That's not a slippery slope. We've already seen companies take advantage of non-union workforces in this manner.

You have two opposing sides, one that fought for these benefits and one that opposed them. Yet somehow people believe that if you eliminate the side that fought for them, the status quo would be preserved. That does not make any kind of logical sense.

Oh yes, the union leaders aren't much better than the lazy union slugs they try and protect. I was in a union for about 6 years when I worked at PacBell/SBC/at&t (and whatever other names we went by in that time period) and other than the two that I can count on my one hand, the rest were horrible.

You nailed it. There's no repercussions for being a crappy union employee. Eventually, maybe, way down the line, in the somewhat distant future, they may get disciplined or even fired or like you said, just move to another work site.

That's true. Some, not all, completely do their own thing. Not wearing eye protection, not wearing steal toed boots, etc...Why would an employer waste money on stuff like that if their employees won't use it? Well, I'm sure there's OSHA stuff they have to comply with, but, I can see their argument.

I've got a fairly unique perspective in that I get to see among my peers (dairy farmers) how some treat a workforce that has no recourse and labor laws are blatantly violated. Now the reason that happens is that a lot of the workers in my field are not in this country legally and working with fake documents. Put aside that fact for a second because that's another issue altogether.

I recently helped my top assistant's brother find a job after hearing some sickening things he had to put up with at another farm. That farm required 12 hours worth of work for $50 ($4.16/hour, just call it a salaried position and it's all good) with no breaks whatsoever. Time off had to be explicitly granted, otherwise it was a 7 day, 84 hour work week that yielded $350 for the week (not sure if the guy was withholding taxes or not either). If the guy decided that somebody took too long to perform a task, he would dock money from their already measly paycheck.

Now, on the flipside, this guy's turnover is ridiculous. Four people quit in the few weeks this guy worked there, and they were all new employees too. In a way the free market is working. But shouldn't this jackass be punished? Because the people he hires have no recourse whatsoever, he can go on blatantly violating labor laws.

And I'm in the camp that once unions are busted, the next push would be to roll back labor laws. You already see a pretty decent sized segment that wants to repeal minimum wage. We already don't have rules about overtime in agriculture. So on and so forth..... To a degree the free market can work but if the powers that control the free market is colluding to drive down wages on a large scale (which is a big reason why unions formed in the first place, no?), there isn't much the working person can do about it. To think that if unions were busted and labor laws were rolled back that the free market would reign and the powers that would be will play nice is nuts. It goes against human nature which is to horde as much wealth and comfort as possible, everybody else be damned.

Don't get me wrong, unions have needed a good kick in the pants for a while. To me it all starts with electoral reform. This whole "money is speech" bullshit gives us the business vs. labor electoral pissing match every single election. Our political system simply boils down to the race by business and labor interests to buy off as many politicians as possible through campaign contributions and PAC funding.

To your point though - relying on the government and existing laws to protect things is also FAR more inefficient then relying on the workers themselves. It's already too easy for companies to make a show of complying with federal regulations, or just pay a fine to make the problem go away. Without the actual employees there in the factory/worksite/whatever having the ability to hold the corporation responsible, rampant abuse is basically a certainty (because it will be cheaper than compliance with a toothless and inept regulatory system). Or are we going to beef up the laws and the regulators and spend a shit-ton of money that way?

This case doesn't set that precedent (though a future court may pluck the dictum and use it to set precedent). So opt-out is perfectly fine - as long as the union gives the non-member employees enough time and oppertunity to opt-out (so a special assessment must have an opt-out period - which in this case there was not).

If Unions were awesome, they wouldn't have any trouble getting people to opt-in. Clean up the garbage, and this might not be an issue.

The IDEA of a Union isn't bad, but the IMPLEMENTATION really sucks at a very high percentage right now.

I agree with you as well. There's a happy medium that I think can be found, but, all parties are so rooted in the "old ways" that I just don't have faith that it will happen at all. So for now, the unions do still have a need because there will be those companies that don't have the best interests of their employees in mind and will walk all over them. You see it now, even in union shops. It's what I call the "We ain't cheating unless we're caught" mentality. They'll continue to get away with something until someone complains and then they pay their fine (that they more than likely have a fund for) and go on to their next thing.

