Big Labor's Endorsement For Obama Is All About Repaying Favors

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

This month the AFL-CIO "enthusiastically" endorsed Obama's re-election bid. No surprise there. No previous president has created anywhere near as large wealth transfers to unions.

Obama's $825 billion stimulus package targeted union jobs. Then there was the $26 billion Public Sector Jobs Bill of 2010. And the Disaster Relief and the Summer Jobs Act of 2010 provided another $24 billion to specifically help teachers, police and firefighters.

The stimulus required Davis-Bacon "prevailing wages and benefits" rules for contracts receiving any stimulus money. These rules typically force companies to pay union wages.

In addition, Obama enacted new executive orders that forced some contractors bidding for government contracts to recognize unions and adopt existing collective bargaining agreements. He even went so far in this process as imposing a "gag" order on what firms were allowed to tell employees about unions and collective bargaining in the event that union organizing efforts were undertaken.

According to the Obama administration's recovery.gov, newly released data show that a total of $504 billion of federal contracts, grants and loans to states and territories were awarded between Feb. 17, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2011. The amounts vary a lot across states, with the very lowest at $978 per capita in Virginia and the highest at $2,495 per capita in Alaska. The District of Columbia is the real winner at a whopping $7,603.

[logicnreason]

No surprise there at all...but "big labor" has fewer dollars to spend on keeping the stain in place.

 

After all, they've spent a good deal of it here in WI trying to kill the new Republican governor. The recall election is scheduled for sometime in June.