1. Take the hard line in staff bargaining negotiations: Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency (EIA) reports on the plight of the Ohio Education Association — whose employees today went on strike against the state teachers union
2. Contract picketing duty to non-union workers at minimum wage: Christine Hall of the Competitive Enterprise Institute highlights a new video of CEI’s Vincent Vernuccio crashing a carpenters’ union protest in Washington, D.C., only to find the picketers marching and chanting in the August humidity were non-union

Hey, you can’t make this stuff up. Great work as usual by EIA and CEI.

I know I’m biased, but watching this video is 4 minutes well spent if you want to understand how some Colorado unions representing teachers and other school employees put money and power before common decency. Watch non-union Pueblo school employee Becky Robertson tell about the year she missed the September deadline to opt out of paying union fees because of family medical emergencies, and what happened when she asked for the money back:

Thank you, Colorado teachers unions (not to mention the school district negotiators that agree to make these deals). And yes, it’s entirely legal in Colorado. For more information on the school districts where non-union teachers and other employees have to go through pains each year to opt out of expensive union fees, and the deadlines for both union and non-union members to opt out (usually in August and/or September), check out the Independent Teachers website.

His first posting helps to get a national audience up to speed on our state’s U.S. Senate race. (By the way, thanks to Michael, for the incoming link.) Here’s guessing he’s not itching to provide similar treatment of Colorado’s roller-coaster gubernatorial campaign.

Anyway, over the next few months I look forward to good original reporting and more insightful analysis from NRO’s home-grown Colorado correspondent. And I encourage my readers to bookmark his page for important updates.

• Congress slipped from next-to-last in 2009 to dead last this year, with only 11 percent saying they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence
• No institution lost more confidence over the past year than the Presidency, which dropped from 51 percent to 36 percent — falling in rank from fifth to seventh
• The three most respected American institutions, and the only ones to achieve high confidence from a majority of Americans: The military (76 percent), small business (66 percent) and the police (59 percent)
• Apart from Congress, the three least respected American institutions are: HMOs (19 percent), big business (19 percent) and organized labor (20 percent) — though HMOs and big business actually ticked up in confidence from 2009
• Only one other institution recorded an increase in confidence from the American public: the medical system, which went from 36 percent to 40 percent
• Check out the survey to see where other institutions were rated: U.S. Supreme Court; criminal justice system; church/organized religion; public schools; banks; newspapers; television news

As far as a bellwether of popular sentiment heading into the 2010 election, the sum of these results indicates a mood very favorable to Republicans. Especially encouraging is the dramatic distinction between big business and small business. So is the declining faith in the federal government and its corruption and bureaucracy, which has vastly overreached and finally drawn the attention of a growing number of Americans.

Our national character long has distrusted big institutions (Big Government, Big Business, Big Labor)… but what are we going to do about it now?

Of course, the visceral disdain for Democratic Party rule and the fruits of Progressivism should not be confused with anything approaching a badly-needed long-term victory for liberty and limited government. In the battle for hearts and minds, little has been achieved. A lot of hard work remains. But it does count for something. Just observing….

Finally, a memo to political candidates and campaign staffs: If surveys like this one don’t inform your press releases and talking points, you really aren’t trying that hard.

ATR looks at whether a state has Right-to-Work laws, paycheck protection, what the share of public and private sector union membership is, etc. In December 2007, when the Index was first released, Colorado received an A-minus (MP3).

This year?

Colorado earned a B. Not bad, but we seem to be going in the wrong direction. I can’t imagine the past few years with Bill Ritter as governor had anything to do with that! [/sarcasm]

What brought our grade down? Some you probably guessed right off the top: no right-to-work law, no paycheck protection law. But ATR also notes our constitutional amendment with a minimum wage indexed to inflation and a slew of health insurance mandates greater than the national average.

And who do we have to replace Ritter…? Oh yeah. Bad question.

