Not Accountable. - Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Unions

 Book Review: Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions | Cato Institute

I maintain that our once "Shining City on a Hill" Republic has been turned into a corrupt Oligarchy, and that the main driver of the conversion is public unions. Two quotes are worthy of remembering: 

FDR could hardly have been firmer: Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government … The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.

Until the rights revolution in the 1960s, the idea of negotiating against the public interest was unthinkable. AFL-CIO president George Meany in 1955 stated bluntly that it is “impossible to bargain collectively with the Government.”

The Administrative State is staffed by public union employees. 

Micromanagement and expansive rights became integral to the public union playbook for control—no innovation is allowed unless the official can show it complies with a rule; no decision about a public employee’s performance is valid without objective proof in a trial‐​type hearing. Clearing out the legal underbrush is what’s needed to restore officials’ freedom to use common sense in daily choices.

Why do Americans feel that their votes are essentially useless? 

No matter which party is elected, no matter what its priorities, the one certainty is that government operations will not be made more efficient, or responsive, or, as with schools and police accountability, even functional. Public employee unions keep it that way by layers of legal armor and by the exercise of brute political force.

The book does not discuss what I consider to be the immediate crisis. Our "justice" department personnel are union employees.  As Chuck Schumer said, “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,”. 

This is obvious to anyone but a fully committed Democrat, and it is obvious to many of them, and they LOVE it! 

Democrats see public unions as their meal ticket. Republican leaders treat public unions like an unfriendly sovereign power that must be dealt with, even if its demands are unreasonable and cause America harm. Would-be reformers of either party, determined to run government prudently, approach unions hat in hand. Any reforms at the margins come at a high price. With two notable exceptions, every effort to rein in union excesses has resulted in abject political defeat. The unions, meanwhile, continue to tighten their grip over government operations.

The book suggests some measures that might help, but I find them inadequate. I believe the SCOTUS is our only hope. 

Politiqueros ?

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/09/politiqueros.php

Election fraud / manipulation / interference has been a cornerstone of  Democrat party since the Civil War. In the Jim Crow era it was required for them to suppress Black votes in the south to maintain power. 

As we see in the "Change the Electorate Strategy",  Democrats realize that a majority of Americans would never support their policies, since they lead to high inflation, shortages of especially energy, high crime rates, attacks on the nuclear family, crumbling infrastructure and much more that is unacceptable to the. actual majority. 

So they change the electorate, use the Administrative State (FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, etc) to attack and often jail opposition voices, and candidates. Since the media gives them nearly airtight cover, what is very obvious, doesn't seem that way to most. 

Sometimes even their government funded mouthpiece ("public" media) slips up and says the quiet part out loud, 

In the town of Donna, five politiqueras pleaded guilty to election fraud. Voters were bribed with cigarettes, beer or dime bags of cocaine. In neighboring Cameron County, nine politiqueras were charged with manipulating mail-in ballots.

Those are actual convictions for fraud ... something Democrats assure us never happens. (Wink, Wink, Nod, Nod) 

Hustling votes has a rich political history in America. Chicagoans have been known to vote from beyond the grave. Democratic machines from New Orleans to New York City have hauled voters to the polls. In the Valley, it's all about mail-in ballots. A politiquera has a friendly relationship with a group of elderly voters, who are eligible to use mail-in ballots. They may be nursing home residents, neighbors or clients at activity centers for seniors.

A couple sad/funny statements: 

"My father was a Republican until the day he died, he always voted Democrat afterward". 

"Illegal Immigrant is a derogatory term! No human is illegal! The proper terms is "Undocumented Democrat"!

The top linked article is worth a read, and even following some of the embedded links (as I did with the NPR one). 

When he was vice president, Joe Biden said. “You know, 11 million people live in the shadows. I believe they’re already American citizens.” According to the Delaware Democrat, 11 million undocumented aliens “are already Americans, in my view.” As he had to know, they aren’t, and the number is also wrong.

The 11 million number is ridiculous, with 20 million plus likely being closer, however we really have no idea ... illegals don't register as illegal. (shocking!) As Biden says, Democrats see them as "citizens" ... well, more accurately "Undocumented Democrat voters". 

Not so shocking, If you go out and look, there is a remarkable correlation between blue states and states that have no voter ID requirement. 

Under current US law, you have to be able to speak English in order to be a US citizen. 

