union. do unions serve the public interest or are they a new sense that we cannot afford and should be abolished? before this court, the prosecution will attempt to show the public sector unions in our schools, fire, police departments, the post office, and other municipalities have become an unelected special interest group that are overpaid and abusing public retirement funds threatening strikes, slowdowns and even violence and through political lobbying, raising the burden of taxes and excessive spending under american public during times of economic stress and high unemployment. we have brought before this court thea lee, deputy chief of staff, policy director and chief international economist of the afl-cio, the premier organization representing labor groups both public and private throughout the united states. ms. lee, would you please stand? you and your union supporters have been accused of taking advantage of the public treasury, being paid too much, taking advantage of pension fund

my current union affiliation. [applause] and i want to also thank my publisher hay market and recognize a great fellow, dave zyron, who many of you if you are sports fans know is the most knowledgeable and incisive left commentator on the world of professional and amateur sports. got a great new movie out, whole series of books and, also, a haymarket author. this little civil wars book tour got started last week we events in hartford and my hometown of boston and amherst, massachusetts, and cleveland last weekend. last night we had an event in the city of mencken and the baltimore orioles and that great newspaper guild-written show at a place called red emma's. i have a souvenir to prove that i was there. maybe busboys needs to invest in a hoodie like this. [laughter] how many people here, and i know inside the beltway book audiences tend to be a little more buttoned up, a little more straight-laced, a little more respectable. how many people here have been to red emma's? whoa! i misread my audience, i take it all

the union.hen you decrease the -- treaty -- when you get greedy, you mess up the whole situation. host: the chairwoman has said we would benefit from more collective bargaining because people would have more money to spend in the economy. caller: we're competing against the chinese were getting paid 31 cents an hour. it is tough to compete against other countries when the wages are that low. it is a complicated situation. i do not have any answers. i do not have the education to come up with the answers to these problems. that is what we pay the congressmen for. guest: you have more education than most people in washington. it is called the education of common sense. joining the union because of workplace injustices' is the model we're talking about. when you use the unions to force people into associations they do not want and then force them to pay a fee that is the wrong model. back then, folks joined the union because the union was representing them. they did not care about being forced to p

my current union affiliation.[applause] and i want to thank my publisher haymarket and recognize the great haymarket author, date siren, who many of you, if you're a sports fans know is the most knowledgeable left commentator on the world of professional and amateur sports. got a great new movie out. haymarket author. this little civil wars up to her started last week with events in hartford and my hometown of boston and amherst, massachusetts and cleveland last weekend. last night, we had an event in the city of in the baltimore orioles and the great newspaper showed the wire and a little place called red m.s., which is a radical bookstore downtown. i have a souvenir to prove that i was there. maybe busboys needs to invest in a booty like this. how many people here and i know inside the beltway book audiences are little more buttoned up, straightlaced, respectful. how many of you have been to read comments? well, i miss medway audience. good to see this no longer a mccarthy era and people are willing to frequent

especially union ones. union teachers are happy that they can't be suddenly fired but the charter teachers can be. >> you can get canned in a moment. does that bother you? >> if i'm not doing my job per se and i was tired for that, so be it. >> fy was is a doctor and i wasn't good, i mean i wouldn't have a job. no one would come to me, right? >> i would hope not? >> you cannot maintain quality unless you can fire people says this charter founder. >> it is as many as we must and as little as we can. >> have you fired more than ten? >> in three schools in eight years, yes. >> but while bad teachers might get fired good teachers are given freedom. >> they can choose their textbooks and their teaching methods as long as they every quarter and every year make sure that the students are learning what they need to learn at the end of the bay in harlem, 43% of 8th graders get passing grades on state math tests. 100% of her kids passed. if such charters work why aren't there more of them? >> because unions and suppo

including teacher union roles. this is at risk of failure but these kids learn. >> 70% are on top of the game right now. >> going to our school is ticket for educational success. >> this woman runs several charter schools. all gets outstanding scores. >> do you it with the same amount money weewlgs have to do it for less. >> john: how for less money do they get the kids so interested? you are interested in have interested in math? and reading. learning is work. [ laughter ] >> the school here is longer and they have to stay until 5:00 p.m. charter teachers can be asked to work more and they told us they don't learn. >> it's not an option for us. we have our hand in the pie with these kids. they use all sorts of new teaching techniques, sometimes teachers wear ear pieces and sometimes they are coached by their bosses. what are they telling you? >> they are telling me things, if i don't sympathy of a great question in the moment. my principal is able to feedback to me in the earpiece. you are see teachers at athletes

