Disgusted as I am by politics (these days I’m more inclined to write about the birds), you would think I would be more prepared for the type of sleaze I stumbled onto this morning. I guess there is still something in me that causes my usual disgust to rise to the level of genuine outrage. There is something about seeing taxpayer revenue being used for the most blatantly partisan political purposes that makes my blood boil.
Anyway, when I read about demonstrators here in Michigan being paid to heckle Romney, my usual disgust turned to curiosity. Who is paying them, I wondered? George Soros and other socialist 1%ers like Barbra Streisand? That would be par for the course, but when I read the story, I learned that the demonstrators are connected with an outfit called Good Jobs Now:
DeWitt, Mich. — The protesters popping up at Mitt Romney’s rallies throughout Michigan Tuesday look like run-of-the-mill grassroots liberals — they wave signs about “the 99 percent,” they chant about the Republican’s greed, and they describe themselves as a loosely organized coalition of “concerned citizens.”
They’re also getting paid, two of the protesters and an Obama campaign official told BuzzFeed.
[…]
about 50 feet away, another protest had been organized by local Democrats in conjunction with the Obama campaign. A campaign official told BuzzFeed they had nothing to do with the other group — which he said he believed they had been sent by the labor-backed “Good Jobs Now” — and confirmed that they were being paid.
“I mean, it’s a free country, they can go anywhere they want, but they’re not with us,” the official said.
“Labor-backed” is right. The Goodjobsnow.com site is hosted by the great, bloated SEIU itself:
CustName: SEIU
Address: 1313 L Street NW
City: Washington
StateProv: DC
PostalCode: 20005
Country: US
RegDate: 2005-02-21
Updated: 2011-03-19
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/customer/C01022585
The article offers a reason that Obama officials distanced themselves from the paid protesters:
while both sides enjoy a good, loud demonstration, it’s generally acknowledged that paying people to protest is a form of cheating — which explains why the Obama campaign was quick to distance themselves from the group.
I think there’s an additional reason. It’s not so much paid protesters that are at issue here, so much as who is paying them. If leftist billionaires want to pay protesters, that’s their business, just as I suppose it would be my business if I wanted to pay protesters.
Right?
But what horrified me as I looked into this is that it turns out that the protesters are being paid with my tax dollars. Here in Michigan, the SEIU has been able to get away with siphoning off taxpayer dollars in a scandalous, largely unreported scam which I will try to explain as simply as I can.
Ever heard of home health care workers? Typically, these are relatives or friends taking care of someone they love. I realize in the old days such things used to be done out of a sense of moral duty, but in the modern world it is considered somehow necessary and proper for the government to pay them. (Can paying parents for the work of raising the kids be far behind?)
Looks like I almost sidetracked myself into a pointless libertarian rant there, so forgive me…. I’m just pissed off right now. The point is, these home health care workers are getting tax money to take care of relatives, but that’s not the scandal.
Regardless of what you might think about government subsidized home health care workers, through some very sneaky legislative maneuvering, these clueless workers have been unionized without their consent, and on top of that, over $30 million in so-called “union dues” have been automatically deducted from their paychecks and funneled directly into SEIU.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) “organized” Michigan’s self-employed home health aides for the purpose of skimming dues from their ailing and disabled clients’ Medicaid subsidy checks. The first counter tallies SEIU dues skimmed since the union and state officials first launched this scheme in late 2006. The second shows the amount skimmed since June 9, 2011, when the Michigan House passed and sent to the Senate a bill to ban this and all similar “stealth unionization” efforts. The third counter shows the dues skimmed since the Governor signed the bill into law on April 10, 2012. The fourth counter shows the amount skimmed since May 25, 2012, when a judge order the funds to be placed in an escrow account.
For more information, visit:
No wonder they have money to hire paid anti-Romney hecklers.
What galls me is that they have my money. So, disgusted though I am by politics, this goes too far — way beyond disgust.
