The Origins of Communism in California

By AJ

Examining the long march to Communism in California shows that it took Progressives over a hundred years to achieve their totalitarian California dream.

In 1879, the NY Times reported on the new California Constitution which was instigated by... wait for it... the Labor Party. Wouldn't you know, community organizers peddling their Communism way back then. In the article, "Communism in California", notice that their oppressive, totalitarian dream was instituted through taxation and taking control of land and railways. Does this sound similar to what they're doing at an accelerated pace today? It certainly parallels what Nancy Pelosi brought to the House floor in 1992, which she called "Agenda 21" and said it is the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development program.

Most notable in the 1879 NY Times article is the authors apparent realization of the danger of enacting a mild form of Socialism that would lead to a Communist California, while at the same time finding comfort in the fact that it's happening in a "distant part of the country". The author may have presumed it would prove disastrous before infecting other States and spreading throughout the US like a violent and deadly virus. Little did the author know that it would be emanating from our very own White House, with an iron fist, within 130 years.

COMMUNISM IN CALIFORNIA (Published May 9, 1879) – Full article HERE 

Excerpts:

"... it is clear that the efforts of the conservative people of California have not been able to stem the tide which has lately set toward Communism in the Golden State. It must be said that the experiment of a mild form of Socialism is now about to be tried in one of the States of the Republic. Perhaps it is just as well that it should be tried in a distant part of the country, and in a State which always makes much of its own griefs, as well as of its own advantages. There never was a serious desire for a remodeling of the Constitution of California until the so-called Labor Party became an important factor in the politics of the State..."

"The adoption of the new Constitution, absurd as it may be in some of its provisions, is the manifestation of a rebellion against what is called "the tyranny of capital." It is a violent remedy for actual ills. It is a practical overturning of the principles that have governed American commercial life ever since the foundation of the Republic. Many requirements of the new Constitution are impossible of execution. Others will be evaded by corrupt officers. But enough will remain to bring disaster and financial distress upon the people."

Many lament what California has become and, despite the beauty of this State, people and businesses are leaving as fast as they can. On the other hand, Communists like Van Jones and the Union leaders who control this State enjoy calling California their "home" while they live in the lap of luxury courtesy of people like George Soros and Barack Obama (through our tax dollars, of course).

A May Day rally in Los Angeles, co-sponsored by the SEIU and various communist groups, as well as other unions, reflected yet another step in the normalization of self-identified communist and socialist ideologies in the Obama era. Not only did the SEIU help to organize the rally in conjunction with communists, they marched side-by-side with communists, while union members carried communist flags, communists carried union signs, and altogether there was no real way to tell the two apart.

The communists freely and proudly declare their affiliation. And the SEIU has no problem marching arm-in-arm with them.

"Smash Capitalism" is a slogan the SEIU apparently endorses - or at least doesn't mind marching behind. In case you think the SEIU is some peripheral out-of-the-mainstream organization:

The SEIU devoted $28 million to Obama's campaign, making the SEIU "the organization that spent the most to help Barack Obama get elected president."

Furthermore, who is Obama's favorite White House guest and one of his closest confidants? The individual who has visited the Obama White House the most: SEIU President Andy Stern, who has visited 53 times. Obama is closely linked with the SEIU. The SEIU is closely linked with communists. You do the math.

Did I say communists? Sorry, I meant Communists (with a capital "C"). Note how the Communists that day (like the women on the right in this photo) carried solid red flags symbolizing their ideology. Keep that in mind as you view the next photo.

One of the SEIU leaders picked up a Communist flag and led a contingent of rank-and-file SEIU members. Everyone was OK with that.

The way you can identify the SEIU members in all these pictures: They're the ones in purple T-shirts carrying blue-and-yellow signs.

So, as you can see, the communists and the union members intermingled as the march progressed.

In case you were wondering what the SEIU was saying during all of this, There is a video of the SEIU chanting "Legalization or REVOLUTION!" Clear enough?

And it wasn't just the SEIU at the march - other "normal" unions like the AFL-CIO were on hand as well.There were plenty of teachers' unions attending too, and they brought along many of their public school students for some good old-fashioned communist indoctrination.

Most in the US who walk around with Che buttons or Che shirts do so simply because they foolishly think he's "cool." These hardcore communists carry his image not because he's "cool," but because he was one of the most radical revolutionaries who ever lived. Right up there with Lenin, apparently.

No comment necessary!

In order to have a more "civil dialogue" with their political opponents, the marchers made a puppet of a demonic Statue of Liberty aligned with the "Tea Bag Party."

