freedom matters fall-winter 2019

Fall/Winter 2019

Volume 4, No. 2

Slowly But Surely, the Evil Empire Forged by the Left and Its Powerful Allies in the Country's Government Employee Unions is Imploding.

For Proof, Look No Further Than What's Happening in Oregon.

union WARS STORY, PAGE 10

A Publication of the Freedom Foundation

T

here seems to be some official disagreement over whether Abraham Lincoln is, in fact, responsible for the quote widely attributed to him proclaiming, "America will never be destroyed from the outside.

If we lose its freedoms it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within."

Facebook recently banned memes using the quote, labeling it "fake news."

Well as far as I'm concerned, if he didn't say it, he should have.

In Lincoln's day, Americans were reasonably sanguine knowing no foreign enemy could project enough force across either of the two wide oceans protecting them to pose a credible threat.

That changed in the 20th Century, however, and the country was obliged to fight two bloody world wars.

But at almost at the instant the second one ended, the advent of technology and indescribably deadly weapons effectively made protracted warfare between super powers on a global scale an impossibility.

Threats do persist, of course, but a full-scale conflict between America and another nation possesed of a nuclear arsenal would take only minutes to conclude, and the outcome would yield no winners. Only losers and casualties.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean your freedoms aren't still under assault. But the nature of the threat has changed, and so, too, has the direction from which it's coming.

We still have foreign enemies, but the only ones foolish enough to engage in armed conflict are terrorists whose only effective weapon is a willingness to surrender their own lives in an attempt to end as many innocent ones as possible.

Our larger external foes still exist, too, but these days they prefer to wage proxy wars and undermine our freedoms through subterfuge.

In this they are aided immeasurably by the weak-kneed and willfully ignorant home-grown "useful idiots" singled out in Lincoln's quote ... whoever actually uttered it.

These despoilers of freedom come in two varieties — those who can't grasp the impact of the policies they support and those who do and expect to profit by them. At someone else's expense.

This latter group — greedy special interests who cloak their true agenda in squishy rhetoric about workers' rights and "fairness" — are the sworn enemy of the Freedom Foundation. And the articles in this magazine reflect just a few of the many ways we're fighting them to preserve your freedom.

Tom McCabe, CEO

Look at it this way...

The Freedom Foundation works night and day to inform government employees of their Constitutional right to opt out of union membership and dues.

And when they do, we get nothing but a sense of satisfaction.

Meanwhile, the unions work night and day to suppress that information and prevent workers from exercising their rights.

And when they're successful, they get to keep $1,000 per year, per employee.

Guess who's lying.

Volume 4, No. 2

The War with the Left Has Gone Nuclear with the Weaponizing of Campaign Finance Complaints by Washington State's Public-Sector Unions.

10. Union Wars Oregon Foreshadows the Imminent Destruction of the Liberal/ Organized Labor Deathstar.

26. From the Mouths of Babes f

Liberals Will Resort to Anything — Including Hiding Behind Children — To Avoid Offering a Substantive Defense of Their Loony Agenda.

30. It's Alive!

Contents

6. Under Attack!

14. Keep up the Fight

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Considers the United States Constitution Outdated, Inadequate and Subject to Change at the Whim of Modern Courts.

Fox News Host Mike Huckabee Puts the Freedom Foundation's Struggle with Unions in Focus During Oregon Banquet.

34. Their Way or the Highway

18. Teaching by Example School Strikes are Illegal in 38 States. So How Come They Happen Anyway?

22. Hair-Brained Bernie Sanders' Unveils a Scheme to Make Journalism More 'Fair.'

California's Assembly Bill 5, Touted as a Measure to Ensure Workplace 'Fairness,' is More Than Just a Massive Giveaway to the State's Unions; It Might Also be the Final Straw for Its Struggling Economy..

38. Action Update A Few of the Freedom Foundation's.

Notable Accomplishments During the Past Six Months.

Freedom Matters is a publication of the Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit think and action tank based in Olympia, Wash., dedicated to promoting free markets and limited, accountable government. Nothing in this publication should be construed as an attempt to aid or hinder passage of any ballot measures or the election of any elected official or candidate. Publisher: Tom McCabe; Editor: Jeff Rhodes. Phone: (360) 956-3482.

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THE WAR WITH THE LEFT HAS RECENTLY TURNED NUCLEAR AS WASHINGTON STATE'S PUBLIC-SECTOR UNIONS HAVE WEAPONIZED CAMPAIGN FINANCE COMPLAINTS

By MAXFORD NELSEN Labor Policy Director

n this era of increasingly polarized politics, it has become fashionable to decry the enforcement or application of laws one doesn’t like as the “weaponization” of such laws. The term, originally coined early in the Cold War in reference to the placement of warheads on rockets, has become dramatically overused.

One noteworthy example occurred when the U.S. Supreme Court last year held that forcing public employees to pay union dues was unconstitutional. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the majority of “weaponizing the First Amendment” for its own purposes.

To be fair, though, the term sees common (mis)use on all sides of the political spectrum.

If government acts properly to enforce a duly passed and proper law, it cannot legitimately be accused of “weaponizing” the law, even if previous

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administrations saw fit not to enforce that particular statute.

Conversely, if a government action is illegal, it can’t really be described as the “weaponization” of something legitimate and proper; it’s simply an illegitimate exercise of government power.

But if the government chooses to enforce a law only against political opponents while giving political allies a pass, that’s a different story.

A legitimate law has thus been converted from a neutral, equally applicable rule to a sword to wield against targeted groups or individuals and a shield to permit favored interests to engage in activity not permitted by others.

In other words, it has been weaponized.

An ongoing, five-year legal saga involving the enforcement of campaign finance laws in Washington state provides a case study in government officials weaponizing the law through selective enforcement.

This particular drama began in 2014, when the Freedom Foundation released a pair of model ordinances for municipal governments.

One would have extended rightto-work protections to public employees, allowing them to choose for themselves whether to financially support a labor union. The other measure sought to increase the transparency of collective bargaining negotiations between government officials and labor unions represented public employees by permitting public observation of the proceedings.

Over the summer of 2014, citizen activists in Chelan, Sequim and Shelton collected signatures to place the two proposals on the ballot in their respective cities. Despite gathering enough to qualify both measures in each city, officials in all three refused to place the measures on the ballot.

With free legal representation from the Freedom Foundation, activists in each community filed suit to force city officials to obey state law requiring them to either pass the proposals as ordinances or allow them to proceed to a public vote.

In each case, however, local unions intervened as co-defendants to defend the council’s decision to keep the measures from the voters.

Inexplicably, county courts eventuPAGE 8

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ally ruled against the activists and for the cities and unions. The activists did not appeal and, as a result, none of the measures ever appeared on the ballot.

Nonetheless, threatened with a loss of power and revenue, several unions paid a private attorney to prepare and file a complaint with the Attorney General Bob Ferguson alleging the Freedom Foundation broke state campaign finance laws by not reporting the value of its legal services to the state Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) as “independent expenditures” in support of the six ballot measures.

It was a novel argument and one that significantly expanded the scope of the state’s Fair Campaign Practices Act (FCPA). After all, the legal disputes in each city were procedural, involving whether the cities violated state laws other than the FCPA by refusing to place the measures on the ballot despite receiving sufficient signatures to qualify. And, ultimately, no elections ever took place.

Nonetheless, the Ferguson’s office adopted the union’s view and filed suit against the Freedom Foundation in October of 2015.

A Thurston County Superior Court judge initially found the applicable law to be too “ambiguous and vague” to conclude the Freedom Foundation had done anything wrong and tossed out the Attorney General’s case.

However, the Court of Appeals subsequently reversed the Superior Court, leading the Freedom Foundation to appeal to the Washington Supreme Court.

In a 5-4 decision issued in January 2019, the Supreme Court narrowly ruled against the Foundation.

As the dissenting Supreme Court justices pointed out, the Court of Appeals agreed the law was “ambiguous” and “confusing” while acknowledging its interpretation of the law “disregarded the ‘literal interpretation’ of the statute’s text” while stating the court “can and must ignore statutory language” in this instance.

This ambiguity is significant because, as the dissent pointed out, “The majority resolves that ambiguity against the speaker and in favor of the government. But resolving an ambiguity in a statute implicating free speech against

the speaker and in favor of the government violates controlling precedent of this court and of the United States Supreme Court.”

Although the Freedom Foundation appealed the Washington Supreme Court’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds, the high court decided not to hear the case.

Tellingly, throughout these lengthy legal proceedings, neither the attorney general nor the PDC initiated any similar enforcement action against the cities or unions for failing to disclose their legal expenses fighting the citizen activists in court.

State law requires independent expenditures “in support of or in opposition to any… ballot proposition” to be disclosed. If the Freedom Foundation’s legal services were “in support of” the local ballot measures, surely the cities’ and unions’ legal expenses were “in opposition to” the same ballot measures and should have similarly been reported.

The facts of the matter were wellestablished in the litigation against the Freedom Foundation.

Ferguson simply didn’t want to apply the same standards to city officials who blocked policies he opposes and the labor unions who help fund his campaign.

Accordingly, once the Supreme Court settled the matter, the Freedom Foundation filed complaints with the PDC alleging Chelan, Sequim, and Shelton all violated the FCPA by failing to disclose their legal expenses fighting the 2014 propositions.

The Foundation pointed out to the PDC how the Supreme Court had determined in January 2019 that, “…where litigation is being employed as a tool to block adoption of an initiative or to force an initiative onto the ballot… the finances enabling such support (or opposition) would indeed appear to… trigger … the reporting obligation…”

The Freedom Foundation also pointed out how the Court of Appeals in May 2019 had reaffirmed that “expenditures on legal services to block an initiative are necessarily independent expenditures subject to the statute’s reporting requirements.”

Case closed.

