UPDATE: Both bills (for private and public sectors) passed the House.
5:45 p.m. Bills have been signed into law:
Snyder: I’ve signed these bills #righttowork twitter.com/jonathanoostin…
— Jonathan Oosting (@jonathanoosting) December 11, 2012
“I view this as opporotunity to stand up for Michigan workers. Freedom to choose who they associate with.” @onetoughnerd on #righttowork
— Kathy Gray (@michpoligal) December 11, 2012
.@onetoughnerd; “This is is in the best interest of Michiganders.” #righttowork
— Kristen M. Daum (@kristendaum) December 11, 2012
Copies of the final bills as passed are here.
——————-
The protests are ongoing at the Michigan State Capitol over the Right to Work legislation, which is expected to obtain final legislative approval and possible signature by the Governor today.
Rep. Geiss: there will be repercussions “there will be blood”this undoes 100 years of labor relations #righttowork
— Lindsay Veremis (@LindsayVeremis) December 11, 2012
AFP tent torn down with women and children in it. Was punched in the face four times. RT and await the video.
— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) December 11, 2012
(Language Warning on videos below)
Republicans attempted to make the bill repeal-proof, attaching a $1 million appropriation on the measure for enforcing right to work. According to Michigan law, spending bills can’t be put on the ballot for the public to vote on.
CNN has live feeds of the legislative session. Unfortunately, it is not embeddable.
[Twitter feed removed]
I haven’t been able to find a reliable live video feed of the protests, but this feed sometimes shows the protesters, via Lansing Times-Herald [Feed now removed]
Maybe this one will work: [Feed now removed]
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Comments
Hey, does this mean we are going to witness yet another Governor recall attempt and failure? Surely the unions think this one is just as important if not moreso because it sets such a strong trend in rust belt states. This is essentially #3 in the area, if I”m not mistaken.
There’s already been an effort to recall Snyder, after like a year in office (it failed miserably to even make it to ballot). He pissed off (once again) the teachers union.
My sister-in-law, the teacher, buys their propaganda hook, line, and sinker. They insist that any blow to the unions signals the start of Armageddon and will result in people dying in the streets while the fat-cat corps and legislators dance on the bodies.
“Right to Work,” what a refreshing alternative to, “Ah’s entitled…”
If only this could become a national policy, some industry might return to this country!
I saw them referred today as “Worker Liberation Laws”.
THAT is some good messaging.
The problem is not limited to Unions. They only demand compensation for consequences of policies which they often support. They can do this successfully because they are a corporation with a business model to exploit democratic (i.e. numerical) leverage.
The problem is monopolies and monopolistic practices directed and enforced through government authority. The problem is unreasonable environmentalism which serves special interests. The problem is civil rights businesses which denigrate individual dignity. The problem is human rights businesses which defend unmeasured immigration (e.g. illegal). The problem is special interests which exploit differentials and gradients in a population. The problem is principally civil servants who promise universal instant gratification without regard for reality.
The problem is that treating symptoms in perpetuity is more profitable than addressing causes.
The problem is that dissociation of risk causes corruption. That dreams of instant gratification motivates its progress.
The problem is that our society has made great progress to normalize a general devaluation of human life, of which the worst transgression is elective abortion of innocent human life when it is incapable of challenging its termination.
The problem is a selective and degenerate morality.
7% of Michigan 8th graders read at grade-level . . . how is it that we can’t get unions out and school choice. It’s astounding. These people are so helpless.
The problem with Republicans (though I don’t know this Michigan governor, and Scott Walker was an exception) is that when we take bold action it’s more like we back into it, either non-committally or at worst with diffidence even apology. The governor should be out here as full-throatedly as the left, demanding to know why this bill is even remotely “controversial” but insisting it is completely consistent with American liberties. They get in our face, we should be getting in theirs. Don’t just “defend” the bill, but proclaim its virtues, and attack the attackers. And that includes the media when they collude with the attackers.
All the Right To Work laws say is that if you don’t like your union for whatever reason, you don’t have to pay them for their services. How is this anti-teacher or anti-worker in general? Every union member I know, would love to be able to skip out on their dues because they feel that their unions are not doing the job they are paid to do. Despite what you hear about the unions sticking up for their members, blah, blah, blah they usually only help the politically connected union members. Everyone else, “go f’ urselves”.
