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Rail Strike Averted, Reality Check on Energy, Border Crisis Hypocrisy

September 15, 2022 by GregC

Listen to “Rail Strike Averted, Reality Check on Energy, Border Crisis Hypocrisy” on Spreaker.

Join Jim and Greg as they breathe a sigh of relief that a rail workers strike is averted, although they’re curious to see the terms of the agreement. They also sigh as Biden again claims costs are going down as he hails the announcement. They’re also pleasantly surprised to see New York Times columnist Tom Friedman scolding the left to get serious about fossil fuel production as a way both to help Europeans in the face of Putin cutting off natural gas and for the U.S. to produce energy at levels that renewables cannot possibly match. Then they roll their eyes as the left freaks out over red state governors sending a few migrants to blue parts of the country but as no interest in dealing with the thousands of people crossing our southern border illegally every day. Finally, they remember former Independent Counsel Ken Starr and how the Democrats and the media turned him into a villain for investigating the unconscionable conduct of President Clinton.

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Filed Under: Border Security, Climate, congress, Economy, Energy, Foreign Policy, History, Humor, Inflation, Journalism, law, News & Politics, Russia, Social Media, Supply Chain, Ukraine Tagged With: 3MartiniLunch, Biden, energy, inflation, Putin, railroad, Strike, Tom Friedman, union

Back to School in Chicago, Biden Bumbling on Russia, Supply Chain Still Choked

January 11, 2022 by GregC

Listen to “Back to School in Chicago, Biden Bumbling on Russia, Supply Chain Still Choked” on Spreaker.

Jim & Greg welcome the return of in-person schooling to Chicago after a four-day hissy fit from the Chicago Teachers Union. They also sigh as President Biden reportedly makes no progress in trying to deter Russian military action in Ukraine. And the Biden administration gets caught flat-footed again as out supply chain problems grow.

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Filed Under: Climate, congress, COVID-19, Economy, Education, Energy, Foreign Policy, History, Humor, Journalism, News & Politics, Russia, Supply Chain Tagged With: Biden, Buttigieg, Chicago, Nordstream, russia, schools, supply chain, Three Martini Lunch, Ukraine, union

Bad News Becerra, Accusing Cuomo, Teacher Unions’ True Colors

December 7, 2020 by GregC

Listen to “Bad News Becerra, Accusing Cuomo, Teacher Unions’ True Colors” on Spreaker.

Join Jim and Greg, even though there are no good martinis today. They wince as Joe Biden taps radical lefty Xavier Becerra to run the Department of Health and Human Services. They also walk through the thoroughly unsurprising allegations that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo runs a toxic work environment. And they fume as the Chicago Teachers’ Union says returning to in-person instruction is due to racism, sexism, and misogyny while national unions convince Joe Biden to demand $100 billion to reopen elementary schools.

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Filed Under: Abortion, Climate, congress, Constitution, COVID-19, Education, Elections, Health Care, History, Humor, Labor, News & Politics Tagged With: abortion, Andrew Cuomo, Biden, Chicago, climate, HHS, money, National Review, teachers, Three Martini Lunch, union, Xavier Becerra

SCOTUS Smacks Down Unions on First Amendment Grounds

June 27, 2018 by GregC

http://dateline.radioamerica.org/podcast/6-27-mix-blog.mp3

The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday rendered a sweeping decision that frees non-members from having to pay dues to public sector unions, a ruling that overturns a previous decision and could be financially lethal to organized labor.

In a 5-4 decision in Janus v. AFSCME, Justice Samuel Alito said the ruling had to be broad because of the fundamental free speech questions involved.

“States and public-sector unions may no longer extract agency fees from nonconsenting employees,” wrote Alito.  “This procedure violates the first amendment and cannot continue.”

Wednesday’s verdict formally overturned the court’s 1977 Abood v. Detroit Board of Education decision, that said unions could extract some fees from the paychecks of non-members, but not for political purposes.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation represented Illinois government employee Mark Janus before the Supreme Court.  The group’s president, Mark Mix, says the past 41 years proved the previous decision simply didn’t solve the problem.

“This regulatory structure is unworkable and that this case deserves what is called strict scrutiny in the legal process.  That means this is a question of pure first amendment rights.

“Everything government unions do is political.  They’re telling government how to allocate their resources so we went from this Solomon-like decision of splitting the baby to slicing the bologna ever thinner and trying to regulate it in even more and greater ways to throwing up their hands, saying, ‘You know what?  We’re doing this wrong.  Let’s get to the basic question of the first amendment,'” said Mix.

“They did that today and what they said is government employees across the nation have a first amendment right against being forced to pay fees as a condition of their employment,” he added.

The Supreme Court has taken up the issue six times since the Abood decision.  In a 2012 case, the court was examining a narrower question but Mix says Alito noted then that broader questions had to be addressed.

Justice Elena Kagan authored the primary dissent in the Janus case, arguing that the majority was meddling in a process that ought to play out for itself.

“It wanted to pick the winning side in what should be — and until now has been — an energetic policy debate,” she wrote. “Today, that healthy — that democratic — debate ends. The majority has adjudged who should prevail.”

Mix is not swayed.

“Justice Kagan doesn’t realize that we’ve had literally hundreds of lawsuits across the country at every level of government on this issue and every level of the court system on this issue.  She probably hasn’t seen the frustration from judges across the entire country who have tried to sort out what the court said in the Abood case and what’s in and what’s out.

“So this robust debate that she talks about is just ridiculous.  This is about a scheme that union officials have enjoyed for 40 years and giving them the privilege to extract money from workers who never wanted them, never asked for them, and never voted for them and now that’s over,” said Mix.

During oral arguments earlier this year, Kagan stopped National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorney Bill Messenger presentation to ask about the union reliance on those dues.

“What our attorney said is you can’t rely on anything that violates the first amendment.  If you’ve relied on it in the past, it’s been wrong and they got it right this time.  So to Justice Kagan, the needs of the many don’t outweigh the rights of the few,” said Mix.

Mix says this decision does not gut unions as organized labor activists contend, since non-members are free to give as much of their income as they want to the public sector unions.

Critics of this decision also insist non-members ought to pay some dues since they benefit from the collective bargaining conducted by the unions.  Mix rejects that argument, noting that collective bargaining often results in wages being allocated by seniority rather than productivity or skill.

“The fact of the matter is if these workers could speak for themselves, often times many of them would do better than the monopoly power that union officials have had over them and continue to have over them in states that allow them to be the only voice for workers in the marketplace,” said Mix.

So what comes next in this fight between organized labor and the right to work movement?  Taking this same fight to the private sector.

“The next step is to end forced fees across the entire country, whether we do it state by state or Congress goes into a 1935 New Deal piece of federal legislation that (Franklin) Roosevelt jammed through the Congress and jammed through the Supreme Court that forces private sector workers to pay dues to get or keep a job.  We can strike that down too.  That’s the next battle,” said Mix.

 

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Filed Under: News & Politics, Podcasts Tagged With: Alito, dues, Kagan, news, Supreme Court, union

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