But rather than hold the cities to the same standard created for and applied to the Freedom Foundation, the PDC let them off the hook entirely and dismissed the complaints. Ignoring state courts, the PDC mystifyingly declared the law to be “(in)applicable in these instances” because: “The Cities’ actions defending themselves in court did not constitute an expenditure or use of public facilities for the promotion of, or opposition to, any ballot proposition… The Cities did not undertake legal action with the purpose of supporting or opposing ballot propositions, but instead to defend themselves against claims that they had failed to take legally required actions under Chapter 35.17 RCW.”

previously warned by the PDC about compliance with the FCPA and yet failed to disclose millions of dollars in contributions.

When presented with a formal complaint from the Freedom Foundation, the PDC acknowledged SEIU PEAF’s violations were “significant” (despite undercalculating them), but still decided to take no action.

In July 2019, the PDC dismissed, for no legal reason, a complaint the Freedom Foundation had filed against the Washington State Council of County and City Employees for failing to report $36,000 in in-kind political contributions and for reporting a half million dollars in other political transactions late.

To make matters worse, the PDC has adopted the position that, in light of recent legislative changes to the FCPA, its decision to dismiss a complaint cannot be reviewed by state courts.

The Freedom Foundation disagrees and is challenging this view in two ongoing lawsuits against the PDC. But if state courts

ultimately side with the PDC, it will have even less accountability than it does now, and similar abuses of discretion will likely become even more common.

The selective enforcement of Washington’s campaign finance laws is already underway.

Political actors like Attorney General Ferguson have demonstrated their willingness to play favorites when enforcing state campaign finance laws.

Unless the courts and the Legislature act soon to reign in these abuses of power and establish mechanisms to promote equal application of the law, Washington state may be soon be an example of what weaponization of the law truly looks like.

By this standard, the lawsuits filed by the citizens against the cities were not intended to “support” the ballot propositions either, but merely to hold the cities accountable for not following the initiative process established in state law.

A consistent view of the law would be either: (1) That both sides in litigation about whether a ballot measure will proceed to an election must disclose their legal expenses; or (2) that involvement in such litigation is not a reportable campaign expense for either side and neither must disclose their expenses.

While state courts chose option one, the PDC and Attorney General created a third option: Sue parties they don’t like and turn a blind eye to offenses committed by parties they do. It doesn’t result in the consistent application of the law, but that’s the whole point.

And this is no isolated incident.

In June 2019, the Freedom Foundation sued the PDC for failing to take action against the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) Political Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson's history of grandstanding and ethical lapses — typically Education and on orders from the state's public-sector unions — have earned him the nickname "Sideshow Bob," Action Fund (PEAF). referring to the hapless clown character on "The Simpsons."

The fund had been FREEDOM MATTERS

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union WARS The Freedom Foundation's Success in Oregon Foreshadows the Imminent Destruction of the Liberal/Organized Labor Death Star

By MIKE NEARMAN Oregon Director

By BOAZ DILLON Policy Analyst

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It was as fascinating to watch as it was scary, which is maybe hard to remember from the relative safety of the year 2019. Those guys had nukes.

In many ways the political Left in the United States is undergoing a similar collapse in 2019. It may not always seem obvious on the ground, but the view from 30,000 feet is far more encouraging.

And the parallel with Soviet Russia is even more striking when you dissect the slow but inexorable changes we’re seeing in the deep-blue state of Oregon.

The year 2019 saw liberal Democrats on top of the heap of Beaver State politics. They had super majorities in both chambers. The governor is a liberal Democrat. They had even primaried a moderate Democrat senator, replacing him with a hardcore lefty.

The 2019 legislative session was not about messaging. It was about getting things done. Bad things.

And, boy, did they — on many fronts.

They raised taxes, passed rent control, effectively abolished the death penalty, allowed drivers’ licenses for illegal aliens and many other “wish-list” items.

There was hardly a cloud on the horizon. A Senate walkout derailed a carbon tax, but mostly Dems had their way, like an out-of-control playground bully.

And the only thing worse than a playground bully is a governmentunion-supported playground bully.

Happily, that faint cracking noise you hear is the thin ice on which the government union protection racket is built. And soon it will no longer be able to stand on its wobbly legal, moral and public-support legs.

The losses are starting to add up. In 2014, Harris v. Quinn recognized the right of homecare workers to opt out of mandatory union dues, and that was followed in 2018 by Janus v. AFSCME, which recognized the same right for all government workers.

Democrats in the Oregon Legislature, doing the bidding of government unions, in the wake of Harris and Janus and looking ahead to the impending march of the Freedom Foundation’s campaign of information backed by litigation are already trying to backfill the erosion to labor’s strength caused by the two rulings by passing legislation that will ultimately be litigated and found unconstitutional.

Numerous bills were introduced by PAGE 12

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Democrats during the 2019 session to shore up union power, but some of them were too far over the top even for Democrat super majorities to swallow.

Take, for example, HB 2643, which would have eliminated all union dues and replaced them with a shameless, per-capita payment by the state directly to the unions.

The main work was done in the omnibus HB 2016, and even that had to be pared back from its original overreach.

Supporters of the bill admit that it attempts to codify into law components that were a part of contract negotiations. A careful reading of the bill reveals no real gain for the workers.

It’s all about the government unions themselves.

This means that, since they have a bunch of stuff they used to have to negotiate for that is now in law, they can move on to a whole new set of things to negotiate.

The legislation sheds some light on what union dues are really used for.

Previously, we were told union dues were used to fight for their members — you know, service grievances, negotiating contracts and the like.

Now, thanks to Sections 3 and 4 of HB 2016, all of that is paid for by the taxpayers. There’s a long list of things the “designated representative” is allowed to do, but the list is rendered unnecessary when the last item on the list is, “Perform any other duties…”

This will be litigated, but the sad part is that it will be litigated at taxpayer expense. If you’re a supporter of the Freedom Foundation, you get to pay twice — for both the plaintiff and the defense.

If you weren’t enraged before, you should be now.

But, again, what are union dues used for? Oregon taxpayers now foot the bill for handling grievances and collective bargaining negotiations. It seems like all the dues go to support the leftist political agenda of the government unions, as we’ve been saying all along.

Section 5 grants government unions the right to meet with new employees in the first 30 days for up to two hours, lest they get propagandized by someone from the Freedom Foundation and be advised of their civil rights.

Two hours? Can you imagine the tedium?

They also have the right to meet before or after work hours, during

meals and breaks, using public facilities, and — get this — to “establish reasonable rules regarding appropriate conduct for meeting attendees.”

Are they thinking things are going to get out of hand at these meetings? Why? Additionally, they don’t really address the situation in which the employee doesn’t want to meet, but maybe they can do that in the next round of legislation.

Government unions’ love for the employees they represent extends beyond the workplace. In fact, the employer must provide them with their personal cell phone and home telephone numbers and personal email addresses, presumably so they can continue the meeting(s) described above right into the worker's home.

Maybe two hours wasn’t enough.

One would think that if government unions were really doing an effective job of representing the workers, a law wouldn’t be needed to turn over personal information.

The next section allows unions to deduct dues but fails to recognize the Janus requirement that taking dues requires the employee to waive his or her First Amendment rights, and “such a waiver cannot be presumed.”

According to the legislation, the government union makes a list of duespayers, gives it to the employer and the employer is required to deduct the dues and hand them over to the union.

A third-party unilaterally and without due process would be taking money out of an employee’s check is unprecedented.

And just in case you question the Freedom Foundation's effectiveness, Section 11 makes it an unfair labor practice to “attempt to influence an employee to resign from or decline to obtain membership in a labor organization.”

They might just as well have named us by name. After all, the banned activity is precisely what we do.

Like the old Soviet Union, government unions under seige feel the need to impose some of the same restrictions on freedom.

It looks like offense, but make no mistake, HB 2016 is a defensive maneuver.

They want to play more politics with less money and dwindling membership, so while they have a super majority, they’re trying to stack the deck in their favor, caring not at all whether they

infringe on the rights of the employees they claim to represent, taxpayers or government employers.

It’s all about their survival.

In the original 1977 movie “Star Wars,” Princess Leia warns an Imperial General, “The more you tighten your grip … the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

This is what’s happening to the government union empire. The more employees leave or potentially leave, the more union meetings the law requires.

The more employees exercise their First Amendment rights, the more of their personal information has to be turned over to the government unions.

Asked by a Willamette Week reporter about union membership losses, SEIU Local 503 executive director Melissa Unger insisted her union remained as powerful as ever.

This says it all. It’s not about the wages, benefits or working conditions for the members. It’s about power.

Because government unions are private parties — yes, they’re still private parties, even though much of their work is funded directly by taxpayers — we can’t get a direct look at their inner sanctum to see how effective we are.

We can’t look at their books, their scaled-back plans, or listen to their pained discussions. We can see fewer dues-paying members by public records requests, see that they’ve put real estate up for sale and watch them decline to play in electoral contests they once dominated, but we don’t get to see the actual damage done.

But the real effectiveness test is to watch government unions fight back. They don’t file nuisance lawsuits against the “white-paper” think tanks, and they don’t enact legislation to stack the deck against educational nonprofits.

They do these things against the Freedom Foundation, which, with the U.S. Supreme Court standing behind it, is the single greatest threat to the single greatest force in American politics.

Editor’s Note: In addition to the Freedom Foundation’s Oregon director, Mike Nearman is also a GOP member of the Oregon State House of Representatives.

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“Keep up the

Fight”

Fox News host Mike Huckabee puts Freedom Foundation's struggle with unions in focus during Oregon banquet

O

ver the years the Freedom Foundation has had many wonderful events and hosted dozens of nationally prominent guest speakers. But by general consensus, none so thoroughly understands what the organization does or summarized it so eloquently as Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, presidential candidate, author, ordained minister and longtime Fox News host during his visit to the Freedom Foundation's Oregon banquet during November at the Salem Convention Center. Here's just a sample of his wisdom. n n n What a delight to be here with you celebrating the accomplishment of putting money back into the pockets of the people who earned it in the first place.

