SEIU Still Striking Nursing Home Residents

It's been three weeks since the SEIU-represented workers walked out on the residents of two Connecticut nursing homes, and the Union of Purple People Eaters is still out on strike.

Health care workers in Ansonia and Derby walked off their jobs at two nursing homes more than three weeks ago, and there's no end in sight, union officials said.

About 200 nurses, nursing assistants and support staff at Hilltop Health Care in Ansonia and the Birmingham Health Center in Derby have been on strike since April 15, along with colleagues at nursing homes in Winsted and Hartford.

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Every day the striking workers can be found marching outside the two facilities from 6 a.m. to midnight. On Friday, the workers staged a "Rally in the Valley" to protest the impasse and encourage some movement in the talks.

Chernoff said the inability to successfully negotiate the contracts is an anomaly in relation to other workers.

How comforting for the elderly.  They've become an "anomaly."
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“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

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“Cadillac Tax” Exemption: Union bosses get a deal while the rest of America gets screwed.

Apparently, the fix was in when union bosses' met in a closed door meeting at the White House on Monday and had a follow-up meeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday. Unions bosses were reportedly able to get an exemption for collectively-bargained health care plans from the so-called "cadillac tax."

According to Congress Daily:

Unions tentatively struck a deal Tuesday to exempt collectively bargained healthcare plans from a tax on high-cost plans expected to be used to help raise revenue for the healthcare overhaul.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern and United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger met with House Speaker Pelosi Tuesday, a day after labor leaders met at the White House to express their opposition to the excise tax.

While Congress Daily notes that the exemption is not a done deal and it could be "tweaked" to include union-free workers as well, Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) stated:

"It's setting up a divide-and-conquer situation here where some people are going to feel they're paying for other people, and they're all working. That politically is possibly the most dangerous thing Democrats can do is create that division."

We couldn't agree more.

Since union bosses spent an estimated $1.5 billion of their members' money on electing Democrats in 2006 and 2008, it is expected that Democrats would be more amenable to union bosses' wishes than the Bush administration was. However, such flagrant capitulation to a special interest is appalling and should be thoroughly (and loudly) condemned.

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"I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes." Thomas Paine December 23, 1776

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10.2 BILLION REASONS WHY UNIONS ARE SPENDING $15 MILLION ON AUGUST ADS FOR SOCIALIZED MEDICINE...

Here's a question: If you could make $10.2 billion by investing $15 million of someone else's money, would you do it?

You'd be a fool not to, right?

Well, this month, pushers of government-run health care will be spending, according to The Hill, between $10 and $20 million to on advertising to twist lawmakers arms to support socialized medicine. Of that, The Hill says that up to $15 million is coming from unions.

Much of the grassroots activity and television ads will be aimed at persuading centrist Democrats and Republicans to support the creation of a robust government-run health insurance program. Many centrists have balked at the cost of pending healthcare proposals and are reluctant to embrace government competition in the insurance markets.

The AFL-CIO and affiliated unions are planning a massive dual offensive on healthcare reform and labor law reform in August, budgeting $10 to $15 million on the effort, according to a senior labor official. The labor unions’ advocacy will consist of mass mailings, running phone banks and distributing policy fliers at worksites. “This is expensive stuff,” said Gerald Shea, Assistant to the President for Governmental Affairs at the AFL-CIO, who provided a rough estimate of the cost of August activities. Shea said the effort would be conducted by the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions and would focus on healthcare reform and the Employee Free Choice Act.

Health Care for America Now, whose members include ACORN, AFL-CIO, Campaign for America’s Future, the Center for American Progress, MoveOn.org, the NAACP, and the Service Employees International Union, will hold national neighborhood canvassing days on Aug. 8 and on Aug. 22.

To date, however, no one has bothered to ask the question: WHY?

What do the unions have to gain from spending money taken from workers (in the form of union dues) and sending ACORN (and allies of their ilk) out canvassing America's neighborhoods to push for government-run health care?

As the saying goes, follow the money.

The answer why unions are spending up to $15 million of their members' is simple: More dues.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

• As the largest industry in 2006, health care provided 14 million jobs—13.6 million jobs for wage and salary workers and about 438,000 jobs for the self-employed.
• 7 of the 20 fastest growing occupations are health care related.
• Health care will generate 3 million new wage and salary jobs between 2006 and 2016, more than any other industry.

Since government workers are the fastest growth area for unions, once health care workers become government workers and, should the private-industry destroying Employee Free Choice Act become law, this lethal combination will mean nearly the entire health care profession will quickly become unionized. (Currently, the industry is less than 20% unionized.)

If you assume union dues will be an average of $50 per month, then multiply it by 17 million workers, you'll find that unions stand to reap an astronomical amount of union dues. In fact, unions stand to rake in around $850,000,000 per month or $10,200,000,000 (that's $10.2 Billion) per year in union dues alone. And that's not even counting the initiation fees many unions will require new health care workers to pay.

So, now you know when that community organizer from ACORN shows up at your doorstep, or you see another union-sponsored sob story ad on your TV trying to convince you socialized medicine is best thing since the atom bomb: Follow the money.

IBD: Congress' New Health Plan Makes Private Insurance Illegal

We have been warning for quite some time that then-candidate Barack Obama's plan to re-engineer Amierca's health care system would lead us into full-blown socialized medicine. Well, we hate to say 'we told you so', but we were right.

Investor's Business Daily has found the page within the 1,018-page Congressional bill that outlaws you from buying private health insurance--and it's right on page 16.

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

To read the entire piece, go here.

As we've said all along, like it or not, socialized medicine is in the works.