Molly Ivins timelessly revisited on Union Busting..

[fencesitter]

"This Anti-Union Bill Takes the Cake" (from 1998)

AUSTIN — California, whew: Sometimes I think we ought to hang a cowbell around that sumbitch to let the future know to shut the gate.

Its latest lunacy is the "campaign reform initiative," Proposition 226, also called "the paycheck protection initiative," and if there were any truth-in-packaging laws in politics, its sponsors would be in Folsom Prison. Proposition 226 should properly be called the "let's put the unions out of business initiative." It has no more relation to campaign-finance reform or paycheck protection than it does to quantum physics. This is a full-blooded, blue-bellied, get-the-unions move sponsored by the zooiest collection of extremist right-wing money you ever saw.

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Its latest lunacy is the "campaign reform initiative," Proposition 226, also called "the paycheck protection initiative," and if there were any truth-in-packaging laws in politics, its sponsors would be in Folsom Prison. Proposition 226 should properly be called the "let's put the unions out of business initiative." It has no more relation to campaign-finance reform or paycheck protection than it does to quantum physics. This is a full-blooded, blue-bellied, get-the-unions move sponsored by the zooiest collection of extremist right-wing money you ever saw.

The plan is simple: If the initiative passes, unions will have to get written permission from each member every year to use union dues for political activity. What's wrong with that? Absolutely nothing, as long as corporations are also required to get written permission from each shareholder every year before the corporation can use any money for any political activity. But this proposition is aimed only at unions. It would cost the unions millions of dollars and untold amounts of time to get these annual permission slips, and that, of course, is the whole point: to weaken the political power of unions, which are already outspent by business. Just what the country needs, complete domination of politics by corporations and the only organizations that speak for American workers shut out entirely.

This stinks.

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Norquist has reportedly said his vision is to "crush labor unions as a political entity." Since unions normally help Democrats, this is also a straight-up partisan-advantage battle, but even more, it's about getting a specific political agenda passed, an agenda that includes private school vouchers (the ruination of the public schools), medical savings accounts (privatized Medicare), privatized Social Security and forced school prayer. There's not any doubt about what the money behind this proposition really wants: It's all in the public record.

Read the whole thing here...http://www.creators.com/opinion/molly-ivins/this-anti-union-bill-takes-the-cake.html