Card Check: How Unions hope for force more people to join up.

Under current law, if you or your co-workers want to form a union, as side from a bunch of rigmarole having to do with paperwork, you have to put it to a vote of your fellow co-workers.  Seems fair enough if you’re going to forcibly take a portion of their check for what usually ends up being political purposes that have little to do with the “protections” the union is supposed to provide for that money.  That vote has always been by secret ballot, as it should be since it’s nobody’s damn business which way you vote.

Well, since unions are losing members faster than the Titanic took on water, and less people are wanting to join a union, union bosses have dusted off an old stand by method of “encouraging” people to join: intimidation.

They want to remove the voting part of the process and just go to a system called “card check,” or filling out a card saying you support the idea of you and your fellow employees having a secret vote of whether or not to unionize.  Routinely a majority of employees will support their fellow employee’s desire to hold a vote on unionization but will vote against unionizing in the secret ballot portion of the process.  Under a card check regime, filling out the card in support of a vote becomes the vote, and how you filled out that card is public knowledge. 

While this ad opposing card check in support of the private ballot exaggerates the point slightly, it’s not really that far from the truth.  Guess that’s what you get when the Democrat Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of labor unions.

Al Franken: Do as I say, not as I do! Doesn’t his pay taxes but wants to raise yours.

Al Franken, former comedian and current joke of a candidate for US Senate, just can’t seem to put his past life as a complete hypocrite behind him.  First it was the fine of $25,000 for not paying workers’ compensation for his employees for nearly 3 years, now it’s not paying taxes owed in several states.

Franken owes about $70,000 in back taxes to 17 states for monies earned since 2003.  Franken, being the stand up guy he is, took no responsibility for the SNAFU and simply blamed his accountant.

“What happened is our accountant made a mistake, and all of these are repercussions of that same mistake,” said Franken. “His mistake was not understanding the law, the obligation to pay these state taxes.”

If Franken hires an idiot like that to do his taxes, an accountant that doesn’t “understand” that you have to pay taxes on money earned, just imagine the kind of staff he would have IF he were elected to the Senate. 

Let’s hope the voters of Minnesota aren’t as clueless as Franken and his “people.”

The Smuggler as Hero.

Walter Williams explains that high taxes sometimes lead to smuggling, and that this sometimes is a noble pursuit:

While it’s politically popular to impose confiscatory taxes on America’s 40 million tobacco smokers, there are a number of consequences one might consider, but let’s start out with a quiz. If a carton of cigarettes sells for $160 in New York City, and $35 in North Carolina, what do you predict will happen? If you answered tons of cigarettes will be going up I-95 from North Carolina to New York City, go to the head of the class. …Some smugglers are good people who differ little from the founders of our nation such as John Hancock, whose flamboyant signature graces our Declaration of Independence. The British had levied confiscatory taxes on molasses, and John Hancock smuggled an estimated 1.5 million gallons a year. …Like Hancock, some of today’s cigarette smugglers are providing a service to their fellow man caught in the grip of confiscatory taxation. …People in government or those in pursuit of a do-good agenda think they know better and think they have a right to use government’s brute force to hinder peaceable voluntary exchange. In comes my hero the smuggler to the rescue. …The easy solution to cigarette smuggling, and its attendant activities, is to eliminate the confiscatory taxes.