We’ve been flooded with queries about this one ever since the health care bill became law. At the last minute, Democratic lawmakers decided on a new 3.8 percent tax on the net investment income of high-income persons. But the claim that this would amount to a $15,200 tax on the sale of a typical $400,000 home is utterly false.

The truth is that only a tiny percentage of home sellers will pay the tax. First of all, only those with incomes over $200,000 a year ($250,000 for married couples filing jointly) will be subject to it. And even for those who have such high incomes, the tax still won’t apply to the first $250,000 on profits from the sale of a personal residence — or to the first $500,000 in the case of a married couple selling their home.

Even if Republicans gain control over both houes, it's impossible they can obtain the majority necessary to overturn the bill.

Are you really that shallow, that unless it affects you, you don't want to look at the big picture?

Skooch if you just went and killed all those folks who won't be hurt by a tax increase you could get it all.

Obamao doesn't follow rules or believe in checks and balances.

When large corporations game the system so that it benefits their bottom line, and then when they gut the system, they rely on their customers to make them viable again, that's not capitalism, that's corporate socialism, or corporate welfare.

But your hatred of unions are clouding your brain, SEIU did not bankrupt anyone.

Excerpted from Culture of Corruption, “Chapter 7: SEIU – Look for the union label”
Andy Stern rallied the Illinois delegation to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in August 2008 with an impassioned salute to the working man Flanking Stern on stage at the Denver celebration: Chicago political machine kingpins Rahm Emanuel and Richard Daley. Stern roared about “rebalancing power between wealth and work” to “make sure everyone shares in the wealth of a growing economy.” Echoing Obama’s 2007 speech to the SEIU political action conference, union boss Stern condemned the old way of doing business and called on American to “turn the page” on behalf of hard-working Americans and their families.
But just two weeks before Stern and company gathered in the Mile High City to celebrate Obaman’s coronation,, the Los Angeles Times published an explosive investigative series about the SEIU, Although the series got surprisingly little attention from national news organizations, L.A. Times reporters exposed how one of Stern’s top protégés “shared in the wealth” –— by siphoning off hundreds of thousands of dollars in dues money for his personal enrichment and pleasure. Moreover, the paper alleged, Stern helped cover up the scandal. No wonder they keep urging us to “turn the page.”
The L.A. Times investigation zeroed in on Tyrone Freeman who, like Barack Obama, began his career as an urban community organizer. In Atlanta, Freeman quickly ascended the SEIU ladder. In 1994, Stern found him at a small Georgia chapter of the union, Local 1985, and brought him westward. Stern set his loyalist Freeman up as head of Local 6434, the sprawling home care workers’ chapter in southern California that represents an estimated 160,000 workers who make about $9 an hour caring for the elderly and disabled. Stern chose Freeman as part of his administration slate at the SEIU convention in 2008 and named him a national vice president in addition to the L.A. appointment. The move wasn’t an altruistic act of affirmative action. It was part of Stern’s grander plan to consolidate power by merging locals into statewide chapters.
With bigger membership rolls came bigger coffers, and with bigger coffers came irresistible temptations.
Freeman, the L.A. Times discovered, had piped $600,000 in union contracts to his wife’s video production and entertainment ventures. The local also paid his mother-in-law $8,000 a month to babysit his daughter and other union employees’ children; footed a $13,000 bill for membership at a Beverly Hills cigar club; covered $12,500 in tabs at upscale Morton’s restaurant in Burbank; and forked over $8,000 in union dues to cover expenses for Freeman’s Hawaiian wedding. Freeman’s spending orgy didn’t end there.
Stern’s protégé created a non-profit training shop called the “Homecare Workers Training Center” –— ostensibly to provide educational opportunities for nurses. In practice, the non-profit served as a conduit to subsidize a childcare business operated by Freeman’s mother-in-law. “Her business had been receiving more than $90,000 annually for the past several years from the training center that Freeman founded as a separate nonprofit and chairs, according to IRS filings and interviews” by the L.A. Times. The funding from her son-in-law constituted more than 10 percent of the nonprofit’s total yearly expenditures. Freeman’s wife, Pilar, and brother-in-law, Hernando Planells Jr., are listed in state documents as officers in the mother-in-law’s business.” Freeman’s ransacking of Local 6434’s treasury didn’t end with nepotistic favoritism. The Times also reported:
* A housing corporation that Freeman helped found as a nonprofit has not been granted the IRS tax-exempt status it sought and was suspended from doing business in California. It also has claimed on its website to have a “strong relationship” with the prominent California Community Foundation, which says it has no such relationship.

