It’s easy to overlook Senator Obama’s background as a "community organizer" because his smile is genuine, his life story is impressive and his rhetoric is so evocative. What is a “community organizer” anyway? What do they do and why? Do they get better deals for the average person? No, that’s Wal-Mart.

What do the unions want? They want to end secret ballot elections so they can install unions upon employees who regularly vote against them. It was only a year ago that the Congress was debating the Orwellian-sounding “Employee Free Choice Act.” If the Democrats win the White House and increase their majorities in Congress, it will be back, perhaps this time as a law.

So what are "community organizers" to do until then? Make mischief. From The Hill:

If there’s one thing that his friends and foes could readily agree on, it’s that Stephen Lerner doesn’t lack chutzpah.

The fast-talking labor leader says he’s had “a lot of fun” orchestrating a series of bold and sometimes comic attacks on the private equity industry in recent months. He warns that they will continue unless the industry changes its ways.

“Where they are, increasingly you’ll find us — physically,” says Lerner, the head of the “private equity campaign” at the Services Employees International Union (SEIU).

In October, SEIU members shuttled wheelbarrows of fake cash “straight from the IRS” to the Carlyle Group, the Washington-based private equity giant. They deposited the cash at the foot of a “Carlyle fat cat” in an attempt to highlight the industry’s favorable tax treatment.

Last summer, seersucker-clad actors posing as wealthy bluebloods picketed the summer home of Henry Kravis, an industry icon and one of the founders of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. They waved placards in mock defense of the tax treatment.

When Carlyle Managing Director David Rubenstein bought the Magna Carta for $21 million in December, the union quickly fired off the “top 10 reasons” for the purchase. No. 5 on the list: Rubenstein would use the 13th-century document as a “prop to hold up at the next congressional hearing on tax breaks for buyout billionaires.”

There's just one problem: If Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke pushes rates too low, he risks sparking inflation. And with oil prices remaining stubbornly high, rarely has inflation loomed as large over rate cut decisions as it does now. "There's no such thing as a free lunch," said Donald Luskin of advisory firm Trend Macrolytics in a note to clients after Tuesday's rate cut. "And there's no such thing as a free bailout, either. Inflation is the price of this one." Inflation, of course, eats away at real asset returns, canceling out some of the gains of a bull market. One telling sign that it's a concern: The price of gold, the traditional hedge against rising prices, spiked on the day the Fed announced its interest rate reduction.