Dues and Don'ts {George Will on SCOTUS decision in Washington Education Association case]

Democracy is rule by persuasion, but the unpersuasive often try to coerce the unpersuaded. Recent days have provided two illustrations of this tendency, both of them pertaining to labor unions, whose decades of declining membership testify to their waning power to persuade workers that unions add more value to workers' lives than they subtract.

Failing unions, like failing industries, turn to government for protection in the form of coercion. Failing industries have traditionally sought corporate welfare in the form of tariffs (coercion of consumers). Unions seek laws to confer what their persuasiveness cannot convince people to consent to.

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled9 to 0 against the Washington Education Association (WEA), Washington state's teachers union, which was claiming a perverse government-conferred entitlement. Five days later, organized labor and its political allies, including she who would be president, marched in Washington, D.C. They were asking Congress to deny to workers, whom unions are trying to organize, the right to a secret ballot. Both cases also illustrate the increasingly casual resort to abridgements of the rights of free speech and association.

Many states, including Washington, allow "agency shop" agreements whereby unions can levy fees on public employees who choose not to join a union but are represented by the union in collective bargaining. Thirty years ago the Supreme Court held that nonmembers cannot be forced to pay the portion of union fees that are used not for collective bargaining but for political activities. Often states have "opt out" provisions, whereby nonmembers are required to request that the political portion of their fees be refunded.

About 3,500 of Washington state's approximately 70,000 teachers choose not to join the WEA, which made opting out a tedious chore. To get their refund — about 25 percent of their fees — the nonmembers had to

In 1992, however, Washington voters approved by referendum an "opt in" rule. Unions were forbidden to use nonmembers' fees "to influence an election or to operate a political committee, unless affirmatively authorized by the individual" (emphasis added).

Amazingly, the WEA convinced the state Supreme Court that requiring it to ask permission before using other people's money — for political speech that those people do not want to finance — was an unconstitutional burden on the WEA's right of free speech. This novel (to be polite) theory did not persuade even one of the nine often fractious justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hillary Clinton, who has given herself a makeover as a moderate, and who was elected by secret ballots, and who hopes that next year voters will use their secret ballots to give to her the power to nominate Supreme Court justices, nevertheless toes labor's line when she advocates abolishing workers' right to a secret ballot. Abolition, she says, will "create a fair and level playing field between workers and employers."

I see...doing away with a secret ballot and voting in public where Guido can write your name in his "hit-list" book makes the field level. I wonder if she convince Vince Foster to commit suicide the same way. There are times when I think this woman has the IQ of broccoli...

Failing industries have traditionally sought corporate welfare in the form of tariffs (coercion of consumers).

I certainly don't support coercive union dues used for political activity.

However, I think tariffs have a place in our economy.

When I go to a professional baseball game, I expect to pay to get in. Moreover I expect to pay more there than I would at a single A minor league game.

When I go to DisneyWorld, a place with their own little culture set up inside, I expect to pay to get in.

I see nothing wrong with charging outsiders to play in the best, most lucrative economic playground in the world....the American economy.

If they don't like it, they can go play in some of the minor league economies.

Horrors! They will charge us to play in their playground. Hecks Bells! They don't let us play by equal rules when we do come to their area.

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Democracy is rule by persuasion, but the unpersuasive often try to coerce the unpersuaded.
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George Will misstates the facts. Once “the people” empower a sovereign government, that government only can coerce based on the ultimate credible threat of deadly force to coerce citizens to obey its laws, and decrees.

(There can be only one sovereign. Any sovereign that refuses to enforce its laws invites other forces to do so, and thus to challenge the sovereign for control. This is why private militias, even in the US, are a danger to liberty and political order as we can see today in Iraq.)

In fact, making light, or even downright denying this fact of deadly force illustrates how easy it is for pervasive government to intrude into our lives. Every law is backed up by the coercion of deadly force, for even refusing to pay a $5 parking ticket can result in a confrontation with a SWAT team. Should the citizen continue to refuse to obey, if he survives, he will recover in jail while all his assets are picked over by government in fines and “court costs” to pay for the multitude of charges his refusal has compiled. Any assets that are left will be given to him should he ever be released for his “crimes”, none of which would have occurred except for the law that levied the $5 fine in the first place.

When someone proposes that government pass this or that law or regulation, they are saying that their favored cause or remedy is more important than the lives of those who would refuse to obey it. In fact, supporters of big and Bigger government count on citizens making a rational cost-benefit calculation in choosing to submit to ever increasing coercion. But, in effect, they have said that they would rather see their grandmother die than see their law disobeyed. It matters not that grandmothers rarely choose to disobey.

Now we are seeing in the debate over the immigration bill, that some laws are passed without the intention of fully enforcing them. This is the cancer of tyranny made famous in Ayn Rand’s prediction [1], where selective enforcement of law can be used to show favor or to make life miserable on one or another group of citizens.

(Given that State and Federal agencies that receive payroll tax receipts know full well the Name and SSN of every illegal alien who has is using a stolen ID, there are plenty of easy ways to flag which employers are hiring illegals. That they don’t seem to care is only gross neglect and proves IMO that governments want illegals to be here.)

[1] Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged: “There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt.”

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