Press Release From the Buckeye Institute

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 22, 2024

Lisa Gates, Vice President of Communications, (614) 224-3255

The Buckeye Institute Takes Union Wage Theft Case to Ohio Supreme Court Columbus, OH – The Buckeye Institute filed its appeal in Darling v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) with the Ohio Supreme Court, calling on the court to hear the case and tell Ohio’s lower courts that the courts—not the State Employment Relations Board—have jurisdiction in cases where public employees, like The Buckeye Institute’s five clients, had money illegally taken out of their paychecks by their employers and given to a government union.   “‘Have your day in court’ is a truism that we learn from a young age. But if you were a member of a government union—a union still taking money out of your paycheck—getting your day in court is not that easy,” said Jay R. Carson, senior litigator at The Buckeye Institute and the lead attorney representing the plaintiffs. “This must change, and Darling v. AFSCME presents the Ohio Supreme Court the opportunity to clarify that common pleas courts have jurisdiction to decide private contractual disputes like the ones presented in this case.”   In its appeal, The Buckeye Institute argues that its clients—all former members of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees (OAPSE)—who had money illegally taken from their paychecks even after they quit their union—should be allowed to challenge the validity and enforceability of their government union contract in court. Unfortunately, and mistakenly, the unions and lower courts have told Buckeye’s clients they cannot challenge their contracts in court and that they must go to the State Employment Relations Board (SERB) for relief.    However, in Littlejohn v. AFSCME—a nearly identical case—SERB told The Buckeye Institute’s client that she must file her case in court. If the lower courts’ rulings stand, hardworking public employees will have no forum to challenge the legality of their union contracts.   After securing victories for five of its 10 original clients in the case, The Buckeye Institute represents: Chelsea Kolacki of Toledo is an office assistant for the Maumee City School District. She was a member of OAPSE before she resigned on September 24, 2020. Kristy Kolacki of Toledo is a secretary for the Maumee City School District. She was a member of OAPSE before she resigned on September 24, 2020. Laura Langsdale of Akron is a custodian for the Springfield Local School District. She was a member of OAPSE before she resigned on October 20, 2020. Ronnie Legg of Galloway is a driver for the Columbus City School District. He was a member of OAPSE before he resigned on August 20, 2020. Stephen Tulga of Columbus is a bus driver for the Upper Arlington City School District. He was a member of OAPSE before he resigned on May 6, 2021. OAPSE claims that The Buckeye Institute’s clients signed a contract authorizing the government union to keep deducting membership dues from their paychecks even though Buckeye’s clients are no longer union members. # # #

Founded in 1989, The Buckeye Institute is an independent research and educational institution – a think tank – whose mission is to advance free-market public policy in the states. The Buckeye Institute is a non-partisan, non-profit, and tax-exempt organization, as defined by section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue code. As such, it relies on support from individuals, corporations, and foundations that share a commitment to individual liberty, free enterprise, personal responsibility, and limited government. The Buckeye Institute does not seek or accept government funding.

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The Buckeye Institute | 88 East Broad Street Suite 1300 | Columbus, OH 43215 US

Union Forgeries Reveal Systemic Corruption Requiring Court Review

By Freedom Foundation | Feb 16, 2022 

Last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in three cases dealing with public employee labor unions accused of forging employee signatures on dues-authorization cards so they can take their money without permission and spend it on politics.   When combined with nearly a dozen other instances of union forgery filed just in courts under the purview of the 9th Circuit, not to mention a separate case currently pending before the 8th Circuit, the actions vividly illustrate just how far unions will go to advance their own political agenda with no regard for the employees whose interests they claim to represent.............To Read More.....

Union Bosses Against Union Jobs

Stephen Moore Jan 04, 2022 @ Townhall.com

Why don't the union bosses in America represent their union members anymore? Could it be because the union leadership has become more beholden to the Democratic politicians in Washington than the rank-and-file workers who pay the dues?

We saw an example of this betrayal of the workers not long ago when the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters brass endorsed Joe Biden for president -- even though Biden openly opposed all fossil fuels and wanted to end the building of pipelines.

Talk about selling the rope to the hangman. The union bosses acted surprised that Biden's first act as president was to kill several thousand union jobs by killing the Keystone XL pipeline. And in recent months, the Biden officials have been on a crusade to shutdown Midwest pipelines that carry natural gas to the midwestern states.

More recently, we witnessed one of the dumbest union leadership campaigns in American history. The United Mine Workers Association endorsed the Build Back Better bill, which is stuffed with $550 billion of subsidies for green energy projects and energy mandates explicitly designed to kill America's coal production. Wipe coal and coal miners right out of existence.

Then, UMWA President Cecil Roberts wrote an extraordinary letter to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), admonishing him for opposing the bill. "We are disappointed that the bill will not pass," Roberts said. "We urge Senator Manchin to revisit his opposition to this legislation and work with his colleagues to pass something that will help keep coal miners working." Manchin was standing up for the coal miners in his state. Why wouldn't the union do the same?

I've been to Charleston, West Virginia, and talked to many of the coal miners. They hate the Biden bill and know that their jobs are in jeopardy. They remember that Hillary Clinton came to West Virginia in 2016 and told the coal miners that under her plan, these workers could build wind panels instead. They laughed at her arrogance and fantasy.

