THE CHAIRMEN OF THE BOARD- THATS MY STORY AND I'M STICKING TO IT

WHO ARE WE ? WHAT HOLDS US TOGETHER ?

by Hans

 

NC Renegade

VERBATIM

Over the past several months [in 2010], I’ve watched conservatives awaken, rally to action, and coalesce into groups, only to see them fragment and fight over issues that dissolved their bond.
I’ve searched for insight that would facilitate group aggregation and prevent the cycle of formation / fragmentation.  ‘Strength of numbers’ and ‘unity of message’ are necessary to defeat the agenda of the progressives.

What makes us more alike than different?  We could define ourselves by what we are not, like the progressives in 2006 and 2008.  Their “change” did not tell us what they stood for, however, and we’re pretty certain we don’t like the changes we’ve received post election.

What are the essential threads of philosophy that bind us in common cause?  What do we believe and how do we make our belief explicit?  Can we state our beliefs so clearly and concisely that they function as a beacon to attract and retain conservative patriots in our cause?

After discussion within our local group, I decided to articulate my personal beliefs, to identify the threads of philosophy that brought me to the group, and hopefully will sustain our bond despite our many differences.

I am alive… human… an individual… and hold beliefs.  I presume you are the same.  Only if one believes in something can one act purposefully.  As you read this, I infer some bond connects us across our disparate life experiences.  Only if our group shares an explicit set of beliefs can we act purposefully in a coordinated fashion.

I began with a blank paper titled “I believe…” (I have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of…) and spent several hours crafting a few declarations:

I BELIEVE…

1. An individual is the fundamental unit of human value, an individual owns himself without precondition, and social structure must respect the sovereignty of each individual.

2. The moral basis necessary for sovereign individuals to prosper together, in social structures, in peace, is completely defined by the “ideal laws for a civil society”:

• Do not encroach upon others or their property
• Do all that you agreed to do.

3. Negative rights (rules against coercion) are consistent with 1 and 2, and form the appropriate basis for establishment of relationships among sovereign individuals.

4. Natural rights derive from 1, 2 and 3.  Natural rights exist prior to any establishment of law or government and describe an individual’s liberty, or freedoms, to:

• Own, develop and dispose of property (products of labor)
•  
• Bear arms for defense of self, family and property
•  
• Establish associations, contracts and self-government
•  
• Assemble, speak and petition to redress encroachments or breaches.

5. Capitalism is the only economic system compatible with liberty.  Any attempt to incorporate altruism or collectivism is a violation of 1, 2, 3, and 4.

6. Liberty can remain secure only if government is so limited that it cannot infringe upon the natural rights of sovereign individuals or intrude into free exchange in capital markets.

7. These United States should be restored from the encroachment of National government to a limited government as defined in the US Constitution and its first Ten Amendments.

8. Once restoration has been achieved, the US Constitution should be reviewed and edited, to eliminate ambiguities of language and make structural corrections to prevent the re-growth of National government.  Attention is required in, but not limited to, the following:

• Explicit definitions for “common good” and “commerce” clause
•  
• Limits on the scope and authority of the Supreme Court
•  
• Establishment of term limits; prohibition of political parties.
•  

I reflected on the consequences of these statements.  What I found was very encouraging.
Traditional conservative principles clearly derive from beliefs 1 through 6.

• Dignity, freedom, ability and responsibility must be honored…
•  
• Equal rights, justice and opportunity, but with no guarantee of equal outcomes…
•  
• Individuals must be allowed to keep the money they earn…
•  
• The best government is that which governs least…
•  
• The most effective and efficient government is local government…  etc.

Beliefs 7 and 8 describe tactics to recover Liberty but are insufficient to sustain and protect Liberty.  A program of education on beliefs 1 through 6 will be necessary to explain why we seek to accomplish 7 and 8.  We need a concise set of talking-points to:

• Speak about the role of the individual as the fundamental unit of human value; oppose all dogma about the supremacy of society or state.
•  
• Educate individuals about the moral basis for human interaction, and the role of negative rights in formation of productive human relationships.
•  
• Explain how capitalism is the only politico-economic system that is compatible with natural rights and individual liberty.
•  
• Describe the Founders vision to maximize individual Liberty through local governance with limited Federal oversight.

Nothing in my beliefs and conclusions is an original thought.  I invested the intellectual labor needed to articulate these ideas as MY beliefs.  The investment of my labor gives me ownership of these beliefs.  They are now my property.

