Mount Virtus

Why the cryptic title: Ed is Watching? It’s the name of a new blog I’ve started contributing to as part of the Independence Institute’s Education Policy Center. If you go there now, you’ll already find posts up on charter schools, on Flunked: The Movie’s Colorado debut, and on a new major school choice law in Georgia.

From Jon Caldara’s blog:

Ed’s job is to keep an eye on, “… legislators, state officials, school boards, administrators, principals, teachers, and other people and groups that have an influence on public education in this great state.” So to get your daily education fix, check in with Ed and see what he has to say.

Please stop by the site, bookmark it for regular visits, and tell all your friends!

Flunked: The Movie - an Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF) production - comes to Colorado next Wednesday, May 21. The Independence Institute (where I work) is sponsoring the showing of this spectacular 47-minute film about the success stories that should inspire transformational change in our nation’s education system. The film, narrated by Joe Mantegna, is more engaging and entertaining than your average documentary. Here’s a preview:

Also, you can listen to this iVoices podcast recorded today with EFF’s Steve Maggi to learn more about the film. And go here to find out how to sign up for the May 21 event.

Update, Part Deux: Sources have contacted me to correct my update. The Act hasn’t officially passed the Senate yet. The final vote will be later this week. The first vote was a procedural motion that appears to be a strong indicator of a final vote. Anyway, there is hope for this bad legislation to die yet.

Update: Just as I was publishing this post, it looks like the Act has passed the Senate, with a lot of so-called Republicans also enabling the legislation. So goes the world…

Unsurprisingly, the Democrats in Congress haven’t accomplished much since they took over. Most notably, Nancy Pelosi’s 2006 “plan” to bring down gas prices is still in the works.

One special interest group to which Democrats have been busy pandering is Big Labor. They keep trying to take away workers’ rights to a secret ballot (aka the “Employee Free Choice Act”) as a means of growing private-sector union membership.

Meanwhile, Democrats in Washington have been trying to coerce the growth of union clout in the public sector, too. The issue at hand is the Public Safety Employee-Employer Cooperation Act of 2007 (S. 2123), which has made its reappearance in the Senate, having initially stalled there after passing the House:

Under current law, every state has the ability to set policies that govern its public workforce. In some states, police, firefighters and paramedics belong to unions that collectively bargain for their contracts. In others, unions representing public-security workers can bargain over pay, but not over benefits or work rules. And in some others, these workers can choose not to belong to a union.

Democrats want to change this for the entire country. A bill that passed the House last year would make the top officials at local unions the exclusive bargaining agents for public safety officers in every town or city with more than 5,000 people. They would also have the authority to bargain for everything — pay, benefits and work rules. The goal is to give labor the whip hand with local governments, and further coerce nonunion members to join the dues-paying ranks.

A top-down dictum to small local governments to mandate union recognition for police, fire, and other public safety workers? It’s a lot more efficient for Big Labor leaders to push the change at the federal level than to wade through the various laws of different states that have different prevailing views about public-sector labor relations. And Congressional Democrats are enabling them, without any compelling reason in the public interest and, in fact, many potential harms to the public interest.

If you want more information, the Alliance for Worker Freedom has a ton of resources on the issue. There’s also a great brief written by James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation.

Last year, when this issue was first hot, I interviewed Weld County Sheriff John Cooke for an iVoices podcast to discuss the potential local impact of the federal legislation.

I about fell out of my chair when I read this local CBS4 TV news story (video also available):

An out-of-state architectural firm has billed an Adams County School District nearly $60,000, for hotels, meals and travel expenses in the last year but the district hasn’t bothered to ask for, or review, a single receipt.

“It’s negligence,” said Kevin O’Brien, a former IRS agent, CPA and business ethics professor at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. “The public has a right to expect there will be some minimum checking on those receipts because its really the public’s money.”

Adams County School District 50 hired Healy, Bender and Associates of Naperville, Ill., last year. The school district enlisted the company to help design a new high school and elementary school and renovate Westminster High School and Ranum Middle School. [emphasis added]

This development is only going to fuel citizens’ distrust of school district management, especially in light of the the Denver Post report that plenty of turmoil already exists over how to spend the $98.6 million bond money approved by local voters in 2006.

Watch the CBS4 news video, if you get a few minutes. Reporter Brian Maass closes with a remark that should inspire gift ideas for School District 50 administrators.
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Before the Wings-Avs series, I said I wouldn’t write anymore about it until the series was over. Well, it’s over… and how. Simply put, the Red Wings dominated. And this blogger smiled.

