Union’s Expect Obama Payback – Seek to End Secret Ballots

Updated Guest Editorial | On Tuesday’s Glenn Beck Show, a discouraging statistic was shown. In 1999, all government spending as a portion of our national GNP was 33%. In 2009, that number stands at 39%.

An astonishing number when you consider that the United States produces over $14 trillion in goods and services annually.  If that number frightens you and raises red flags about the growth of government, then something is on the horizon which will make that number worse. And that is why we need your leadership today.

Big Labor is expecting a pay back from President Obama.  For the hundreds of millions they spent on his election, they expect him to sign an innocent sounding, yet deceptive bill called Employee Free Choice Act – better known as “Card Check.”

Card Check is a cunning device that will make unionizing companies less democratic in the process of union organizing and more prone to intimidation and harassment.  Currently, unions must have at least 30% of the employees sign cards voicing their support for a union.  In the vast majority of cases the employer will then require a secret ballot election to determine if a union will be formed.  If the new “Card Check” federal legislation is passed, unions may contact employees directly, and when they get 51% of the employees to sign a card, the right of the employees to vote by secret ballot is abolished and the workplace is automatically unionized.

Card check will dramatically speed up the unionization of America by harassment and intimidation. As a result, government will grow bigger and mandatory union dues – the main objective to Card Check – will increase Big Labor political donations to Democrats and left wing causes.  In 2008 alone, 91% of all union contributions went to Democrats.  A staggering number when you realize that Big Labor can simply take dues out of union employees’ paychecks. This is one of the biggest power grabs in recent memory.

It is inconceivable to believe government will not grow bigger and more confiscatory with a larger union presence. Government’s 39% total of our GNP will soon grow to the mid-to-high 40s if card check passes. Do we want that? Will that help or impede innovation, freedom and entrepreneurship?

Big Labor and their allies hope to accomplish this power grab by taking away a working man and woman’s right to a secret ballot.  Can you imagine if your elected officials knew how everyone voted in their districts? How many more votes do you think they would receive on Election Day?  The same logic applies to union voting. Without the privacy of the secret ballot, people become more acutely aware of the need of their jobs and their unwillingness to go against the pressure of union leaders. That is why Save Our Secret Ballot (www.sosballot.org) was organized – to protect the right of the secret ballot for all Americans.

Save Our Secret Ballot is doing this by placing on the ballot in 15-20 states a state constitutional amendment (not federal) to protect the right to a secret ballot (for exact language go to www.sosballot.org).  We want voters to know exactly what is at stake and what unions want to accomplish. Holding a public debate is the last thing unions want.  House Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid are ready to take away your right to a secret ballot and President Obama is ready to sign it. All that stands in its way is you!

Where you and I want public discourse and debate like the famous Lincoln – Douglas debates over 150 years ago, unions want to treat this issue like a Venezuelan policy debate – the less discussion the better.

Unions want to pass this without the American public knowing about it. Like a thief, they want to do this in the darkness of night without the glare of daylight. Unlike a thief who steals material goods which can be replaced, they want to steal freedoms that cannot be replaced.

We need your help today – not tomorrow.  Today, Monday, this freedom protecting legislation will be up for a vote in the Utah House of Representatives.  We have some Republicans still frightened of the unions.  Please help today by getting your family, friends, business associates and YOU to call your Utah State Legislator and State Senator and ask them to vote YES for HJR-8 (Save Our Secret Ballot).

You can call them at the Capitol Hill

Utah State Senate 801-538-1035
Utah House of Representatives 801-538-1029

Without your help and leadership, unions will take away a fundamental freedom. For more information, go to www.sosballot.org and help stop this power grab today!

Chuck Warren is a partner at Silver Bullet, LLC (www.silverbulletllc.org).

Was Ayn Rand Right, 52 Years Ago?

By Stephen Moore (Wall Street Journal) | Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read “Atlas Shrugged” a “virgin.” Being conversant in Ayn Rand’s classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only “Atlas” were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I’m confident that we’d get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.

Many of us who know Rand’s work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that “Atlas Shrugged” parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.

Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity <<<Read the Full Story>>>

Utah: Records Release Escalates Charges of Gov’t Corruption

SALT LAKE CITY, January 6 – New evidence signals for the first time that prominent members of Utah Governor Jon Huntsman’s Department of Commerce may be directly involved in illegal, and sometimes criminal activities.

