On Friday the Florida House approved HB 1021. Also referred to as a union-busting bill, it would ban automatic dues deduction in public sector labor unions and require members to sign off on the use of their dues for political purposes.
By Nancy Pelosi standards, the bill was approved with a bi-partisan vote of 73-40. No Democrats voted for it, and three Republicans voted against.
Whether the bill is a union busting bill or not, depends on what you believe the purpose of a labor union is.
Union members may still pay their dues via a check or credit card. And they may still consent to the labor union using their dues for political activism. In either case, if labor unions are as attractive as the union leaders make them out to be, then they have nothing to worry about. The union-busting side complains that “the bill would bar unions from engaging in political activity without permission from members.”
Not only is that exactly right, but it is the point of the bill. The crux of the issue is the usurping of their members’ rights by presuming that all of their members wish to contribute to a political activity that they do not agree with. You could say that this is a pro-choice bill.
In this bill, the workers are permitted a choice where heretofore they had none. It in no way prevents the unions from participating in political activism as they have always done, and support whatever candidate or party (as long as they’re Democrats) that they want. They have the same rights as a union as their members do as individuals. Or to put it another way, the union members have the same rights as individuals as the union does as a collective labor union. The SCOTUS has already established that campaign contributions are the same as political speech.
All statistics being equal, if you figure that about half the country is D and the other half is R, then one could expect that, when finally given the right to choose to fund their union’s political activity or not, that the union might lose about half of their political campaign funds.
The way I look at it, the end of unions bullying their members has finally come. Sucks to be a labor union president nowadays.
Heard on my satellite radio feed last night that Tab Benoit is coming to Pensacola. Playing at the Vinyl Music Hall, Wednesday, April 6, 2011.
Appearing with the Voice of the Wetlands Allstars, it’ll be New Orleans blues by, as their website says, ‘legendary musicians who are at their musical prime.’
From his website . . .
Tab Benoit has assembled a stellar ensemble of fellow New Orleans musicians (including N.O. Legends which include Meters and Neville Brothers Cyril Neville, fellow roots-man Anders Osborne, fiddler Waylon Thibodeaux, influential New Orleans drummer Johnny Vidacovich, harmonica/ accordion player Jumpin Johnny Sansone, and New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian Big Chief Monk Boudreaux. to forge a musical plea about the fragile eco-system that is the increasingly depleted wetlands surrounding their hometown.
Cheap tickets ($20-25) for what ought to be a super show.
An Obama-bot named Diane Pearce commented on The Lunch Counter recently. The comments were identical and had nothing to do with the topic. But are amusing nevertheless.
Diane Pearce Loves Barack Obama | March 25, 2011 at 9:19 pm
Just wanted to say that I am eployed at a large biotherapeutic company in Clayton NC and I endroce Barack Obama with all my being. I encourage all my friends and colleagues to say yes for Obama in 2012!! I LOVE YOU OBAMA
Point is that OfA is full speed ahead to distract anyone who will listen from Obama’s incompetence to start drumming up re-election support in 2012. The Lunch Counter has no problem with saying yes for Obama. Do you want him out of The White House? Go ahead, say ‘yes.’
Peggy Noonan wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal that perfectly lays out what Americans are thinking.
I cannot for the life of me see how an American president can launch a serious military action without a full and formal national address in which he explains to the American people why he is doing what he is doing, why it is right, and why it is very much in the national interest.
The absence of such a statement from our President, the Commander In Chief, is especially puzzling when you consider his previous position on the use of our military.
“I don’t oppose all wars … what I am opposed to is a dumb war.” – Barack Obama, 2002
For the first time, Obama is the Commander-in-Chief of a war that he authored rather than inherited. And the man who a decade ago anointed himself the arbiter of intelligent warfare is leading the U.S. into a conflict that is questionable on its merits and incoherent in its execution.
The blatant in-over-his-head behavior of our president is embarrassing. Certainly causing belly laughs in Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia.
Gov. Rick Scott signed executive order (11-58) Tuesday that will require drug testing of many current state employees as well as pre-employment testing for applicants.
“Floridians deserve to know that those in public service, whose salaries are paid with taxpayer dollars, are part of a drug-free workplace,” Scott said. “Just as it is appropriate to screen those seeking taxpayer assistance, it is also appropriate to screen government employees.”
Of course, the ACLU has their shorts in a wad over this. Citing a ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in 2004 that random drug testing was unconstitutional, a violation of the Fourth Amendment as considered an unreasonable search.
The ACLU apparently missed the difference between purely random testing and Gov. Scott’s order which requires everyone be tested ‘at least quarterly.’ This order doesn’t apply to every state employee, just current employees in agencies that answer to the governor. Whoever they are.
Aside from the obvious benefits of assuring a drug-free workplace, as opposed to a free-drug workplace, there is a demonstrable economic advantage to such a policy in terms of insurance. Fewer accidents, less loss. All of which the taxpayers pay for.
The reference to taxpayer assistance refers to an initiative by the Scott administration to require those who apply for state benefits to agree to submit to a drug test as a qualification to receiving benefits. That proposal (SB 556) was approved unanimously Tuesday by the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.
But it’s not for everybody that applies.
The department may only screen an applicant who has been convicted of a drug felony within the prior 3 years and shall continue to screen that individual for 3 years after the date upon which the individual begins receiving temporary cash assistance.