OK, I guess Hitler comparisons are off the table for now - too many people have called it taboo. So what's second best? The Devil!

Tell me the honest truth: If the Tea Party had marched in a rally behind a banner held up by fascists or neo-Nazis, don't you think it would have been national news? But the nation's biggest Obama-supporting political organization marched behind banners like these, and not a peep about it in the media. Hmmmm..

Until recently, the average American has regarded fascists and communists as equally noxious and equally malignant. As well they should have. But the drive these days by the left side of the spectrum is to make communism and socialism somewhat less remarkable and more palatable. For two years they angrily denied the Tea Party accusation that Obama's policies and supporters had a socialist bent.

But in recent months, as the accusation had started to gain traction, the new leftist tactic has become: "What's so bad about socialism after all? You're demonizing a very popular and respectable ideology!"

Here is Communist California today... (h/t MamaKat)

Video: Communists and SEIU Members march together at May Day Demonstration, L.A., CA

Video:  Young Communists at May Day protest, Los Angeles, Ca 5/1/2011

Related:

How California’s Colleges Indoctrinate Students

Rioting Across America – The Great Depression and Beyond

Video:  Rioting Across America -  The Great Depression

These clips are not just of the Great Depression, but time frames surrounding that period. Do you have any doubts that the Communists and Progressives have been with us for 100 years or better? Well, they have been under many guises. Many times it is in the form of unions and organizers who claim they want to help the worker, when in reality, the ultimate goal is bringing ‘change’ to our form of government. When you were growing up, did you ever hear of these riots and this violence that eventually led up to WWII and afterwards? I didn’t. This is a first for me.

From a comment on the thread:

Those workers who were rioting were damn serious!

60,000 showed up for some of the riots at that time!

Governors of multiple states had to call out their National Guard.

The Guard showed up with their side arms, machine guns, and gattling guns, ready to use them as needed.

The workers made alot of use of homemade bombs and molotov cocktails.

The police used shot guns and alot of tear gas and “naseous” gas (that made you feel sick to your stomach).

Someone was reported dead and several were wounded at every riot that was covered in that footage.

Policemen were killed or injured.

Rioters overturned cars, attacked cab drivers and their passengers, and smashed all of the windows out of businesses.

There were alot of clubs, bats, and billy clubs used left and righ by law enforcement personnel and rioters alike.

I guess this is what we have to look forward to – a whole lot of death, injury, and destruction of personal property.

Two quotes are worth repeating from that video clip:

“American will never allow a dictator in this country.”

“Americans must remember that rioting is only a short step away from Civil War.”

Another very interesting comment on the thread:

Actually much of that film footage was from the late 1940s and even early 1950s rather than the classic Great Depression.

One of my uncles was a professional “strike breaker” during that time and throughout the 50s and 60s — what the commies called a “scab”.

He was something of a mechanical genius, and with only the most basic briefing on any sort of machine (examples — sheet metal press, printing press, textile loom, wire and cable production machinery) he could both man and maintain an industrial operation almost singlehandedly.

Whatever needed done — he found a way or made a way to make it happen!

My uncle and men like him kept whole industries in operation during the likes of these riots and maintained America as an industrial power.

Many, many of his bones were broken as he crossed picket lines — he called it the cost of doing business.

A small-framed wiry man, and a WWII veteran, my uncle had grown up working the migrant wheat harvest and knew the intrinsic value and dignity of both hard work and ingenuity.

It would not be proper to call him a fearless man. He knew fear very, very well.

But he never let union goons and the violence they did him prevent him from going in to do whatever it took to feed his family.

His body was found in a California desert.

In September of 1997, Sweeney who led the AFL-CIO, made it possible for Communists to once again lead the unions here in the US. See Aaron Klein’s excellent book, Red Army, on page 15.

History is repeating itself and the Progressives/Communists will use violence, hatred, fear, hunger and class warfare to achieve their agenda using whatever means are necessary. This path ALWAYS leads to death, bloodshed and war.

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton – The NoisyRoom

Now an Unelected, Unconfirmed Obama Appointee Is Working or Destroy the Secret Ballot

By Rick Manning – It is somewhat odd that one of President Ronald Reagan’s most often used quotes “Personnel is policy”, isn’t particularly eloquent although its alliteration and brevity make it memorable. Perhaps the three word phrase is remembered because it is succinct and accurate, even more so today than even 25 years ago. In the past week, America has gotten a double dose reminder of why this axiom is true through dual National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) actions aimed at forcing unionization on the nation’s private sector.

