Neil W. McCabe reporting...

In ‘fixing’ immigration, the fix is in

[This article first appears at CanadaFreePress.com.]

Congress has begun working through the final passage of a comprehensive immigration bill and regardless of what you have heard, the fix is in. There will be a bill and if you took the time to read it, not only would you hate it, you might be the only one to complete the assignment.

Spoiler alert: The leadership will make sure the bill passes, no matter what it says.

Here are some scary numbers:

A study by the Heritage Foundation, authored by Robert Rector and Jason Richwine, estimated that in 2010 the average illegal alien family received $24,721 in government benefits and services, while contributing just over $10,387 in taxes.

Upon amnesty, these aliens will be granted free and open access to some 80 different means-tested welfare programs, including Obamacare, Social Security and Medicare. Not only blowing the budgetary gaskets of these programs, but more importantly for Democrats expanding the payrolls of the middle-class bureaucrats and paper-shufflers.

Rector and Richwine estimate that even if new immigrants are not allowed to feed at the trough for 13 years, because of their limited skill sets, the average alien legalized in the bill will receive nearly $600,000 in government benefits than he will pay in taxes.

It seems like we should check with China first to make sure they are willing to cover the freight, no?

This situation will be further exasperated by the fact that newly documented workers will drive down real wages of regular Americans.

In Congress today, there are two redoubts for conservatives to defend their principles, conservatives in the Senate and the GOP majority in the House.

In the Senate, it is the cadre forming around senators Rand H. Paul (R.-Ky.), Michael S. Lee (R.-Utah) and R. Edward “Ted” Cruz (R.-Texas). Other colleagues fall in and out of their formation depending on the issues and interests at stake, but in the main they are the steadiest, most effective conservative in the upper chamber.

Even when a bill passes the Senate, House Republicans watching these three men pick up where they left off making the House a place where bad legislation dies.

What is different this time is that the House GOP leadership has already told Paul, Lee and Cruz they are taking the deal and taking the dive. Some on the House side have gone so far as to say that if conservative in the House or Senate make too much noise, the leadership will attack them as out-of-step troublemakers.

Look for the Senate to pass its version of the bill before the July 4 recess. The House will begin its own proceedings on immigration soon and may have its bill done before the Senate, since there are not nearly the procedurals devices available in the lower chamber to slow down a bill leadership wants to pass.

Remember, dear reader, Republicans are not conservatives. Republicans are politicians and their party is where conservatives are most comfortable right now. Republicans are people who take checks from the Chamber of Commerce, so if American business needs cheap engineers, nannies and lettuce-pickers, guess what Republicans will support?

Another characteristic about Republicans is they crave acceptance. They wander the halls of Capitol Hill asking each other: “What don’t people like us?”

Somebody convinced the GOP leadership that if they support the immigration bill, people will like them, and that settled that. Of course, this is nonsense, but it is such sweet nonsense.

For conservatives, watching Republicans is like watching Lucy hold a football for Charlie Brown.

By Labor Day, the GOP leadership will have helped President Barack Obama turn his summer of scandal and retreat into a triumph with the signing of the immigration bill, and once again the Republicans will be flat on their back as Lucy laughs all the way home.

Short-term Holder suffers from Deval-ing dynamic

[This article originally appeared in the Canada Free Press.]

It is the resignation that cost Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., his job.

Despite having one of the easiest jobs in America, Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Murray called it quits May 22—meaning Gov. Deval L. Patrick will not be succeeded by an accident-prone dolt, rather party regular William F. Galvin, the secretary of state, will serve as acting governor until the end of Patrick’s term in January 2015.

Just like Donald H. Rumsfeld could not be fired as Pentagon chief until his deputy Wolfowitz was sent to lead the World Bank and Richard M. Nixon could not be impeached until Spiro T. Agnew was dispatched, Patrick has been chained to his desk in Boston—a victim of his own succession.

Murray was a useful running mate. A supporter of abortion rights, who played up his Irish-Catholic upbringing, Murray was the figurehead mayor of the Bay State’s second city and was in many ways the proto-Biden for Patrick, who grew up in a poor black family with an absent father in Chicago’s South Side before earning scholarships to Milton (Mass.) Academy, Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

When President Barack Obama introduces Patrick to the nation, in a few weeks, it will be a real case of what philosopher Yogi Berra called: “Déjà vu all over again.”

