Imagine that this November, instead of going to your local polling place, three guys from “The Party” come to your house, hand you a ballot, tell you to put your name on it, and wait while you complete it. They look at it, make a few faces, then ask, “Are you sure this is how you’re going to vote?” This becomes an open record of your choices, filed away at “headquarters,” a permanent history of your voting preferences.
Our Congressional Reps, and Jeanne Shaheen, all support this kind of balloting. And unions are paying them big money to make sure that federal legislation legalizing Card Check becomes a reality.
Card check is a way for labor unions to collect votes from their members–or would be members–when seeking approval for a contract or bargaining agreement. It is the exact opposite of the secret ballot. You have no anonymity. Everyone will know how you voted, while you are voting, or at any point in time thereafter. If you have ever worked for a union (Disclosure: I was a Teamster for ten years) then you are well aware of the pressure union members and officials can wield against dissenters or people on the fence. Having a few union boys waiting on the lawn to see how you voted is nothing short of intimidating. So Card Check is just a way to game the voting process. It violates your fundamental rights and denies you the freedom to make choices based on your own beliefs.
Fox News put it plainly enough…
Secret ballot elections are a fundamental American right. They ensure that every voter expresses his or her choice without peer pressure or harassment and that the choice of the majority prevails. That’s why we use private ballots to elect the president and members of Congress. It’s also why American workers choose to join — or not join — unions in secret ballot elections.
Hodes, Shea-Porter, and Shaheen, support this Bill. So once again the party of “Choice” is anything but.
Now supporters insist that it balances out management’s ability to intimidate employees from voting for the union. Management does try to intimidate employees, even in a shop that already has a union, but never in my experience at the expense of a secret ballot. And while business has limited access to you, while you are on the clock, the union can intimidate you 24 hours a day seven days a week, using co-workers while you are working, and anyone who is pro union when you are not. It’s one thing to think you might get fired, and another entirely to fear for your life or your family.
Political money
Business tends to fund political campaigns that oppose these kinds of pro-union laws, but they aren’t taking money from employee paychecks to do that. Union’s on the other hand use member dues to flood the campaign coffers of pro-union Democrat candidates, for what they claim are ‘workers rights’ issues. In 2004 Unions dumped almost 54 Million dollars into Democrat campaigns, and in 2006 it was almost 58 Million. Now I’ll agree that they do actually do use some of that money to help workers, but they also use some to ride in Limos and throw themselves parties. And lately they have been using too much of it to deny their members, or future members, the fundamental protections of the secret ballot. This is simply un-American.
After losing the Card Check vote in the senate, my former master, Jim Hoffa jr. had this to say.
“Today’s vote shows us who is standing with workers and which politicians are in collusion with corporate America to destroy the middle class,” Teamsters President Jim Hoffa said.
The workers party mantra–“They’ll destroy the middle class.” It’s a load of carp. If you look at history, since the decline of unions more Americans have left the middle class, moving up rather than down. And many of the people who are in or are emerging from lower income levels have televisions, cars, cell phones, and own or rent homes, not because of unions but because they avoid the trap of government hand outs, stay married, raise their children, or stay involved in their communities. Hardly the vision of destruction Herr Hoffa would have us embrace. He’s just trying to make more union members so he can collect more dues, make the union bigger, add more people to the union payroll, and use that extra cash to exert pressure where it needs to be exerted to further his agenda.
Sounds exactly like what democrats want. That’s why they like each other so much. It’s almost a joke that public sector union growth is the most reliable feeding tube they have. Public sector employees work for us, they work for the government, or they used to. Now they are working for a union. Think about that the next time a democrat wants to grow the government. It won’t just waste your tax dollars, it will also very likely grow the unions, and more than likely their campaign coffers nest time around. No conflict of interest? Well let’s see.
The New Hampshire congressional Dems–being the reliable democrats that they are–collect plenty from Unions. Shea-Porter already has over 100k this year, Hodes who took in 190K in his successful 2006 run, has almost 190K already, and Shaheen–who collected 320K from unions in 2002–clocks in at just over 150K so far this cycle. If elected, these Democrats will bring back the Card-check legislation to try and rob the workers they claim to support, of the fundamental human right of a secret ballot. If they have a democrat president, it will become law, and the party of choice will have reaffirmed what we should all know; that it is choice as long as it is their choice.
This clear objective to limit freedom runs contrary to everything the people of New Hampshire should stand for. If we care anything for liberty, we will see this as just one more affornt to it by the Democrats who claim to hold our best interests at heart. They are common mountebanks, plying “choice” and “change,” but what they are selling is nothing of the kind; more government, more unions, and less freedom.
The New Media Militia 