It’s an outrage. Forcing people into unions they never joined, then siphoning off “dues” to which they never consented and giving it to a government union to conduct partisan political activity like heckling candidates is a mind-boggling feat of Orwellian proportions.
I’d say “not with my money you don’t!” except they already have it.
UPDATE: Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link and a warm welcome to all.
Comments appreciated, agree or disagree. I’m glad to see that some people can understand what I meant when I described forcibly unionized home health care workers as “clueless.” I should add that some of them don’t like what is going on.
MORE: Are the male anti-Romney hecklers being paid more than their female counterparts? Gay Patriot (thanks for the link) is calling for a media investigation!
Comments
36 responses to “Who pays these hecklers? (Sorry I asked….)”
Those “clueless workers” you mention are quite often professional care givers. I am a funeral director and have seen countless families thank the men and women who have spent days and nights, weeks and years, with their elderly/infirm mother or father. The caregivers provide not only security for their patient, but relief and peace of mind for the families.
Maybe you should go after teachers, nurses and firemen instead.
Something tells me that the people doing the home health care, be they licensed nurses or caring family members, would never have agreed to joining a union, and especially not a SEIU-affiliated machine. That sort of thing, and paying for protesters, makes you wonder what else goes on behind closed doors and behind the backs of union members (voluntary or otherwise).
In other news, the J. Krieger Funeral Home today announced a straw-man-building party and open house to be held on their driveway tonight.
Perhaps we should get together and pass a law that all funeral home employees should be required to send membership dues to the Cato Institute (to pull a name out of the air) in order to support that organization’s good work representing their interests in Washington.
Hey, fair’s fair, after all. The only difference is whose ox is being gored–well, that and the fact that the Cato Institute would consider such an arrangement deeply immoral, while for organizations like SEIU it’s standard operating procedure.
Racket: a fradulent scheme, enterprise or activity b. illegitimate enterprise made workable by bribery or intimidation
These people are shameless.
So, Jennifer, you don’t see anything wrong with the government giving my tax money to pay partisan political agitators? Sorry, but I’m not ready to embrace your Gleichschaltung.
In a free society, if you wanted to hire hecklers, you would not be stopped.
Of course in an unfree society, you are forced to hire a heckler to prevent you from hearing your candidate’s speech.
“Something tells me that the people doing the home health care…would never have agreed to joining a union…”
You’re right. Not long ago Michigan passed a law forcing independent home health care workers to join the union. Which is a good enough reason to hate both the gangster government and its union masters.
Jennifer, that is an amazing example of totally missing the point. I am impressed.
The more that information like this gets pushed towards the non political “severely normal” people who have no idea what is happening to their tax dollar, the greater the probablility of a massive electoral upset.
Please get this information out wherever and wherever you can, even if you need to post it on mailboxes like Samizdat. Once normal taxpayers get engaged by this sort of nonsense, the game will be over.
‘lanched:
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/145283/
“Jennifer” didn’t miss the point; she’s an SEIU goon who’s trying to gin up misguided outrage at Eric in the hopes that folk will disregard what he’s saying.
She knows (and therefore doesn’t need to be told) that “clueless” in the context of the original post was meant not as an insult of home health workers but as a description of their helpless and innocent status in this whole charade. They are clueless because they had no desire to be unionized and never wanted to be, and didn’t know it was happening until it was too late, and resent having to pay the dues but don’t know how to prevent, and don’t have a clue that their dues are being used to pay left-wing protestors to heckle Mitt Romney.
“Jennifer” knows all that; she’s just the rapid-response team from SEIU trying to put out fires on the Internet by claiming that whoever has a legitimate gripe against the left is racist or homophobic or wants to pollute the environment or take bread from children or candy from babies or medicine from grandma or whatever.
So don’t bother trying to convince her; that’s throwing your pearls before swine.
