Prepare To Be Offended

In another move to give kickbacks to his union supporters, Obama signed legislation that says that only union-based companies can big on government projects. This move negatively affects 25,000 companies. So much so that The Association of Building Contractors has condemned the executive order.

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.”

Way to go. In a time of huge unemployment, let’s eliminate the possibility of putting some people to work. Combined with their so called “free choice act”, then unions will become the man behind the curtain running this country.

h/t GatewayPundit

Let’s take just the 25 billion being talked about currently and I get 1/3 of that, approximately 8 billion. Well I would take that 8 billion and build some plants outside this country and then ship the cars back here to the U.S.

Of course this means closing all U.S. plants in the process. However, instead of just putting hundreds of thousands of people out on the street, I would offer to relocate them to their country of choice and continue building cars for us. Naturally that means no unions and no viagra, but hey, you won’t lose your job. Look at the bright side, you may not make as much but the standard of living will be far less as well.

It is far better than letting the government take control of my company and run it into the ground, as the British did in the 60’s, I would be free of the gestapo unions and might actually turn the company around. Sure I would have to build some great cars in the process that people really want to buy, but that should be the easy part.

I’ve been think about starting a series on this blog about what I would do about any given situation. In most cases it would be if I were the President, but not always.

Given that I figured I would start off with this new auto bailout that is being talked about in congress and elsewhere. As many people have mentioned, this is going to be a big mess no matter how you look at it.

To start with we have three companies that are failing in U.S. sales. Some are saying let them fail. If they can’t manage their business then the company should fail like any other company. In principal I agree with that. However in GM’s case they are doing quite well overseas and are profitable, especially in the Asian markets. So they are doing something right, just not here.

Either way, I would give them two choices.

Option One

First if we are to bail you out, then I would require what Neil Cavuto said, the CEO and the Chairman must resign. Then I would bring in the top 20 or so non-employee stock holders (which means basically mutual fund companies) and have them search for a new board. The stock holders then vote in new management.

At the same time I would require the UAW to renegotiate their contracts and cut labor costs. They are out of control and it is killing these companies. The only problem with that of course is that the UAW has already said they won’t budge.

Option Two

The government does nothing and lets the companies fail. As bad as that sounds it doesn’t necessarily mean they shut their doors and all is lost. It means they file chapter 11 bankruptcy and the courts can reduce their debt. Possibly even force the unions to the negotiating table.

Yes, some jobs will be lost and that is the sad fact. However you cannot keep a person employed just for the sake of that person. Labor is almost always the largest expenditure of any company and why it is usually the first to go when the company needs to stay a float. Some must sacrifice so that other may go on.

So that is my view. However with a democrat congress and a democrat president there will be neither. They will hand them billions of dollars of our money and they will probably fail anyway. All the while the unions will keep their strangle hold on the companies.

McCain has been known to be liked by quite a few democrats, but according to some reports in the keystone state, a LOT of ex-Hillary campaign workers are working for McCain there now.

My favorite piece of this is the union angle:

Union members repeatedly tell all of us that they are lying to pollsters because the unions have been polling these people — and the unions will threaten people’s jobs if they don’t tow the union line. So, the people lie when asked whom they are supporting. But, the unions can’t control who they vote for on Election Day. And that’s when things are going to get interesting.

If this is happening in PA, I can only hope it is happening in Ohio, Florida, Virginia, etc.

Now, you could get all conspiracy theory on this and say that the Hillary supporters want McCain to win so that Hillary can run in 2012. That very well may be and that is ok. We can cross that bridge when we get there. And we have an ace up the sleeve by the name of Sarah Palin…

Those of us who actually think for ourselves knew this one all along. Seems the union that a demolition worker belongs to in Scranton Ohio is being pressured by his union to “fall in line“.

That is odd, and here I thought unions were supposed to be protecting workers from harassment and poor working conditions from the big bad corporations? I don’t know about you, but being pressured to vote a specific way sure seems like a bad environment to me. Not to mention that in most companies, politics, religion, etc. is considered topics not suitable for the work place.

It also bears mentioning that Obama wants to strengthen unions even further by way of the Employee Free Choice Act. A nicely disguised piece of legislation that will make it easier to form unions and “help rebuild America’s middle class”. Uh huh. What they really mean is “help rebuild the Democratic base”.