Spring/Summer 2022
Volume 7, No. 1
Useful Idiocy
How the Left’s green agenda plays into the hands of America’s enemies
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A Publication of the Freedom Foundation
W
e live in an amazing — and in many ways terrifying — age. As is chronicled in an article published in this issue of Freedom Matters, we’re exposed on an almost nightly basis to the gruesome reality of war in the Ukraine, and we can reasonably ask whether the current administration’s misguided environmental policies created the circumstances that fueled Russian President Vladimir Putin’s thirst for conquest. A separate article, meanwhile, probes the haunting question of whether anyone would have — or could have — openly made that connection in the not-too-recent past. For generations, about 90 percent of the national news disseminated in this country started life as a story on the front page of either the New York Times or the Washington Post and was subsequently given the official stamp of approval on the CBS Evening News by anchor Walter Cronkite — dubbed by many the “most trusted man in America.” And too many were comfortably at ease with an arrangment that seldom exposed them to viewpoints at odds with the elitist liberalism of Cronkite and the legacy media and gave them an excuse not to find it on their own. With the advent of technology and, equally important, President Reagan’s foresight to end the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” alternative voices began to dot the landscape, and those like Fox News and radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, who unapolagetically articulated long-suppressed conservative ideals, profited beyond their wildest dreams. To those on the political Left, who still expect the media to be their helpmate and echo chamber, the possibility of the truth trickling out from even a handful of sources cannot be tolerated. To that end, President Biden in late April announced the appointment of a so-called “Ministry of Truth,” charged ostensibly with exposing — and no doubt silencing — those sharing (what the the party in power defines as) lies in print, on the air or online. Obviously no one wants to be lied to, but most adults would prefer to divine the truth for themselves rather than have it determined for them — particularly by an administration desperate to purge honest reporting of its manifest failures from the public discourse. The Freedom Foundation, like thousands of individual bloggers and dozens of other policy organizations, is working hard to fill the truth void with publications like Freedom Matters, our monthly newsletter Living Liberty, plus our blogs and video productions. We are the modern media, and we take our responsibility to the truth seriously. If only the mainstream media did. AARON WITHE, Freedom Foundation CEO
Volume 7, No. 1
26. Targets of Opportunity
Americans have a visceral need to level the playing field, even when it means trampling rights and empowering the government.
With their membership numbers continuing to shrink, public-sector unions are looking for new recruits in strange places including most recently staffers working for members of Congress.
Contents
6. Is Fair Equal? (and Vice Versa)
10. Dues & Don’ts Even deep-blue states can be flipped by defunding the unions that use someone else’s money to pay for their liberal agenda.
14. A Lesson in Hate As if teachers’ union leaders weren’t vile enough, now they’ve begun pushing anti-Semitism.
18. Are We Not Media? The combination of technology and deregulation has made journalists out of just about everyone. (And it’s a good thing.)
22. Playing the Race Canard Unions portray themselves as champions of racial justice, but history shows just the opposite is true.
30. Useful Idiocy Radical environmentalism used to be written off as just a harmless joke. But with thousands dead in the Ukraine because of Biden’s earherness to appease the green zealots in his base , no one’s laughing now.
34. Organized Labor’s Dirty Little Secret Do unions by definition want to scrap America’s capitalist government and replace it with some form of Marxism? Whatever they may want you to believe, the answer is still yes.
38. Action Timeline What has the Freedom Foundation been up to for the past six months? Plenty.
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: Aaron Wuthe; Editor: Jeff Rhodes. Phone: (360) 956-3482.
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Is your
Legacy
Secure?
You’ve spent a lifetime living your values, but will they survive you when you’re gone? Only if you make a solid, well-constructed plan now. If individual liberty, free markets and limited, accountable government are important to you, the Freedom Foundation can help perpetuate your dreams. Call (360) 956-3482 to speak with a legacy giving specialist today.
FREEDOM MATTERS
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Is Equal
Fair?
Millions of Americans are being affected by so-called ‘supply-chain’ problems, but how many recognize unions’ role in it all?
(& vice versa)
Americans have By TIMOTHY R. SNOWBALL Litigation Counsel a visceral need to level the playing field — even when it means trampling rights & empowering our already out-of-control government. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal …”
E
—
U.S. Declaration of Independence
xcept they weren’t. In fact, contrary this soaring rhetoric, the Founding Fathers clearly recognized that humans are born with unique attributes that can either help or hinder them in life. Consequently, they envisioned a system of government that acknowledged undeniable differences while safeguarding the rights of all. Precisely because nature didn’t see fit to make us all equal, we need laws and Constitutional protections that treat everyone fairly. And therein lies the conundrum.
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In most everyday conversation, the words “equal” and “fair” are treated as virtual synonyms. We need look no further than cable news, the Internet or social media for evidence of this fact. As an abstract concept, Americans admire few things more than fairness and equality. But what’s fair equal isn’t always fair. And vice versa. Consider, for example, two bakers receiving the same pay even though one bakes 50 loaves a day and the other can produce only 10. Their compensation is equal, but no one could credibly argue the arrangement is fair Fairness is just that — an abstraction. It has no concrete definition. Fairness is purely subjective — and easily misrepresented. Governments, however, are populated by people, not abstract principles. And people who aspire to remain in government very quickly learn to pander to voters by making lavish promises that play to the electorate’s biases and perceptions, no matter how skewed or unrealistic they may be. Not only do equality and fairness have different basic definitions, they also have differing legal definitions. And the widespread misunderstanding of this reality breeds a lot of bad policy outcomes. In their quest to ensure “fairness” for themselves, too many Americans are willing to destroy any semblance of true equality for others through the application of unequal government intervention. Conversely, in their eagerness not to discriminate, our elected leaders very often tip the balance in favor of perceived equality and devise “solutions” that, again, disregard how many loaves of bread the baker bakes. If we want to gain a better understanding of what “equal” means in the United States, it is best to begin at the beginning. In the original statement of our national principles, Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that it was a self-evident truth that “all men are created equal.”
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But when it comes to truths, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything on this earth less self-evident. People differ in intelligence, backgrounds, income and educational attainment. And it is not just social or economic differences. Some people are taller than others, or more beautiful/handsome or even happier. And yet, in certain circumstances, each of these accidents of birth could prove hugely beneficial to the possessor — seemingly disproving the maxim that all are created equal. So, what exactly did Jefferson mean when he penned these famous words in the Declaration of Independence at the birth of our country? “Equality,” in the sense that Jefferson and the other Founders used it was not an equality of conditions. This proposition would have been baffling indeed coming from a man who, along with his southern contemporaries, owned human slaves. It was also not an equality of outcomes, as the lives of man of Jefferson’s colleagues, among them John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, attested to the Founders’ respect for the value of hard work and the freedom to reap the rewards of one’s labor. Which explains why Jefferson’s famous phrase was immediately followed by the proviso: “…that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” As a governmental imperative, the United States denies neither the existence of unique talents nor the serendipity of pure luck. What it does stipulate, however, is that, irrespective of one’s situation or skill set, he or she is equal in the eyes of God and, thus, equally entitled to the protection of their basic natural rights. Hence, “equality” as understood by the framers of the Constitution is a condition in which the rule of law ensures that no matter the material differences in individuals, all
are treated equally, and their rights respected under the law. Under this conceptualization, it is this deliberately leveled playing field that legitimizes any disparity in material conditions. In America, everyone has the same shot at success (or failure), based on their respective efforts or lack thereof, and we assume government won’t give anyone a leg up over their neighbor. No picking of winners and losers or putting a thumb on the scales to produce an arbitrary outcome. Just an unbiased enforcing of the rules. Like a referee. This is precisely what makes the modern conflation of equality and fairness as enforced through government programs, meddling and force so problematic. Take two of the most hot-button issues in the current debate over social “fairness” masked as a quest for equality — sex and race. In September 2018, California lawmakers approved a gender quota for corporate boards that required all publicly held firms headquartered in the state to have at least one appointed female director by the end of 2019, and two female board members by the end of 2021. Subsequently struck down as unconstitutional by a California state judge, this law serves as a case in point. A truly “equal” system would be one in which all individuals aspiring to rise to the highest ranks of corporate America would do so without any help, or hindrance, from the government. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., what truly matters is the content of one’s character rather than the composition of their chromosomes. Relatedly, this was one of the primary issues that turned off conservatives to the recent nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Biden. It is not that Judge Jackson is not a qualified lawyer and jurist. She obviously is.
