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Christian schoolteachers who object to being forced to help finance the political agendas of unions yesterday moved a step closer to having their case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued an order that allows the teachers to petition the Supreme Court to consider their argument that California’s “agency shop” law is unconstitutional because it requires them to pay for political activity they do not support.

The teachers unions could ask the full 9th Circuit to reconsider the panel’s ruling. But Terry Pell, president of the Center for Individual Rights, the non-profit public-interest law firm representing the teachers along with the international law firm Jones Day, does not expect the unions to do so.

“The next stop is the U.S. Supreme Court,” Pell told The Daily Signal adding:

This ruling [from the 9th Circuit] happened much more quickly lhan we had a right to expect. It’s a big step forward. The panel hit the nail on the head. There’s nothing left for the 9th Circuit to do. This is a question of law that has already been decided so it has to go to the Supreme Court.

Pell said the …read more

RICHMOND – Martha Boneta’s eight-year battle with an environmental group over a conservation easement on her farm in Virginia’s Hunt Country moved closer to resolution yesterday as another organization agreed to take over enforcement activities.

Boneta and representatives of the Piedmont Environmental Council appeared at a meeting of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation’s board of trustees in the Virginia General Assembly building here. The foundation is a co-holder of the easement on Boneta’s farm.

Each side made 20-minute presentations about the easement on Boneta’s property and what she has called abuses on the part of the environmental council in its enforcement of the terms.

Easements are agreements landowners enter into with conservation organizations such as the Piedmont Environmental Council. The property owners receive cash or tax breaks for agreeing to limits on development. Boneta did not receive tax breaks because the easement was attached when she bought the farm.

After the presentations, the Virginia Outdoors Foundation’s seven-member board voted 6-0 to adopt a resolution expressing its willingness to take over enforcement activities.

Boneta, who has accused the Piedmont Environmental Council of colluding with government officials and realtors to force her off her property, said the resolution “gives me hope for the …read more

Martha Boneta’s years of struggle with a powerful conservation group could come to the beginning of an end this week.

Boneta owns the 64-acre Liberty Farm in the Paris area of Fauquier County, Va. Almost since her family bought the property in 2006, she has been embroiled in a series of disputes with the Piedmont Environmental Council.

At issue: the conservation organization’s enforcement of an agreement that limits development of the land.

But the Virginia Outdoors Foundation’s board of trustees will meet Thursday in Richmond to consider a resolution in which it would agree to take over all enforcement of the easement on Liberty Farm from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

The environmental council appears to be “open-minded in terms of being willing to discuss the matter,” the foundation’s executive director, Brett Glymph, told The Daily Signal.

>>> Farmer’s Harassment Claim Against Environmental Group to Get Airing

The foundation has no power to constrain the actions of the environmental council or other conservation organizations and no oversight role in state law.

The proposed resolution, Boneta says, merely calls for the organization to declare it is willing to take over all enforcement if she and the environmental council can …read more

“Hands Across New Jersey.”

That was the name given to the grassroots movement that came together in response to the $2.8 billion tax increase New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio pushed through after taking office in 1990.

Florio, a Democrat, had said throughout the campaign that he saw “no need for new taxes.” When he went back on his word, the state erupted.

Bumper stickers such as “Impeach Florio” and “Florio Free in ’93” were distributed widely across the state at Hands Across New Jersey rallies. The movement officially was non-partisan, but its activism worked to the advantage of Republican candidates.

Jeff Bell wants to bring about a similar explosion to shake up New Jersey’s political status quo.

Bell is in an uphill fight to unseat Cory Booker, the incumbent Democrat, in the Nov. 4 election for U.S. Senate.

Booker, 45, the former Newark mayor who prevailed in a special election last year to fill the remainder of Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s term after his fellowDemocrat’s death, is well-known, well-funded and widely expected to win handily.

But Bell, a political lifer who knocked off four-term incumbent Clifford Case in the Republican primary for Senate in 1978 only to lose to Hall of Fame basketball player, Rhodes …read more

Martha Boneta says a regional conservation group has trespassed repeatedly on her small farm in Paris, Va., about an hour outside Washington, D.C.

Boneta says the group, the Piedmont Environmental Council, has attempted to drive her off the farm through overzealous zoning enforcement, unwarranted and overly invasive inspections and an IRS audit she says was instigated by one of its board members.

The group argues that it has done nothing more than perform its duty to enforce a legal agreement with Boneta and decries the failure “to see eye-to-eye” with Boneta on how to do so.

He Said, She Said, Court Said

The dispute has had this he-said, she-said quality to it for years. But recent events have brought increased scrutiny of the actions of the Piedmont Environmental Council, which was founded in 1972 and bills itself as “one of the most effective community-based environmental groups in the country.”

