On WMUR “Closeup” this morning, replacement host James Pindell interviewed Diane Lacy, President of the NH State Employee Association and NH Rep. Will Infantine (R-Manchester) during his first segment). Well, during the interview, Ms. Lacy shows that either she has no grasp of real facts or is just what many people believe: that the SEIU is just another name for “Progressive Democrats” in that they just make up facts and say them as truth. And keep repeating them, just like NH Progressive Press Sec. Harrell Kirstein and Uber-Progressive Chair Ray “Buckles” Buckley And are in the tank for Obama, as the national SEIU spent over $70 million, by their own admission, trying to get Obama elected. Lacy concentrated on three things:
- Unions = Middle Class
- Republican supported budget hurts union workers (with an assisted jab question from James Pindell)
- Speaker Bill O’Brien is a Free Stater
- In fact, NH is overrun by Free Staters (and she has no clue who or how many)!
- She is making the wedge appeal to the RINOs for support with “hey, THOSE Republicans are not like you – support us!”
- But she’ll replace those RINOS with union members who will be running for election.
- And kinda mumbled something that without automatic union due deductions from union member paychecks, e-commerce in NH is dead.
Like this first statement by Diane Lacy:
“Middle Class is under attack here in NH and the way to get to the Middle Class is by taking away their rights.”
This is getting to be old, but let’s walk through this, shall we?
Just like the Occupy [insert Obamaville location here] who are trying to say they speak for the 99% (I can assuredly inform you, they don’t), Lacy tries to redefine our language such that Union = Middle Class. Really? It may “sound” good, but only if you aren’t listening (and for most people on a Sunday morning, you HAVE to want to watch the show). But just the sheer lack of number of workers in unions (private sector unionization is only 6.9%; for all workers it is just 11.9%) makes this patently untrue. At this point, how could she really have a straight face as she says this?
Sidebar: First, you just have to marvel at a chapter of SEIU that willingly is known as SEIU Local 1984. Secondly, ask yourself: why is it that only Progressives ever seem to want to redefine words all on their own (and given the ties that many SEIU leaders have to the Socialist / Communist / New Left / Workers Family Parties, they are nothing but a Progressive front organization)?
They weren’t happy with “Progressives” back at the turn of the last century, so they started to call themselves Liberals. Then when they ran “Liberal” into the ground, the want us to believe they are “born again” Progressives and not Liberals. Can’t they ever get themselves Right correct? Do you ever hear of Conservatives ever calling themselves anything except, er, Conservatives?
For good luck, she throws out that bromide showing the lockstep nature of Progressives with:
It is a race to the bottom and we won’t stand for it.
Ah yes, letting some workers wishing to exercise their economic Liberty and the Right to Free Association (which also includes the Right to NOT associate with others) to negotiate with potential employers on their own will kill unions? Why is that such a sticking point – why do unions wish to take that Freedom away from those that simply want to work under a private contact (be it written or verbal)? There is absolutely no evidence that I have ever seen that not having a union will force wages downward. Now, in the private sector, wages may have gone down as union wages have made their companies uncompetitive (re: auto unions nearly have sunk the US auto manufacturers to the point that they HAD to be bailed out) against global competitors. In this situation, the limiting factor is Profit – and that is what can keep union / management costs in line. Have that go negative, and there is no company, so it is the limiting factor for everyone.
Next, Pindell decides to question Infantine in such a way that would immediately put him in the “debate hole”:
“…Coming on the heels of the budget which really hurt public employees…”
Well, Will didn’t fall for that, with the response of:
“To try to go from creating jobs to “we’re trying to hurt union and hurt the middle class is unfair”
And indeed, it was unfair and Will’s was a good response. Look, Legislators are elected to represent the taxpayers and their interests. Public unions, when you strip off all the fluff, exist to extract power and money from those same taxpayers for the benefit of their members. I don’t want to hear the nonsense that union members are taxpayers too – the problem for that pat response is that the more that taxes go up, the less taxpayers have in their pockets and the MORE that union members have in theirs. In other words, the majority bear the cost for the benefit of the few – and that is Diane Lacy’s job to make happen (increase membership and increase their compensation). The problem is that there are NO limiting factor to restrict compensation – except for the Legislators that are elected that then negotiate / approve the budgets for contracts.
Then, Lacy starts in with the politics concerning Right To Work:
“This is about the Democrat Party vs the Republican party. And let’s be clear; the speaker is not exactly our typical Republican. He is a Free Stater. These people, these sponsors that are going out there with the legislation are Free Staters. They are not the typical Republicans. Even Will here opposed RTW for a dozen years, sorry, 10 years, and now he is supporting it and I am hoping that this not about some ideological shift that you’ve had and maybe this is out of a sense of duty in following Speaker O’Brien but the will of NH has not been there and promise of jobs is not been there. The Speaker has not released any corporation whose promised NH hundreds of jobs for this legislation.