Carole Jean Badertscher was a California nurse who just wanted to go to work and take care of her patients — but the SEIU was determined not to let that happen. The union’s contract with Badertscher’s employer, the Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, had expired, and the union had called a strike in response. Badertscher and other nurses, unwilling to abandon their patients for the sake of a stronger SEIU hand in contract negotiations, resigned from the union and went to work. In turn, she was threatened by the union bosses, who promised to have her prosecuted under California’s antique professional-strikebreaker statute, which was long ago pre-empted by federal law. Badertscher and other nurses were told that they would be fined and could be thrown in jail for months.

But there was more at stake in the case for the SEIU than the right to bully nurses in the Pomona Valley. The SEIU local had also informed hospital employees that they were legally required to keep paying union dues….

When Badertscher sought legal relief from the threats and paycheck-plundering of the SEIU, her lawyers did not expect to find themselves arguing their case in front of the man who was the SEIU’s own chief lawyer until a few months ago, when President Obama named him to the National Labor Relations Board….

Yes, that would be the one and only Craig Becker — who has refused to recuse himself from this case. The Craig Becker who used to be SEIU’s top attorney. The Craig Becker given a recess appointment by Obama after the Senate failed to muster 60 votes in support of the union attorney’s nomination to the post.

Not that Becker was without support. He did muster the vote of the appointed junior Colorado Senator Michael Bennet. In spite of it all, Bennet’s decision over the union card check bill lingers on.

Meanwhile, Michael Bennet’s brief term in office is counting down to its last five months. But you have to admire his consistency: consistently indecisive on the card check bill and consistently vulnerable to the lobbying of the Obama White House and Big Labor. I can’t wait for a junior Senator who at least represents Colorado.

Or maybe Bennet would be interested in publicly criticizing Becker for not recusing himself in the case of the nurse vs. the SEIU bullies? I’m not holding my breath on this one.

Michael Bennet has been stuck in indecision on the union card check issue almost since the day he was appointed to office a year and a half ago. Maybe the junior senator figured he doesn’t have to answer the question because he cast a backdoor vote for card check via the Craig Becker nomination back in February — but still losing some Big Labor backing to his primary rival Andrew Romanoff.

At least by that time next year we have good reason to hope Bennet won’t have to worry any more about constituents pestering him for his opinion on such issues. Leaving behind public office for private life has a way of adding to one’s solitude.

Ben DeGrow is a Contributing Author at People’s Press Collective, Your Source for Colorado Politics.

About 20 Association members, representing 40,000 fellow members, recently interviewed candidates for Colorado’s U.S. Senate seat. These members decided that CEA should wait until the August 10 Primary Election to recommend a U.S. Senate candidate to our members.

The process these members used was to invite all the declared candidates in both major political parties to complete written questionnaires about public education issues and appear for personal interviews. The interview team invited Sen. Michael Bennet (D), the incumbent; Andrew Romanoff (D); Ken Buck (R); and Jane Norton (R). Bennet and Romanoff participated fully in our questionnaire-interview process, but the Republican candidates declined to do so.

Guided by this process, the interview team declared that both Democratic candidates are strong supporters of public education and our Association’s positions on education issues – and that our Association will wait until August 10 and then recommend the candidate who wins the Democratic Primary.

I contacted the Jane Norton campaign to see what they had heard from the CEA and what their response was. They didn’t remember receiving a questionnaire, but said they “were asked to attend a PAC interview.” The only reason I decided to write this up was the colorfully crafted response of Norton spokesman Josh Penry:

There are a lot of Republican teachers who support Jane, and Jane taught herself for a while. But we concluded that we’d have a better chance of earning an endorsement from Andrew’s mom or Senator Bennet’s butler, so we respectfully declined the interview.

Indeed. Similarly, I don’t hold my breath every year waiting for the CEA Christmas card that never comes to my house. But it’s funny to watch the elusive two-step some candidate-endorsing groups take to pretend they are strictly non-partisan entities. Thus the union’s email to members concludes:

The recommendation to wait until the August 10 Primary Election means that our Association is giving equal weight to the two Democratic candidates and encour-aging Democratic members to work and vote for their favorite. It also means that our Association will not recommend a Republican candidate because neither participated in our process.