On Monday January 5, Utah County businessman and talk radio host C. Rick Koerber announced that he will begin releasing to the public a mountain of evidence implicating several government employees and officers.  The evidence is in the form of secret audio recordings, photographs, recordings of telephone conversations and printed documents authored by Utah officials.  Beginning Friday January 9, 2008 Koerber has announced his plan to publish in a series information releases including web links to audio files and .pdf documents.

“Given the current climate and the behavior of these people I just decided that it wasn’t worth letting things continue with business as usual,” said Koerber. “I think its best for everyone if the truth was revealed and everyone can see how things are done by some of Utah’s top ranking bureaucrats.  A few key individuals seem to enjoy ruining the reputations of sincere, hard working men and women and its costing normal every day citizens their jobs, their retirement, and in some cases their life savings.  I bet not a single one of them has ever created a real job and several of them seem to think they are above the law.”

The evidence being released implicates several Department of Commerce personnel including Utah Securities Division Enforcement Director Michael Hines, Enforcement Analyst Jennifer Korb, Licensing examiner A. Gary Bowen, former Division Director Wayne Klien and former Division of Real Estate officer John Brown.  Among the more then fifty recorded segments and documents in Koerber’s possession government employees are revealed lying, admitting conspiracy, misstating the law, admitting coercion, threatening witnesses, leaking protected information, bragging about excessive power and discretion and in at least one instance possible violations of a federal court rule prohibiting certain disclosures related to a grand jury proceeding.

Koerber is part of a growing number of Utah businessmen turning to State lawmakers and to the courts in an effort to reign in the alleged abuses by appointees, staff and employees in Gov. Huntsman’s Department of Commerce.

Henry S. Brock, a Utah based CPA associated with Americans for Civil Rights, is another local businessmen who is fed up with the Utah Department of Commerce and has created a laundry list of documented abuses on the ACR website where a petition is being circulated to pressure lawmakers to take action.  “Whether you are a doctor, contractor, realtor, or financial advisor, we all have similar concerns,” writes Brock, who uses the recently released State Audit of one division inside the Department to call attention to what he calls widespread abuse.

In what is becoming increasingly discussed nationally, Utah’s state officials, under Gov. Huntsman’s tenure, are now ranked, according to a recent study published by the New York Times, as one of the top 15 most corrupt States in the union.

In December of 2007 lawmakers approved a State audit of the Department’s Division of Securities which uncovered an array of problems including impropriety, internal conflict, coercion, violations of due process, and numerous other failures in its official 43-page report released in July of 2008.

“The audit only uncovered the tip of the iceberg” claims Utah businessman James Claybourn.  “If you read the audit carefully you’ll notice that it only looked at a few cases, and that it also describes the need for much further investigation.”

Claybourn, Brock and Koerber are part of a growing business community increasingly disillusioned by the lack of attention and scrutiny being directed at the widely reported abuses by the Department which operates under the sole elective oversight of Huntsman and his appointee Department of Commerce Director Francine Giani.

Koerber hopes that by announcing the systematic release of the recordings and documents he’s been gathering over the last several years that a more thorough investigation of the Department will be conducted and that the State legislature will not take only small, token efforts at reform.

“Look, the situation in the Department of Commerce is out of control.  They brag about being able to break the law, about ruining people’s lives and they regularly demonize small businessmen who are supposed to be treated as innocent until proven guilty,” extols Koerber.  “In today’s financial climate bureaucrats should not be freely spreading lies and acting like they are above the law, forgetting that small businessmen and women are citizens deserving of equal protection under the law.  It’s just plain wrong.”

In fact, the Department has had to drop fraud charges and issue public apologies in the past for erroneously accusing businessmen of fraud and misconduct using punitive premature media, for example its March 30, 2007 release related to Gary W. Teran and Carl A. Page of First Western Advisors.

The Department has been gaining a growing number of critics that extends beyond the business community.  Over the last year, several government insiders, including at least one former Executive Director and one former Division of Securities Director, have suggested that a “changing of the guard” is urgently needed along with several substantial reforms.

The Utah legislature has also begun addressing the reported impropriety, however, several prominent Utahans, are concerned that the gravity of the situation is not being fully appreciated by lawmakers.

