GINGRICH EAGER TO BE MORE THAN ANTI-ROMNEY CANDIDATE

Verne Strickland Blogmaster / November 28, 2011

  

Greg Kahn for The New York Times: Newt Gingrich, speaking to a standing-room-only crowd in Naples, Fla., last week, has been hiring staff members in two states.

By TRIP GABRIEL

Published: November 27, 2011 NYTimes.com

After a surge that has brought his candidacy back from a punch line, it is time for Newt Gingrich to translate the free-floating support as measured by polls into donations and a grass-roots organization that will turn out voters in early states. 

On Monday, Mr. Gingrich begins three busy days in South Carolina, where he will cut ribbons at his second and third state offices, court high-dollar donors at a $500-a-person coffee gathering and meet privately with influential Tea Party leaders. Besides recently hiring nine staff members in South Carolina, he has added half a dozen in New Hampshire as the campaign taps into a flood of online donations.

On Sunday, Mr. Gingrich received a major boost when he picked up the endorsement of New Hampshire’s largest newspaper, The Union Leader, a rebuke to Mitt Romney, who has a commanding lead in polls in the state and had hoped to gain from the paper’s influence with conservative voters.


The question is whether all the effort is too little, too late with the first votes to be cast in less than five weeks. In a sign of the campaign’s challenges, it failed to file the necessary paperwork last week to get Mr. Gingrich on the ballot in Missouri, which holds a Feb. 7 primary, after a crucial contest in Florida. And the campaign still has only a bare-bones operation in Iowa, whose caucuses on Jan. 3 are becoming all the more important in a fractured Republican field.

As Mr. Gingrich’s popularity has grown, he is facing more intensifying attacks from his rivals, particularly over his call for a more “humane” policy to allow some longtime illegal immigrants to remain in the country.

A top aide to Mr. Romney predicted that the Gingrich bubble would deflate as others before it have. “You don’t have to go deep here,” the aide said, referring to controversial stances and personal baggage from Mr. Gingrich’s past. “It ranges from immigration to ethics to being a Washington insider to Freddie Mac to you pick them.”

Still, the Gingrich campaign shows signs of putting to rest concerns that his candidacy is little more than a promotional tour. This week, his book-signing appearances are all preceded by town-hall-style meetings. Over the weekend, hundreds turned out at his campaign events in Florida.

His hiring of staff members in South Carolina and New Hampshire is helping to lead one of the largest grass-roots efforts of any candidate. The Union Leader endorsement cited Mr. Gingrich’s “innovative, forward-looking strategy” while noting he was not “the perfect candidate.”

Increasingly, Mr. Gingrich is emerging as the Romney alternative, perhaps the last man standing after the fading of previous conservative standard-bearers: Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and Herman Cain, the former pizza executive.

Once affluent donors “are finally settling on the anti-Romney candidate,” said James Epley, Mr. Gingrich’s chairman for Buford County, S.C., “then those folks who are holding back will come aboard.”

The Gingrich campaign says it has raised $4 million since the end of September, a big jump over the previous three months, when it brought in only $800,000 and ended the fiscal quarter with $350,000 in the bank.

The campaign would not say how much of that came from high-dollar donors, who are a sign of establishment support beyond the small contributors who respond to Internet and e-mail pitches.

Nor would it say whether it planned television ads — another sign of a campaign’s maturity — which are costly but have the potential to shift the conversation with voters.

A spokesman, R. C. Hammond, said Mr. Gingrich held a fund-raiser over the weekend in Naples, Fla., that brought in around $50,000. Another is scheduled at the Crazy Crab restaurant on affluent Hilton Head Island on Tuesday morning, for which it expects 15 to 20 donors at $500 apiece.

The crowds on the trail are a marked departure from the summer and early fall, when Mr. Gingrich was forced to live off the land, bunking in Des Moines in the home of his Iowa co-chairman, Dr. Greg Ganske, a plastic surgeon.

“Greg makes one of the best cups of coffee in Iowa,” Mr. Hammond said.

The lean times followed the mass resignation in June of more than a dozen Gingrich staff members who cited the candidate’s unwillingness to commit to the grind of retail campaigning. But he now seems to be taking to heart those former advisers’ prescriptions and getting down to hard slogging. “You’ll see a lot of us in Iowa, a lot of us in South Carolina and a lot of us in New Hampshire,” said Mr. Hammond, one of the few who did not quit.