To union leaders’ credit, the email was followed by links to each of the four major Senate candidate campaigns. But you have to find interesting the weird dances created by the juncture of partisan political campaigns and the U.S. tax code. Now on to something more serious…

Insiders say Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is championing the measure, has as many as 62 votes. That tally includes Udall and Bennet.

Reid’s mandate would overturn 75 years of labor law and conflict with Colorado’s system, which has served this state well. State and local governments here already recognize collective bargaining of employees if voters agree to it. Many public employees in the Centennial State have gained such rights, and routinely set contracts with employers through collective bargaining.

Reid’s measure would require that public safety workers be given collective bargaining rights without voter approval. The Colorado Municipal League, which opposes the measure, points out that the federal mandate would instantly affect thousands of employees and Colorado taxpayers at every level.

The bill first emerged in 2007 with the Democratic Congress and has been floating around since. It’s an entirely unnecessary change to the law — a sop to Big Labor — that also would have the effect of trampling individual rights and local control, and costing taxpayers more in the long run.

Check out this post I wrote a couple years ago with links to insightful commentary and a podcast interview that is as relevant as when I recorded it three years ago. If you have any such inclination, please add your voices to those telling Colorado’s U.S. Senators to stand up for our state and not their party’s special interest funders!

Enter Dave Ohmart, with his latest report:

In a recent incident in Pueblo, Colorado WINS prevented Sgt. Jeff Hotchkiss, of the Department of Corrections, from participating in a vote that would have affected his work schedule. A few union members, very few, voted to make the correction officers’ work schedule 12 hours per day. The sergeant, and pretty much all other officers, were not allowed to participate in the vote. WINS told Jeff that if he wanted to vote, he had to join their organization and pay (now) 1.25% of his gross salary in dues.

Sgt. Hotchkiss filed a discrimination suit against the department. Tossed around by the bureaucracy, department heads were unsure how to proceed. They eventually held a tier II grievance, but the Sergeant never filed a grievance. He filed charges on discrimination, stating that he was a state employee discriminated against by the “partnership” in the vote.

ColoradoWINS refuses to answer questions about the event. They will not provide the names of WINS members or the number of members who participated in the vote. Even the Department of Corrections is restrictive when it comes to providing this information. Sgt. Hotchkiss is still waiting for a response…

Unintended consequences unleashed. And as Ohmart points out, Democrat gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper “has made no commitment” on the issue. We taxpayers have no reason to expect anything less. But what about state employees?

(H/T Complete Colorado) The Denver Post‘s Tim Hoover reports today:

Days before the legislature adjourns, some Democrats are pushing a proposal that would guarantee unions could still collect dues from state employees — even if the next governor is not union-friendly.

The effort comes in the form of an amendment to House Bill 1181, a mostly technical bill dealing with policies of the Department of Personnel and Administration. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins, added an amendment in committee Wednesday that essentially would cement into law Gov. Bill Ritter’s 2007 executive order that allows unions to deduct membership fees from a state worker’s check, if the employee consents.

Besides the policy history and ramifications, which the story largely gets right, the HB 1181 union buy-off just screams something at me. What is it, you ask? Statehouse Democrats recognize they already have pushed the Eject button on their monopoly State Capitol power and in the waning days of the legislative session are now pushing the Panic button. From their perspective, the time to help entrench union power in state government is now — before they lose their own levers of power.

The Democrats see the political storm clouds coming. They are preparing to lose control of one or both houses of the state legislature, and maybe even the governor’s office. Of course, that doesn’t mean this fall’s election results are some kind of inevitably. Instead, now is the time for conservatives to keep their eyes on the ball and shrewdly seize the opportunities presented them.

I’ve been busy of late, but I’m planning to update my predictions of the state house and senate races soon. And for those who have been asking, my colleagues and I are working out the last technical glitches and preparing to launch a new Survey of Colorado’s Political Temperature for the month of May. Thank you for your patience: Stay tuned….