The UMWA wants more funding for victims of black lung and other benefits for laid-off coal miners. That's fine. But if Build Back Better passes, there won't be any miners left working in states like West Virginia, and the UMWA will be defunct.

What's next, the Steelworkers union coming out against steel production?

Even the United Auto Workers union is putting at risk tens of thousands of union jobs by backing Biden's risky plan to divert production of gasoline-powered cars toward electric vehicles. More than 90% of the car sales in the U.S. are still traditional cars. If they are not made in the U.S., they will be made in Japan, Korea and Germany. How does that create union jobs?

The union bosses haven't caught on to the reality that the green movement they are partnering up with is essentially supporting an agenda that will deindustrialize America. There is no way that we can have a $22 trillion economy that makes everything from steel to cars to pipelines to buildings and airplanes and technology and corn and cotton without affordable energy. My question for the union bosses is: How do we create jobs in America if our energy comes from wind turbines and solar panels ... made in China?

Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at Freedom Works. He is also author of the new book: "Govzilla: How The Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy."

Cost of Forced Unionism Mounts Ever Higher

By Stan Greer | July 15, 2021

What will it take to convince elected officials in forced-unionism states that are economically torpid or unaffordable for middle-class Americans, or both, that they must change course, or face potentially grave ballot-box repercussions for favoring Big Labor bosses over everyone else?  Eventually, shrinking revenue bases may finally shake the complacency of Big Labor politicians who don’t seem to mind if far more taxpayers are leaving their state than are moving in.

It shouldn’t require fiscal catastrophes to persuade state elected officials to stop hurting the vast majority of their constituents just so the special privileges of a relative handful of union bosses can be perpetuated and even expanded. But state insolvency may well arrive before Big Labor politicians in states like California, New York, and Illinois acknowledge that monopolistic unionism has to be rolled back.

Let the facts speak for themselves............To Read More....

 

 

The Amazon Effect

The Internet giant has been a key driver of job growth and productivity during the pandemic, but unionization efforts could undermine its e-commerce model.

Steven Malanga February 15, 2021 @ City Journal,  published with permission.  I recommend subscribing, it's free.

 

For decades, unions tried unsuccessfully to organize Walmart as it expanded from a regional chain to America’s biggest store. Founder Sam Walton fiercely resisted labor’s efforts because in a successful company, he said, workers and management must pull together to serve customers; in a unionized business, though, employees and management were too often at odds. Walton offered generous stock options, profit sharing, and a path to management for long-time employees as part of his arsenal to fend off what was for years the most intense ongoing union-organizing effort in America.

Now Amazon is inheriting Walmart’s mantle as the retailing company most fiercely pursued by organized labor, even as the online store experiences explosive growth. To keep unions at bay, Amazon offers starting pay that’s often well above what workers can get at many other retailers, as well as health benefits and a 401(k) plan. Moreover, Amazon has been willing, even eager, to place the distribution centers so crucial to its business strategy in declining regions that desperately need jobs—like Bessemer, Alabama. It’s no small irony, then, that the workers at that Bessemer facility are in the middle of an election on whether to authorize a union. If the vote succeeds, it will almost certainly prompt other unionization efforts at many of the company’s more than 100 U.S. fulfillment centers.

Much is at stake. Though Amazon is popularly viewed as a giant tech company that dominates its marketplace, the company’s e-commerce business has low profit margins and only an erratic history of making money. A successful wave of unionization drives could fundamentally alter Amazon as we know it, threatening its e-commerce model.

Nearly 6,000 people now work at the Bessemer facility, up from the 1,500 that the company originally said it would employ when it announced the project in June 2018. The Greater Birmingham area had originally pitched itself somewhat optimistically as a site for Amazon’s so-called HQ2. While it didn’t win that battle, nearby Bessemer won a commitment for a $325 million investment in a fulfillment center. Until then, greater Birmingham was the largest metro area in the nation without such a facility. A former mining and steel-making region whose fortunes faded with the decline of mining, Bessemer needed those jobs and the income they would bring. Even today, median household income in the area is just $32,301, less than half the national median. The median hourly wage for a retailing job is about $11, while packers and stockers, who do the kinds of jobs needed in the company’s fulfillment warehouses, earn from $11.50 to $12.50 on average. Amazon, by contrast, starts workers at $15.30 an hour.

The Amazon facility is supercharging growth. The fulfillment center stands on a site once owned by U.S. Steel. Studies initially estimated that the area would gain some $200 million in new economic activity based on the original 1,500 jobs. Amazon added jobs so quickly there, however, that those original estimates became quickly outdated. Other big firms have noticed Amazon’s move. FedEx, Lowe’s, and online used-car retailer Carvana are now building similar distribution centers nearby.

The pandemic that has boosted Amazon’s growth—as millions of Americans traded in-store shopping for online—also underlies the unrest at Bessemer. The facility officially opened last April, just as Covid-19 was spreading rapidly throughout the country. Workers have complained of long shifts, inadequate breaks, and lack of attention to Covid protocols. 

They’re looking for higher wages, news reports say. Amazon says that it offers compensation packages well beyond those of similar jobs, including vision and dental care and a 50 percent match on employee contributions to their defined-contribution retirement plans. The company also says that it has made extensive modifications to provide worker protection from the coronavirus and is offering two weeks off with pay for workers who contract it. Nonetheless, workers have opted for a vote on whether to join the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union. That would be a big win for labor in an industry where union membership has declined by 400,000, or 40 percent, over the last 20 years.

