Discussion: Why Public Unions Should Be Scared SCOTUS Will Gut How They Collect Fees

Fascism is, as fascism does.

This is the same institution that gave us Bush v. Gore. That in turn gave us a president who spent his first 9 months under reacting to the threat of terrorism, which allowed 9/11 to happpen. He then lied the nation into an unnecessary war that made Iraq a client state of Iran, unleashed Isis, destabilized the Middle East, lead to millions of refugees fleeing into Europe, destabilizing Europe. The combined affect of his policies was to shift over $12 trillion (over a ten year period) of societies assets from the 99% (demand side) to the 1% (supply side). The impact of this move was covered by cheap & ez credit, but when that ran out the U.S. economy cratered, pushing global civilization on to the abyss, that still has not lost its gravity.

The Supreme Court gave us this dystopic world with their decision in Bush v. Gore, and they have never apologized for that decision.

Clearly the nation got the 2000 election correct and the Supreme Court got it wrong - by a vast chasm of a margin.

It is my contention that justices have a strong preference to vote their party line vote, but generally speaking, when they do deviate from that, it is to protect the institution of the Court itself, its perceived legitimacy and moral authority, its roll in society.

(That is, by the way, what I would argue, what happened in Marbury vs Madison, Marshall would have liked to find for Marbury, but couldn’t so he chose to strengthen the institution instead, granting the court with the power of judicial review in the process which vastly strengthened it - but as Breyer said, maybe that decision was wrong and should be overturned which would neuter the court, certainly the constitution never explicitly grants the court the power of judicial review, they simply gave it to themselves in Marbury)

The only current conservative judge who has acted accordingly is the Chief Justice himself, Roberts. At times he appears to be moved by the issue of protecting the court as an institution - I think that explains his deviations from conservative doctrine, (his own explanations arent that good, in my mind).

I think one of the arguments for this has to include that overturning precedent on this would vastly undermine the courts perceived legitimacy and moral authority with hundreds of millions of Americans who still resent the chaos the court caused with its Bush v. Gore decision to overthrow the publics preference.

The only justice that this might resonate with is Justice Roberts.

Personally, I think the labor movement died when the government defanged the mob in the 1960s. All it usually took was a brick through the living room window to shift a conservatives (CEO or politician) thinking on what “fairness” and “justice” means. By defanging the mob (Robert Kennedy as Attorney General, the RICO statutes, etc…) labor lost its ability to hit back. I know, it’s violence. But as Gandhi once said, poverty is a kind of violence, the worst kind. And apparently American conservative elites have no compunction against serving their fellow, ordinary Americans violence of the worst kind as a regular and steady diet as long as they themselves are immune from any violent act in return.

Because the union negotiates for the entire bargaining unit, which is usually the entire “shop”. The reason why labor prefers this to negotiating separately is to prevent an old union busting tactic–briefly raise the compensation of non-union employees until the union dissolves, then jam them back down again afterwards.

The capitalist class is starting to feel arrogant about the final steps of union busting, surmising that they no longer need to depend on their labor lieutenants, i.e., union bureaucrats, to keep the working class in check. And no better force to go after to make the point than the more liberal public workers union leadership. It’s easy to blame this apparently likely outcome on the SCOTUS conservatives and Republican Party biases, but were moderate major capitalist voices calling for caution, Kennedy would toe the line, just as Roberts did on health care. But they’re not, as exemplified by the moderate to sometimes liberal USA Today jumping on board. But this is only a logical political extension of Citizens United, which unleashed the raw electoral power of big capital, and the support of traditionally moderate major city newspapers for Tea Party Republicans in 2014 (and why they’re desperately trying to find a way to derail Hillary in 2016).

Another way of seeing this is that the labor lieutenants have done their post-WWII and post-1960s jobs so well that they can now be effectively and unceremoniously disposed of. The catch here is that without the conservatizing force of unions and their pro-business bureaucratic leaderships, the arena of direct working class political action opens up, and with some experience an eventual return to its political roots - Marxism.

Good ol’ Signs of Fascism, coming back once again:

No. 9 – Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

No 10 – Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.