Next weekend, political conservatives from all over the nation will be descending on Washington, DC to attend the annual Conservative Political Action Conference—better known as CPAC. Across town, however, union bosses and their adopted #OccupyDC progeny are planning to disrupt and lay siege to the conservative conference.

According to the AFL-CIO’s Washington DC Metro Council website, “Actions are currently being planned for noontime andafter work on Friday, February 10.”

Apparently, the unions plans to attempt to disrupt the conference with rats, puppets, and more:

WE’VE HEARD ENOUGH FROM THE 1%! Join the rally featuring tents, an inflatable fat cat, puppets, “candidate Walmart,” and more to LET THE VOICES OF THE 99% BE HEARD!

There is also a Facebook page for Occupy CPAC, posted by Change to Win staffer, Trina Tocco. It is important to note that Change to Win is the SEIU-led federation that broke away from the AFL-CIO in 2005—which means both union federations are involved in planning the attacks on CPAC.

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Having spent nearly a decade as a former union representative and activist (aka “union thug”) in a Right-to-Work state, it has been interesting to discuss and watch the activities and debates over the Right-to-Work battles occuring within the various states. Having been on both sides of the labor-management equation, it’s easy to see the two sides of the coin—the pluses and the minuses—that come into play with Right to Work legislation.

However, since Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed Right-to-Work legislation on Wednesday, making the Hoosier State the nation’s 23rd Right-to-Work state and, coincidentally, Ohio’s Attorney General approved language that will allow a Ron Paul supporter and Tea Party consultant to use his “Ohioans for Workplace Freedom” to gather signatures to put Right-to-Work legislation on Ohio’s November ballot, perhaps it’s time we explore what’s right and what’s wrong with Right to Work.

What is Right-to-Work? First, for those unfamiliar with Right-to-Work laws, it is easy to be misled by the hyperbole often thrown around (mostly by unions and their allies) that Right-to-Work has anything to do with anything other than the collection of union dues. It doesn’t.

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Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual union membership summary which, unsurprisingly revealed little change in the number of workers who belong to unions. [Total union membership went from 11.9% to 11.8%.]

Commenters across the web provided their take on the membership numbers with the Heritage Foundation’s James Sherk providing perhaps the best analysis as to why union membership keeps falling.

Deregulation and free trade have since made the economy more competitive, giving Americans more choices. Now Americans can buy from whomever offers the most value. Unfortunately for the union movement, that company is often nonunion.

One particularly interesting commentary on the BLS numbers was that from former co-founder of ACORN and ex-SEIU bigwig Wade Rathke, who opined that private-sector union membership might fall as low as 5% “unless something serious and drastic happens.”

Apparently, to Rathke, a National Labor Relations Board stacked with union lawyers bent on shaping the law to accommodate their employers and clients is not drastic enough; nor, apparently, is having a President of the United States giving away taxpayer money to subsidize unionized industries.

Notwithstanding Rathke’s ominous 5% prediction, that, however, was not the interesting part of his statement.

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Last Tuesday, a pair of seeming coincidences occurred: The first was an article that appeared in the Hill about the SEIU splitting the costs with Priorities USA Action on an anti-Mitt Romney ad in Florida. The second was an e-mail that went out from 1199SEIU featuring ex-1199SEIU boss and current political heavyweight, Patrick Gaspard. While the two appeared unrelated, what they do have in common is the SEIU’s influence on the Democratic Party and the presidential election itself.

Even before the Service Employees International Union became known in center-right households for its thuggish behavior during the 2009 health care debate, the SEIU was already a well-known political powerhouse in Washington. By 2009, the union’s then-president, Andy Stern—already a polarizing figure who successfully broke up the AFL-CIO in 2005—became known as the hand inside Barack Obama’s puppet from his visits to the White House. However, after Stern and his SEIU ‘changed America forever‘ through the imposition of health care reform, Stern abruptly left the union movement.

Although Stern became a corporate insider soon after his departure from the union movement, to many, he still remains the public face of the SEIU. This is despite the fact that there is a far lesser known and much more powerful SEIU operative running both the Democrat National Committee, as well as Barack Obama’s re-election campaign machine, Organizing for America.

Meet Patrick Gaspard. In an e-mail last week from 1199SEIU to its members, the union begins with: “In a series of recent interviews, our brother Patrick Gaspard discusses the presidential election…” Outside of the Beltway Bubble and the SEIU, few people know who Patrick Gaspard is, nor do they know just how politically powerful he really is.