I claim this “property right” as a consequence of belief 4, connected intimately to “rights” described in our Declaration of Independence.  The second sentence of our Declaration reads:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In his recent address to Continental Congress 2009, Michael Badnarik explained the etymology of the adjective “unalienable” which he carefully pronounced “un-a-lien-able”.  His pronunciation startled me as I had been taught the word as un-alien-able and it always seemed an odd term.

Mr. Badnarik explained the root of the adjective was not “alien” (differing in nature or character typically to the point of incompatibility) but rather was “lien” from the legal and financial lexicon:

• Lien – a claim to property for the satisfaction of a debt; a right given to another by the owner of property to secure a debt, or one created by law in favor of certain creditors
•  
• Alienable – the character of property that makes it capable of sale or transfer; capable of being taken away
•  
• Unalienable – incapable of sale or transfer; a right which cannot be given to another

My beliefs confirm certain “rights” exist simply because we are human.  Mr. Badnarik explains these rights are “un-a-lien-able” and cannot be transferred or taken away without making us less than human.  Our belief structure determines whether we are sovereign or serf.

One bond which holds us together must be our belief in the sovereignty of an individual.  Another must be our recognition that rights of individuals exist prior to establishment of law and government.
What other beliefs do we share?

Who are we?  What holds us together?

The Vandals are within the gates. But they are all texting each other.

Fred On Everything

VERBATIM

Random Vaporings on Language 

 

The other night, sitting in the living room and communing with our useless dogs, I asked Vi what book she was reading.  It was old, battered, and of many pages.

Lecciones de Lengua Castellano. Lessons in Castillian, meaning Spanish. The American edition. (“America” in Mexico denotes everything from Yellow Knife to Tierra del Fuego, not the United States). The book was Intended, it turned out, for students in  high school.

I examined it, astonished. It was a thorough study of grammar, the structure of good writing, and the elements of style in Spanish.  The vocabularies were extensive with sections on Arabic, Latin, Greek, and Saxon etymologies. I doubted that any university in the United States had anything so demanding.

Or in Mexico, today. With exceptions, the Mexican schools are dismal. So must they have largely been in 1963, when the book was published. Apparently those schools that were not dismal were rigorous.

I leafed through it with a curious feeling of familiarity. I grew up as a residuum of an earlier America, that of the upper South around the end of the nineteenth century, the Virginia of Southside, of the University of Virginia. Rural, relatively isolated in an age without electronics, it retained much of the culture of Thomas Jefferson. The educated of those days were carefully literate and cared about language. Writing well was considered a mark of civilization.

The cultivated men of the times before 1900, and for that matter the women,  wrote well indeed. Read the memoirs of Ulysses Grant, George Armstrong Custer, John Singleton Mosby (who studied Greek and mathematics at the University of Virginal). Their prose is strong, polished without ostentation, always clear and devoid of grammatical slips. Yet these were not scholars but soldiers of the Civil War.

This was the tradition of my father, a mathematician raised in the Prince Edward County of Virginia of the Thirties, and of my grandfather, a professor of mathematics born before 1900. And so I grew up with my English being gently corrected, with relatives reading to me from those marvelous books purportedly for children that combined faultless language with stories that continue to delight adults to day: Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, The Jungle Books, Alice, Tom Sawyer, The Wind in the Willows. (I suppose that they now would be called “dual use.”)  The only modern work of similar literary quality of which I am aware is The Lord of the Rings.

My grade schools of the Fifties still taught grammar and required the diagramming of sentences, now regarded with horror as a sort of linguistic water-boarding. We learned tense, mood, voice, subjunctives and parallelism and appositives. Equally important, we learned to listen to the language as well as its content, without which decent writing is nigh impossible.

With us, the written language was primary, the spoken derived from the written. In Spanish, if I know how “ajolote” is spelled, the word is mine. Otherwise it never quite is. Today among the literarily unwashed, the spoken language becomes primary. Note how “iced tea” becomes “ice tea,” ”boxed set” becomes “box set,“ presumably a set of boxes. The people who use these confusions don’t read, perhaps barely can, and do not know how the words are spelled. Participles? Huh? Wha’?

English once had its equivalents of Lecciones de Castellana. There were Fowler’s The King’s English and American English Usage, and of course Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. These today are as well known to our gilded peasantry as the Gilgamesh Epic.

An attention to meaning existed. We knew that “sensuous” does not mean “sensual,” nor bellicose, belligerent; nor alternate, alternative; nor uninterested, disinterested; nor envious, jealous; nor historic, historical; nor philosophic, philosophical; nor it’s, its.

