California: The contracts are expected to cost about $600 million in the current budget year that ends on June 30, according to the Legislative Analysts Office.

CA bureaucrats upset their $2500 bonuses are taking too long to arrive https://t.co/xfLOlElOnn #CAPolitics #WhyCAisbroke

— Sacramento Steve (@CapitolSteve) March 17, 2017

Workers represented by state government’s biggest union, Service Employees International Union Local 1000, are due to receive bonuses worth $2,500.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. - H. L. Mencken

— Famous-Quote.net (@famousquotenet) March 17, 2017

American Bar Association Gives Gorsuch Top Rating, Says He’s ‘Well-Qualified’

American Bar Association Gives Gorsuch Top Rating, Says He’s ‘Well-Qualified’ https://t.co/If5FONUXlo pic.twitter.com/WQcUdpr6zk

— Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) March 10, 2017

SEIU campaigns against Neil Gorsuch's Supreme Court nomination https://t.co/SjciRF45An pic.twitter.com/NYMquhilBg

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) March 10, 2017

While small businesses are struggling to cope with the recent 50% hike to the state minimum wage, public employee unions are seeking a 22% raise on top of that.

While #SmallBiz is coping with recent 50% #MinimumWage hike, public employee unions seek an additional 22% raise https://t.co/O6DV3vQN5W

— NFIB California (@nfib_ca) June 9, 2016

SEIU spent $23 million on minimum wage campaign in 2014

SEIU spent $23 million on minimum wage campaign in 2014 http://t.co/OeTLGXVnew

— Conn Carroll (@conncarroll) April 2, 2015

Who Is Organizing The Racial Protests Across America? Must See Video

Via Barracuda Brigade

Send In The Clowns: 84% of McDonald’s Protesters Were Not McDonald’s Employees

◼ It's kind of hard to call it a "spontaneous protest" when you're paying people to pretend to be employees! - RedState

On Wednesday, the Service Employees International Union, as part of its four-year old plan to unionize the nation’s fast-food workers, launched a frontal assault on McDonald’s corporate headquarters in Oakbrook, Illinois.
During the event, over 100 protesters, as well SEIU boss and fast-food unionization architect Mary Kay Henry, were arrested.

After her arrest, the SEIU’s self-anointed Burger Queen actually thanked the police on her Twitter feed.

The union’s event planners had rented 32 buses, ensured they had prominent civil rights leaders in tow for photo-ops as they stormed the company’s entrance and, while they had some of McDonald’s 440,000 U.S. employees, the vast majority of protesters (about 84%, according to Bloomberg’s numbers) appear to be nothing more than a rent-a-mob (or astroturf, as the case may be)...

◼ The event, the latest in a series of demonstrations by workers demanding $15-an-hour pay and the right to form a union, began at 1 p.m. local time yesterday, on the eve of McDonald’s Corp.’s shareholder meeting. - Bloomberg

Obama’s ACORN Pals Cashing In on Obamacare Enrollment

◼ President Obama’s old friends in the ACORN crime syndicate have decided to get a piece of the big-money Obamacare action. United Labor Unions (ULU) Local 100 in New Orleans, which is run by ACORN founder Wade Rathke, announced on its Facebook page that it’s gearing up “to do mass enrollment and help navigate people into the marketplaces in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas under the Affordable Care Act!” - Matthew Vadum/American Spectator

Be afraid. Wherever Rathke goes, lawlessness follows.

...“Local 100’s role as a Navigator, suggest[s] the program is less about health care and more about building a new progressive infrastructure,” says longtime ACORN-watcher Mike Flynn of Breitbart.com.

Among the other left-wing groups hopping on the Obamacare navigator bandwagon are the Democrat-friendly Planned Parenthood, National Urban League, and Virginia Poverty Law Center Inc.

Other left-wing groups have signed up with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as “Champions of Coverage.” They vow to promote enrollment by emailing their members, hanging posters, giving out fact sheets and brochures, holding conference calls, or promoting enrollment in other ways.

Among the Champions of Coverage are Families USA, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), NAACP, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and U.S. PIRG Education Fund.

Enrollment will be a dangerous free-for-all because Obamacare “navigators” are barely regulated at all. By the way, the only reason there are any “navigators” is to help the left, as HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has more or less admitted. Imposing rules would only interfere with community organizers’ ability to wreak havoc and spread the gospel of so-called social justice....

These community organizers will have access to “social security numbers and tax information” and HHS isn’t even planning on running background checks before sending them out into the field. “Besides the obvious identity theft concerns, this is a frightening development in light of the political activities and invasion of privacy, which the IRS and others have engaged in during the Obama presidency,” Jindal says.