Equality It is the idea that the main reason Biden selected her not for her resume, but for her sex and the color of her skin. Which brings us to the everpresent (per the liberal agenda) issue of race. In a society with true racial equality, an individual’s skin pigmentation would make no difference to their academic or professional advancement. Yet consider the issue of affirmative action. For decades there have been attempts to introduce quotas to regulate the racial content of elite public high schools and universities. Even though many of these attempts have been struck down as unconstitutional violations of, you guessed it, the Equal Protection Clause, the idea that seats should be reserved for individuals based not on their achievements, but on their race, persists. Most recently, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted a case for review that addresses the issue of racial discrimination … against Asian students. Of course, none of this is to deny that women, African-Americans and other groups in our society have suffered horrific discrimina-
Fairness tion in the past, often at the hands of government itself. After all, we can’t learn anything from history if we airbrush away those episodes that should rightfully make us feel ashamed. Instead, the appropriate response is not to repeat the mistakes that caused the injuries in the first place by inviting self-serving lawmakers to use the sledgehammer of government to stitch together the torn fabric of feelings. Right idea, perhaps, but the wrong tool for the job. How then can we as a society do all we can to help individuals to reach their full potential? Through those institutions that have long formed the bedrock of what we call Western Civilization — the family, the church and the community. Until we’re ready to step up and admit that in many situations it is culture, rather than any lack of opportunity, that leads young people astray, we will only perpetuate the myth that fairness and equality are one and the same. In their wisdom, the Founding Fathers devised an economy based on free markets and free will. Allowed to operate as designed, their
Reality
(Once government Intervenes)
creation produced the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. The marketplace of ideas requires no less. Just as we don’t need a government bureaucracy to tell us which brand of toothpaste to buy, we don’t need the heavy hand of government telling us which ideas are acceptable and which aren’t. Millions of Americans, making hundreds of buying decisions in their own best interest every day, whittle down the field of options by eliminating products and services no one wants. Just as surely, Americans understand fairness and will ultimately reject unfair, inferior ideas. Fairness, like beauty, may reside in the eye of the beholder. But the version demanded by many individuals making voluntary decisions in a free market will always have a stronger claim to legitimacy than an arbitrary construct imposed by government edict. Instead of chasing abstract phantoms and government solutions that are inherently unequal, each of us must face the fact that one person and one person alone is responsible for our lot in life. Ourselves. FREEDOM MATTERS
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&
Dues Don’ts ‘
Even in states where the Left seems completely unassailable, history has shown the tables can be turned just by defunding the public-sector unions that have become far too influential.
I
n the days following Donald Trump’s stunning (to the mainstream media, at least) election in 2016, the same collection of enlightened pundits whose projections had failed so miserably were paraded before the cameras to try and make sense of it all. Most offered up the customary deep dive into voter demographics and exit polls, combined with a bit of conjecture about the By JEFF RHODES mood of the elecVP for News & Information torate — and more than a few since-debunked conspiracy theories about Russians meddling with the tabulation procedures. For whatever reason, though, one explanation that got little or no attention was the recent defunding of an essential Democratic special interest — public employee unions. But it’s a lesson that should be taken to heart by every American alarmed by the growing, but largely unreported, influence of special interests over the governing process but frustrated that there seems to be no solution. Big Labor, of course, has been a major supporter of leftist politics for decades, but with only 6 percent of workers in the private sector currently paying dues
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By JEFF RHODES
VP for News & Information
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to a union, the real strength of the movement comes from unions representing government employees. In the run-up to the 2016 election, however, there were telltale signs that particular bulwark was crumbling, including published news accounts that documented the weakness of Hilary Clinton’s ground game not only in hotly contested states like Ohio and Pennsylvania but also in the traditionally blue states of Wisconsin and Michigan. A Nov. 16 Huffington Post article, headlined, “The Clinton Campaign Was Undone by Its Own Neglect and a Touch of Arrogance,” recounted that Clinton operatives in those two states reported an unaccustomed shortage of boots on the ground to knock on doors, man the phone banks and shepherd Democratic voters to the polls. In Michigan alone, the Clinton team had roughly one-tenth as many paid canvassers as Sen. John Kerry deployed when he ran for president in 2004.
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A similar scenario unfolded in Wisconsin, where state and local officials scrambled to raise nearly $1 million for efforts to get out the vote in the closing weeks of the campaign. What Wisconsin and Michigan had in common — in addition to being traditionally Democratic strongholds — was that, for both, 2016 marked the first national election since they passed right-to-work legislation, giving public employees in those states a choice about whether to pay dues or agency fees to a union as a condition of employment. And in the interim, thousands had taken advantage of the opportunity by opting out, blowing a huge hole in the revenue stream organized labor had grown accustomed to sharing with its Democratic friends. A coincidence? Consider, then, the example more than two decades earlier of Washington state, where a wildly popular (with the public, at least) ballot measure temporarily staunched the flow of
someone else’s dues dollars into the left’s coffers. In 1992, fiscal conservatives collected more than a quarter of a million signatures on a citizen initiative authored by former Washington House of Representatives member and unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor Bob Williams. Among its other provisions, the measure stipulated that: “No employer or other person or entity responsible for the disbursement of funds in payment of wages or salaries may withhold or divert a portion of an employee’s wages or salaries for contributions to political committees or for use as political contributions except upon the written request of the employee.”
The provision, dubbed “paycheck protection,” meant that, simply put, union leaders could longer assume members shared their political leanings and wanted to fund them. They
actually had to ask permission before donating someone else’s hard-earned money to a leftist candidate or cause. Predictably, the Democrat-dominated Washington State Legislature refused to act on the measure, which meant it could be presented to the voters on the November ballot as Initiative 134. By this time, according to a Washington State Wire story in 2010: “(L)abor unions had trouble making the argument that they ought to be allowed to make enormous contributions to political races. They threw up their hands. It passed with an overwhelming 73 percent.”
The result? In the subsequent 1994 election, Republicans in the Washington State House of Representatives went from a 66-32 minority in 1992 to a 58-40 majority. In the state Senate, the GOP flipped three seats and cut the Democrat advantage to 25-24. (Republicans earned an outright 26-23 majority in 1996). At the federal level, Republican Slade Gorton won the only contested Senate seat, while GOP candidates took seven of the state’s nine seats in the House. Among those swept aside in the Red Tide was U.S. Rep. Tom Foley, who became the first sitting Speaker of the House to lose election since 1862. It’s true the story was much the same elsewhere around the country that year, as voters expressed their displeasure with the first two years of Bill Clinton’s presidency by electing Republicans in huge numbers. But no state as solidly Democratic as Washington made such a remarkable transformation on Election Night. While many factors undoubtedly contributed to the phenomenon, the impact of I-134 cannot be ignored. Before the measure passed, Washington public employees — including teachers — had the right to request their union not use their dues for political purposes, but because unions made the opt-out process so difficult, only 20 percent of the workers bothered to exercise it. I-134 flipped the script completely by putting the burden on the unions instead.
Consequently, during the 1992 election, 80 percent of the workers declined to contribute — depriving the unions of 60 percent of their financing power with the stroke of a pen. Obviously the unions couldn’t allow this to continue. The Washington Education Association (WEA), the state’s largest and most poli-tically active teacher’s union, responded by reinventing itself. The union folded its old political action committee and created a new one in itsd place. The new PAC would take the money from the teachers who “opted in.” Meanwhile, every union member would be required to contribute $12 a year to a new “community outreach program,” which would finance the union’s more indirect political efforts. One union official later testified it was “an internal ploy” to get around the new law. As if the arrangement wasn’t sketchy enough, the community outreach program then proceeded to loan the PAC $162,255 for the 1994 political races — and then immediately forgave the loan. The fraud was obvious for anyone to see. Williams, who in 1991 founded a think tank that later became the Freedom Foundation, explained, “They’re laundering money is a polite way to put it.” The Freedom Foundation fired back in April 1996 by filing a complaint with Washington’s Public Disclosure Commission (PDC), which did its own investigation and, after finding even more wrongdoing on the union’s part, recommended the state take legal action. Attorney General (and later Washington Gov.) Christine Gregoire announced plans to sue WEA, which prevented the Freedom Foundation from filing its own lawsuit. But in 1998, she worked out a settlement deal under which the union would reportedly pay a fine of $430,000 — at the time, the largest campaign finance penalty in state history. Nearly three-quarters of that total, however, was structured as a “refund” to teachers — in essence, the fine amounted to nothing more than a temporary dues reduction.
More sinister, however, was a provision in the deal that “clarified” a gray area in the law to WEA’s advantage, allowing the union to pump member dues into the political action committee without asking permission — as long as the union contributions were properly reported. The state’s attorneys justified the action by claiming that part of the initiative hadn’t specifically mentioned unions. Behind closed doors, with no debate or public input, Gregoire and her union allies — the same organizations that donated tens of thousands of dollars to her election campaigns before and after the settlement was announced — effectively stripped out the landscape-altering component of a ballot initiative approved by 72 percent of the state’s voters. The result was all too predict-able. By 1998, with unions once again free to spend as much of someone else’s money as they pleased, Democrats in Washington’s House of Representatives had reclaimed a 28-21 advantage, while the Senate was deadlocked 49-49. (Senate Democrats regained their majority in 2002 and haven’t relinquished it since.) The three states have vastly different histories, demographics and cultures, but Washington, Michigan and Wisconsin all experienced precisely the same electoral shift in the immediate aftermath of legislation that (at least temporarily) choked off funding to their respective government-employee unions. No doubt this explains with the unions have been fighting tooth and nail since 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME effectively made the entire nation a right-to-work state. If millions of public employees represented by groups like AFSCME, SEIU, the Teamsters and various teacher’s unions ever fully embrace their freedom to opt out and stop funding someone else’s political agenda with their dues money, the consequences could be devastating not only for organized labor, but for the leftist candidates and causes they so generously support. And wouldn’t that be a shame? FREEDOM MATTERS
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A Lesson in
HATE the
By SHELLA ALCABES & RACHEL WIEGEL
Litigation Counsel / Outreach Coordinator
As if their agenda wasn’t toxic enough already, California teachers’ unions have started trafficking in anti-Semitism.