As one of America’s largest employers and a giant technology company, Amazon has more than its share of critics across the ideological spectrum. Some 50 congressional representatives wrote the company a letter recently urging it to use the Bessemer organizing campaign as an opportunity “to chart a new course and break with your history of disempowering workers.” The letter accused the company of “a clear pattern of denying workers dignity on the job” and “strong-arm tactics.” It made no mention of the wages and benefits that Amazon pays workers compared with other, similar companies, but did note that the company’s profits have recently risen robustly—as media stories have also noted.

Yet, the profit story at Amazon is far more nuanced. Amazon has attracted a lot of attention since its early days in the 1990s as a tech innovator with a hot stock price that eventually helped make Chairman Jeff Bezos the world’s richest person. But it took the firm nearly a decade to earn a profit, and for years, the income it could squeeze out of its growing sales was modest. By 2006, the company’s sales had soared to $10 billion, but it made just $190 million in profits on that enormous volume—a net profit margin of just 1.9 percent of sales. Things have improved substantially since then, but much of Amazon’s current earnings power has not come from those distribution centers and its consumer website.

The real profit success of Amazon today is its web services—cloud computing, network services, and data analytics, offered largely to businesses and government. Though perhaps the least visible of all Amazon’s enterprises, these provided nearly two-third of the company’s operating profits last year: $13.5 billion on revenues of $45.5 billion. By contrast, the North America retail business that the Bessemer facility is part of recorded profits from operations of $8.6 billion, but that from an enormous $236 billion in revenue—a margin of only 3.6 percent. The pandemic has helped fuel growth of the retail division, but because it’s so labor intensive, the company has had to hire tens of thousands of new workers and now employs an estimated 800,000 people in the U.S., mostly in the retail division. Adding compensation of just a few dollars an hour through some combination of higher wages and greater benefits to that workforce would add billions of dollars annually to Amazon’s costs, eroding its already-slim margins.

In the world inhabited by many of its critics, Amazon should be sharing most of its profits with its workers, regardless of how much it pays them now and what it offers them in terms of security and opportunity in an otherwise struggling retail landscape. Among the many factors that these critics ignore—probably because they can’t understand them—is that innovative, efficient businesses like Amazon not only produce unprecedented job opportunities but also drive productivity, and hence standards of living, across the economy. 

One way they do this is by offering an intensely competitive selling landscape, where average Americans can benefit from quality products delivered at low prices. If a retailer becomes big enough, those gains can be enormous. In the 1990s, as Walmart expanded across America, McKinsey estimated in a famous study titled “The Wal-Mart Effect” that the giant retailer’s gains had been responsible for one-sixth of the U.S. economy’s productivity improvements in the decade. Warren Buffett declared that it wasn’t Microsoft or any other tech giant but Walmart that had done the most to spur the country’s economic growth in that era. Nonetheless, many of labor’s political allies worked hard to restrain Walmart’s growth, including in low-income areas in places like New York City and Chicago that desperately needed its jobs and low prices.

Amazon may be a virtual retailer, but it relies on those brick-and-mortar fulfillment centers to make its model work. A string of successful organizing campaigns might force it to accept even smaller profit margins that bring it closer to being in the red again after the pandemic ends, which might simply prompt layoffs. Or the company could try raising prices, which would almost certainly be an invitation for competitors to chip away at its fragile profitability. Given that only 4 percent of retail jobs in America are unionized, many of those competitors would gain a distinct advantage over Amazon. So the company has bluntly resisted unionization, which, to many of its critics, is nothing short of immoral.

Amazon hasn’t helped its case among free-market types and cultural conservatives. Apparently wanting to placate the Left, Amazon has endorsed a $15 national minimum wage—a move that, not coincidentally, would also force competitors to raise their salaries closer to Amazon’s. And it was Amazon’s Web Services that de-platformed Parler, the free-speech alternative to Twitter, in the wake of the January U.S. Capitol protests that turned violent.

The one constituency that matters the most—American consumers—doesn’t pay much attention to these kinds of internal corporate disputes. Consumers just go on expecting quality products at good prices and reasonable service. If Amazon stops delivering in any of those areas, consumers will move on to the next big next thing. Amazon understands that, and that’s why it’s fighting this battle.

Steven Malanga is the senior editor of City Journal, the George M. Yeager Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and the author of Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy Against the American Taxpayer.

Photo by Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images

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Canada Post Office Employees Refuse to Deliver Copies of the Epoch Times Newspaper

By Walter E. Block - February 10, 2021

 

In a recent chapter of our cancel culture, two Canadian post office workers refused to deliver copies of the Epoch Times Newspaper. Mr. Ramiro Sepulveda, one of the two, “protected” the Canadian public in this way from what he regarded as intellectual filth. In his view, “I saw this thing, I read it and thought it was trash…” He further averred that the Epoch Times Newspaper was “damaging” and “I saw the headlines and I thought, wow, that’s ridiculous…”

But the intellectual virus goes far deeper than this one censor.  These workers were not at all condemned by their union representatives. According to William Johnson, president of the Regina Canadian Union of Postal Workers local, Canada Post should be more careful about what material it transfers from sender to recipient.