So we see the collusion between the SEIU and the Democrat Party in using the same people to demonize – the Free Staters. They Alinsky’d Honey Puterbaugh in the special election back in the summer by calling her that. Frankly, they had to – calling we Conservatives “extremists” was loosing steam and effectiveness. And having already used that against the TEA Party (and got rudely spanked by voters in November for doing so), they have to go and pick on another target.
Because that’s what Progressives do – like any Community Organizer, they can’t win anything unless they try to tear the stuffing out of people because they can’t win if they were truthful on the issues (a la: “we will tax you out the wazoo because we know we can spend your money on XYZ / give it to someone else and that’s more important than you spending it on your children”).
We also get to see the “dog whistles” (hey, if the Progressives like Chris Matthews, USA Today, MSNBC, The Nation, and Daily Kos) that will be used in the election:
- Free Staters
- Typical Republicans
- Right To Work
- Middle Class
Mark my words, EVERYONE that opposes the union agenda and power, and the Democrats that protect them, will be Free Staters – even people who aren’t (like O’Brien and many of his leadership)! It won’t matter to them and they won’t care. After all, if they can demonize someone or some group, they lose. Every. Single. Time. Each and every election is this way – they
Er, Bill O’Brien is NOT a Free Stater, Diane, even as much as you may wish it hard enough. And frankly, even the “extremist” label doesn’t fit – but it did fit the majority of Democrats this last election as the voters gave them the heave-ho. I’m curious – in calling Republicans extremists and Free Staters, aren’t you ALSO demonizing the voters that put them into office? After all, it is the VOTERS that are the taxpayers that foot your wages, right? After all, if the Democrats were not extremists, why would they have been thrown out? Actually, my opinion is that just like the SEIU leadership, the Democrats were too Collectivist, too Statist, too willing to continue to centralize power into Concord and irritated the sensibilities of most New Hampshire voters.
BTW, with Enterasys bringing 540 jobs from MA to NH, wouldn’t that count towards that “NH hundreds of jobs“? Or are we to simply ignore that news, Diane?
Will had a great line when he brought up the meme that Unions are not always the altruistic folks they wish to portray themselves as (er, the adult version of elementary school teaching kids “self-esteem”?) with the object lesson of the UNH Pervert Professor:
“…unfortunately there are some barnacles out there like the situation of the UNH professor that exposed himself but was not removed from his position
with the implied knowledge that his union defended him and thus, defending someone that most taxpayers would call a sex pervert. Such is the power (and morals) of a union.
The subject then changed as Pindell asked Lacy:
Going forward, what is the SEA going to do in terms of holding legislators accountable on these particular issues, particularly Democrats? Are you going to be more involved more in recruiting candidates (and I think this is your first election cycle as President)? We see all this activity, organizing – where is it headed in this election year?
Lacy responded with the following:
I think it is headed to the Main Streets of all of our towns in NH. We will put boots on the ground, people on the ground. We’ll have a conversation with our neighbors, all of our communities, about the values that are important to NH because one thing is clears: NH is being taken over by the Free Staters and we are not going to stand for it. This is our state and we believe in our local businesses and advocating for them. there were local businesses that testified in opposition to these bills yesterday.
There are local businesses that stand that stand to be deeply damaged by these bills if they are passed. I mean some of the bills on dues deductions. That will impact e-commerce here in NH. that will impact bankers, insurance companies, lawyers, a number of services, vendors, manufacturers. And these legislators have no clue as to what they are going to do to businesses on this so we will have the conversation.
Will then puts her in her place:
I don’t agree that the House is being taken over by the Free Staters. There are approximately 14 members that say they are “Free Staters” that are legislators…..but I’ve also heard that at least one union has gone to all its members and get all of you to get out there and get elected as State Representatives even if you change your Party Registration to get elected, to get more of their members into the State House. So we expect that as well.
let’s look at the actual math, eh?:
- 14 members out of 294 Republicans is a lonely 4.76%
- 14 members out of 400 total House Legislators is a mere 3.5%
- 950 members of the Free State Project have actually moved to NH – a downright small number of the 20,000 members that the FSP wishes to see move voluntarily to NH – 4.76%
- 950 FSPers have actually moved to NH – out of a NH population of 1.3 million – a less than miniscule 0.07%
Really, Diane – OVERRUNNING NH? I haven’t decided if you are just bad at math, delusional concerning the FSPers actual influence reach, or just can’t stand the idea that ONLY 950 FSPers can out punch the weight of 10,000 NH SEIU politically active members who have lots of paid staffers. And if any of those three items are true, it is a very sad commentary about the current state of affairs at the NH SEIU Local 1984.