Now don't get me wrong, not all companies are like this. However, I see the most likely places of employment to try and take advantage of their workers if unions were abolished, would be places like retail, farm labor (like lungs mentioned), manufacturing jobs, drivers & food workers.

Why opt-in when you can get the benefits the union fought for without paying the dues?

Right. Basic economic concept of free-riding at work.

Give me a minute to get your answer. Let me go over to the universal health care thread or the welfare thread and read you what Jphillips and DT answer when they take the opposite side on this question.

:confused:

I don't believe in free-riding.

As far as the Healthcare plan...I believe in single-payer.

As far as welfare...welfare recipients pay taxes (sales and other types of taxes). I look at Union dues philosophically as just another "tax type" payment deducted out of your paycheck, not as something that you "earn" and then are forced to give to the union. It's part of the cost of having the job...kind of like the gas that you have to put into your car to get there.

Were larry, JPhillips, or DT against the Individual Mandate? Otherwise that response makes no sense.

I'm against it, but only in the sense that I want single-payer. In the absence of single-payer, ::shrug:: the individual mandate is an imperfect (hopefully temporary) solution.

I don't know if it mattered in the Supreme Court Opinion (I really don't know anything about labor law), but isn't there a difference when it's a public union? Everybody's talking about private corporations taking advantage of nonunion workers in the name of profit. Aren't there entirely different issues when it's a public union? Government can take advantage of people too, but it's kind of a different thing. This is why people are against privatizing things, right, because the government will act better since they're not concerned with profit. So aren't public unions less important then?

Edit: Something seems off I just can't put my finger on it - maybe it's liberals freaking out about a government being too powerful and abusing its workers? I would think conservatives would be more pro-public employee union (generally). Or is union law (from the supreme court or any other source) just one-size-fits all regardless of the characterization of the union?

Why would their reasoning have anything to do with me? Even if their position is inconsistent with mine (which I don't agree it is), what the hell does that have to do with what I said? I don't agree with everything that other liberals say or do.

This is the second post you've made to me in this thread where instead of actually arguing with what I said you make some pithy 1-2 sentence sarcastic comment that doesn't address what I said at all. Isn't this the same kind of childish level of debate you usually decry when the partisan Republicans and Liberals engage in it?

Now to address your question seriously, I support welfare and universal health care and do not believe it is inconsistent with what I said about union opt-ins. If we were talking about subsidies for those who couldn't afford their union dues, then what you said might make sense, but this would be more akin to someone forgoing American citizenship so they could pay less taxes in another country and still enjoying the benefits of welfare or universal healthcare.

You're not a part of the liberal hive-mind?? Did you not get your facebook invite? :lol:

(see what i did there? hive-mind = communists)

Good point. And I've actually argued that the ACA would be way worse for the insurance companies if there was no mandate. They would be forced to cover anyone at any time for any condition, even if they signed up the very second something happened. If Obama truly were a socialist, this is what he would've done. The mandate is actually a big gift to the private insurance industry.

Very true.

I didn't include you in my post so not sure what the diatribe is for. I did address your previous post about how illogical the side you don't agree with was being while in the same post you predicted "seriously curtailed" changes with absoluetly no basis for your claim.

But to your point in the second paragraph it is the same D/R nonsense. On the big ticket items the supreme court rules almost always D/R and the arguements are always the same posters on each side with the only difference being sometimes they are for individual rights and sometimes they side with the government with no logic to why they choose to side one way or the other.

But they could charge whatever they wanted for coverage, right? No public option. We'll just all end up paying more for the people who had pre-existing conditions.

You said I made a slippery slope argument with absolutely no basis for your claim. I responded with my reasons for why it wasn't a slippery slope argument. You chose not to respond to that. Instead you responded to another argument I made by somehow using what you think JPhillips or DT have argued as if that somehow has anything to do with what I said. Are you incapable of actually directly responding to what I say?


You may not like the logic or you might disagree with the logic, but it isn't true that there is none. The world isn't black and white. There are issues where individual rights make sense and issues where collective rights make sense. And I've actually argued in the past in favor of incorporating the 2nd Amendment, which even Scalia and many other conservative justices haven't been willing to do yet.

