As Charlotte just wrote, President Obama celebrated Labor Day with an event with organized labor. During this event, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa reportedly declared, “President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.”
It’s another sparkling example of the hypocrisy of all the liberal blather following the shooting of Rep. Giffords (by an apolitical madman, but that liberals cast as a right-wing nut) about the need for greater civility.
But beyond that, it’s another interesting window into what unions have become in the United States. Far from protecting workers’ rights, they are really all about expanding government’s power, so that government can be used to dole out favors to the politically collected, particularly union bosses.
It’s worked swimmingly for some unions, like during the auto bailout and the first “stimulus” that protected over-paid public sector workers from layoffs. It hasn’t worked so well for the American people.
This may be why support for unions is so low.
The real question is if President Obama thinks that his best strategy is to keep expanding the dependent class (presuming that those who receive transfer payments from the government–food stamps, two years of unemployment benefits, housing vouchers, etc–are likely to vote for the biggest government candidate) and tossing more money at “infrastructure projects” that really don’t do much for our infrastructure, but do protect government and other union workers. Or if he actually wants to help the economy grow again, by reducing barriers to private sector job creation, like excessive regulation, high taxes, and political micromanaging.
I suspect he’ll take the former course… and that a majority of American people will increasingly recognize that “Obama’s Army” is really fighting the private sector and our economy as we know it.