Free Republic

A federal appeal court has cleared the way for Wisconsin's long-stalled voter ID law to be in place for the November elections. Just hours after hearing arguments in a case challenging the requirement for voters to show a government-issued photo ID at the polls, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday issued an order lifting an injunction that has kept the law from being enforced. A federal judge ruled earlier this year that the law was unconstitutional...but the appeals court noted in its order that the state has since worked to address issues highlighted in that decision, including a...

A D.C. sixth-grade teacher will apologize for an assignment that asked students to draw comparisons between former President George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler. The McKinley Middle School teacher sent students home with a Venn diagram and asked them to compare and contrast Bush and Hitler. At least one parent found it troubling on a number of levels. He told News4 he sees a certain lack of respect for the office of the president. And the instructions read "both men who abused their powers," which the parent said presents opinion as fact. D.C. Public Schools released a statement late Wednesday...

I'm just curious who is ashamed of the Stars and Bars. I was born and raised in the south and this flag always gave me comfort and identity. I slept with it over my bed during my youth. What about you? Today if you even mention it, it's like a fart in church. I say, where are the true southern men?!

Franchising has been nothing short of a spectacular success for America. From restaurants to hotels to auto shops to plumbers, franchising generates hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue each year and employs millions of people across the country. Modern franchising as we know it was created a century and a half ago by Isaac Singer, an inventor, innovator and the founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Co. He had figured out how to manufacture and sell his sewing machines in enormous quantities but he couldn’t service them across the vast country. So he created a franchising operation… whereby he...

Minimum Wage: Fast-food workers engage in a nationwide "Fight for 15" while ignoring the economic reality of higher prices, fewer jobs and the sawing off of that first rung on the economic ladder of success. In a scene repeated in various cities across the country last Thursday, roughly 50 people were arrested as they protested in front of two Chicago-area fast-food restaurants as part of the push for a $15-per-hour minimum wage for fast-food workers, what they call a "living wage." These protests, organized by the infamous purple shirts of the Service Employees International Union, simply ignore economic reality. It...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Would liberals please explain why union workplaces are exempt from SeaTac’s $15 minimum wage law? The Washington Post recently published this article on the new $15 minimum wage law in SeaTac, Washington. The article states:“… union workplaces are exempt…”This exemption is wrong because the law is supposed to treat everyone equally.But also, it is an extreme example of hypocrisy. It was unions who got the ball rolling on this $15 minimum wage. It was unions who said that all workers should be paid at least $15 an hour.But now, these very same unions are getting an...

Want robots at McDonald's? Hike minimum wage: Zell Matthew J. Belvedere | @Matt_Belvedere Wednesday, 3 Sep 2014 Video Federal and state efforts to increase the minimum wage are misguided and pose serious risks to the economy and the job market, billionaire Sam Zell told CNBC on Wednesday. "The tinkering with the minimum wage is a very dangerous game," the chairman of Equity Group Investments said in a "Squawk Box" interview. "You start talking about a $13 or a $15 minimum wage, and you're going to have robots that are operating McDonald's."

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – A T-shirt showdown has left two of the city’s most powerful unions at war – with teachers pitted against the NYPD. As CBS 2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reported, many teachers across the city wore pro-police t-shirts after their union president, Michael Mulgrew, attended the Rev. Al Sharpton’s march protesting the death of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old father of six who died while in police custody on July 17.

Three things fast food workers should do with the “extra” money you’ll get if the national minimum wage is raised from $7.25 to $15 per hour. For argument sake, let’s call the average minimum wage $7.85 to account for California, New York, Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Nevada, Ohio, Illinois and Florida, all of whom have something in the neighborhood of $8 (give or take).  Socialist enclaves of Oregon, Washington, Vermont, and Connecticut are in the $9 range, with Washington the winner at $9.32. Let’s also set the number of hours per week at 30 for the average burger-flipper or fry...

Sixty-one years ago last month, the third-ever McDonald's opened in Downey, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles and home to Apollo, the third-ever NASA manned spaceflight program. McDonald's went to 119 countries from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Apollo went to the moon. A man who witnessed much of this history is Ron Piazza, who owns the landmark McDonald's in Downey —the world's oldest-operating McDonald's— along with nine other golden-arched franchises in the area. Piazza is something of a throwback. Plainspoken and serious, he is the type of business owner whose name and phone number are printed at the...

