Free Republic

.........In California, signatures have been gathered for a voter initiative, "Stop Special Interests," on the November ballot that, if passed, would break the umbilical cord between the state treasury and union treasuries. In California, among others, the state deducts union dues from public employee paychecks and sends these directly to the unions, thus saving them the need to persuade public employees to sign up to let the union bosses use their money in elections. This is the umbilical cord and the California unions have used it to become the most powerful special interest in Sacramento, having great influence over the...

They really outdid themselves. In Wisconsin and across the nation, public school employee unions spared no kiddie human shields in their battle against GOP Gov. Scott Walker's budget and pension reforms. Students were the first and last casualties of the ruthless Big Labor war against fiscal discipline. To kick off the yearlong protest festivities, the Wisconsin Education Association Council led a massive "sickout" of educators and other government school personnel. The coordinated truancy action -- tantamount to an illegal strike -- cost taxpayers an estimated $6 million. Left-wing doctors assisted the campaign by supplying fake medical excuse notes to...

Frustrated union and Democratic Party leaders from Madison,Wisconsin, to Washington,D.C., while wiping the Badger State recall election bloodbath from their shoes, are bombarding the nation with excuses, mitigating circumstances, and outright denial of their own declining reality. A leading excuse emanating from Democrats everywhere, not least from the Wisconsin Democratic Party which is still stinging from President Barack Obama's refusal to campaign for their man, is that the campaign of the past and future governor, Scott Walker, substantially outraised and outspent his Democrat challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. It is true that Walker received more financial support, including from outside...

...........in Wisconsin, it seems somewhat difficult to get anyone to refer to government unions as a “special interest.” Unions refer to themselves as “the middle class,” or the “hard-working people” of the state — as if every member of the middle class worked for a state or local government. To the Left, any collection of individuals that uses their own money to influence a public debate is known as an “interest group.” Conversely, if a similar group uses taxpayer money boosted through union dues to do the same thing, it is known as a “grassroots organization.” ..........Not only are unions...

MIDLAND — Michigan’s 60,000 home health care aides will no longer be deemed government employees — meaning they cannot be forced into a government employee union and have dues withheld — as a result of legislation signed today by Gov. Rick Snyder. The next step is for the Michigan Department of Community Health to immediately stop the collection of dues from subsidy payments intended to assist developmentally disabled adults and the diversion of those funds to the Service Employees International Union, said Patrick J. Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation. “Ending this lucrative charade is terrific news for...

A few weeks back I took on our federal employees for being delinquent on their taxes to the tune of $1 billion. I received some criticism for that article, principally from readers who thought that government employees were being unfairly singled out. But just as that column appeared, the government confirmed what most knowledgeable people already suspected: federal employees are significantly overpaid. In January, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a comprehensive analysis of wages paid to federal employees. The report revealed that during the period of 2005-2010, federal employees were awarded much higher compensation than equivalent workers in the...

Madison - The state medical school disciplined 20 doctors and fined 11 of them up to $4,000 for handing out sick notes to demonstrators at last year's labor protests, newly released records show. The records, requested by the Journal Sentinel last year under the state's open records law, show for the first time the extent of the discipline given to those doctors by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. In several cases, doctors in more senior positions within the school also had to step away from those roles for a period of four months over one...

'What has the country so angry," says Fred Siegel, "is the sense that crony capitalism has produced a population that lives off the rest of us without contributing. They're right. It's not paranoid." The economic historian of the American city has spent a lot of this autumn on Wall Street. He met many of the protesters who camped out at Zuccotti Park, before the city's finest cleared them out last week. He also knows the bankers and finds the theater of the Occupy movement ironic. "They're on the same side of the street politically," he says. "They're both in favor...

This summer, something remarkable happened: 45,000 Verizon workers went on strike, and no one — save a few customers dealing with service interruptions — much cared. The communications behemoth wanted more than 100 concessions on health care, pensions, sick days and outsourcing. Unions representing the workers said Verizon sought to void 50 years of collective-bargaining gains for middle-class workers, despite posting a 2.8% jump in revenue in the second quarter, up to $27.5 billion. Thirteen days later, those on strike went back to work on good faith, the company guaranteeing nothing other than continued talks. It’s an indictment of how...

When Beverly Hills residents found out that many of their city’s 950 municipal and public safety employees were earning stunning salaries, 13 weeks of paid vacation, unlimited overtime and other tax-free retirement benefits, taxpayers were outraged and city officials rushed into closed-door sessions to figure out what to do. These revelations, exposed through the efforts of the city’s hometown newspaper, The Beverly Hills Courier, unmasked an even deeper problem: many California cities, and likely other municipalities across the U.S., are being strangled by the cost of ballooning pension benefits they can no longer afford. “What we have now is a...

