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THE CASE FOR FREEDOM California settles case after Newsom caves
During December, Pennsylvanians got passed over yet again by state government and the elected leaders who are bought and paid for by the union bosses.
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Last September, California schools were nowhere near the right track to reopen. Especially hurt by “zoom” education were children from disadvantaged backgrounds and children with special needs. Both of these categories of children require in-person attention for their development, and online classes did not meet these children’s diverse and urgent needs.
Despite the call of California families that schools re-open in the fall, California Gov. Gavin Newsom did next to nothing.
For this, you can thank the state’s teachers’ unions, which care more about “social justice” causes than they do about children.
Epidemiological studies show that children (are) less likely to transmit COVID-19 than adults, and that schools are not particularly dangerous places for the spread of the disease. Even though the science shows teachers were at minimal risk, the teachers’ unions — including the United Teachers Los Angeles and California Teachers’ Association — used the virus as an excuse and demanded a “wealth tax,” defunding of charter schools and single-payer healthcare before they would permit their teachers to return to work.
Moreover, California’s Constitution only requires that children have a certain quantity of education, in the form of minutes spent in instruction. In doesn’t address the quality of that education.
But even by this low standard, whatever the quality of education was prior to COVID-19 restrictions, distance learning wasn’t working. California was causing more harm to its students by not opening schools.
To assist California’s children and families, the Freedom Foundation, on behalf of several concerned parents, filed suit in Shasta County against Newsom and several other school officials, including Shasta County Superintendent Jim Cloney and California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
The suit was initially filed on September 11, 2020.
In the complaint, the plaintiffs sought declarative and injunctive relief to prevent the enforcement of the governor’s orders shutting down schools. As part of the argument to reopen schools, the Freedom Foundation cited studies, periodicals, an epidemiologist, the Centers for Disease Control, the American Academy of Pediatrics and numerous other sources to show that:
n in-person instruction five days a week presents minimal risk of transmission; n there are greater risks of transmission inherent with part-time schooling as opposed to full time; n in-person instruction strengthens a child’s mental health and self-esteem; and, n in-person instruction provides access to vital mental health and social services like speech therapy and physical or occupational therapy.
In response, and in a complete reversal of the original plan that shut down schools, Gov. Newsom has now allowed for the opening of local Shasta high schools for in-person instruction two days a week and has opened elementary schools for in-person instruction five days a week.
Further, Newsom has announced a school reopening plan urging school districts to reopen in February.
Most importantly, the accompanying rationale behind the governor’s re-opening plan for schools indicated a change in heart regarding the risks of in-person instruction, admitting that:
n children get COVID-19 less often than adults; n when the do get sick, youngsters get less sick than adults; n children do not seem to be major sources of transmission—either to each other or to adults; n the social-emotional skills cultivated in the youngest grades are foundational for future wellbeing; n in-school learning results in lower rates of anxiety and depression; n higher rates of immunizations; and, n greater opportunity to learn social and emotional skills — such as self-awareness, social awareness, self-management and responsible decision-making.
Perhaps not coincidentally, these new revelations were identical to many of plaintiffs’ claims in the lawsuit. Newsom had previously expressed that these very same assertions were “false and irrelevant.”
With education moving swiftly toward in-person learning, the Freedom Foundation and the concerned parents and children involved in the Shasta County lawsuit moved to dismiss the lawsuit as a job well done.
During these difficult times, the Freedom Foundation has never backed away from its responsibility to the community to ensure the government did not encroach on the basic rights and liberties of the people the government is supposed to serve.
The Freedom Foundation’s fight for school re-openings is one such example.
By SHELLA SADOVNIK, Litigation Counsel
Gov. Wolf’s budget scheme would make Pennsylvania’s economic woes even worse
I’LL HUFF ...
AND I’LL PUFF ...
AND I’LL RAISE
YOUR TAXES SO MUCH IT’Ll MAKE
YOUR HEAD SPIN.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget address delivered this week to the Pennsylvania State Legislature — remotely of course, for the first time in state history — promises to kill jobs and raise taxes.
Naturally, he didn’t express it quite those words. But when your stated goals include things like raising minimum wage to $15 an hour and increasing school funding by almost $1.5 billion, it’s necessary to read between the lines.
In an interview with NBC 10 Philadelphia, Wolf’s budget secretary Jen Swails explained, “The biggest part of that, $1.35 billion, would be distributed to schools to pay for their primary operations, like teacher salaries, operations costs and supplies, on top of the $6.8 billion they currently receive.”
We’ve already witnessed half of Pennsylvania’s restaurant workers — 300,000 out of 600,000 — lose their jobs almost overnight because of Wolf’s draconian and dystopian mandates. We’ve heard parents angrily demand that public schools be reopened for in-person teaching because the science says it’s safe. And we’ve seen business owners ordered to close up shop and lose their life’s dream and lay off or fire their workers because of these ever-changing mandates.
One would think the governor might be a bit more mindful of the people and industries he’s decimated. But no.
