News

Obama restricts government contracts over 25M to unionized labor

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From Erick Erickson at Red State. (H/T IHateTheMedia via ECM)

Excerpt:

Barack Obama and his administration are about to significantly drive up the costs of federal building construction. This is an astonishing reach. The Office of Management and Budget has directed that any federal construction over $25 million benefit unions.

The order would make all federal construction projects 10-20% more expensive by requiring all contractors to either use union workers or apply inefficient union apprenticeship and work rules to their employees. Contractors would also be required to make contributions to union pension funds and other union programs that non-union workers will never benefit from.

This will hugely drive up the cost of construction of federal buildings and line the pockets of unions without even having union workers involved in the projects. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that only 15.6% of private construction workers in America belong to unions. In other words, 8 out of 10 construction workers in America will be legally denied the right to work on federal building projects.

Now you say to me, “Wintery! What’s wrong with unions?”

And I refer you to this article from the extremely leftist NYT. (H/T Sweetness and Light via ECM)

Excerpt:

No one got the chance to say goodbye to Café des Artistes, the storied New York City restaurant that served up Old World fare under the gaze of the painted nubile nudes that perkily graced its walls.

The restaurant had closed on Aug. 9 for a month-long vacation and was to reopen Sept. 14. But on Friday, facing steady losses and a union lawsuit, its owners made what they described as a wrenching decision to close the landmark cafe on West 67th Street for good.

“It’s a very sad day for us,” said Jenifer Lang, whose husband, George Lang, has owned the restaurant since 1975. “It’s a death in the family.”

It was also the death of an intrinsic part of old New York. Countless couples got engaged in the glow of the restaurant’s dim, romantic lighting…

Mrs. Lang, 58, said that the restaurant’s business had been hurt by the economic crash but that its problems ran deeper. Café des Artistes was unionized, and she said the restaurant paid about $250,000 a year to cover its employees’ health and pension benefits, an amount she said the restaurant struggled to cover. Mrs. Lang also said the couple, whose home is half a block from the restaurant, put in $2 million of their own money to keep it running over the last 10 years.

“It makes it difficult to run a restaurant most of the time,” Mrs. Lang said of the union benefits. “When the economy is down, it makes it impossible.”

The final straw, Mrs. Lang said, was a lawsuit recently filed against the restaurant by the union demanding past benefit assessments.

Bill Granfield, president of Local 100 of Unite Here, the union representing the cafe’s 50-odd employees, said the restaurant had fallen behind on its payments for medical insurance and welfare funds, forcing the union to demand payment in court. He also said workers in 2003 took a pay cut and agreed to switch to a cheaper medical plan to ease the restaurant’s financial pressures…

Unions kill jobs by raising the price of labor with no compensating rise in worker productivity. When you raise the price of labor, businesses die. When businesses die, unemployment goes up. That’s the way the world works.

Mentoring

MUST-READ: The Pugnacious Irishman does a brave thing that we must imitate

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OK, now this is what I really like to see.

Excerpt:

Set up my classroom today…it’s an ordeal.

I have this gigundous bookshelf next to my desk that contains the  books I’ve read.  My theory is that if I want to make my students readers, I must model it myself.  In order for that to happen, they need to see me as a reader, which means they should see what I read.

If a student’s parents sign a waiver, the student has permission to check out any book in my room, including from my shelf (the lone exception is that books from my shelf can’t leave the room–I’m very territorial about my books.  :) ).

While I have a large range of reading interests, there are many Christian themed books.  Science, philosophy, theology, history–it’s all represented.

I can see some students balking at this.  “Isn’t that illegal?” they might ask.  “Hey!  Them’s religious books, and that violates the separation of church and state!” they might quip.

One time during a discussion at my previous school in which a religious question came up, a student objected: “my junior high teacher told me that it’s a sin to talk about religion in the classroom.”  Now there’s a contradiction if I ever heard one!

There’s no way I’m gonna let some ill-thought out one liner from a student or even parent get me to back down.  I’ve thought about this, and I have a ready response.

Read the whole thing! He goes into details explaining why he is not intimidated by the threat of people being offended. This is a great post. Very inspiring!

And now I want you all to consider trying to be like Rich! If you have a workplace, consider adding something that identifies you as a Christian. Rich just got married, and it hasn’t affected his level of bravery one bit! One of the main reasons I avoid marriage is because to me it means the end of adventures. I just cannot believe that my wife would encourage me to be brave. But Rich’s example should be an inspiration to us all!

This is exactly what I wanted to do in life, but by then I was committed to computer science… I dream of teaching! But I’m not sure how to get into it, and I don’t want to be in a union.

To learn more about bravery in the workplace

Listen to some lectures by my favorite Christian of all, the one I try to emulate most in my day to day life.