If anything the silent majority of union members will love this bill. The day after this is passed, they are gong to walk into their union shops and say “I am sick of your games, go f yourself!”. Those that are out there protesting are the connected and their cronies. There are a lot of them, trust me, but now it won’t help to kiss the union boss’s ass. the union boss will have to kiss everyone’s ass, because instead of looking at their members as stooges they can tax, they are going to see them as customers they have to please.
Of course that’s all the bills do. But that doesn’t fit the thugs’ narrative, right? So they have to lie, yell, scream, and blow things so far out of proportion that the people that don’t regularly pay attention (namely, “just about everyone”) see and hear only the gross, distorted view of everything that the thugs parrot.
Just like in Wisconsin.
Just like the election.
It’s a tried-and-true tactic, and it’s used so often because it works. Which is really more of a sad comment on the state of things today.
[…] JACOBSON IS COVERING the Michigan Right To Work Protests. Or, more accurately, the Michigan protests against the right to work. So they’re anti-rights […]
I worked in a closed shop my whole career. The union did nothing for me except make my work life harder. Like the time I got written up for changing the light tube in my room. I was an echo tech and I worked in the dark so I could see my screen. I left the light under an upper cabinet on while I worked so I could see to move around the room. I called and asked that the light be changed when it went out at the beginning of my day. The “engineer” finally got around to it just before lunch. He brought the box of light tubes down but then left for lunch! Lucky him, he got a lunch! I was working through mine, and without a light. So I changed the light. When he showed up around 3 PM and found I had changed it, he reported me to his supervisor, who called my supervisor, who interrupted me on a busy afternoon and told to go to her office. I was formally reprimanded and a letter put in my file.
I saw bad employee after bad employee protected by this corrupt union while the good employees had to shoulder added work load. The kicker was when they wanted to raise the technical classes’ union dues because we made more money. We got NO representation from the union because we didn’t need it. We did our jobs. We threatened to leave that union and go to a technical union so they backed off.
I could write a book after working 40 years!
By the way, where are our brave and stalwart Republican leaders calling out Obama for his gross and inflammatory lies about this law? These lies don’t matter? It doesn’t matter when the President of the United States inserts himself into a State issue then lies about it, leading to misreporting and violence? For four years these pathetic fools in the GOP have not just missed golden political opportunities but allowed huge and destructive mendacities that subvert the integrity of the office and threaten our national welfare to slide by without comment.
There is so much vital and righteous anger in America right now that the GOP has missed and continues to miss, and indeed even smothers with their blanketing stupidity and cowardice. It would be so incredibly easy to inspire and coalesce a national resistance movement in America right now, or build up the tea party into a true tsunami. These powdered-wig clueless cowards make me sick.
You are so right. Say what you will about Newt – there were times he made me jump for joy when he handed it back to them and left them slobbering idiots!
Yes. And my heart swelled to see the 500,000 Constitutionalists gather on the National Mall in Washington DC / Restoring Honor 2010.
And too, the Restoring Courage Rally in Israel.
It seemed like the tea party went to sleep when Fox fired Glenn Beck.
Curious about the guys with the “Local No 17” signs, which say “RTW – Right to Take your Wages.” Are these guys for or against the Unions, who want to retain their ability to extort dues, aka “take your wages”?
Watching them tear down that tent, the natural tendency is to see them as animals.
But that’s an insult to animals. Animals have no sense of malice or arrogance.
They’re just lowly thugs. The lowest of the low.
Agreed LHC! Someone’s got to press charges against these disgusting “puke heads”. Unfortunatley, they never get held accountable for their actions. I’ll take the Tea Party any day of the week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnt5LwQx9eA&feature=player_embedded
Deemocrat pol threatens blood shed.
If there isn’t a privilege for speaking in that forum, I’d have that punk in jail tonight.
Ya’ gotta’ love lying ‘rats like Geiss. When you go to his website, you see this:
“Rep. Doug Geiss (Taylor) and the entire Democratic caucus stands against the use of violence and do not condone its use. We condemn violence, the destruction of property and all other illegal activity in the strongest possible terms.”
