Free Republic

Their signs may have read “united for students” but little about the recent teachers’ strikes in Chicago and Detroit public schools actually benefited the city’s children. That’s because teachers in both cities have staged “sickouts,” forcing schools to close and sending roughly 450,000 students into the streets of two of America’s most dangerous cities. At the helm of these protests are unions that use collective bargaining disputes to call on teachers to leave the classroom and block traffic during rush hour. These strikes are just the latest example of how unions can manipulate workers and taxpayers to advance their own...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Westover Vineyards of Castro Valley. Owner Bill Smyth is preparing to shutter his winery because the California Department of Industrial Relations slapped him with $115,550 in fines, back wages and penalties for using unpaid volunteers. Those fees put Westover in the red. Why did the state go after him? Smyth suspected a complaint by a "disgruntled" former volunteer. On Monday, I heard from Scott Cantacessi, whose wife, Kim, worked/volunteered at Westover for 17 years. On her last day, as she was walking to her car, Cantacessi fell and fractured her arm. "I...

The Obama administration rescinded most of a federal regulation Friday designed to protect health workers who refuse to provide care they find objectionable on personal or religious grounds. The Health and Human Services Department eliminated nearly the entire rule put into effect by the administration of President George W. Bush during his final days in office that was widely interpreted as allowing such workers to opt out of a broad range of medical services, such as providing the emergency contraceptive Plan B, treating gay men and lesbians and prescribing birth control to single women. Calling the Bush-era rule "unclear and...

A recruiter who left Google last year says that the company had maintained a "do not touch" list of companies including Genentech and Yahoo, whose employees were not to be wooed to the Internet search giant. That revelation could be significant in light of this week's disclosure that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Google, Yahoo, Apple, Genentech and other tech companies conspired to keep others from stealing their top talent. Although Google declined to comment on the list or other aspects of the investigation, Palo Alto attorney Gary Reback, who has been involved in a number of high-profile...

BEDFORD — U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., castigated the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress yesterday as beholden to corporate greed, and he pledged to return fairness to the American economy. Addressing a “Politics and Eggs” gathering at the Bedford Village Inn, Kerry lambasted the Bush administration for secret meetings with lobbyists, tax breaks for the richest Americans and a Medicare drug prescription bill crafted by the pharmaceutical industry. The bill rewarded drug firms that spent $131 million on lobbyists to get Congress to bar the government from negotiating discounts on medicine for Medicare beneficiaries, most of whom are...