Under federal law, most applicants seeking citizenship must demonstrate an understanding of the English language — including an ability to speak, read and write words in ordinary usage — and demonstrate knowledge of U.S. history and government.

"Interestingly",  Section 203 of the voting rights act requires ballots to be printed in multiple languages"! 

Requires ballots to be printed in lots of languages. It appears however that this is Administrative "Law" tacked on under the "voting rights act". 

As Wikipedia says about Title 52 

Title 52 of the United States Code (52 U.S.C.), entitled "Voting and Elections", is a codification of the "general and permanent"^[1] voting and election laws of the United States federal government. It was adopted as a result of "editorial reclassification"^[2] efforts of the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives and was not enacted as positive law.^{[3][note 1]}

"Editorial reclassification" certainly seems like "Administrative Law"?  Which Constitutional scholars are increasingly declaring to be unconstitutional. 

 

Where Election Integrity Dies

The US Has The Worst Election Integrity Of Long Established Democracies

That was according to the WaPo in 2016.

What do Argentina, Costa Rica and Brazil have in common?

They all outranked the United States in a comparison of election standards and procedures conducted by the Electoral Integrity Project. The United States ranked 47th worldwide, out of 139 countries.

That was an important fact to establish before the 2016 elections, because if a Democrat loses, the narrative will be that there is a high probability that there was "interference" in the election, possibly by a foreign power like Russia. 

During the first two years of Trump's term, the integrity of the 2016 election was constantly impugned. Trump and members of  his administration were investigated and even charged for conspiring with Russians.  There were accusations he was a "Russian Agent".  Members of Congress, the media, Hillary Clinton, and countless Democrats declared Trump "illegitimate" because the 2016 election was "rigged, interfered with, etc". 

Fast forward to 2020 and beyond. Suddenly, even though election integrity measures had been extensively damaged by mail-in ballots, ballot drop boxes, increased lack of voter ID, election observers being removed from ballot counting areas due to "broken water pipes", etc. Anyone questioning the integrity of our elections as the WaPo had in 2016, and Democrats at all levels including Hillary would for the entire Trump term,  is now at least a "conspiracy theorist", if not a downright criminal, as is supposedly the case with Trump. "Justice" depends on politics. 

Multiple indictments of the likely Republican nominee in the runup to 2024 are of course NOT "election interference" in any way. The suppression if the Hunter Biden laptop information immediately prior to the 2020 election was also NOT "election interference". The list of actions taken to interfere with 2020 is long, and the list of interference for 2024 gets longer by the day. 

If someone wanted election integrity, the measures to obtaining it are simple. Mandatory voter ID, no mail in ballots, no drop boxes, same day voting at voting places with bipartisan observers, and strictly limited absentee ballots only filled out onsite at a county / precinct office with video monitoring of ID / registration being verified. We could consult Argentin, Brazil, Costa Rica or even the "top 10" nations with the best election integrity. 

Anyone not wanting to cheat would be in total agreement with these measures. If you are not, you are actually a threat to democracy, since the integrity of your vote is the foundation of democracy. 

If we want to maintain our Democratic Republic, we need a system at least as trustworthy as our banking system, and ideally moreso, as the measures listed above are easier to understand than the measures taken to insure the integrity of our financial systems. 

If you want election integrity, these measures will seems obvious to you. If you have qualms about ensuring the integrity of our elections, please consider your reasons, and what that means relative to your support of democracy. 

We are NOT a "Banana Republic", we are a "Democrat Banana Republic"! 

Making Martyrs

 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/12/conservative-women-tradwife-republican

A "martyr" used to be a person killed for their religious beliefs.

That is still true to a significant degree, it is just that the "religion" is secular. George Floyd, Gabby Giffords (she didn't die, but it still works), JFK, MLK, RFK ... etc. Today's religions are appropriately secular ... progressivism, state prosecution of people deemed dangerous to the Narrative,  Science", Climate Change, etc. 

The linked article exposes the fact that the far-right is nefariously attempting to get decent women into their evil fold so they can be martyrs. We can be gratified that we are assured there isn't such a thing as a "far-left", only people that correctly stay in complete sync with the always correct always malleable narrative of the day (NOD). So what do these poor "softly attracted" women do? 

They often work behind the scenes to advance conspiracy theories through social media and softly attract new women into the fold. But at the same time, in recent years “alt-right” women have also shifted to influential public-facing roles in right wing media production and far-right national politics.