* The union spent at least $123,000 more on the fund-raising tournament at the Four Seasons Resort in Carlsbad than it received in reimbursements, according to Labor Department filings and interviews. Freeman said the event made money for the charity. The union’s expenditures included $100,000 in payments to entities associated with former professional football star Eric****rson, which have been suspended from doing business in California. The payments were listed as donations to nonprofits, not as fund-raising expenses.
* And a now-defunct minor league basketball team coached by Freemant’s brother-in-law received $16,000 for what the union described as public relations.
Freeman’s local also paid nearly $106,000 to a company called “The Filming Inc.” –— for which the Times could find no state incorporation record or IRS nonprofit listing, no business license, and no legitimate address –— and another $106,000 to Hollywood talent agency William Morris for “advice and counsel” in such areas as media and “membership awareness.”
Even more troubling, Freeman allegedly rigged his own election. In August 2008, the Labor Department began investigating charges from rank-and-file members that Freeman’s union local “made it nearly impossible for candidates not on his slate to qualify for the ballot, according to people familiar with the probe. The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office also opened investigations. Former employees of Freeman’s nonprofit charity also alleged that the Stern protégé forced them to work on campaigns of political candidates in violation of federal law.
Even more damning, a key union source told the Times that, contrary to the denials of union brass, SEIU’s top officials were warned of Freeman’s plundering six years before the paper blew the whistle:
In response to the July [2008] inquiries, [union spokesman Steve] Trossman had issued a statement on behalf of Stern that said the union had received no allegations about Freeman’s local. Freeman denied any wrongdoing.

