Mount Virtus

Update II, 4:05 PM: Writing on the Townhall blog, Guy Benson offers up some exclusive video footage of the Wisconsin Democrat senators running away. John Hayward at Human Events offers some fascinating insights and concludes with a bit of powerful advice: “Governor Walker should take a page from the handbook of New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and face the unions down. Every teacher who participated in the illegal strike, or brought students to political rallies, should be fired immediately. The taxpayers of Wisconsin don’t have Hollywood celebrities and millionaire union bosses to brew up angry mobs to press their demands. They don’t have the luxury of slipping away from jobs they’re already nervous about to march around the state capitol. The only thing they’ve got is a determined governor, who should join with his colleagues in other states to level the playing field between tax payers and tax consumers, by breaking the public unions once and for all.”

Update, 2:50 PM: Scott Walker sends out a clear message to runaway Democrat legislators: “Their actions by leaving the state and hiding from voting are disrespectful to the hundreds of thousands of public employees who showed up to work today and the millions of taxpayers they represent.”

We can debate whether new Governor Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans have chosen a wise course tactically, but there’s no doubt they have demonstrated some serious political fortitude in taking on a major problem. Senate Bill 11 was supposed to come to the floor today. A key part of the solution to a major budget challenge similar to those faced in other states, SB 11 would restrict government union collective bargaining (except for public safety workers) and requiring public employees to pay greater shares of their health and pension benefits.

Yesterday it was union protesters littering signs all over State Capitol property (a press release from U.S. Senator Ron Johnson’s office also suggests union members surrounding the governor’s private residence), and today it’s this: All 14 state senate Democrats are on the run from the police to prevent a vote from taking place. Wow. Brilliant strategy.

Of more than historical footnote, Wisconsin was the first state in the nation to grant collective bargaining rights to government workers–just over 50 years ago, in 1959. More than two decades earlier none other than President and Democratic Party icon Franklin D. Roosevelt observed what a bad policy idea that would be: (more…)

Colorado is an interesting place for education reform, for many reasons. Among them are issues related to teacher professional membership and representation:

1. In Colorado, public school teachers have a right to join or not join (and not pay fees to) a union or other professional membership organization.
2. In Colorado, elected school boards are not obligated to enter a collective bargaining relationship with teachers or other employees.
3. In Colorado, no state laws define collective bargaining for government workers, nor any of the related procedures and guidelines.
4. In Colorado, school districts with active collective bargaining agreements are required to post them online (and have them available in the school office) for transparency and easy public access.

The first three on the list could apply to very few other states. (I think Utah may be the only other state with all four.) But what they together reflect is a strong basis for local control of education. Local control for school boards to decide — in some cases restricted by the parameters of existing agreements — whether and how to bargain. Even more local control for individual teachers to decide whether and how they want to be represented.

Some of the boundaries of this local control are being tested right now in northern Weld County — Gilcrest, to be exact. The Valley Re-1 school district has an acting “Professional Organizations” policy that appears to grant some sort of representative status to the local Valley Education Association, but looks nothing like a traditional collective bargaining agreement and isn’t recognized as such by the Colorado Department of Education’s online collection. (more…)

Spend 99.9% of member dues political funds on Democrats over Republicans (at a 50% success rate for the most heavily funded candidates)? Check. Give $250,000 in member funds to the 527 group Accountability for Colorado, with a track record of negative political smears — a group denounced by candidates in both parties and by Denver Post columnist Vince Carroll for maliciously distorting the truth? Check.

Remember: The deadline to request the Every Member Option political refund is December 15. CEA members can go directly here to make an online request of the $39 refund. To find out more information, including on local union refunds, visit the Independent Teachers web site.

Today marks the end of an era. The state employee who started the non-union group ColoradoLoses as an answer to Colorado WINS, the union coalition outgoing Governor Bill Ritter invited into Denver by executive order in 2007. Dave Ohmart posted the announcement on his website earlier today:

I am shutting ColoradoLoses down. Thaks so much for the support you showed me over the past two and a half years.

WINS will be shutting down too, I believe. They have lost support and are near bankruptcy.

I don’t have any independent information to confirm or challenge Dave’s assessment and prediction. But it’s important to note that Colorado WINS (a joint coalition of SEIU, AFSCME and AFT) did gain its semi-exalted bargaining position, after Ritter’s signed order, largely as a result of tremendous apathy among state employees. Speaking of apathy, Dave also noted in an email announcement sent this evening:

I wanted to force a petition to demand a new vote. I needed over 2,000 signatures and after 5 weeks only got 130. I have received none in over a week. That tells me that state employees are not interested in my efforts…so I’m closing shop. The website is empty except for the closing statement and it will be down soon.

What will incoming Democratic governor John Hickenlooper do vis a vis Colorado WINS and the Ritter executive order? Probably nothing. Unlike his major opponents, he made no promises to repeal the order. But if Dave is correct, the point largely is moot. We’ll have to wait and see.

Update, 10/13: I know I gave Bennet too much credit for his mealy-mouthed opposition to “the language in that bill,” but couldn’t resist the opportunit for snark. Writing at Denver Business Journal, Ed Sealover expounds further.