“Working families everywhere applaud the courage of the fast food workers who are striking today and engaging in acts of civil disobedience in over 150 cities. And we applaud the unity and the collective spirit displayed by members of AFL-CIO state federations and labor councils who have joined today’s protests in solidarity.This nation was built on the fundamental beliefs that work should be a gateway to the middle class, and that no job should ever trap someone in poverty. That’s why the ‘Fight for Fifteen’ movement is surging and the protests are getting ever louder. It’s time for corporations to...

Dozens of fast food workers have been arrested at protests around the country where they are demanding higher pay at popular restaurants such as McDonald's, Burger King and Domino's. Fast food workers in New York City, Chicago, Detroit and possibly more cities were arrested for blocking traffic in front of restaurants early Thursday morning, while thousands more continued protesting peacefully, according to news reports. Backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), fast food workers in 150 cities are walking off the job and picking up picket signs to demand that they be paid no less than $15 per hour....

LANSING — Michigan's largest teachers' union should allow members to resign at any time and stop enforcing an annual one-month opt-out window, a state labor judge ruled, relying on the state right-to-work law that took effect last year. The administrative law judge, Julia Stern, recommended Tuesday that the Republican-controlled Employment Relations Commission order the Michigan Education Association to no longer limit school employees to leaving the union solely in August of each year. She said the law that took effect last year incorporated a federal law interpreted to give public employees the ability to leave their union anytime.

The SEIU represents hundreds of thousands of health care workers and is now encouraging them to march alongside fast-food strikers, according to the New York Times. Union officials also want home-care aides to join protests in six cities – Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Seattle. Union leaders say the hope is to expand to more cities in future strikes. For The Record says: According to a study commissioned by the agency overseeing home caregivers in Michigan, 75 percent of those home-care aid workers the SEIU is urging to strike are taking care of a relative or close friend. Might...

The AFL-CIO wants President Barack Obama to give "affirmative action" to illegal immigrants who are in the shadows and to go "bold" on executive amnesty. At a Christian Science Monitor breakfast last week, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka reportedly said that he hoped Obama enacts executive amnesty that is "bold enough to be worthwhile." When he was asked "what the labor movement would consider to be bold action on immigration," Trumka reportedly answered, “Affirmative action with workers to let them come out of the shadows." According to an NBC News report this week, "Labor unions want the president to shield as...

It’s that time of year again – when the little juvenile delinquents, future prison inmates, and functionally illiterate junior members of the free shit army pick up their “free” backpacks and “free" school supplies they will never use and shuffle off to the decaying prison like schools in the City of Philadelphia to eat “free” breakfasts and “free” lunches, while being taught government sanctioned pablum by overpaid mediocre union teachers. It’s a repeat of every year for the Phila school district. As the school year approaches they are shocked to report a massive deficit and beg the State of PA...

Apparently, some teacher’s union officials have taken too much public school math. michigan outline “On a Saturday in May, members of the Michigan Education Association held a walk in Midland bringing attention to public school funding,” the Michigan-based Mackinac Center reports in the organization’s July/August report. “They claim education funding is down nearly $19 million in the greater Midland area in the last four years.” “MEA president Steve Cook has claimed that Michigan’s public school budget has been cut by $1 billion. The problem is that these claims are not true.” “State spending on public education actually increased $800 million...

In remarks on the U.S. economy Monday, President Barack Obama said Congressional Republicans will eventually cave to public pressure to raise the federal minimum wage. Obama was speaking at the Laborfest festival hosted by the AFL-CIO in Milwaukee, Wis. “If I cared about these things, I’d also want more Democrats looking out for me,” he said. “I’m just saying. Because when the rest of the country is working to raise wages, but Republicans in Congress won’t, it ain’t right.” ADVERTISEMENT Noting the protests in recent months from fast food workers seeking higher wages, Obama said Republicans would open up to...

The official at the center of the Internal Revenue Service tea party scandal once dismissed complaints that labor unions were not reporting millions of dollars in political activities on their tax forms, according to an email obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. In 2007, Lerner responded directly to a complaint that some major labor unions reported completely different amounts of political expenditures when filing with the IRS and the Department of Labor. At the time of the email, Lerner was the Director of Exempt Organizations at the IRS. Lerner wrote, “We looked at the information you provided regarding organizations...

Labor Day is no time for a non-union barbecue, says the nation’s labor movement. To help the shoppers, Big Labor has issued a list of union-made food and drinks that should be served at the backyard feast today. “Labor Day is the unofficial end of the summer holiday season. While the day honors the hardworking men and women who make this nation go and grow, the weekend also gives us a chance for one more big backyard barbecue blowout. Here’s some union-made food and drink to get your barbecue off to a great start,” said the AFL-CIO. They forwarded the...