Things that disagree with the Narrative are conspiracy theories, The 2 year headline story that Donald Trump was a Russian agent and the 2016 election was invalid because of that interference was NOT a conspiracy theory, because the FBI, CIA, Justice Department, media, etc all agreed it was gospel. The fact that it turned out to be baseless is thankfully forgotten. If radicals ever bring it up, it was at worst an "honest mistake",  NOT a conspiracy theory. Blessed be the Holy Narrative. 

The fact that 51 former security officials declared the Hunter Biden laptop to be "Russian Disinformation" right before the 2020 election is also NOT a conspiracy theory",  however the people that claimed it was real, and very damaging to Biden, WERE taking part in a far-right conspiracy theory. 

Today, the NY Times notes that the laptop is real, damaging to Biden, and has nothing to do with Russians. Again, at worst, apparently there was just another "honest mistake",  that somehow caused 51 former security officials to swear the whole laptop story was a conspiracy theory, and that 51 of them made the same honest mistake and decided to make a statement in no way had any intent of influencing the election.  That would be "bad", by definition, something only the "far" or "alt" right engage in. Anything that causes you any discomfort with the Holy Narrative is a lie perpetrated by the far-right.

The Narrative Creed needs to be imprinted on your heart!

I believe in the one true and ever changing Holy Narrative, 

Created by the Holy Trinity of the Holy Democratic Party,

The Holy Administrative State, 

and the Holy Media, 

for the eternal benefit of all who adhere to the doctrine of the Holy Narrative 

When Ashli Babbit was killed by Capitol Hill police during the January 6 attack, she was promoted as a martyr, with even the former US president Donald Trump calling her parents. “Women make better martyrs in the ‘alt-right’,” Jeppesen said about Babbit’s lingering effect."

How could anyone believe that Ashli, an unarmed female veteran taking part in a mostly peaceful demonstration, shot at point blank by an officer under no threat of death, great harm, or bodily injury be considered a martyr? It is not like she had a lethal dose of Fentanyl in her body, was passing counterfeit bills, and resisting arrest, whereby she could be a legitimate martyr. 

Anyone thinking such thoughts is obviously a heretic against the teachings of the Holy Deep State Narrative, and should gladly receive re-education. 

Tragically, the peril is even deeper! 

Another growing power on the far right is Moms for Liberty, a group that began as a small parents’ rights group but which has spread across the US and is a leading force in promoting book bans.

Some heretics claim that these books are not actually "banned", but only restricted to children of appropriate age, something like putting ratings on movies. Obviously this is dangerous misinformation, and it is absolutely clear that is this a ban. Even more tragically, there are primary school children being denied access to important education by loving Drag Queens, and important instruction in all aspects of health affirming gay, lesbian, and trans sexual practices! 

I tearfully confess I suffered the abuse of not even having Playboy on the library shelves in High School, and was forced to search for bare breasts in National Geographic, the horror of which is why I am demanding reparations. Hopefully the damage caused can be reduced by medication and counselling, but there is no substitute for reparative cash!

Apparently, our society had not progressed enough to realized that denying my access to Playboy was in fact a ban on Playboy in those ancient times. 

 Far-right mothers start building rapport with other parents, using the vulnerability of their children to open the door to QAnon conspiracy theories and anti-government sentiment.

This far-right conspiracy to interact and possibly influence other parents to become so confused that they become vulnerable to conspiracy theories,  possibly even anti-government sentiment, is so frightening I really suggest you avoid the horror of reading the article! We need to constantly repeat the government prayer ... "The government is great, the government is good, we thank it for our daily bread"! 

One can only applaud the Guardian for their staunch support of the Holy Narrative, and even though painful, having the courage to warn us against the creeping disinformation of the far-right! 

Praise be to Biden! 

 

Government, Business, Obesity Alliance

 https://thespectator.com/topic/new-war-obesity-underway-food/

Why are Americans so fat? 

Like many of our problems, the government got involved! 

“Our healthcare system incentivizes people to be sick,” says Calley Means, co-founder of TrueMed, a payment integration company that enables customers to use pre-tax health savings account and flexible spending account funds on healthy food, supplements and exercise-related costs. “If pharma and the healthcare industry were to design a perfect system, it would be that everyone’s getting sick from food and we’re not curing anything, and people are not dying quite yet, but we’re managing more and more conditions that are tied to food. That’s exactly the system we have… Their business model is charging people who need interventions.”

