The chronic inability of Colorado’s appointed U.S. Senator Michael Bennet to take a position on the union card check bill (also known as EFCA) has moved deep into the realm of bizarre self-parody. It’s a political joke that has lasted so long that the label of “Both Ways Bennet” has been branded permanently on his (hopefully brief) career.
A member of the Denver Post editorial board, Chuck Plunkett observes that the long-awaited seating of Al Franken as Minnesota’s U.S. Senator has once again ratcheted up the pressure that EFCA could come to a vote and force Michael Bennet into the uncomfortable position of, well, having to take one:
I’ve asked Bennet’s office whether he wants to come on with his position on card check. (We oppose it.)
As observers are aware, he’s been more than coy on the question, and our board is among those who’d love to know where Bennet, who faces re-election in 2010, stands on this important question.
Update: Bennet’s office says the senator isn’t prepared to comment at this time. So we’ll keep waiting.
Then again, Michael Bennet still isn’t quite ready. It’s been nearly six months we’ve waited thus far. What’s a few weeks more at this point? In honor of the never-ending saga, here’s a quick trip down memory lane 2009 for Mount Virtus readers: (more…)
Say what? The Washington Examiner reports that Democrats are proposing to exempt unionized workers from the massive tax hike needed to fund government health care:
With cost estimates already as high as $1.6 trillion, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has proposed paying for the bill in part by taxing health care benefits for workers who earn more than $100,000, or $200,000 for married couples, according to those familiar with the discussions.
Baucus is also weighing a tax based on the value of health care benefits that exceed a yet-to-be determined cap. A tax on benefits that exceed the cap by a mere $3,000 could amount to $750 in taxes annually for a worker who earns as little as $34,000, say experts.
But those union members serving under collective bargaining agreements would not be subjected to the tax, according to proposals under discussion.
Talk about adding insult to injury. Bad for liberty, bad for the economy, bad for health care, bad for taxpayers. And now this? (more…)
Colorado Governor Bill Ritter screwed up with his handling of the Senate Bill 180 veto. Stumbling across a good public policy decision, he provoked the wrath of labor union special interests.
Since Bill Ritter has found himself on this sensible path, perhaps he could continue a little longer and throw his weight behind an idea which time has come: financial transparency for labor unions representing state and local government employees.
Of course, in doing so, Ritter would have to buck the trend of Big Labor cronyism being advanced by his party leader, President Barack Obama. From my recent Independence Institute op-ed: (more…)
Update: It’s also worth noting that EFCA supporters have engaged in a full-fledged campaign of deception. Someone should ask Senator Michael Bennet if he’s buying it.
We know the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (aka card-check):
Now, thanks to a new report released by the Workforce Fairness Institute, we see more clearly and concretely the real beneficiaries of this three-headed monster legislation: (more…)
I asked before if Bill Ritter called the bluff of Big Labor with his veto of Senate Bill 180. If we’re to judge by last Friday’s union-organized rally, then Ritter made a mistake. To see what I mean, take a step over to Face The State’s slideshow, and see signs like “Why does Ritter hate fire fighters?” and “Ritter lied to my dad” (or just Senator Lois Tochtrop’s angry expression).
Of course, Ritter didn’t make a mistake from the standpoint of choosing good policy over bad policy. But he has made four mistakes surrounding this issue:
- Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep. Backroom campaign promises can come back to burn you. As observed at ColoradoPols and demonstrated by the little girl’s “Ritter lied to my dad” sign, Colorado’s Democrat chief executive apparently promised something like SB 180 (and probably even stronger) to the fire fighters union to win their support. Whoops.
- If you intend to veto a bill, tell your party to kill it earlier. With Democrats in charge in both the state house and state senate, Ritter could have conveyed that he didn’t want to be forced into make a very public and politically damaging decision on SB 180.
