-By Warner Todd Huston
Well, here is a victory against union thuggery. The Texas Attorney General’s office has released an opinion (GA-0774) that prevents school districts from implementing automatic payroll deductions as directed by teachers unions from the paychecks of teachers for union spending on political action committees.
Here’s the most relevant paragraph as it appears in the summary at the end of the decision. (download .pdf file)
Because the Legislature has not expressly or impliedly authorized school districts to process payroll deductions for contributions to political committees such as TSTA-PAC and NEA-Fund, Texas laws prohibits school districts from processing such contributions.
So teachers unions in the Lone Star State will no longer be allowed to forcefully remove money out of teachers’ paychecks to that they can spend it on left-wing political causes. This decision will not prevent teachers from individually sending their dues to political causes nor will it prevent unions from spending on PACs and political causes but it will prevent the schools from using school resources to make the deductions and for using school accounting departments to keep track of those deductions.
By its very nature this will take a big bite out of the millions that teachers unions have available to spend on left-wing causes because teachers will have to expressly provide for unions to spend that political money instead of having it simply taken without their ability to direct it personally.
Naturally, the unions are crying foul saying that Texas is somehow stepping on people’s right to “political participation.” Of the automatic payroll deductions the union said…
“This practice, which promotes a school employee’s constitutional right to political participation, has been going on for 20 years without any problem,” said Richard Kouri, TSTA’s public affairs director. “We can only conclude that Attorney General Abbott is playing politics in an election year by impeding teachers’ First Amendment rights. But why?”
“Been going on for 20 years”? That is their excuse to keep ripping off their members? Does “been going on for years” somehow make it right? I don’t think so. Humanity has been doing many things “for years” without it being righteous action!
But the union’s first point is by far a more egregious assault on logic. They excused the deductions by saying that the practice “promotes a school employee’s constitutional right to political participation.” Uh, no it actually denies the employee’s constitutional right to political participation because it summarily removes the employee’s money and spends it without his express direction! Further this new Texas rule does not prevent an employee from “political participation” in any way whatsoever, anyway. For a union that promotes education, this union sure doesn’t make any logical sense, does it?
In any case, this is a great victory and Texas joins other states with measures to prevent unions from automatically deduction money from members’ paychecks for political spending without the express permission of those members.
God Bless Texas!
Bob Schoolfield of the blog at LetsChooseSchools.com was instrumental in getting this victory against union thuggery finished in Texas and you can read his story of how long this decision took to come to fruition (26 months) and the many offices and politicians he had to deal with to get it done, but it has at last gotten done after a long road of “political participation.”
(H/T Kathleen McKinley of Right Wing News)
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 200 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDailyReview.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
Huston has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Huston’s work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neil Bortz, and Michael Savage. He has appeared on the G. Gordon Liddy show, dozens of local shows from coast to coast, and many blogtalk radio shows.
Mr. Huston has appeared on local TV news to discuss his writing, has been a guest of CNN’s blogger lunch, and has appeared on Breitbart TV’s B-Team show.
Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com and has a blog on the Tribune-Owned http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/publius-forum/ChicagoNow.com website. He is a well known writer on Illinois politics.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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