My condolences to Constructively Reasonable. Your consolation will be having lost to the eventual Stanley Cup champion.

It’s the first day of May, and big flakes of snow are falling in my backyard. Yesterday it was 80 degrees and sunny. Call it springtime in Denver. Maybe global warming is taking a holiday.

The Denver Post has put up my exclusive commentary on Gov. Bill Ritter’s November executive order, which may soon end up unionizing two-thirds of state government. Here’s a taste:

Thanks to Gov. Bill Ritter’s gold-plated invitation, union leaders are on the verge of taking a major role in state government. Taxpayers and dissenting workers should pay attention.

Under the terms of Ritter’s November 2 executive order, 30 percent of the affected workers in an occupational group have to express formal interest in a union “partnership” election. The Colorado WINS union coalition that formed four days after the order has collected enough signatures to hold five separate elections that could make it the “exclusive representative” of more than 21,000 state employees.

On March 19, the Association of Colorado State Patrol Professionals (ACSPP) won the first union “partnership” election with roughly three-fourths of ballots cast, even though less than a true majority of state troopers actually voted for it.

The upcoming Colorado WINS elections could yield similar results.

If you’re looking for more details and footnotes behind the arguments in the column, check out my new issue paper. For those with less time, the two-page backgrounder is here. Auditory learners can catch the podcast. All compliments of the Independence Institute.

John Mark Reynolds (H/T Hugh Hewitt) has penned a clever parody of a classic ballad - here’s an excerpt (you’ll have to imagine your own guitar vocals, or if you’re ambitious enough, record an MP3 in hopes of getting on Hewitt’s program):

Does any one know where the love of Gen Y goes
When the press turns the minutes to hours?
The pundits all say they’d have made Chesapeake Bay
If they’d put Reverend Wright far behind him.
They might have split up and so not have capsized;
Instead he pressed on and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
On the Internet lists he was compiling.

As a son of Michigan, I know the original Gordon Lightfoot song well, respecting its peculiar and unforgettable blend of the cheesy and the sublime. Speaking of cheesy, I was struck by the thought of another pop culture ship-sinking metaphor for the Barack Obama campaign, in three parts:

“Audacity? Hope? Forget it, I’m king of the world!”

“Reverend Wright! Dead ahead!!”

“Wh-wh-what happened? We were unsinkable. D-does this mean the campaign won’t go on (and on… and on…)?”

Someone with more time and Photoshop skills can play with that theme. In the meantime, I’ll go and repress once more the traumatic memory of the guy next door in my college dorm who blasted that Celine Dion song full volume - leaving his room locked while he fled the dorm, leaving me to go insane. (Some of you may have found part of the explanation you’re looking for.)

A ballot initiative proposed for the November 2008 Colorado ballot (and supported by the Independence Institute, where I work) has earned its third major newspaper endorsement, still more than six months out from the election.

From the Pueblo Chieftain today:

THE INDEPENDENCE Institute, a Golden-based think tank, is circulating petitions for a ballot initiative that would stop governmental agencies from collecting union dues from their employees.

In 2001, then-Gov. Bill Owens signed an executive order that stopped the payroll deduction for unionized state employees. Soon after Bill Ritter’s election, the new governor issued a new executive order to resume the automatic deductions.

Jon Caldera, president of Independence, says the organization doesn’t believe governments should be collectors and distributors of dues for unions that turn around and spend that money to lobby the same governments. Independence believes that taxpayers should not be subsidizing unions that often work counter to the taxpayers’ general interest.

We agree. [emphasis added]

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I saw this post from The Colorado Index earlier in the week. Busy at the time, I just shook my head and moved on. But when Rossputin - the subject of the post - brought it to my attention again, I decided it was worthy of a quick response.

A watcher is entitled to his opinions and to the manner of delivering those opinions, but a couple factual corrections are in order:

1. A watcher wrote: “‘Blogger Extraordinaire’ Ross Kaminsky - the self promoter who admits he doesn’t read conservative Colorado blogs….” Fact: The implication behind the use of “Blogger Extraordinaire,” which was used twice in this post, was that it was a title Ross chose for himself. In fact, it was the Samsphere promoters who devised and used the label. To my recollection, as someone who actually attended Samsphere, Ross never used the label himself. In fact, of the six blogger panelists last Saturday, Ross and David Harsanyi spoke about their blogs the least. That hardly would qualify him as any more of a self-promoter than any other blogger in attendance, myself included.

I would hope that after the fellowship of Samsphere, maybe Ross reads more conservative Colorado blogs than he did before. It’s certainly true for me.