But should we be surprised at such an extra-cautious strategy from the junior Senator who last year boldly blurted that he would vote for heavily unpopular Obama Care even if it cost him his appointed job?

No, not really. Michael Bennet after all is an elected official known for more than a year of legendary indecision on the union card-check bill (unless you count his vote for the Craig Becker NLRB appointment).

Bottom line: The Andrew Romanoff-Michael Bennet primary figures to get more interesting before Colorado Democrats decide between the unpopular, handpicked Appointed One and the once rising star now shunned by the party establishment.

Sure, the Colorado Education Association loves to increase funding for K-12 schools and retain member jobs. But sometimes, its pleas for school funding simply don’t add up. Yesterday’s CEA blog entry “Amazon: play fair, support school funding” is just such an example:

In other words, Amazon firing its affiliates does nothing to impact the fact that Amazon.com is still required to collect sales tax or, at a minimum alert their customers to this requirement under state law. The giant retailer is using its political weight to protest losing its tax-free status and having to compete on par with other Colorado retailers.

Why should you care? Because sales tax revenues fund public schools. A portion of all sales tax revenue goes into the State Education fund, the first source for nearly all K-12 public education programs, from the state’s share of Total Program to funding for full-day kindergarten.

By ensuring that all companies doing business in Colorado collect sales tax from retail sales, we are ensuring that revenue continues to flow into the State Education Fund. By creating a more level playing field for Colorado companies to compete with online retail giants, we are helping support local companies — this also raises property and income tax revenues that help fund public education.

Perhaps CEA should strive to be more honest, or at least to do its homework by reading this thorough and careful analysis from the Tax Foundation (H/T Free Colorado). Among other things, the analysis shows that Amazon taxes:

• Are “unlikely to produce revenue in the near-term”
• Make the playing field less (not more) level between brick-and-mortar businesses and their Internet-based counterparts “because they require Internet-based businesses to track thousands of sales tax bases and rates while brick-and-mortar businesses need to track only one”
• “Undermine legal certainty, burden interstate commerce, and harm economic growth”

So maybe CEA is ignorant of tax policy and chose to accept the official fiscal note that claimed Colorado’s Amazon Tax (aka HB 1193) would raise nearly $5 million more state revenue per year. Or maybe CEA is just trying to provide cover for its allies in the legislative majority at the State Capitol. Because after all, who can provide a better It’s For the Kids propaganda moment than the teachers union?

There’s one way to tell which scenario is more likely to be the case. Find out whether CEA opposes SB 177 (PDF), an expansion of an agricultural tax credit that legislative fiscal analysts say will negatively impact local property tax collection for schools.

CEA’s choice in supporting tax policies conveniently appears less dependent on how the policies affect school funding than on how they affect the interests of its Left-leaning political coalition.

EFF labor policy analyst Rachel Culbertson joined me and my Independence Institute colleague Mike Krause for a conversation to whet your appetite for the book. Click the play button below (or follow this link) to listen to the 12-minute iVoices podcast:

For more detail on the book’s argument about how we can give workers more freedom in designing a labor model for the 21st Century and how it might work in Colorado public education and other government agencies, check out Ed Is Watching.

While rival Andrew Romanoff has won backing from the Teamsters and UFCW, Bennet at least finally has gained something for putting his neck out to try to ram Obama Care through Congress.

Interestingly, The Atlantic (edited by Michael Bennet’s brother) reports the same story about the SEIU endorsement and then selectively notes:

Bennet is considered vulnerable, but his race rates behind Indiana, Arkansas, Delaware, and Nevada as threats to Democrats’ edge in the Senate. He currently trails Republican challenger Ken Buck by a slim margin….

Bennet polls better than Romanoff against various GOP challengers, meaning a Bennet win in the August primary would give Democrats a better shot at retaining his seat.

Uh, really? No mention of any polling matchups with the advertised Republican frontrunner Jane Norton? The candidate who trails by 14 points “would give Democrats a better shot” than the candidate who trails by 7? At least Romanoff supporters know one source they can view with a skeptical eye.