Mr. Gingrich has visited New Hampshire four times since he filed to be on the primary ballot in late October, the date his staff there traces to his comeback.

About 1,000 supporters have signed up through a Web site in the past two weeks, said Matthew LeDuc, a staff member for Mr. Gingrich in the state. “He was able to come in here, capture his moment, and get in front of people’s faces,” he said.

Ashley Parker contributed reporting.

Ex-Labor Board Chairman: Union-backed case against Boeing 'Unprecedented'.

Verne Strickland Blogmaster

By Judson Berger /AP

Published April 26, 2011

| FoxNews.com

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner is seen on the production line at Boeing's Commercial Airplane manufacturing facility in Everett, Wash., Feb. 14. (AP)

The former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board told FoxNews.com that a board attorney's bid to stop Boeing from opening a production line at a non-union site in South Carolina is "unprecedented" and could have serious implications for companies looking to expand. 

The comments Tuesday from Peter Schaumber add to the roiling debate over the complaint filed last week against the aerospace giant. NLRB's acting general counsel, taking up allegations from union workers at a Puget Sound plant in Washington state, had accused Boeing of violating federal labor law by moving to open a second 787 Dreamliner airplane production line in South Carolina. 

The complaint hinged on claims that Boeing made "coercive statements" regarding union-led strikes, and then retaliated by transferring its second line to a non-union facility. As evidence, the NLRB noted that a Boeing executive said in an interview that the overriding factor in going to South Carolina -- a right-to-work state where unions cannot force employees to join -- was a desire to avoid disruptions. The union in Washington state has led several strikes against Boeing since the 1970s, most recently in 2005 and 2008. 

But Schaumber said the complaint is a big stretch and would mark a departure. He said that if the claim is upheld, it could jeopardize any company with unionized workers that wants to expand to a right-to-work state. 

"It would be fair to say it's unprecedented," he said.

Schaumber, a Bush administration appointee who served on the board for almost eight years including as chairman, argued that the NLRB counsel offered "no basis" for the central claim that Boeing retaliated by transferring work from Washington to South Carolina. 

"The workers don't have any claim to the work," he said. "If the workers don't have any claim to the work, it wasn't retaliatory to open a new second production line. ... It is simply expanding its business operation." 

Boeing offered a similar defense, saying the jobs in South Carolina will not come at the expense of jobs in Washington state. 

The new production line is expected to pump out three planes a month, on top of the seven planes a month coming out of the Puget Sound area. Boeing said since the expansion decision was made, union employment in Puget Sound has increased by about 2,000 workers. Plus Boeing noted that the South Carolina factory is almost done and has involved more than 1,000 workers in the process. 

"This claim is legally frivolous and represents a radical departure from both NLRB and Supreme Court precedent," Boeing General Counsel J. Michael Luttig said in a statement. 

South Carolina Republican lawmakers were similarly outraged over the complaint. Sen. Jim DeMint called it a "political favor" for the unions who supported President Obama's 2008 campaign.

Sen. Lindsey Graham vowed to try to cut off funding for the "wild goose chase." 

"If successful, the NLRB complaint would allow unions to hold a virtual 'veto' over business decisions," he said in a statement. 

FoxNews.com is seeking comment from Washington state's two Democratic U.S. senators. But NLRB spokeswoman Nancy Cleeland said the charge that Boeing is transferring work away from union employees stems from the company's original commitment "to the state of Washington that it would build the Dreamliner airplanes in that state."

Plus she said the South Carolina facility would assume work that is currently being done at a Seattle facility. "As far as the merits of the complaint go, however, the distinction does not matter. Whether this work is considered new or existing, the decision about where to locate it would violate federal labor law if done for discriminatory reasons," she said in an email to FoxNews.com. 

NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon cited Boeing executives' comments on their desire to avoid strikes in claiming the company violated federal rules. 

"A worker's right to strike is a fundamental right guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Act," Solomon said in a statement. "We also recognize the rights of employers to make business decisions based on their economic interests, but they must do so within the law." 

Solomon noted that a settlement could still be reached. The NLRB stressed that the complaint doesn't request that Boeing shut down the South Carolina plant; however, it seeks to keep 787 production in Washington. 

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which initially filed the allegation against Boeing with the NLRB in March of last year, said in a statement that the South Carolina decision was aimed at the union. 

