Earlier this weak, the National Education Association (which is rivaled only by the league of jumbo shrimp in the realm of oxymorons) "early endorsed" the reelection campaign of President Barack Obama. The NEA is a union consisting of approximately 3 million teachers, which as far as I can tell, are exclusively from public schools. This activity raised a couple of points.
First, the NEA has abandoned any pretense of impartiality. By announcing its support of President Obama before the Republican field has even been finalized, before the platforms have even been revealed, the NEA has shown its hand as an ideological organization that is just another public employee organization dedicated to electing Democrats who will feed them public funed pensions that help bankrupt the states. Of course, when Democrats openly tell unions if they vote Republican, they are off the Democratic public teet, as Vice Presiden Joe Biden did in Las Vegas yesterday to loud applause from the union, it's easy to see that there is no arms length relationship, the unions and the Democrats are family.
Second, the union already automatically pulls $10 dollars of all members' dues to put into its political campaign fund. Earlier this year, that amount was doubled to $20 per member. Overall, the amount is up from $5 in 2004 by 400% (I guess they are just tracking the increase in college tuition). At first glance this is nothing scandalous. However, let's take Michigan, a pro-union, heavily Democratic state that has given us such luminaries as Michael Moore and the third world country that is Detroit (notice how Chrysler even acknowledges this by advertising itself as "imported from Detroit"). Michigan is not a "right to work" state. That is, if you want to work as a public school teacher in Michigan, you cannot do so unless you join the union. So what's my point? This means that the union is forcibly taking funds from public employees and channeling them to Democrats. More simply put, the unions act as a channel to take tax dollars and funnel them to Democrats. In right to work states, I have no problem with this act, as by joining the union, the teacher has effectively indicated they want this done, but in states that are not right to work, this is the forcible transfer of tax dollars to a particular political cause.
Personally, I believe this should be a national scandal, yet it is barely meriting a blip on the radar. This is likely because it has been going on for so long that people have resigned themselves to the practice.
The solution is to get behind the national right to work legislation proposed earlier this year by a group of conservative Senators. Normally, I advocate local solutions to problems and a minimum of federal interference. In this case, however, I believe that not only is this a federal issue, but that such an action is well within the scope of the United States Constitution and the powers granted to Congress. The idea that a union can force an employee to join, thereby restricting the ability of labor to flow freely in the marketplace and placing a fundamental restriction on the freedom of citizens is pretty much an insane concept. I personally believe not only that all states should be right to work, but that federal government should ban unions from public sector employment at the national level. Keep in mind, I'm fine with private sector unions as long as they cannot coerce membership within a profession (this would be called an illegal tying agreement if it were done by a business and constitute a violation of antitrust law).
In any case, if a Republican does take the Oval Office in 2012 and somehow both houses of the Congress are controlled by Republicans, I think if you agree with me, it will be time to push for passage of this legislation to end this pubic union money laundering operation for the Democrats.