O
ver the past several decades, young Americans have begun to embrace a very different perspective regarding the Middle East conflict compared to previous generations. They have become increasingly sympathetic towards groups like Hamas that their parents would have viewed as enemies of freedom and democracy, while showing open hostility to the country’s traditional allies in Israel. It’s what they’re learning in school. It is no secret the union-led public school system in America makes a habit of rewriting history it finds inconvenient and indoctrinating, rather than educating, young minds. To a degree many would have con-
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sidered unthinkable just a few years ago, the lessons being taught are overtly, and radically, anti-Semitic. And nowhere is this more apparent than in California, where teachers’ unions dominate the public schools and public-sector unions dominate the Legislature as much any other state in the nation. Case in point, June 2021, when the Freedom Foundation was able to obtain a copy of a motion request letter being circulated to educators by United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) President Cecily Myart-Cruz “denounc(ing) the Israeli Army” and demanding teachers (and, by extension, students) stand with Palestinians, who she describes as “the most oppressed workers” in the world. Many teachers in Los Angeles were understandably outraged when this document was not only sent to them by the union representatives but accompanied by pressure to sign it and show they agreed with its toxic message. During this time, many union leaders also scurried to social media to express their contempt for Israeli residents and anyone who feels compassion for them. Once apprised of the situation, the Freedom Foundation immediately sent mail and emails to UTLA members exposing this divisive language and urging them to cease funding Myart-Cruz’s bigotry with their dues. Hundreds of teachers consequently opted out of UTLA, and many community members have become more watchful of antisemitic behavior within the Southern California school district. Not to be outdone, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has also gotten into the act. AFT president Randi Weingarten — herself a Jew — was quoted earlier this year asserting, “American Jews are now a part of the ownership class.” The incomprehensible remark came in response to a question about Jewish criticism of her union’s push to keep schools closed during the COVID 19 pandemic. Weingarten added, “What I hear
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when I hear that question is that those who are in the ownership class now want to take that ladder of opportunity away from those who do not have it.” Her vile comments mirror the familiar stereotypes and scapegoating Jews have endured for centuries. Undaunted, the teacher’s unions in California have continued to push this issue through the state’s new Ethnic Studies curriculum requirement. The program is the brainchild of a consulting group calling itself Liberated Ethnic Studies, which develops and sells a curriculum to school districts to fit this new legal requirement. Numerous high schools across the state have already purchased these lesson plans and are poised to implement it in the 2022-2023 school year. Teachings of this course promulgate a distinctly anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian agenda — at a cost of more than $82,000 a pop to the school district and its taxpayers. Needless to say, a state of California’s size has an enormous number of Jewish residents. Los Angeles alone has the second-largest Jewish population in the country. Many Jewish and Zionist community members in these districts are justifiably concerned about the hostility towards Israel being whipped up by the teachers’ unions and taught in the state’s schools, fearing Jewish students will be subjected to violence. Castro Valley School District in the Bay Area, for example, has been outspoken about its proud adoption of the LES curriculum. However, a group of teachers, parents, and students there is fighting back, noting that the district “…claims it is committed to ensuring the inclusion and belonging of all students and families with its tagline ‘All Means All.’ However, it appears this declaration comes with a notable exception: Jews not included.” To add another layer of pressure, the University of California is considering imposing a new admission requirement that would require all applying California high school students to have taken the highly controversial Liberated Ethnic Studies course. The UC system, which has a history of taking its marching orders from
CTA, includes nine of the state’s most prominent universities. A petition expressing outrage was signed by more than 1,000 UC students, faculty, alumni and donors demanding the university not add this new requirement — which, if passed, would be only the second amendment to UC admissions policies in the past century. Dozens of California educators have already reported experiencing the implications of these agendas in their schools. Many history teachers say they are pressured by union reps and administrators to teach a “revised history” of the Middle East, and some have been told not to refer to Israel as a “real country.” Jewish parents, in turn, report their children are being bullied and treated as if they are evil, while others feel they must hide their heritage to avoid discrimination. Since 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling banning mandatory union membership and dues in the public sector, thousands of California teachers have fled CTA. More than a few have cited its anti-Semitic agenda for their decision. Likewise, the legality of Critical Race Theory in schools is both complex and controversial. Schools are generally allowed to teach the curriculum of their choosing, so long as it complies with the state statutes and education requirements laid out by the California Legislature. Further, teachers have a substantial amount of academic freedom in the curriculum they teach. However, that academic freedom can come in direct conflict with the First Amendment rights of teachers and students. Since the Legislature’s adoption of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum on March 18, 2021, this required ethnic studies curriculum includes, among much other racist propaganda, antiSemitic content because it leads to the portrayal of Jews as “white, privileged oppressors” and Zionism as a “racist, colonialist system of oppression.” In Ethnic Studies classrooms, where students will be required to “dismantle systems of oppression,”
Criticizing Critical Race Theory
As a Jewish attorney at the Freedom Foundation, the issues in California relating to the Model Curriculum are near and dear to my heart. What is particularly appalling to me, however, is the bizarre victimhood hierarchy critical race theory requires Jews to accept. Jews are an ancient race that has been suffered thousands of years of discrimination and subjugation. Yet at the same time, in most places where they have lived in the diaspora, they have thrived and contributed immensely to the nations in
Jewish and Zionist students will undoubtedly have a large target on their backs. Requiring teachers and students to role play and utter phrases they find vile, wrong, harmful and anti-Semitic will unquestionably result in a violation of those students’ First Amendment rights. This kind of coerced speech requirement shreds the legala doctrine of “unconstitutional conditions,” which states that one cannot be required to give up a constitutionally protected
which they were living. This contradiction does not square with the principles of critical race theory, which ranks minorities based on power and powerlessness, based on success and failure. Jews do not fit the Critical Race Theory mold. Nor should they — or any group, for that matter. The entire paradigm is evil, un-American and illiberal, and we should do everything in our power to fight this indoctrination. — SHELLA ALCABES
right, such as freedom of speech, in order to maintain a government benefit, such as public education. In some cases, the imposition of a quid pro quo is blatant and obviously wrong. In Speiser v. Randall, California required veterans to affirmatively acknowledge their loyalty to the federal government as a condition to receiving certain tax exemptions. This clearly infringed upon the veterans’ First Amendment rights, with the government using a financial
carrot (a tax benefit) to coerce individuals into not speaking out against the government. In other cases, the conditioning is less obvious. American Communications Association v. Douds is such a case. In Douds, an agency of the federal government refused to allow labor groups access to government facilities unless the officers of the groups executed affidavits relating to communism. The Supreme Court ruled, “(T)he fact that no direct restraint or punishment is imposed upon speech or assembly does not determine the free speech question. Under some circumstances, indirect ‘discouragements’ undoubtedly have the same coercive effect upon the exercise of First Amendment rights as imprisonment, fines, injunctions or taxes.” In the case of the anti-Semitic “Model Curriculum,” it’s clear the unconstitutional condition is most applicable to situations where schools will be forced to include teaching that is dictated or guided by the Legislature or potentially lose a public benefit. This legal theory has not yet been tested in court and will likely have much success in private schools that receive public funding. That said, it is one possible avenue for fighting the Model Curriculum. Other legal considerations may have to take a personal injury approach. For example, if the school environment becomes dangerous or hostile to students and teachers as a result of the Model Curriculum’s implementation, a student or teacher may consider suing under a tort claim for harassment or workplace violations. The difficulty with each of these legal theories is that none is yet ripe for adjudication. Once the Model Curriculum is implemented fully in schools and students and teachers are actually affected by it, a suit may rightfully be brought. Until that time, the injuries are still just hypothetical and no court would be willing to hear these cases preemptively. FREEDOM MATTERS
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T
he Watergate coverup, the Pentagon Papers leak and the CIA’s involvement and clandestine support of largescale cocaine sales to fund the Nicaraguan Contras are among the stop-the-presses news stories that spring to mind when those of a certain age contemplate the term “journalism.” Whether factual or not, such scandals and international intrigue conjure up the image of hard-driving, incorruptible reporters and editors working for the nation’s legacy newspapers and broadcast media, unearthing information the public needs to know. We think of reporting on the Vietnam war, 9/11, and the war in Ukraine. Stories of national and international importance told by mass news media conglomerates (“institutional press”) such as Fox News, the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal. But modern technology has forever changed the rules, and the number of those actually playing it has exploded. No longer is the title of journalist limited to credentialed representatives from newspapers, magazines, radio and television outlets. And unlike doctors or lawyers, who require state certification to practice, there are almost no limits to who can consider themselves a journalist and lay claim to whatever privileges might accompany the moniker. That’s a good thing. These days, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of everyday
Are We Not Media? With the advent of the Internet, virtually anyone these days can fit the definition of the journalist. (Hint: That’s a good thing.) By SYDNEY PHILLIPS Litigation Counsel
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Americans who fit the legal definition of “news media.” Ultimately, these people — committed individuals on the ground writing unbidden about local government, small-town politics and the misdeeds occurring in our own backyards — are the ones who need the most protection. Arguably, the most essential element to a free society is an informed citizenry. Democracy can only flourish when its citizens are aware and apprised of the world around them. As the old saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant. The importance of this cannot be diminished. The right and ability to communicate freely without fear of retribution from the government necessitates the broadest possible interpretation of who can communicate ideas and opinions. This is one of the key tenets that makes America great — the untrammeled right of the average American to report on all that’s occurring within his or her sphere of influence and to tell the stories that matter to those at the local, regional and national level. No one understood this better than the Founding Fathers, who included absolute protection of freedom of the press in the very first amendment to the United States Constitution. Freedom of the press is not simply there to protect journalism in its most traditional sense but also to protect the rights of ordinary citizens wishing to gather and disseminate news. The Bill of Rights proclaims, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The Founders understood that the freedom of press meant the protection of a free society. James Madison in 1789 defined freedom of the press as “…one of the great bulwarks of liberty.” Yet beyond this, not much is known about the Founders’ debate on the question. No arguments were recorded, and the little we do know is limited to understanding it was considered a matter of great importance. In the ensuing two and a half centuries, courts and legislatures have attempted to better understand the role of the press in a just society. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter StewPAGE 20 n FREEDOM MATTERS
art argued in a famous concurring opinion:
“(The fact that the) First Amendment speaks separately of freedom of speech and freedom of the press is no constitutional accident, but an acknowledgment of the critical role played by the press in American Society. The Constitution requires sensitivity to that role, and to the special needs of the press in performing it effectively.”
