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The Michigan Education Association, the state’s largest public school employee organization, has claimed that a recent email from Mackinac Center Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh is “exposing the (Center) for what it really is,” because McHugh briefly stated, “Our goal is (to) outlaw government collective bargaining in Michigan. …” The idea that this is “exposing” anything hidden is bizarre; the Center has long questioned collective bargaining in government and has publicly recommended its repeal. Significantly, however, the MEA is mounting the attack at the very time when policymakers are finally beginning to address the worst excesses of collective bargaining for...

In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Herman Cain said he supports the "right" for public employees to bargain collectively. In other words, he is in favor of unions on the taxpayer dime. Cain also said federal workers have unions, meaning the right to collectively bargain, but they do not. On the issue of collective bargaining, Cain said he supported the right of public employees to bargain collectively. "But not collective hijacking. What I mean by that, if they have gotten so much for so many years and it's going to bankrupt the state, I don't think that's good....

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"I reject the idea that we have to strip away collective bargaining rights to compete in a global economy." Noman wasn't aware of anyone suggesting such a thing, and might join the President to protest if he were. He does recall Republican Governors of several states, most notably Wisconsin, moving to eliminate collective bargaining in the public employee context because the conditions that make collective bargaining a right in the private sector context don't afflict the proliferating number of government workers. You need antagonists on both sides of the table arguing from different premises with different interests, and a presumption...

Ft. Worth-based Range Resources’ ugly legal battle with some North Texas landowners and the EPA over alleged groundwater contamination has taken a new turn, with the firm filing a counter-claim against the landowners. In 2010, Steven and Shyla Lipsky of rural Parker County complained to the Texas Railroad Commission — the agency that oversees drilling in Texas — about natural gas in their water well. The couple believed it was caused by drilling at two nearby Range gas wells. The Lipsky’s hired a Flower Mound-based firm, Wolf Eagle Environmental, to do water and air testing. Alisa Rich, the owner, encouraged...

MADISON, Wis. -- The state Supreme Court has asked attorneys for reasons why it should take up a lawsuit challenging Gov. Scott Walker's divisive collective bargaining plan. Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne has filed a lawsuit alleging Republican legislators violated Wisconsin's open meetings law during debate on the plan before Walker signed it into law in March. Dane County Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi has blocked the law from taking effect while she considers the lawsuit. Sumi is expected to make a decision on the case after May 23. The state Justice Department last month asked the Supreme Court...

CHICAGO (AP) — Top Republican lawmakers in Illinois say union restrictions like the ones approved in neighboring Wisconsin aren’t the way to go. But Republican Senate leader Christine Radogno (rah-DOH’-nyoh) is calling on unions to cooperate when it comes to fixing the state’s budget crisis. She says Illinois can’t afford the level of raises that some employees have gotten. Radogno spoke to reporters Monday after appearing at an unrelated news conference with Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk and House Republican leader Tom Cross. Cross says the state also has to deal with its underfunded pensions and that it behooves everyone...

Over the weekend, public employee unions held a rally in Madison where the list of speakers included Bill Franks of the American Federation of Teachers. Franks had this to say about rank-and-file Republicans: ... the would-be Republicans, anybody making $30-40,000 who think they can afford to be a Republican is not living in any kind of reality. Real Republicans don't recognize them. Because the real "haves" are them. And these people who think they can afford these [conservative] principles, they can't afford them. That's not in their self interest. That's what we gotta cure as a pathology. This is a...

The Wisconsin Legislature has abolished nearly all collective bargaining rights for public employees and required them to pay a portion of their retirement benefits. We hope this starts a badly needed nationwide trend. . .

My hubby said he thinks the republican's screwed up in Wisconsin. He said he thought public opinion would turn against them now. He thought they should have just waited the democrats out and let them sweat it out in IL. Comments and keep in nice :) it's late and I don't feel like getting yelled at.

Madison — The Senate abruptly passed a controversial budget-repair bill Wednesday night – without Democrats – and sent the measure to the Assembly, which is expected to pass it Thursday. The bill eliminates almost all collective bargaining for public workers. It passed18-1, with Sen. Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center) casting the no vote. The Assembly passed an almost identical version of the bill Feb. 25.

While lawmakers in Indiana and Wisconsin continue to violate their oaths of office, senators in Ohio passed a bill to curtail collective bargaining for government employees. Naturally, not a single Democrat voted for the bill because that party has long been a puppet of the unions, bought and paid for decades ago. In Wisconsin, Democratic “lawmakers” remained outside the state in a stalemate that could last for months. Republican Gov. Scott Walker is trying to curb collective bargaining for things such as pension plans and health insurance. And in Indiana, House Democrats were cowering in Illinois, also avoiding their sworn...

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...