This isn’t about busting unions. I don’t understand why people think this is an anti-union movement. It isn’t. It’s a pro-freedom movement.

It’s simply about giving people the freedom to do with their money what they wish to do with it. th I want you to know how grateful I am to the people in this room for the courage you’ve had to invest in trying to make sure that people who are workers in this state, and Washington and California, and all throughout the country, realize that they have certain Constitutional rights, and it really just comes FREEDOM MATTERS

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down to their own personal freedom.

I think one of the great freedoms we have in the First Amendment isn’t just religion and freedom of speech, but also freedom of association. That’s one of the fundamental freedoms of the First Amendment. We are free to associate with who we choose.

And by the way, if we are free to associate with people we choose, we also have the right to disassociate from whomever we choose. And what a lot of people who oppose what you do fail to understand is that you’re just standing up for the First Amendment rights that ought to be settled for every American.

I just wonder what would happen if instead of the union deciding it was going to force you to pay almost $1,000 a month in dues so they could take your money and push for particular political candidates, suppose some of us on the conservative side decided we were going to create a union and were going to make it so that every public employee would have to give $1,000 to, let’s just say, the Baptist Church.

There’s no way in heaven I would ever suggest something like that, but can you imagine how outraged the entire country would be if the government started saying everyone had to make an involuntary contribution to a particular religious group?

I would find that offensive. I think everyone in this room would.

I’m a religious believer, but I don’t think anyone should be forced to give to any church — or for that matter a synagogue or mosque — unless they wanted to. That’s the whole idea behind freedom.

For those who think you should be forced to support a union, ask them how they’d feel if they were forced to support a religious cause. They’d say, “Well, that’s not the same thing.”

Yes, it really is.

No worker should have to fund things that violate his or her own conscience. It’s as simple as that.

I believe if someone wishes to join a union, that’s fine. If they believe the union provides value for the $1,000 or $1,500 — or even $50 — they pay in dues, great. Take it out of my check.

Whatever.

That’s your choice. But don’t make it automatically everyone’s choice.

That’s all in the world the Freedom Foundation has done. It is not going out trying to tell people what they cannot do.

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It’s simply wanting to empower people to do what they choose to do.

I can’t think of anything more American than to say, “Pick the causes that are important to you and support them with your own money.”

One of the reasons that public employee unions don’t work very well is that the people negotiating the deal, neither one of them has to pay for it.

That never pans out.

There are two people: The receiver — the union — and the donor, who is really not going to be able to choose what the money is used for. It’s ultimately the taxpayers who end up being handed the bill.

Sometimes we have to be willing to fight the good fight. Not because we’re mean, but because we think that freedom ought to work for everybody, not just a handful of people who

abuse the notion of what freedom even means.

The work you’re doing as the Freedom Foundation I find extraordinary.

And the fact that you’re doing it on the west coast is absolutely stunning.

And the brilliance of the plan is that you’re not trying to do everything.

You’re picking out something that is significant and important, that is actually empowering workers — whether they’re teachers or workers for the state — and you’re saying to them, “If you’d like a pay raise that doesn’t involve having the Legislature appropriate it, there’s a simple step you can take that gives you and your family an instant pay raise. Would you be interested?”

I believe I would.

Well, here’s the simple answer you can take: You don’t have to pay dues

to a union that takes your money and spends it on things you probably hate.

You don’t have to do that anymore.

Would you like to keep that money and use it to buy shoes, or maybe send your kids to camp? Or buy books for their school, or maybe just take a family vacation.

Would you like to have that money, or would you like the union to have it because you know how efficiently and effectively they’ll spend it? When the employee says yes, what the Freedom Foundation has just empowered them to do is get a significant pay raise that doesn’t cost the taxpayers one penny.

I think that is a worthy goal for those of you in this room who have it made it a priority in your personal giving to help the Freedom Foundation empower the workers — and at some point, people are going to start realizing you’re not their enemy. You’re their friend.

It’s the people who’ve been involuntarily reaching into your pockets and paychecks taking money they had no right to take, those are the ones who aren’t really your friends — or the friends of your loved ones, who could really use the pay increase.

That’s why what you do is so important.

As I say, this is not about unions.

We can talk about unions because that’s kind of the flashpoint. But it’s really about being able to decide which freedoms we’re going to be able to exercise in this wonderful republic of ours.

Those of you in this room represent the front lines of the fight when it comes to our genuine freedoms. I’m here tonight to thank you, I’m here tonight to encourage you.

I’m here tonight to urge you to keep up the fight.

Give those of us who live east of you reason to believe the entire west coast shouldn’t just drop off in the ocean and float away. Convince us there’s still hope for this region and you represent the very best of us, which I believe you do.

And I hope that nothing will keep you from fighting for freedom, for the families of your area and for their ability to use their own money that they’ve worked for the way they want rather than the way their union wants them to.

“You’re Right Side” T on the

he Freedom Foundation’s 2019 annual banquet on Sept. 24 was honored to have as its keynote speaker Laura Ingraham — attorney, author, syndicated radio host and Fox News personality — who brought the house down during a rollicking, unscripted 90-minute talk that offered an overwhelmingly positive message for conservatives of all ages.

Here are a few of the highlights: n n n

“We have it made in this country.

The only people who are going to defeat this country are the people in this country. And we cannot let this happen.

No way, no how. Not on our watch.

We must take them on. We don’t have to grab our muskets and go into battle, but we do have to take them to court.

We do have to show up in court and file the lawsuits, the litigation that stops their trampling of our individual rights. To believe what we want to believe, to say what we want to say to exercise freedom of conscience in the workplace.

If we don’t support groups like the Freedom Foundation, we might as well just go home and call it a day. It’s over.

The fact that you all are here speaks volumes about the commitment you have to freedom.

And this movement behind you, the freedom fighters of tomorrow, they’re picking up the torch.” n n n

“There’s a very interesting dynamic in this country. Democrats tend to be overly optimistic about their chances of regaining control and reshaping your life, while Republicans are almost always way too pessimistic, especially about their prospects of reaching your voters who will shape the future.

I think the truth is probably somewhere in between, and that’s where groups like the Freedom Foundation really come into play.

If we just kind of go about our business and think everything will be OK without putting some skin in the game, maybe making ourselves a little uncomfortable, it won’t be.” n n n

“I’m here to tell you tonight: Be not afraid. Be strong. Be confident. You’re on the right side.

You’re impressing me tonight that you’re here. You’re supporting a great institution, a great organization of American patriots who are standing up to the forces of coercion and corruption.

The other side wants to steal your freedom. They want to take away the underpinnings of our democracy.

Do not let them do it.

Until I take my last breath, I will be fighting for this, and I need this to be a fight for the whole country. No part of our country is abandoned by the true calling of freedom.

Not this state, not California, not Oregon, not Colorado, not Connecticut.

We’re all in this together.“ FREEDOM MATTERS

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School strikes are illegal in 38 states.

So how come they happen anway? n the past decade, the UnitBy JAMI LUND ed States has seen a marked Senior Policy Analyst increase in teacher strikes, a union tactic that requires having employees refuse to show up for work until its demands are met by the employer.

In 2018, 24 teacher strikes occurred in nine states across the country, up from an average of nine strikes a year for the previous eight years. Several factors made this year exceptional, one being the pending Supreme Court Case, Janus v. AFSCME, which concerned teachers’ unions’ ability to compel dues payment.

In February 2018, unions argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that forced union payment was in the public interest because it was necessary for “labor peace.”

The facts until that time supported the opposite, however. Freedom Foundation research in The Effects of Agency Fees on Labor Peace found that, “(G)overnment workers in states that allow agencyfee requirements go on strike at 27 times the rate of public employees in ‘right to work’ states.”

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February and June, the National Education Association led statewide walkouts in six right-to-work states — Oklahoma, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Arizona. Strikes in right-to-work states are rare, statewide actions are very rare and strikes at the end of a school year are extremely rare.

While it’s difficult to speculate about what motivates the executives of the National Education Association, the extraordinary nature of the spring 2018 labor unrest among NEA affiliates suggests the spectacle was intended to support legal arguments to protect forced union dues.

A second factor causing a spike in teacher strikes in 2018 came in Washington state, where 13 teacher strikes were called in the fall. As a result of a state Supreme Court ruling, school districts in Washington had a windfall of resources to support the entire range of expenses related to education.

The well-organized Washington Education Association began agitating to capture all of these resources as teacher pay raises on behalf of members. The statewide push for 10 to 30 percent increases was the central focus of the $80 million network of union affiliates.

The enthusiasm to bargain for noteworthy raises in Washington and around the country could also be fruit of the Janus v. AFSCME decision. Teachers union dues are particularly high, averaging more than $1,000 per year in Washington.

Claiming that dues paid off in raises between $2,000 and $17,000 is a strong marketing message in the new, optional union dues world. Other unions have needed to rely on less-appealing tactics like fine-print “irrevocable” payment contracts, threats of service reduction and bullying.

Both reasons for the increase in strikes indicate a well-funded, group is willing and able to bend public decisions about education budgeting and accountability to serve a single interest.

The absurdity of teacher strikes Public education because a government enterprise in the first place generally because education is important in a free society. Writers at the founding of the states and the federal government recognized that the kind of society they hoped to create PAGE 20

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relied upon an educated citizenry governing themselves. They often wrote about the importance of citizens learning virtue, skills and knowledge.

While the Founding Fathers did not envision a centralized government managing education, early American communities in the northeast did establish publicly funded schools.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, governments acted in response to reformers to make education compulsory for students.

Today, states have detailed laws about compulsory education for children and young adults. Students refusing to attend school face penalties including incarceration.

Likewise, general taxation and education-specific taxes are compulsory.

Citizens who decline to pay these taxes are subject to government seizure of their assets and other penalties.

Even lawmakers are commonly governed by state Constitutions to make adequate provision for education.

Nearly every state’s Constitution mentions some state responsibility for education.