The “sensitivity” Justice Stewart spoke of is the unique way the government treats the press. Due to the media’s role in disseminating news and information, the state gives deference to those it recognizes as members of the fraternity. This deference provides the press with access to records, courtrooms and spaces from which a regular, uncredentialed member of the public might be barred. This unique access and perspective is imperative to the storytelling and news-gathering functions of the press. In fact, so many of the stories we recognize as great reporting come from the information gathered by people accessing government records. Each state has responded to the role of the press differently. In Washington state, for example, the Legislature has defined “news media” as:
“(A)ny newspaper, magazine or other periodical, book publisher, news agency, wire service, radio or television station or network, cable or satellite station or network, or audio or audiovisual production company, or any entity that is in the regular business of news gathering and disseminating news or information to the public by any means, including, but not limited to, print, broadcast, photographic, mechanical, internet, or electronic distribution.”
While this definition pays homage to traditional forms of journalism, it also classifies “any entity” engaged in the regular business of “news gathering and disseminating” as a member of news media or the “press.” Simply put, any courtesies and priv-
ileges enjoyed by more conventional media outlets must also be extended to anyone with an interest in acquiring information and possessing a medium — including an online blog — with which it can be shared with others. Under the law, there is no distinction between the highest-paid reporter at the New York Times and your neighbor blogging in his pajamas at the kitchen table. Nor should there be. The single most important privilege extended to news media is the access to public records. The government is the servant of the people, and in that role is the maintainer and keeper of public information. The ability and opportunity to report on the government cannot be understated. Washington’s Public Records Act, to cite a local example, expresses succinctly the importance of public records to the residents of the state when it says: “The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.”
Like the traditional media and the growing crop of online journalists, the multitude of government watchdog organizations that have sprung up to fill the information void cannot perform their critical mission of encouraging honest, accountable leadership without access to public records. Gathering data from government agencies is pivotal to the information these organizations gather and analyze. And because, aided by modern technology, they have the ability to disseminate this information to millions of consumers with the touch of a button, these groups are unquestionably a member of the media in the truest sense of the word. Or so any serious reading of the law would indicate. Unfortunately, not
And that’s the way it wasn’t There’s a popular meme making the rounds on Facebook that has a picture of longtime CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite above the caption, “Can anyone remember when journalists reported facts and not opinions?” If you can’t remember such a time, that’s because it never existed. It later became clear after his retirement that Cronkite was extremely liberal and, to cite just the most obvious example, his opinion in the wake of the 1968 Tet Offensive that the war in Vietnam had become unwinnable was perhaps the most important factor in turning American public opinion against it. In fact, Tet — an overwhelming American victory militarily — was seen by the North Vietnamese as a last-ditch effort before returning to the bargaining table to surrender. But thanks to Cronkite, our enemy
everyone reads the law seriously. The Freedom Foundation is currently embroiled in an all-toopredictable lawsuit with the state of Washington over a pair of standard information requests seeking to obtain the contact information for thousands of government employees so they can be informed of their right to opt out of union membership and dues. Both of the agencies being queried considered these legitimate requests fbut were prevented from complying when several unions lodged a complaint citing a new state law that had taken effect the day after the request was filed limiting the disclosure of
was emboldened and the war dragged on for four more years before U.S. forces withdrew in disgrace, leaving anywhere from 1.5 to 3.5 million South Vietnamese behind to be slaughtered by the aggressors. Anyone nostalgic for the days when one liberal newscaster had that kind of power either shares Cronkite’s dystopian world view or is too lazy to think for him- or herself. The modern media landscape, with an almost unlimited number of news outlets, may be chaotic, but at least it offers a voice to opposing points of view. Why else would the Biden administration, desperate to suppress word of its many failures, brazenly create a “Ministry of Truth” within the Department of Homeland Security whose job is nothing less than defining a lie as anything unflattering to the president and his liberal agenda. If only Uncle Walter were still around to give this naked power grab a patina of respectability.
personal information. An Appeals Court judge this spring sided with the unions on the question of the request’s timing but agreed an exception in the law for “news media” might include the Freedom Foundation. The case was returned to Superior Court to consider that question. Again, it couldn’t be more obvious that an exemption for “any entity” engaged in the regular business of “news gathering and disseminating” would have to apply to a nationally recognized public policy organization that: n regularly informs public employees, donors and the public;
n publishes a monthly newspaper, a twice-yearly magazine and weekly blogs; n produces in-house a variety of videos based on its information; n utilizes the full-range of social media; and, n whose reporting has consistently led to stories being picked up by institutional press sources, have been cited by other government and private actors to influence change in their state and have led to hundreds of lawsuits to protect citizens from government over-reach and malfeasance.
The formula is simple: Information gathering + dissemination = media. And the unions know full well they will ultimately lose this battle. But they have no incentive to concede the point and millions of dollars in member dues to keep collecting while the case is bottled up in court. Limiting access to spaces (open meetings and court rooms) and records has become the mission of government actors and private interest groups alike. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan once opined:
“(T)he First Amendment … has a structural role to play in securing and fostering our republican system of self-government. Implicit in this structural role is not only ‘the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,’ but the antecedent assumption that valuable public debate – as well as other civic behavior – must be informed. The structural model links the First Amendment to the process of communication necessary for a democracy to survive, and thus entails solicitude not only for communication itself but also for the indispensable conditions of meaningful communication.”
Government employees in particular and the public in general have a right to know what their elected leaders are up to, and the laws defining who is and isn’t entitled to that information are painfully explicit. All they require is fair-minded enforcement. FREEDOM MATTERS
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Playing the
Race Canard While unions portray themselves as defenders of equality and civil rights, their checkered history — and the very nature of how they operate — tell a different story.