The source, who said he was party to internal conversations about Freeman in 2002, told The Times last week: “The international knew that there were allegations of impropriety many years ago. This is not news to them.”
On Aug. 20, 2008, just days before Stern would join Democrats in toasting Barack Obama at the party convention in Denver, Stern’s protégé Tyrone Freeman stepped aside as head of Local 6434 and the chapter was placed in a temporary trusteeship. Stern’s office in Washington, D.C. released the announcement. “These allegations are of serious concern to all of us and we support Mr. Freeman’s decision to put the best interests of the members first,” Stern spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette wrote in an e-mail to the Times. But even as he relinquished his position, Freeman was apparently engaging in the strong-arm tactics he learned from Stern. Ten employees told the Times that they suffered retaliation after refusing to sign a petition supporting him as the scandal exploded. “Freeman’s lieutenants” at Local 6434 essentially pressured other members to sign a “loyalty oath,” one union member disclosed.
After dragging its feet and being forced to act to quell public embarrassment over the Times investigations, SEIU finally announced formal charges against Freeman “for engaging in self-dealing and financial malpractice in violation of SEIU’s Constitution and Local bylaws.” In November, Stern threw his underling under the bus. Freeman, whom Stern had groomed in his own image, was banned for life from the SEIU and ordered to provide $1.1 million in restitution to the union. A sanctimonious Stern issued a statement lamenting Freeman’s downfall: “Today’s decision sends a clear message across our Union…We are all accountable. Our members do some of the toughest jobs anywhere, and we will not tolerate any actions violating their trust or putting their interests at risk.”
But rank-and-file members weren’t fooled or mollified. An insurgent group called S.M.A.R.T. –— SEIU Member Activists For Reform Today –— blasted the union leadership:
Freeman didn’t come from nowhere. He was appointed by Andy Stern – for the third time…And there are many other locals where Stern has installed unaccountable appointees and, sometimes ignoring reports that they were out for personal gain…So Stern’s message to us is clear – he cares more about expanding control for himself and an ever shrinking inner circle than he does about building real power for working people, creating solid organizations, coming through on SEIU’s political pledges for the fall, or even the perception of our union and our movement as real, democratic, valuable and clean. He will only act when there is no other option, and he will never apologize.
As for Freeman, he glided into a new life as a Los Angeles sports agent –— where he uses his criminal involvement in defrauding low-wage workers as a selling point. His shameless biography on the website of the SMWW Sports Agency touts his “tireless commitment to lead the struggle for livable wages, decent housing and health care for all.” Burnishing his scandal credentials, Freeman adds: “I believe my recent personal experience evolving from turmoil, can be a testimony shared in preparing any athlete for the trials and tribulations of being a star.
Ruthless Andy Stern taught Tyrone Freeman and his southern California peers all too well. Rickman Jackson, another Stern administration protégé and former chief of staff to Tyrone Freeman, headed Michigan’s largest SEIU chapter before being “reassigned” for three years to a staff organizing job after the revelation of financial shenanigans tied back to L.A.’s Local 6434. While collecting a six-figure annual salary in Michigan, Jackson was drawing a second salary in California and accepted $33,500 in housing payments on a residence listed as the business address of Freeman’s bogus housing non-profit corporation.
Another Stern administration protégé, Annelle Grajeda, rose to power after the SEIU president installed her as president of the 80,000-member Local 721 in Los Angeles. She ascended to positions on the union’s state council and international executive board. Like Freeman and Jackson, Grajeda had been voted onto Stern’s official administration slate at the SEIU convention in 2008. The Times published damning details of how Grajeda’s ex-boyfriend, SEIU official Alejandro Stephens, collected multiple salaries and consultant fees from the union while also pocketing a salary as a Los Angeles County health services employee. Grajeda had arranged for her ex-lover to get an eight-month leave of absence from the job. He was fired after he refused to return to work. Grajeda quit her California posts after catching public flak and found a new job –— as special assistant to SEIU secretary-treasurer Anna Burger in Washington, D.C.! Her former chapter heralded the move up. Grajeda will now oversee efforts to “partner with the Obama administration” to secure more public funds for SEIU projects. What could go wrong?
Former SEIU 721 President Annelle Grajeda assumed her new role as special assistant to the International Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger for the Public Sector Mar. 9.

According to a staff announcement from the International Union in Washington, D.C.: “With more than two decades of service, Annelle has played a critical role in winning strong contracts for tens of thousands of union members, preserving trauma centers in Los Angeles County, fighting for health care reform, defeating ballot initiatives in 2005 that challenged working families’ livelihoods and uniting more than 80,000 workers into SEIU 721 for greater strength and a stronger voice for public service providers. She brings this wealth of experience and talent to the national level in her new role.”
…The International’s announcement went on to state “While there has been no finding of wrongdoing on Annelle’s part, she has decided to change the capacity in which she serves the Union in order to take on the challenge of developing quality public services at a time when funding is threatened like never before.”
In her new role, Annelle will expand SEIU’s work in the public sector partnering with the Obama Administration to secure more funds for key infrastructure projects and core public services including care for the elderly, health care, education and social services.
Tyrone Freeman, Rickman Jackson, and Annelle Grajeda were all groomed by Stern and personally appointed by him to the posts they exploited. But there’s no “three-strikes” policy in labor management. Like Obama, Stern has managed to pass the buck while pretending it stopped at his desk. Birds of a feather evade accountability together.
The L.A. SEIU debacles were just one stinking layer of Stern’s rotten onion. Corruption isn’t an anomaly at the SEIU. It’s a contagion. Cronyism isn’t the exception. It’s the rule…