From The Elements of Style  we learned the all-important “Omit needless words”, from Fowler:

Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched.
Prefer the concrete word to the abstract.
Prefer the single word to the circumlocution.
Prefer the short word to the long.
Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.

But that was then. Today usage nose-dives from the merely infelicitous to the downright annoying. Note the increasing penetration of language by that form of mispronunciation, once the marker of the lower middle class and below, in which emphasis falls on the first syllable of words. HOtel, INsurance, DEEfense, REEsources, DEEtail. It is the linguistic parallel of a facial tattoo.

And there is noun-speak. “Rainwater run-off flow control barrier system improvement programs.” Aside from the lack of clarity, the endless catenation of substantives is so ugly as to make migraine seem preferable. A satisfying solution would be a chain saw—taken to the author, the words being innocent bystanders.

Why are things that once were the common property of the cultivated now regarded as fossils predating the trilobites? One reason I think is the weakening of the barriers of class. The educated cannot maintain standards of excellence when constantly bathed by television in mangled grammar and illiterate usage.

Then there is a variant of Gresham’s Law that says bad culture drives out good. Stated more carefully, in the absence of barriers of class the values of the drains of society tend to become universal. Thus we have rap music, if such it is, hanging pants encompassing  louts, piercings, and functional illiteracy. In a sentence, the vulgar have discovered that it is easier to reject higher standards than to meet them. By sheer numbers they prevail.

The death of good language is part of the larger death of all culture, springing from the same causes: the domination of society by the mob. Note the decline in the sales of books, particularly books of history, the sciences, and literature: the rapid growth in genuine illiteracy, the disappearance of symphony orchestras. We have no poets, a nation of over three hundred million being far inferior to tiny, muddy London in the Seventeenth Century. Classical music is seldom played and never written. Architecture means K Street

Little hope exists of a reversal any time soon, if ever. In 1850 those deficient in schooling knew their deficiencies, and wanted to learn. Today there is an actual preference for ignorance, which is regarded as authentic or democratic and morally superior to knowing anything, which would be elitist. In politics we see a vengeful delight that control of society passes to non-European minorities without interest in any culture but that of the streets. “He is street smart,” or sometimes just “He street smart” conveys approbation that once would have been expressed by “He is a man of taste and discrimination.” Once learning or even the desire for it has been lost, they do not readily return.

The Vandals are within the gates. But they are all texting each other.

A Depression Thanksgiving on the farm

Via Traditions and Skills

This joyous harvest festival has always been a family day celebrated with a big dinner and heart-warming reunions.  Ninety-six-year-old farmer Webster Howe’s recollections of his favorite Thanksgiving is a bit poignant, but full of family warmth.

The best Thanksgiving I ever had was when me and Mother was workin’ the farm in southern Missouri, south of Joplin.  It was in ’34 or ’35.  Our kids had all left home lookin’ for work in California and in Kansas, takin’ all the little ones with them.  Draggin’ the grandchildren all over the country, probably to starve, Mother always put it .  Those years, there wasn’t no one left on the farm but me, Mother, and John, our youngest son.

In those days, there was want all across this country.  Where we was you couldn’t hardly make a thin dime.  We milked our string of cows and couldn’t sell the milk, and fed it to the pigs and couldn’t sell the pigs, but Mother and me and John was blessed with food and work.  That year we put up more dried and canned stuff, and put down and smoked more meat than we ever done before or since.  You’d of thought we was squirrels, puttin’ away nuts for a hard winter.  I guess knowin’ about want everywhere and thinkin’ it might come to you and yours makes a person a little scared.

Anyway, it got to be one week before Thanksgivin’ and we didn’t hear nothin’ from any  of the kids, not our two youngest families livin’ in southwest Kansas or the two older boys in California.  Mother had writ them long letters, tellin’ them she missed them and wonderin’ if any of them was comin’ home for the holiday.

When she didn’t hear, she jest went out one mornin’ and killed two big tom turkeys and dressed them.  Then she set about making apple, mince, and pumpkin pies.  by evenin’ the bread and baked stuff began to pile up til I asked her who she was cookin’ all that for, me and John?  She never even answered me.

I tell you, it got to me.  Mother was workin’ hard and lookin’ tired.  I was gettin’ bitter  at the kids who hadn’t even answered their mother’s letter.  John, he put in every bit of extry time he had helpin’ her-when she’d let him.  I could see it was botherin’ him too, you know the way she was takin’ on, as if all her cookin’ and wishin’ would bring them other kids home.

