congress goes back to the drawing board. And they should start with a tabula rasa – to be filled in at the will of the American people.
http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=2007
N.C. Schools: “Those Who Erase History…”
By William A. Wilson
It is one thing to forget, ignore or misinterpret our nation’s history, but a group of uber-liberal educrats in North Carolina is taking the radical revisionism of America one step further. These politically-correct, taxpayer-funded “thought police” are actually trying to erase American history from our children’s textbooks.
What do they want to replace it with? Radical environmental propaganda from left-wing extremists who view American liberties as obstacles to overcome, not safeguards to be defended.
In perhaps the most glaring example to date of our government’s descent into socialist madness, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction is attempting to remove all American history prior to 1877 from its textbooks, replacing it with a “global studies” curriculum.
Rather than learning about George Washington crossing the Delaware or Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves (while studying from documents like the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation), high school students in North Carolina would instead be indoctrinated with more multicultural rhetoric and the fuzzy science of climate change (while studying form the Koran and the “Copenhagen Accord”).
This sort of raw indoctrination is worse than misguided – it’s treasonous.
If this new anti-American curriculum is adopted, American children would no longer learn about the principles on which this nation was established – and the blood that was shed in defense of those principles – they would instead be spoon-fed Obama administration talking points on how intolerant, imperialist America owes a huge financial debt to the rest of the world, one that we can start repaying immediately by helping developing nations “combat global warming.”
“What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach (history) where students are connected to it, where they see the big idea, where they are able to make connections and draw relationships between parts of our history and the present day,” the chief academic officer for North Carolina’s school system told FOX News.
Continue reading here.
A Lesson for Dems from Delaware’s “Beau” Biden
By Chris Slavens
The Democrats’ future in the U.S. Senate looks even gloomier following Delaware Attorney General Joseph R. “Beau” Biden’s announcement on January 25 that he would not run for the seat vacated by his father, Vice President Joseph R. “Joe” Biden, Jr. Democrats at the national level, unnerved by a recent series of Republican victories in special elections, had looked to the younger Biden as their best hope for keeping both of the First State’s Senate seats in Democratic hands. The refusal of the vice president’s son to run for Senate in the nation’s second-smallest state says a lot about the current political climate.
Delawareans have been voting for (or against) Bidens since 1969, when 26-year-old Joe Biden ran for county council and won, only to run for U.S. Senate two years later, bypassing the usual political ladder of state offices and scoring a tremendous upset victory over Republican incumbent J. Caleb Boggs. In 2006, his son ran for state attorney general, successfully relying on family name recognition to defeat an opponent that was significantly better qualified. Of course, most followers of national-level politics probably have one question about the goings-on of Delaware: Who the heck cares?
The Obama administration cares. So does the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Democrats across the country who see their Senate majority slipping away, one seat at a time. The fact is, Biden was their only hope to defeat Delaware’s Republican candidate, current U.S. Representative Michael Castle, a former two-term governor whose moderate status has earned him nine House terms in a strongly Democratic state. Barring a miracle for Democrats, Castle will occupy a seat held by their party since 1972.
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ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured article, The London Telegraph quotes ALG Senior News Editor on the tea party movement.
Tea Party conference hit by allegations of profiteering and hijacking
The first national conference for America’s burgeoning Tea Party movement has been hit by allegations of profiteering and hijacking of the cause.
By Alex Spillius in Washington
Disgruntled critics within the grassroots conservative movement have become particularly incensed by the $100,000 (£63,000) fee to be paid to Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate who will be the star of the event as its keynote speaker.
After adverse comments from Right-wing bloggers - one commented: “that’s a lot of damned tea” - Mrs Palin has promised to donate the fee to “campaigns, candidates and issues”.
“My only goal is to support the grassroots activists who are fighting for responsible, limited government - and our Constitution,” she wrote in USA Today, defending her decision to speak at the convention.
“The nature of the Tea Party movement means there may never be a ’perfectly orchestrated’ event: democracy in action doesn’t come with a manual.”
A loose confederation of conservative campaigners, the Tea Party movement sprung up in opposition to the bank bail outs and President Barack Obama’s £492 billion stimulus bill. It gathered steam with vocal opposition to his plans to overhaul the health care system, which caused several Democrats to dilute their support.
But now leading activist groups have scrapped plans to attend the movement’s first major event, which begins today [thurs] at a plush resort hotel on the outskirts of Nashville.
Several sponsors have pulled out along with two speakers, the Republican congresswomen Michelle Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn, who were concerned about the event’s for-profit status.
Tickets for three days of speeches, workshops and strategy sessions cost £343, with the closing banquet featuring Mrs Palin alone costing £218.
Intended to unite the disparate movement that is threatening to revolutionise American politics, the event is doing more to divide it. Eric Erickson, founder of the leading Right-wing blog RedState.com, said the high charges being sought from modest-earning activists by little-known organisers “sounds as credible as an email from Nigeria promising me a million bucks if I fork over my bank account number”.
“I think the tea party movement has largely descended into ego and quest for purpose for individuals at the expense of what the tea party movement started out to be,” he said.
The event is the brainchild of Judson Phillips, a lawyer backed financially by Bill Hemrick, a retired businessman who made a fortune from baseball player cards. He was initially keen to involve Mrs Palin in a business venture.
At first Mr Phillips said that all profits would go to a political fund to support conservative candidates. Lately he has claimed the convention could even lose money.
Robert Romano, a spokesman for Americans for Limited Government, a Washington pressure group, said: “The for-profit model for tea parties is probably a mistake. It clearly hasn’t benefitted the movement to proceed in that manner.”
Continue reading here.