“I think as a Crown corporation they do have a moral responsibility to actually look at this stuff and determine if it is peddling in hate and racism and those sorts of things,” in his view. (A Canadian Crown corporation would be somewhat similar to a public utility in the U.S.: highly regulated, by the government, but only quasi-independent of it.)

Union leaders have promised to stand by contract-violating members such as Sepulveda. In Johnson’s view, “The publication affects a bunch of our letter carriers. This is not a publication that we as a Crown corporation should be giving out to Canadians.”............To Read More......

 

 

 

Chicago Teachers Strike for $100,000 Salaries

By Daniel Greenfield 0 Comments Thursday, October 31, 2019 @ Sultan Knish Blog

Since October 17, the Chicago Teachers Union has banished 361,000 students from their classrooms by going on strike to demand a $100,000 average salary for its members.

The union insisted that taxpayers, “stop short-changing the people who make our schools work”.

4 in 10 Chicago public school students don’t meet national reading standards. Or, as celebratory press releases declared, 61% of Chicago students actually met the national average. Math is obviously not a key skill of Chicago educators except when it comes to demanding obscene pay hikes.

A “record” 57% of Chicago students also met the national average in math.

If 57% doesn’t deserve a $100,000 salary, what does?

Currently, Chicago teachers are living on starvation wages of $78,211 a year. The people responsible for that 57% “record” are shortchanged with a miserly starting salary of $52,958, a beggarly $82,630 10-year midcareer salary, and a $108,242 maximum salary that barely keeps them out of the poorhouse.

They can’t live like this.

Hundreds of thousands of students are left on their own as their educators “fight for the students” by demanding a 15% raise in 3 years, while Chicago’s lefty mayor will only offer them 16% in 5 years.

And that’s not counting the annual cost-of-living increases which make it more like 25%.

5 years from now, the starting salary for a Chicago teacher would be $72,000 while the average salary for a Chicago teacher would be $100,000. That’s the offer that the union claims isn’t good enough.

Waiting 5 years for a $100,000 salary would “short-change” the people who make our schools fail.

67% of Chicago’s school budget already goes to salaries and benefits. Another 33% is left over for the other stuff. Guess where that $2.5 billion that the union is demanding will come from? Not the 67%.

“The fact is there is no more money,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot insisted. “Period.”

Nonsense. There’s always more money. All Chicago schools have to do is put out more junk bonds, borrow another $500 million, pay $70,000 in interest a day (that won’t even cover the average salary of a public school teacher), and add it to the $9 billion or so in debt that it’s already carrying.

That’ll help put a dent in the $850 million in pension contributions this year.

Better make sure that the number of students meeting math averages doesn’t pass 60% or the next generation of taxpayers might figure out what’s going on and run for their lives and their wallets.

CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates previously had lots of ideas for raising money. “Where will the money come from? Rich people."

Ah, those rich people. They really are the answer to everything.

It’s not hard to see why Senator Elizabeth Warren, a rich person, turned up to a CTU protest.

Past tax returns showed that in 2017, a CTU VP had been earning $96,115 from the union. It’s doubtful that there have been salary reductions in the union since then. That would force the union’s management to go on strike against its membership. So, Gates is probably making six figures.

Is the money coming from her, a rich person? Nah, she has other ideas. Like gambling and drugs.

“We have a governor who has committed to legalizing recreational marijuana and putting a tax on it, we can take that as well,” Stacy Davis Gates ranted. “They are also talking about sports betting. We can take that. They’re talking about opening a new casino here in the city of Chicago. We can take that.”

We’ll take the drug and gambling cash… for the children.

Gambling and drugs will be used to help pay the $100,000 salaries of teachers in a city that actually brags that a record 57% of the students met national averages in math. This is what full spectrum failure, moral, economic, educational, political, looks like in this progressive Pottersville.

In Chicago, there’s only one difference between organized crime and organized lefties. Many criminals won’t shake down gamblers and drug dealers for cash, and then steal the money from the children.

There’s a union for that.

Stacy Davis Gates will take the drug and gambling cash, but there are things she won’t take.

"Rich white men tell black women with children in the Chicago Public Schools what to do all the time," she whined, after her name was misspelled in a note from the lawyer of the black female lesbian mayor.

Not only is Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s mayor, a black woman, but so is Janice Jackson, the CEO of the public school system. But, even when the mayor is a black lesbian, the race card never expires.

In a city and a system run by black women, those “rich white men” keep pushing everybody around.

And those “rich white men” will be paying those $100,000 salaries too. It’s the very least they can do.

It’s all theater.

361,000 students were left without an education, and their parents, most of whom work and earn a lot less than the privileged teachers whining that they can’t live on $100,000, were left to cope with them.

Mayor Lightfoot insists that there’s no money, but that’s silly. There will be money. Rich white men will provide it too. At interest rates that only a Chicago public school graduate would find acceptable.

The Chicago Teachers Union will get its insane raises. More money will be borrowed at ruinous interest rates to pay for them. The pension cost will be incomprehensible and won’t actually be paid.

Enrollment in Chicago schools keeps dropping sharply even as the unions howl for more cash. CTU protesters claim that they’re striking for smaller class sizes, but they’re already getting them as the enrollment numbers fall by the thousands. The teachers are running out of students to exploit.