non-union workers. they can probably work together. but it does raise the question if the union can't get you higher wages, why would you pay to join? >> i think unions do a lot of things on the job that are really important to working people. the basic thing is whether every worker has to go in by him or herself to the boss and beg for safety goggles, for bathroom break for raise health care or a pension or whether workers have that basic human rights and the united states is still a member of the nlrb. this is the right we recognize, to come together at the workplace and to bargain together instead of coming as an individual. those protections are important to workers. we have to turn around the question and not ask why should public sector workers have a pension or health care if i don't? the question is not how do i take it away from the public sector work ez. the question is why doesn't everybody in america have a pension and health care? isn't that something as a wealthy industrialized country we

the european union the troika as we call them european union monetary fund and the european central bank the proposal the plan that they have it's not working. raising taxes. and the connelly that is in deep deep recession doesn't solve problems it creates even more what future do you see for the unified europe do you think it will survive this crisis i would like to see europe survive but there are many things that i have my objections for example the relations between the european union and russia they should become better. greece has tried to be a bridge between the european union and russia and russia successfully sometimes unsuccessfully and others there are some new member states in the european union that are reacting but russia is a part of europe so i can't imagine a europe without russia there must be a closer form of cooperation between the two sides and everybody is going to benefit from that you mention germany several times throughout this interview me finish up on the german quote just a few days ago i'm going merkel sad that if the euro collapses europe will collapse do y

and union bank.

across stronger union a political union and that would also include a fiscal union this is the only way the euro will be saved if they go to a united fiscal policy which would essentially destroy the sovereignty of every single member of the european union that's the only way this currency can be saved . yes but it will not save it because in fact at the levels that are much too high you see behind the problem of the euro the bigger problem of what is called the free market system which endlessly creates that does not put it into the real economy and the spreading out that is collapsing on an even larger scale that in fact europe and there is a certain arrogance behind those who promoted at the great universities in america like and harvard and princeton where they claim that anything the free market does is for the benefit of everybody it's just not true i mean the united states for example has export it all its jobs on the grounds that this is suitable for everybody it's not the whole system is fundamentally crap thing and part of that is the problems in the collapse of the euro o

and nonrussians within the soviet union. staggering statistic, and this is the kind of century we lived through and yet he nostalgically talks amount that not only being the worst century of the 20th century but tries to create an economic, a commonwealth und moscow's control, whic really is moss stall i didn't a, one of the splits between him and med jeff that he, medvedev was rejecting that nostalgia and identifying himself with it .. and he therefore has difficult very subsequent, difficult strerjd russia from the course that may have been open, namely progressive modernization, increasing democratization, and greater ties with the west and so forth. >> rose: is there more individual freedom today in china or in russia? >> rusa. russia. >> russia is a traditional autocracy, it is not a totalitarian state. in the press it is relatively op and if you go to russia and read newspapers in russia these days, they really give you a diversity of views and a lot of real news from the outside world. second, television is really an

union-scale jobs of participation by all unions across the board, for everyone.e also ask that you please, please make sure they include local businesses, whether it be contractors on the construction site or local lenders on all of the other services and the opportunities that exist for this great event. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. executive director of young community developers. i do not want to spend too much time and echoing the sentiments of a lot of my colleagues. i think we're all on the same page in terms of what we want to see with the america's cup opportunity. one thing i do want to talk about is a credibility in terms of standards and expectations. -- the credibility in terms of standards and expectations. we got lots of information today, but a lot of information we did not get. we are asked often to write proposals and response to rfp's and we have to be very detailed and the row about the information that gets in there. we have to tell you what the cost is and forecast a lot. we do not necessarily always have the information, and we

quality of public school education, 38% said unions hurt it. fast forward to today. that number has grown to nearly 50%. steven bril, are you surprised? >> i'm not surprised. the battle has been worth it for the reformers and unions because i see a place where they can come at and where the politicians and the reformers can get the unions on their side which is the only way we're ever going to fix america's schools. >> you came at this as a journalist, with no dog in the fight. you started looking at the rubber rooms, where teachers were put on full pay and sitting on a beach chair playing cards on the public dime. what did you find about what the impediments are to real reform in the schools? >> the pendulum had clearly swung too far. when the teachers unions were first organized in the '30s, the '40s and '50s they were needed. teachers were abused, they were sexually harassed, it was a mostly women profession, discriminated against. then, in the '70s and '80s i think you could argue that they succeeded too well, so that by the time you got to