Update 3/25/2011: SB 556 as amended expands the drug screening to . . .
[I]ndividuals who apply for benefits funded by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program; making individuals responsible for bearing the cost of drug testing; requiring certain notice; providing procedures for testing and retesting; providing for notice of local substance abuse programs; providing that, if a parent is deemed ineligible due to failing a drug test, the eligibility of the children is not affected; providing an effective date.
The only exceptions are minors under 18 years old. The PDF of the bill is HERE, and is half the size (4 pages) of the original bill.
US Export-Import Bank extends $3 billion credit to Brazil to finance infrastructure projects and offshore oil drilling. So says the Export-Import Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg, who traveled to Brazil with President Obama.
It’s cool that they are taking an interest in offshore drilling and new offshore technology like floating storage facilities. It’s just too bad that it will be creating no jobs for U.S. workers and plenty of jobs for Brazil and other foreign countries. Isn’t it amazing how generous he is with your money for something he won’t do here?
Here’s an idea: Let American companies do what Obama is paying Brazilian companies to do — drill offshore. We won’t have to pay them money or float them any loans to do it, either. In fact, we will make money off of the leases, while the effort creates hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs in the US, creating more tax revenue rather than emptying out the Treasury.
A South Carolina man who twice pleaded guilty to having sex with a horse (the same horse) has been released from prison after 16 months and ordered to stay away from the stable where the animal lives.
It is not clear whether Vereen has to stay 1000 feet from barns, race tracks, and State and County Fairs.
Probation officials said Monday that Rodell Vereen, 51, was let out of prison March 1. He must continue to register as a sex offender.
President Obama was in Chile today and answered questions for the first time since U.N. authorized military action in Libya began.
Some of what he said was ‘we can’t simply stand by with empty words.’
In the real world, what goes around comes around. The President is very convincing when he is speaking and has had the media hypnotized for years.
Anyone with a memory of the 2008 campaign will remember Sen. Obama criticizing Sen. Clinton for her ‘words, just words. Follow the link, you decide who owns empty words.
Oh there I go again, picking on President Obama. Not exactly. But the media is doing their best to hold him harmless for higher energy prices. It’s just a shame that circumstances beyond his control continue to deal him a losing hand.
On the road to a national energy policy, President Barack Obama is hitting pothole after pothole.
‘On the road to a national energy policy?’ Not only has he taken the wrong turn. He is lost. His idea of an energy policy is to not use it. And by all means, don’t get it. Keep on buying it from the Middle East, Russia, and Venezuela. There’s a plan. Make the cost of gasoline so high that it will cripple the economy. Small price to pay to push technologies that do not yet exist in any practical supply.
First, worries over coal-burning plants’ role in global warming prompted Obama . . .
Worries? What worries? By some divine providence, the media ignored candidate Obama’s thoughts on an energy policy where coal is concerned. Candidate Obama said that his Cap and Trade legislation would make it difficult, if not impossible for coal burning electrical generating plants to operate.
[I]f somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.
Half of the electricity in the United States comes from coal fired electric plants.
and other Democrats to look more favorably on offshore oil and gas exploration.
Right. That’s why, oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico is still on hold, against court orders to the contrary, nearly a year after the crises that he didn’t let go to waste. And seven months after the Deepwater Horizon leak was plugged. That’s a pothole?
Next came a warmer embrace of nuclear power as part of a possible broad political agreement . . . Now the crisis in Japan is throwing a shadow over nuclear energy worldwide.
Right. And a year before the current crisis in Japan, Obama cut the funding for the only approved site for the disposal of nuclear waste. The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository.
Making matters worse for Obama, a spike in U.S. gasoline prices is angering Americans just as his re-election campaign cranks up. Experts say gas price fluctuations have almost nothing to do with the tragedy in Japan or the Gulf oil spill. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from lumping various issues together and using them to club Obama.
There’s a really big wagon. Rising gas prices are not his fault. He’s just having a run of bad political luck. Is that what the media, and Democrats, were saying when Bush was in The White House?
In reality, Obama could cause the world market of oil and gasoline to fall overnight, simply on the announcement that he intends to make the United States an oil producer instead of an oil buyer. That would be a part of an energy policy to embrace.
Pointing out the obvious is characterized as taking ‘cheap shots.’ The media takes the Democrat points that, if you point out that stopping oil and gas exploration and development, and if you point out that relying on technologies that are not yet practically available are major factors in rising costs and reasons for instability in the market, then you’re taking a ‘cheap shot’ at President Obama.
“As long as our economy depends on foreign oil,” Obama said, “we’ll always be subject to price spikes.”
So don’t worry. Be happy.
He called for “a comprehensive energy strategy that pursues both more energy production and more energy conservation. We’re working to diversify our entire portfolio with historic investments in clean energy.”
President Obama just said last week that we are using less energy, as if that is a good sign of conserving and using less. Here’s a clue. We are using less because our economy is slowing down. You can’t have both a growing economy and less energy consumption. All the ‘historic investments in clean energy’ are fine, but not at the expense of exploiting our own fossil fuel resources.
The problem here is our President is not the leader America, and the media, had hoped he was. If he were a leader, he would be the one leading America around those potholes, or fixing them and moving forward. Not portraying him, and us, as innocent victims.
