I thought that the Democratic Party and the Labor Unions were supposed to support working Americans?

Per foxnews.com, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government will hold a hearing in South Carolina on June 17th, looking into a federal labor lawsuit against Boeing Co.

The National Labor Relations Board filed the lawsuit, claiming that the company moved manufacturing facilities from Washington state to North Charleston in order to avoid unionized workers.

The National Labor Relations Board is a U.S. government agency, charged with administering the National Labor Relations Act (1935). The three-member of the NLRB are appointed by the president. The board organizes elections to determine whether employees wish to be represented by a labor union in collective bargaining. They also monitor labor practices by employers and unions.

The NLRB does not initiate investigations.  It becomes involved in a labor dispute, such as the  Boeing factory, after being contacted by employers, individuals, or unions.

The National Labor Relations Board has no enforcement powers. But, it can, and will, especially under a Democratic Administration,  go after perceived offenders in court.

In April, the National Labor Relations Board sued Boeing. The NLRB claimed that the manufacturer located a new 787 passenger aircraft assembly line in South Carolina, which happens to be a right-to-work state, in order to retaliate against Washington state union workers who went on strike in 2008.

The NLRB is demanding that Boeing return the jobs to Washington.

The only problem with that idea, is the fact that Boeing has already built a new South Carolina plant and has hired 1,000 workers.

Yesterday, in another battlefront in the Liberals’ War on Prosperity, the Obama White House blocked a proposal from House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) to speed up the process of oil and gas leasing and energy infrastructure permitting in an Alaska reserve.

Obama and his bureaucratic minions claim that permitting this production of energy by American companies on American soil could force federal regulators to flout environmental laws and would, by necessity, include a costly, redundant resource assessment.

Mike Pool, deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management, while announcing that his agency will hold lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve, known as NPR-A, in December 2011 and each year after, also emphasized that his agency, which oversees 191 lease tracts covering 1.6 million acres, has all the tools it needs to facilitate development of oil in the reserve while balancing protections for wildlife habitat and subsistence users.

According to Pool, holding lease sales in the areas most likely to produce commercial oil and gas and set permitting deadlines could be detrimental to the agency’s public land management process, including the National Environmental Policy Act:

Systematically over time we have been responsible to conduct and make available leasing in NPR-A. There’s no delay in permitting and processing as it involves BLM responsibilities in NPR-A.

Pool added that his agency has no pending backlog of rights of ways or other projects.

According to another Interior official, there is no reason to reassess or update the U.S. Geological Survey’s most recent assessment of oil and gas resources in the reserve, as called for by Hastings’ bill. The most recent survey found about half a billion barrels ofoil at prices near current levels.

Pool said:

I think we have everything in place and we have demonstrated that over time. We currently have all the regulations and the authorities we need.

Hastings, fresh off a trip last week to NPR-A with Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell (R), said:

Producing oil and natural gas in the NPR-A is pointless if there’s no way to get it out of there. The real problem is the federal government’s blocking and delaying of permits for necessary roads, bridges and pipelines needed to transport the energy out of the NPR-A.

According to committe spokesman Spencer Pederson, speaking after the hearing, the decision of the Interior Department suggests the Obama administration may be responding to the panel’s hearings:

However, if Interior paid attention to our NPR-A Access Act hearing, they would have learned that simply issuing lease sales does not solve the problem of producing oil in the NPR-A and transporting it for use.

He also added that, according to the Interior Department, it would be posting a 30-day request for nominations to industry in the coming week to help identify the potentially most productive areas to lease in the December sale.

And to bring today’s post into focus, here’s a little gem I discovered.

In return for a $5 donation to his reelection campaign, President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) is offering his fans a chance to to win a “casual” dinner with him at an unstated location, by participating in a raffle, whose proceeds go to his re-election campaign.

Obama announced that his campaign will raffle off four tickets for the casual dinner in an e-mail to his supporters:

We rely on everyday Americans giving whatever they can afford–and I want to spend time with a few of you. So if you make a donation today, you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to be one of the four supporters to sit down with me for dinner. Please donate $5 or more today.

The e-mail goes on, trying to rally the troops, neglecting to mention that Obama himself has conducted several high-dollar fundraisers in the weeks since his announcement that he is seeking re-election:

Most campaigns fill their dinner guest lists primarily with Washington lobbyists and special interests. We didn’t get here doing that, and we’re not going to start now. We’re running a different kind of campaign. We don’t take money from Washington lobbyists or special-interest PACs–we never have, and we never will.

Really, Mr. President?

Found on americanthinker.com, in an article written by Mallory Factor, on September 22, 2008, is the following refudiation:

On June 26 [2008], the AFL-CIO brass officially endorsed Barack Obama for president. With Big Labor’s largest umbrella organization and its member unions pouring unprecedented resources into the general election campaign, the public ought to fear the legislative payback that would ensue if Obama were elected.

…The two largest union coalitions — the AFL-CIO and the “Change to Win” Federation, a coalition of the American labor unions formed in 2005 as an alternative to the AFL-CIO — have publicly admitted they will spend at least $300 million combined on federal elections alone. When combined with political action committees and local unions and other union funders, at least $1 billion of union money (mostly in forced union dues coerced from workers as a job condition) is being dumped into electioneering.

And, looking back on the Obama Presidency, in 2011, it certainly appears that Big Labor got its money’s worth.