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Wednesday, March 11, 2015

The Left in a Sentence

Wisconsin: Unions Sue to Stop Law Halting Dues Collection

(AP) The state A.F.L.-C.I.O. and two local unions filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to at least temporarily block a new law barring unions from requiring workers to pay the equivalent of dues. The lawsuit, arguing that the law is unconstitutional, was filed in Dane County Circuit Court a day after Gov. Scott Walker signed the measure. A spokeswoman for Mr. Walker, a Republican, and Attorney General Brad Schimel, also a Republican, both said they were confident that the law would be upheld, just as federal courts have ruled in favor of such laws in Michigan and Indiana. The unions say that the law is an unconstitutional taking of their property without just compensation and that enforcement would cause them irreparable harm.

Emphasis added, perhaps unnecessarily.

14 comments:

Bret said...

Well, that might be unions in a sentence. I think the entire Left is a little more complicated than that.

erp said...

The left's world domination goals are a little more complicated than just confiscating our money, but basically that is their thinking on entitlement.

Hey Skipper said...

Bret:

In what meaningful way? As far as collectivists are concerned, what you have left over after taxes is what they are generous enough to allow you to keep.

Granted, any society has to have taxation. But granting that we must pay dues is a entirely different state of mind than "you are all belong to the state."

Harry Eagar said...

Over at RTO, Skipper is harping on the 'nothing is free' theme again. Exception for right-to-work states, I guess.

erp said...

Harry another outstanding non sequitur!!!

What does being forced to belong to a union which is confiscating your money much of which is sent to politicians whose goal is to rip off more of your money to buy votes from those who don't work have to do with nothing is free???

Bret said...

Hey Skipper asks: "In what meaningful way?"

The Left is a big tent with lots of agenda. Gay rights, feminism, etc., in addition to the entitlement/looting agenda.

Anonymous said...

Bret;

I'll go with Skipper. In every case you mentioned the basic current push is "you other people have something I want, give it to me". It's all looting just not always precisely for money.

Hey Skipper said...

[Harry:] Over at RTO, Skipper is harping on the 'nothing is free' theme again. Exception for right-to-work states, I guess.

It is interesting to consider the unacknowledged, but glaring nonetheless, assumptions tied up in that sentence.

For starters: that what the union is delivering is exactly what the union members want.

And that what the union is demanding is in the best interests of the union members.

But wait, there's more: that the union leaders aren't exploiting the union members.

And as a bonus round, that what the union is demanding isn't in the interest of some of the members, but is very much for others.

Let me take that last one on.

The union of which I am a member is at loggerheads with management. Aside from the union's communications, which have been uniformly ill considered, amateurish, insulting and uninformative, there is the little problem of defined benefit retirement.

As the contract stands, pilots with 25 or more years can retire at 50% of their full time pay, defined as the average of their highest five years earnings.

There is a cap -- anything over (IIRC) $225,000 per year is counted as $225,000. (Did I remember to mention that my union is, aside from other pilot unions, by several furlongs the most highly paid union members in the world?)

The union is insisting on scrapping the cap.

There are some guys who get very comfortable gigs in standards and as instructors.

And senior wide body (too often literally as well as metaphorically -- catering on international trips is plentiful and good) Capts.

Those guys could see there retirement go from a mere $113,000 per year (exclusive of 401k) to nearly double that.

The problem, of course, is that extre $113,000-ish per year isn't funded

Nothing is free. (You'd think, considering how brilliant they are, Marxoids would be able to master linking. You'd think.)

Since that money isn't free, it is going to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is lower compensation for all the pilots.

Including a great many who never got those comfy gigs.

Unions can provide a valuable counterparty to management. But when the union gets to loot my paycheck and stab me in the back at the same time, maybe I should be able to exercise my freedom of association.

(Remember to look for that Union Label.)

erp said...

Skipper, why pick on Philly? There are union thugs in every nook and cranny across the fruited plain. A union without them would be news.

Harry Eagar said...

You guys re looking a little peaked, so I thought I would throw you some red meat.

http://chronicle.com/article/Reluctant-Crusader/228377/

(I'll let Skipper's defense of free riders speak for itself -- even if he purports to believe that nothing is free.)

erp said...

Instead of red meat, how 'bout we skip to dessert and you post a link to the Russian individualists?

Unless this lady is of independent means which in the interest of honesty and full disclosure should have been mentioned, there's no way I'd believe she turned down a tenured position and a chance at a full professorship, so after I read that, I skipped the rest of the too long article which I gather posits and confirms the 51 sexes Bret uncovered as being the current number extant in the land.

As an aside: The editors of a scholarly journal of high education should know gender is a grammatical term, not a biological one even though apparently Google doesn’t know it either.

Hey Skipper said...

[Harry:] I'll let Skipper's defense of free riders speak for itself ...

And I'll let a progressive's assuming as true that which is far from proven speak for itself.

Harry Eagar said...

Mack has admitted it so that's proof enough for me.

The lady has a husband, she isn't starving. Typical of erp, she doesn't have to read the story to know whats in it.

I don't know why I bother, since erp won't even exert herself to learn the history of her own country, but the first group you could identify as an influential group of individualists in Russia was the Dekembrists.

But the point was not whether I know Russian history (I do) but whether John Jay knows anything about Russian agrculture.

http://mauinews.com/page/blogs.detail/display/3449/Book-Review-220--Rural-Russia-under-the-Old-Regime.html

erp said...

Why only the Decembrists? Any and all Russians not Bolsheviks could also be described as individualists including Cossacks, peasants, clergy, etc.

Again a really inventive non sequitur -- congratulations. What does my being married have to do with my not starving and what do either my marital status or potential lack of nutrients have to do with my familiarity with history?

The problem is you is you speak the language of the left’s version of history and I don’t.