President’s Allies May Be Exempted From Burdensome ACA Tax (Click here to download the National Right To Work Committee’s November-December 2013 Newsletter) At the very beginning of 2014, an array of key components of the so-called “Affordable Care Act”…
German union rep. Bernd Osterloh says Tennessee VW employees should be allowed to have a secret ballot vote. The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation is actively fighting to protect the employees at the VW Chattanooga plant. More about Osterloh’s comments from the…
The Wall Street Journal looks at the miracle of choice — government union members in Wisconsin who now have a choice whether to join a union are deciding to vote with their feet and pocketbooks. They are leaving the union in…
The only thing that ObamaCare offers teacher unions is the possible chance to unionize the likely resulting expansion of school medical personnel. But, it destroys benefits that teachers currently enjoy; you know the teachers that the National Education Association (NEA)…
Union bosses in Michigan are attempting to undercut the state’s Right to Work law and for that the Wall Street Journal takes them to task: When Michigan became the 24th right-to-work state late last…
Just when you think they can't go any lower, the union bosses have filed a lawsuit in Louisiana to force children to attend poor schools. The Wall Street Journal opines on the latest big labor outrage: Here's the bizarre world in which we live: In 2007 Gabriel Evans attended a public school in New Orleans graded "F" by the Louisiana Department of Education. Thanks to a New Orleans voucher program, Gabriel moved in 2008 to a Catholic school. His mother, Valerie Evans, calls the voucher a "lifesaver," allowing him to get "out of a public school system that is filled with fear, confusion and violence." So what is the response of the teachers union? Sue the state to force 11-year-old Gabriel back to the failing school. This week a state court in Baton Rouge is hearing the union challenge to Louisiana's Act 2, which expanded the New Orleans program statewide and allows families with a household income less than 250% of the federal poverty line to get a voucher to escape schools ranked C or worse by the state. Gabriel's voucher covers $4,315 in annual tuition. The tragedy is how many students qualify for the program. According to the state, 953 of the state's 1,373 public schools (K-12) were ranked C, D or F. Under the new program, more than 4,900 students have received scholarships allowing them to attend non-public schools. Enter the teachers unions, which sued this summer to stop the incursion into their rotting enterprise. According to the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and the Louisiana Association of Educators, the voucher program steals money from public schools.
Liz Peeks discovers the nasty truth of the Obama auto bailouts -- they were a "Hefty Union Payoff": [media-credit name="NRTW Committee®" align="alignright" width="300"][/media-credit] In the second presidential debate, Mr. Obama attacked early on, saying, “Governor Romney said we should let Detroit go bankrupt.” Note to Obama fans: GM did go bankrupt – filing for Chapter 11 protection against its creditors on June 1, 2009. It’s what happened next that the president can take credit for – a handout of $49.5 billion in taxpayer money to GM, some $27 billion of which remains outstanding, and another $17 billion to its financial arm Ally Financial, which still owes $14.7 billion. In other words, Obama didn’t save General Motors; American taxpayers did, with an assist from the Federal Reserve. While liberals rant about the bailouts of Wall Street, it is worthwhile noting that of the $417 billion in TARP funds spent to stabilize the economy, only $65 billion has yet to be repaid – and more than half of that is owed by GM and Chrysler. The latest TARP report from the Congressional Budget Office says that the government invested nearly $80 billion in those two auto giants and that taxpayers are still on the hook for roughly $37 billion. In the same report, the CBO projects that handouts to Wall Street firms will ultimately net the government a cool $11 billion profit. They say the auto industry, on the other hand, will never pay back taxpayers. According to the congressional bean counters, $20 billion is gone for good.
[media-credit name=" " align="aligncenter" width="300"][/media-credit]After giving away the store and the kitchen sink to the union bosses, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is looking for a federal taxpayer guarantee for the state's pension debt, the Wall Street Journal opines: Now that Chicago's children have returned to not learning in school, we can all move on to the next crisis in Illinois public finance: unfunded public pensions. Readers who live in the other 49 states will be pleased to learn that Governor Pat Quinn's 2012 budget proposal already floated the idea of a federal guarantee of its pension debt. Think Germany and eurobonds for Greece, Italy and Spain. Thank you for sharing, Governor. Sooner or later, we knew it would come to this since the Democrats who are running Illinois into the ground can't bring themselves to oppose union demands. Illinois now has some $8 billion in current debts outstanding and taxpayers are on the hook for more than $200 billion in unfunded retirement costs for government workers. By some estimates, the system could be the first in the nation to go broke, as early as 2018. Liabilities are also spiralling nationwide, with some $2.5 trillion in unfunded state pension costs. According to a paper released Thursday by the Illinois Policy Institute, the crisis will end up pitting states against each other as taxpayers in places like Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Utah will be asked to subsidize the undisciplined likes of Illinois and California.