At the end of the day, someone has to pick up the tab for this. That’s just how basic economics works.
And who might that be? Of course, it’s the hard-working taxpayers of our Commonwealth who’ve been dealt blow after blow from this administration.
The model for this insanity is to raise state income taxes from 3.07 to 4.49 percent — a 46 percent increase. Can you and your family afford to live on less money in Pennsylvania?
Don’t think so.
Our state legislature last approved an income tax increase 17 years ago, in 2004. In a day and age where we’ve all had to make do with less, is it too much to think government could do the same — particularly since the state’s wounds are largely self-inflicted?
Since announcing his run for the state house in 2013, the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) and Americans Federation of Teachers (AFT) have donated $2.35 million and $1.69 million, respectively, to Tom Wolf’s political war chest.
Gov. Wolf has every intention of paying dividends on that investment with your money. He’ll do the political bidding for his biggest donors, we’ll all suffer because of it.
Unless, that is, public-sector employees recognize the direction this state is headed and recognize that their money is funding our collective downfall.
Go to OptOutToday.com and learn how you can do your part to expose the crooked game Wolf and his union cronies are playing — and what you can do to put a stop to it.
By HUNTER TOWER, Pennsylvania Director
Freedom Foundation urges Oregon AG, state legislative leaders to uphold the law
In a letter sent to Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum and several legislative officials last Friday, the Freedom Foundation called on the state’s leaders to stand firm in choosing the Oregon State Constitution over union special interests — something that should be an easy task, considering they’d made that very choice just a month ago.
If they don’t, the letter promises, the Freedom Foundation will do it for them.
The issue at hand? Whether employees of the Legislative branch — specifically, the staff assistants who work for individual state legislators — can be unionized under Oregon law.
In recent months, those staffers have been the target of a unionization push by the Washington-based International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 89. And although IBEW filed for certification with the Oregon Employment Relations Board (ERB) back in December, it soon became clear the effort was riddled with errors.
Most notably, it came up against the separation of powers doctrine of the Oregon Constitution, which separates the government into the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches and provides that “no person charged with official duties under one of these branches shall exercise any of the functions of another…”
That’s a problem for IBEW’s petition, which asks the ERB — an administrative arm of the Executive branch — to order a completely different branch of government (the Legislative) to recognize and bargain with a labor union.
Fortunately, Rosenblum’s Department of Justice (DOJ) quickly recognized the problem and, on Dec. 29, filed legal objections with the ERB on behalf of legislative officials.
Along with challenging the constitutionality of the union’s petition, the DOJ cited numerous logistical problems with the proposed “bargaining unit” — including how it was defined and the number of employees who had supposedly signed union authorization cards — and pointed out that the state’s collective bargaining statutes also do not allow for union representation within the Legislative branch.
In evident response to the DOJ’s objections, IBEW withdrew its petition and promptly re-filed an amended petition with a revised description of the bargaining unit. Problem solved, right?
Far from it. As the Freedom Foundation explained in its letter to Rosenblum and Co., not only did IBEW’s amended petition do very little to resolve the DOJ’s objections regarding the proposed bargaining unit, but, more importantly, because those objections were automatically dropped when IBEW withdrew its original petition, the broader questions of constitutionality and legality have yet to be answered.
State law gives the DOJ and legislative officials until Feb. 4 to re-file their legal objections in response to IBEW’s new petition. And while there doesn’t appear to be any valid reason why they wouldn’t — after all, they did the first time, and nothing has changed — the Freedom Foundation is ready and willing to step in if they don’t.
By BEN STRAKA, Policy Analyst
Oregon
Update
Commercials chronicle Casey’s Restaurant’s fight
Casey’s Restaurant, a small, family-owned eatery in Klamath Falls, is very much like thousands of Oregon small businesses ordered to close their doors — perhaps permanently — as part of the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The difference is, Casey’s isn’t accepting its death sentence without a fight. And starting this week, residents in the Klamath Falls cable market will be hearing all about it.
The Freedom Foundation — a free-market public policy organization with offices in five states — will be running a self-produced commercial about the local eatery on the CenturyLink cable system.
The establishment’s owners already follow common-sense health precautions and CDC guidelines for preventing the spread of COVID-19. But when the governor issued an order in November closing restaurants for the second time in less than a year, they also knew that if they did close, they would probably not be able to reopen.
Their employees would no longer have livelihoods.
So Casey’s made the hard choice — joining other brave entrepreneurs fighting to keep their businesses alive. They decided to keep their dining room open.
As expected, Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the state agency largely responsible for enforcing Gov. Brown’s shutdown orders, served Casey’s with a “red tag” and an $8,900 fine.
Casey’s is a responsible business and its owners care deeply for their employees’, and the public’s, health.
By PARKER HOLLINGSHEAD, Paralegal
And the business, as operated, poses a threat to no one.
OSHA has not made any factual findings to the contrary. Represented by the Freedom Foundation and associated attorneys, Casey’s is fighting back and appealing the OSHA citation and fine and will continue to fight.