“The bills [being proposed] are grossly inadequate and do not go far enough to protect the constitutional and civil rights of all licensees under the Department of Commerce, including the Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing, the Division of Real Estate, and the Division of Securities,” says Brock.  “Regulators are not above the law, and are accountable for their acts in relation to the public trust reposed in them…the Legislative Auditor’s Official Report said that employees within the agency themselves fear to speak-up due to reprisals, and the licensees are certainly fearful of retribution; hence, an unwillingness to speak out on legislation such as this. I have no doubt there may be reprisals against me for speaking up.”

One disturbing example of such reprisals involves State Representative Carl Wimmer who began looking into potential abuses by Huntsman’s Department in 2007.  After learning of Wimmer’s inquiry, then Securities Division Director Wayne Klein fired off an email to State Attorney General Mark Shurtleff suggesting that Wimmer should not be trusted and that his efforts be downplayed because he was an investor in one of the companies being investigated by Klien.  Wimmer, however turned out not to be an investor in any company being investigated by the Division.

“A government bureaucrat, trying to sabotage a State legislator to protect his territory- this is exactly what they do.” said Koerber.  “If you accuse them of wrong doing they line up a row of supposed victims of fraud-never mind that the story of fraud might be entirely made up by the regulators-and suggest that by attacking the government you are somehow harming or being insensitive to potential victims.”

In one of the audio recordings yet to be released by Koerber, Klien can be heard justifying his division’s targeting of Koerber himself because of statements made about Klein on Koerber’s his talk radio program and because of legislative scrutiny being brought on the Department by Rep. Wimmer and his colleague Rep. Jim Bird, pressure which Klein seems to attribute to Koerber.

–Partial Transcript-

Within a month of the announcement of last year’s audit and amidst a storm of controversy Klein resigned from his position as Securities Director.  But in commentary released after the release of the official audit, Audit Manager Tim Osterstock immediately preempted any suggestion that Klein’s resignation would solve the problem.  “It’s not just a director, it’s an organization,” Osterstock said.

One Department of Commerce insider, who requested to remain unnamed for fear of reprisal, confided about the Department and actions taken by Executive Director Francine Giani, “You have no idea how crazy this place is.  Its all about territory, power and egos.  Once the audit came out Francine put on a happy face but things around here got put on lock down. Quite frankly, so long as Francine and people like Michael Hines have free reign, I would hate to be a business owner in Utah.”

Regarding Koerber’s January 5th announcement that these recordings will be released to the public, this same insider remarked, “This is extraordinary evidence, I hope it starts to get the kind of attention it deserves.”

Huntsman who has been Utah Governor since 2004, appointed Giani to her present position in 2005, and has remained silent since the scandal started brewing in 2007.  Several businessmen, lawmakers, citizens organizations and government insiders now appear committed to making sure his Department doesn’t escape legitimate scrutiny and reform.

[Note: C. Rick Koerber is the Founder and President of FreeCapitalist Enterprises, LLC  that parent company in charge of operations for FreeCapitalist Daily]

Related Content on the Web:

• January 05, 2009 – FranklinSquires Press Release
• Audit blasts state securities division
• Utah’s securities chief is resigning under cloud
• Francine’s Domain – Scandal Brewing in Utah State Government
• Rogue Agency Arrests Utah Mom
• Audit: Corruption, Failure and Incompetence in Utah Government
• Open Letter to the Legislature
• Division of Securities Apology Regarding Teran and Page

RNC Speaking Out Against Socialism? Wow.

By Ralph Z. Hallow (Washington Times) |In what would amount to a slap in the face to a sitting Republican president and the party’s Senate and House leaders, national GOP officials, including the vice chairman of the Republican National Committee, are sponsoring a resolution opposing the resort to “socialist” means to save capitalism.

“We can’t be a party of small government, free markets and low taxes while supporting bailouts and nationalizing industries, which lead to big government, socialism and high taxes at the expense of individual liberty and freedoms,” said Solomon Yue, a cosponsor of a resolution that would put the RNC — the party’s national governing body <<<Read the Full Story>>>

Forbes: How Capitalism Will Save Us

By Steve Forbes (Forbes Magazine) |We are experiencing the devastating consequences of a chain of major economic policy errors, which, to use a current cliché, created the perfect storm. These government blunders temporarily paralyzed the global credit system and are now sending the U.S. and Europe into recession, while sharply cutting back Asia’s growth rates.