"Boeing's decision to build a 787 assembly line in South Carolina sent a message that Boeing workers would suffer financial harm for exercising their collective bargaining rights," Vice President Rich Michalski said. "Federal labor law is clear: it's illegal to threaten or penalize workers who engage in concerted activity, and it's illegal in all 50 states." 

A hearing in the case is now scheduled before an administrative law judge on June 14 in Seattle. That decision could then be voted on by the National Labor Relations Board itself. And that decision could in turn be appealed to a federal circuit court. 

Schaumber said the dispute could drag on for a while, but suggested the current makeup of the board does not favor Boeing. 

"This board views its role as to promote unionization, and with that in mind, that will be their focus in deciding this case," he said.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/26/ex-labor-board-chairman-union-backed-case-boeing-unprecedented/

Big brute union tactics are alive and well. Ask Boeing and South Carolina about NLRB!

Verne Strickland Blogmaster

UNION EXCESSES AND THUGGERY TOOK DOWN DETROIT AND U.S. AUTO INDUSTRY. LET'S TELL THEM TO GET OFF BOEING'S BACK! OBAMA AND NLRB SHOULD KISS OFF.

Posted April 21, 2011 by Bruce McQuain

It is a battle between a business’s best interests and about its fundamental right to make decisions about how it conducts its business and the government’s “right” to interfere and dictate how and where it will do its business.

In what may be the strongest signal yet of the new pro-labor orientation of the National Labor Relations Board under President Obama, the agency filed a complaint Wednesday seeking to force Boeing to bring an airplane production line back to its unionized facilities in Washington State instead of moving the work to a nonunion plant in South Carolina.

One of the reasons the South has thrived while the Rust Belt has, well, rusted, is companies have taken advantage of the “right to work” rules in most Southern states to locate there without fear of work stoppages at every turn.  That would seem to be a fundamental right that any business should enjoy, the right to locate their business where they feel their best interests are served.  What the government is saying is that’s not true – if you have union employees elsewhere.

In its complaint, the labor board said that Boeing’s decision to transfer a second production line for its new 787 Dreamliner passenger plane to South Carolina was motivated by an unlawful desire to retaliate against union workers for their past strikes in Washington and to discourage future strikes. The agency’s acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, said it was illegal for companies to take actions in retaliation against workers for exercising the right to strike.

First, it’s not “retaliation” if the facts in the story are correct.  Boeing has hired 2,000 more employees – union employees – at the Washington state plant since the decision was made to add a second assembly line and do it in South Carolina.  So A) it’s not taking jobs away and B) the additional jobs since the decision hardly speak of “retaliation” in any sense a rational person would be able to discern.
Second, the “complaint” comes as the plant in South Carolina nears completion and 1,000 workers have been hired there.
So, given those facts, this is a crap statement (that’s technical talk):

In a statement Wednesday, Mr. Solomon said: “A worker’s right to strike is a fundamental right guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Act. We also recognize the rights of employers to make business decisions based on their economic interests, but they must do so within the law.”

This is the usual duplicitous talk you get from this administration – acknowledge the right of the employer to make business decisions based on their economic decisions and then immediately deny what was just acknowledged.  This too is crap”:

“Boeing’s decision to build a 787 assembly line in South Carolina sent a message that Boeing workers would suffer financial harm for exercising their collective bargaining rights,” said the union’s vice president, Rich Michalski.

No, they haven’t sent such a message.  What they’ve said is they have a backlog of orders and can’t afford (business interest) work stoppages every 3 years while unions negotiate a new contract. That is a legitimate concern.  And they want some sort of continuity built into the productions system that accounts for that probability.  No one is denying union workers their “rights” in Washington nor have any union employees been fired because of them – again, since the decision to locate in SC was made, 2,000 additional union employees have been hired there.
What’s is happening here is government has chosen to take sides and is attempting to intimidate Boeing.  The side it has picked – surprise – is the union side.  And it plans to use its power to attempt to force a company into doing something which is not in its best business interests, despite the lip service Solomon gives that “right”.  But there’s no “hostile business climate” here, is there?
Bottom line?

The company also said it had decided to expand in South Carolina in part to protect business continuity and to reduce the damage to its finances and reputation from future work stoppages.

And in a free country, Boeing would have every right to expect to be able to do that without interference.
—
Bruce McQuain blogs at Questions and Observations (QandO), Blackfive, the Washington Examiner and the Green Room.  Follow him on Twitter: @McQandO

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2011/04/21/nlrb-to-boeing-build-all-your-737s-in-union-state-or-well-sue/