The basic cause is that government has incentivised an unhealthy diet. 

In the 1970s, in a bid to stabilize food prices, President Richard Nixon authorized subsidizing corn crops; that glut in the market led to the development of high fructose corn syrup, which turned out to be much cheaper to produce than sugar. Today, it’s hard to go to the grocery store and find a package of anything that doesn’t contain seed oils or corn syrup. Cereals, chips, crackers and salad dressings are rife with both. I thought I was safe eating a handful of whole roasted cashews, but no: the label lists “vegetable oil (peanut, cottonseed, soybean and/ or sunflower seed).” Because seed oils are intensely subsidized, they’re very cheap. The American Action Forum reports, “The most heavily subsidized and produced crops — corn, soy and wheat — are key ingredients in highly processed foods and are consumed at an ever-growing rate.”

It takes teamwork to destroy a population, and our "educational" system has pretty much destroyed critical thinking and produced a nation of sheep, that are ripe for the shearing by marketing, misleading dietary guidance, and now, even celebrating obesity. 

We may as well be putting Fentanyl ads on during the Superbowl, and have Lizzo for the halftime show! 

“We live in a system where chronic disease management is a growing sector of the entire economy that is also bankrupting us,” Teicholz observes. “Death and disease are the great engines of the American economy now.”

We live in a Democratic Republic. That means we need to have the common sense to regulate ourselves as well as our government and industries. We are NOT "victims", we are irresponsible patsies sucking in the sludge from big government, big pharma, big medicine, big media, etc with no sense that we need to be awake and critical. Naturally, all the "bigs" heavily discourage independent thought and study, but being a victim is not an answer! 

How did all this happen? Same as ancient Greece, Rome, the UK, USSR, NAZI Germany, China, etc ... the people become fat dumb and not really "happy", but distractedly compliant. 

 

Administrative Power, A Nice Summary

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/07/is-administrative-law-unlawful.php

Readers of this blog know that I consider the Administrative State to be by far the greatest danger to the liberty we have remaining. A little encouragement to read at least the linked post: 

The first step is simply to understand administrative power–to recognize that it is extralegal and absolute power. Once this is understood, the rest will follow. This is why I wrote my book and why I close with a plea for more accurate language about administrative power.

I review the book here if you are a glutton for a bit more punishment.  

Will The SCOTUS Dismantle The Administrative State?

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/07/will-the-supreme-court-dismantle-the-administrative-state.php

One can only hope!

As I have written more than once, the government we live under is not the one described in the Constitution. The ubiquitous and powerful arm of our government, found nowhere in the Constitution, is the Fourth Branch, the plethora of federal agencies, the administrative state. The administrative state has assumed much of the power that the Constitution assigns to the legislative and executive branches, a development that has progressed now for more than a century without serious challenge. Do we finally have a Supreme Court willing to take on the unelected Fourth Branch and restore a government that looks more like the one that is outlined in the Constitution?

Actually returning to being a republic, after lying anytime we do the pledge would be great. It isn't healthy to lie, maybe especially when you are so bamboozled you don't even have the merest clue of what "the republic for which we stane" would be ... if we had managed to keep it.  

The linked points to the excellent book, "Is the Administrative State Unlawful?" (spoiler, it is). 

Here is my review of that fine book. 

Drug Induced Utopia, MDMA

 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230614-how-a-dose-of-mdma-transformed-a-white-supremacist

As soon as I started reading the linked, "soma" from Huxley's "Brave New World" popped into my head. Wow! A drug that makes people feel more "connected", less anxious, more tolerant, less prejudiced, less rigid! 

What sort of monster would argue against putting this into the water supply, or just making injections mandatory to move around or engage in commerce, have a job, etc in a "civil" society? It seems like it would be better than the Covid jab. Or maybe it already was one of the "features" of the original jab or some of the boosters? It does seem that the population at large is more "laid back", not concerned about suich mundane things like working, inflation, possible nuclear war in Europe, high inflation, a senile president, or a host of other things. 

Perhaps, like LSD, we can just "Turn on, Tune in, and Drop Out". Groovy man! Even easier if we never know what happened to us. "Consent" seems to be a tired old concept these days anyway. 