- Don’t keep harping on the veto to the media. From today’s Denver Post: “The bulk of Ritter’s end-of-session news conference revolved around his vetoes of the labor bills.” (H/T Rocky Mountain Right)
- When you get called on your mistakes, don’t get caught astroturfing to save your hide. Again, Rocky Mountain Right made a great catch here. A minor offense compared to the first three, to be sure, but it keeps the fires stoked (no pun intended) in the blogosphere and gives the story more traction than it otherwise would have.
Meanwhile, I’ll continue to sit back, prop my feet up, and enjoy the show. Will there be more mistakes to come?
Update, 9:30 AM: AFL-CIO press release in response to Ritter’s SB 180 veto pasted below the fold. Also, Amy Oliver notes that several legislators from northern Colorado went against the will of the people in voting for SB 180 — having benefited from thousands in labor campaign contributions.
Yesterday I gave Governor Bill Ritter kudos for the veto of SB 180. Today’s Denver Post follow-up by Lynn Bartels is headlined with the statement that Rep. Edward Casso and organized labor interests see the decision as a “tipping point”.
It could be my imagination, but I got the impression from reading the story that Ritter essentially is saying something like this to the unions:
So yeah, I have this penchant of making a wide spectrum of different groups really mad at me. But you guys are labor, and I’m a Democrat. Where are you going to go? I had a better chance of creating an open enemy in the Chambers of Commerce and the Municipal League, so I decided to keep them happy. Go ahead. Deal with it for now. I may try to find a way to make it up to you later. But if not, what will you do about it? Seriously?
In other words, Bill Ritter’s decision to veto SB 180 was good policy, but promoting good policy may not have been his primary motivation. But is it a dare? How far will he go before Big Labor takes him up on it?
Honestly, though, it’s hard to figure out. Was Bill Ritter really indecisive about this issue enough to wait to the last minute to make his intentions known? Was he waiting for something to change his mind? Why string along the labor unions?
From the standpoint of good politics it doesn’t make sense, even if the final outcome prevented bad policy. (more…)
It’s not often I laud Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, but he is to be commended today for choosing good public policy over political pressures by vetoing Senate Bill 180 — the firefighter collective bargaining legislation.
While Ritter’s official statement put the matter more diplomatically than I have, he didn’t buy the phony argument about firefighter safety:
Third, the debate on this bill raised important issues about firefighter safety, but there are better ways to address these issues than mandatory collective bargaining in certain communities. We must address firefighter safety at the state level. Doing so ensures that all areas of Colorado can benefit. Under this bill, however, the safety issues would only be addressed in the jurisdictions required to engage in collective bargaining, which would unfairly limit the scope of the needed reforms to protect firefighter safety. I have heard from Colorado fire chiefs who have urged me to veto this bill since it would not create a statewide standard for firefighter safety.
Unfortunately for Democrats, this decision is only likely to escalate intra-party warfare. The question of the hour is how long it will take for the Big Labor LIAR to open fire against the incumbent governor. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem too likely that Bill Ritter will gain much politically (except sparing the wrath of the Colorado Municipal League) from today’s veto announcement.
Update, 6/4: Thanks to a comment left by Politically Correct Death author Francis Beckwith, I refer you to his newer and more relevant book Defending Life. I’ll have to check it out myself very soon.
Update, 9:30 PM: My final thought (for now) on the matter, from Doug Wilson: “The question is whether you would be willing to reduce a society to anarchy for the sake of saving that kid, when you (should) know that the anarchy you introduce is going to be responsible for the deaths of far more children than you managed to save.” And for further edification, I will commend the thoughts of Dr. Albert Mohler as being squarely right on the matter.
Thanks to one of the more thoughtful liberals I know, David Thielen, a link to this morning’s post about Dr. George Tiller and Private William Long was added in a ColoradoPols diary. Here are some of the more colorful comments it generated, along with my replies. (more…)
This report from the Detroit News strikes close to home:
Oakland County is taking a major hit in General Motors Corp.’s restructuring in bankruptcy, with an estimated 6,600 of the 8,900 factory jobs lost in Michigan based in the affluent county north of Detroit.