Education is so important that students, parents, taxpayers, lawmakers and even states themselves face serious consequences for failing to participate.

Yet despite the intense importance attributed to education, employee groups seeking personal gain routinely flout centuries of societal commitment and articulated state responsibility to educate the next generation. How is it that union agitators are the only party for whom this critical duty of the state can be shunted aside for mere personal gain?

Why strikes happen despite laws prohibiting them

In addition to flouting the importance of education, striking teachers ferquently violate the law and their own word and refuse to serve families and the society that pays them.

Educators who sign work contracts specifying terms of employment attesting that they will work the schedule the contract requires. Union collective bargaining agreements regularly specify that they will not strike.

In addition to contractual obligations, most states’ laws specify that striking is illegal. Two-thirds of states have laws prohibiting strikes, and a handful

of states ban collective bargaining altogether. Only a dozen states make provision for teacher strikes.

Not surprisingly, strikes are most common in states where striking is legal. Pennsylvania, Illinois and California all have the highest number of strikes. But the fourth-highest ranking state for strikes is Washington, where strikes are illegal.

In Washington and likely in other states, the problem is that state law specifies no penalties for engaging in an illegal strike. Not surprisingly, the state of Washington estimates that approximately 80 teacher strikes have occurred since 1976.

In order to end an illegal teacher strike, a school district must file a lawsuit against the union seeking an injunction ordering the teachers back to work. To get such an injunction, the district must show the strike is injuring district operations and students.

In practice, showing harm requires enough days of disruptions to encourage a court to agree. Adding to the difficulty, many elected school board directors receive union political support, and their sympathies make them reluctant to take decisive action to prevent union strikes.

When school districts have sought an injunction, courts have sided with the district and concluded the union strikes are illegal.

Even if a district seeks and obtains an injunction, the union may choose to simply ignore the court order to return to work. Then the district must go back to court and persuade the judge to begin imposing penalties on the union or the employees for violating the court order.

Lastly, teachers can generally go on strike without fear of losing any pay, since the missed school days have to be made up at the end of the year. Most other public employees working yearround jobs don’t have this luxury. As a result, strikes by non-teacher public employees are exceedingly rare.

Remedies for local school districts

Observed bargaining. Often the mechanics of a successful strike require a vigorous misinformation campaign to employees and the public. Strike votes among employees are preceded by extensive marketing from the union officials.

The union playbook to generate a strike is heavily dependent upon controlling the messaging and controlling the facts of the dispute.

One remedy that can make it less likely for employees to support a strike and less likely for the public climate to by sympathetic is simple information.

A policy of immediately making offers and exchanged information available publicly and allowing observers or video livestreaming could decrease the likelihood of strikes.

No-strike contract language. Every public employer who negotiates with a union can insist on language that prohibits strikes and details the actions the district is allowed to take if a work stoppage occurs.

Remedies for states

Discipline. In areas where strikes are prohibited or ambiguous, states or other employers are able to take disciplinary steps as in any other case of nonperformance of employee responsibilities and insubordination.

Federal law prohibits strikes, and President Reagan famously fired striking air traffic controllers, banned them federal employment for life and the Federal Labor Relations Authority decertified their union.

These actions were taken on the basis of discipline and failure to comply with an oath taken upon employment agreeing not to participate in strikes.

The willingness to act to discipline employees and unions for contractbreaking is a remedy, but one that can be problematic to implement if workforce shortages exist.

Employee oath. One practice established by the federal government is to require employees to sign an oath agreeing never to participate in a strike or work action and acknowledging the employer’s right to take action if the oath is violated. This could easily be replicated by any state or public employer, since it would increase the clarity of the consequences for employees who are asked to participate in a strike.

Statutory consequences for strikers and remedies for citizens.

Washington Ferry workers went on strike, and the action prompted the adoption of reforms to give citizens security that vital public services would not be disrupted over employee wage concerns. These reforms declared

strikes illegal, prohibited ferry worker payment for strike days, permitted any resident of the state to seek a court injunction if a strike is “imminently threatened” and even directed the state to provide for “emergency passenger service” in the event of a strike.

Withdraw recognition for strikeinitiating unions. In Maryland, if a union calls a strike, the school district can cease recognizing, dealing with and collecting dues on behalf of the union for up to two years.

Adopting such a provision would discourage future strikes by making penalties clear, firm and predictable for those responsible, while avoiding courtordered fines or jail time for teachers who strike.

The very existence of public-sector unions at the state level is only possible to the extent that states permit them to be. A handful of states, in fact, do prohibit public employee collective bargaining.

Rethinking the application of labor-management theory to public employees

Public-sector unions are a private, dues-collecting organization with a government-shielded monopoly to take a cut of funds intended for public services. The leaders of these organizations have a mission to make government more expensive, less productive and less accountable.

However, the injustice of forcing public employees to fund a private, ideological special interest group as a condition of serving the public is an embarrassing but undeniable blemish on U.S. history.

Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 remedied part of the problem by ending compulsory union payment for public employees. But the whole practice of collective bargaining should be reconsidered.

Consider that until recent decades the very idea of collective bargaining for public employees was not only unthinkable, it was also illegal. It was clearly understood that public employees are not victims of exploitative capitalists, but are hired by the public itself. They perform responsibilities so important that citizens who refuse to pay for them are penalized severely.

The injustice public employees faced was the system of patronage, in which

an elected director of an agency would fire all public employees and replace them with friends and relatives. This injustice was blocked with reforms adopting “civil service” laws assuring continuing contracts and systematic pay schedules for public employees.

These kinds of laws have existed for more than 100 years and were created for Washington public employees from the 1930s through the 1960s.

For example, in Washington, collective bargaining for public employees was not even possible until 1967. At that time, it was limited to various decisions unrelated to wages.

The idea of negotiations including public budget obligations on wages was absurd. How could a private, selfinterested group circumvent the elected policymaking process to establish budget priorities of the public agency?

As recently as 2002, the concept of adding collective bargaining over wages was adopted and added to the existing civil service laws for state employees.

Considering that it is relatively new, the need for this extra apparatus in our system of government is not clear. n There is no history of wage injustice or poor provision in the areas of benefits or pension for public employees. n No profit motive exists for unions to fight in the public sector. n No benefit to managers occurs by exploiting public sector workers. n Civil service laws have stood for decades to protect the integrity of public employees. n Most public employees are professionals whose value is well established by their skills and training rather than the force of artificial contracts enforcing uniformity and less important values. n And since public services are so important that citizens can be forced to pay for them, the union device of striking shouldn’t even be permitted.

President Franklin Roosevelt famously denounced public employee strikes as “unthinkable and intolerable” since they hold critical government services hostage until union demands are met.

So it may make more sense to trade the combative, unbalanced and dangerous power of collective bargaining and strikes for a system of employee collaborative decision making like the “meet and confer” process.

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HairBrained

Presidential candidate and unapolagetic Socialist Bernie Sanders’ latest loony scheme is a reform plan to make the media more ‘fair.’

A

wpolitician who thinks government can manage a private industry better than someone who’s invested his or her own blood, sweat and tears in the enterprise isn’t qualified for a career in either. But amazingly, that sort of hubris is precisely the characteristic that defines the current crop of socialists seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

And there’s no industry they’d rather apply a monkey wrench to than the media.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), for example, is on a quest to break up big tech companies like Google and Facebook, and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) recently promised a crowd at an NAACP event in Detroit that she’d hold social media companies accountable for the

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By ASHLEY VARNER VP for Information

“hate” spreading across their platforms — which is liberal-speak for “anyone who disagrees with me.”

But for sheer chutzpah, you’d be hard-pressed to top the scheme unveiled in August by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to “reform” journalism by targeting one of his favorite boogeymen, “greedy corporations.”

In a Sanders administration, Befuddled Bernie vowed, there would be an immediate moratorium on approving media company mergers, as well as a requirement for companies to disclose corporate transactions and merger proposals that might lead to newsroom layoffs.

Media corporations, meanwhile, would be required to provide opportunities for employees to purchase the outlets before a merger can proceed, and would

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be limited in the number of stations a corporation can own — whether in a particular market or as a whole.

As is true when socialists nationalize any industry, none of Sanders’ ideas are calculated to make the media more profitable, since profits are, in his alternate universe, a proof of avarice and exploitation. Thus, they won’t solve journalism’s long-term problems by keeping newspapers and broadcast outlets afloat.

But in the meantime, they’ll spew the sort of news Bernie and his fellow travelers want to hear while suppressing other points of view.

Sanders’ plan would also include a tax on targeted ads to fund “nonprofit, civic-minded media.” Naturally, he’s a little vague about who gets to decide which group’s ads would be targeted or who would be the approved recipient of the tax revenue.

And of course, he wants to help media employees unionize.

Writing in an op-ed to the Columbia Journalism Review, Sanders fulminates, “We will pass my Workplace Democracy Plan, which will boost media workers’ laudable efforts to form unions and collectively bargain with their employers. I have publicly supported journalists’ efforts to unionize. Unions not only fight for media workers’ wages and benefits, they can also better protect reporters from corporate policies that aim to prevent journalists from scrutinizing media owners and their advertisers.”

Helpfully, Sanders also wants to have a hand in what media outlets cover.

His op-ed continues, “At precisely the moment when we need more reporters covering the healthcare crisis, the climate emergency and economic inequality, we have television pundits paid tens of millions of dollars to pontificate about frivolous political gossip, as local news outlets are eviscerated.”

The reality that consumers want — and are willing to pay for — newer, more responsive, higher-tech news products more than the ink-stained dinosaurs he prefers never seems to enter into Sanders’ thnking.

Thanks to the Internet, cable television and a resurgence in talk radio, Americans have more options available to them than ever before when it comes to news and information. No longer are they dependent on a hometown newspaper, local television news station PAGE 24 n FREEDOM MATTERS

'Bern'-alism To no one's surprise, Vermont senator and Socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders believes the greatest threat to journalism today is ... wait for it ... big corporations.

