This is exactly what conservatives have been warning people about. The loss of states rights under the Obama administration. In this story at NewsMax, the President has gained what amounts to a veto power over the budget in the state of California. You could alternatively look at the situation as the outright blackmail of an entire state by the federal government.
During a long, painful budget battle at the capitol in California, a budget was finally passed which included wage cuts to SEIU unionized home health-care workers. President Obama is now threatening to rescind nearly $7 billion in federal stimulus money to the state if those wage cuts are not restored. How did this happen?
Apparently upset over decisions made to reduce wages of SEIU unionized home health-care workers in the state budget, the union has appealed to President Obama to intervene. Now that’s an awful lot of muscle for a labor union to be exerting over a state budget. But you get what you pay for and, according to SEIU president Andy Stern, they paid 60.7 million to help Obama get into office. Talk about “pay-to-play”.
Apparently, the SEIU is starting to take a page from ACORN’s playbook on thuggery at the nations capitol. Links between the two groups are starting to appear more frequently including one linking ACORN’s founder, Wade Rathke. Most people don’t realize Rathke is also founder and Chief Organizer of SEIU Local 100, which is headquartered in New Orleans and also has chapters in Texas. He is also the president and co-founder of the SEIU Southern Conference and a member of the International Executive Board of SEIU. According to his Wikipedia entry he has directed the Centre for Community Leadership, based in Vancouver, British Columbia and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It’s purpose is to train organizers to build partnerships between community organizations and labor unions.
Perhaps like this example from California SEIU offices in which a non-profit charity they founded spent exactly $0 over the course of two years on their charitable purpose, to develop housing for low-income workers . It is now under investigation by the IRS.
UPDATE: Atlas Shrugs points to a post at GetLiberty.org entitled “Obama De-Funding the Union Corruption Busters”. Gee, imagine that. Here’s a sample:
“OLMS is the federal agency that investigates financial crimes that occur when union officials steal from their union. OLMS also investigates cases where union officials engage in fraud and other corrupt practices in conducting union officer elections.”
UPDATE2: Also see this great post by Michelle Malkin on the SEIU link to the Obama administration.
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Obama and the many unions who support him and his radical policies are mounting a full-court press to gain as much control as they can while his poll numbers are still high. They hope to make changes that will be difficult to reverse when the pendulum swings back to the right, as it always does. Liberals seem particularly good at doing this.
I’m adding you to my blog roll at TOTUS. I like you blog it provides a detailed and insightful look at the political scene.
Thank you for the compliments. I’ve added a link to your blog as well.