Among them: A court ruling scaled back the organization’s inspection rights on Boneta’s 64-acre Liberty Farm. A judge sided with a winery owner in a similar dispute with the habitat preservation group Ducks Unlimited. And documents revealed that a member of the group’s board wanted to put spy cameras on Boneta’s …read more

LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J.—As far as Rob Pluta is concerned, New Jersey lawmakers who say they want to help restaurant workers by raising the state’s minimum wage for tipped employees have it all wrong.

“This will cripple the restaurant industry,” Rob Pluta says of New Jersey’s minimum wage hike.

If Trenton wants to help these workers, says Pluta, who owns and operates Leonardo’s II, an Italian eatery in Lawrenceville, it needs to promote the state, not enact even more mandates.

There is Revolutionary War history everywhere around Lawrenceville, population about 4,000. It’s not too far from Trenton, where Gen. George Washington launched his famous Christmas night surprise attack on Hessian soldiers garrisoned there. The Battle of Trenton and Battle of Princeton were fought during the “Ten Crucial Days” that reinvigorated the colonists and to this day are the subject of elaborate re-enactments during the Christmas season.

Rob Pluta owns and operates Leonardo’s II, an Italian eatery in Lawrenceville, N.J. (Photo: Leonardo’s II Facebook Page)

“There’s so much rich history here and so much potential for our business community,” says Pluta. “But the price of doing business keeps going up, and it makes New Jersey less competitive than it should be with neighboring states.”

Pluta wasn’t …read more

Fourth-grade teacher Rebecca Friedrichs doesn’t support a new state law allowing self-identifying transgender children in the public school system to choose which bathrooms, locker rooms and shower facilities they will use.

Allowing these students to occupy the same private space with classmates who don’t share their biological traits, Friedrichs believes, puts the interests of a few ahead of those of the many — and is potentially embarrassing and damaging for other students. She says she feels the same way about permitting transgender children to join all-male or all-female teams as they see fit.

Frankly, she says, “it’s hard for me to protect the modesty of other children.”

Friedrichs, a 27-year teaching veteran who works in Anaheim, Calif., also thinks it is a mistake for the state teachers union to push so hard for tenure to protect bad teachers. She supports school choice for parents because it helps poorer families get more out of the educational system.

And she backed Proposition 8 — the 2008 ballot initiative that upheld marriage in California as the union of a man and a woman — because she believes it is bad for society.

“If the union is on one side, it’s a sure bet I’m going to …read more

An environmental group that stands accused of overstepping its inspection authority and trespassing across a Virginia farm also tried to have video cameras installed to monitor the property.

An officer of the Piedmont Environmental Council proposed that one of that group’s board members “runs a security company and could offer the use of security cameras to record visitors,” according to documents examined by The Daily Signal.

Martha Boneta, who owns Liberty Farm in Paris, Va., last year sued the Piedmont Environmental Council and others because, she said, PEC encouraged Fauquier County officials to harass her with citations of zoning violations and other actions.

As previously reported by The Daily Signal, Boneta says PEC’s inspections have gone far beyond what is required to assure compliance with an easement on the property.

Documents obtained by The Daily Signal show the environmental group sought not only to monitor Liberty Farm through increasingly invasive inspections but also to install the video cameras to monitor visitors.

However, the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, a quasi-state agency created by the state legislature to preserve open space, would not go along.

‘Desire to Peep and Spy’

A “stewardship contact log” maintained by the Virginia Outdoors Foundation shows that Heather Richards, vice …read more

Before opening a new bank account, filling up your tank, shopping for groceries, purchasing a computer, booking a flight or visiting a drug store, you can now find out how those companies are spending on political causes.

Thanks to a free online app called 2nd Vote, consumers have this information at their fingertips for America’s most popular brands.

The app, which is available on Google Play and Apple’s iTunes, allows instantaneous access to a database that includes more than 400 companies. It’s the brainchild of a nonprofit based in Nashville, Tenn., which seeks to help consumers make more informed decisions.

“Conservatives need to have this information so they can hold companies accountable,” Chris Walker, executive director of 2ndVote, told The Daily Signal. “Companies will listen, and listen very quickly and act in a meaningful way if as customers they redirect how their money is spent. The status quo is that conservatives have not engaged on this, so we can’t be surprised when all the corporate activity goes toward the left.”

An app called 2nd Vote tells consumers how companies spend on political causes.

With a new school year starting in many states this week, 2nd Vote just rolled out an additional feature that …read more

Pension double-dipping and union corruption are two ways the governor can distract from Bridgegate and do some good for the Garden State. …read more