But as we’ve learned in the Obama era, this kind of craziness is par for the course with community organizers.

◼ Seedco: Obamacare's Fraud-Stained Navigators - Michelle Malkin/Townhall

Welcome to ObamaWreck! Americans nationwide spent Tuesday struggling with the much-hyped "Affordable Care Act" health insurance exchanges. Server meltdowns, error messages and security glitches plagued the federal and state government websites as open enrollment began. But when taxpayers discover exactly who will be navigating them through the bureaucratic maze, they may be glad they didn't get through.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius controls a $54 million slush fund to hire thousands of "navigators," "in-person assisters" and counselors, who are now propagandizing and recruiting Obamacare recipients into the government-run exchanges. As I warned in May, the Nanny State navigator corps is a serious threat to Americans' privacy. Background checks and training requirements are minimal to nonexistent. A history of fraud is no barrier to entry.

Case in point: the seedy nonprofit Seedco. This community-organizing group snagged lucrative multimillion-dollar navigator contracts in Georgia, Maryland, Tennessee and New York. The New York Post reports this week that the outfit "is partnering with dozens of agencies, such as the Gay Men's Health Crisis, Food Bank for New York City and the Chinese American Planning Council, in each of (the Big Apple's) five boroughs." They'll have access to potential enrollees' income levels, birthdates, addresses, eligibility for government assistance, Social Security numbers and intensely personal medical information.

If this California teacher gets her way in court, she won't have to pay union dues much longer

◼ Right-to-work gets its day in court - Sean Higgins/Washington Examiner

Rebecca Friedrichs is an Orange County, Calif., math teacher who pays about $700 to her union every year. She didn't sign up for that expense, though. Under California law, she has no choice: Public school teachers either enroll or they don't work.

If she gets her way in court, however, she won't have to pay dues much longer. She is one of 10 educators suing the California Teachers Association to end the dues requirement.

"I just want to have a free choice," she told the Washington Examiner.

Should they get the case to the Supreme Court, a ruling in their favor could effectively make every state a right-to-work state. Big Labor could face huge membership losses as people in previously "closed shop" union workplaces opt out.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) owes at least $8 million to a bank owned by one of the largest unions in the country, according to the committee’s most recent financial report.

◼ DNC Literally in Hock to SEIU - freebeacon.com

The DNC initiated an $8 million loan with the Amalgamated Bank of New York on Aug. 10, the report shows, accounting for the majority of the committee’s overall debt of $11 million.

Amalgamated Bank, often described as “America’s Labor Bank,” is a national entity, the majority of which is owned by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a politically active union with deep ties to the Democratic Party. The SEIU is also involved with the Democracy Alliance, a shadowy group of wealthy left-wing donors founded by billionaire investor George Soros.

Who is behind the Occupy Wall Street movement?

Bill O'Reilly: Talking Points Memo

◼ WHY OBAMA REFUSED TO BACK OFF HIS OCCUPY ENDORSEMENT - John Nolte/Breitbart

In October of 2011, in a nationally televised news conference, President Obama had nothing but positive things to say about the Occupy Wall Street movement. That same month, in an interview with ABC News, the President said of Occupy, "We are on their side." The following month, the President once again expressed his support during a speech:

Young people like the ones here today, including the ones who were just chanting at me —you’re the reason I ran for office in the first place.

What's remarkable is that even as the President was encouraging and showing support for this movement -- ensuring them "we are on their side" -- Occupy had already devolved from goofy to lawless. By November 1, Breitbart News had already reported on over a hundred different acts of violence, anti-Semitism, vandalism, and perversion. Having made our point, we stopped keeping track at #417, but in the months since, Occupy has only roared back to life in an even more dangerous way.

Throughout all of this we have yet to hear a President more than willing to comment on Trayvon Martin and the "stupidly acting" Cambridge police say a single word about the lawlessness and anarchy committed by those whose "side" the President is apparently still on.

Finally(!), yesterday, someone in the media had the stones to ask the White House to distance itself from these thugs. Naturally, the White House refused:

Fox News' Wendell Goler: "The President has voiced support for the Occupy folks in the past, or at least their goals, did their actions in Chicago sour his support?"

Jay Carney: "Well I think you’re making broad comparisons between different groups, what the President has said in the past is-he has understood-the frustrations Americans have about (pause) the (pause) failure in particular of Wall Street in some cases to - well obviously Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis that precipitated the worst recession since the Great Depression."

Now why would that be? Well, as Bill O'Reilly pointed out yesterday, some of the individuals and organizations backing this lawlessness are also allies of the President -- including the DC-based Institute for Policy Studies, which is partially funded by George Soros' Tides Foundation. Also, SEIU is covering $4,000 a month rent for DC Occupiers. There's also Obama's own former "Green Czar" Van Jones who claims to have a hundred thousand Occupiers at his command. ...Read more at the link.

