From WGEM, and the only thing funnier than their headline is the thought that WGEM likely receives a lot of ad money from the union in advertising.

It’s Christmas caroling with a message.

Wednesday night, locked out workers from Roquette America in Keokuk staged a very unique protest.

They took a break from the picket lines to go caroling outside the homes of top Roquette executives who live in Quincy.

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They took a break from the picket lines to go caroling outside the homes of top Roquette executives who live in Quincy.

The union workers have been off the job for almost three months now.

Roquette locked them out on September 28th, and contract negotiations have pretty much stalled ever since.

Are you kidding me? A caravan of 80 people to sing insults and, according to eyewitnesses, shouting “F*CK YOU” at various houses right before Christmas? This isn’t “caroling,” this is intimidation. On private property. I’m told by locals that one of the houses they visited was down a private lane of an elderly couple whose granddaughter often stays with them (and luckily wasn’t the night the union struck) – the union trespassed.

As for the carols:

It went like this, “God bless ye very wealthy men,we’re here so you can see. The workers who helped make you rich are now out on the street. You locked the doors while profits soared, how greedy could you be? Oh tidings of capital gains, oh what a shame, all you care about it capital gains.”

Yes, those evil business owners who are trying to cut costs because a president who the unions supported and donated money to is forcing business to trim costs so they can afford his massive health control law and other regulations thrown on them. If the unions are unhappy with this then perhaps then need to look at the economic situation this president has created instead of blaming skittish business owners simply trying to stay afloat in a dismal economic period. The president for whom these unions worked has created an economic environment wherein there is less discretionary money to go around, thus less demand for goods and services, thus less revenue for small business, and so on and so forth. Union members should be “caroling” the source: their union bosses. Unions have become the very thing which they were formed to fight and many good men and women (my family is predominately union) are caught up as pawns in a game played by favored fat cat union bosses who send their workers out to engage in extortion and intimidation in exchange for work. (more…)

We’ve already noted how two HuffPo reporters ran defense for SEIU: First there was Erica Payne, HuffPo blogger, lover of all things Media Matters, who appeared on Fox News to try to shift blame of SEIU antics onto the tea party.

We’ve also read how HuffPo blogger Arthur Delaney was embedded with SEIU to cover their home invasion of Bank of America employee Greg Baer which terrified Baer’s young son who hid in the bathroom (we’re still waiting for the Carnahan Coffin-Gate drama queens to repeat their hysterics over this but so far, nothing); Delaney became the first to parrot SEIU’s baseless accusation of “conflict of interest” at Fortune columnist Nina Easton after she published her firsthand account, as Baer’s neighbor, of the same protest. Monday we exposed Huffington Post’s own conflict of interest when we discovered that SEIU had paid the site $15,000 categorized as “political activities and lobbying.”

Is this what SEIU money is buying? Two HuffPo bloggers running their media defense? Of course, this could be a routine advertising expense. But, Big Government has learned that the Huffington Post has inserted themselves into SEIU’s most notorious violent incident: the Kenneth Gladney beating of last August.

(more…)

Why is the Washington Post ignoring the SEIU protest at the homes of two bank executives, one being an employee of the Bank of America? Aside from a brief mention in a larger story on May 17 about SEIU protests, the paper of record in the nation’s capital has been strangely silent.

Even after the story broke here that the buses that carried an estimated 500 protesters to the Greenville Rd, Chevy Chase residence of a B of A executive were escorted by at least two units of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, the incuriosity of the WaPo continues.

This afternoon, all the details of this story were reconfirmed through the Montgomery County Police Department spokesperson, Corporal Daniel Friz.  Meanwhile, two high-level D.C. police officials have disputed their department’s police presence at the B of A executive’s home.

Operating in full CYA mode, the first statement cames from D.C. Chief of Police Cathy Lanier: (more…)

If you haven’t read by now all the headlines on this story, you’ll want to start at the beginning and read the first post, SEIU Storms Private Residence, Terrorizes Teenage Son of Bank of America Exec. Because as each day passes, new facts are popping up. The story seemed so outrageous at first. After all, the thought of over 500 screaming and chanting protesters surrounding a Bank of America lawyer’s private residence while the man’s teenage son, home alone, hid frightened inside a bathroom – it’s just so extreme, even by SEIU’s standards.

