The Badger State will hold six recall elections for state senators on Tuesday, the final battle of a war between Gov. Scott Walker (R) and organized labor that began months ago. Walker’s decision to strip public-sector unions of their collective-bargaining right set off a national firestorm — with the labor movement promising retribution for legislators who voted in favor of the proposal.
[...]Democrats have targeted six Republican state senators for recall, while two of their own face recall fights. Republicans have a 19-14 majority in the chamber, so to seize control, Democrats must win three GOP-held seats and lose none of their own.Most analysts consider Sen. Dan Kapanke (R) the most endangered, because his district gave Obama more than 60 percent of the vote in 2008. Many Democrats are counting that seat as a pickup. Sen. Randy Hopper (R) also faces a tough race in a Democratic-leaning district. Sens. Luther Olsen and Alberta Darling, both Republicans, are vulnerable, too, and their races are likely to decide whether Democrats get to the majority on Tuesday.
[...]Tens of millions of dollars have poured into the state — some experts estimate that more than $30 million has been spent — as every interest group on either side of the aisle is trying to make its voice heard before the vote.
Democrats — and especially organized labor groups — have cast the Wisconsin recall elections as a sign that they retain significant political power and are more than willing to fight when they think Republicans have overreached.
This is a big story that is happening at the state level. It might be worth sending a few bucks to the Republican state senators.
Remember when that awesome Republican governor Scott Walker limited the unions from extorting massive amounts of money from the state using their collective bargaining powers? Well, some judge halted the legislation. That judge has now been overruled by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Acting with unusual speed, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the reinstatement of Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial plan to end most collective bargaining for tens of thousands of public workers.
The court found that a committee of lawmakers was not subject to the state’s open meetings law, and so did not violate that law when it hastily approved the collective bargaining measure in March and made it possible for the Senate to take it up. In doing so, the Supreme Court overruled a Dane County judge who had halted the legislation, ending one challenge to the law even as new challenges are likely to emerge.
The changes on collective bargaining will take effect once Secretary of State Doug La Follette arranges for official publication of the stalled bill, and the high court said there was now nothing to preclude him from doing that. La Follette did not return a call Tuesday to say when the law would be published.
[...]The court ruled that Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi’s ruling, which had held up implementation of the collective bargaining law, was in the void ab initio, Latin for invalid from the outset.”The court’s decision …is not affected by the wisdom or lack thereof evidenced in the act,” the majority wrote. “Choices about what laws represent wise public policy for the state of Wisconsin are not within the constitutional purview of the courts. The court’s task in the action for original jurisdiction that we have granted is limited to determining whether the Legislature employed a constitutionally violative process in the enactment of the act. We conclude that the Legislature did not violate the Wisconsin Constitution by the process it used.”
The court concluded that Sumi exceeded her jurisdiction, “invaded” the Legislature’s constitutional powers and erred in halting the publication and implementation of the collective bargaining law.
Generally, when a higher court calls bulls**t on a lower one, it’s called a remand, a declaration that the lower court got it wrong, and to try again.
Commenters are telling me the court ruled here ab initio, which (context clues, it’s been forever since I did anything law-oriented) means it’s expunged from memory altogether as being improperly entertained from the start, which means there is no remand to the lower court to try again. The higher court has said “Not only did you get this wrong, you got it so wrong we don’t trust you with another bite at the apple, so we’re directing your decision from here. It’s over. Done. Finished. Kaput.”
And more. This judge, Sumi, attempted not to rule a law unconstitutional but a bill — a not-quite-yet-a-law — unconstitutional, as she ordered the law to be unpublished, that is, to remain a bill without going to the final step to make it a law.
Ace actually brought out the flaming skull and the bear for this story… so it must be big.
Here’s some other good news from Wisconsin – they just passed a bill to legalize concealed carry. That’s good for law-abiding citizens and bad for criminals, who will now have a tougher time committing crimes.
It’s hard to imagine Uncle Sam telling Walt Disney where to make movies or McDonald’s how many hamburgers to make, but if you take a look at the case of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) versus Boeing, you’ll see that the federal government is trying to do just that: dictate where and how private industry may do business. And it’s doing so to bolster one of President Barack Obama’s favorite special interests—labor unions.
To catch you up on the story, Boeing Corporation decided to build a new assembly plant in Charleston, South Carolina, in order to produce the 787 Dreamliner. The NLRB (which is responsible investigating unfair labor practices) got wind of the decision and last month filed a complaint against Boeing, alleging that the company decided to build the plant in South Carolina out of retaliation for union strikes at its Washington state facilities. Nevermind that Boeing actually added 2,000 jobs in Washington on this particular project.
South Carolina is a right-to-work state, meaning that Boeing can hire non-union workers. For fans of big labor (like President Obama and his allies), right-to-work states are a threat to unions’ dominance. (It’s worth noting that the NLRB today is composed of four members, three of whom are Obama appointees.)
The NLRB’s intentions, then, could be easily inferred. It is doing all it can to help unions at the expense of right-to-work states, corporations and at the end of the day, American workers. But in this case, we have even more than inference.