2. A watcher wrote: “Since Samsphere has come and gone and no one recorded the lessons for your review” - Fact: You can find it all right here. Was every aspect of Samsphere recorded? No, but excluding the small group discussions and workshops, most all of it was.

My good friend, a conservative Christian law student at the University of Colorado, has entered the world of blogging at Constructively Reasonable. If you get a chance, please stop by and encourage him to continue blogging, even as he seeks to survive the rigorous first-year final exams!

Promoted with more updates: El Presidente has posted some key video excerpts, and (under imaginary threat of compulsion) here is a post written by one of Jon Caldara’s minions.

Follow-ups on Samsphere Denver:

- Brad Jones’ Buzz at Face The State
- Bob Agard
- Randy Ketner, Night Twister

If you were at Samsphere Denver and posted on the topic, but I overlooked you, please drop an email or a comment with a link to your post, and I’ll put it up.

I forgot to recap the Samsphere Denver established blogger participants, and now it’s small-group discussion time. Here’s the whole list of bloggers, with those in my group highlighted in bold:

CONFIRMED BLOGGERS
Anthony Surace at Rocky Mountain Right
Denise Mund at Colorado Charter Schools
Brian Schwartz at Wakalix
John Martin at The Drunkablog
Ray Thomas at The Thoma$ Report
Randy Ketner at Night Twister
Ben DeGrow at Mount Virtus
Michael Sandoval at Slapstick Politics
Ross Kaminsky at Rossputin
Jon Caldara at The Cauldron
Brad Jones at Face the State
David Harsanyi at David Harsanyi
Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom
Patrick Sperry at Conservative Libertarian Outpost
Bob Ball at The Daily Blogster
Marty Neilson at Colorado Taxpayer
Bob Agard at Bob’s Blog
Richard Combs at Combs Spouts Off
David Petteys at Backbone America

Also a couple of new novice bloggers here. Lots of ideas being shared. I can feel the energy growing.

For the auditory learners out there, check out my new podcast with Jon Caldara on Gov. Bill Ritter’s union “employee partnerships.” Visual learners can turn to the full report, or if you’re short on time, the two-page nuts and bolts version.

For the second time in the span of a week, I have been quoted in the Rocky Mountain News. Quite astonishing, really, except for the fact that the writers of these stories on all the political battles over right-to-work and other initiatives must be glad to find a different voice than the standard pro-business and pro-labor mouthpieces. I was glad to be able to give a pro-liberty view to the article:

“The Labor Peace Act is unique and offers some protection, but it doesn’t offer complete protection,” said Benjamin DeGrow, an analyst at the Independence Institute. “Anything that best protects the individual worker’s right to decide what they want is the right sort of policy.”

Instead of addressing the argument in the story, the other side attacked the motives of those supporting individual workers’ rights:

The “freedom-of-choice” argument promoted by the “right-to- work” advocates falls flat with some longtime labor observers. “The folks who want ‘right-to- work’ understand it just simply undermines the ability for unions to finance what they do,” said Roland Zullo of the University of Michigan Labor Studies Center. “It’s not about giving people the right to choose.”

Professor Zullo certainly is skilled at reading minds and divining motivations.

Zullo noted that workers in the states without “right-to-work” laws can opt not to pay the portion of fees that go toward political activities.

Technically, yes, as a pat answer. These are called “Beck rights” for workers in the private sector. But consider the following problems:
- Many workers are not aware of Beck rights
- Workers must resign union membership in order to exercise Beck rights
- Legal enforcement of Beck rights is weak, often proving costly and time-consuming
- Unions often work to resist the exercise of Beck rights (here’s just one example among many)

Obviously the good professor has never tried to file an objection to get a refund of union political expenses. A true concern for individual workers’ rights would be to let them decide not only their rights of association but also the right to fund freely organizations they support and to withhold funds freely from organizations they do not support.

I hope the professor does not believe that labor unions (or any other organizations) are justified in using any means, including coercion, to “finance what they do.”

Only three days remain until Samsphere reaches Denver. Whether you’ve been blogging for years or just want to figure out how to get started, this is the place to be. If you live in the Denver area and have a chance to make it on Saturday, register now before the last few spots fill up.

If you’re like me, you may identify closely with the famous Barack Obama phrase: “typical white person.” But I was never moved by the entrepreneurial spirit like a couple friends of mine who created the Typically White website, where you can go to order “Typically White” shirts and bags.

Who knows? You might find a great present to one of your conservative - or any typically white - friend or family member.