While it may be true that all good things must come to an end, that’s not necessarily the case for things that have been trapped in a state of crystallized indecision for many, many months. In the case of Michael Bennet and card-check, though, it was. On February 10, 2009, I first wrote about the appointed Colorado Senator’s Big Labor-sponsored legislative dilemma. Lo, these more than 600 days later, the Denver Post reports Bennet had an epiphany:

After more than a year of equivocating on the Employee Free Choice Act, which would greatly ease union organizing, Bennet said: “I would not support the language in that bill.” Business leaders who have been demanding opposition from Bennet immediately jumped on the words as great encouragement.

“With jobs and the economy being the top issue on the minds of Colorado voters, it’s great news for Colorado small business and individual workers that both candidates said in tonight’s debate that they oppose EFCA,” said Sandra Hagen Solin, state director of the Coalition for Colorado Jobs. “We are very pleased to hear Sen. Bennet, after months of silence, tell Colorado voters that he opposes the bill.”

I never thought I’d see the day. You know, some might chalk it up to election season convenience, but do we really need to be so cynical about the political process? Senator Bennet, thank you for seeing the light on card-check in the final months of your term in office.

A few weeks ago I brought your attention to the devious and deceitful work of the poorly-named Democratic 527 group Accountability for Colorado. The group is heavily funded by teachers unions and the ultra-liberal billionaire tag team of Pat Stryker and Tim Gill, among others.

Accountability for Colorado’s dishonest attack fliers, radio ads and robo-calls against Republican state house candidates — using some of the same recycled outlandish arguments regardless of the candidate — have prompted inquiries to local District Attorney offices, specifically from Karen Cullen (HD 18) and Tom Janich (HD 31).

The latest candidate I’m aware of to have the local D.A. investigate the use of bizarre slanders from Accountability for Colorado is my own state house candidate Libby Szabo. Obviously, I won’t dignify the obnoxious attacks by repeating them — except to say specifically that some of them fail to comport with reality and at least one is so off-the-wall and out of left field that it really shows more about Lefty desperation than anything else. (more…)

(H/T Who Said You Said)

Another reason for conservatives to unite their support behind the more electable candidate for governor: Democrat John Hickenlooper is going to perpetuate the Bill Ritter legacy and coddle government employee unions. Specifically, Hick wouldn’t want to revoke Ritter’s executive order giving union leaders gold-plated access to state government for fear of hurting somebody’s feelings — even if some state employees have suffered. Wow, what leadership:

Meanwhile, as WSYS reports:

Contrast the mayor’s comments with those of Tom Tancredo, the American Constitution Party candidate, who on Friday released a statement that read, “I’ll repeal the Executive Order unionizing state government before lunch on my first day. What about you, Mr. Mayor?

Well, I guess we have our answer now. And the race for Colorado’s next governor becomes that much clearer a decision.

Last week I highlighted the political giving of Colorado education-related groups, making several observations. Among them was the fact that none of the groups — not even the pro-reform **Stand for Children small donor committee — had supported a single Republican candidate.

But I wrote too soon. They just hadn’t reported it yet. An Ed News Colorado story today highlights that Stand for Children has backed some of its Republican (and other) endorsements with campaign cash: (more…)

It’s not often I post up clips from The Daily Show, but this mock-up of a Nevada UFCW local’s anti-Wal Mart protest had me in stitches. If you have five minutes for the laugh, take it:

This incident isn’t an isolated one. In fact, it reminds me of a couple labor-as-management stories I highlighted a few weeks ago.

As a political junkie, among the funniest things I find are the terribly misleading names given to those 527 groups. The Lefty Democrat big donors and unions have operated a slew of them. Remember the misleading Coloradans for Life from election cycle past?

Well, in 2010 we have the Lefty 527 group Accountability for Colorado… And what could truly be less accountable? Spewing poison and slander about conservative state legislative candidates, and no one there to answer a reporter’s phone call. A couple examples have been documented by local newspapers:

• The Pueblo Chieftain reports the group has attacked Republican state house candidate and local businessman Keith Swerdfeger: “The music sounds eerie and the announcer’s voice is full of warning, telling Pueblo radio listeners that someone as greedy as con artist Bernard Madoff and as awful as the British Petroleum oil spill is in their midst and running for office this year.” The Chieftain‘s editors were impelled to call out Accountability for Colorado’s ads as “despicable”
• The Greeley Tribune reports that another Republican state house candidate, Bob Boswell, has been the target of wild smears from this same group (dubbed “as ‘Toxic Bob’ for his stance calling on the state to become a leader in reprocessing nuclear waste as part of his energy plan”), which even his Democratic opponent has denounced as over the top (Nice cover those 527 groups afford, eh? Way to go, campaign finance reform!)

(more…)

What happens when the union becomes management? Just wanted to bring your attention to a couple of recent stories that highlight two different ironic approaches to their separate labor situations:

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.

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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.

One of Colorado’s best and hardest-working people in new media has gone pro. Michael Sandoval, originally an innovative and successful blogger at Slapstick Politics and more recently managing editor of People’s Press Collective, is now on the Colorado 2010 election beat for National Review Online.

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.

For what it’s worth, if you want a glimpse of the public mindset concerning 16 major institutions in American society, you should check out the new Gallup survey (H/T Mike Antonucci). The following are some salient observations on how favorably Americans view the 16 major institutions: (more…)

Americans for Tax Reform is out with its annual Index of Worker Freedom this week. The idea is to look on a state-by-state basis to determine the extent of employee individual rights and freedoms in workplaces based on the laws and policies of their respective states.

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? (more…)