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Alaska Moves to Comply With Supreme Court on Deducting Union Dues

Alaska’s labor policies need a “course correction” to ensure the First Amendment rights of public employees are protected under a recent Supreme Court ruling, the state’s attorney general has told Gov. Michael Dunleavy in a legal opinion.

Because public sector employers no longer are permitted to deduct labor union dues or fees from an employee’s paycheck without that employee’s “affirmative consent,” the state’s payroll deduction system “fails to satisfy constitutional standards,” Alaska Attorney General Kevin G. Clarkson says in the written opinion dated Tuesday.

Clarkson recommends to Dunleavy that Alaska implement a new payroll deduction system to ensure that a government employee “freely consents” to payroll deductions for union fees, and does so in a “knowing, intelligent, and voluntary” manner.

In response to the opinion, Dunleavy said it “clearly articulates” that Alaska doesn’t comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling.

“In the coming days and weeks, my administration will be working to ensure the state is in full compliance of the law and that Alaskans are informed of their rights,” the governor said in a press release.

Clarkson and Dunleavy are Republicans who took office in December.

Six months earlier, in June 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. American Federation of …read more

 

Nurses Union That Backs ‘Medicare for All’ Prevails at This Hospital

MIDDLETOWN, Pennsylvania—Not every nurse at St. Mary Medical Center supports “Medicare for All” or the political goals of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

But every nurse at that Bucks County hospital soon will pay dues to a labor union that has backed Sanders and government-run health care, now that a majority of their colleagues has voted to join the union.

“Medicare for All is a horrible concept that is not rooted in reality,” Vicki Zaino, a nurse manager in oncology, told The Daily Signal before the second day of voting began Friday. “The proposal would greatly burden taxpayers while destroying private insurance opportunities for people across the country.”

Other nurses who asked not to be named also expressed misgivings about being required to pay dues to Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, a union that already represented more than 8,000 nurses statewide.

“I don’t want to pay union dues to an organization that is devoted to politics instead of health care,” another nurse in oncology told The Daily Signal.

“It’s fine to support whatever candidate you want to support and it’s fine to support whatever policies you want to support,” this nurse said. “But it’s not fine to do this with …read more

 

Democrat Governor Excludes Conservative News Service From Media List

When two reporters showed up at the Wisconsin governor’s office in February for a press briefing on the new administration’s proposed budget, staffers turned them away.

Although the governor’s office didn’t formally invite the reporters, they were credentialed through the Wisconsin Legislature to cover government activities. They also emailed an RSVP to the governor’s staff.

The two reporters arrived at a conference room for the budget briefing at the designated time, but the governor’s staff said they weren’t on the RSVP list.

So, what gives?

Under the First Amendment’s prohibitions against government actions that inhibit “freedom of speech” and “freedom of the press,” shouldn’t all credentialed reporters be granted access to something as routine as an elected official’s budget briefing?

That’s what the MacIver Institute for Public Policy, a free market think tank based in Madison, Wisconsin, argues in a lawsuit filed against Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who assumed office in January.

MacIver Institute’s suit claims the governor violated its right to equal protection of the laws and due process under the 14th Amendment.

At a time when the Trump White House’s every dealing with the press appears to be scrutinized, a Democrat governor’s attempts to exclude a conservative-leaning news organization, …read more

 

Nurses Accuse Union of Pressure Tactics in Hospital Organizing Drive

MIDDLETOWN, Pennsylvania–Staffers who took down pro-union signs posted without authorization in St. Mary Medical Center were injured by staples “turned around backward” and “held in place by mustard,” nurses say.

The nurses, who spoke with The Daily Signal about a union rally last week near the entrance to the hospital in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, said the way the signs were put up was deliberate.

“This was meant to injure anyone who took down the signs,” said one nurse, who asked not to be named. “We are having union propaganda plastered all over our walls and slid under our doors.”

“Union officials are also visiting nurses at their private homes,” the nurse said. “There’s a lot of coercion and a lot of efforts made to intimidate.”

The accusation that union posters were hung in a way meant to injure anyone is “false and defamatory,” a union spokesman told The Daily Signal.

For the past several months, union posters and signs have been hung on walls and doors at St. Mary’s as part of a larger effort to prod nurses into joining a union, an official with Trinity Health, the hospital’s parent company, told The Daily Signal on background.

“We certainly could file a labor complaint, …read more

 

How Faulty Assumptions in Climate Predictions Could Mean Big Costs for Americans

Family incomes will take a severe hit and household electricity prices will jump rapidly if policymakers use the “social cost of carbon” to justify new environmental regulations, a Heritage Foundation statistician warned during a climate change conference in Washington.

Since computer climate models are grounded in assumptions about the impact of carbon dioxide emissions, the results “can be all over the map,” Kevin Dayaratna said at the Heartland Institute’s conference.

These results then can be “rigged by policymakers” to achieve their desired results, Dayaratna said during his presentation.

The Heartland Institute is a libertarian, free-market think tank based in Illinois. Its 13th International Conference on Climate Change was held July 25 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

Dayaratna, a senior statistician and research programmer at The Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, was part of a panel discussion on “Energy and Climate Economics” that probed the costs of the Green New Deal and the benefits of fossil fuels.