The article focuses on a dangerous White Supremacist (Brendan) who was transformed by a single treatment with MDMA: 

Brendan grew up in an affluent Chicago suburb in an Irish Catholic family. He leaned liberal in high school but got sucked into white nationalism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he joined a fraternity mostly composed of conservative Republican men, began reading anti semitic conspiracy books, and fell down a rabbit hole of racist, sexist content online. Brendan was further emboldened by the populist rhetoric of Donald Trump during his presidential campaign. "His speech talking about Mexicans being rapists, the fixation on the border wall and deporting everyone, the Muslim ban – I didn't really get white nationalism until Trump started running for president," Brendan said.

Wow, after such a troubled childhood with affluence and Catholicism, he appropriately "leaned liberal". It shows he had to be basically good inside ... I would not be surprised to find he was saddled with a two parent family that had arcane things like rules and discipline!  Tragically, he got "sucked in" by Republicans in college (a rare breed), obviously the screening of students needs to be more rigid. Exposing immature college kids to dangerous ideas of the Republican sort needs to be prevented!

But then he was totally corrupted by the evil orange man Trump!  Perhaps "Let's go Brendan" will replace "Let's go Brandon"? Young people need to get a lot of exposure to drag queens, gay sex, explicit porrnographic books, transgender, etc so they can make their own decisions. However, unless we suppress extremist ideas coming from people like Republicans/Trump for the entire population, people will succumb. We can't trust adults to just decide for themselves! It is just common sense. 

MDMA seems too "good" to be true, as always, depending on what is good? 

Anecdotally, some members of the Taliban, for example, use MDMA to channel a connection to the divine during prayer chants, according to a drug activist based in Kabul who I interviewed for my book. In the West, plenty of members of right-wing authoritarian political movements, including neo-Nazi groups, also have track records of taking MDMA and other psychedelics. This suggests, researchers write, that psychedelics are nonspecific, "politically pluripotent" amplifiers of whatever is going on in somebody's head, with no particular directional leaning "on the axes of conservatism-liberalism or authoritarianism-egalitarianism."

Hmm, so it seems like the drug MAY amplify whatever way you are leaning ... although that does not seem to really fit with Brendan's case. 

Over at Scientific American, we find: 

Although its precise therapeutic mechanisms remain unclear, clinically relevant doses of psilocybin can induce powerful mystical experiences more commonly associated with extended periods of fasting, prayer or meditation. Arguably, then, it is unsurprising that it can generate long-lasting changes in patients: studies report increased prosociality and aesthetic appreciation, plus robust shifts in personality, values and attitudes to life, even leading some atheists to find God. What’s more, these experiences appear to be a feature, rather than a bug, of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, with the intensity of the mystical experience correlating with the extent of clinical benefit.

The "god" that drugs often lead one to tends to be more like the Buddhist sort of "god is everything, you are part of god, everything is good". Like a few million being killed in Mao's "Cultural Revolution". 

Like "Brave New World", it would seem that whatever "vales" can be induced in people (possibly through education, or REeducation) we will all have a shot a utopia -- possibly against our will, but if "the science" and "the narrative" has declared it as "good", isn't it the duty of the elite make utopia happen? 

Europe Is Great! (When it agrees with the left)

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/06/question-for-the-identitarians.php

'The American left likes to selectively applaud especially Scandinavian Europe when it at least thinks it agrees with them. Turns out that socialist "paradises" like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, etc are less socialist than that US. Mythology is much more important to Democrats than reality, since reality is generally hostile to their mythology. 

Scandinavian countries have stricter abortion laws than the US. 

They also believe the science rather than the narrative on transgender. 

The European medical community, by contrast, is expressing doubts about that approach. Having allowed these treatments for years, five countries—the U.K., Sweden, Finland, Norway and France—now urge caution in their use for minors, stressing a lack of evidence that the benefits outweigh the risks. This month, the U.K.’s publicly funded National Health Service limited the use of puberty blockers to clinical trials, putting the drugs beyond the reach of most children.

I see a few reasons for this: 

• European media and science are still more diverse than the US. The EU has not been weaponized to the degree that the Administrative State has in the US.
• The Democrat Administrative State in the US uses the NIH, CDC, etc in concert with Big Pharma to boost profits, that are then rolled back into the Democrat political machine. 
• Europe is not yet as hostile to religion and families as the US elites are. The countries retain their state religions, and realize that religion is a unifying force. The US is hard at work to establish "Wokeism" as the state religion ... with little thought as to what effect that will have.