Reveal her duplicity, and move on. Her tactics are to poison the wells of public discourse and treat others as pawns to be manipulated by spin and propaganda; it is thus unfitting to treat her as a respectable participant.
I’m trying to figure out what a no bra wearing, California living, worn out hippie has to do with events in Michigan. Then I realized someone had already nailed her hide to the barn door.
Michigan has done the same thing, exactly, to home *day care* providers. You know, what we used to call “babysitters”? Yep. They’ve been forcibly unionized, too. And dues taken.
Jennifer Krieger notwithstanding, the great majority of those caregivers are taking care of relatives and family members and State funding is just supposed to give a little help to people who may need it–it’s not really a paying job with a boss and paychecks and all that. The unions tried to pull the same scam here in Illinois (it was AFSCME, here) working through our union whore Gov. Quinn, and were just barely stopped.
[…] Paid with tax dollars? (Via Instapundit.) Comments […]
Jennifer … your outrage is just a shiny object to distract us. Next it will be “for the children” …
I may be a degreed engineer, an expert in my field, a professional as much as these caregivers are … but I can still be “clueless” about many aspects of life. I don’t take offense when someone points that out to me.
If you truly respect these caregivers … how about we go after the SEIU and other unions, as well as their political enablers, who get to exploit many of these people against their will to further their political agenda … exploitation like that recently interdicted in Wisconsin with much success?
Or do some have to sacrifice for the Progressive cause?
My ailing mother is currently in a care facility.
It was a wrenching decision to put her there, but it was the right one. I am a computer nerd completely incapable of the tasks a home health aide has to perform. Could I stay with her 24/7 to make sure something didn’t happen to her? Could I lift her up to take her to the bathroom? Could I change her diaper?
I recognize my limitations. No, these are things I am simply not competent to do.
So I am willing to stand with Jennifer on the cause I think she was supporting, defense of people who do this necessary but completely thankless work.
Of course this makes it all the more outrageous that they are forced to give up some of their laughable pay to a bogus union.
D
RC JUNE – ACCURATE COMMENT. As a home health care worker in this precise situation I can attest that this all happened without any of us looking for it or wanting it to happen. There is nothing that we can do about it… who would we turn to for fairness —- the government ?!
My neighbor is the political director for one of the biggest construction unions in MA. He told me that while they tend to favor Dems they don’t endorse or campaign for anyone unless they hire their GOTV operation. That’s why you’re not reading about Sen. Mike Capuano now.
I’d be happy to “go after” nurses, teachers,and firemen when they steal? Why does having a public job make you a deity? Newsflash: It doesn’t.
They’re starting the same thing here in my state. I can’t even care for my own autistic son without taking a 90 hour SEIU course.
Well, it seems that Jennifer’s naked, clumsy attempt to seize the moral high ground has run into some heavy resistance here.
The true tragedy is that people like our friend the funeral director may actually think that the corrosive, anti-freedom policies they constantly push are actually helping people in the long run.
The sad truth is that they’re not–their overemotive compassion at the expense of simple common sense is destroying the core foundations of the civilization that can support such luxuries as “professional care givers”.
But they’re blind to the fact that bit by bit, chip by chip, THEY are the ones who have been hacking away at those foundations.
It is THEIR compassion and wisdom which is the issue–not ours.
They started this fight. They’re the aggressors. And more and more people are on to their racket.
Taking care of others is not the issue. Taking other people’s money at gunpoint to do that is the issue.
It is NOT a virtue to be generous with other people’s money.
It is OK that the home healthcare workers are getting some assistance to help family members.
The problem is that the Union is taking a cut of the money that is ment to help home healthcare workers take care of family members.
Jennifer Krieger says: “I am a funeral director and have seen countless families thank the men and women who have spent days and nights, weeks and years, with their elderly/infirm mother or father. “
The issue is not what people think of the providers or the care the providers provide; the issue is whether the providers wish to be FORCED into a union.
David H Dennis says: “My ailing mother is currently in a care facility.”