But one of the plants to be idled, in Orion Township, is in the running to build a small car in the future, said GM spokesman Chris Lee. The Orion site currently assembles the mid-size Chevrolet Malibu and Pontiac G6.
“It’s a real sad day,” said UAW Local 549 President Doug Bowman in Pontiac. Workers at Pontiac Assembly, which makes the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups, were told by plant officials at 8:15 a.m. the 3.4 million-square-foot plant will close in October or possibly sooner, Bowman said. In reality, the workers may have just a few weeks in the plant. The plant already is slated to be idled for five weeks starting June 11 to reduce inventory. The Pontiac Stamping plant, originally opened in 1926, has been put on standby capacity and will be idled December 2010.
It’s a sign of the times, one of those things that’s hard to put into words. My dad worked more than 30 years in the Pontiac plant. My Grandpa worked there before him. The world is changing fast, and Pontiac must feel like a bleak and desperate victim of it all.
Here’s to a better future for Michigan, for our nation. And on a less serious note, here’s to the 2012 Congressional Motors Pelosi GTxi SS/Rt Sports Edition.
Sound the alarm on Bill Ritter’s re-election chances. Hard-core Democrats are swearing they’re going to abandon ship, at least if you take the Dead Governors at their word.
But really, Ritter’s sagging popularity is not exactly newsworthy for those who have been paying attention the past couple months or so.
The real reason I gave a link to Colorado Pols was the unintentional humor behind a new union political group aimed at challenging (or at least threatening) Colorado’s incumbent Democratic governor:
A group calling itself Labor Initiatives Against Ritter – or LIAR – has filed the paperwork needed with the Internal Revenue Service to begin raising money for political purposes.
Mark Johnson, an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers member from the Colorado Springs area, is listed as the group’s agent. He declined to comment on LIAR’s plans.
Plenty of Colorado union members and agency fee-paying workers may have wondered where all their hard-earned money goes. But now we will be able to say with much greater certainty that a portion of it is going to a LIAR.
“Trust us.”
As the Grand Junction Sentinel reports today, the day of reckoning draws closer for Colorado Governor Bill Ritter to decide on the bad policy that is SB 180 — a costly favor to Big Labor.
The Sentinel today also editorializes strongly against SB 180 — using many of the same arguments I’ve brought forward before, and even one I haven’t really emphasized:
Strikes would be prohibited under the legislation, but there are no sanctions listed in the bill for those who violate the provision.
Now it would seem that Bill Ritter has an opportunity to start mending fences with folks on the Western Slope, where his popularity is low and heckling is a common greeting for him, by vetoing SB 180. He could listen to Grand Junction mayor Bruce Hill, for example:
“If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” Hill said, “and why fix it in Denver instead of in our own community?”
(more…)
For the handful of you out there who aren’t tired of hearing me talk about teachers unions, contract impasses, and sick-outs this week, you can listen to a new interview with Brad Jones on the most recent Face The State weekend edition (Segment 3). You also can hear an interview with U.S. Senate candidate Cleve Tidwell and discussions on some of Face The State’s big Colorado stories from the week that just passed.
Update, 10:00 AM: Labor Pains’ Justin Wilson has a more thorough refutation of Big Labor’s new report here.
In an effort to ramp up their efforts to pass the Employee Forced Choice Act (EFCA), Big Labor is touting a new report that suggests employers are rampantly breaking the law (PDF) during union organizing elections. The problem? The report’s data all are based on interviews with union organizers — hardly an unbiased source.
But anything goes. While Big Labor appeals to EFCA apologists who need rational cover with impressive-sounding reports, it seems they also think they must appeal to the populist masses of religious believers. So they have sent clergy member lobbyists to Washington, DC, to insist that card-check legislation is a “moral imperative” of “social justice”. (Huh?)