Left to its own devices, the credit crisis, which began in August 2007, would have crushed economies as severely as did the Great Depression.

Belatedly, but thankfully, governments recognized that the only way to get credit flowing again was for them to make quick and direct massive infusions of new equity into beleaguered banks, as well as commit to other emergency measures hitherto unimaginable.

If sensible rescue efforts continue–and they will–the immediate crisis will quickly pass. Shell-shocked businesses and consumers won’t recover rapidly from the trauma of recent months, especially as we now cope with recession. But the downturn shouldn’t be prolonged: The economy here and those overseas should start to pick up no later than next spring.

That soon? Despite the crisis, the global economy still retains enormous strengths. Between the early 1980s and 2007 we lived in an economic Golden Age. Never before have so many people advanced so far economically in so short a period of time as they have during the last 25 years. Until the credit crisis, 70 million people a year were joining the middle class. The U.S. kicked off this long boom with the economic reforms of Ronald Reagan, particularly his enormous income tax cuts. We burst from the economic stagnation of the 1970s into a dynamic, innovative, high-tech-oriented economy. Even in recent years the much-maligned U.S. did well. Between year-end 2002 and year-end 2007 U.S. growth exceeded the entire size of China’s economy. Obviously China’s growth rates were higher, but China was coming off a much smaller base.

The world is flush with cash. It’s frozen because of fear, but the cash is there. Productivity gains are burgeoning.

So, will this global boom resume next year, slowly at first and then with increasing momentum? It should. Whether that happens, however, depends on the next, highly dangerous phase: <<<Read the Full Story>>>

>>>Learn more about Capitalism and becoming a capitalist

Bush Stops Gravity: Abandons Free Market to Save it?

Can principles be suspended or sacrificed?

AFP (Breitbard.com) | US President George W. Bush said in an interview Tuesday he was forced to sacrifice free market principles to save the economy from “collapse.”

“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush told CNN television, saying he had made the decision “to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse.”

Bush’s comments reflect an extraordinary departure from his longtime advocacy for an unfettered free market, as his administration has orchestrated unprecedented government intervention in the face of a dire financial crisis.

“I am sorry we’re having to do it,” Bush said. Bush said….<<<Read the Full Story>>>

Newsweek: Ayn Rand caused America’s Crisis?

Barret Sheridan (Newsweek) | It’s not easy being Alan Greenspan these days. As the former Federal Reserve chairman, he urged government regulators to take a light touch while banks like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers buried themselves-and the economy more generally-under a mountain of debt. Now that his reputation is plummeting faster than the stock market, he’s been forced to admit a “flaw” in his hands-off ideology.

Of course, things look entirely different to members of “free-market advocacy groups,” as they like to be called. One such group is the Ayn Rand Institute, named after the matriarch of the movement, whose antigovernment and anti-regulation views are embodied in her best-selling novels “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” Indeed, Greenspan himself was a friend of Rand’s, and a devotee of her extreme free-market philosophy…[Read Full Article]

The End Of American Capitalism?

By Anthony Faiola – (Washington Post) |The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression is claiming another casualty: American-style capitalism.

Since the 1930s, U.S. banks were the flagships of American economic might, and emulation by other nations of the fiercely free-market financial system in the United States was expected and encouraged. But the market turmoil that is draining the nation’s wealth and has upended Wall Street now threatens to put the banks at the heart of the U.S. financial system at least partly in the hands of the government.

The Bush administration is considering a partial nationalization of some banks, buying up a portion of their shares to shore them up and restore confidence as part of the $700 billion government bailout. The notion of government ownership in the financial sector, even as a minority stakeholder, goes against what market purists say they see as the foundation of the American system.

Yet the administration may feel it has no choice. Credit, the lifeblood of capitalism, ceased to flow. An economy based on the free market cannot function that way.

The government’s about-face goes beyond the banking industry. It is reasserting itself in the lives of citizens in ways that were unthinkable in the era of market-knows-best thinking. With the recent takeovers of major lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the bailout of AIG, the U.S. government is now effectively responsible for providing home mortgages and life insurance to tens of millions of Americans. Many economists are asking whether it remains a free market if the government is so deeply enmeshed in the financial system.