Dr. Walter L. Bradley

  • Ph.D. in Materials Science, University of Texas at Austin, 1968
  • B.S. in Engineering Science, University of Texas at Austin, 1965

My favorite lecture of all time:

And variations of his “Giants in the Land” lecture that I like:

Other lectures:

Post what YOU do to be identified as a Christian in YOUR workplace in the comments!

News

CRISIS: Rifqa Bary’s hearing is today! Please take action now!

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UPDATE: Robert Spenser reports that Rifqa will stay in Florida until the next hearing on September 29, 2009. Pamela Geller has videos.

Here is a call to action regarding the ex-Muslim 17-year-old girl from Ohio who converted to Christianity and fled her parents.

Fox News has a story about the line her attorney will take.

Excerpt:

In a 35-page memorandum filed Monday in Orange County family court, attorney John Stemberger claims Fathima Rifqa Bary, who will remain in foster care in Florida at least until a hearing on Thursday, should not be returned to the custody of her parents, Mohamed and Aysha Bary, because of their connection to the Noor Islamic Cultural Center near Columbus, Ohio.

“The leader of the mosque, Dr. Hany Saqr, was previously an imam for another area mosque at the same time the largest known Al Qaeda cell in the U.S. since 9/11 was operating out of the mosque,” the document read. “Additionally, Dr. Saqr was identified in exhibits submitted by the Department of Justice in a recent terrorism finance trial in Texas as being one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America — an international organization responsible for birthing virtually every Islamic terrorist organization in the world, including Al Qaeda.”

The center also is affiliated with Dr. Salah Sultan, a “cleric alleged photographed with terrorist leaders designated as such by the U.S. government,” according to the document, and frequently hosts “extremist speakers” who have allegedly made statements supporting violence and terrorism.

Stemberger also claims the Noor Center has been “directly tied” to an ongoing probe into Somali-American youths who fled the U.S. to train in terror camps operated by the Al Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab terror organization.

You can read more about her mosque here on the Jawa Report.

Lots of videos on some of the characters affiliated with the radical mosque attended by Rifqa’s parents.

Take action

Governor Charlie Crist’s office:

Phone: (850) 488-4441 and (850) 488-7146
Fax: (850) 487-0801
Email: Charlie.Crist@MyFlorida.com

Florida Department of Children and Family:
George H. Sheldon, Secretary
Phone: (850) 487-1111
Fax: (850) 922-2993

And after you’ve contacted both of them, PLEASE PRAY! This is life or death!

Her parents planned to flee the country

The Washington Times has more on the case. (H/T Jihad Watch)

Excerpt:

In mid-July her mother went through Rifqa’s private things and found her journal. It was then revealed to her mother that Rifqa was a practicing Christian. Mrs. Bary called her husband and alerted him that Rifqa was still practicing Christianity in secret.

Mr. Bary cut his business trip short to return home immediately while Mrs. Bary packed the family’s bags to go back to Sri Lanka. Whether Rifqa would have been honor murdered before or after they returned to Sri Lanka is known only to the Barys.

It was very clear that Rifqa’s father planned to flee the country with his threatened daughter. According to very recent documentation, Mr. Bary dissolved his business on July 29 — after Rifqa ran for her life (fearing an honor killing for her apostasy) and was discovered in Florida.

This was not an insignificant business, with annual sales of $237,561. That’s a lot to give up. So why did Mr. Bary dissolve his business so suddenly? He obviously did not expect Rifqa to prevail in Florida court. Like all the pundits, he expected Rifqa would have to go back to Ohio.

Mr. and Mrs. Bary signed papers in Ohio with Franklin County Children Services, saying they would be happy if she were brought back to the state and placed in a foster home for at least 30 days. They just wanted to get her back in Ohio and out of Florida and Floridian interference.

Thirty days in foster care in Ohio (and what good does that do?) and then they wing her to Sri Lanka. Rifka said it herself: “In 150 generations of my family, no one has known Jesus. I am the first one. Imagine the honor in killing me. There is great honor in that. Because if they love Allah more than me, they have to do it. It’s in the Koran. … They have to do this. They just have to. Either they do that or they send me back to Sri Lanka. There’s an asylum there where they put people like me, like, think I’m crazy.”

Mr. Bary began the process of dissolving his business in early July when it became increasingly clear that Rifqa was a true convert to Christianity. At that time, he waved her laptop at her and said, “You are dead to me. You are not my daughter.” He told her: “I will kill you.”

His sudden dissolving of his business indicates he was deadly serious. But you won’t learn them from the mainstream media. For them, and for the almost-as-clueless courts, he is “indigent.”

And don’t forget about the two brave Iranian women still in a filthy Iranian fail for refusing to deny Christ. Pray for them, too!

(Note: if you want to know where Obama is, look here. We are on our own!)