It’s only been 18 days and living somewhere else is starting to enter my mind. The question is where?

I fear for my children.

It appears that Uncle “Godfather” Sam now has strings attached to his federal funding. Mafia tactics anyone, organized crime?

Mr. Solomon, welcome to the club of unemployed construction workers. Filing taxes for the 2008 year, my husband has 5-W2s as he has chased jobs for the last year only to find out that each one was really temporary in nature.

A couple of days ago he made a profound decision to switch careers. With this news from you it looks like that was a good decision. Unemployment will pay quite a bit less than half his working wages. If he stays in the construction field we’re going to be living on that for a long time, aren’t we?

I am a tad bit sick of these idiot! Lokkinf forward to 2010/2012!

Michael Steele has an article on the RNC website speaking out against this latest move by Obama saying he did it “quietly.” He knows he screwed up with his Gitmo and foreign abortion executive orders, the voters let him know that. His approval ratings dropped 20 some points in his first 2 weeks. If he keeps going with crap like this he will be at Bush’s approval ratings in his first 100 days, and that is a good thing.

I’m on the west coast of Florida in Bradenton, just south of Tampa.
I do steel framing, drywall etc, mostly commercial but also some high end residential and my work load has gone from having 7 to 10 jobs going at once to maybe one small job a month. I’m wondering how this might effect already signed contracts as there are two school projects I am supposed to be involved with but which seem to have fallen to the back burner.
As it is right now construction in my area of Florida has come to a screeching halt and unemployment amongst construction workers is double the national average if not more now.
Obama has used this so-called stimulus bill to pay back the special interests that payed to get him elected and this repealing of Exec, Order 13202 is just another payback for his friends.
Some seriously “Strange Change”

Like most things about this administration, it is really an old thing they’re trying to do; re-invent the ’20s and ’30s, those good old days when it was safe to be a communist. Using a mostly phony economic crisis, they rush through all sorts of “emergency” measures that place tremendous power in the hands of the federal government. Then they federally fund all sorts of stimulus spending that is aimed at targeted constituencies and social engineering goals. Both Wiermar Germany and the New Deal prior to the mid-WWII anti-union, anti-communist backlash that culminated in Taft-Hartley and HUAC are good examples.

As the FDR Administration did with the War Production Board and the War Labor Board, the only way you’re going to get any of that stimulus money as a state or local government is to agree to the federal terms that will require that it be done under a union agreement with a no-strike clause because of the “urgency” of getting the work and the “stimulus” done quickly. If the state balks, it doesn’t get any money. It probably also gets a lot of love from federal auditors and the Public Integrity Section of the USDOJ. Won’t take many elected and appointed officials doing the perp walk on national TV for the rest of them to get over their recalcitrance in helping to “stimulate” the economy.

At the private contractor or worker level, you’re simply frozen out unless you sign the pattern agreement and join the union. And for you in the Right to Work states, don’t be thinking foolish thoughts like how you have a right to be non-union or to be a fee payer only. If they’re feeling brave enough, if they have enough votes to pass card check, and they do, they have enough to repeal the RTW provision in the LMRA.

The only comfort I can offer is that unions are one trick ponies and always over play their hand. The abuses during WWII and the open, arrogant corruption caused the Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Griffin amendments to the National Labor Relations Act in 1948 and, I think, 1957. Organized labor has NEVER forgiven the Republican Party for Taft-Hartley and no labor leader has gone a day without thinking of repealing it since 1948. They’ve pretty much gotten to their Holy Grail.

Frankly, the only way they can pay for all this stuff is with massive inflation, which will wipe out every retirement system and all retirement savings in the Country. On the one hand, that is going to make a lot of people really, really angry with the government. On the other hand, it is going to make a lot of people really dependent on the government. So, who knows how it turns out? In ’28 or so when inflation and unemployment crushed the German economy and the Wiemar Republic, Germany could have easily turned left into a Soviet style communist state, buck up and borne it and remained a constitutional republic, or gone right. The NSDAP is the party that most credibly promised the German people that it would deal with the crisis and get Germany working again, and we all know how that turned out.

Thing is, all the new full-facility construction in the Broward school system has stopped cold…………….. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

Additions, retrofits, re-builds, etc. are still going…. for now.

That’s OK , the Demoncarats have already had hearings on how best to steal what’s left of your 401K, spend it , then dole you out a pittance along with your SS check.
What a country!

Regards,

Right now it is only construction projects that are federal contracts….with Federal IT contracts be next?