blob is the teachers union, janitors union, school board bureaucrats.ek try to make a change the blob.... >> we don't that here. we have four to or five people to sign off. they have to say this okay. it's crazy. >> john: union leaders escape that burr bureaucracy. >> you went to private school? >> it made me feel i better do good in that school or else. >> john: why can't other people have the choice they had? also, why does it cost a third of a million dollars to fire just one union teacher? what is wrong with these people? ♪ okay, so who ordered the cereal that can help lower cholesterol and who ordered the yummy cereal? yummy. that's yours. lower cholesterol. lower cholesterol. i'm yummy. lower cholesterol. i got that wrong didn't i? [ male announcer ] want great taste? honey nut cheerios. want whole gin oats that can helpower cholesterol? honey nut cheerios. it's a win win. good? [ crunching, sipping ] be happy. be healthy. can i try yours? and today, we're re-inventing aspirin for pain relief. with new extra-strength bayer advanced aspirin. it has

we believe in union. this is a union town, and we think local hiring really only works when it is union jobs. we want to see a jobs plan that promotes opportunities for the local communities, businesses, and on any construction or construction-related activities. prevailing wage. training. what we want to do is provide benefits. that is what you get when you have local hiring. you get long-term career opportunities. when it comes to the local hiring hall, i think we do not have a full sense of where it applies, but i think we will get that when we come back in a month or see the draft and see how to expand the policies of local hire to non-construction, which a considerable -- which is a considerable part of the drums. we are dealing with folks that are funding this thing better into racing really big boats. they might not be into community hiring and why we go union, and this is why we create the leverage to do this. to insist whether it is a privately funded or publicly funded, whenever we build we have

was a wise one the way we entered the monetary union was the wrong one. relation of the greek drachma that we had to the euro was and correct the way we sense. who made the transition from the drachma to the euro was incorrect for example prices went three times up we didn't pay attention at the time because what we gained from the monthly union right away was more credit greece and greeks could borrow money easier but it wasn't used in the correct way it was used just to buy things but also the investments that were made in europe were only to sell germany you know what's the biggest investment it's made in greece for the past ten years super markets and we ended up buying german products buying german cause. we have helped the german economy very much by our buying capacity i'm telling you maybe greece borrowed a lot of money in the past ten years from now you can go from germany especially why don't you. money germany has made out of greece the pos that he has you'll discover that that's more than what we borrowed. from the. lease. to earth or let's ju

union members marched around nunin -- union square shouting about union power, over 20 years union powerbeen... >> diminished. >> putting it mildly. union members represent just 12% of the nation's work force. and the commerce department reports that private sector wage gains have lagged behind the wage gains of the great depression. >> and this is a period where there is a transfer of wealth over the last three decades that. is what we've seen. we can see working people standing up, fighting back whether in a union or not. >> the local union president believes like the great deprelgs, these hard times will help build union supports. not everyone is optimistic. and pines led the union chant and admitted tea party's message is resonating. >> i don't know how to convince working people, but they did a good job. >> today, sara palin address aid tea party rally and did not talk about organized labor. and opting to bash the president. >> our president has no plan to tackle the politicians deficit problem autos the president spent labor day talk bgs the economic plan intending to unveil on thu

but what unions also know is that the values at the core of the union movement, those don't change. values that have made this country great. that's what the folks trying to undermine your rights don't understand. when union workers agree to pay freezes and pay cuts, they're not doing it just to keep their jobs, they're doing it so that their fellow workers, their fellow americans can keep their jobs. [cheers and applause] when teachers agree to reforms on how schools are run at the same time they're digging in their pockets to buy school supplies for those kids, they do so because they believe every child can learn. they do it because they know something that those who seek to divide us don't understand. we are all in this together. that's why those crowds came out to support you in madison and columbus. we are one nation. we are one people. we will rise and we will fall together. anyone who doesn't believe it should come here to detroit. it's like the commercial says, this is a city that's been to heck and back. and while there are a lot of challenges here, i see a city that's com

a union president said it.said it before the president of the united states was going to remark. by the way, it's not union day, it's labor day. it celebrates all mesh workers -- american workers, not just unions. megyn: let me ask in this context because you started by giving him a pass because it's jimmy hoffa jr. some folks last week gave maxine waters a pass when she said the tea party could go straight to hell. andre carson who said there are people sitting in congress right now who want to see african-americans hanged from trees. everybody's giving a pass on a piecemeal basis, and do you think, you know, collectively it amounts to something more in your view, dick? >> well, sure. i mean, when rick perry calls the head of the fed, ben bernanke, from dylan, south carolina, his conduct treasonous and he gets a pass? >> he didn't get a pass. people like me stood up and said it was wrong. it was wrong for him to say that. a lot of republicans did stand up and say that. >> not many. not many, brad. >> type of h