Well, it didn’t get no better and by the time we was doing chores the night before Thanksgivin’ me and John was feeling low too.  I still had two cows to go, when I heard a car drive up.  John left the feedin’ and went out to look.  He come runnin’ back and told me to come quick, he’d finish up later.
When I stepped out of the barn, there was my son Ken’s old touring car loaded with women and kids and Jack, my son-in-law, jumpin’ out of it.  I jest turned around and went back into the barn.  John, he come after me and told me they’d jest come down after me if I didn’t come on up to the house.

At the house there was a lot of laughin’ and talkin’ and everyone was huggin’ Mother and John and me.   When we went inside, John, he poured coffee for the grownups and icy cold milk for all the children.  Mother and the girls went to the pantry for somethin’ to eat and we could hear them teasin’ and laughin’ about all the stuff she’d made.

Then with both hands full of cookies, the littlest grandchild come out to lean against my chair.  She was a purty little redheaded kid.  She told me that up in Kansas they didn’t have no cookies like her Grandma made. I looked down at her and seen right away that she was as scrawny as a lamb whose mother didn’t have enough milk to feed it.  Mother and Daughter walked out of the pantry about then and seen us.  Mother give a knowin’ look at me and then at Daughter.

Daughter has always been the bravest of all my children, but when she looked straight at me, I saw  fear in her eyes.  Never sheddin’ a tear, not waver in her strong voice, she told us how they’d been broke most of the time in Kansas and they’d sold everything-even most of their clothes-to get the money to come home.  Without asking for an ounce of pity, she made me a deal to work out their keep till things picked up-as thought I wouldn’t a taken them in for nothin’.

My boy Ken, he never said nothin’, neither did his wife they jest let Daughter talk.  Jack, our son-in-law, never said a word, jest sat there with his head kind of down and his elbows on his knees.  Mother seen he was feelin’ shamed for not bein’ able to take care of his own, so she told him how much we was needin’ help and how his  comin’ was a real godsend.

The next day was Thanksgivin’ Day.  The boys helped me with chores, then we sat awhile in the barn and talked about how we was goin’ to make it.  And about how bad it was in Kansas and on up north.  The women spent the whole mornin’ puttin’ dinner together.   Then about two o’clock we ate.

Sittin’ there at the crowded table, covered with plates and food, the family all spruced up and smilin’, Mothers lookin’ like the Spirit of God had descended on her purty face, put me to mind of my own pa and ma and brothers, and I remembered the old, old prayer my father said at our table.

Well, I’m ninety-six, ninety-seven my next birthday-and since then I said that prayer, maybe fifty times over Thanksgivin’ dinners, but it never give me the joy it did that first time.

Hot Seat with Bill Whittle: How to Win the Culture

Via NC Renegade

Excellent, as always.

iSecede.Org

Via Bonnie Gadsden

The Post-Republic America

 A intuitive comment by K.R. 

Those that still feel a need

•to be governed by others, or
•to govern others

take 30 paces forward turn and face me. Those that don't form to my right as a firing squad. Now do what must be done.

Now go and live your life as a free person, being prepared every minute of every day to defend yourself against those that would rob you and your family of your life, liberty, or property. The fight is never won once-and-for-all.

 ==============================

 

TL in Exile

VERBATIM

Everyone will come to the same conclusion at different times, in their own fashion. Some will be happy and some will be sad, but none can avoid the awful truth presented to us all without mercy in the last election: We are living in the post-republic America.

De Tocqueville knew it immediately and it has taken the better part of two centuries to accomplish the hazard he saw in the new American-style of government. Not that it was new to de Tocqueville, at least the understanding of democracy did not escape him, but when he remarked (paraphrased) that America would survive until the people realized they could vote themselves largess from the public treasury, he saw our future.

The last election was the first one I know of where the people dependent on government, or interested in the spoils to be had from electing one individual over another stood up to demand their loot. Be that "free" medicine and medical care, an extension of unemployment benefits (when the election was past and a higher unemployment figure could be tolerated) or just the greed of demanding more money from the wealthy, it is all the same.

Social Security was the first abomination to sink into the American psyche and become embedded, largely because it was paid into by those who planned to use its benefits later. Had the government treated these funds more responsibly, it might have actually worked as a sort of national 401K, but they stole the money and spent it on their pet projects and political payoffs and handed us all back an IOU.