If you don't believe the same answer is correct for every question you're a hypocrite.

I really have something to add to this discussion, as I am a member of 1 going on 2 unions. However, I don't like one, and downright hate the other. But, I would never do my job without some sort of a collaborative bargaining group to represent us.

I work in the single most regulated, unregulated industry. The govt sets the the bare minimum standards for me to work. The govt tells the airlines how to work, then taxes them higher than any other industry for the safety of the passengers. US Airlines compete against small, govt subsidized airlines that are oooed and ahhhhed over around the world, where the playing field is hardly level.

Airlines routinely push employees as far as they will legally go. They push beyond the realm of the contract without fear of trouble because the grievance process can take years for each grievance. Our labor negotiations are the biggest joke of all. When the supermarket labor contract expires the news is right there waiting for the workers to go on strike. When the airline contract expires it can take over 5 years AFTER for a strike to happen. There is almost no real threat of a strike, because the president just makes it illegal.

Airlines have followed the plan of bankruptcy as a means of voiding labor contracts, and have lied in court to get what they want. Employees are stripped of benefits, forced to take pay cuts and lose work rules in contracts that might last 7 years or more, while management pockets the difference with big bonuses, raises and guaranteed retirement packages that include lifetime flight benefits around the world.

While there are some airlines without union representation, they are new, and it's really only a matter of time before the employees are driven to representation.

If employees can opt out the whole point of collective bargaining is over. The goal that started in the 80's with Frank Lorenzo will finally be realized where the labor unions will be rendered useless and more and more airline pilots will be paid $21,000/year, while more and more managers will complain that pilots are overpaid.

I assume the former clerks have inside track, contacts on whats going on in there.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...8ZtV_blog.html

Decisions, Decisions: How High Court Could Rule on Health - Law Blog - WSJ

I doubt the former clerks have any better idea than anyone else as to what actually is going on at the court. Court takes a lot of steps to ensure there are no leaks.

Jack Goldsmith: Temple Of Silence | The New Republic

He isn't punished because his workers are also breaking laws. So they aren't reporting him because they would likely be deported themselves.

If he were employing US citizens, he'd be shutdown pretty quickly from disgruntled ex-workers.

That depends on whether or not you agree with what the union is fighting for. And how much of that you want to line the pockets of the guys running the union vs actually contributing to the cause.

No health care decision today.

Arizona case released--affirmed in part, reversed in part. Also struck down the Montana SC's Citizens United follow-up in a summary reversal, affirming Citizens United.

More on Arizona: Court struck down all parts of the law except the "stop and check". However, it left room for invalidating that part, too, on constitutional grounds, once it is actually interpreted and applied.

Health care on Thursday.

Yeah, the stop and check part wasn't debated on constitutional grounds, just whether it was right for the 9th circuit to prevent Arizona from enforcing that provision while the case was ongoing. They did hint that enforcement based on racial identity would not be constitutional, but it wasn't the time to consider that.

And even though the stop and check part was "upheld" for now, all this means is that Arizona is allowed to check the immigration status of someone they've detained. But by invalidating other parts of the law, Arizona can't even hold someone on that basis alone. It's all up to the feds from that point.

Scalia fired off a very angry dissent. Always a good read. He says Arizona (or other states) would not have joined the union if they new this ruling was coming down.

This should be a crime.

The court also ruled that mandatory life without parole sentences for minors violated the 8th Amendment.

Absolutely. Couldn't agree with you more.

Gotta agree with you here. Both sides of the aisle should be ashamed of this. Talk about abuse of power. I know some will think there is not much to this but come on didn't they put Martha Stewart in jail for something no worse than this?

Where did you find that quote?

I would imagine it's from
Lawmakers reworked financial portfolios after talks with Fed, Treasury officials - The Washington Post

Insider Trading = BAD!

Insider Trading by Congresspeople = Oh that's okay

Wow, yes!

Isn't that basically every law they pass?

"This is blah blah blah*"

*Does not apply to members of Congress.

Yep.