And that’s the real crisis.

Chicago can always borrow more money even if its bonds are rated below those of Puerto Rico, Somalia, and a burning pile of trash below an underpass that somehow talked J.P. Morgan into a bond issue.

But it can’t borrow more students.

Illegal aliens are doing their part. A sizable chunk of Chicago public school expenses is generated by students who don’t speak English. But why would your average illegal go to Chicago when he can stay in California? On a cold winter night, even hardened MS-13 gang members will shudder at the ‘lake effect’.

The Chicago Teachers Union is bulking up salaries and staff sizes for a huge influx of students that isn’t coming. If anything, the students are running the other way. And who can blame them?

The future of public education in Chicago is empty schools, $100K teacher salaries, and fake jobs.

Don’t worry. The “rich” will pay for it. And if that doesn’t work, there’s always gambling and drugs. They won’t pay for the $100,000 salaries, but that’s where plenty of those salaries will be going.


Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

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Press Release: The Buckeye Institute

Contacts: The Buckeye Institute: Lisa Gates (614) 224-3255 or Lisa@BuckeyeInstitute.org Liberty Justice Center: Kristen Williamson 773-809-4403 or media@libertyjusticecenter.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE     April 29, 2019 Kent State Employees Sue Over Illegal Union Dues   Columbus, OH -- Three Kent State University workers have filed a federal lawsuit alleging that union dues were illegally deducted from their paychecks (download a copy of the complaint).   Annamarie Hannay and Adda Grape are custodians for student residence halls at Kent State University. Since they started working at the university, they were required to pay money to AFSCME, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. However, in August 2018, each of them resigned their union membership and requested that Kent State stop deducting union dues from their paychecks.   Despite the decisive victory for workers' rights in the U.S. Supreme Court's 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision, AFSCME refused to honor the resignations of these employees outside of arbitrary opt-out periods. Kent State University continued to deduct dues from the workers' paychecks without their affirmative consent.   Hannay, Grape, and their coworker John Kohl are now suing to exercise their "Janus rights" with the help of attorneys from The Buckeye Institute, which also represents plaintiffs in Maine, Minnesota, and Ohio in cases to end forced union exclusive representation, and the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit law firm that represented the plaintiff in Janus v. AFSCME.   "AFSCME is putting money before workers. The union is violating workers' constitutional rights by denying their resignations in order to keep collecting dues," said Patrick Hughes, president and co-founder of the Liberty Justice Center. "Kent State is supporting the interests of a government union above the workers who serve their students every day."   In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus that government employers may not withhold union dues or fees from employees' paychecks without their affirmative consent. Prior to the Janus decision, employees were given an unconstitutional choice: pay the union as a member or pay the union as a nonmember. Now that workers' First Amendment right to choose has been recognized, any permission to deduct dues given before June 27, 2018, should be null and void.   "I'm being forced to pay the union for more than a year after I first submitted my resignation and withdrew any permission to deduct dues from my paycheck," said Annamarie Hannay, who pays almost $600 each year to AFSCME. "I sent in my resignation to the union and Kent State in August 2018. Since then, not only has my resignation been denied, but I've also received confusing and contradictory messages from the union about when I could finally stop paying them money from every paycheck."   "Annamarie and Adda are asking the court to rule against this egregious and ongoing violation of their First Amendment rights, which-to date-their union has refused to acknowledge," said Robert Alt, president and chief executive officer of The Buckeye Institute. "The U.S. Supreme Court spoke plainly in its Janus ruling that unions must obtain 'clear and compelling evidence' that a worker has consented to be a member of the union. In this case, AFSCME has not done so. In fact, Annamarie and Adda have resigned their memberships and made it plainly known that they do not want to be members of the union."   Hannay, Grape, and Kohl's case, Hannay v. Board of Trustees of Kent State University, was filed on April 29, 2019, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. A copy of the case is available here.   # # #   Founded in 1989, The Buckeye Institute is an independent research and educational institution - a think tank - whose mission is to advance free-market public policy in the states. The Buckeye Institute filed the first significant First Amendment labor-law challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court following the 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision. Buckeye's case pending cert before the U.S. Supreme Court, Uradnik v. Inter Faculty Organization, calls for an immediate end to laws that force public-sector employees to accept a union's exclusive representation. Buckeye is also representing other plaintiffs in Maine and Ohio in their efforts to end forced union exclusive representation. Learn more about The Buckeye Institute at BuckeyeInstitute.org.   The Liberty Justice Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public-interest litigation center that was founded to fight against political privilege. The most notable example of the Liberty Justice Center's success in this arena is its 2018 U.S. Supreme Court victory in Janus v. AFSCME. Beyond its work in the Janus case, the Liberty Justice Center's team of talented, liberty-minded attorneys are also fighting to protect economic liberty, private property rights, free speech and other fundamental rights. The Liberty Justice Center pursues its goals through strategic, precedent-setting litigation to revitalize constitutional restraints on government power and protections for individual rights. Learn more about the Liberty Justice Center's fight to restore workers' First Amendment rights at standwithworkers.org, and about the organization itself at LibertyJusticeCenter.org.