T
he nation’s largest public employee union, the Service Employees international Union (SEIU) includes a section on its website trumpeting creation of what it calls a “Racial Justice Center.” “There can be no economic justice without racial justice,” the accompanying text informs By JEFF RHODES us, noting VP for News & Information that, “The Racial Justice Center was established in January of 2017 to support our commitment to all working families whether black, white or brown. It serves as a hub and resource for our work to create a world where everyone, no matter the color of their skin, can participate, prosper and reach their full potential.” Lofty rhetoric indeed. But like most pronouncements from organized labor, SEIU’s attempt to position unions as the champion of civil rights
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has to be swallowed Needless to say, with an entire shaker job-needy blacks of salt, in this case bewho might be less cause it reflects both motivated to drive a whitewashing of a hard bargain history and ignorance were strictly of the basic laws of excluded from economics. the club, and the “At SEIU,” the webracial tension fusite wording contineled by the unions’ ues, “we are coming discriminatory together to reject policies boiled over the politics of hate with horrendous and division. We are consequences. fighting back against Among the worst self-interested politiwas the so-called cians and greedy corIllinois Coal Strike porations who try to of 1898. divide us while they When an agreehijack our economy, ment between the our democracy and United Mine Workour government.” ers and the mine For government owners expired, employee unions the union went on — which are effecstrike and violently tively in the business prevented black of seizing as much workers from tak“Shall the labor unions control as possible ing their former use their influence to deprive over government by jobs. the black man of his opportunity corrupting politicians The UMW had with confiscated dues the full support of to labor… [or] unite with those who money — to accuse Illinois Gov. John R. want to give every man, regardless of anyone else of hijackTanner, who swore color, race or creed, what Col. Roosevelt ing the process is he would use the calls the ‘square deal’ in the matters of labor?” hypocrisy of the most state militia to “… brazen sort. shoot to pieces with — BOOKER T. WASHINGTON But when you have Gatling guns” any as much to hide as train bringing in unions do when it black workers. comes to racism, no The militia caplie is too audacious. tain in Pana, Ill., was Truth be told, the “With deportation, even to a equally adamant, entire labor movement in the U.S. is limited extent,” the Great Emancipavowing, “If any Negroes are brought based on bigotry and discrimination. tor wrote, “enhanced wages to white into Pana while I am in charge, and Unions, in fact, can trace their labor are mathematically certain. they refuse to retreat when ordered history in this country back to the Labor is like any other commodity in to do so, I will order my men to fire. If years immediately following the Civil the market — increase the demand I lose every man under my command, War, when newly freed black slaves for it and you increase the price of no Negroes shall land in Pana.” migrated North and flooded the bur- it. Reduce the supply of black labor, Samuel Gompers, who founded the geoning Industrial Revolution with by colonizing the black laborer out American Federation of Labor and cheap workers. of the country, and, by precisely so served as the organization’s presiNo less a luminary in the civil much, you increase the demand for, dent from 1886 to 1894, and again rights pantheon than Abraham and wages of, white labor.” from 1895 until his death in 1924, is Lincoln recognized the “problem,” When the ex-slaves, following widely considered one of the labor although his preferred solution, Lincoln’s death, stubbornly refused movement’s most respected figures. rather than simply allowing the free to be expatriated, white workers Yet he once famously thundered, “The market to work as it was intended, resorted to Plan B — organizing into Caucasians are not going to let their was to deport the former slaves to unions employers could be bullied standard of living be destroyed by some other country. into dealing with exclusively. Negroes, Chinamen, Japs or any
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other … If the colored man continues to lend himself to the work of tearing down what the white man has built up, a race hatred worse than any ever known before will result. Caucasian civilization will serve notice that its uplifting process is not to be interfered with in any such way.” Labor apologists, of course, will insist any unflattering differences between unions and African-American workers are ancient history, and even a superficial glance through Google will turn up a treasure trove of clumsy leftist efforts to airbrush the factual record. Just to cite a few: n “Unions are essential to racial justice,” Progressive.org; May 21, 2021; n “Unions are essential to eliminating racism,” Jacobin; July 7, 2020; n “How unions promote racial solidarity in the United States.” EquitableGrowth.org; Sept. 2, 2021; and, n “Why labor and the movement for social justice should work together,” PopularDemocracy.org. Even more cringeworthy, however, are the multitude of unionproduced missives assigning racist motives to right-to-work legislation.
n “The racist roots of right-towork,” AFSCME.org; n “The racist history of right-towork,” LaborNotes.org; n “The ugly racial history of right-to-work,” DissentMagazine.org; and, n “Racist history of right-towork shows threat to black, Latino workers,” ChicagoReporter.com.
But just like opponents of voter ID laws, who assume black voters are less likely than other to possess a drivers’ license or other identification documents, right-to-work critics only expose their own biases by suggesting black workers need to be compelled to join a union because they can’t be trusted to decide for themselves whether doing so is worth the cost in dues money. The point is, why should anyone be surprised to discover the racist
skeletons in organized labor’s closet when the entire movement is based on principles that, whether intentional or not, feed discrimination as oxygen does a flame? As Lincoln correctly observed, reducing the supply of any commodity will increase the cost to obtain it. Unions exist to raise the wages of their members by erecting barriers to entry into the labor pool and artificially suppressing the supply of workers. Unhappily for the union narrative, this dynamic plays right into the hands of employers predisposed to discriminate against minority workers by reducing the cost of doing so. Acclaimed economist Thomas Sowell, in “The Economics of Discrimination,” explains: “To the extent that organized labor succeeds in raising pay levels above where they would be under supply and demand in a free market, (it) provides incentives for employers to hire fewer workers because labor is more costly — both absolutely and relative to the cost of capital that can be substituted for labor. At the same time, wage rates raised above the level that would prevail under supply and demand attract more workers, who apply for jobs that have higher pay. The net effect is that organized labor tends to create a chronic surplus of job applicants. Given that surplus, the cost to the employer of turning away qualified applicants from the ‘wrong group’ is less that than it would be if the employer had to be concerned about finding enough similarly qualified replacements for those who have been arbitrarily rejected.”
In simple terms, this means employers forced to pay inflated union wages will, logically enough, hire fewer workers, putting jobs at a premium. Gifted this arbitrarily created “buyer’s market,” an employer will suffer little or no financial penalty for indulging in the luxury of hiring a worker on the basis of skin color rather than actual qualifications.
Thus, for all their preening when it comes to racial justice, union leaders are either consciously promoting — or willfully ignorant of the logical consequences of — an economic system that makes racism more likely rather than less. And why not? The union model is nothing more or less than the physical manifestation of the sort of collectivist ideologies that have stifled freedom and opportunity for more than a century while benefiting only the anointed few wherever they’ve been adopted. By contrast, no form of government has ever come close to capitalism when it comes to ensuring racial equality. Again, quoting Thomas Sowell, “Free market capitalism provides information and opportunity that creates incentives for us to serve each other — regardless of how we look or what we believe. In other words, free markets destroy racism.” None of which is to suggest that union leaders are closet bigots keeping their true feelings under wraps. Given the level of support — and their unwitting members’ dues money — funneled by unions to the Black Lives Matter movement, to say nothing of the irrational attachment of the nation’s teachers’ unions to the Critical Race Theory curriculum, there is little doubt organized labor does indeed see itself as a champion of civil rights. The reality, however, is much different. First and foremost, unions care about preserving and growing their wealth and influence. Writing for the CATO Institute in 2010, Peter Moreno rightly noted, “The claim that organized labor has been a force for racial egalitarianism can only be called a myth. It is one of the many myths that pro-union historians have perpetuated … (but) perhaps the greatest myth of all is that organized labor is good for workers generally. In fact, unions transfer income from the unorganized to the organized, and depress total income to such a degree that even organized workers are poorer.” No matter what color they may be. FREEDOM MATTERS
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Targets of Opportunity A
As their membership numbers shrink, unions have started looking to legislative staffers as a new source of dues.
t first glance, Starbucks baristas appear have little in common with congressional aides. Yet, for some of the same reasons, both are at the center of one of the biggest waves of labor union organizing in recent decades. In the face of declining membership in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Janus v. AFSCME that outlawed mandatory membership and dues in the public sector, government employee unions, aided by their liberal allies in bureaucracies at every level, have sought to replenish the ranks by organizing groups of workers that have historically been considered a poor fit for collective bargaining. These have included foster parents, home-based childcare operators and people caring for Medicaid-eligible friends or family with disabilities. MAXFORD NELSEN Labor Policy Director The latest in this trend has been the unionization of legislative aides. Although still a novelty, the trend has rapidly gained steam over the past year. Unlike many government jobs, legislative work is often inherently, explicitly partisan. For obvious reasons, both elected officials and their aides generally find it helpful and productive to share the same basic political views. In addition, it’s common for the respective party caucuses to have their own Republican or Democrat staff to assist with drafting legislation, handling public relations and engaging in coalition outreach. While aides may work for a particular lawmaker or party day to day, individual lawmakers do not generally operate as independent “employers.”