Yeah, and the funny part is that they won't even be shamed enough to resign (or at least not run for re-election).

Although it does lead to the question of what should an elected official do in that instance. If investments in the stock market are legal, and there is no guarantee (I know...but "all but certain" is still not guaranteed) in something like a stock market...what should they do?

I mean, its not like they have direct control of the stock market. So I don't buy the argument that "they should be working to prevent the collapse of it".

I'd be all for making elected officials remove their stock market investments but short of that...not sure what you can do (though not to be confused with what you can & should vote for instead).

I think blind trusts could work for federal elected officials.

In an important poll released today, 65% of Americans surveyed said they believed that Obama would be better able to handle an alien invasion than Romney. Which I think is a little higher then the number of people who say they plan to vote for Obama. So there's a decent number of people who are voting Romney, but concede that as far as alien invasions go, Obama's the better choice.

Edit: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/s...171143465.html

I demand a link! I don't believe your all-important phoney baloney poll for one minute! :D

SI

I thought it was a joke until I saw the poll on another site. I think it was a National Geographic poll.

For me it would depend on the attitude of the aliens. If they were peaceful I'd trust Obama, but if they were hostile I'd want Romney. Obama would end up like Nicholson in Mars Attacks.

What??

It's not a joke????

So, anyone want to make Supreme Court guesses today? I might as well throw my hat into this ring.

I think the easy one is a 7-2 (Scalia/Thomas) laugher on the Medicaid funding tied to the states question. A state accepts money and then say "Oh, I don't want to be told how to spend it"? Roberts and Kennedy aren't going to go for that- they'll accept the "if you don't want money, just don't accept it" argument. Scalia is just so off in the weeds at this point and Thomas pretty much does what he does so that's the only reason I think it's 7-2. Alito could go either way but I think he's more likely to side with the majority.

Honestly, I don't think there's much doubt about the next question. Talking to my wife this morning, I had it pegged at 10%. Intrade has it around 25% but I think that's too high. The individual mandate is getting struck down and I think it is 5-4 along strict "party" lines. I could even see this going 6-3 or 7-2 with objections from the liberal side of the bench on it being mandatory.

And the big question of course is: what goes with it? I'm mildly leaning towards only the pre-existing conditions clause being thrown out. I get the impression Roberts likes to keep things slightly lower profile with his goal of smaller 9-0 decisions, if at all possible, and I don't think he wants to upset the apple cart by throwing the whole bill out. He and maybe Kennedy "cross over" and it's a 5-4 or 6-3 with a scathing descent written by Scalia. This one I'm not at all sure on and Supreme Court watchers seem equally conflicted.

Then again, I suppose there's always a chance they punt it and say "we can't rule on this because no tax has been paid yet". But I just don't see them doing that. The court has become so egotistical (probably always has been) that they won't miss their shot to make an impact. Tho I suppose you could play some legal calculus and the conservatives say "if Ginsberg retires and Romney wins, we have a better shot at striking the whole thing down in 2015". But I find that highly unlikely.

I guess we have about an hour or hour and a half to go to find out.

SI

Agree on the Medicaid. As for the mandate, I think they either strike it down or punt it. If they see it as a tax, it will be constitutional. But if it is a tax, then they have to respect the AIA and wait until 2014. I think this is best case scenario for the left.

However, I'd definitely put money on those Intrade odds for a flier.

I actually think that that the AIA argument seems correct. However, this is outside of my area of expertise, and I cannot find any expert who agrees with me on that.

I actually think that the Anti-Injunction Act reading is correct. However, I'm no lawyer so what I think amounts to a hill of beans.

But that's the thing about being the highest court in the land: it's more about what you want to do and your personal thoughts. If they decided today that, as part of the health care decision, all guns are also illegal as they can harm people- they could declare that and no one could tell them otherwise. It would officially be the law of the land. There's no check and balance on them for being unconstitutional (tho I realize in the absurd example I gave, they would need an enforcement mechanism from Congress and that wouldn't be forthcoming but that's why I used the most absurd example I could come up with).

SI

Before Roberts, I would have put money down on the punt option. He seems to like to just get it over with, so to speak.