Cal Policy Center to UTLA: ‘See you in court’

“I have asked the ULTA repeatedly to stop taking money out of my paycheck, and they simply will not stop”

By Editorial Staff November 19, 2018

A federal judge on Dec. 17 will hear teachers union officials defend their efforts to force a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher to pay them a “service fee” in exchange for his job as a special-education instructor.............“It appears the only way the union is going to stop taking money is to get a judge to order them to stop.”.............Union leaders [have said] as a nonmember.......he would still have to pay an annual “service fee” equivalent to his union membership dues......... a clear attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s Janus decision.........To Read More.....

Column: Case is key to public workers’ free speech

Jesse Hathaway Dec. 27, 2017

As thoughts turn to celebrating the incoming year, a Supreme Court case, Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, could give government workers a reason to be merry in 2018, by freeing them from union captivity and delivering a big win for personal liberty.

More than 40 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled on a similar case, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, in which the court determined teachers lacked the right to fully opt out of union membership while employed in a public school system where teachers are unionized.  Objecting public servants may “opt out” of paying the portion of their involuntary membership fee, but because money is fungible, union bosses still use individuals’ money to speak for what the union boss wants.

 

In 2016, Mark Janus, an Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services child support specialist, sued the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, arguing the union was infringing upon his rights by extracting membership dues from his paycheck without his consent........To Read More.........

My Take - The truth of the matter is this needs to be expanded to include regular votes on whether the member even what a union or whether or not they want the current union.  Most of these unions were voted in decades ago and now the current employees are stuck with them and now the union is not the servant of the membership - it's their master - and the rules for kicking a union out are so difficult it's more mafia like than democratic. 

Paradigms and Demographics Afternoon Edition

----Featured Article --- Who Was the Last President to Have a Great Second Term?  - Calvin Coolidge (1925-1929). Since Coolidge only served part of a first term (after Harding died), his case is unusual. But Coolidge finished his second term with the lowest misery index (unemployment plus inflation) of any president in the last one hundred years. He lowered tax rates, cut federal spending, and had budget surpluses every year of his presidency.   Seven presidents since Coolidge (Obama will be the eighth) had second terms, and these second terms showed mixed success at best and more often disastrous problems.   FDR in his second term tried packing the Supreme Court. And when the Senate shot that down, he then tried ”purging” those Democrats who opposed him by campaigning against them for re-election. However, almost all of his Democratic opponents won anyway. The next two-termer was Harry Truman, who fought the Korean War during his second term, and ended his presidency with almost the lowest approval ratings in modern U.S. history. Eisenhower had a recession in his second term, and his party lost 47 seats in the off-year elections during that beleaguered term. Nixon, of course, had to resign during his second term. Reagan’s second term was a mixture of good policies and the problems of Iran Contra. Clinton was impeached during his last years in office. George W. Bush lost control of both the House and the Senate during his second term, and his approval ratings were barely better than Nixon’s and Truman’s….

Obama insiders reap riches at trio of healthcare IT firms -A trio of giant information technology firms that dominate the rapidly growing market for digital medical documents enjoy special insider access to key policymakers as the federal government implements its 2009 mandate that healthcare providers convert to electronic health records. The three firms — Cerner Corp., Epic Systems and Allscripts Healthcare Solutions — accounted for more than $5.6 billion in annual electronic health records sales in 2013. Boosting their revenues are the federal mandate and a $30 billion subsidy program to encourage sales, both of which were strongly backed by President Obama in his healthcare reform agenda. Steering the mandate’s implementation is the Health IT Policy Committee, a federal advisory commission within the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the Department of Health and Human Services.

New Record: Federal Tax Revenues Top $3T for 1st Time - Inflation-adjusted federal tax revenues not only hit a record high in fiscal 2014, but marked the first time that tax revenues have ever topped $3 trillion, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement. In fiscal year 2014, inflation-adjusted federal tax revenues hit a record $3,020,848,000,000, but the federal government still ran a $483,350,000,000 deficit during that time.  Each month, the Treasury publishes the government’s “total receipts,” including all revenue from individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, social insurance and retirement taxes (including Social Security and Medicare taxes), unemployment insurance taxes, excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, customs duties, and “miscellaneous receipts.”

Federal Debt Now $200,000 Per Full-Time Private-Sector Worker - Which will be greater: the burden of student debt on Americans who went off this fall to their first year of college, or the amount of federal debt per full-time private-sector worker when these students earn their degrees and start looking for jobs?  There is no doubt: It will be the amount of federal debt per full-time private-sector worker. As of last Friday, the total debt of the federal government was $17,858,480,029,490.28, according to the U.S. Treasury. That equaled $200,258.81 for each of the 89,177,000 full-time private-sector workers that, according to the Census Bureau, were in the United States in 2013.

To argue that consumers are not rational is to argue for more state control - A reader directed me to an article in The Atlantic that purported to explain Why Economics Is Dead Wrong About How We Make Choices. Being aware of the anti-market prejudices of so-called journalists I expected the worse: my expectations were not confounded. Derek Thompson, the author of this little masterpiece, tells his readers that [t]he old economic theory of consumers says that “people should relish choice.” Bulldust! Economics has never said any such thing.…… If one is going to argue that consumers are not rational then this will lead to the conclusion that “wise men” in power will have to make the decisions for them, which is basically what the left believes. Under their guidance goods would be produced to satisfy human needs, as defined by them, and not for profit. No wonder it is no accident that these attacks on economics invariably lead to a demand by leftists for more state control…..