Germane to unionization of HOME health care workers how?
It appears that Knox vs. SEIU has just been decided correctly.
It is not obvious to me that people forced to join a union have diminished rights compared to non-union employees who are nevertheless forced to donate to a union–which was at issue in Knox vs. SEIU.
So sorry, Jennifer.
Welcome to reality. Enjoy your stay.
(The question begged, of course…is how much of this is going on in other venues? i.e. local, state and federal government and politics. Hint: this type of corruption – and thinking, if you can call it that – is everywhere you look.)
SEIU gave a premonition of these paid ‘protesters’ last December in the state of Washington, by running an ad looking to hire an organizer, whose job description includes, under ‘Leadership Development’, the training and leading of members in ‘civil disobedience, such as occupying state buildings and banks, and peaceful resistance’. And under ‘Member Mobilization’, to plan and execute strategic direct action field plans including banner drops, bank takeovers, and capitol occupations with membership, other local unions, and coalition partners.
The ad was run under SEIU’s ‘healthcare’ website, and disappeared the day after its discovery by nonunion heretics.
These people cant be getting paid all that much, so these forcibly collected dues cannot help. I wonder if they actually got a chance to vote in any election when they were unionised. I see little evidence the SEIU is doing anything for THEM with their forcibly collected union dues.
To Jenefer Kreiger.
Spare me your leftie indignation. The writer has not proposed firing these people. But how does having a big chunk of their meager pay siphoned off to the SEIU to hire protestors help either those workers, or us? This is the very kind of taxpayer paid union corruption that is currently ruining the dem brand, and why Gov walker won, and Romney will win.
“Douglas June 21st, 2012 (#):
They’re starting the same thing here in my state. I can’t even care for my own autistic son without taking a 90 hour SEIU course.”
Your comment is even more outrageous than the article. So you are now forced to fork over big money to these SEIU bandits to care for your own kid. A question. Its bad enough to be forced to take a course like this, to care for your own kid, but do you have a choice of who to take it from, or are the SEIU crooks the only choice for the course?
Come on now. Do you think this is anything the Republicans don’t do? Get real.
Tadcf obviously thinks it’s OK then.
Let’s pass a law then requiring all commenters here to send annual dues to Eric for the maintenance of this web site.
I’m not talking about a voluntary membership fee, but a mandatory, legally-enforceable mandate.
I’m sure he’s totally on board with this.
Do you have any idea how stupid you sound, “tadcf?” No, never mind. You don’t.
tadcf
Come on now. Do you think this is anything the Republicans don’t do? Get real.
That’s right. There are SO MANY unions that send big money to the Pubs.
The unspoken assumption here is that SEIU and similar organizations are, at all times and in all places, ALWAYS doing the best possible thing — by any moral standard you choose to apply. And because anything these organizations do is then by definition “good”, it is therefore right and proper to demand tribute from people who would otherwise not freely and willingly support these organizations.
This is so self-evidently absurd, greedy, venal, and, frankly, evil that the amazing thing is that there actually are people (who do not otherwise exhibit overt criminal behavior) who honestly believe this.
This is what I refer to above with the short-hand word of “stupid.”
[…] teachers, state government workers, and public university employees, and an emerging class called home health care workers. Here in Ann Arbor where I live, a large number of people are professors, assistant professors, […]
[…] worse is that the SEIU wants to force the paid mothers to join the SEIU and then have union dues automatically deducted from their government paychecks, and transferred directly to SEIU! It’s the sort of outrage that has made unions deeply unpopular even with people who were […]
[…] Classical Values Disgusted as I am by politics (these days I’m more inclined to write about the birds), you would think I would be more prepared for the type of sleaze I stumbled onto this morning. I guess there is still something in me that causes my usual disgust to rise to the level of genuine outrage. There is something about seeing taxpayer revenue being used for the most blatantly partisan political purposes that makes my blood boil. […]