We saw their fury throughout 2009:  “Capitalism is Dead”, “Kill the Corporation”, “Bust up Big Banks”, “Greed Kills”, “Bank of America, bad for America”.  the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) led an all-out assault on Wall Street – and on capitalism and corporations – coining words and phrases that have since become common staples in the vocabulary of the bank-bashing craze.  That fury hit a fever pitch last March when word of the AIG bonuses went public.  it was the SEIU out in front of the protests, at AIG offices, and bussing protestors to the homes of AIG executives.
The months that followed saw more of the same.  In April, SEIU hailed the ousting of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner.  That same week, it stepped up its battleplan with the Mother of all Corporate Campaigns against Ken Lewis, Bank of America CEO and Chairman – complete with videos, rolling billboards, smear sites, petition drives, letter campaigns, media blitzes and more, while it placed equal attention on Bank of America, forcing the company to respond with a $40 million image boosting campaign of television and print ads.
And by October, SEIU’s bank bashing crusade climaxed again at the American Bankers Association annual meeting, with its greatly publicized “Showdown in Chicago“, where some of the protestors dressed in Grim Reaper garb chased down meeting attendees, brandishing cleavers and butcher knives emblazoned with bloody-looking slogans such as “making a Killing” and “Greed Kills”.  clearly, the aim was to intimidate, yet none of the media outlets apparently felt any duty to call out such theatrics.  That event also featured a star-studded cast that included everyone from Andy Stern, to Anna Burger, Richard Trumka (AFL-CIO), the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Senator****Durbin (D-IL), FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, and even Armando Robles of the now infamous Serious Materials, which was recently featured on Stossel’s Crony Capitalism special.
In November came the much anticipated Goldman Sachs protest.  While the event was promoted in advance by media outlets like Politico, it turned out to be more of a letter delivery than a protest.  Nonetheless, Andy Stern was once again the notable headliner.
All told, there’s certainly been no shortage of bank bashing tirades.  Labor unions like SEIU in particular have been especially dramatic in both prose and propaganda, as the photo and some of the videos referenced above demonstrate.
And now, as the Obama administration and liberal Democrats in Congress come to terms with the impact of the Scott Brown victory in the recent Massachusetts election on their progressive policy agenda, the gears in Washington DC seem to have shifted into regressive campaign mode.  President Obama is making the rounds again in familiar town hall style, complete with the typical backdrop of carefully selected audience members placed atop tiers of risers, flanked by flags and slogans. Obama is now presenting an “I’m just a regular guy like you” sort of persona, as he refocuses his key issues on jobs and the economy.
But the telltale signs of big labor’s influence over the President’s agenda clearly surfaced on January 21st, when Obama announced a major crackdown on Wall Street banks.
“What we’ve seen so far in recent weeks is an army of industry lobbyists descending on Capitol Hill to try to block commonsense rules,” Obama said. “If these folks want a fight, it’s a fight I’m ready to have.”
Sure, it’s an easy fight to pick.  After the months of unrelenting populist rage against the perceived enemy that is the “Wall Street Fat Cats,” as the president refers to them, there would hardly be much pushback from the general public.  Especially with all the anti-capitalist rhetoric and theatrics from the likes of progressive protestors, community organizers and labor unions. even Hollywood and the press have joined that bandwagon.  but behind all of the ire is labor’s real agenda, one that is completely irrelevant to the majority of Americans.
Now, I am certainly not defending the practices of some of the banks – the behavior of some has been irresponsible and reckless.  I think we all acknowledge that.  but considering that labor unions like SEIU represent such a small minority of “the American People,” why have we seen such constant, organized angst on a widespread scale from SEIU? no other outfit has been anywhere near as visible or as aggressive as SEIU on this front.  While everyone else made their points, said their peace and moved on after April, SEIU continued and escalated its attacks month after month.  One has to wonder, how much of it is truly in the sincere interest of “protecting the American people”?  (Especially considering that labor unions represent only a tiny portion of all Americans – and all of us have been greatly impacted by the financial crisis).  And why no protests against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or the auto industry?
Even noted law firms, like Hunton & Williams, and Morgan & Lewis took notice, and published their suspicious of the sincerity of the labor union’s motives.