Union takes mandatory dues, calls Walmart owners robbers - Accusing Walmart’s owners of “robbing America,” a labor union fueled by workers’ mandatory dues led protests recently demanding full-time hours and $15 hourly wages for the mega-retailer’s employees. Walmart’s corporate headquarters, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., says the company has more than 1.3 million employees and in 2013 promoted 170,000 “to jobs with more responsibility and higher pay.” This summer, The Wall Street Journal reported on a study concluding Walmart store managers are paid an average of $92,462.

 

GOP senator alleges collusion between EPA, progressive policy group in drafting carbon rules  - Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) and House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) are accusing the Environmental Protection Agency of inappropriately collaborating with an activist organization to craft the agency’s controversial carbon emissions policy, pushing those affected to the margins in the process. It’s an accusation that rises above impropriety, though. The Daily Signal reports that both Issa and Vitter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, are directing their congressional staff to “look into whether the EPA broke federal law in developing carbon emissions regulations.”  At issue is the EPA’s advisory relationship with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a progressive environmental group that has long been at odds with the business community over the perceived need for stricter regulations.  Vitter claims that emails between EPA staff and the NRDC reveal a tight relationship between the activists and the EPA — a relationship that places the NRDC in a favored status not enjoyed by other parties potentially affected by the new rules.

Center for FoodSafety attacks GMO drought tolerant crops, distorts big picture  - A recent article by Douglas Gurian-Sherman of the Center for Food Safety on the green food website Civil Eats has me scratching my head. The subject was attempts to breed drought tolerant corn and the fact that conventional breeding methods currently outpace biotech attempts in creating commercially viable strains.

Cancer cure? Patients’ blood reprogrammed to destroydiseased cells  - The blood cells of cancer patients, reprogrammed by doctors to attack their leukemia and re-infused back into the patients’ veins, led to complete remissions in 27 of 30 people. That’s especially exciting because those patients had failed all conventional treatments. The report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is an extension of data presented previously at the American Society of Hematology’s annual meeting. Not all of the remissions lasted, the report showed. Nineteen patients in the study remain in remission 2 to 24 months later, and 15 of them didn’t need any additional treatment. Seven patients relapsed between 6 months and 9 months after their infusion; those included three people whose cancers spread beyond the blood cells the new treatment targets. Five patients left the study for alternative therapy.

Vaccination coverage among United States kindergarteners  -  With the new school year well under way, the CDC has some good news to report . Its annual vaccination coverage report documents the vaccination coverage among our nation’s kindergarten children. Although the report found high levels of vaccination coverage overall, it also highlights clusters of unvaccinated children, putting certain communities at risk for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. The report is based on data from federally funded state, local and territorial immunization programs and includes vaccination coverage for a total of over four million kindergarten children.

According to the report, 94.7 percent of kindergarten children received 2 doses of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR), 95 percent received the diphtheria, tetanus toxoid, and acellular pertussis vaccine (DTaP), and 93.3 percent received two doses of the varicella vaccine. Total exemption rate was about 2 percent. The highest rate of exemption was reported in Oregon, and two states, Kansas and Maine, reported increases in percentage of kindergarteners with exemptions. And although the overall numbers are good, 26 states and DC reported vaccination rates below 95 percent for two doses of the MMR vaccine. Colorado’s kindergarteners have the lowest rates of vaccination overall, with only 81 percent of them receiving the MMR, DTaP and/or the varicella vaccine.

Ebolaidiocy and other (de)pressing matters: Part 1 - Since there is hardly a day that goes by without a good dose of mind-numbing idiocy about Ebola, we figured ACSH ought to weigh in now and then. After all, the worst “Ebola science” isn’t a whole lot different from half of the other stuff that poses as science that we dissect daily. Here is our Part 1 challenge: Come up with something dumber than this, and we will all hand wash and wax your car.

 “Fearing Ebola, some US communities take dramatic steps”

 OK, this doesn’t sound too bad, only because the headline does not betray what’s inside. This left us with our mouths hanging open. Today’s “winner” is Portland, ME, which apparently does not grasp the basic fundamentals of epidemiology—that you have to actually be exposed to something before you can catch it. In this case, a teacher who had traveled to Texas for a conference was placed on a three-week paid leave of absence when she returned. Why? Well, it makes perfect sense to those having the intellectual capacity of a box of Froot Loops. After all, the teacher made the reckless decision to stay in a hotel ten miles away from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas—the hospital where Thomas Duncan died. ACSH’s Dr. Josh Bloom makes several points:…..

After wasting tax dollars, officials at CDC, NIH claim budget cuts hurt Ebola preparedness -  Here’s a lesson about how government works: Public officials think they should always have a larger pot of taxpayer money, no matter how badly they have misspent, misprioritized and misused the taxpayer money they already have.