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Undaunted by the constitutionally-questionable appointment of three members to Barack Obama’s National Labor Relations Board, union attorney and current NLRB chairman Mark Pearce declared in an Associated Press interview that he and his union comrades are continuing their assault on the 93% of private-sector employees who are union-free.

In fact, if Obama’s union appointees have their way, all employees who are targeted for unionization will have their employers forced to turn over their home telephone number and e-mail addresses to unions.

Ever since the 1960s, when unions have targeted companies for unionization through a NLRB-supervised election, employers have been required to turn over the list of employee names and their home addresses. The NLRB, in turn, promptly gives the list of employee names and home addresses to the involved union(s).

This list, called an Excelsior List, gives union organizers the ability to conduct intrusive home visits prior to the NLRB election. As is often said, just as when any other salesperson doing door-to-door sales knocks at the door, targeted employees can invite the union organizers into their homes, or they can sic the chihuahua on them.

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Following Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s reforming his state’s collective bargaining laws and breaking the stranglehold unions held on taxpayers (saving them $476 million so far), union bosses across the country laid siege on the  dairy state’s capitol and declared war on Walker and his fellow Republicans.

In 2011, union bosses and other outside groups spent tens of millions of dollars in a failed attempt to recall six Republican state senators and are spending millions more now trying to recall Scott Walker.

The millions union bosses are now spending—paid for by union members throughout the country—has Democrats getting nervous that the money spent might strain union coffers too much prior to the November elections.

According to the Hill:

Unions have made ousting Walker a top priority and are poised to spend heavily in Wisconsin. But Democratic strategists and some senior political experts within the labor movement believe the initiative should have been launched before the November presidential election.

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Listening to Barack Obama’s State of the Union Speech last night was like listening to just about every one of his SOTU speeches…

Actually, with the exception of Obama’s promise to sign a law making Congressional insider trading illegal [Martha Stewart may have some resort recommendations for Nancy Pelosi], listening to Obama’s SOTU speech really was listening to his other speeches, as this RNC video points out.

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Consider this an open thread.

Most people know the name George Soros, the mastermind behind…well, a lot of stuff.

Sitting in his 33rd-floor corner office high above Seventh Avenue in New York, preparing for his trip to Davos, he is more concerned with surviving than staying rich. “At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t just mean it’s time to protect your assets. He means it’s time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil.” Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.

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The fallout over Barack Obama’s decision to kill 20,000 (mostly) union jobs on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project continues as the Laborers International Union of North America left the BlueGreen Alliance Friday afternoon.

Founded in 2006, the BlueGreen Alliance is a political pairing of left-wing unions and environmental groups whose mission (so to speak) is to ensure that America’s conversion to a green economy results in union jobs as jobs in industries like coal are destroyed.

Included among its stated goals are passage of cap and trade legislation, as well as the Employee Free Choice Act (aka card-check unionization).

According to the Laborers’ union press release announcing the union’s departure from the BlueGreen Alliance on Friday afternoon, at least Laborers’ president Terry O’Sullivan seems to be understanding the Devil’s pact union bosses have made by sacrificing their members’ jobs in exchange for an economically-unrealistic “green” economy:

“AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recently said there was a divide in the labor movement over this project,” LIUNA General President Terry O’Sullivan said. “That is an understatement. That divide is as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon. We’re repulsed by some of our supposed brothers and sisters lining up with job killers like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to destroy the lives of working men and women.” [Emphasis added.]

Specifically, O’Sullivan was referencing the CWA, SEIU, UAW, Transport Workers Union, United Steelworkers Union and Amalgamated Transit Union who had sold their souls (and union jobs) to the environmentalists and praised Obama’s decision to side with the green activists by killing the pipeline, as well as destroying the hopes of unemployed union members.

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After months of playing political ping-pong with 20,000 potential (mostly union) jobs, the Obama administration decided on Wednesday to kill the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried crude oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries.

According to a State Department release [emphasis added]:

Today, the Department of State recommended to President Obama that the presidential permit for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline be denied and, that at this time, the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline be determined not to serve the national interest. The President concurred with the Department’s recommendation, which was predicated on the fact that the Department does not have sufficient time to obtain the information necessary to assess whether the project, in its current state, is in the national interest.

Since 2008, the Department has been conducting a transparent, thorough, and rigorous review of TransCanada’s permit application for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project…

For more than three years, the State Department has conducted its “transparent, thorough, and rigorous review.” However, apparently, the Obama Administration believes that three years wasn’t enough to be transparent, thorough, or rigorous enough.

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