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Instead, the legislature or its respective chambers typically have nonpartisan, professional staff that handle payroll and technical employment matters and generally report to the majority party. The nature of the work is also unique, with staff typically working intensely when the legislature convenes but having a more relaxed schedule — or even not working at all — outside official legislative proceedings. Nonetheless, unions’ one-size-fitsall, factory floor collective bargaining model is a poor fit for the unique structure and demands of legislative employment. Consequently, few legislative employees have been unionized despite the widespread proliferation of unions in government. Until recently, Maine appeared to be the only state to permit unionization and collective bargaining for legislative employees, which it authorized in 1999. While nonpartisan, administrative employees have been represented by the Maine Service Employees Association since 2002, the partisan aides working with state lawmakers are not unionized. But with dues revenue on the line, unions are working hard to force the square peg into the round hole. So far, their record is mixed. At the outset of Delaware’s 2020 General Assembly, a group of legislative aides announced their intent to form a union for the roughly 45 employees serving the state’s elected lawmakers. The effort to certify the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 81 was spearheaded by Democrat staffers who, given their party’s nearly 2-1 advantage in the General Assembly, comprised a clear majority of the bargaining unit. Even their clear numerical advantage proved insufficient to overcome unforeseen legal barriers, however. Just one month into the effort, AFSCME Council 81 shared a legal analysis with workers concluding that the employees were exempt from the state’s public employee collective bargaining laws, “…thus raising a question about whether the Public Employment PAGE 28 n FREEDOM MATTERS
Relations Board could ever establish a bargaining obligation for the General Assembly.” Additionally, the analysis determined “(T)here remains a clear separation of powers issue … because we would be asking the judicial branch to impose a requirement upon the legislative branch through the executive branch.” In a statement to Delaware Online, the employee activists blasted AFSCME Council 81, claiming the union “repeatedly assured us that we had the legal right and ability to organize and promised us legal protections afforded to all organizing workers under the law … That they would have a different legal opinion now than during the several months leading up to our announcement is disappointing and dangerous for everyone involved.” Then in December 2020, on the other side of the country, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 89 filed a petition to unionize Oregon lawmakers’ aides with the state Employment Relations Board (ERB). It immediately ran into roadblocks. Responding to the petition on behalf of the Oregon Legislature, Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum argued that allowing an executive branch agency, the ERB, to direct the legislature to collectively bargain with its own staff violated the separation of powers between government branches established by the Oregon State Constitution. She also pointed out that state law “does not provide a mechanism” for the legislature, as an entity, to be represented in collective bargaining and that some of the employees the union petitioned to represent were specifically excluded from being unionized. Nonetheless, the Democratcontrolled Oregon State Legislature, deeply in hock to union political muscle, sought to remove one roadblock by passing SB 759 in early 2021, designating the Speaker of the House and the Senate President as the Legislature’s bargaining representatives in any union negotiations. IBEW also withdrew its initial petition and submitted a second that
designated the employees to be represented more precisely. With these issues resolved, the union, legislature and EBR plowed ahead, ignoring the thornier separation-of-powers question. The ERB certified the union to represent legislative aides in June 2021 after the employees voted for the union 75-31. But in August, the Freedom Foundation challenged the unionization scheme, primarily on separation-ofpowers grounds, with a lawsuit filed in state courts on behalf of Oregon state Rep. Kimberly Wallan (R-Medford) and her legislative assistant, Sarah Daley. The litigation continues to work its way through the courts and, so far, the union and Democrat legislative leaders have been unable to reach agreement on their first collective bargaining agreement, perhaps a sign of the unique challenges of integrating collective bargaining into a legislative environment, or that Democrat legislators are learning the hard way that union contracts will undermine their control over the operation of the institution. In early 2022, the concept spread north to Washington, where a coalition of unions, led by the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District Council 5, backed legislation to extend collective bargaining privileges to legislative employees. Initially, it looked like Washington’s Democrat-controled Legislature had learned the lessons of Oregon’s initial, rocky experience with unionization. While the proposal received hearings in both the House and Senate, it failed to receive floor votes in either chamber in time to survive a key deadline. The apparent attempt by Democrat leadership to let the bills die quietly prompted an unprecedented one-day “sickout” in mid-February involving about 100 staffers — all Democrats, according to press reports. Progressive media also savaged Democrat leadership, not unjustly, for the hypocrisy of supporting unions in every other context but refusing to allow collective bargaining for their own employees.
Attempting to save face, Democrat leaders bent the procedural rules and introduced a new bill to resurrect the concept. HB 2124, which was ultimately passed along party lines and signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee, extended collective bargaining privileges to legislative employees in principle beginning in 2025. In the meantime, the newly created, $1 million-per-year Office of State Legislative Labor Relations was tasked with studying and reporting to the Legislature on how to actually implement collective bargaining. The driving force behind such legislation, of course, is not an interest in aides’ welfare or voice at work, but a desire to feed the Big Labor beast more dues money in return for continued electoral support. In Washington’s case, IUPAT District Council 5 endorses Democrats almost exclusively. It and its parent affiliate have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in members’
dues backing candidates for office in Washington. Prior to targeting legislative staff, the union organized employees of the Washington and Oregon Democrat Parties. While collective bargaining in government always comes with fundamental, structural flaws, the explicitly partisan nature of legislative aides and the unions seeking to organize them create additional challenges. Allowing labor unions explicitly aligned with one political party to represent non-partisan legislative employees who are supposed to impartially and professionally serve elected lawmakers regardless of party affiliation could pose serious conflicts of interest. Further, as occurred in Oregon, allowing a union aligned with the majority party to represent all legislative aides puts minority party staffers in the unenviable position of having to choose between: (1.) joining the union and supporting the electoral defeat
of the lawmaker(s) they work for; or, (2.) forgoing any voice over workplace matters. Nonetheless, these difficulties may be more than eclipsed by the fact that liberal lawmakers are self-imposing collective bargaining obligations that will inevitably turn their focus inward towards negotiating contracts, defending grievances, navigating work rules, managing labor unrest or even work stoppages, and otherwise slow down their conveyor belt of progressive policy. Congressional Democrats presently find themselves in a similar bind, torn between living their proclaimed belief in the universal importance of labor unions to workers’ rights and ceding a competitive advantage to their Republican counterparts. With the midterm elections rapidly approaching, it wouldn’t be surprising if congressional leadership hopes the issue simply blows over for now. But there’s little chance it will go away altogether. FREEDOM MATTERS
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Useful Idiocy By ASHLEY VARNER For many years, VP for Communications & Federal Affairs environmental extremism just seemed like a harmless joke. But with people in the Ukraine actually dying because of it, no one’s laughing anymore.
I
t’s getting so you can’t get through a news broadcast without hearing about a new law or regulation to combat climate change. Contrary to the popular narrative, there’s nothing resembling a consensus supporting such legislation within the scientific community, but when it comes to the mainstream media and government bureaucrats, the debate is long-since
settled. Not coincidentally, these draconian measures to save the planet from impending doom involve millions, or even billions, more in government spending and provide the chattering class with a nightly catastrophe about which to opine. Many of these inconveniences are minor and incremental,
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like banning plastic straws in favor of paper alternatives that disintegrate if you don’t enjoy your beverage fast enough. But other governmental burdens in the name of “saving the planet” can deeply and adversely impact millions of people. At the low end of the scale, this means imposing oil and natural gas policies that cause fuel and home energy costs to skyrocket beyond what a family’s budget can easily absorb. For others, it’s literally become a matter of life and death. By now, to cite the most horrendous example, it’s become patently obvious to all but the most deranged environmental extremists (and their befuddled surrogate in the White House) that adopting policies designed to curtail exploration for future oil reserves and the transportation of its current inventory has put the United States at a significant competitive disadvantage with Russia. This is far more than an economic dilemma. By transforming the nation from a net exporter to a net importer of petroleum, President Biden handed Vladimir Putin, Russia’s bloodthirsty dictator, the political cover and the funding he required — not only with the U.S. but also with its European allies — to invade Ukraine and butcher tens of thousands of innocent noncombatants. Once upon a time, fanciful dreams of running a modern economy on moonbeams and happy thoughts seemed like a pleasant diversion to many. But those days of blissful ignorance are gone. Now we’re forced to endure video every day of men, women and children slaughtered in the name of keeping the planet from warming by two-tenths of a degree over the next century. The green mob’s answer to $4plus per gallon gasoline? Go out and buy a $50,000 electric car (that has to be recharged every few hundred miles using power generated, in the vast majority of cases, at a coal-fired plant producing more carbon emissions than the gas guzzler it was
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created to replace). The rhetoric has ratcheted up dramatically in recent years, but the campaign to grow government and intrude more and more into our daily lives has been ongoing for decades. Before it became “climate change” in the 2000s, there was the “global warming” crisis of the 1990s. In the 1980s, the calamities de jour were “acid rain” and the destruction of the planet’s ozone layer by aerosol deodorant. These came on the heels of similarly solemn pronouncements during the 1970s of planetary cooling trends that foretold a looming ice age. It appears for now the climate experts have settled on the term “climate change” because they don’t have to come up with a different tactic for each new decade while they find new ways to scare the bejeezus out of the American people in hopes of separating them from ever-more tax dollars and personal freedom. Against this backdrop, President Richard Nixon in 1970 was goaded into creating the Environmental
Protection Agency by executive order. According to the EPA’s own archives, during the 1970s alone, the agency enacted: n the Environmental Quality Improvement Act (1970); n the Coastal Zone Management Act (1972); n the Marine Protection Research and Sanctuaries Act (1972); n the Marine Mammal Protection Act (1972); n the Endangered Species Act (1973); n the Deepwater Ports and Waterways Safety Act (1974); n the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act (1974); n the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (1976); n the Water Resources Planning Act (1977); n the Water Resources Research Act (1977); and, n in its early years, the EPA placed “about 1,500 rulemaking notices in the Federal Register annually.” Meanwhile, the media regularly pitched in to help with the fearmongering.
An April 28, 1975, Newsweek article proposed solutions that even included outlawing the internal combustion engine, and a Time magazine issue on Jan. 31, 1977, featured a cover story with helpful advice on, “How to Survive the Coming Ice Age.” Much to the annoyance of the doomsayers, it didn’t happen, which necessitated the manufacturing of another oncoming catastrophe that could only be averted with a massive infusion of taxpayer dollars, larger and more intrusive government and the unquestioned sacrifice of our civil rights. As an Oct. 29, 1989, Los Angeles Times article headlined “Global Warming Expected to Be the Hot Issue of the 1990s,” explained:
“In a simpler time, not so long ago, environmentalists talked about saving forests for hiking, streams for rafting and clean air for the pure enjoyment of breathing it. Now, as the 1990s approach, the talk has turned to the science of survival – saving forests for oxygen, keeping streams from spreading toxic pollutants, cleaning the air to avoid catastrophic global warming. From the hazy vantage point of 1989, the environment looms as the major global issue of the next decade. The threat of environmental cataclysm is replacing nuclear holocaust as the most frightening menace to civilization.”