The point is that with Social Security's facade of personal investment the socialist agenda wormed its way into the brains of even right-leaning Americans. They feel that they have put money in and expect to get money out. The larger question is lost in the same way, a generation hence, Obamacare for all of its faults and follies will be accepted as a given.

This is why this election marked the post-republic America, because it was the turning point, the ultimate tipping point, the one that the socialists and Marxists had been working toward all these years. Romney lost the election on the mobilization of the takers along with the understanding that he would not reverse any of the key legislation that had vexed so many patriotic and liberty-minded individuals who did not bother to turn out. Combine that with illegal aliens of all races and backgrounds disenfranchising legal voters and the outcome is a perfect fit for the Marxists.

So, here we are: democracy has supplanted the republic at last. The laws are not Constitutional after the warped interpretations of Marxists judges leaning always toward greater government control rather than greater liberty and limited government power. So there is no rule of law consistent with Constitutional limitations, which is a destruction of the republic in itself.

Ours is no longer a system where the citizen chooses to forgo some of his wealth in order to secure stability and proper government, it is a system where the comfort of one citizen in one age is able to secure that comfort from the toil of a citizen in a subsequent age, those yet to be born. Those citizens had no say in the spending and accumulation of debt to be handed to them on their birthday. Yes, we have all inherited some of this burden from previous generations, but not to this magnitude and not to this detriment. The revolving debt of government is now to a weight that the subsequent generations will be crushed by it, enslaved by it, without voice or vote.

The question now is: Where do we go from here?

I have described above the fact that the republic for these specific reasons is dead. We are a democracy now, no matter how the laws are formed or what our pledge of allegiance says. A republic requires that our representatives will act in accordance with the Constitution while serving the majority responsible for their election. In all things, however, a representative cannot act against the Constitution in favor of the masses, which is exactly what we endure today.

Electing presidents who nominate and seat judges who will ignore the Constitution and rule favorably against the Constitution is a violation of the concept of a republic, but perfectly consistent with a democracy.

Where do we go from here? Down.

There is no way to save the republic and rely on the laws at this point, we are past that. There is no way to walk into a court of law and plead innocence by fact of being convicted of an unlawful law, the entire judicial system is merely a means of making legal that which is unlawful. Everyone is in on it, they were trained that way and everyone they work with were trained that way. It is pointless.

Start trying to figure out what you are going to do about it. I am. (and no, I don't mean just writing on this useless blog)

Trust the government?

Via Keep It Simple

Texas Schools Now Teaching Boston Tea Party Was Act Of Terrorism….And More

Freedom Outpost

VERBATIM

 

Does anyone remember the video that began to circulate where a FEMA representative told local police in Oklahoma that the founding fathers and Christians were terrorists? If you thought that was the end of such statements, let me awaken you to the reality that public schools are teaching something very similar to that in the U.S. occupied State of Texas. They are teaching students, contrary to their parents wishes, that the Boston Tea Party was an act of terrorism and that those who did it were terrorists.

Before we go further, let me state clearly that I fully understand the sentiments of those who engaged the Boston Tea Party. I understand their desire to make a statement. It wasn’t right for them to take what belonged to someone else and destroy it, but I did get the sentiment and would never call it terrorism. No one was killed. No one was threatened. It was a statement that they were not going to be taxed by England without being represented.

This December 16 will mark the 239th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. The protest has been historically recognized as the event that sparked the Revolutionary War. However, this is how it is being taught via the Texas public school system’s World History/ Social Studies lesson plan (Unit 12: Lesson: 07: 

News report: New Act of Terrorism

A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port. Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities. It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country’s government. Even stronger policies are anticipated by the local citizens.

In fact, much of the curriculum seems to suggest that anyone who opposes or does not agree with what government is doing is somehow labeled a “terrorist.”



After the above story is read, teachers are then instructed on how to manipulate the students thinking.

From the lesson plan:

There can be no doubt that these lessons are geared to tying the historical Boston Tea Party with terrorism and that concept then tied to the current Tea Party movement and thus to terrorism.
The company producing the lessons is CSCOPE. So just who is CSCOPE? They are an offshoot of the State Board of Education in Texas. They are owned by Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative (TESCCC). According to CSCOPE’s website:

CSCOPE is the source for an all-in-one approach to a quality curriculum system. CSCOPE is a comprehensive, customizable, user-friendly curriculum management system built on the most current research-based practices in the field.

CSCOPE has several sample resources and samples that you can view here.