I knew something was up when the following day, Fortune magazine editor Nina Easton, a neighbor of the targeted residence, published an account of the incident and was almost immediately attacked by what seemed like practically a coordinated dogpile of writers from several specific sources.

In almost mirror fashion to the Town Hall events last August, when both the Huffington Post and Media Matters seemingly tried to cover up and dismiss the violent acts that SEIU committed against Kenneth Gladney, the same players were again out in full force. As our Larry O’Connor wrote, both outlets behaved less like journalists and more like arms of the SEIU press office, dismissing SEIU’s bad behavior and attacking an innocent party with fabricated conflicts of interest as a method of distraction and intimidation.

Bob Borosage, Erica Payne, and John Podesta

And now we learn this: Erica Payne, the guest who was invited to appear Friday on Megyn Kelley’s Fox News show and proceeded to blame the Tea Parties for the behavior of SEIU? She was co-founder of Democracy Alliance, the very organization that spawned and is a donor to Media Matters. SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger is also the Vice-Chair of its Board.

(more…)

The family of Greg Baer, Bank of America executive, is located in a jurisdiction protected by the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD), which responded promptly to a disturbance call from his neighborhood last weekend.

According to Corporal Dan Friz, an MCPD spokesperson in Rockville, Maryland, the department received a disturbance call from one of Baer’s neighbors at 4:10 pm last Sunday. Four MCPD units arrived at Baer’s Greenville Rd. address at 4:15 pm.  At least two Metropolitan Police Department units from the nearby District of Columbia were already at the scene when they arrived.

Why? Because police cars attached to the Washington MPD’s Civil Disturbance Unit had escorted the SEIU protesters’ buses to Baer’s home. Such cross-jurisdictional escort activity is not uncommon for both departments according to Friz and Metro Police Department spokesperson Officer Eric Frost.  Still, the District police did not inform their colleagues of what was about to happen in one of their Maryland neighborhoods.

The Maryland officers reported there were approximately 500 protesters on and near the front lawn of Baer’s house.  Montgomery County was not given a “heads-up” concerning the planned protest.  Although a protest permit is technically required in Montgomery County, in practice no citation is issued if the protestors disperse when requested to do so by the owner of the private property they occupy. (more…)

Alinsky Rule #12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Nina Easton just became the left’s latest target. Why? So that SEIU can hide from the truth about its financial liabilities to Bank of America (more on that after the jump).

Easton, a Washington Editor for Fortune Magazine, wrote a column early morning Wednesday, addressing the outrageous protest organized by SEIU and National People’s Action, where 700 protesters stormed the front lawn of the private residence of Greg Baer, deputy general counsel for corporate law at Bank of America.

As I wrote in my post yesterday, “SEIU Storms Private Residence, Terrorizes Teenage Son of Bank of America Exec,” Easton is actually a neighbor of Baer. When she was startled by the loud, screaming, bullhorn-rattling protesters, she called Baer’s teenage son to check on him. Home alone, the frightened teenager had locked himself in the bathroom. After witnessing the entire incident as it unfolded on her neighbor’s private property, Easton criticized the SEIU and left wing groups in her article for crossing the line this time.

Alinsky’s Rule # 12 states,

“Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)”

In almost coordinated lock-step fashion, the 12th Rule was promptly and firmly applied. As Larry O’Connor posted on Big Journalism yesterday, a series of several posts soon followed the publication of Nina Easton’s article: (more…)

It looks like “reporter” Arthur Delaney has a new moonlighting gig as Assistant Communications Director for SEIU and he’s so tired he accidentally posted a PR piece for the beleaguered union at his day job at the Huffington Post.

As noted at Big Government today, a gang of SEIU intimidators stormed the front lawn of Bank of America Deputy General Counsel Greg Baer this past weekend in an attempt to bully him into changing B of A’s policies toward foreclosures, or so they claimed.

In Fortune Magazine, columnist Nina Easton reported on the protest and made note of the fact that SEIU is actively trying to organize the bank tellers at B of A — and by the way, SEIU owes the bank four million dollars.  But never mind all that, SEIU just cares about “the little guy.”

But, the main thrust of Easton’s article in Fortune is the fact that she happens to be Greg Baer’s neighbor.  The issue of hundreds of protesters bused in from various states to block traffic and scream through a bull horn on a peaceful suburban street on a Sunday afternoon transcends politics.  This is about common decency and co-existing in a civil society — qualities that elude the modern fascist left. (more…)