Biotech crops on the rise— gradually but surelyovercoming phony fears - According to a recent report, since 1996 there have been over 5 billion acres of biotech crops harvested. And not only do these crops provide food for millions, they also reduce the use of pesticides, can add nutritional value to foods, and, according to some studies, reduce the release of greenhouse gases as well. In spite of such benefits, the anti-GMO crowd continues to promote false and misleading ‘disinformation’ about bioengineered crops. They ignore the fact that humans have been modifying the genetics of both food crops and animals ever since agriculture began some 10,000 years ago. Now, thanks to modern biotechnology, we have the ability to more accurately and efficiently make and monitor such changes than ever before. “There has never been any substantiated, scientifically sound evidence that bioengineered crops threaten the health of people or animals consuming them, or that they cause environmental damage.” says ACSH’s Dr. Ruth Kava. “Indeed,” she continues, “such crops have the potential to increase food crop production, while protecting marginal lands from cultivation. As the world population continues to expand, we will increasingly need these crops to meet the growing need.”

For more information about bioengineered crops, read ACSH’s recent publication on agricultural biotechnology here.

More ‘Walker is Hitler’ rhetoric appears from the left -  “WALKERS MOTTO DIVIDE & CONQUER SO WAS HITLERS,” proclaims the grammatically challenged, hand-written sign pinned to posts just off of Mariner Road near Wisconsin Highway 83 in Hartland.

Embattled Veterans Affairs procurement official abruptly resigns - Susan Taylor, the subject of a scathing inspector general's report issued Sept. 26, had been targeted for firing by VA officials.  

 

Congressional probe finds federal regulators targeted legal businesses - A congressional probe found evidence Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation officials forced banks to sever ties to legal businesses with negative public images. Regulators pressured the banks to cut off the accounts of entire industries whose practices they "disfavored" as part of a multi-agency program created in 2013 by the Justice Department and known as Operation Choke Point. Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the panel's subcommittees, said entire industries were being "disfavored" without regard for the performance of individual companies. Issa is a California Republican. Jordan is an Ohio Republican. Justice officials said the purpose of the program is to shut down a variety of businesses they think pose a “reputational risk” to the banks, according to a May congressional report.....

 

Time for Conservative Cultural Surrender? - [On] NBC's "Meet the Press"…newly installed host Chuck Todd stubbornly persisted in the usual Republicans-in-deep-trouble narrative. Based on the judicial failure to take up gay marriage cases, Todd previewed the program by asking, "Is it time for conservatives to surrender in the culture wars?" Later, Todd underlined his point: "Whether it's on abortion, whether it's on same-sex marriage, whether it's on marijuana legalization, the culture wars have shifted to the left. Many Republicans are trying to acknowledge that general public shift. And yet, it's going to cause some heartburn."  We're in the middle of an election cycle where red-state Democrats are running away from President Obama on gun ownership, on border control and on energy and "climate change" crackdowns. So isn't proclaiming a "national shift to the cultural left" a rather desperate spin for the losing side?...... Now flip that script, and imagine Chuck Todd asking Planned Parenthood whether their public stand for "post-birth abortion" is politically smart. The national media hounded Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock about rape exceptions in 2012 Senate races, but this fall they won't whisper the name "Kermit Gosnell" or mention the 2013 hearing in the Florida legislature where a local Planned Parenthood staffer insisted it was a "woman's right to choose" whether a baby born alive can be murdered…… As the Democratic Party skids toward defeat, NBC can only ask, "Is the GOP retreating?"

The Price of Papal Popularity - Normally a synod of Catholic bishops does not provide fireworks rivaling the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley's boys in blue ran up the score on the radicals in Grant Park.  But, on Oct. 13, there emanated from the Synod on the Family in Rome a 12-page report from a committee picked by Pope Francis himself — and the secondary explosions have not ceased.  The report recognized the "positive aspects of civil unions and cohabitation" and said "homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community." As for Catholics who divorce and remarry without an annulment, we must avoid "any language or behavior that might make them feel discriminated against." Hailed by gay rights groups, the document stunned traditionalists….

 

Perkins to Olson: ‘If Love is the Only Factor, Where DoYou Draw the Boundary?’ - In a debate on Fox News Sunday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins questioned Ted Olson, an attorney who fought against California’s same-sex marriage ban, about what could define marriage if love is the only consideration. “If love is the factor, what boundaries are there?” Perkins asked Olson, a registered Republican who was on the legal team that successfully fought to have the gay marriage ban in California struck down. “What court after court after court has said, that allowing people of the same sex to marry the person that they love, to be part of the community and to be treated equally, does no damage to heterosexual marriage,” Olsen said ……. “Let me ask you, what are the boundaries, though?” Perkins said. “If it’s just love, what are the boundaries? “Where can we go with marriage?” he asked. Host Chris Wallace then weighed in by suggesting Perkins was insinuating that gay marriage could open the floodgates to polygamy or even bestiality…… “Sadly, when marriage is elastic enough to mean anything, in due time it comes to mean nothing,” Moore said.

Criminalizing Innocent Christian Behavior - Where are all the atheist freedom lovers we always hear about? It's time for them to start standing up for religious liberty. The left and militant gay movement are getting bolder and bolder, and too many Christians are stewing in their apathy.  It seems that with each passing month, this senseless tyranny advances. The latest is that two Christian ministers in Idaho, Donald and Evelyn Knapp, have allegedly been ordered to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies at their chapel or face fines or jail sentences.  This nightmare began Oct. 7, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated Idaho's marriage laws and legalized same-sex marriage in that state, which allowed Idaho county clerks to begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses a week later.