A reader of FreedomOutpost sent me information on the curriculum and also spoke with me via telephone. She informed me that many parents were denied access to the curriculum by teachers and superintendents. This is in direct violation of Texas State Law. From the Texas Constitution:

Sec. 26.006. ACCESS TO TEACHING MATERIALS. (a) A parent is entitled to:
(1) review all teaching materials, instructional materials, and other teaching aids used in the classroom of the parent’s child;

However, it doesn’t end there. CSCOPE also imposes a “gag order” on teachers using the site, which I have been informed they were made to sign a copy without legal counsel.

In addition to the above, note the counter cultural anti-Christian lesson offered by CSCOPE via the

CSCOPE review website:

CSCOPE Lesson: Christianity is a Cult

In addition, they then provide false and misleading historical data pertaining to Islam, such as the following screenshot:



Also, the curriculum seems to be not only anti-Christian, but also pro-Islam as demonstrated in this Power Point presentation.

There is also Population Dynamics, along with Population Demography curriculum that is taught to the students. While population dynamics and even demography may be helpful to some, the question that should arise is, “Why is this being taught in public school?” The answer comes from a very presumptive source, the United Nations.

In their International Commission To consider Zero Population Resolution they address “High School Ambassadors” and cite the following:

As the world approaches a population of seven billion people, Secretary General Ban Kimoon would like you to participate on an international roundtable to discuss the issues associated with this growth. The outcome of this roundtable will be a report educating people of your age, around the world, about the impact of the current growth projections on specific countries throughout the world and possible measures that could lessen those impacts.

To be prepared for the roundtable, you will need to understand the basics of population dynamics and factors that impact populations. Specifically, you should focus on the following:

• Biotic and abiotic factors that limit population growth

• The relationship between carrying capacity and population growth

• Calculating birth and death rates as well as identifying exponential and logistical growth patterns

You will need to demonstrate your understanding of population dynamics, utilizing appropriate technology, and incorporate this in your final report to the UN Roundtable by applying it to a specific developed and developing country. Your report should include the following:

• Demographic data for each country including birth, death, and fertility rates
represented visually

• Description of the type of population growth being experienced and the key social,
biological, political, and economic factors impacting that growth

• A position whether to support or oppose the pending resolution that the world must
achieve zero population growth by the year 2060

o Support your position using trends and predictions based on your research.

• Alternative measures to limit impact of growth

My friends if you live in Texas you had better wake up and either stand up against the state run schools or get your children out of there. This not only applies in Texas, but in all states. Consider homeschooling your kids. They will gain the best knowledge of all things from you, not to mention you will have the greatest amount of time to input your values, principles and morals instead of having to counter what the statists are teaching your kids.

Obama’s Labor Board Pushes Manufacturing Jobs Overseas

 

If you are wondering why American manufacturing jobs are going overseas and not coming back, look no further than President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB recently told a U.S. Court of Appeals that employers’ concerns that a multiplicity of small bargaining units will cripple their operations are “irrelevant” under U.S. labor law.


The Board’s position was put forward by Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon in a disturbing brief to the Fourth Circuit. It was filed to defend the Obama Board’s highly controversial decision, Specialty Healthcare, which jettisoned 76 years of Board law. The decision authorized unions in all industries over which the Board has jurisdiction to represent bargaining units of as few as two or more employees doing the same job in the same location. Why do unions want these small units? Because, among other things, they are easier to organize.


The Board’s decision threatens an undue proliferation of bargaining units, which Congress, state labor boards and other nations have warned about for years.  


The Board Has Always Resisted “Undue Proliferation”


Since its inception in 1936, the NLRB has recognized that an undue proliferation of bargaining units causes unnecessary work stoppages and is inconsistent with the long-term goals of collective bargaining. Therefore, the Board has favored larger units and sought to avoid a multiplicity of smaller units. During Senate debate in 1974 on extending the Board’s jurisdiction to cover non-profit health care institutions, committee Chairman Senator Harrison A. Williams (D-NJ), no stranger to Board law, recognized this fact. He applauded the NLRB and said that as a rule it has “generally tended to avoid the unnecessary proliferation of bargaining units.”


The Board’s efforts in this regard were also clear in 1989 when it proposed adopting a rule that would make a single facility unit presumptively appropriate. In its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the NLRB said that the employees’ desire for a single facility unit (as opposed to the employer’s desire for a multi-facility unit) “might be outweighed by concerns over disproportionate, unjustified costs and undue proliferation of units.”  

Congress Has Expressly Warned The Board About Undue Proliferation

More  @ Townhall