VAN JONES: ‘OCCUPY…SAVED THE ENTIRE COUNTRY FROM DESTRUCTION’

Video streaming by Ustream

◼ Jones made the comments in Los Angeles ahead of his appearance at an “All in for the 99%” training event, saying Occupy “disrupted the narrative” as both parties “barreling toward more austerity.” - The Blaze

“[The] Occupy movement pretty much saved the entire country from destruction,” Jones said in an interview posted online. “Both political parties were barreling toward more austerity, more cutbacks, more pain for the people and more — basically both political parties had managed to converge on this idea of basically no rules for the rich, no rights for the poor, no middle class to speak of. That was basically the agenda, the question was just how much pain how fast.”

“Occupy Wall Street came on and completely disrupted the narrative,” he said. All the ‘austerity, austerity, cut, cut, cut’ stuff went away and suddenly even Republicans had to talk about income inequality and that whole theme. Occupy Wall Street really kind of, like, helped us to hit a reset in the country.”

...Jones said next week will kick off a massive training effort, in the style of the 1960s, to teach protesters nonviolent civil disobedience. In what’s being called “The 99% Spring,” Jones’ organization, Rebuild the American Dream, is partnering with the SEIU, MoveOn.org, the Domestic Workers Alliance and others to train 100,000 people across the country in direct action.

Each local group has portrayed itself as an independent community organization not tied to any special interest. But they were founded, incorporated, and led by SEIU personnel.

◼ Part 1 Secretive nationwide network gives SEIU new organizing muscle - Daily Caller

The politically aggressive Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has quietly created a national network of at least eight community-organizing groups, some of which function alongside the Occupy Wall Street movement, a Daily Caller investigation shows.

Incorporated by the SEIU as local non-profits, the groups are waging concerted local political campaigns to publicly attack conservative political figures, banks, energy companies and other corporations.

The individual activist groups use benign-sounding names including This Is Our DC; Good Jobs, Great Houston; Good Jobs, Better Baltimore; Good Jobs Now in Detroit; Fight for Philly; One Pittsburgh; Good Jobs LA; and Minnesotans for a Fair Economy.

In reality, they are creations of the wealthy and influential labor union, amounting to a secret network of new SEIU front groups.

◼ Part 2 of Daily Caller’s Occupy/SEIU investigation - Michelle Malkin's Twitchy.com

◼ Part 2: Secretive SEIU network partners with Occupy movement, raises nationwide hell - Daily Caller

The organizations — including This Is Our DC; Good Jobs, Great Houston; Good Jobs, Better Baltimore; Detroit’s Good Jobs Now; Fight for Philly; One Pittsburgh; Good Jobs LA; and Minnesotans for a Fair Economy — employ “flash demonstrations” and other tactics to deluge their political targets with protesters, sometimes numbering in the hundreds.
TheDC first reported Monday on the secretive ties between these organizations and the SEIU. Their elaborate and sometimes lavish protests, some with expensive-looking production values, advance the giant labor union’s interests without exposing the SEIU directly to criticism from the public.

Since Monday, TheDC has identified another organization in this network: “Working Washington,” whose Seattle-based website mentions nothing about its SEIU ties. That site, however — like those of the other front groups — is hosted on a server that TheDC traced back to the SEIU.

"I think they have a really good feeling that this is the guy who goes into a room on Sunday night as kind of the 'Daddy of California' with a checkbook to pay all the bills."

◼ SEIU president tells Jerry Brown's tax-plan rivals to step aside - Sacramento Bee

Powerful labor leader David Kieffer says proponents of tax measures competing with Gov. Jerry Brown's measure should get out of the way.

Kieffer, head of Service Employees International Union California, has begun breaking his union's silence on Brown's tax plan after the group had quietly pledged support weeks ago.

"I think people do really feel like he's the adult in the room who would take the resources that the state voters have given him and be prudent with it," Kieffer said in a recent interview. "I think they have a really good feeling that this is the guy who goes into a room on Sunday night as kind of the 'Daddy of California' with a checkbook to pay all the bills."

Brown has proposed raising income taxes on the wealthy and hiking the sales tax by a half-cent to help balance the budget and avoid school cuts. He has tried to discourage proponents of two other multibillion-dollar tax measures from qualifying their initiatives for the November ballot, but those groups have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to gather signatures and shown no sign of stepping aside.

Keiffer said that SEIU, which represents government workers and home care providers, sees Brown's plan as the best one to raise money for the entire state budget. The other proposals mostly raise funds outside the state budget to benefit education and county programs.