Although the Obama’s 2004 was well-run, it really was during the Patrick’s 2006 campaign that David Axelrod and his sorcerer’s apprentice David Plouffe put the final touches on the methods they would use to put Obama in the White House, such as the use of new media and neurologically-tuned aspirational rhetoric.

Patrick slogan: “Together We Can” was just one tweak away from Obama’s “Yes, We Can.”

Patrick’s MySpace page supplemented his campaign website that was a cutting-edge platform with photos, position papers and videos. The site actively collected email addresses that fed the campaign’s email outreaches.

Rhetorically, the campaign’s biggest coup was Axelrod’s burglary of the word: Hope from the House of Clinton. William J. Clinton was the “Man from Hope, Arkansas,” who “still believed in a place called: Hope,” especially when he awarded students the Hope Scholarships.

In his speech to the state party’s 2006 convention, Patrick used the word 11 times, and in a key passage said: “I’m not asking you to take a chance on me, I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations. Take a chance on hope.”

When he ran for president in 2008, Obama used the same line: “I’m not asking you to take a chance on me. I’m also asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations.”

“Hope” was deployed so many times, so many ways by Axelrod during the 2008 Obama campaign, you would have never known it was once another camp’s calling card.

Flummoxed, the former first lady charged Obama with copying Patrick—not her husband—but, friends, it cannot really be plagiarism if the words were written by the same man.

Plagiarism, of course brings us to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who in his 1988 campaign for president ripped off both Robert F. Kennedy and British Labour Party leader Neil G. Kinnock, which brings us back to Murray.

The price for Murray’s May 22 resignation was a $200,000-a-year job with the Worcester Chamber of Commerce. Nice how things work out?

McCabe on 'The Big Picture' w/Thom Hartmann

Fixing our 'Mickey Mouse" copyright laws

 

[The article first appeared in the American Thinker.]

In  the midst of everything else that is going on in Washington, the House Judiciary Committee has begun its  overhaul of the nation's copyright laws.

If  Congress can undo the damage done in 1998 with the Copyright Term Extension Act,  it will synch up our copyright regime with its constitutional intent and set up  our economy for a next stage booster.

The  opening move towards reform on Capitol Hill came in November when a young  staffer for the Republican Study Committee, the 170-member conservative caucus  that forms the majority of the majority in the House, circulated a policy memo  calling for a return to more limited copyrights.

The  aide, Derek Khanna, was not fired as is still reported, but the memo was withdrawn and  he was not asked to stay on for the current congressional session. This does not  mean he was deterred -- after the memo was withdrawn, he led the fight to  decriminalize unlocking your cellphone

Khanna,  now a Yale Law School fellow, said he is encouraged by both the House Judiciary  Committee opening the door for reform and statements by the Registrar of  Copyrights Marybeth Peters supporting reform.

The  key concern for Khanna is that copyrights return to what the Framers  intended.

In  Article 1, Section 8, subsection 8 of the Constitution, the Framers empowered  Congress: "To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing  for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their  respective Writings and Discoveries."

The  idea is simple. Exclusivity creates incentive for artist to innovate, and move  society forward, but in America there would not be feudal rights held in  perpetuum as there still exists today in Europe.

Intellectual  property is why America's economy survives and thrives after the steel mills  left Pittsburgh and the sweatshops left Manhattan. The money is in the design,  not the fabrication.

We  do not have a service economy. We have an IP economy.

Two  books side-by-side cost relatively the same to produce in ink, paper, and labor.  But if one book is Gone with the Wind and the other is A New Look  at Nova Scotia Chalkboards and Chalk. You can see that how an author  configured all that ink into words and narrative makes all the  difference.

Now  forget the cost of paper and ink and consider what happens to prices and profits  when the book, or movie or magazine or song, goes digital and the electrons are  virtually free.

Now  consider how easy it is to pirate creative works.

The  day before I left Kuwait for duty in Iraq, I came very close to buying the  complete set of "The Sopranos" for $350 at the Army store. I am glad I waited.  Two days later at Camp Liberty, I bought the same set for $7 from a local  merchant. Not bad. In addition to shows and music, the merchant was selling  Adobe Creative Suite 4 for $3.

My  generous take on my own crime is that if the set cost $100, I would have bought  on the spot -- even if I knew a $7 version was waiting for me on a shelf. I want  to be a legal consumer. But I will not get rooked.

Eventually  all works pass into the public domain,  where like Shakespeare, Mozart, and Walt Whitman, they belong to the collective.  As works approach the public domain, copyright holders have the incentive to  charge a fair price while they can.

