-By Warner Todd Huston
Several years ago a mother who cares for a disabled teen was shocked to discover that the Gov. of Illinois was going to force her into a union because she gets state aid to care for her son. She protested this forced unionization and the forced paying of dues that goes with it. Now a union professor is saying that unions should use violence against this woman to silence her.
Dr. Alan Singer, a Professor of Secondary Education at Hofstra University, urged unions to take “aggressive, illegal actions” saying it was “the only way” to stop people like Pam Harris from hurting the union cause of extorting business and government.
Mrs. Harris is the woman behind the Illinois lawsuit fighting state imposed unionism (Harris v. Quinn) that has made it to the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States.
The case now before the Supreme Court was brought as a result of the actions of Illinois Democrat Governor Pat Quinn who issued an executive order that forcibly unionized all residents who receive state medical aid to care for family members in their homes.
These are families that often live on a shoestring budget due to the massive costs and burdens placed on them due to a child or parent who has catastrophic medical conditions or mental impairments. These families take some state aid in order to care for their own family member in-home so that they don’t have to be institutionalized.
Quinn summarily decided that since these people took care of medical needs they were to be titled “in-home healthcare workers” and needed to be unionized.
So Gov. Quinn issued an order suddenly throwing all these people into a union without consulting them or asking them if they wanted to be unionized. Worse, the state immediately began deducting “union dues” from the often already meager state aid to hand the cash over to Quinn’s favorite union buddies. Again all without any input at all from the people Quinn claimed he was trying to “help.”
So, suddenly Mrs. Harris found she was “in a union” and was being “represented” without her consent or knowledge. Worse she was also losing to this new union the money she would otherwise be using to care for her mentally disabled son.
Then came the expected and all too typical union intimidation as the union began sending people to Mrs. Harris’ home to warn her against agitating against them.
In the end, this whole forced unionization policy is nothing but a kickback scheme invented by Democrats to fill union coffers with state money disguised as “dues.” These mothers and caretakers of the disabled will never see the money and the state itself handles the paying of dues directly meaning the money goes straight from the government right into the pockets of rich, big labor activists.
Harris properly sued and that is where Professor Singer comes in.
This ignorant unionista claims that the Harris case would “seriously weaken, if not destroy, all public employee unions.”
Were this true, of course, one has to blame the unions and the Democrats themselves for this. After all, this lawsuit came about because of the Democrat Governor’s backdoor actions illicitly forcing unionization on people that otherwise would have had no reason to criticize the union at all. If Quinn and his union allies had not invented this kickback scheme, no lawsuit ever would have been bought.
Yet now Professor Singer is calling for violence and lawlessness to defend the unions that should never have tried to force themselves on mothers in the first place? Pretty arrogant, isn’t it?
Mrs. Harris, of course, was rightly shocked by Professor Singer’s call to violence and lawlessness. “Nothing good comes from illegal actions,” Harris said. “They are something always taken against someone who makes the laws, upholds the laws. Citizens like me, who only have our legal process for recourse and justice.”
Sadly, unions have a very long and disgusting history of violence, theft, murder and association with the Mafia. It appears that Professor Singer revels in that history. In fact, he fits right in.
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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
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 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, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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