On the day that President Barack Obama signed the nationalization of America’s health care into law, Service Employees International Union’s then-president Andy Stern shot a gushing video to his membership thanking the SEIU membership for “changing America forever.”
Since that day, Andy Stern has ‘retired’ from the SEIU, taken a position on the Board of Directors of SIGA Technologies, as well as still sits at President Obama’s side on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Stern has, by no means, lost his influence. If anything, Stern, while less in the public eye, may have become more influential on America’s future.
It is no secret that Andy Stern and his fellow “progressives” are fighting hard to install a “new 21st-Century economic plan” on America (beginning at 27:35). In fact, Stern and his fellow progressives continue to push an end to capitalism, not just in words, but in policy formation as well.
For nearly a year now, unions (led by their “progressive” leaders) have been building the case to nationalize America’s retirement system. In May, more details started emerging on the Left’s plan to takeover, prompting House Republicans to write send a letter to Secretaries Solis and Geithner that stated:
“[W]e write today to express our opposition in the strongest terms to any effort to ‘nationalize’ the private 401(k) system, or any proposal that would dismantle or disfavor the private 401(k) system in favor of a government-run retirement security regime…. Instead, we urge the Departments to make it easier for employers to include retirement income solutions in their savings plans and to help workers learn more about the value of their retirement savings as a source of retirement income.”
Following that initial volley, other than the proposed $165 billion bill to bailout union pension funds, there has not been much more reported until last week.
Andy Stern, a key member of the deficit commission, is pushing to invest a significant portion of the Social Security trust fund in private companies through the stock market, the former labor leader told HuffPost.
Stern, taking a break from one of the few public meetings of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, said that Social Security “needs to be, like any pension fund, brought back into balance.”
There were several ways to bring the fund into balance, he said, but one that he favors consists of “investing some percentage of government money in the stock market, as they do in Canada. Not individual taxpayer money, but government money.”
Let there be no mistake: This proposal, were it to be enacted, essentially ends the quasi-free market that built America to greatness.
While President Bush had wrongly proposed a partial privatization of social security by letting Americans invest a portion of their social security into the stock market, Andy Stern’s proposal is far more insidious. While Bush’s plan would have had the far-reaching tentacles of government regulations involved in determining what sort of stocks would be allowable, Stern’s plan is a plain take over of publicly-held companies by the federal government.
If the federal government becomes the single largest share-holder of a publicly-held company (after union pension plans), every aspect of how that company is managed (through shareholder resolutions) will be dictated by the federal government. This, of course, would likely include the edict of unionization.
In 2008, when then-candidate Barack Obama vowed to change America with the SEIU at his side, little did most Americans realize that ‘transforming America‘ meant that the federal government would take over the health care industry, as well as an attempt to take over all other industry.
In November, as unions fight to maintain their stranglehold on the federal government, Americans should have a clear choice to make. One choice is to live under Andy Stern’s vision for a unionized America. The other choice is to stop it. It really is that simple.
2010 is America’s Thermopylae and everything rests upon enough Americans getting up, getting out, getting together and getting to the polls.
Remember.
November.
GOTV.
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“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.”Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
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