Obama will be the death of this country…one step at a time.

That and the fact that the senate stripped out the E-verify provision that had been part of the porkulus proposal.

Now, if they get all the illegals to not only register to vote but join unions under card check, we can all simply marvel at the efficiency of the evil geniuses the dumb class put into power.

---

Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

Here it is again – please, please copy and paste and send it to everyone you know. Bold the last paragraph. This is the end of right to work. Period. I am going to go throw up.

Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) today denounced an Executive Order signed by President Obama that repeals Executive Order 13202, that prohibited federal agencies and recipients of federal funding from requiring contractors to sign union-only project labor agreements (PLAs) as a condition of performing work on federal and federally funded construction projects.

“Today’s decision to repeal Executive Order 13202 opens the door to waste and discrimination in federal and federally funded construction contracts,” said ABC President and CEO Kirk Pickerel. “This action removes the safeguards that prohibited discrimination based upon union affiliation in the awarding of federal contracts.

“Construction contracts subject to union-only PLAs are designed to be awarded exclusively to unionized contractors and their all-union workforces,” said Pickerel. “Absent the economic benefits of competitive bidding, union-only PLAs are known to increase construction costs between 10 percent and 20 percent and discriminate against minorities, women and qualified construction workers who have traditionally been excluded from union membership.

“Union-only PLAs drive up costs for American taxpayers while unfairly discriminating against 84 percent of U.S. construction workers who choose not to join a labor union,” added Pickerel. “All taxpayers should have the opportunity to compete fairly on any project funded by the federal government.”

A union-only PLA is a contract that requires a federal construction project to be awarded only to contractors and subcontractors that agree to recognize unions as the representatives of their employees on that job; use the union hiring hall to obtain workers; pay union wages and benefits; and obey the union’s restrictive work rules, job classifications and arbitration procedures.

Cool heads MUST prevail….we have rights. They cannot dictate who can or
cannot work.
We must all take a deep breath and organize…we can have a labor union of
our own. They cannot dictate what type of union.
How about the Freedom labor union? We can dicate freedom of wages, benefits, etc…..
Let’s make a lemon from lemonade. They are handing it to us on a silver platter.

As I read this, the previous EO forbade requiring union PLAs. As I read this, now nothing requires union PLAs; it is just an option. Why would a school board, such as here in Florida’s Brevard County, up the coast from you, put such a requirement on a construction contract? maybe they CAN do it, but it sounds like they are not required to do so. The old EO made it NOT an option. And in a right-to-work state like Florida, I cannot see them doing this. They’d lose their seats quickly.

Now, I am a pure non-union person. And I respect your views and knowledge, Kenny, from your posts here. I read much of your material. And maybe I am understanding this in the way that the unions and BHO want me to, so I don’t see the real meaning. Please help me.

The EO prohibited any fed gov agency and any agency or other recipient of federal dollars for construction projects from requiring contractors to use only a union labor/work force.

Our friend POTUS has decided to really start the ball rolling in payback to all unions in requiring that all construction projects nationwide receiving federal dollars at any level on this PLA thingy MUST HIRE ONLY UNIONIZED labor force.

If the contractor doesn’t hire union – through a union hall to boot – the fed dollars go poof on that project.

It’s as simple as that. Unconstitutional? I’m counting on it. But these fargin bastages folks on the left don’t care a whit for anything, including RTW states like ours here in Flori-duh.

I still think this is all interconnected to a larger plan with the now 1,600 page lunacy that’s trying to grab the brass ring within the first 30-60 days of the new administration taking the reigns.

I don’t have time to really deal with this since I have to pack and catch an early morning plane to ANC.

So, The money comes to the State or local government for a project. The Unions and their greenie friends object to everything about it. The negotiations will now begin. In order to get the local appropriation and permitting, the union requires that the work be done union. The Greenies require that the project use the latest bleeding edge “green” technology. The wages for everything are Davis Bacon or better. There’s lots more to it, but basically, they get to hold any publicly funded project hostage until they get what they want.

When I get back from ANC, I’ll do a diary on Project Labor Agreements, promise.

That means all the schools we work on are verboten iff vee haff not signed zee papers. Every public school here in Flori-duh receives Federal dollars for operations and all construction projects.

My neighbor and his wife have a small, private, non-union contracting business. They are rabid democrats who turned away from their Catholic pro-life sensibilities to support the Obama revolution. They were under the illusion that it would be good for their business with the school district, what with the democrats being big on building schools and all.