How does that really help the left? I guess one of Scalia, Thomas, or Alito could die and I guess Obama could get re-elected. But those are long odds as Obama's probably 50-50 right now and the odds of one of them dying is fairly long as none would retired if a Democrat was in office. Romney has equal odds of winning the presidency and Ginsberg is more likely to die/retire than one of Scalia, Thomas, or Alito.

It's a great rallying cry for the right to raise money but if it's gone- that dissipates. So if it's gone, what happens to all the Obamacare rhetoric?

What's the gain for the left of deferring it?

SI

I just meant it's best case scenario, as in either we will get a rejection of the mandate or a push. The push would clearly be better. Of course, if it is a tax then I don't see how it could possibly be unconstitutional.

Link added! (I heard that story so often yesterday I thought everyone had...but ya, it's a real thing).

Between this and the NBA2K version of life that Daryl Morey seems to be playing (Rockets GM), it seems like a gambler's day to watch for me :)

SI

I've been really surprised by the growing sentiment that the mandate or the whole thing would be struck down....everything changed after the oral argument, and I just don't put much into oral arguments as far a predicting stuff. I've seen a lot of tough appellate court questioning that, as it turned out, was really just designed to help the judge write the opinion, and to convince other judges to take their side. (If an appellate judge has really made up his or her mind, they can be less willing to engage in harsh questioning - why give the attorney the chance to have a great counter and swing someone else their way?) But, people who observe the Supreme Court far closer than me seemed to take so much out of how that went down, so I started to believe them after a while. So I have no idea. But I guess I'm still leaning upheld all the way. Though secretly I'm kind of hoping they just hold off until the next term, just to see the reaction.

Edit: I think I'm going to read it fresh from the Supreme Court opinion website, skipping the summary at the beginning, and before I hear the media's interpretation of the holding. Just an intellectual experiment.

Individual mandate survives as a tax, per SCOTUSBlog.

beat me to it

According to SCOTUSblog, Individual Mandate survives as a tax, but they are still parsing through it (complicated to say the least).

According to Scotusblog's live blog, the individual mandate "survives as a tax." They add that it's very complicated, so they're still wading through it.

Apparently, Roberts joined the left to uphold the mandate, but the Medicaid provisison is limited (though not invalidated).

I love that CSPAN 3 is showing Scotusblog with video of the area in front of the Supreme Court and that's it.

SI

I can't wait to see Scalia's dissent on this, after the barn burner dissent he wrote on SB1070.

CNN says mandate struck down.

Dumb question of the day: If mandate survives as a tax, can it be challenged again in 4 years?

SI

So does it survive as a tax, or was that just predictions by people? If so, that's a pretty misleading headline by CNN.

LOL epic fail by CNN, they have now changed it.

From SCOTUSblog:

"The money quote from the section on the mandate: Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it."

CNN is dead wrong right now.

EPIC FAIL! BAD HEADLINE FOR LESS THAN 5 MINUTES! DEATHHHH!

It's easy to poke fun at our modern world sometimes :D

SI

LOL - okay just an epic fail by CNN.

Not surprised that it was upheld - it was carefully crafted in that regard. Really surprised that Roberts crossed over "party line" to uphold it.

* At 10:10, SCOTUSblog had it
* At about 10:12 msnbc had Supreme Court upholds health care mandate
* Also at 10:12, CNN had the wrong headline, corrected about 5 minutes later
* Still at 10:25, Fox News: NObamaCare? What court ruling could mean for your health & money

SI

Yay for America.

from SCOTUSblog

I love it when every "expert," "insider" and "former clerks" are wrong.

Really surprised that Kennedy was in dissent on this. That's interesting.

Le sigh.

As surprising as Roberts upholding it? I think that is the most shocking.

Those are the two most shocking - not sure which is #1 and which is #2. Maybe a tie.

And I would rank them: SCOTUSblog, msnbc, Fox News, CNN.

Getting it wrong is worse than not getting it at all. I'm sure there were a ton of hits in that five minutes.

And so forcefully wanted to strike the whole thing down.

From SCOTUSblog:

And we now have a very, very slippery slope as precedent. It is, effectively, okay for Congress to fine people (now defined as a tax) for not doing something they tell you to do.