The Freedom Foundation is proud to stand with Casey’s and other businesses throughout the Pacific Northwest that are willing to challenge the unlawful government overreach that is threatening to destroy their communities.
California’s public unions can’t spin these numbers
If you want to know the truth about what’s happening with California’s government employee unions, ignore what their leaders say and crunch some actual numbers.
They paint an encouraging picture for taxpayers and the workers themselves but portend a bleak future for the unions.
According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, California unions lost 63,000 members while the number of union-represented workers declined by 71,000 over the past year.
Union officials have a ready explanation for this — COVID-19. According to their spin, the governor’s overwrought response to the pandemic cost the state a reported 1.4 million workers during the past 10 months.
But there’s more going on here than just a shrinking economy. According to data obtained from the Sacramento Bee, SEIU 1000 — one of the state’s biggest public-sector unions — lost around 3 percent of its membership between February and November 2020.
Other unions, such as the California Teachers Association, also reported losses of several thousand members over the last year.
Note: These aren’t private-sector unions, whose members might well have been casualties of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s COVID closure stampede. These unions represented government workers — not one of whom lost a nickel due to the quarantine.
While the Freedom Foundation has reached out to both of these unions through a mixture of canvassing, physical mailers, e-mails, phone calls, and digital advertising, our own internal statistics confirm what has been reported publicly.
Take, for example, SEIU 721. Thanks to an all-out blitz from the Freedom Foundation around Christmas, more than 650 of its members opted out of union tyranny.
Both public data sets and our own internal data point to a simple fact — union membership in California is falling.
To be fair, BLS data is questionable at best and relies heavily on self-reported information from a limited number of households.
It would be unfair to pretend that simply because BLS data says union membership declined that it’s an entirely accurate statement.
But coupled with other publicly available data — especially union LM-2 reports, which are released yearly (and which we expect to see many of in March of 2021), we have a pretty good idea of where union member ship is headed and why it’s heading there.
By SAMUEL COLEMAN, Outreach Director
How ABout a little Collective Bargaining, MY DEAR?
SEIU has a problem with sexual harassment it doesn’t want you or its membership to know about
You may remember back in 2017, an expose by Buzzfeed revealed that SEIU International had an issue with sexual harassment. Under public scrutiny, SEIU fired two of its senior staffers.
Sahar Wali, a spokesperson for SEIU, said, “We know that progress does not stop with these personnel actions alone. President (Mary Kay) Henry has taken important steps toward ensuring that our workplace environment reflects our values, and that all staff is respected…”
Since then, we haven’t heard much about SEIU when it comes to its struggle to keep sexual predators out of their ranks. That is, until a new website went live.
Me Too SEIU details multiple allegations, victim stories and solid sources when it comes to SEIU’s continued difficulty in rooting our sexual predators in its ranks. Unfortunately, this is an issue that, to an outside observer appears to be within SEIU as an organization.
Take SEIU 721 for example, which more than 650 members fled after the Freedom Foundation informed them that they had the right to leave. Believe it or not, a gentleman named Martin Manteca, who works for them as an organizing director, has been accused by 16 women of sexual harassment.
He was described by coworkers as “an absolute sociopath” and “such a terror.” Another said, “(H)e’s toxic, absolutely toxic.”
According to depositions, Manteca “… not only sexually harassed women in the workplace” but would “…become physi cally confrontational”.
So why does a “sociopath” like Martin Manteca still have a job, representing union members and being paid upwards of $130,000 every year?
Simply put, SEIU’s actions suggest it doesn’t care. The union may pay lip service to important causes, such as the recent “Me-Too” campaign to root out powerful sexual harassers, but its leaders demonstrate no real interest in participating.
We can say that because Manteca isn’t the only SEIU staffer about whom public accusations have been made. Here’s a full list, according to MeTooSeiu.com
n Stan Lyles – vice president, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West. n Marcus Hatcher – former SEIUUHW Kaiser Permanente Division director. n Dave Regan – SEIU vice president, president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West. n Chokri BenSaid – Hospital Division director, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West. n Pedro Malave – former staff member, SEIU 32BJ. n Tyrek D. Lee Sr. – former executive vice president, SEIU 1199 United Healthcare Workers East.
Spotlight on California
By SAMUEL COLEMAN, Outreach Director
n Martin Manteca – o rganizing director, SEIU Local 721. n Scott Courtney – former vice president, SEIU. n Kandall Fells – former organizing director, Fight for $15 (SEIU).
While some of these people have since been fired, or resigned under pressure, several are still there. One, in fact, was given an award by his union.
Manteca, the “sociopath” who would “become physically confrontational” with people who tried to stand up to him, was given the ‘Heart of the Union’ award by SEIU 721 back in 2019.
Yikes.
Regardless of whether you’re a union supporter or not, we can all agree that SEIU 721 shouldn’t be protecting people like Manteca. And if you’re one of those dues-payers wondering what you can do to stop your money from protecting accused sexual predators, we encourage you to visit www.optouttoday.com to explore your ability to cease dues payment.
