Free Republic

Stories surfaced this year to the effect that federal employees would quit if Donald Trump were elected. Unfortunately, that's not likely to happen. "Most of what we think of as federal law is written by federal agencies," Benjamin Ginsberg, a professor at Johns Hopkins pointed out recently at the Cato Institute. "In the most recent year available, Congress passed 218 pieces of legislation, not all of them substantive, while federal agencies added 150,000 rules, many of them important, for example, Taft-Hartley [right-to-work] regulations." "So the Department of Labor is writing new law nominally based on some ancient statute." The last...

The Taft-Hartley Act was a major revision of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (the Wagner Act) and represented the first major revision of a New Deal act passed by a post-war Congress. In the mid-term elections of 1946, the Republican Party won control of the upcoming Eightieth Congress, gaining majorities in both houses for the first time since 1931. The "Class of 1946," as the first-term Republicans were called, was dominated by members of the conservative "old guard": John Bricker of Ohio, William Jenner of Indiana, William Knowland of California, George Malone of Nevada, Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin,...

The 2010 landslide means that Republicans in the House can stop any new legislative initiatives by the Democrats and that Senate Republicans, if united, can stop almost anything Democrats want to do in that body as well. House Republicans can also send to the Senate bills that will put political pressure on Obama and Senate Democrats, like a complete extension of the Bush tax cuts. But at the federal level, Republicans cannot actually do anything without Democrats caving in. The situation is very different at the state level. Republicans now control both houses of the state legislature and the governorship...

A bill submitted to congress, Sept. 29, would abolish the right to work laws that exist in 22 states, at least according to its sponsor Brad Sherman (D-CA27) as the text of the bill, H.R 6384, is not yet available at Thomas.gov. Right to work laws came about from the Taft-Hartley Amendments to the National Labor Relations Act in 1947. These laws allow a person to refrain from joining a union and still be able to work at a company.

• There has never been a valid reason for courts to allow unions, uniquely, to be free from the consequences of violence and mob behavior used in pursuit of their own economic ends; • Davis-Bacon prevailing wage legislation is and was little more than a union wage protection racket; • Union practices in job targeting, salting, project labor agreements, environmental permitting, living wage requirements, and corporate campaigns are indistinguishable from ordinary blackmail, extortion, and strong-arm work. No, I don’t think unions are good for America. Unions, and particularly unions in the public sector, may well be our literal undoing.

WASHINGTON -- Union leaders across California said they are "angry," "disappointed" and "outraged" at Sen. Dianne Feinstein for supporting President Bush as he brandished the Taft-Hartley Act this week for the first time in a quarter century to end the West Coast port lockout. But whether the widespread disenchantment with the state's senior Democratic senator will cause labor leaders to yank their money and support is another matter. "We're not starting a campaign against her four years from the election," said Steve Stallone, spokesman for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. "We have to just deal with her, and that's...