As far as wages and other compensation is concerned, we need to address progressive inflation, and other economic distortions.
The federal government must have a budget. Other governments must restrict their debt (e.g bonds) accumulation. It cannot operate with account deficits which diminishes purchasing power and thereby devalues labor. It cannot support and enforce monopolies or monopolistic practices. It cannot support and defend unmeasured immigration (e.g. illegal) and unreasonable immigration (i.e. displaces citizens, exceeds rate of assimilation). It cannot conflate and normalize involuntary (e.g. redistributive change) and voluntary (i.e. economic, charitable) exploitation. It should not prevent reasonable recovery of natural resources. It should not initiate or intervene in foreign conflicts on a whim (the expansion of overseas conflicts has been impressive).
It’s amazing how much “progress” we have made in the last four years.
We need to stop treating symptoms and address causes.
Maybe Scott Walker can lend Gov. Snyder his worn, but still serviceable body armor. The protestors in Wisconsin intimated violence early on but never found anybody to take the bait. Law enforcement responded with generous accommodation and simply let the protestors cry themselves out like toddlers. Eventually even our sympathetic media tired of their crude behavior and found other “news” to report. These guys in Michigan will blow themselves out too.
This what Reuters reports:
“In less than a week, Michigan was transformed from a bastion of union influence to the verge of joining states, mostly in the South, that have weakened legal protections for unions.”
How does this bill “weaken legal protections for unions”? In what way? It takes away their oppressive right to compel membership. Is that what they mean by a “legal protection”?
And was this bill conceived, drafted and debated all within one week? Is that what they mean?
Republicans attempted to make the bill repeal-proof, attaching a $1 million appropriation on the measure for enforcing right to work. According to Michigan law, spending bills can’t be put on the ballot for the public to vote on.
Wait, that’s far too smart for Republicans.
How can we be sure the Canadian “hosers” haven’t secretly infiltrated Michigan and are pretending to be GOP legislators?
So…
Tea Partiers leave a rally place cleaner than they found it. They are “extremists,” “kooks,” and racists.
These unspeakable thugs threaten, attack, destroy, and riot…and they are simply honest, oppressed Americans
Ya know, I really do wonder what would happen if our side behaved that way? Because I think that’s where we’re headed. Among the left’s thuggery, the GOP’s sellouts/silence, and media demonization, the frustration on the Conservative side is going through the roof.
Watch the video of Steven Crowder being sucker punched. I don’t know what it takes to get national republican political leaders mad and convinced we’re at war and our very political existence is threatened (other than tea partiers making inconvenient calls for reform). We watched Mitt Romney run for President in two cycles and never show the slightest outrage at the slanders directed at him or the debasement of his own country.
So after Wisconsin and now this and not to mention after the last four years I think it’s safe to say that national republicans are simply incapable of outrage and morally, constitutionally, viscerally unable to fight back or even inflect a civilly outraged response.
To look at the raving, vile hatred of these people — the savage thuggishness and impulsion to violence (stoked by the President of the United States) — and to see no response at any level within the GOP completely strips me of any possible remnant of identification with this party.
Wait….. So the union guy says, “Right to Work is the freedom to freeload…. they can suck all the parasitical benefits from out wages that unions have negotiated and they get it for free…..”
Isn’t this brilliantly hypocritical? They elected a person to office who wants to redistribute wealth from those who earned it to those who didn’t. However, it seems that when this class warfare comes home to roost with unions , they don’t much like the idea of someone getting the benefits of what they paid for.
I suppose union dues don’t buy you the type of politician it used to……
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u_F3oev06i0
[…] just engaging in a publicity stunt? Lord have mercy on these perfidous ones.Update V: much more at Legal Insurrection.Category: UncategorizedComments […]
Well…
Tomorrow, the economy of Michigan will begin to improve. “Watch and learn…”
[…] III: more at Jackie Wellfonder. Update IV: Cue the Orwellian crapflooders: Update V: much more at Legal Insurrection. Update VI: White House spokesman goes Full Postmodern Clown: White House spokesman Jay Carney […]