Should public sector unions be curbed? Is it time to end the ability of governmental employees to form unions? Raymond La Jeunesse, Jr., vice president and legal director of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, believes so. La Jeunesse, who has more than 40 years experience helping employees litigate against compulsory unionism - including arguing four cases

So I was driving the NY Thruway up to Saratoga this past weekend and I saw a few old Obama 2008 bumper stickers. As I saw each one I thought to myself, "How stupid must that person be not to have removed it yet." But then I passed a car with one of those old stickers with a new one that had another with nothing more than "2012" on it pasted next to the old one. A white, 40 something woman was driving. And it hit me. She is a government employee. She is quite happy about what is going...

the times Daniels OKs bonuses up to $1,000 for each state employee By Dan Carden dan.carden@nwi.com, (317) 637-9078 | Posted: Friday, July 15, 2011 10:45 am INDIANAPOLIS | State employees will be paid a bonus of up to $1,000 each for their efforts in helping Indiana amass a $1.2 billion budget surplus. Gov. Mitch Daniels authorized the one-time payment on Friday to recognize employees he said have spent years doing more with less. "There's not a state in the nation where state employees are more committed to efficiency and care with tax dollars than Indiana," Daniels said. The "efficiency dividend...

One thing about public unions is that they are seemingly immune to the effects of economics. They operate like a monopolist, but are actually a monopsony. Because of the conflicted relationship between the legislators and unions, they are able to continually try and exert their influence as the government grows. We are seeing that phenomena in the recent Boeing versus NLRB kerfuffle. Two of the three Obama appointments were made during a Senate recess, and thus subject to no Senate scrutiny.

"We cannot compare labor-management relations in the private sector with government..." In August 1981, President Ronald Reagan faced down an audacious countrywide air traffic controllers strike that threatened to paralyze the nation's transportation system. But the walkout violated a regulation prohibiting government unions from striking, so declaring the situation a federal emergency -per 1947 Taft Hartley Act- the President held a press conference in the White House Rose Garden to issue an ultimatum... Reagan warned that if the air traffic controllers "do not report for work within 48 hours,  they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated." Many thought he was bluffing at...

MADISON - State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald says the situation at the Capitol is "unsafe." Fitzgerald appeared on Newsradio 620 WTMJ's Wisconsin's Morning News.  He's concerned about the ability for business to take place inside the Capitol."Law enforcement is doing the best they can, but they're just undermanned," Fitzgerald said.The State Assembly is scheduled to be in session at 11:00 a.m. Thursday.  Fitzgerald says that could be tough under current conditions.  "They're (officers) are having a very difficult time cleaning out, not only the assembly wing, but the rotunda is still full of protesters."Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald is also urging caution.  "I...

Just reported on WTMJ. Last night every Republican member of the State Senate received a death threat saying they and THEIR FAMILIES would be killed. Also reported on WTMJ, Minority Leader Mark Miller (D) may have sent a tweet out last night encouraging protestors to storm the Captiol building and cause disturbances.

The Triumph of the Therapeutic MindWhether it's budget deficits, teachers' pay, or delta smelts, the therapeutic mind refuses to count the cost. Beyond the political posturing over state and federal budgets, there looms an age-old philosophical divide over human nature, perhaps defined as the therapeutic versus the tragic view of our existence. The therapeutic view — thanks to the bounty and affluence brought about by modern technology — has largely triumphed. The tragic view is deemed the domain of the embittered, the selfish, and the downright mean. There are several tenets of the modern therapeutic view. In such a utopian...

[Meade] told me that just now, by phone. He got out, and is warning others not to go in. Obviously, it's a terrible fire hazard to make it so people cannot get out of the building easily. Presumably, protesters think it's a good idea to keep the police out, but it is dangerously stupid. ADDED: Meade called back to say, some of the doors are handcuffed shut and some are wide open. "ANYBODY CAN GET IN AND ANYBODY CAN BRING ANYTHING IN. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO SECURITY WHATEVER." AND: Meade — who just got home at 9 CT — says...

One day short of the three-week anniversary of their departure, Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller said it's time for Dems to come home and take the fight over collective bargaining rights to the ballot box. Miller, D-Monona, said it was "stunning" that Senate Republicans took less than 30 minutes to vote to end collective bargaining rights for public employees that have existed in Wisconsin for more than 50 years. He called it a disrespect to the people of Wisconsin that will not be forgotten, promising there will be political consequences. "It’s time for us to join the fight back in...