Given that the United States has held itself up as a global economic model, the change could shift the balance of how governments around the globe conduct free enterprise. Over the past three decades, the United States led the crusade to persuade much of the world, especially developing countries, to lift the heavy hand of government from finance and industry.

But the hands-off brand of capitalism in the United States is now being blamed for the easy credit that sickened the housing market and allowed a freewheeling Wall Street to create a pool of toxic investments that has infected the global financial system. Heavy intervention by the government, critics say, is further robbing Washington of the moral authority to spread the gospel of laissez-faire capitalism.

The government could launch a targeted program in which it takes>>>>Read the Full Article

President Obama! Now What?

By Fouad Ajami (Wall Street Journal-Opinion Page)

The morning after the election, the disappointment will begin to settle upon the Obama crowd. Defeat — by now unthinkable to the devotees — will bring heartbreak. Victory will steadily deliver the sobering verdict that our troubles won’t be solved by a leader’s magic.

There is something odd — and dare I say novel — in American politics about the crowds that have been greeting Barack Obama on his campaign trail. Hitherto, crowds have not been a prominent feature of American politics. We associate them with the temper of Third World societies. We think of places like Argentina and Egypt and Iran, of multitudes brought together by their zeal for a Peron or a Nasser or a Khomeini. In these kinds of societies, the crowd comes forth to affirm its faith in a redeemer: a man who would set the world right.

Martin Kozlowski

As the late Nobel laureate Elias Canetti observes in his great book, “Crowds and Power” (first published in 1960), the crowd is based on an illusion of equality: Its quest is for that moment when “distinctions are thrown off and all become equal. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd.” These crowds, in the tens of thousands, who have been turning out for the Democratic standard-bearer in St. Louis and Denver and Portland, are a measure of American distress.

On the face of it, there is nothing overwhelmingly stirring about Sen. Obama. There is a cerebral quality to him, and an air of detachment. He has eloquence, but within bounds. After nearly two years on the trail, the audience can pretty much anticipate and recite his lines. The political genius of the man is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish. The coalition that has propelled his quest — African-Americans and affluent white liberals — has no economic coherence. But for the moment, there is the illusion of a common undertaking — Canetti’s feeling of equality within the crowd. The day after, the crowd will of course discover its own fissures. The affluent will have to pay for the programs promised the poor. The redistribution agenda that runs through Mr. Obama’s vision is anathema to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the hedge-fund managers now smitten with him. Their ethos is one of competition and the justice of the rewards that come with risk and effort. All this is shelved, as the devotees sustain the candidacy of a man whose public career has been a steady advocacy of reining in the market and organizing those who believe in entitlement and redistribution.

A creature of universities and churches and nonprofit institutions, the Illinois senator, with the blessing and acquiescence of his upscale supporters, has glided past these hard distinctions. On the face of it, it must be surmised that his affluent devotees are ready to foot the bill for the new order, or are convinced that after victory the old ways will endure, and that Mr. Obama will govern from the center. Ambiguity has been a powerful weapon of this gifted candidate: He has been different things to different people, and he was under no obligation to tell this coalition of a thousand discontents, and a thousand visions, the details of his political programs: redistribution for the poor, post racial absolution and “modernity” for the upper end of the scale.

It was no accident that the white working class was >>>> Read the Full Article

McCain: Obama tax policies are socialist

By Glen Johnson (Associated Press) | CONCORD, N.C. – Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Saturday accused Democratic rival Barack Obama of favoring a socialistic economic approach by supporting tax cuts and tax credits McCain says would merely shuffle wealth rather than creating it.

“At least in Europe, the Socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives,” McCain said in a radio address. “They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Sen. Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it’s just another government giveaway.”

McCain, though, has a health care plan girded with a similar philosophy. He proposes providing individuals with a $5,000 tax credit to buy health insurance. He would pay for his plan, in part, by considering as taxable income the money their employer spends on their health coverage.

McCain leveled his charge before a pair of appearances aimed at restoring his lead in critical battleground states. In both North Carolina and Virginia, where McCain was to speak later in the day, his campaign has surrendered its lead to Obama in various polls. President Bush, a Republican, won both states in 2004.

During a rally outside Charlotte, N.C., McCain returned to the socialism theme, although he did not use the more tart language of his radio address.

He also was sharply critical of the Bush administration, saying it should be more aggressive in buying>>>>Read the Full Story

Next Page »