Two business groups, Alliance for Worker Freedom (AWF) and Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), have released a web video game illustrating potential negative effects in the workplace should card check legislation become law.
The game, which is entitled "Card Checked," takes place in a stylized setting after the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. The player encounters several scenarios as an employee of a tattoo parlor.
The fictional International Body Art Designers Union is trying to unionize the parlor using strong-armed tactics.
"Unfortunately, the game ends much like real life in that EFCA is expected to cost 600,000 jobs in the first year if passed," AWF and ATR said in a release.
Some of the game's highlights (most happen if you do not sign the union membership card) :
A tie-dye wearing hippie tells the player that all the tattoo artists should unionize, quoting the French revolutionary motto, "Liberty, fraternity, and equality!"
Scruffy union organizers who look more like mafiosos hang around the workplace pressuring employees to unionize.
If the players refuses to sign the card, a co-worker tells him that "union thugs told me that something might happen to my cat Min Min."
If the player continues to refuse unionization the organizers smash the back window of his sports car. A slide says there have been 9,000 incidences of union violence since 1975.
Once the store unionizes, union officials say they want to take dues from the player's paycheck to buy a "private Learjet so we can go to posh resorts for, uh... important conferences on defending worker rights."
A leading credit union trade association came out against a compromise draft proposal on a controversial measure that would allow judges to rewrite the terms of home mortgages. Senate Democrats, led by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), have been trying to strike a deal with a handful of financial industry players, but the issue has been stalled in the upper chamber for more than a month. The policy, known as "cramdown" in the industry, is strongly opposed by major parts of the industry. The board of the National Association of Federal Credit Unions on Wednesday unanimously opposed the cramdown policy.
After the jump, read the letter that the association's president, Fred Becker, wrote to Durbin.
No, this is not a re-post from earlier. For the seventh time, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) has introduced a "privileged resolution" asking for an ethics investigation into the relationship between earmarks and campaign contributions.
The resolution makes specific reference to a "raided firm," leaving little doubt that Flake's target is the now-defunct PMA Group, an appropriations lobbying group with close ties to Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) that was raided by the FBI in February.
No sooner did the House vote to table the motion last night than Flake re-introduced the same resolution.
A lobbying group under investigation for it's work securing earmarks for its clients will close shop next week, the New York Times reports.
Paul Magliocchetti, a one-time aide to Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and the head of PMA Group, was a powerful player in the capital, schmoozing with lawmakers and using loopholes in the ethics code to provide staffers with meals:
And many on Capitol Hill, recalling the scandal that mushroomed around the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, are wondering who else will be ensnared in the investigation as prosecutors pore over the financial records and computer files of one of K Street
The National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW) has sent a letter to members of Congress opposing President Obama's proposed budget.
Pleading with members "in the strongest possible terms" to oppose the budget, the letter states that Obama's proposal is "not a budget but a roadmap for unprecedented restructuring of the U.S. economy."
Specifically, NAW takes issue with what the letter describes as "punitive tax increases" on top of an "already progressive tax code."
"These tax increases would have a profound negative impact on the economy," the letter reads, "affecting the successful small businesses which create the preponderance of new jobs every year--the capital they would use to create jobs and make investments will instead be sent to the Federal Treasury."
NAW is also a strong opponent of card-check legislation.
A new ad from liberal activist group Americans United for Change and labor union AFSCME hails the passage and signing of the economic stimulus package, using footage of President Obama signing the bill in Denver.
The ad will run nationally on MSNBC and CNN. It was produced less than four hours after Obama signed the stimulus, according to Americans United for Change.
In it, the groups encourage viewers to thank Obama "for putting jobs first" by successfully passing and signing the package.
Americans United for Change and AFSCME have aired TV and radio ads throughout the stimulus's legislative journey, pressuring 13 GOP senators with TV ads in their home states. The groups are part of the Campaign for Jobs and Economic Recovery, a massive coalition of liberal groups formed in December to advocate for Obama's stimulus.
A new national TV ad will target Republican lawmakers who voted against Democrats' economic stimulus package, using House GOP Whip Eric Cantor's (Va.) comment that Republicans should "just say no" to the stimulus.
The ad will be coupled with a slew of radio spots encouraging GOP lawmakers to change their minds when the stimulus comes back to the House or Senate for further consideration once the two chambers' versions are reconciled.
Liberal activist group Americans United for Change and labor union AFSCME financed the ads and the $200,000 purchase of air time.
Read more...
A coalition of consumer, labor and business groups exhorted President Obama to "send a clear signal" by including healthcare reform funding in his first budget request to Congress.
The chief executives of the AARP, the Business Roundtable, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) -- which together make up the Divided We Fail coalition -- wrote Obama Friday to reemphasize their support for comprehensive health reform this year.
"Because of our belief that bipartisan healthcare reform is critical to a strong economy, personal financial security and long-term fiscal stability, we are writing to urge you to make health reform legislation a top priority this year," reads the letter, signed by AARP CEO Bill Novelli, Roundtable President John Castellani, SEIU President Andy Stern and NFIB President and CEO Dan Danner.
"We ask you to send a clear signal on the importance of healthcare reform by including in your budget submission policies that would moderate cost growth and reinvest savings into providing the tools necessary to support a modernized healthcare delivery system that provides access to quality, affordable coverage for all Americans," the letter says.
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