You could almost have predicted the storyline and its lead-up to the populist outrage. If you kept your eye on Andy Stern and the SEIU Master Trust.
In a 1972 book, “The Unseen Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism came to America,” author Peter Drucker studies the role that government and labor union pension funds play in the financial sector. he described that unknowingly, the US over time has “socialized” our economy without actually “nationalizing” it, by way of the pension funds of America’s workers.
“Through their pension funds, employees of American business own today at least 25 per cent of the equity capital of American business. the pension funds of the self-employed, of public employees, and of school and college teachers own at least another 10 per cent more, giving the workers of America ownership of more than one third of the equity capital of American business.  Within another 10 years the pension funds inevitably will increase their holdings and will, by 1985 at the latest, own at least 50 per cent of the equity capital of American business…these “institutional investors” together own the controlling interest in the company and, indeed, the company could not be financed unless the “institutional investors”-the pension funds –were willing to invest in it…”
(Click here for an article version of Drucker’s book, with contributions from Thomas Sowell and others)
Drucker went on to explain that the United States economic system actually has devolved from pure capitalism into more of a version of “decentralized market socialism,” citing General Motors and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union’s pension fund as among the first to foray into investment in the private capital market funds, as is now so common today. While Drucker wrote the book generally in support of the workers’ cooperative stake in private business, he warned then that private corporations would come to rely too much upon the pension funds, and the true incentive of self-interest normally created by Capitalism could eventually go away.
“the emergence of the pension trust makes final the divorce of traditional “ownership” from “control”…for the pension funds are not “owners.” they are investors. they do not want “control.” indeed, they are legally disqualified from “control.” the pension funds are “trustees”: it is their job to place the beneficiaries’ money in the most profitable investment. they have no business trying to “manage.” If they do not like a company or its management, their duty is to sell the stock. To sit on a board of directors, for instance, and accept the obligations of board membership, is incompatible with the duties of the trustee which the pension-fund managers have to discharge and which have been sharply and strictly defined in the Pension Reform Act of 1974.”
To be fair, the author later emphasizes that institutional investors should exercise their voice in representing their interests.  Utilizing your proxy vote and providing feedback to the board as an active shareholder is a good thing!  but as others have noted, the potential for abuse also exists, if union shareholders engage the board for purposes other than their pension investment interests. Drucker (and lawmakers in the 1970’s) expected that shareholders and their trustees would either engage to positively affect the stock, or they’d sell it if they didn’t like the company’s management.  Perhaps it is this observation that SEIU’s Andy Stern has seized upon. Rather than sell the stock, maybe Stern wants to control the companies in which his pension trust is invested.  it may have less to do with protecting pension investments and more to do with unionizing workers at those companies.
You Don’t Want a Union?  this is my Baseball Bat & I call it “Shareholder Resolution”
Of all those companies that have been SEIU’s protest targets, most have been the very same corporations in which the $1.9 billion SEIU Master Trust and some of parent Change to Win Investment Group’s $217 billion are invested. Is it also coincidence that many of these corporations were also the very targets of SEIU unionization efforts?
In early 2009, Andy Stern and Anna Burger wrote to the White House and Congress, demanding a list of financial reforms be legislated immediately, including a central regulator, and control over executive compensation and bonuses.  Then in April, SEIU Master Trust director Stephen Abrecht sent a letter to 29 financial firms in which the trust holds investments, demanding that the companies’ directors investigate more than $5 billion in paid bonuses that SEIU says were based upon false metrics. Among those firms on the list were AIG, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, PNC Financial Services and others.
Shortly thereafter, SEIU proposed a number of shareholder resolutions to the boards of many of the companies on that same list, requesting everything from ousting CEOs or board members to controlling employee compensation structures.  meanwhile, outside on the streets, SEIU’s protests were often coordinated with company meetings and events.  As banks and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce fought against the Employee Free Forced Choice Act legislation, SEIU levied shareholder resolutions against them and issued more demands to Congress for immediate consumer protection and financial reform.