This is important. The way to destroy the Democrats as a political party is to go after their funding.And a lot of their funding is taken from union workers, many of whom are social conservatives who don’t agree with Democrat priorities like taxpayer-funding of abortions and legalizing same-sex marriage.
As Oregon teachers and lawmakers continue brainstorming various education reforms, getting rid of mandatory union dues should be at the top of the list.
That’s nothing against the Oregon Education Association. As far as I can tell, OEA has well-meaning, knowledgeable people working for it. And unlike in Washington, where the state-level teachers union was recently riddled with lawsuits over how it spends members’ dues, Oregon teachers who have had unacceptable run-ins with their state-level union either don’t exist or are hard to find.
But no matter how decent a job a union does, a teacher should never be forced to give it money as a condition of his or her employment, especially when unions are known to engage in all sorts of politicking. Just imagine if your employer took a portion of your paycheck each month and spent it furthering causes and issues and candidates with which you disagreed.
As Susan Stacy, a special education teacher in Seaside, said, “I don’t agree with a lot of the policies or pursuits of the NEA or the OEA. And when they support organizations or causes I flat out disagree with, I don’t think I should be forced to support them. Even when it comes to organizations I think are good, it should be my choice to support them.”
Stacy has been teaching in Oregon for 12 years. Before that, she taught for five years in Utah, a state without compulsory unionism. When she was hired here, she was surprised when she received her first paycheck to find a deduction for union dues. She asked her district what it was all about since she wasn’t planning to be a member and then was informed that in Oregon she had to pay dues.
“I was incensed,” she said.
[...]Taxpayers should be against compulsory union dues, too. After all, taxpayers employ teachers, not unions. It’s crazy that the state allows a union to take hundreds of dollars from 47,000-plus educators each year to help further its agenda. While the majority of the union’s work involves collective bargaining, the union regularly opposes charter schools and partakes in legislative battles to eliminate them. It routinely backs Democrats, endorsing just eight Republicans from among 90 state races in 2008.
There is a move to pass a right-to-work law on right now in New Hampshire. This would allow workers to work without being forced to join a union, and to pay union dues.
How much will the union bosses’ income stream fall, when dues money no longer flows from employee paychecks directly into their coffers? Writing in the New York Post earlier this month, Rich Lowry laid out the worst-case scenario for Big Labor, based on some previous examples:
“When Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels ended collective bargaining and the automatic collection of dues in 2005, the number of members paying dues plummeted by roughly 90 percent. In 2007, New York City’s Transit Authority briefly stopped automatically collecting dues for the Transport Workers Union, and dues fell off by more than a third.”
The financial damage to unions will actually be even worse than the amount of dues withheld by defiant, or delinquent, public employees. The state of Wisconsin has actually been performing an extremely valuable service by collecting these dues automatically and handing the bundled loot over to the union hierarchy. Private companies pay a great deal of money to maintain Accounts Receivable departments and collections agents. Imagine the WEAC was a private concern with 98,000 customers. The amount they would spend on collecting fees from those customers would be a significant line item on their budget.
This will all leave the unions with much less money to slip into Democrat pockets – but again, the damage is even worse than the total amount of campaign dollars lost. Many union members are not Democrats, and some of them will likely begin demanding more control over how union money is spent, now that the dues don’t magically disappear out of their paychecks. This will greatly reduce the unions’ ability to make promises to Democrat politicians, in exchange for political services.
Money is a very important thing. You can encourage people to do all kinds of things when you give them the right financial incentives. And policies create those financial incentives. That’s why we need to win elections.
Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate passed a resolution Thursday calling for police to take 14 Democrats into custody for contempt after they fled to Illinois to avoid voting on a bill that would strip public-sector unions of nearly all their collective bargaining rights.
On the same day, Republicans in the Indiana House agreed to impose fines of $250 per day on Democrats who are also in Illinois, boycotting the legislature over labor and education bills they oppose.
In Wisconsin, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald signed the orders after Republicans voted 19-0 calling for the action unless Democrats returned to the chamber by 4 p.m. Thursday.
None of the Democrats did, prompting Fitzgerald to sign 14 orders of detainment in dramatic fashion in the center of the Senate chamber. State patrol officers watched silently from the gallery.
The move comes two weeks after the Democrats left, effectively delaying the vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal that he says will help him address a $3.6 billion budget shortfall. Walker said Thursday that he will start issuing layoff notices to state workers on Friday if his bill isn’t passed by then.
[...]The resolution gives the sergeant at arms the authority to take any and all steps, with or without force and assistance from police, to bring the senators back.
The Republicans should make the fines $250 per hour, not $250 per day. And they should apply the fine to all the union thugs, not just the Democrat fleebaggers. Then the Republicans could balance the budget. Everybody wins!
RT @Dina1410: What nobody will admit: The Oxford Sex ring and the preachers who teach young Muslim men that white girls are cheap - http://…11 hours ago
Recent Comments