Another  quirk of our copyright laws is how royalties for recorded performances are paid  and not paid on the radio. Platforms providing the exact same service pay  exponentially different rates.

This  disparity is the work of the Copyright Royalty Board, the three-man panel appointed by the Librarian of  Congress (apparently for life) James H. Billington.

The  most glaring example of our broken copyright regime is the CRB's ruling that  Internet radio stations, or what it calls non-interactive transmitters, such as  Slacker Radio and Pandora, pay 50 percent of their sales in performance  royalties.

Khanna  asserts that the process is a form of state-directed industrial policy. "The  process for defining rates for Pandora is arbitrary and seems to deliberately  subsidize older technology versus new competitors," he said. "It makes little  sense for satellite radio to pay one rate while new, and likely more efficient,  market participants have to pay significantly more money in royalties... It's a  farce to claim that this disparity in rates represents a free market; rather,  this system is government picking winners and losers."

In  1790, Congress set the term of a copyright at 14 years, and if the author was  still alive, he could apply for a 14-year renewal. In the next 200 years, the  terms were expanded to 28 years with a 28-year renewal.

The  1998 Copyright Term Extension Act took the 28-year term and the intent of the  Framers and tossed them out the window. Now a copyright for a work created after  1978 has a copyright term of the life of the author plus 70 years -- effectively  keeping a creative work out of the public domain for at least three  generations.

Works  created after 1923 and still under copyright were automatically extended until a  2019 sunset, which no doubt pleased lobbyists for the George Gershwin estate.  Its biggest cash cow, "Rhapsody in Blue" was written in 1924.

Disney's  lobbyists were surely whistling while they worked, because the CETA kept Mickey  Mouse, first drawn in 1928, in its licensing cage for another 20 years,  too.

When  President William J. Clinton signed the bill, it was named for its chief  sponsor, singer-songwriter Salvatore "Sonny" Bono, who until his skiing death in  January 1998 was a California congressman.

Bono's  widow Mary succeeded him in Congress and fought for the bill as a memorial to  her popular husband -- although she did make the point that Sonny always really  wanted to make copyrights forever. Well, of course he did.

There  is a libertarian argument to be made for no copyright protection whatsoever. In  that scheme, ideas would flow, like capital, to their highest best use, without  a copyright's statutory drag on commerce. But, it could also keep our best minds  from getting out of bed in the morning, too.

The  realistic path is for Congress to dial back the excesses of the  Gershwin-Disney-Bono great leap towards feudalism.

The  current copyright regime is a mishmash that provides extraordinary copyrights  that would have kept Mozart's compositions out of the public domain until 1881  and treats a booming industry like Internet radio with a royalty schedule that  makes the business unsustainable.

The  first step Congress takes should be to abolish the Copyright Royalty Board that  functions as a star chamber in the back offices of the Library of Congress,  picking winners and losers and pushing and pulling billions of dollars around  the economy based on whims. The second step is to dial back copyright terms to  promote the confluence of the arts.

Reasonable  copyrights for creators and innovators will foster creativity and innovations,  but also produce an environment where the unpredictable and unexpected explode  out of the clash of concepts and ideas that turn the orderly marketplace  into an intellectual bazaar.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/fixing_our_mickey_mouse_copyright_laws.html#ixzz2VV8dOvbg
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The other NRA sets up $1B stick up of gas stations, convenience stores

Americans are spun up on scary stories about the National Rifle Association.

But, there is another NRA to worry about if you appreciate lower prices for gasoline or popcorn at the movies: the National Restaurant Association.

The other NRA represents large and small restaurants, but by hijacking the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation writing process for implementing President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The Food Marketing Institute, a supermarket trade groups, estimates that cost of the new rules as more than $1 billion in new menu reporting and labeling burdens.

The restaurant industry had two problems it wanted to solve at the federal level. First, the restaurants wanted to use federal preemption to create national menu-labeling standards, which would free them from the hassle and expense of satisfying the horse blanket of state and local rules for an industry that thrives on uniformity. Already New York City and the state of California had created irksome menu and labeling ordinances.

In its Sept. 7, 2010 letter to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the NRA specifically called for the agency to pressure the states into “national uniformity.” Armed with its national standards codified in PPACA, the restaurants did not want any delays.

Second, the NRA wanted to beat back encroachment from the gas stations, convenience stores and supermarkets, which were selling compelling alternates to their fare.