In one action, the NLRB decided to sue the states of South Carolina and South Dakota because their voters had the audacity to protect their citizen’s right to a secret ballot vote in a union election.

Of course, this offended the sensibilities of the Obama appointees on the NLRB, who first threatened and now are moving forward with legal action against the citizens of these states.

The second NLRB action is all the more outrageous as they are seeking to keep Boeing Corporation from building airplanes in South Carolina rather than in Washington state. You see, Washington state is very friendly to the union that represents Boeing workers, and the workers in the Boeing plant in South Carolina recently decertified that very union. So, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers dialed up Washington, DC, and the NLRB came riding out to right the wrong of a company outrageously choosing to locate a manufacturing facility in the wrong state.

This brings us back to the Reagan quote, “personnel is policy.”

While Donald Trump has been running around Hawaii looking for Obama’s birth certificate, Obama’s unconfirmed appointee to the NLRB has been having his way in launching an official federal government jihad in support of Obama’s big labor supporters, who don’t care where he was born.

The brains behind the NLRB attack on the American way of life, is a formerly obscure lawyer named Craig Becker. Becker’s views are so extreme when it comes to management/labor relations, that his nomination was derailed by a bi-partisan vote in the Senate when it was controlled by 59 Democrats.

In response, President Obama, at the urging of the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka, used a backdoor mechanism to get Becker onto the NLRB called a recess appointment, which allows him to serve for a defined period of time without Senate confirmation.

Why was Becker so important that Obama was willing to risk the ire of the Senate to put him in place?

Craig Becker was a top lawyer at both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and their rival the AFL-CIO simultaneously.

Craig Becker was the intellectual architect behind Big Labor’s plan to coerce workers into membership against their will through denying them the right to a secret ballot election.

This rejected Obama nominee even went so far as to write in the 1998 Fall/Winter edition of the New Labor Forum, “At first blush is might seem fair to give workers the choice to remain unrepresented. But, in providing workers this US labor grants employers a powerful incentive.”

Is it any wonder that this unelected, unconfirmed Obama appointee has in the course of one week led an obscure government agency to put the force of the US government against Boeing Corporation creating American jobs in a state where those jobs are unlikely to become members of a labor union, and against the citizens of states who are attempting to protect their rights to a secret ballot.

Personnel is policy, and Craig Becker proves that a determined virtually anonymous zealot can do incalculable damage to the nation’s economy.

What is scary is that in this Administration, Craig Becker is not the outlier, but instead is the norm.

Rick Manning is the Communications Director of Americans for Limited Government. Also see his story on House legislation to prevent the NLRB from suing South Carolina and South Dakota.

Souorce: NetRightDaily.com

Government Unions vs. American Taxpayers

Heritage Foundation:

Government Unions vs American Taxpayers

The Washington Post reports today that "the daunting tower of national, state and local debt in the United States will reach a level this year unmatched just after World War II and already exceeds the size of the entire economy, according to government estimates." But there are a number of big differences between our national debt now and the debt in 1946. The Post reports: "State and municipal governments from Sacramento to Madison to Harrisburg have racked up about $2.4 trillion in debt, or more than 15 percent of GDP."

And even this total is understating the problem. Recent studies show that state and local governments are severely underestimating their pension and benefit promises, including a $574 billion shortfall for the nation’s top major cities and a possible $3.4 trillion shortfall for the states. The cause of these crippling pension and benefit obligations is no secret. The Post explains: "Public employees often enjoy more generous pension and health-care benefits, and these are at the root of the long-term budget problems confronting many states."

How did this happen? Why did so many state and local governments not only spend too much today but promise future spending far beyond the means of taxpayers to pay for it? Government unions. And across the country, legislators and governors are beginning to fight back.

The professional left (including the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the NEA, AFSCME and President Barack Obama) is trying to portray these budget battles as an assault against all unions. But as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R), who is pushing legislation to curtail government union bargaining power, explained last night, this is just plain false:

The bill I put forward isn’t aimed at state workers, and it certainly isn’t a battle with unions. If it was, we would have eliminated collective bargaining entirely or we would have gone after the private-sector unions. But, we did not because they are our partners in economic development. We need them to help us put 250,000 people to work in the private sector over the next four years.