Here's what he would do if elected to fix the "problem." n Impose an immediate moratorium on federal approval of mergers of major media companies; n Require media corporations to disclose whether their corporate transactions and mergers would cause significant layoffs of reporters; n Require that employees "be given the opportunity to purchase media outlets through employee stock-ownership plans"; n Block federal merger and deregulation moves that harm people of color and women; n"Reinstate and strengthen media ownership rules" with the goal of limiting "the number of stations that large broadcasting corporations can own in each market and nationwide"; n Enforce anti-trust laws against tech behemoths like Facebook and Google "to prevent them from using their enormous market power to cannibalize, bilk, and defund news organizations"; n Increase funding for federal programs that support public local media "in much the same way many other countries already fund independent public media."

or terrestrial radio options for their consumption of news.

If you don’t like Fox News, there’s always CNN. If that doesn’t cut it for you, there’s always MSNBC. ABC, NBC and CBS are still available if you don’t care for cable news at all. Online (and occasionally still in print), The New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times and Wall Street Journal cover a wide range of topics tailored to the audience those corporations value.

Since when did it become the province of politicians to decide what news gets covered, by whom, from what angle or produced only by a company they like?

We should all be wary when we hear this kind of talk.

The freedom to choose what news is valuable or entertaining and what outlets Americans find trustworthy

is fundamental to the concept of a free press, but Sanders’ plans would threaten those options.

Following the senator’s announcement, Politico responded, “Journalism needs a plan — a plan to save itself from the cockeyed plan to ‘save’ the industry that Sen. Bernie Sanders uncorked … (T)he Sanders scheme would add layers of regulatory supervision to the news business, levy new taxes, subsidize news outlets he favors (public radio and television) and deter additional newspaper mergers.”

Politico continued, “In seeking to shape journalism’s future, Sanders completely mistakes journalism’s past.

And in his rush to put his stamp on the media’s future, he relies on half-baked statistics ... The newspaper industry as we’ve known it for 130 years is dying.

Newsrooms have lost 25 percent of

their jobs since the glory days of 2008.

Circulation has collapsed. Newspapers have gone. But Sanders seems unwilling to accept that the industry is dying for good reasons. Newspapers were once one of the most profitable sectors in the economy … But as new competition arrived — first cable TV and then the internet — readers and advertisers began to abandon them.”

The New York Post also responded to Sanders’ “reform” plan with healthy skepticism.

“Yes, our industry’s got troubles,” the article conceded. “Journalism jobs have plummeted in recent years; newspapers keep closing all across the country; and even the TV and cable folks are starting to see their revenues drop as the Internet changes everything. But billionaires aren’t the problem: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is keeping the Washington Post alive as a major paper; biotech gazillionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong is doing the same for the Los Angeles Times.”

More from the NY Post: “As for Bernie’s ‘rescue,’ well, the crisis he sees is that … nobody’s covering his pet subjects as much as he’d like. Sure sounds like he wants to save journalism by ensuring that he decide what we report. To get to ‘real journalism,’ Sanders would limit the corporate ownership and boost newsroom unions — neither of which would bring in more money to an industry that’s hemorrhaging it.”

In October, Sanders tweeted, “We cannot allow corporate America to continue to destroy journalism. When I am president, we will tell the owners of @splinter_news, @SInow, @ mcclatchy, @Gannett, and others that they must end their greed and respect their workers or face consequences.”

On the same day, Elizabeth Warren tweeted, “Private equity firms are sucking value out of our companies, putting people out of work, and wiping out newspapers and digital news outlets like @Splinter_News. I have a plan to hold these firms accountable.”

Warren’s plan is most directly aimed at the private equity firms who buy up smaller or struggling media outlets, without giving much thought as to why they may be struggling in the first place.

Both Politico and the NY Post admit problems within the legacy media, but rather than blaming corporate greed or lack of unionized newsrooms, both

The reviews are in: n "This is malarkey and it doesn't help that Sanders wraps it up in the same populist billionairebaiting rhetoric he covers everything in, ideological maple syrup to sweeten what can only be understood as an unprecedented power grab over freedom of speech and the press."

REASON, Aug. 27 n "He doesn't have a plan to rescue journalism. He has a plan selectively to rescue parts of journalism that he thinks are advantageous to him, to the left, to progressives and to socialists as well."

Political commentator RICHARD RANDALL n "The Sanders plan would clear the path for any authoritarian to dictate whatever he defines as 'real journalism.'"

THE DAILY CALLER, Sept., 2019

n " If you think Bernie Sanders in charge of deciding how a free press operates is a good idea, you’re a fool."

Political Commentator BEN SHAPIRO

outlets recognize that the internet has changed everything, and some media have been less able to compete in the fast-changing market.

With all the available options the Internet provides, people are turning to what speaks to them, rather than what their ZIP code once dictated for them.

There are plenty of blogs, podcasts and online news sites that provide a voice and a narrative their audiences

want to hear. The legacy media — and the monopoly they once had over what Americans learn about their world — has been rocked, but several of these news outlets see these political plans for what they are: an attempt to avoid coverage the politicians don’t like.

Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron weighed in, saying, “Sen. Sanders is a member of a large club of politicians — of every ideology — who complain about their coverage.”

Even the New Republic, which is hardly known as a conservative news outlet, commented, “Nothing in this plan, of course, would change the stuff that Sanders and his staff have been grumbling about. Politicians will always question their coverage…”

It’s largely about controlling the narrative.

Politico’s senior media writer, Jack Shafer, was even more blunt. “The biggest of big media offend (Sanders),” he wrote, “so his plan also advocates new limits on how many broadcast stations large broadcast operations can own … One unintended result of these regulatory cinches would be to reduce the value of all the properties they touch, making it more expensive for owners to attract capital to grow or even survive. Is that what Sanders wants? I think so.”

A devastating outcome of enacting such a plan would be for the American people to lose options in where and how they get their news. If people have options available to them, yet choose to watch a particular news network, subscribe to a newspaper or visit a news website, what business is it to Sanders?

So is it Google’s or Facebook’s fault?

Is it an increasingly naked partisan approach to covering headlines that fit a particular agenda? Or is it a natural byproduct of a 24-hour news cycle and the pressure to be first to break a story or keep viewers glued to the television for the sake of advertising dollars?

All of these things — and more — are happening in journalism today.

But the free press is too great a part of the American story to allow political figures to determine who gets to speak, and where. As the Washington Post proclaims on its masthead every morning, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

We should take that seriously.

Especially when blowhard politicians promise to start unscrewing the lightbulbs.

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By JAMI LUND Senior Policy Analyst

From the

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Liberals will resort to anything — including hiding behind children — to avoid having to offer a substantive defense of their

By JEFF RHODES Managing Editor crazy positions.

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s if more evidence were needed, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein last February found herself in a made-for-TV imbroglio that exposed once again the utter hypocrisy of the political left and the double standard of the mainstream media that covers it.

For reasons known only to its leaders, an angry mob of student “activists” — some quite young indeed — from a youth climate change group calling itself the “Sunrise Movement” chose Feinstein as the subject of an ambush at her office demanding to know why she hadn’t yet personally ram-rodded the Green New Deal into federal law.

Obviously exasperated, the senator — a longtime climate change alarmist herself and never one prone to sticker shock when it comes to spending someone else’s tax dollars — nonetheless found herself exploding, “There’s no way to pay for it, so nothing will happen.”

Make no mistake, this isn’t simply a case of using children as props — such as handing a photogenic moppet a protest sign in a teachers’ strike or making malnourished toddlers the face of illegal immigrant caravans. Manufacturing a heart-tugging tableau was a staple in the leftist toolbox long before Saul

BABES

of

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Alinsky started identifying the rules of social order that needed breaking in his despicable magnum opus, “Rules for Radicals.”

The relatively new development isn’t trying to create empathy for your position by suggesting a child’s welfare hangs in the balance if any other course of action is taken. What’s changed in recent years is to disingenuously suggest the young person doing the talking is actually the architect of the change envisioned, and that this gives his or her words “authenticity.”

Feinstein tried to discuss her own version of the legislation, but the kids would have none of it. The possibility that someone else might know more than they do is simply not worth consideration. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” Feinstein scolded her uninvited visitors. “I know what I’m doing. You come in here and you say, ‘It has to be my way or the highway.’ I don’t respond to that.”

For its part, the left-leaning media is torn. Writing in The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan observes, “Seeing their rudeness treated in the measured and unyielding way that adults used to speak to misbehaving children is weirdly thrilling.”

Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the Fordham Institute, opines in Education Next that, “It’s the adults who brought the children to her office — whether parents, teachers or activists — who ought to wish for (a do-over) and in the future think twice before using children as puppets and props.”

This is the same media, let’s not forget, that positively swooned when 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, whose expertise on the subject is limited to the layman’s understanding (at best) possessed by her actor father and opera singer mother, in September delivered a climate change manifesto to the United Nations Security Council that would have been chilling if it hadn’t been so cringeworthy.

That didn’t stop Vox writer David Roberts from cooing, “(Thunberg) has proven extraordinarily potent in crystallizing and focusing what has been a somewhat diffuse activist energy. She has brought a directness and simplicity to the movement that has been lacking.”

Not content merely to suggest the manifest ignorance demonstrated someone who not only isn’t an educated scientist but isn’t even yet an adult might actually be a virtue, Roberts PAGE 28

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— like a number of other so-called “journalists” — shamelessly exploits Thunberg’s well-chronicled struggles with autism and Asperger’s Syndrome by claiming they qualify her as an even better spokesperson for the cause. “(I)n part through their indifference to social cues,” he postulates, “people with autism have a unique capacity to face the facts clearly.”

To put it mildly, this isn’t just hogwash. It’s irresponsible, reprehensible hogwash — made even worse by Thunberg’s parents, who forged an instrument with which to blare their environmental message by frightening their own child into depression.

