Free Republic

Rasmussen repolled Wisconsin voters earlier in the current impasse, with Democratic legislators fleeing the capital in order to hold the legislature hostage and to stop a budget-repair bill that imposes serious reforms on public-employee unions, and the results were not pleasant for Governor Scott Walker. Voters mainly opposed efforts to change collective bargaining for PEUs, at least in general, and Walker’s approval rating has sunk underwater during the standoff. Rasmussen has repolled Wisconsin voters to ask more specifically about the components of the reforms, and finds that Wisconsin voters support at least some of them: Consistent with a survey conducted...

<p>Shortly after California voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978, open warfare broke out in the union movement between leaders of public and private worker groups.</p> <p>In the Washington Post, an anonymous lieutenant of AFL-CIO president George Meany criticized the aggressive stance of Jerry Wurf, head of American Federation of State County and Municipal workers, in trying to defeat Prop 13, which capped property taxes. The problem, the Post pointed out, was that the AFL-CIO's members were the "taxpaying employers" of Wurf's workers and favored the tax and spending limitations of Prop. 13. "Jerry's big problem with the tax thing lies in convincing the rest of the trade union movement of the legitimacy of the positions he has taken," said the AFL-CIO official.</p>

Debunking the phony numbers http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/states/USCHARTsat.html at that are being spread by the lying neo-Marxist media.

Why is the looming NFL strike different from all other strikes? Well, first, it's not a strike, it's a lockout. Or at least it will be on March 4, when the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the National Football League and the player's union expires and the owners padlock the gates. Apparently most sportswriters are rusty when it comes to covering sports labor issues - or perhaps they were never taught that much in the first place - so they don't know the difference. There's a big difference, and even some veteran sportswriters don't seem to know it. Here's the Daily...

NASHVILLE — The Senate Education Committee voted along party lines Wednesday to abolish collective bargaining between teachers unions and school boards across the state. The vote was 6-3, with all Republicans on the panel voting for the bill and all Democrats against. Sponsor Sen. Jack Johnson said passage of the bill — SB113 — will remove 'an albatross from around the neck of our school boards across the state' and remove a roadblock to education reform. Democrats such as Sen. Andy Berke of Chattanooga said the bill is politically motivated and will do nothing to help the education of children....

Unvetted (i.e., without credentials) individuals such as the Wright brothers and Thomas Edison have had a far more beneficial effect on mankind than have all the vaunted, vetted collectives such as the Service Employees International Union, or Napoleon's Army for that matter. Here are a few unvetted individuals I have in mind: Wright brothers, A. Einstein, H. Ford, Thomas Alva Edison, Moses, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus of Nazareth, John Adams, Benito Juarez, Robert Goddard, Ronald Reagan, Frederick Douglass. Often they were at odds with the Establishment and the power structure. They were likely to be dismissed as unusual or strange. On...

In 1928, as America lurched towards the Wall Street Crash, Joseph Stalin revealed his master plan - nature was to be conquered by science, Russia to be made brutally, glitteringly modern and the world transformed by communist endeavour. Into the heart of this vision stepped Trofim Lysenko, a self-taught geneticist who promised to turn Russian wasteland into a grain-laden Garden of Eden. Today, Lysenko is a byword for fraud but in Stalin’s Russia his outlandish ideas about genetic inheritance and evolution became law. They reveal a world of science distorted by ideology, where ideas were literally a matter of life...

Rush Limbaugh, America’s Anchor man, The Doctor of Democracy, America’s Truth Detector, the Harmless Little Fuzz Ball has been of late the victim of a vicious barrage of slander and hate. This onslaught was perpetrated by the collective left in this country over his attempt to partner with a group seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams, an NFL franchise. These attacks have been fueled and fired by two race-card playing charlatans and apostate Christian leaders of the Left, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (see Matt. 7:16, 21-23; 12:33; 2 Tim. 3:1-6). The Liberal, State-Run Media has been working feverishly...

Thank you also, Mr. President, for this honorary degree. It was only a couple of years ago that I stopped paying my student loans in law school. Had I known it was this easy, I would have ran for the United States Senate earlier. You know, it has been about six months now since you sent me to Washington as your United States Senator. I recognize that not all of you voted for me, so for those of you muttering under your breath "I didn't send you anywhere," that's ok too. Maybe we'll hold—what do you call it—a little Pumphandle...

Ukraine's Pursuit of Genocide Designation Upsets Russians Who Say Others Died, Too MOSCOW -- Relations between Russia and Ukraine, bedeviled by disputes over natural gas supplies and NATO expansion, have lately been roiled by one of the great tragedies of Soviet history: the famine of 1932-33, which left millions dead from starvation and related diseases. Ukraine is seeking international recognition of the famine, which Ukrainians call Holodomor -- or death by hunger -- as an act of genocide. When Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin forced peasants off their homesteads and into collective farms, special military units requisitioned grain and other food...

