by Bill O'Connell on February 4, 2012
Congressman Tim Bishop continues to push his manufactured campaign issue, with the full union backing of the Communication Workers of America, to fight against outsourced call centers. He calls it a “surgical strike”. I think there are more appropriate names for it.
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by Bill O'Connell on January 12, 2012
Tim Bishop likes manufacturing. The manufacturing of campaign issues, that is. In his effort to manufacture a campaign issue around overseas outsourcing, he got a lifeline from the White House yesterday when President Obama held an “insourcing” forum yesterday to encourage companies to “bring jobs back to America.” An editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Insourcing for Dummies” describes the effort.
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by Bill O'Connell on January 10, 2012
As if sitting on a couch with Nancy Pelosi talking about global warming wasn’t enough, Newt Gingrich seems to have taken a seat next to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to attack free market capitalism.
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by Bill O'Connell on December 27, 2011
Tim Bishop has submitted legislation to punish firms that use overseas call centers. He is desperate. He needs an issue that he hopes will sneak him past the electorate into office for another two years. Outsourcing worked for him last time, so he is trying to put lipstick on that pig and pass it off as bold, new thinking. What I am thinking is when is Tim Bishop ever going to represent the people who actually live in his district?
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by Bill O'Connell on December 9, 2011
As the Occupy Wall Street movement starts to sputter and annoy people, a recent announcement by New York University pretty much sums it up.
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by Bill O'Connell on September 23, 2011
President Obama Speaking at Solyndra
Congressman Tim Bishop has not been able to keep from spending, no matter what. The Postal Service has an $8.5 billion deficit, and Tim Bishop is out there fighting to keep an unneeded post office open. We are trillions of dollars in debt and he comes out blasting the Tea Party, because they want Congress to not waste anymore money on green boondoggles like Solyndra.
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by Bill O'Connell on September 16, 2011
Boeing 787 Dreamliner photo by craezer
Yesterday, the House passed a bill that would prevent the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from telling Boeing, America’s largest exporter, that it couldn’t build a factory in South Carolina, a Right-To-Work state. Boeing built a $750 million factory (with their own money, not yours) and hired 1,500 workers, before the NLRB stepped in and called this union retaliation. But no jobs are being eliminated back in Washington state, in fact, Boeing has added 2,000 jobs.
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by Bill O'Connell on September 14, 2011
Photo by boss tweed
Ah, 1922, the Yankees won their second American League pennant and finished up their final season at the Polo Grounds before moving across the river to their new stadium in the Bronx. In the summer, hyperinflation in Germany meant it took 493 marks to equal one dollar. Feature length film Nanook of the North is released. In the fall the conversion rate in Germany is 1,000 marks to the dollar. Stalin comes to power in Russia, and Mussolini in Italy. By November it takes 3,000 marks to equal one U.S. dollar in Germany. Alexander Graham Bell dies. By year-end it takes 7,000 German marks to equal one U.S. dollar. It was also the last time the 9th Congressional District in New York was held by a Republican.
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by Bill O'Connell on September 5, 2011
Photo by photobunny
It would be an understatement to say that unions have had some setbacks recently, so what’s wrong with hogging a holiday all to themselves as they lick their wounds?
The Marathon County Labor Council originally tried to ban Republican lawmakers from Monday’s parade, but it backed down when the Wausau mayor threatened to refuse insurance costs and other expenses to the public event.
While it is true that organized labor was behind the establishment of Labor Day, when you consider that at their peak in the 1950s, unions only represented a little over a third of all workers, it never would have happened without a lot of non-union support to get them more than the fifty percent needed to pass any legislation. So just how did we get in this mess?
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by Bill O'Connell on May 3, 2011

Score one for Mr. Boehner. He has been getting lambasted by conservatives for being had on the 2011 budget deal he negotiated. But if you dig a little deeper you can find a nugget of gold.
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