Divemedic

The Wisconsin legislature wants to outlaw collective bargaining. A law eliminating collective bargaining is an assault on the First Amendment. Elimination of collective bargaining would mean that the employees no longer have the ability to assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievances.

Assembly is the key to free speech. One voice can be silenced, thousands cannot. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

Since all laws are enforced by the police power of the state, any law that is passed carries with it the implicit threat that force will be used if it is disobeyed. Therefore, a law that outlaws the right of employees to collectively bargain outlaws free speech, under the threat of violence. When free speech is eliminated, there are few options left to a people who want to be free. None of them are pretty. The Republicans in this case have decided that if they cannot win against the unions at the negotiating table, they will simply outlaw them, and thereby eliminate their free speech rights. Free speech for everyone, as long as you say things the Republicans like.

To me this isn’t a union issue, it isn’t about anything other than free speech. If you allow the government the ability to silence a group that you disagree with, who will defend you when the government comes to silence YOU? Since the Republican legislature wants to silence free speech, the people (union employees are people) are protesting, and doing it in a non-violent way. The government responds by sending police to violate the rights of the protesters and ordering them to leave, and the police refuse, even though the police would be exempt from the law that prohibits collective bargaining. Maybe there is hope for the Constitution.

The only thing I am addressing with this post is the attempt to outlaw collective bargaining. This is far too large of a topic to tackle all things union. Any other topics, like how public employees being disciplined have due process rights, or any other union topic will have to wait for another day.

The military rank structure is an anachronism, and needs a major overhaul. Our current system of officer and enlisted is a left over from the days of feudalism, and being hundreds of years old in its basic concept, no longer fits into our modern society.

It used to be that officers were the educated gentry, and enlisted troops were illiterate proles who were little more than cannon fodder. During battles, it was once against the rules of combat to deliberately target officers, as it was believed that the officers were needed to keep the troops in check, or massacres would result. The concept of “officer and a gentleman” is used to assume that somehow, an officer is better than an enlisted man, and is thus entitled to better housing, food, and working conditions.

That is no longer how our society functions, nor is it how warfare functions. Gone for the most part are the days when enlisted troops were unable to read and write, and were good for nothing but serving as bullet stops. To become a commissioned officer requires one to have attended a college with an ROTC program, or have graduated from a service academy. During my time in the military, I knew some good officers. I also knew some officers who couldn’t lead a platoon of soldiers into a whorehouse without pissing them off.

Instead, a modern system of leadership and coordination could be used to overhaul the current system and make the management, leadership, and control of the armed forces more responsive, and better able to manage the war. Are there any businesses that are still using the same organizational structure that they were using 40 years ago? Our military has been using the structure that it has for over 200 years, and that structure itself was copied from European militaries who had been using it for hundreds of years as well. Something to think about.

Let me clear up my position on the union issue:

Collective bargaining is fundamentally a First Amendment issue: the right of a group of citizens to assemble and to petition their government for a redress of their grievances. It doesn’t matter if the group of people are getting a government paycheck or not, the constitution applies to everyone, and making exceptions because you don’t like how they are using their constitutional rights is exactly what tyrants do. (See the anti gun groups, the TSA, PATRIOT act, DUI checkpoints, etc.)

I do think that states should be a ‘right to work’ state, in that no one should be REQUIRED by law to join a union in order to have a job. Implicit in the First Amendment’s protection of my right to assemble and speak freely is my right NOT to assemble and speak. As a non-union employee who works in a union fire department, that right is important to me.

I also think that it should be illegal for a public employees’ union to strike or stage a “sick out” in order to force the government to bow to their demands. Anyone who refuses to report for work should rightly be fired.

So where would unions get their power? Through the constitutional exercise of their rights to speak, redress grievance, and vote: just like any other citizen. To say, as Sofa has done in comments:

So they [Unions-ed] are organized against the people.

Is to state that the government employees, the union members, are not people who are endowed with rights under the Constitution. It doesn’t matter that the people voted to “do something about that” as my First Amendment right to speak, assemble, and petition my government are no more up for a vote than my right to keep and bear arms, or my right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

That means the Constitution doesn’t grant any government the power to tell workers that they cannot collectively bargain.

Don’t like it? Change the Constitution. Until then, I will do what I have done since I swore an oath at the age of eighteen years: defend that Constitution against ALL enemies, foreign and domestic.

If the police are questioning you in a professional capacity, telling them ANYTHING is NEVER in your best interest. This child and his parents learned that lesson the hard way.

The job of the police is to show that they are doing something about crime. They do that by finding reasons to arrest people. If you talk to them long enough, they will find a reason to arrest YOU. There are those who believe that telling the truth will help curry favor, or get the police to cut you a break. More often than not, you give a cop who had nothing on you enough evidence to take you in.

Shut up, get a lawyer, and let the lawyer do the talking. Anything you have to say that will prove your innocence will still prove your innocence a couple of hours later when the lawyer gets involved. Police receive hundreds of hours of training in how to use your words against you, so keep your trap shut.

A young paramedic, who works for a different agency within the system, but we share a common medical director, came to me this week and wanted to confirm that he was correct in arguing with his supervisor on a certain medical issue. It seems that he ran a call on a woman who was complaining of vertigo and shortness of breath. He found a weak radial pulse, and the monitor (ECG) showed a sinus rhythm at a rate of 86, and her BP was 84/50. Our young medic started a line, and was preparing to give some fluids, and that is where the trouble began.

The supervisor that was on scene felt for a radial pulse, and got a pulse of 36. He insisted that this meant that the patient was bradycardic, and that the young medic administer atropine. The medic refused, and an argument ensued. Our young medic was instructed to “treat the patient and not the monitor” and ordered again to give the atropine. Young medic refused. After the call, our young medic friend was written up for insubordination and failure to follow orders, and sent to see the QA department. The QA department SIDED WITH THE SUPERVISOR, and now the medic faces a discipline hearing, where he is likely to get suspended. The woman from QA told him not to depend on the monitor, as she has seen a Lifepack get a BP and an O2 sat from a mannequin.

So he came to me, and asking for my take, and I gave my opinion. For those who may not know, here it is: The reason for the discrepancy between the patient’s pulse and the rhythm on the ECG was caused by blood pressure. It takes a systolic blood pressure of about 80-90 for a person to have a palpable radial pulse. Since the patient’s BP was so close to 80, it is likely that some pulses were reaching that threshold, while others were not. Since the monitor showed a heart rate of 86, giving Atropine would not have corrected the issue, as this was likely a fluid issue, or perhaps even a problem with vascular tone. In either case, the appropriate treatment would have been fluids, and if that failed, Dopamine should be considered. I told the medic that he should get the Medical Director involved, and get him to come to the discipline hearing if possible.

I am really starting to become convinced that there are very few competent people working anywhere in our health care system. That includes everyone from medics and nurses to the doctors. I am not sure where these idiots come from, or how they manage to pass the state test, but they are out there, and they actually get promoted to positions of power. Unbelievable.