Striding onto a Seattle-area work site with a white hard hat, Jimmy Matta converses in Spanish with Latino laborers who carry paintbrushes, power drills or spackling tools. How much are you getting paid? How many hours are you working? Matta gives them his business card, promises his help and drives off to the next site. A decade of organizing Latino construction workers is paying off for Matta, 32, who recently became the first Latino organizing director of the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters. Born in Idaho to illegal migrant farmworkers, Matta spent much of his early childhood in the...

South Africa may force more white farmers to sell in order to speed up the transfer of land into nonwhite hands, the agriculture minister said Thursday. Lulu Xingwana also said the government was considering new regulations for foreign land ownership. She said that black South Africans, who make up nearly 80 percent of the population, currently own just 4.7 percent of the land — even though land reform has been a key part of government policy since 1994 to right the wrongs of apartheid. Xingwana and other officials have repeatedly ruled out Zimbabwe-style land grabs, but the public's patience is...

Impasse has Hick in another jam on worker wages. Contract negotiations between Denver sheriff's deputies and the city are deadlocked, putting Mayor John Hickenlooper in another pickle over employee salaries in recent weeks. "Having been all over the country and having seen these things in different places, if this is the way they're doing this in Denver, it's askew," said sheriff's Capt. Frank Gale, who is negotiating on behalf of 740 sheriff's employees, from deputies to captains... The council is scheduled to discuss the sheriff's collective-bargaining negotiations behind closed doors on Monday. What's next? *Now that contract negotiations between the...

Gov. Bill Ritter has signed an executive order giving state government's 49,000 workers the right to join unions or other employee associations but said strikes remain illegal under state law. Ritter said his order authorizes "partnership agreements" that will make better use of workers' abilities and allow them to meet with management to discuss concerns. Rep. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, said "partnership" is another word for collective bargaining that would hurt state government. "This is indeed collective bargaining," Tony Gagliardi, Colorado state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, reacted strongly against the executive order. "Like reactions in the...

A homeless man was arrested this week at the downtown Central Library after allegedly masturbating in a back aisle and then pulling a knife on a librarian who was trying to escort him out of the building. A security guard used a Taser on the man, who was arrested by police and charged with multiple offenses, from lascivious conduct to aggravated battery. No one, luckily, was injured or killed in the incident. But it's an ugly reminder of a community problem hidden in plain sight. On any given day, you'll find a group of homeless regulars at the Central Library,...

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has been preparing a military-led collective leadership to rule the communist country after his death, a news report said. Kim, 65, who inherited power from his father, had given up the dynastic succession for various reasons, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted unnamed diplomatic sources in Beijing as saying. "Chairman Kim, who had picked his eldest son Jong-Nam to succeed to him, changed his mind a few years ago... and is preparing to allow in a collective leadership system," one of the sources said. Some leaders in the North oppose another father-to-son...

Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and futurist, has stumbled on a discovery of earth-shattering importance. It is the arrival of "singularity," and according to him it will happen in 2045. "Gradually," he writes at the beginning of "The Singularity Is Near," "I've become aware of a transforming event looming in the first half of the 21st century … the impending Singularity in our future is increasingly transforming every institution and aspect of human life, from sexuality to spirituality." Singularity, Kurzweil says, is a development "representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability" and a "radical upgrading of our bodies' physical...

Freeper Investigation: Cindy Sheehan "Vigil" and "Anti-War Protests" Fake, all bought and paid for by George Soros. I have been reading the stories on Cindy Sheehan and her "Valiant Vigil" at "Camp Casey" as the "Peace Mom" on AP, CBS, AFP, Reuters, etc... and now the "I Shall Return" announcements and speeches being reported about in the wires. I noticed a similarity in each and every story I read. Each referenced one or another "Spokesperson" named Michelle Mulkey, Mike Smith, Steve Smith, Ryan Fletcher. Well, I did a quick investigation and I found that with the exception of Ryan Fletcher,...

Liberals drop public Sheehan role By Bill Sammon THE WASHINGTON TIMES August 31, 2005 Powerful liberal advocacy groups such as MoveOn.org are taking a less active role in Cindy Sheehan's anti-war activities in the wake of criticism that they may have muddied her message. The groups, which played a major role in Mrs. Sheehan's monthlong vigil outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, are scaling back their involvement as Mrs. Sheehan prepares to leave Texas today on a bus tour to Washington.

It is time that we take the word liberal away from the left. The word that is identified with liberty and freedom has been hijacked by those who loath the very concepts that liberty implies. Words such as liberal, socialist and communist have become archaic, and have lost their true meanings. We should choose a new fitting and more descriptive word that better illustrates what leftists are really all about. Liberal theory will always fail because it denies the very nature of human beings. We are individuals and will always live and act in our own self interests. To the...