The 1990s put the climate propaganda into overdrive with doomsday predictions of melting glaciers pushing the sea levels to dangerous levels, overtaking coastal beaches and submerging entire blocks of New York City under the ocean. A popular cartoon series, “Captain Planet and the Planeteers,” debuted in 1990 and ran throughout the 1990s, preaching to young millennials about the evil and dangers of man-made global warming. Clinton administration Vice President Al Gore was tasked with enacting a laundry list of environmental
policy goals — and empowered to fire any government official who got in his way by, for example, citing scientific facts. Interestingly, those old enough to remember “global cooling” in the 1970s were really cooling to climate hysteria by the late-1990s. Sales of SUVs continued to rise despite ongoing attempts to demonize them, and the failed Y2K hysteria during 1999 certainly didn’t help those skeptical of apocalyptic government pronouncements. For his part, Gore believed he could ride this climate-phobia all the way to the White House and, in 2000, came within a whisker of doing just that. Embittered by his rejection at the polls, in 2006 he turned to producing a fact-challenged documentary euphemistically titled “An Inconvenient Truth” and issued a prediction that, unless the nation undertook “drastic measures, the world would reach a point of no return within 10 years.” That was almost 30 years ago, and we still seem to be plugging along. American politicians and ecoactivists still prattle on about the need for Americans to sacrifice so the rest of the world can breathe quality air and drink clean water, without trying to implement the same policies in developing countries that have been foisted upon America’s economic engine since the 1970s. Over time, it started to become obvious America’s would-be emperor and his followers weren’t wearing clothes. As conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh observed: “Climate change isn’t about climate. It’s about getting rich off of an ever-expanding, growing, controlling government. It’s all about expanding the government and government control over people. It’s about creating victims. When you successfully turn somebody into a victim, you’ve automatically made them a dependent on you. You’re essentially telling them they’ve
lost the power to solve their own problems.” So government has to do it for them. All you have to do is hand over your money and your freedom, and hucksters like Al Gore will do the rest. Unfortunately, while those old enough to remember the doomsday predictions decades earlier have long since learned to roll their eyes and go back to living their lives, too many got sucked into the hysteria and are having a hard time finding their way out. Millions of gullible children taught that melting ice caps would drown polar bears believe to this day the world is on the brink of collapse if we don’t do more, pay more and give up more. A new crop of climate alarmists actually believed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) when she proclaimed in 2019 that the world would end in 12 years if we didn’t address climate change … in a way that we haven’t for five decades already. Americans are living in the cleanest, most efficient and environmentally friendly economic climate in our nation’s history, but it’s never enough because those in government and those who seek to profit from our misery will always find a way to inflict a little more. If this sounds eerily familiar, it’s because we’re living it out in a different doomsday scenario, also engineered to grow government and impose more restrictions on our daily lives. Trust the science, follow the experts, and do what you’re told because government knows best and government is here to save you. Only this time, the we can’t just shrug off their failed projections and laugh as the professional Chicken Littles are exposed yet again. This time, unless adults intervene once and for all, the lies and selfserving agenda of environmental extremists have the potential to blunder us into World War III. FREEDOM MATTERS
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Labor leaders know Americans would reject their ideology if they knew it was rooted in Communism. So they lie.
“T
The Unions’
his Brotherhood will continue to oppose communism, Nazism or any other subversive “ism.” We will support our God, our Nations, our Union.”
Dirty Little Secret
The statement above can be found in constitution of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the largest trade union in existence. At one time, similar language could be found in many constitutions of prominent labor unions. No more. It’s not entirely clear when this wording was dropped, but you’d be hard-pressed to find the sentiments expressed anywhere within the organized labor movement these days — in word or deed. Of course, that comes as By RUSTY BROWN no surprise for anyone Special Projects Director even remotely familiar with the current political landscape, in which union leaders champion the most radical leftist ideas imaginable and with increasing frequency come right out and say their goal is to do away with capitalism. In March, for example, teachers in Minneapolis, Minn., walked off the job, leaving schools in the area shut down for three weeks. At some point
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during the protest, Greta Callahan, head of the Minneapolis Teachers Federation, a subsidiary of the American Federation of Teachers, took bullhorn in hand to declare, “Our fight is against the patriarchy. Our fight is against capitalism. Our fight is for the soul of our city.” Funny, most folks both in and out of the union would have sworn its job was to advocate on behalf of teachers for better wages, benefits and working conditions — ideals in no way inconsistent with the workings of a marketbased economy. But they’d be wrong. Make no mistake: The values and institutions that made America the envy of the world are now squarely in the crosshairs of unions around the country. Small wonder zealots like Callahan are so unabashed in their support for the same “isms” earlier labor leaders were proud to condemn. Nor is it a surprise that teachers’ unions and school boards, which are largely elected by unions, all fight together, by any means necessary, to keep the curriculum and what goes on inside the school a secret from parents and the communities. The fundamental liberal agenda cloaks itself in a variety of protective coverings today — Socialism, Democratic Socialism, Communism, wokeism, social justice, cultural revolution, etc. — but all are simply fruit from a different branch of the Marxism tree. For obvious reasons, budding Bolsheviks continue to ignore the painful lessons of history and insist their vision of Utopia can be realized if only the tenets of his or her preferred strain of statism are scrupulously followed. What this narrative conveniently overlooks, however, is the simple fact that human beings crave liberty, while collectivist governments, by definition, cannot exist without first empowering the iron fist of the state to impose an arbitrary version of “fairness” on the masses rather than allowing individuals the freedom to achieve it on their own. With respect to unions, this inconsistency shows up most frequently in discussion of wages. Labor leaders love to wax eloquent about the need for a “fair” wage, but who gets to determine what that means?
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What seems fair to a low-skilled, easily replaced worker will almost certainly seem unreasonable to a privatesector employer burdened with the responsibility for not only keeping workers happy but also earning the profits needed to keep the company in business. Not coincidentally, unions representing public employees don’t share this limitation. When you’re paid by taxpayers rather than profits, there’s no reason not to ask for the moon in contract negotiations — especially when you know you’ll probably get it. There’s a famous axiom among those who study organizational behavior that the instant a group of individuals band together to advance an ideal or achieve a given end, those goals become secondary. The organization’s first goal is always to survive and, if possible, grow. Labor unions are certainly no exception to this rule. In practice, this means the concerns of the rank and file are routinely subjugated to the need of the union to attract additional members and collect more dues money. For public employee unions, in particular, the overriding objective is always to grow the size and scope of government — and labor leaders already predisposed to authoritarian ideology are only too happy to oblige. Union leaders reflexively choose the most liberal path, and members are dutifully instructed about which candidate they can vote for and what side of every issue they need to support — even when doing so violates the worker’s core values. Unions have become the single biggest influencer in American politics, and their support almost exclusively goes towards one side. Politics and government go hand in hand and are seen as the way of the future for labor unions. And true to all the best communists, unions consistently find a way to profit from the hard work of their members. One of the most glaring examples of this corruption is a scheme recently uncovered involving the National Education Association (NEA) and a life insurance company called Security Benefit Group. The arrangement began in 2005,
when a series of odd payments were discovered from Security Benefit to a handful of unions, mostly NEA subsidiaries. Security Benefit was required to disclose the payments to the U.S. Department of Labor, and did so under protest, claiming the payments were either reimbursements for an event or a fee to promote its products. These payments were mostly small amounts around a few hundred dollars, with the largest being five total payments of $17,500 each to the Alabama Education Association. Security Benefit has consistently appeared on union financial disclosure forms ever since, but unions, for the most part, are not required to itemize receipts, rendering the full extent of the payments invisible until 2019, when Security Benefit was once again required to file its own disclosures. It turns out the payments have grown enormously. Last year, nearly $600,000 spread over four payments went to the Indiana State Teachers Association alone, and just shy of $4 million went directly to the NEA. This report also included a number of smaller dollar figures to various unions and $200,000 that went to the International Association of Firefighters. Why is this a big deal? One company incentivizing another company to promote its product happens all the time. The problem was the product being pushed. In 2007, a lawsuit was filed alleging NEA breached its fiduciary responsibility to its members through its “Valuebuilder” annuity accounts, which had well over $1 billion under management. The lawsuit claimed fees charged in the plans were excessively high, one of which reached 10.62 percent, making it nearly impossible for investors to earn money in the plans. In 2005, just before the lawsuit, NEA Member Benefits — the arm of NEA that pushes these plans — recorded an income $52 million. The case was dismissed in 2010 on a technicality that the lawsuit was filed under the wrong statute, and it appears to have been pursued no further. Even so, the current federal fil-
The Early Divide
Gompers Most modern historians recognize Samuel Gompers and Eugene V. Debs as the fathers of the American labor movement. Often overlooked, however, is their fundamental disagreement about the best mechanism with which to advocate for workers. More specifically, Gompers was an ardent believer in capitalism, while Debs ran for president five times on the Socialist Party of America ticket. Born in London in 1850, Gompers rose to the presidency of the Cigarmakers International Union in 1875 and, in 1886, the American Federation of Labor. He advocated “Pure and Simple Unionism” meaning that unions would avoid forming a political party in order to preserve the unity of the labor movement. At the AFL’s 1903 convention, he thundered. “I want to tell you Socialists that I have studied your philosophy … I have kept close watch upon your doctrines for 30 years. And I want to say that I
ings show the scam is still being orchestrated, and the NEA executives are profiting handsomely from the hard work of its members. Sadly, stories like this are far from rare. Perhaps an even more despicable example of a union cashing in on the backs of its own members concerns the International Association of Fire-
Debs am entirely at variance with your philosophy. Economically, you are unsound; socially you are wrong; industrially, you are an impossibility.” Debs, born in 1855, was a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World, as well as Social Democracy of America (1897), the Social Democratic Party of America (1898) and the Socialist Party of America (1901). “I am not a capitalist soldier,” he wrote. “I am a proletarian revolutionist. I do not belong to the regular army of the plutocracy, but to the irregular army of the people. I refuse to obey any command to fight from the ruling class, but I will not wait to be commanded to fight for the working class. I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the worldwide war of social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades.”
