Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Bought and Paid For?

Organized crime is known for buying officials to turn a blind eye to their crimes and focus on the competition, is this any different?

Indeed, misuse of union pension funds is being conducted on an increasingly grand scale. Boehm pointed out that in one West Coast case, union officials embezzled $200 million from a pension fund.

"The biggest tragedy of all is that Congress recently cut back the amount of funds being used to investigate corruption, presumably for political reasons," he added.

In August, congressional Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee succeeded in cutting $47.7 million in funding for the OLMS out of the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill for fiscal year 2008 (H.R. 3043).

The Congress that accomplished nothing on the some of the biggest issues such as Immigration, Iraq or ethic reform (They did pass a bill that makes it easier to hide corruption) but they had time to ramrod this through. They also tried to remove an age old measure to protect an individual from pressured voting.

While most people look at Unions as favorable according to this.

Overall, 57% of the public has a favorable opinion of labor unions and 68% completely or mostly agree labor unions are necessary for workers' protection.
It seems that less and less actually want to be in one.

But as U.S. industry evolves, the influence and relevance of unions may be simultaneously declining.According to the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 12 percent of the national workforce belonged to labor unions in 2006, down from 12.9 percent in 2004. That number is down from the 35 percent of workers who were union members in the 1950s.
If the large Union ceased garnering protection from the Democrats, how long would they last in their current form. Anything that does not adapt becomes obsolete and that is exactly what is happening to the Unions. They are suffering from their own success. Unions for a long time were the champion of the workers by getting necessary, protective legislation passed. What do Unions want now, they want legislation that force more people to be represented by them, even if they don’t want to be.

But union officials said they were petitioning now in the hope that there will be a Democratic president someday who will appoint a board that will look favorably upon their argument.
In others words, “someone bought and paid for”.

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