While persons with Asperger’s can focus intently on the task at hand, the affliction doesn’t endow them with special powers to process information.

On the contrary, the “indifference to social cues” Roberts finds so endearing actually robs Thunberg of the ability to put verbal data in the proper context or, God forbid, consider any other point of view than the one she’s been spoon-fed since birth by her activist parents.

While a closed mind and dogmatic inflexibility toward facts that may undermine her position make Thunberg a compelling advocate among those on the political left, they prevent her from being a credible one. And if one can look beyond the baleful stare, anger and threats, she is in many respects a sympathetic figure.

The same can’t be said, however, of David Hogg, the preening, opportunistic young survivor of the 2018 shooting spree at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., that claimed 17 lives.

Mind you, Hogg, who was 18 at the time of the incident, is no more an authority on the Second Amendment than Greta Thunberg is a climatologist.

Nor was his experience any more harrowing than most of the hundreds of students who escaped to safety that day.

He was blessed, however, with a gift for righteous indignation, not to mention a certain amount of media savvy.

Bundle it all together with his eagerness to be exploited by gun control zealots more easily embarrassed than he by the fundamental weaknesses of their arguments, and the result is someone who’s managed to leverage his victimhood into a burgeoning career as the anti-Second Amendment movement’s perfect front man.

Like Thunberg, what Hogg lacks in evidence and logic he makes up with crude chutzpah, recently telling Real Clear Politics, “When your old-ass parent is like, ‘I don’t know how to send an iMessage,’ and you’re just like, ‘Give me the f***ing phone and let me handle it.’ Sadly, that’s what we have to do with our government; our parents don’t know how to use a f***ing democracy, so we have to.”

To reiterate, this is no constitutional scholar. But when has the left seen the Constitution as anything more than a decaying parchment whose words are to be treated as gospel when they buttress their positions and dismissed as hopelessly antiquated tripe when they don’t?

It’s no coincidence liberals trot out precocious teens as their spokespersons far more often that do conservatives. To begin with, they think very much alike.

That’s not necessarily to suggest those on the left are unintelligent. But where intellect comes into conflict with emotion, liberals — like small children — listen almost exclusively to their heart. They want what they want, and they want it now. Never mind whether it’s practical, affordable or requires trampling someone else’s rights and feelings.

Adult liberals and their junior varsity counterparts also share a proclivity for oversimplification and name-calling.

Rather than engaging on the issues and actually debating facts, for example, leftists assume they can end any argument by declaring the opposition to be a racist unworthy of their consideration.

In the same vein, Thunberg can write off anyone who disagrees with her as a climate change denier or corporate stooge, while Hogg can simply brand his opponents accessories to murder. The left loves this tactic; not only is it easy, but you come away with a renewed sense of moral superiority.

But again, liberals have already perfected these debating techniques.

If that’s all there was to the game, they wouldn’t need to hide behind children. But what makes it perfect is the natural inclination of those with a more civilized bent not to pick on those weaker and less capable of defending themselves.

In their quest to simply suppress voices they know they can never defeat in a fair fight, leftists shield themselves with children like a cow-

Credit: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

A 2017 Newsweek article decried the presence of children at Trump rallies and noted that some had even been interviewed in a general way about their support for the president. But that's a far cry from holding teenagers up as an authority on scientific or technical issues, as liberals frequently do. ard wearing glasses to a fistfight knowing a conservative dare not even point out the patent absurdity of their ill-formed logic for fear of having the media pounce.

“The list is endless,” writes Sumantra Maitra in The Federalist. “From David Hogg to the South African Rhodes scholar who wants to topple the Cecil Rhodes statue in Oxford (while enjoying the scholarship), to Hamas using children as actors for propaganda, to the urban moms taking their kids on ‘resist’-themed outings, the principle behind all of this is the same. Youth, by virtue of age, is considered a moral factor.”

Except it’s not.

There’s a reason society considers

Thunberg and Hogg just barely old enough to drive, not quite old enough to vote and several years away from being able to drink legally. It is assumed those activities require a level of sophistication and judgment that a human being acquires in stages.

It is the job of adults — parents, teachers, coaches, clergy, family members and friends — to share these life lessons and prepare our offspring to one day assume positions of leadership.

The only thing more shameful than abdicating that responsibility and forcing children to run things before they’re ready would be to pretend they were doing so while, in reality, they were simply puppets being manipulated by firmly entrenched, truly malevolent

leftists like George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer and others.

To be sure, the left is well-acquainted with the phenomena and perfectly willing to condemn it — but only when it can be identified on the right.

In a truly cringeworthy swingand-miss published by Newsweek, for example, reporter Graham Lanktree, in an article headlined “Trump’s Child Crusaders,” works himself into a lather over a series of interviews given on Fox News and other media outlets by then-12-year-olds Millie March and Cole McCafferty on why they support the president.

Helpfully (for his cause, at least), the author only cites one partial quote from either youngster as proof of his point that her appearance would be “cute-ifit-weren't-so-contextually-creepy.”

To underscore this assertion, the article includes analysis from Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the Ph.D. program in communications at Columbia University, who concludes, “These kids are being weaponized.”

Gitlin says the interviews with Millie and Cole “camouflage” the political positions of the hard right as “feel-good sweetness and light, when, in fact, they are defending raw racism and sexual abuse.”

Again, ignoring the well-documented liberal tendency to classify everything he or she disagrees with as racist or sexist, the professor is nonetheless correct that children — being children — lack the knowledge required to be classified as an authoritative spokesperson on anysubject.

Which is precisely the point. If Gitlin is genuinely offended by a 12-yearold speaking in generalities during a softball cable news interview, how must he feel about 16- and 17-yearolds addressing Congress or the United Nations on subjects requiring vastly more technical proficiency?

“What I find repulsive is featuring children as spokespersons,” he said.

“That’s hiding behind children.”

The younger they are, the less likely that they’ve come to their conclusions through independent research, Gitlin concludes, and “the more (likely) they’re being made use of in a fashion that is unseemly.”

And he’s exactly right. The question is whether he recognizes that in the race to weaponize children, his side has already gone nuclear.

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Like most leftists, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg thinks the U.S. Constitution she swore an oath to uphold is an outdated document that pales in comparison with versions adopted by other countries that confuse individual wants with actual rights.

By ROBERT BOUVATTE onservatives often accuse Litigation Counsel liberal jurists of re-writing the Constitution to serve their own preferences. But sometimes those on the left show us exactly how, if given the chance, they would have drafted it in the first place.

And given the vast difference between the version they’d prefer and the one they’ve sworn to uphold, it’s fair to wonder sometimes which actually informs their decisions.

Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a vocal critic of the Founding Fathers’ experiment in self-government for nearly the past decade, is the poster child for this phenomenon.

It made a big splash back in 2012, for example, when she went out of her way to advise the people of Egypt, then drafting their own governing document, “not look to the U.S. Constitution,” for assembling a chartering document in the 21st Century.

Instead of our “rather old constitution,” Ginsburg suggested the Egyptians should seek guidance from newer works, such as the South African constitution that had been enacted less than a decade earlier.

She praised that document as not only providing for an independent judiciary, but also for articulating a number of “basic human rights” that supposedly yield a benefit to the people of that nation.

This past September, Justice Ginsburg offered further criticism when she lamented the lack of an Equal Rights Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, claiming such a provision is necessary to explicitly state that men and women are equal before the law.

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Her comments are unsurprising, coming from a justice who believes our own Constitution should be understood as a “living” document – even though an equal rights amendment was proposed and rejected by American voters in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, the South African constitution that Ginsburg holds in such high esteem does look good on paper. It came about after the scourge of apartheid, and the implementation of an interim constitution to move away from that unjust regime.

The current constitution was accepted in 1996 and is the fifth in the nation’s history. Exemplifying progressives’ fixation with a “living” charter, it has been amended no fewer than 17 times since its enactment and includes a Bill of Rights that would make the 2016 Democratic field gasp.

Many of its sections contain what are traditionally thought of as rights (or “negative” rights), such as freedom of speech, privacy and the right to freely travel. But then the document lists at least twice as many entitlements it promises the people (or “positive rights,” in the parlance of the Left).

Among these are the right to property, food, water and shelter, healthcare, social assistance and a basic standard of living, education, and several other “rights” our nation’s liberals have not even (publicly) identified yet.

To cite just one, no list of “basic human rights” would be complete without the right to “human dignity” explicitly recognized in the South African charter.

But is the measure of a good constitution simply the number of rights that it claims to protect? In typically pithy fashion, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once quipped that, “Every banana republic has a Bill of Rights.”

The question is whether they’re enforced — or enforceable.

At the time of this nation’s founding, James Madison expressed concerns that the protections of the Constitution then being drafted would amount to little more than “parchment guarantees.”

If longevity is necessary to meaningfully protect its citizens’ liberty, South Africa’s former constitutions proved little assurance, and the current one is untested, at best.

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more than 200 years and has been amended only 27 times during that period, there are certain fundamental areas in which the South African constitution leaves a lot to be desired.

Indeed, there are at least three necessary components to the United States Constitution that liberty-loving Americans and South Africans, will find nowhere in Justice Ginsburg’s model charter: n the separation of (enumerated) powers; n its identification of only “negative” rights; and, n its concept of “equality.”

While some object that these differences make the U.S. Constitution “out of step” with the rest of the world and its emphasis on positive guarantees, others prefer the word “exceptional.”

With respect to the first, the South African constitution seems to recognize that the separation of powers is a good idea, at least in principle. Chapter 3 of the document addresses the importance of “co-operative government,” wherein each of the identified branches will stay within its sphere and not assume powers that have not been conferred on it.

It does not, however, actually place the respective branches of government in the position of serving as checks and balances upon one another, even though it does require them to engage in good faith attempts to resolve conflicts before resorting to the courts.

The defect in this system is that each of the branches is assumed to have a vast well of unenumerated general powers, so no one really knows who is properly exercising which authority — they are each simply supposed to exercise their flexible authorities with virtue, as in the state governments that predated the founding.