fighters’ iconic Fill-the-Boot campaign. To be clear, there are no lawsuits or criminal charges pending regarding this matter, although IAFF’s pensions have been a source of legal concern in recent years. In most cities, you’ll find firefighters every year standing on the streets with their boots, collecting donations for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
They famously claim that 100 percent of the funds collected go to the MDA. However, there are payments every year going from MDA back the national headquarters of the IAFF. Some years those payments run into the millions. What’s that money for? Who knows? But what it isn’t doing is benefiting the kids and families suffering from muscular dystrophy. Again, corruption is the rule, not the exception, in the sort of top-down governmental systems favored by labor leaders. And for obvious reasons. Lenin, Mao and the procession of acolytes who followed them through the decades had no misconceptions about Marxism. Far from the altruistic paradise it promises, all of these systems require someone in power to oversee the redistribution of wealth that never quite finds its way down to the proletariat. Not surprisingly, Marxist adherents from the dawn of the movement have gravitated to labor unions as the logical instrument with which to undermine other systems of government and hand themselves the levers of political power. As Lenin advised the leftist radicals of his day, “You must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations — even the most reactionary — in which proletarian or semiproletarian masses are to be found. The trade unions and the workers’ cooperatives (the latter sometimes, at least) are the very organizations in which the masses are to be found.” Once upon a time, union leaders may have recognized that no form of government in history has a better track record of lifting the status of everyone who participates than capitalism. But again, once individuals organize, the collective good goes out the window. Organized labor has always sung — and will always sing — the siren song of socialism, not because it’s in the best interests of the workers whose dues pay the bills but because it’s the surest way to line the pockets of the people who make the rules. FREEDOM MATTERS
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ACTIONTIMELINE ACTION TIMELINE Highlighting a few of the Freedom Foundation’s signature accomplishments over the past half year
Jan. 7 On Jan. 7 and 14, lawyers from the Freedom Foundation argued on behalf of two Washington care providers that by ignoring their repeated attempted to opt out of membership and dues, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 775 breached a so-called “union security agreement” it negotiated with the state. Such agreements require unions to equally represent every worker in a specified bargaining unit — even nonmembers. As counterintuitive as it sounds, union leaders believe the provisions strengthen their argument for requiring everyone to pay dues — or at least a maintenance fee — whether they choose to actively participate in union activities or not. Jan. 7 The Freedom Foundation files a federal lawsuit suit in California on behalf of a member of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 501 whose repeated attempts to opt out of membership and dues the union promised to deal with “accordingly.” Jan. 14 Freedom Foundation attorney Sydney Phillips makes back-to-back arguments on to the Washington State Division 1 Court of Appeals in a pair of separate but similar law, each concerning the organization’s to fully access the contact information of state, county and local employees. In both cases, lawyers for the state and the labor unions representing its employees tried to portray the standoff as a threat to the workers’ privacy when, in fact, their real concern is PAGE 38
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keeping the Freedom Foundation from informing them about their recently affirmed Constitutional right to decline union membership and dues deductions. Feb. 2 The Freedom Foundation releases a report detailing how hundreds of labor unions — including numerous teachers’ unions — and related organizations received $36.7 million in federal funds through the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for which they were legally ineligible. Feb. 3 After months of confusing motions and legal wrangling, Washington state’s recently imposed capital gains tax is finally debated on its merits in the courtroom of Douglas County Superior Court Judge Brian Huber. Attorneys for the Freedom Foundation argue that this is just one more attempt to impose a progressive income tax on state residents who’ve emphatically and repeatedly rejected similar schemes for more than a century. Feb. 8 The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Portland holds a day-long session, during which the three-member panel hears nine consecutive cases detailing how government employee unions systematically abridge the First Amendment rights of public employees to opt out of union membership and dues affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME. In four of the cases — Wagner v. University of Washington, Ochoa v. SEIU 775, Zielinski v. SEIU
503, and Wright v. SEIU 503 — the appeal was made directly by a Freedom Foundation attorney. Three other appeals — Savas v. California Statewide Law Enforcement Agency, Quirarte v. United Domestic Workers/AFSCME Local 3930 and Polk v. Betty Yee — were argued by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation on behalf of clients represented jointly with the Freedom Foundation. Feb. 23 The Freedom Foundation files a federal class-action lawsuit in Cincinnati, Ohio, on behalf of a city employee who terminated her membership and dues in AFSCME Council 8 last July but continues to involuntarily support the union’s activities through a mandatory confiscation of her accrued vacation time. March 1 Douglas County Superior Court Judge Brian Huber strikes down the capital gains income tax passed by the Washington State Legislature in 2021. While not the last word on the subject, the ruling was a resoundingearly victory for the Freedom Foundation — which filed the first lawsuit challenging the tax in partnership with attorneys at Lane Powell PC in Seattle — and all who value the state constitution and want to keep Washington income-tax-free. March 15 Freedom Foundation founder and first president Bob Williams dies in Tacoma, Wash., at age 80. Williams created the then-Evergreen Freedom Foundation in 1991
Leave a legacy of freedom
March 25 The state of Washington bypasses the Appellate Court level and takes its arguments directly to the state Supreme Court following Douglas County Superior Court Judge Brian Huber’s ruling earlier in the month striking down Washington’s new capital gains tax. The Freedom Foundation filed suit immediately after the measure’s approval, arguing it violates the Washington State Constitution and 90 years of legal precedent.
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
April 4 Freedom Foundation Labor Policy Director Maxford Nelsen is interviewed by Todd Feinberg on Hartford, Conn.’s WTIC Newstalk radio regarding how unions are influencing the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) policy regarding school re-openings during the COVID pandemic. April 7 Ashley Varner, the Freedom Foundation’s vice president for communications and government policy, and Ohio Director Lauren Bowen appear on the syndicated “Matt Buff Show” discussing President Biden’s long list of giveaways to public-sector unions and the Freedom Foundation’s work to push back. April 8 Rachel Wiegel, the Freedom Foundation’s California outreach coordinator, interviewed on Spokane (Wash.) radio station AM-590’s “Inland Empire Answer” program discussing the undue influence of teachers’ unions over Centers for Disease Control (CDC) policy regarding
school re-openings during the COVID pandemic. April 11 Ashley Varner, the Freedom Foundation’s vice president for communications and government policy, appears on an hour-long podcast with former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.). April 13 In a joint statement, a group of prominent House Republicans express concern over the Freedom Foundation’s findings that, between March 2020 and March 2021, more than 200 labor unions and related nonprofit entities received in excess of $36 million through the SBA-administered Paycheck Protection Program loans despite being ineligible on the basis of their tax-exempt status. The lawmakers called on the SBA to investigate further. April 15 An op-ed authored by Ashley Varner, the Freedom Foundation’s
vice president for communications and government policy, appears on the RedState.com website. Headlined, “NLRB memo just the latest in a long line of Biden sellouts to labor,” the piece details how Jennifer Abruzzo, the president’s hand-picked National Labor Relations Board counsel, had written a memo in which she asserted it is an unfair labor practice for a private-sector employer to hold a meeting at which employees are warned about the potentially negative impacts a decision to form a union might have on their workplace. April 15 An article written by Anthony Hennen of The Center Square in Pennsylvania describes a Freedom Foundation report showing how labor unions were handed more than $36 million in COVID-relief loans they were ineligible to receive. Unions in Pennsylvania alone took in $1.2 million. April 19 Freedom Foundation Labor Policy Director Maxford Nelsen appears on both the “John Solomon Reports” and the “Jim Bohannon Show” podcasts discussing his recent report detailing how labor unions were handed more than $36 million in COVID-relief loans they were ineligible to receive. April 21 A letter to the editor written by Freedom Foundation VP for News and Information Jeff Rhodes is published by the Wall Street Journal praising the publication for its editorial critical of NLRB counsel Jennifer Abruzzo and detailing similar union abuses in Washington state. FREEDOM MATTERS
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