The statistical models used by the Obama administration to set regulatory policy are flawed because they are highly prone to user manipulation, Dayaratna told conferees.

In fact, only one of the three models in use during the Obama years considered …read more

 

EXCLUSIVE: Media Requests for EPA Records Soar Under Trump

Major news outlets, seemingly more prone to investigative reporting in the Trump era, are much more aggressive in seeking records from the Environmental Protection Agency than they were in the final years of the Obama administration, The Daily Signal has learned.

ABC News, CBS News, the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Politico are among 20 news organizations showing a large increase in Freedom of Information Act requests, according to EPA numbers obtained by The Daily Signal.

The 20 media outlets include not only news organizations with liberal perspectives but some, such as CNN, BuzzFeed, Mother Jones, and Huffington Post, that freely mix news coverage and left-leaning opinion.

According to the data, the biggest percentage increase in FOIA requests to the EPA by the 20 media outlets occurred between 2016, Barack Obama’s last year as president and 2017, Donald Trump’s first year as president.

The organizations made a total of 626 FOIA requests to the EPA in 2017, more than doubling the 249 requests in 2016.

Dating to 1967, the federal Freedom of Information Act requires disclosure, upon written request, of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the U.S. government. Such requests–whether by a media …read more

 

Deceased Navy Veteran’s Name Cleared in ‘Clean Water’ Case

After being convicted, fined, and imprisoned under the Clean Water Act for digging ponds to protect his Montana home from forest fires, Joe Robertson had his name cleared last week.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Robertson’s conviction in a legal victory that comes posthumously, since the Navy veteran died four months ago at age 80.

Robertson was 78 when the federal prosecution led to his prison sentence in 2016; he completed his 18 months behind bars in late 2017. At the time of his death March 18, he was supposed to be on parole for another 20 months.

Robertson also had been ordered to pay $130,000 in restitution through deductions from his Social Security checks.

The 9th Circuit initially upheld a lower court ruling against Robertson in November 2017 and denied him a rehearing in July 2018. But last November, he petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case.

On April 15, the high court responded by vacating the 9th Circuit ruling and sending the case back to that appeals court for further review.

Robertson’s widow, Carrie, had stepped in to carry on his legal battle. The Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit, public interest law firm …read more

 

A Year After the Supreme Court Rules Against Unions, What’s Changed

Pick a state, any state where rank-and-file public employees differ with the political agenda of their union leadership and can make a clean break from the union if they choose.

That’s because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that nonunion government workers can’t be compelled to pay dues or other fees to support a union. A year after that decision, attorneys and policy analysts who spoke with The Daily Signal say they find that too many Americans remain unaware of their First Amendment rights in the workforce.

They also express concern that union operatives and their allies in government are pushing legislation to undermine the high court’s 5-4 decision on June 27, 2018, in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.

In one response, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free market think tank in Michigan, set up a website that enables employees to start the process of opting out of their union. Those interested go to the “My Pay. My Say.” website, enter some personal information, and name their employer and union association.

Michigan became a right-to-work state in 2013 after then-Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, signed into law a measure prohibiting new contracts that require workers …read more

 

Conservative Shareholders Push Facebook to Achieve ‘True Diversity’

Facebook shareholders will have the opportunity Thursday to vote in favor of “true diversity” as the company holds its annual investor meeting.

In the past few weeks, Apple, Amazon, and Twitter all have rejected the same shareholder resolution calling for the technology companies to seek “ideological diversity among their board members” that “contemplates differences in political/policy beliefs.”

>>> Update: Facebook investors rejected the “true diversity” proposal Thursday along with seven other independent shareholder proposals.

The negative vote tallies do not come as a surprise to Justin Danhof, a lawyer who heads up the Free Enterprise Project, an initiative of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank based in Washington.

>>> Related: ‘We’re the Ones Yelling Stop’: How These Conservatives Are Fighting Corporations’ Liberal Tilt

For years, liberal groups have been much more organized than conservatives as shareholder activists, Danhof told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

The upshot is that it is “super easy” for more individuals and groups on the right to enter the fray during shareholder meetings, where they can advance resolutions and raise questions about company policies, he said.

“We need to get more conservatives involved, and what I tell people …read more

 

Conservative Shareholders Push Facebook to Achieve ‘True Diversity’

Facebook shareholders will have the opportunity Thursday to vote in favor of “true diversity” as the company holds its annual investor meeting.

In the past few weeks, Apple, Amazon, and Twitter all have rejected the same shareholder resolution calling for the technology companies to seek “ideological diversity among their board members” that “contemplates differences in political/policy beliefs.”

The negative vote tallies do not come as a surprise to Justin Danhof, a lawyer who heads up the Free Enterprise Project, an initiative of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank based in Washington.

Related: ‘We’re the Ones Yelling Stop’: How These Conservatives Are Fighting Corporations’ Liberal Tilt

For years, liberal groups have been much more organized than conservatives as shareholder activists, Danhof told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

The upshot is that it is “super easy” for more individuals and groups on the right to enter the fray during shareholder meetings, where they can advance resolutions and raise questions about company policies, he said.

“We need to get more conservatives involved, and what I tell people is to please copycat me and take a look at what we’re doing with the Free Enterprise Project,” …read more