In such an arrangement, why should one branch ever back down from a conflict with another, and what makes the judicial branch the legitimate authority to resolve such disputes?

The second problem is related to the first — because only a government of limitless authority could ever promise all of the entitlements that supposedly come with South African citizenship.

For example, a regime cannot promise all of its citizens the right to healthcare without claiming for itself the power to force some of them to provide that benefit at a rate of compensation established arbitrarily

rather than by the free market.

Nor can government guarantee a roof over one’s head without compelling another to provide it (through tax payments, outright nationalization, or otherwise). Of course, for jurists of Justice Ginsburg’s bent, this is not a problem. But for those who cling to the notion that “rights” result simply from personhood and can’t be taken away by government, the notion of rights that require the government to confiscate what belongs to someone else is an irreconcilable contradiction.

The U.S. Constitution wisely avoided placing government in the position of being a provider for all by identifying in its Bill of Rights only “negative” rights – i.e., limitations on the powers of government that apply to all people.

This is because its framers took the exact opposite position as those of South Africa’s. United States citizens are regarded as free people, whose liberty can be restrained only to the extent explicitly enumerated in the Constitution. Indeed, James Madison feared including a Bill of Rights in the Constitution at all, since it could be understood to leave unprotected those negative rights (or “liberties,” if you will) that went unmentioned.

Much like pre-Revolutionary peoples had to specifically list in their state charters all of the baubles they had been granted at the grace of the sovereign, modern progressives would prefer if the only limitations on government authority were those explicitly set forth in a tidy set of pages.

Of course, implicit in the idea that rights must be enumerated, rather than powers, is that all the wonderfulsounding rights one might imagine can nonetheless be dispensed with when the sovereign deems it necessary.

Which brings us to the third problem with South Africa’s constitution, comparatively speaking — the idea that true equality is only brought about by government-ensured equality of outcomes.

Section 9 of the 1996 document starts off like the U.S. Constitution, in stating that “everyone is equal before the law.” But then it goes on to add provisos that enshrine the modern Left’s view of our Equal Protection Clause, by specifically authorizing legislative measures “to promote the achievement of equality,” and by allowing the government to distinguish between “unfair discrimination”

Good news for Justice Ginsburg: Dem gains in Virginia Legislature fuel talk of a return for the ERA The proliferation of government — and government jobs — was the deciding factor in the Virginia State Legislature flipping to Democratic control during the Nov. 5 election. As the Washington, D.C., suburbs have swollen with workers more interested in being the swamp than draining it, the state’s demographic composition has shifted in ways that will have profound impacts on Virginia residents — and possibly national ramifications, as well.

Almost as soon as the votes were tallied on Election Night, activists began plotting the return of the Equal Rights Amendment, which its backers insist would codify “gender equality” in the U.S. Constitution.

Critics, however, argue that adequate protections already exist in statutory law and federal civil rights standards.

The measure has been around for nearly 100 years and came close to ratification in the 1970s, only to fall three states short of the necessary two-thirds. Virginia, then a stronghold for Christian conservatives, was one of the holdouts, but with a newly empowered Democratic majority, the ERA will almost certainly be brought out of mothballs — and passed — sooner rather than later.

and “fair discrimination.”

In other words, the nation itself is entitled to discriminate for purposes of remedying discrimination. No need to ask who will determine what is “fair discrimination,” of course. All branches, cooperatively exercising their unimpeachable good faith, will undoubtedly come to the same conclusion.

Especially for a nation seeking to pivot from the decades of “unfair discrimination” that immediately preceded adoption of its constitution, the notion that government is competent to make this distinction is ironic — and unsettling.

It highlights the central, and most critical, advantage to a constitution centered around the polestar that people are free, versus one centered around an omnipotent government. The U.S. Constitution, despite the original sin of slavery, contained all the needed machinery to purge this sin and set the nation on the right course.

We are still getting there a century

But things are never quite that simple in politics. For one thing, the deadline spelled out by the Constitution for the amendment process has long since passed. And in the meantime, several states that had originally signed on to the ERA have withdrawn their support.

Assuming amendment supporters are forced to go back to square one, a rewritten amendment would need to be passed by both houses of Congress before going to the states.

and a half after the Reconstruction amendments, to be sure, but as Justice Ginsburg also notes, the genius of the U.S. Constitution is in its expanding conception of “We the People.”

Further, the Supreme Court has recently stated that it will not much longer tolerate discrimination on the basis of skin color, even in the context of affirmative action.

At that point, no constitutional amendment will be necessary; the court will simply have to eat a bit of crow in advancing its opinion, contrary to the justifications heard in previous years.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, our constitutional form of government isn’t perfect; it’s just better than everything else that’s ever been tried.

If the people of South Africa decide in a few decades that benign racism is not, in fact, the way to resolve long-standing racial tensions, it will require yet another amendment to its constitution to prevent the government from acting in this way, which has

up to this point been explicitly authorized. In the meantime, those left with the disadvantages of this “fair” discrimination will have no appeal to the courts, and even an amendment is unlikely to resolve the intrinsic problem in such a system of governance.

Rest assured, the new government that writes the amendment will defer to its own, unquestionable authority to determine what is “fair,” as will each future government in every future amendment.

Lost in the constant drafting and redrafting will be any question of whether such authority should be exercised at all.

This question informs our entire constitutional structure.

That reality might not comfort Justice Ginsburg, but should it should be enormously reassuring to Americans genuinely concerned with protecting “basic human rights” against the onslaught of standards that constantly shift at the whim of those empowered to interpret them.

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or the

ASSEMBLY BILL 5, IS TOUTED BY ITS BACKERS AS BEING ALL ABOUT FAIRNESS. BUT IN REALITY, IT'S JUST THE LATEST IN A LONG HISTORY

By SAMUEL COLEMAN OF GIVEAWAYS Outreach Coordinator TO CALIFORNIA UNIONS. ONLY THIS ONE he Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions” might HAS THE well be the unofficial state motto in California given the large number of hellish failures that distinguish POTENTIAL its Legislature .

TO DESTROY The only reason it hasn't happened yet is the reality that not all the intentions behind the mayhem that THE STATE'S comes from its lawmakers are demonstrably good.

ECONOMY To cite one recent, egregious example, the framers of Assembly Bill 5 may have had many objectives in mind when ONCE AND they hatched it, but the welfare of the state’s taxpaying FOR ALL. residents undoubtedly never entered the discussion.

"T

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AB-5, which redefined the relationship between employers and an estimated 2 million independent contractors, was sold as the legislative fix to a Supreme Court case called Dynamex v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, which concerned a large corporation classifying a significant percentage of its workforce as independent contractors rather than traditional employees.

Independent contractors are typically required to perform many of the same tasks as a company’s full-time employees, but they are not entitled to the same benefits and can be terminated much more easily.

Independent contractors work under a contract or verbal agreement and are not expected to take initiative or assume any responsibilities no spelled out in the contract. They work as required, or as their agreement stipulates, and when the contract expires, it may or not be renewed — depending on the employer’s needs.

Independent contractors, unlike traditional employees, typically do not have regular work schedules or defined work spaces. They are generally hired for limited periods to do specific tasks, or to fill in for regular employees as temporary workers.

They’re an important part of the California economy, especially for younger workers just getting their feet wet.

More than 74 percent of surveyed millennials, according to USA Today, said they were interested in freelance careers instead of traditional employment, with nearly 25 percent of those saying that they intended to leave their full-time jobs in the next five years.

Only 43 percent of older generations claimed they would consider a freelance career.

The Supreme Court ruled that the current test for determining whether a worker was an independent contractor or employee was not enough and opted to introduce an “ABC test,” a three-prong standard in which all three criteria must be met for a worker to be considered an independent contractor.

These include: n the person is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under PAGE 36

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the contract for the performance of the work and in fact; n the person performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and, n the person is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.

You may be wondering how anyone taking this test could be considered an independent contractor.

They can’t, and that’s the point.

AB-5 codified this Supreme Court case into law, making it nearly impossible for anyone in California to work as an independent contractor.

Proponents of the bill say that it will provide workplace protections, benefits and dependability for the schedules for hundreds of thousands of independent contractors across the state.

The reality is just the opposite.

By conservative estimate, AB 5 will increase the cost of labor, on average, by 20 to 30 percent for businesses that make use of independent contractors. Basic logic would state that when labor becomes more expensive, business either increase prices or reduce labor.

AB-5 doesn’t just affect a segment of workers in a typical workplace; it affects hundreds of thousands of gig workers and other non-traditionally employed people.

Most notably among those affected are ridesharing workers who enjoy the benefit of having no workplace, no boss and no set-in-stone schedule when they can work.

Ridesharing drivers can work as much, or as little, as they want with absolutely no repercussions and enjoy the benefit of setting their own schedule.

Rideshare drivers, however, aren’t the only independent contractors who are going to be hurt by AB-5. There are a huge number of workers whose professions are going to be gutted by the bill.

Truckers, commercial janitors, nail salon workers, physical therapists, newspaper carriers, campaign workers and a wide variety of other job titles will all be affected by the changing employment landscape.

In an era when millions of positions are already in danger of being automated, this kind of progressive

occupational tinkering is out of touch with the real world. The last thing employers need is another reason to replace human labor.

We don’t need to hypothesize about the effects of an ABC test, either.

Massachusetts imposed a similar law in 2004 that provides an interesting case study for this kind of governance.

While some companies were able to adapt and survive, many ended up closing their doors. The new ABC test generated a tidal wave of litigation against employers that ended in multimillion-dollar settlements and businesses fleeing the state.

Most companies found hiring independent contractors was simply too risky and largely ceased the practice.

While it’s easy to feel bad for the businesses that had to close their doors, the ultimate losers were the previously independent contractors and full-time employees, who lost out on work. Changing the language of the law didn’t make it any easier for employers to pay their employees or make businesses more profitable and it certainly didn’t change the fiscal climate of the state.