Under the proposed FDA rules, grocery stores and supermarkets, never mentioned in the PPACA, would have to provide precise nutritional information for sheet cakes, by the slice and by the sheet.

This second step would force non-restaurant competitors to compete on a field the NRA designed with more home court advantages than the old Boston Garden’s warped parquet floor.

Consider a supermarket’s soup kettle next to the salad bar. Every day the soup changes depending on what vegetables and meats are going to expire. Even the “same” chicken noodle soup is different every time it’s made because of the same factors.

Yet, the FDA wants the same level of detail as one would get from a Big Mac that has been sold trillions of times, but figured out once and just posted.

The gas stations were a particular target because a business with more than 50 percent of its revenues from motor fuels, the tax definition of a gas station, could deduct capital investments, such as pumps and fuel tanks, over 15 years. But, the doughnut shop across the street was stuck with a 32-year schedule.

An advocate working for the supermarkets and convenience stores told me that early in the development of the PPACA, he met with restaurant industry lobbyists and at the time there was no hint that the stores were going to be part of the law.

One of the ways the NRA pulled it off was to submit comments to the FDA – the entity charged with implementing the law – recommending that the regulations include gas stations and stores, as if they belonged under the new regime, he said.

“NRA absolutely submitted photographs of convenience stores and supermarkets in their packets with rationale for why they should be included in these regulations,” said Lyle Beckwith, a senior vice-president for government relations with the National Association of Convenience Stores. . In fact, in one of its comments to the FDA, the NRA included photos of Sheetz, a gas and convenience chain, just to bring the point home.

A fair metric of whether a business is a restaurant would be similar to the one used to decide the definition of a gas station, the insider said. If an establishment, like a Wawa or a Sheetz, generates more than 50 percent of its sales from the sale of ready-to-eat food, then they will comply as a restaurant.

“They know that if you walk like a restaurant and quack like a restaurant, you will be treated like a restaurant,” Beckwith said. “But, the rest of the industry doesn’t.”

Not good enough for the NRA.

In its July 5, 2011 letter to the FDA, the NRA made the case for its preferred standard: 50 percent of the gross floor sales, a ridiculous standard. Then, in the next section of the letter, the NRA complained that the FDA unjustifiably excluded movie theaters.

Next time you drop $15 on popcorn and two sodas, ask your date how they enjoyed the fine dining of a true NRA-approved restaurant experience.

Section 4205 of the PPACA indicates that the menu-labeling rules will apply to restaurants and “similar retail food establishments” with 20 or more locations. To make sure none of the restaurant competitors could escape the reach of the new NRA-inspired rules, the NRA argued in its July 5, 2011 letter that the phrase should include gas stations, convenience stores and food courts or other food service inside an ordinary retail store. FDA accepted and adopted this suggestion.

Piling on, in the letter the NRA cautioned the FDA that any attempt to narrowly define what businesses were actually restaurants or not would “run afoul of the plain language” in the healthcare law.

The chain requirement seems sensible enough on its face, until you consider that the FDA has ruled that all of the nearly 5,000 supermarket members of the Independent Grocer Alliance are members of a chain because they share a logo. Many of the IGA supermarkets are really one-unit operators.

The same rule pulls in thousands of independent gas stations and convenience store franchises, which in every way are separate and distinct businesses, not set up to take on new Obamacare burdens with the ease of a real 20-unit chain.

This rule alone will hurt thousands of the mom-and-pop businesses politicians always promise to protect.

NACS’ Beckwith said the reality of the rule is that gas stations and convenience stores will have to bring in real chain restaurants, such as NRA members: Subways or Dunkin Donuts, to mitigate the burden of the new FDA regulations.

Not only will the FDA rules punish NRA competitors, but they will force gas stations and stores to bring NRA members inside to take over the ready-to-eat business for themselves, he said.

One of the difficulties facing the stores and stations is that the FDA withdrew its “Draft Guidance for Industry: Questions and Answers Regarding Implementation of the Menu Labeling Provisions of Section 4205 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010,” in January 2011 after the consistent uproar that resulted when it was released in August 2010.

The non-restarants are forced to wait for the FDA to publish its next attempt, but the months drag on and there is no sign that the agency is close.

In the House, there is a bill sponsored by Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R.-Wash.), the fourth-ranking leader in the GOP conference, which will straighten out how the FDA implements the PPACA. The bill, H.R. 1249, would clarify that, among other things, restaurants are restaurants and sandwiches packed in a gas station refrigerator are not.