And here I thought the “God opposes the secret ballot” phenomenon was just in Colorado. (more…)
Feeling ill because of the teacher sickout in Boulder Valley School District? Another 269 teachers came down with the phantom cough today.
Few things can drive people as crazy as trying to figure out the ins-and-outs of Colorado labor laws and policies, and how they apply to teachers and possible teacher strikes. So Mike Rosen had me on his show this morning (check May 19, 9 AM hour … I come on during the second half of the hour) to give the lowdown and shed some more light on the goings-on in Boulder.
If you’re bored, or maybe sick at home with the blue flu, please take time to listen and let me know what you think.
Thanks also to Complete Colorado for the kind link.
Quick post, but an important read for a Friday: As clearly and as effectively as I’ve seen done, Steven Malanga’s Wall Street Journal column explains the negative impact of public-sector union strength on the well-being of taxpayers. (H/T Labor Pains)
Read it.
Maybe it will help clarify the reasons why Governor Bill Ritter ought to veto Senate Bill 180.
So Colorado Governor Bill Ritter has a couple tough decisions to make. That could pose a problem.
This morning the Denver Post’s John Ingold follows up on the political challenges posed to Ritter from the legislature placing Big Labor bills Senate Bill 180 and House Bill 1170 on his desk. The Governor sure is talking a good game:
“This is not a zero-sum game,” Ritter said. “The way I approach this is not based upon this notion that somebody wins, somebody loses. The way I approach this is ‘What is the best public policy for us?’ “
In that case, from the standpoint of “best public policy”, vetoing the costly and intrusive SB 180 is a no-brainer — for all the reasons I’ve previously explained. HB 1170 is problematic for its own reasons, as the legislation would unbalance the scale of leverage toward labor unions during contract disputes.
It will be interesting to see where Bill Ritter comes down on these bills — whether he has the courage and good judgment to send them both to the trash bin. His high-minded rhetoric aside, I’d like to see something other than shameless political posturing.
(Co-authored by El Presidente and Ben DeGrow)
We were privileged with the opportunity last Saturday to sit down and conduct an exclusive half-hour two-on-one interview with Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ryan Frazier (Frazier’s two GOP primary contenders are Weld County district attorney Ken Buck and businessman Cleve Tidwell). The conversation was wide-ranging and informative. We left with a clearer picture of the candidate’s vision and the campaign’s direction.
We began by bringing up a recent article in The Hill that portrayed Frazier as part of a “band of centrists”, and asked him what he thought of the characterization. He responded: “I’m Ryan Frazier, and I do what I believe to be right. I’ve never been much for labels…. I’ll leave the labeling to the press.” Though he did choose the word “principled” to describe his philosophy, he was fairly adamant about not being categorized into a box.
Nor did Frazier express any dismay that Beltway Republican Party bigwigs have taken a wait-and-see approach to his candidacy (all the better in light of NRSC’s recent Florida endorsement): “I’m not really concerned about folks in Washington DC. I never expected to be their number one choice. As a matter of fact, I think that’s why our candidacy can be so significant. Because we’re not the establishment. We are a grassroots campaign…. I’m not as concerned about whether they think I’m a top choice.” (more…)
Developing story… Last night the board of the Jefferson County Education Association (JCEA)( (Colorado’s largest local teachers union and an affiliate of the Colorado Education Association) voted to declare an impasse in negotiations over renewing the collective bargaining contract with Jeffco Public Schools for the 2009-10 school year. This morning JCEA notified the school district of its decision.
According to the school district, the core of the dispute revolves around a proposed compensation agreement to address relative funding shortages during the current economic downturn. Under this plan, teachers would continue to receive their automatic steps and levels for acquiring seniority and credit hours.
The plan rejected by JCEA also would offer teachers an additional one-time 1 percent pay bonus for November 2009, making the increase permanent for 2010-11 if an additional $11 million in state funds comes through after budget projections are updated in January 2010.
(Editorial comment: At first glance, given the current economic downturn and the plight of many in the community, this creative proposal seems eminently fair.) (more…)