Massachusetts did nothing except make it impossible for a specific classification of workers to work.

California is no exception to the laws of economics, either.

Regardless of its market size, the Golden State does not have a magical immunity to job creators fleeing, employers reducing hours for workers, or avoiding costly litigation at the hands of opportunistic scavengers.

If independent contractors enjoy their jobs, their free schedules and their flexibility, why are they asking for a new law like this?

Short answer: They aren’t.

AB 5 is the brainchild of an unholy alliance between California’s most liberal politicians and big labor, with millions of dollars injected into this project by unions waiting to claim their piece of the pie.

Lorena Gonzales (D-San Diego) sponsored the bill and received more than $476,850.00 from labor unions in the 2018 cycle alone, with her two top industry donors being public- and private-sector unions.

While dozens of other lawmakers were involved, with virtually all receiving donations to the tune

It goes without saying the move to pass AB-5 in California was hardly spontaneous. Like many bad ideas all over the country, it is actually the brainchild of labor unions eager to consolidate power and use the force of law to eliminate competition. of hundreds of thousands of dues dollars, let’s focus on for the moment Gonzales.

Gonzales has a long and storied history with organized labor. In 2008, she was elected CEO and secretarytreasurer of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council (AFL-CIO).

For her efforts, she’s earned a 100 percent satisfaction rating from the California Labor Federation, United Domestic Workers of America, California Federation of Teachers, in addition to the admiration of a dozen other union-affiliated groups.

As far as they’re concerned, she might just as well be a parrot.

AB-5 comes at a time when unions in California and across the United States are in a tailspin.

On the west coast, the Freedom Foundation has helped more than 60,000 government workers opt out and continues to aggressively pursue unions that fail to honor their members’ constitutional right to cease paying union dues.

California state workers' unions, for example, have experienced a severe

decline since Janus v. AFSCME — the landmark 2018 U.S. Supreme Court case that affirmed public employees' right to cease their financial contribution to their union — put unions nationwide on the defensive.

As of July 31, 2019, more than 57,000 state workers are not paying dues, and that's undoubtedly just the beginning.

The only answer to a big union, short of actually providing a service employees consider worth paying for, is to expand its base by some other means.

AB-5 does just that by increasing the pool of employees who can be unionized by more than 2 million.

Unlike a regular business, which provides a good or services in exchange for financial compensation, unions are totally unprepared to survive in a world where they must exchange value for value.

For more than 40 years prior to Janus, unions could confiscate a worker’s dues without the fear of anyone opting out.

Workers had the option of

paying instead what was called a “representation fee” — a percentage of the total dues cost that supposedly only accounted for representational activities — but the difference between tghe two amounts was typically not seen as worth the trouble of opting out over.

However, things have changed, and unions are sweating for the first time in decades.

Without the ability to take employees’ money by force, unions have found themselves in a predicament where their friends in the Legislature need to step in.

AB-5 is simply another grab for government paternalism with liberal legislators in Sacramento telling the rest of the state what’s best for them.

Instead of allowing hardworking Californians to decide what works best for them, big unions and legislators alike know that their political contributions will stop if union membership ever drops too low.

That’s a doomsday scenario those in power can’t imagine.

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ACTIONTIMELINE ACTION TIMELINE Highlighting a few of the Freedom Foundation’s signature accomplishments over the past half year

MAY 7 President Trump re-tweets a Daily Caller article hailing his decision to scrap a 2014 Medicaid regulation allowing states to divert payments meant for caretakers into the pockets of unions. The reform was largely the brainchild of the Freedom Foundation, and the article mentions the organization prominently.

MAY 11 The Freedom Foundation files a lawsuit against the California Teachers Association (CTA), challenging the socalled “membership cards” the union pressured several teachers into signing without their affirmative consent as required under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME. MAY 16 Represented by the Freedom Foundation, Costa Mesa, Calif., resident Maria Quezambra files a federal lawsuit against the union representing her, alleging it forged her signature on a membership card, illegally took dues from her paycheck for over five years, then trespassed on her property to bully her into maintaining membership.

JUNE 6 The Freedom Foundation files a lawsuit against the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission, accusing the agency of mishandling a campaign finance complaint against the Service Employees International Union’s Political Education and Action Fund (SEIU PEAF).

JUNE 10 The Oregon Education Association (OEA) is the subject of a new Freedom Foundation lawsuit challenging PAGE 38

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whether teachers seeking to opt out of their union must be accommodated immediately or whether they can be delayed by arbitrary provisions inserted into membership contracts that may be invalid in the first place.

JUNE 19 The Freedom Foundation joins forces with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation to intervene in a lawsuit filed by five states — including Washington, Oregon and California — to challenge the Trump administration’s recent decision to crack down on union dues-skimming from the paychecks of Medicaid caregivers.

JUNE 27 The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Janus v. AFSCME ruling, which frees public employees from mandatory dues and fees, celebrates its one-year anniversary.

The ruling includes language lifted almost word for word from an amicus brief submitted by the Freedom Foundation in support of the case.

JULY 3 A Wall Street Journal story headlined “New Rule to Test Union Membership, Finances” chronicles a decision by the Trump administration to begin actively enforcing long-ignored rules requiring that Medicaid payments be made directly to recipients rather than diverted by their state government, which often deducts union dues at that point. The rule change was the brainchild of Freedom Foundation Labor Policy Director Maxford Nelsen, who is quoted extensively in the WSJ piece.

JULY 10 A class-action lawsuit filed by the

Keeping Score How big a bite has the Freedom Foundation taken out of publicsector unions in Washington and Oregon? According to official state numbers, the number of dues-payers in targeted unions is down by the following percentages just since the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2018 issued its ruling in Janus v. AFSCME: WASHINGTON: n SEIU 925 (Childcare Providers): 65% n SEIU 775 (Homecare Providers): 25% n WFSE/ADSCME (Largest State Employee Union): 27% n WPEA/UFCW (School Employees): 21% n WEA (Teachers): 7% OREGON: n SEIU 503 (Homecare Providers): 40% n SEIU 503 (State Employees): 33% n OSEA (School Employees): 36% n AFT (Teachers): 35% n AFSCME (County & City Employees): 19% Freedom Foundation and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation on behalf of a pair of California In-Home Supportive Service (IHSS) providers will test whether or not a bitterly contested 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling rendered the membership card of virtually every unionized public-sector worker in the country invalid.

JULY 23 The Freedom Foundation files a lawsuit on behalf of two more California public employees, challenging whether a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year prohibiting mandatory union participation can be undercut by wording inserted into a standard collective bargaining agreement.

Leave a legacy of freedom

JULY 26 A pair of California public employees represented by the Freedom Foundation file suit challenging whether SEIU 721 can force its “members” to remain in the fold against their wishes until the union’s current collective bargaining agreement with their employer expires.

SEPT. 3 Lincoln County’s Board of Commissioners marks the day after Labor Day by filing an appeal to ensure open and transparent contract negotiations with the unions representing the community’s public employees. In 2016, the commissioners adopted a resolution based on a model developed by the Freedom Foundation promising to hold future collective bargaining sessions in an open public forum.

SEPT. 9 The Freedom Foundation hands the state’s public-sector unions a devastating setback in a landmark public records case, winning a unanimous ruling in the Washington State Supreme Court. The case involves a cache of emails and other documents requested by the Freedom Foundation in 2015 from four University of Washington professors relating to efforts to unionize the school’s faculty.

SEPT. 21 Best-selling author, syndicated radio host and Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham is the keynote speaker at the Freedom Foundation’s annual banquet at the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue.

The wealth of our country exists in large part in the savings and hard-earned assets of good people who have endured, sacrificed and succeeded. It is their legacy that stands poised to be transferred to the next generation.

Will these funds be a windfall profit for government programs, new capital for center-left organizations? Or will they be a responsible transfer of values held dear by the good people who earned the money?

Join the fight against the tyranny of the government unions.

Become a member of the Freedom Foundation today. Donate online at www.freedomfoundation.com For information on how to become a member of our Legacy Society, contact www.freedomfoundation/legacy

OCT. 2

an appeal in Oregon District Court on behalf of nine Oregon public employees in Anderson, et al. v. SEIU, et al. The case alleges that three Oregon government unions are relying on membership cards that are unconstitutional to force public employees to pay money to labor unions.

OCT. 11 Aaron Withe, formerly director of the Freedom Foundation’s operations in Oregon, has been appointed national director and will coordinate the opening of branch offices in other states.

OCT. 15

The Freedom Foundation files a federal lawsuit with the U.S. Western District Court in Tacoma against the state’s Department of Labor and Industries and its assistant director of human resources, Heather Normoyle.

The complaint alleges the agency denied Freedom Foundation canvassers the same access to the public areas of its Tumwater headquarters building that is routinely granted to other organizations — including labor unions.

A letter to the editor written by Freedom Foundation national director Aaron Withe appears in the Washington Times.

Headlined “Unions not above the law,” the piece chronicles the organization’s recent unanmous victory in Washngton State Supreme Court in a landmark public disclosure case concernng access to documents dealing with an attempt to unionize faculty members at the University of Washington.

OCT. 9

NOV. 9

Maxford Nelsen, labor policy director for the Freedom Foundation, is appointed

by President Donald Trump to fill a seat on the Federal Service Impasses Panel, an independent entity within the Federal Labor Relations Authority. Members serve on a part-time basis and help to resolve impasses in contract negotiations between federal agencies and labor unions representing federal employees.

The Freedom Foundation welcomes former Arkansas governor and Fox News host Mike Huckabee as guest speaker at its annual Oregon banquet in Salem.

OCT. 10 The Freedom Foundation files

NOV. 18 The Freedom Foundation opens a branch office in Ohio, joining Washington, Oregon and California as states where the organization actively works to contact public employees to inform the of their rights under Janus v. AFSCME to opt out of union member FREEDOM MATTERS

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