When Anna Burger then testified in front of the Congressional Financial Services Committee in September, not only did she push for a central bank regulator and other financial reforms, but she concluded her testimony by calling for the unionization of bank workers, insisting that the bank workers could then “speak out in protection of consumers” without fear to prevent future crisis.
Not surprising, since SEIU has had its eye on unionizing bank workers for quite some time, placing repeated pressure on banks for years and conducting endless rounds of their infamous corporate campaigns.
I was also interested when SEIU celebrated the victory of Brazilian bank workers who in October had won a wage increase and other concessions after a 10-day strike there, through the efforts of SEIU’s partnering coalition Central Unica dos Trabalhadores (CUT). In November, SEIU sent a delegation of its own members down to Brazil to learn more about their partner union’s bank campaign.
Prior evidence of SEIU’s bank organizing attempts had already surfaced one year earlier after emails between Inga Skippings of SEIU and ACORN were publicized, revealing their collusion on the effort to unionize bank workers, since, as Skippings put it, “the banking industry is now being infused with billions of taxpayer dollars.”
“We need to get a handle on who these workers are, working conditions, etc.,” Skippings wrote.
“do you have ACORN members who work for banks or Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae? Is there anyway [sic] you could check? the banks we’re most concerned about are:
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Chevy Chase/B.F.Saul, BB&T, SunTrust, Bank of America/Countrywide, Wachovia/Wells Fargo, PNC Bank/National City, Citigroup
Please let me know and if you have other suggestions, I’d love to hear them.”
Of course, after months of SEIU’s repeated and relentless attacks against Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, demands that Bank of America fire him, and finally a shareholders resolution to oust him, Lewis stepped down as CEO in September 2009, while Andy Stern took full credit for Lewis’ resignation on Twitter.  SEIU even went so far as to demand that Kenneth Feinberg, in his duties as the newly created Pay Czar, stop all payments to Ken Lewis, after he’d already been ousted from the board.
But SEIU’s abusive wielding of its pension funds as a weapon doesn’t stop with the financial sector. In fact, this tactic was at play long before the financial crisis. One such example heated up in 2006 in SEIU’s campaign against Sunrise Senior Living centers. under the guise of protecting its pension investments, SEIU had demanded input on board decisions, including who they wanted appointed to the company’s board, a campaign that ultimately proved successful in forcing out several board members whom SEIU perceived as anti-union.  Meanwhile, SEIU was coincidentally hard at work trying to organize workers at Sunrise facilities.
Other attempts, some successful, some not, have been made over the years in similar SEIU fashion. Just a few examples of their Pension Fund activism to note:
Institutional investors certainly have a responsibility to protect their pension funds, and no one faults anyone for doing so.  but in SEIU’s case, there has often been a pattern of abusing that responsibility to achieve other goals.  over the years, SEIU has teamed up with a multitude of co-investors and pension fund activists to gain unionizing and pay control from inside these corporations.  this activity is rampant in the private sector companies, and much of it is not in the best interest of the taxpayers or the workers at these companies.
The financial reforms Obama has proposed of late match up nearly word for word with what’s been proposed by SEIU’s leaders.  Much of what’s included in H.R 3126,  the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009, also lines up with SEIU’s language. and in the midst of them all are the renewed calls to pass EFCA, the misleadingly named Employee Free Choice Act.
And all the while, SEIU has continued on its mission to use the shareholder resolution as a weapon against nearly every business in which their Master Trust has been invested…that is, if that business opposes the Employee Free Forced Choice Act.
So, who’s proposing the financial reforms – is it Obama, or is it SEIU?  Who and what is all this legislation designed to protect, really?  the American People?  or just a few leaders in purple t-shirts?
SEIU & progressive groups stage a 3-day “Showdown in Chicago” at the annual ABA meeting. of course, when non-progressives protested the bailouts, they were shunned as “extremists” & a “dangerous mob”, but I digress…

We're here today and in 30 states around the country, from Miami to Missoula, to say that it is time to end an economy that only work for some, and make this an economy that works for all Americans. Is that right?
I've got to tell you, I'm sick and tired of Ken Lewis and the Bank of America. They made $135 million in profits In the last 10 years.