Divemedic

In my previous post,  there were some comments that public employees should be prohibited from contacting their government representatives as a group, because doing so was against the will of the people. So much for that theory.

Americans strongly oppose laws taking away the collective bargaining power of public employee unions, according to a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. The poll found 61% would oppose a law in their state similar to such a proposal in Wisconsin, compared with 33% who would favor such a law.

I am not, nor have I ever said that public employees should get their way, and I am also actively opposed to so-called “closed shops.” I do however, feel that they should have a seat at the table. Telling them that they cannot speak collectively is like telling people that they can only protest alone. What happened to the right to peaceably assemble?

The First Amendment is as important to me as the Second. There are many that I used to admire for their love of the Constitution, but I am sorely disappointed that they are only interested in using the words of the founders to feather their own nest.

When I paid my OUC electric bill online, I keyed in my checking account information wrong. They called and told me, so I paid it, plus a $25 fee, in cash the next day. Now they say I am cash only, no checks, no credit cards, no online payments for the next two years. In person, in cash, only. That is total bullshit. If they didn’t have a total monopoly, I would switch today.

OUC is a government owned utility. There is no practical choice for getting electricity any other way than through the local government. They require me to come pay in cash, while at the same time they are violating the law themselves by prohibiting me from carrying my concealed weapon in their government owned offices, despite being prohibited from doing so by Florida’s preemption laws.

I am going down there now to pay my bill. In nickels.

EDITED TO ADD: OK, I checked. They will not accept bulk coins. I am going to contact as many elected officials as I can to cause trouble for this. This is purely a vindictive thing, as they will not even accept money orders. Cash only, in person only.

A constitutional amendment that would take court procedural rulemaking authority away from the Supreme Court and give it to the Legislature has been introduced in a House subcommittee that has been studying the issue.

Currently, Art. V, Sec. 2, provides that the Supreme Court has the authority to adopt practice and procedure rules for the court, and the Legislature may repeal any rule by a two-thirds vote of both chambers. It also includes some technical language about the court and the district courts of appeal submitting questions on military law for an advisory opinion to a special military appellate court.

The amendment repeals all of that, and instead specifies: “No court shall have the power, express or implied, to adopt rules for practice and procedure in any court. Court rules of practice and procedure may be recommended by the Supreme Court to be adopted, amended or rejected by the legislature in a manner prescribed by general law. If there is a conflict between general law and a court rule, the general law supersedes the court rule.

Make no mistake, this change is intended to neuter the Supreme Court. The state Legislature of Florida intends to make the Supreme Court of the State a useless appendage. When any branch of government seeks to overrule the others, watch out.

State Senator Jim Norman, a Republican from Tampa, wants to make it a First Degree Felony to photograph a farm without the owner’s permission. A first degree felony carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, a $10,000 fine, and prohibits you from ever owning a firearm or voting again.

This means that the second conviction for enticing a child into a building to molest him is a lesser crime than taking a picture of cow or an orange tree from the side of the road. Sexual battery on a child over the age of twelve that does not use force is only a second degree felony.

Tell me again how Republicans are champions of the Constitution. Sorry, they are no better than the Democrats.

With fuel prices rising, I hear people claiming that they want to buy an electric car to avoid the high prices. Look at the numbers:

It takes 30 kWh to go 100 miles in an electric car. The cost for that at 13 cents per kWh (that is what my utility charges) is about $3.90. The cost to go the same distance in a 35 mpg car at $3.50 a gallon is $10. That would save you $610 a year in fuel if you were to drive 10,000 miles a year.


The catch is that the charging station will cost from $700 to $1500 installed. The all electric Leaf is $32,000 with a tax credit of up to $7500. So even assuming the best case, the Leaf will cost you $25,200. The gas powered Toyota Yaris costs $13,000. A difference of $12,200.

This means that you would have to drive the car for 20 years to break even. The savings just isn’t there.

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.