Behind any popular mass movement there are often good ideas and noble objectives. Public sector unions—including teachers’ unions—are no exception. Organized labor, ideally, offers collective power to ordinary workers and provides a counterweight whenever business interests become exploitative. How to regulate that balance is a topic that deserves vigorous and ongoing debate, but most of...
If at first you don’t succeed, try again. This adage applies well to ideas for new ways to tax Californians. Every election cycle we see new ways to be taxed, and higher tax rates, but rarely will we see a tax get repealed. So it is that Assemblyman Alex Lee (D, San Jose) has introduced Assembly...
With the November 8 election already ten days ago, we are now conditioned to accept that some final results will not be known until December 16, five weeks later. Counting proceeds at a crawl in counties up and down the state, and those among us with housebroken political sentiments are expected to be impressed at...
With a rough top-down analysis, it’s easy enough to estimate how much government unions collect and spend every year in California. They have roughly a million members, paying roughly $1,000 per year in dues. That would be one billion dollars per year. They spend about a third of that to fund political campaigns for candidates and ballot...
The following conversation never happened. It is for the reader to decide to what extent, however, this conversation reflects political reality in California today. Candidate (C): It’s a surprise that you contacted me. I never thought I would run for office, I don’t know how to run a campaign, and I’m not well informed...
Boosted by Covid emergency funding, California governments have gone on a hiring frenzy, but membership in California’s government unions has hit a 20-year low, documents obtained by California Policy Center show. State and local government payroll records, obtained by CPC under the state’s Public Records Act, reveal that governments have added some 200,000 new employees after four...
On every major issue affecting cost-of-living in California, unions supported political agenda of self-serving ruling elite. If you go to the “what we do” page of the California Labor Federation, the lead paragraph starts with this sentence: “The California Labor Federation is dedicated to promoting and defending the interests of working people and their...
There is only one answer to this question: Public sector unions. Anyone who argues otherwise is either misinformed or has a personal or professional motivation to delude themselves and others. Before offering evidence of the financial power of public sector unions, consider the power these unions wield that is not explicitly financial. These unions operate...
Negotiations between the Manhattan Beach Firefighters Association and the Manhattan Beach City Council have been stalled since May, when an impasse was announced. As reported in a local publication serving Manhattan Beach and nearby cities, firefighters and their supporters packed a July 19 city council meeting to urge the council to alter its stance in labor...
For four days last month, independent truckers blockaded the Port of Oakland, preventing goods from entering or leaving. Threats of arrest, along with the possibility of personal liability stemming from a lawsuit filed against the protesters by the Port of Oakland, were sufficient to bring the blockade to an end. But the reasons for the protest have...
Public sector unions have corrupted the ability of California’s governing institutions to serve the interests of the people. The consequences include a failing public education system, catastrophically flawed environmental policies, and an unrelenting attack on the ability of small businesses to survive. In each of these cases, there are plentiful examples of this corruption, and...
This article originally appeared in For Kids and Country. Union membership is way down, and their collective future is not rosy. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual report on union membership in January, and the results were not pretty for organized labor. There are 50,000 fewer union members in the private sector than in...
This article originally appeared in the California Globe. For the last few decades what used to be referred to as socially responsible investing has more recently morphed into “ESG” investing. The acronym stands for “environment, social, and governance,” and refers to how investors should evaluate the impact that every company they’re considering investing in has, positive or...