Walker is right: Government unions are inherently different from private-sector unions. The purpose of private-sector unions is to get workers a larger share of the profits they helped create. But government is a monopoly and earns no profits. All government unions do is redistribute more tax dollars from taxpayers to unions. The left used to understand this. Not only did President Franklin Delano Roosevelt write in 1937: "All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," but as recently as 1959, the AFL-CIO Executive Council stated that "government workers have no right [to collectively bargain] beyond the authority to petition Congress—a right available to every citizen."
Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) also recognizes the key difference between private-sector and government unions, telling the Associated Press Monday:

We have an $8 billion budget hole in Ohio. We have a third of our college students that leave Ohio after three years. We’ve lost 600,000 jobs in the last 10 years. Only California and Michigan have lost more than that. And part of the reason why we are pushing collective bargaining is we frankly want to give the managers in our local communities and our schools the ability to control their costs so they don’t have to raise taxes and drive businesses out and more jobs out.

By granting government workers the power to collectively bargain, government unions have completely politicized the civil service. State and local employees in 28 states are required to pay full union dues or get fired. Using this government coercion, government unions have amassed tremendous financial resources that they use to campaign for higher taxes and higher pay for government workers. The top outside spender in the last election was the American Federation of State and County Municipal Employees ($91 million).Governor Mitch Daniels (R–IN), who signed an executive order ending state worker collective bargaining his first month in office, spoke in support of Walker yesterday:

The people who are doing the demonstrating, and their allies … spent that state broke. … The most powerful special interests in America today are the government unions. They’re the leading financial contributors. They have muscle, a lot of times their contracts provide for time off to go politick and lobby.

And lobby and politick government unions have. Across the country, from Arizona to California to Minnesota to Maine to New Jersey and more, government unions have pushed legislation and ballot measures that raise taxes and spending. In Trenton, New Jersey, last night, Governor Chris Christie (R) framed the debate:

In Wisconsin and Ohio, they have decided there can no longer be two classes of citizens: one that receives the rich health and pension benefits, and the rest who are left to pay for them. These ideas are not red or blue. They are the black and white of truth.

Conservative governors across the nation should absolutely work to reform the way public-sector unions drain our economy. As Governor Christie told MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' today: "We're not trying to break the unions, the unions are trying to break the middle class."

Video:  Radical Public Union Protest! ATL, GA

Related:

Van’s Grand Plan to Span the Land:  A Union Protest at Every State Capitol

Shocking Level of Influence Exposed:  Union Boss Trumpka Talks to White House Every Day and Visits a Couple Times a Week

Obama Triggers Union Uprisings – Wisconsin Governor:  GOP Won’t Be ‘Bullied’ by Union Bill Protestors

Memo: How to beat the right-wing mob

If right-wing protesters are going to show up and yell at their elected officials during town hall meetings, left-wing activists need to start coordinating with those representatives to provide "cover" for them says a 4-page memo distributed by Health Care for America Now!, a group supporting President Obama's recommended plans.

Conservative groups who help mobilize like-minded people to oppose the legislation have outraged Democrats, left-leaning think tanks and blogs, in light their success in spurring contentious town hall meetings that have been filmed an uploaded to the Internet. Much to their chargrin, video clips of conservative activists in Pennsylvania and Texas chanting and booing their elected officials have become a symbol of public angst over President Obama's agenda.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has even accused conservative organizations of distributing "rent-a-mob instructions" on how to protest the President's health care reform plans. As evidence she pointed to a mailer from group called Right Principles.

To help push back HCAN, whose members include the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now! AFL-CIO, the SEIU, the NEA and National Council of La Raza, has some instructions of their own. The memo, emailed to HCAN's 120 field staffers in 44 different states on Aug. 4, encourages activists to contact elected officials before public events to plan ways to preempt the opposition.

"Ask the Member's staff what would be most helpful and talk through a strategy for making sure the right messages don't get drowned out by chaotic protesters," wrote Field Director Margarida Jorge. The memo's introduction says she has "years of union organizing experience" and has "laid out tactics for people attending town halls to follow to blunt the right."

Another one of Ms. Jorge's tips is to "Address the MOC directly with a positive message: Remember, these Members need cover and they are getting beaten up by right wing zealots in these meetings."

HCAN Communications Director Jacki Schechner said protecting elected officials who support their favored reforms was necessary given the contentious nature of some town hall meetings
"People are trying to bait them [elected officials] into having something so they can get yelled at and they don't want to feel unsafe and uncomfortable," Ms. Schechner said. "They don't want to put themselves out to be bait for pushing and shoving, that's not dignified discourse."

By Amanda Carpenter on Aug. 6, 2009 into The Back Story