Serious question here. What is the main argument against the individual mandate? I don't love that the government can tell me what to buy, but it seems like an acceptable trade-off for the guarantee that my insurance company can't deny a claim based on a pre-existing condition.

You mean like fines for not paying your taxes? That is exactly how this was ruled. There is already precedent for that.

We've had this precedent for hundreds of years.

Did you miss the part where the Founding Fathers taxed merchent seamen in the 1800's if they didn't have insurance?

A lot of commentators speculated that Roberts could be the 5th vote. More than thought Kennedy would. Because Roberts may fall back on precedent. Though that depended on a Commerce Clause view instead of a Tax view... that's interesting part.

So, if I'm reading this right, the AIA was now completely ignored:
Yup, it's a tax.
Yup, it's constitutional even tho we cannot rule until it's been levied.

The Medicaid ruling is even more interesting, in my mind:
If the government says you have to update your policies to continue to get funding, states are basically grandfathered in if they refuse. You get old funding, just not the new funding. That seems wildly inconsistent to me.

Even tho what most would say is "my side" won, why do I feel like I lost when the "win" was "Congrats! Everyone has to buy insurance!"

SI

I am certain that if Scalia ever resigns, Thomas will as well. But instead of writing his own resignation letter, he will just sign his name to Scalia's.

When I was making my predictions earlier (laughably wrong, I might add!), Roberts was the hardest to peg. He genuinely seems intent on trying to do narrow rulings and build consensus and that means he's harder to peg down on big rulings where it's hard to parse them.

SI

:D

SI

I should have trusted my gut and gotten involved in the intrade thing.

I think its a decent strategy (or at least used to be, before today). If the number moves solely because of oral argument, go the other way.

Edit: In other words, I should have bet my congressional medal of honor on the outcome. A medal which of course, I have, or at least, have the 1st amendment right to say I have, if I read one of the other opinions today correctly.

That's the same boat I'm in. Not thrilled with the health care reform law, but as a whole it is far better than what we would be left with were the law to be repealed.

We'd better hope that David Banner isn't a Tea Partier.

I understand people not being thrilled with a mandate, but it really is necessary under a law that requires insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions. Otherwise, no one would have any reason to buy into the insurance plan until they had a condition that needed coverage. This would not be feasible for insurance companies unless (as molson pointed out earlier) they could charge whatever they wanted, in which case it wouldn't be feasible for the government.

So do the Republicans run on:

1. Trying to repeal it all

or

2. Accept health care will be happening and if they want to have some input they need to come up with a plan.

I still think the law does absolutely nothing at all to bring down costs or reform the health care system system. If anything, I predict costs and premiums will still increase, maybe even faster than before on that second part. If costs don't get fix, this could blow up in both Obama's and the Democrat's faces.

I totally disagree. With everyone now covered and preventative care covered without co-pays, I believe this will lead to more conditions being prevented or caught sooner, thus lessening the need for expensive late term care. It will move us from a reactive to a proactive model and this will drive costs down.

Which is why I say this is the best imperfect solution we are likely to get at the moment.

In my dreams they would have thrown out the mandate (thus fucking the insurance companies) and we would end up with single-payer as the only viable solution after an Obama/Dem victory in the next elections (I dunno...maybe some psuedo-nationalization of the big insurance companies or something?), but there was like a 0.1% chance of that happening I suppose.

So I'll take the mandate I guess.

Here's the thing: they already do that. And now that it's mandatory, you have a captive audience so you can charge even more. Frankly, the only way I see out is to have a competing public option with no profit motive. Even the 80/20 revenue rule is kindof a joke but it's really what might limit costs going through the roof. That said, tax lawyers seem pretty adept at eating away at "revenues"

SI

Edited after reading about this. So, yeah. What I envision is accounting practices that'll make Hollywood look legit. In a what, 2000 page law, they'll have an army of lawyers and accountants taking every little loophole they can find to make sure their premiums stay nice and high.

And since we can't buy insurance across state lines, we're stuck with the tiny number of providers to choose from, so it's not like we have competition here.