Whether McMorris-Rodgers’ bill becomes law or not may hinge on whether it is viewed as relief for businesses caught flat-footed as the NRA hooked them up or if it looks like a healthcare reform cutout.

There is still a split on Capitol Hill among opponents of PPACA. While some look for every chance to pick away at the president’s landmark law, others are afraid to fix the most hated parts of the law, lest these fixes release so much of the built-up pressure for complete repeal that the bulk of the legislation remains—forever.

Supporters of the bill would be better off framing this as a case of the government picking winners and losers, which should be the magic words.

Francis must learn to deal with Muslims, Jesuits as he moves forward

How Pope Francis handles the issues raised in two events, one internal and one external, reveal how comfortable he will sit in the Chair of St. Peter.

As the first pope from the Society of Jesus, his elevation should be a step towards reconciliation between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jesuits, who are now the dissenters inside the Church they were founded to defend.

That spirit of reconciliation was not yet strong enough to prevent the Jesuit’s Boston College from presenting the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny an honorary law degree at its May 20 commencement. Kenny, a professed Catholic, leads the effort in Ireland to legalize abortion.

In 2013, Catholic schools do not accidently invite pro-abortion politicians to campus.

Boston’s archbishop Cardinal Sean O’Malley, a fixture at the Catholic university’s graduations in his full scarlet regalia, announced that he would not witness the school celebrating Kenny.

“I am sure that the invitation was made in good faith, long before it came to the attention of the leadership of Boston College that Mr. Kenny is aggressively promoting abortion legislation,” the cardinal said.

“It is my ardent hope that Boston College will work to redress the confusion, disappointment and harm caused by not adhering to the Bishops’ directives,” said the Capuchin, whose phrasing is itself homage to the Jesuits, who once taught William J. Clinton the meaning of “is.”

Francis did not weigh in on the conflict involving Ireland and Boston, both long passed their days as bastions of orthodoxy and loyalty to the Vatican. But, he cannot avoid them indefinitely.

The second event speaks to the uneasiness between the Holy See and the Muslim world.

Tensions between the Catholic Church and Islam have been worse, say during the crusades; but as Pope Francis begins his own papacy without the missteps that ruined his predecessor’s attempt to improve the Holy See’s relations with the Muslim world.

Less than three months into his reign, it is too early to judge the damage if any done when Francis canonized 813 Italians, who were beheaded by Muslim raiders because they refused to convert to Islam.

The canonizing of these martyrs to the faith recalls the misstep that hurt Benedict XVI’s relationship with the Muslim world. The occasion was the pope’s Sept. 12, 2006 return to University of Regensberg, the Bavarian college, where he was once a professor.

In a lecture setting, Benedict quoted one the last of the Byzantines, Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos: Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The Vatican apologized and explained, but the damage was done. With the war in Iraq raging towards chaos and Ground Zero still an open pit, it was easy for Muslims to read Benedict’s choice of that quote as a knock.

If Francis honoring Italians martyrs, who kept the faith when threatened with the sword of Muhammad, seemed to echo Benedict at Regensberg, there is a good reason. All the paperwork for these martyrs, as well as the other saints canonized that day, was processed and signed off by Benedict.

The teaching authority of the Church is called its magisterium, and each pope develops his own personal magesterium that characterizes his own reign and administration.

The heavy lift for Francis is he is burdened, rightly or wrongly, with developing his magesterium and the one Benedict left undone.

Benedict ascended to the throne of St. Peter with anticipation that he was ready to reform and restrain Vatican bureaucracy. He did not.

As Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, he forged the peace treaty between Rome and the Lutherans, but he stumbled badly trying to reconcile the Holy See with the Society of Pope Pius X, the post-Vatican II splinter church. More tragically, his attempt to resolve the situation with the Underground Church in China and the Communist-sponsored church left things worse than when he started.

As the Western world struggles to reach accommodation with Islam and its extreme and violent elements, Catholics and non-Catholics will look to the Roman pontiff, who leads the institution that created the Western world.

More pressing for Catholics concerned for their Church will be how these Jesuit pope reins in his brother Jesuits and other dissenters, who really threaten the unity of his reign.

In message to Congress Obama continues Bush's findings on Iraq

It seems to me that when we pulled up stakes in Iraq, abandoning the Iraqi people and the very successful Advise and Assist Mission there, we did so for other that strategic reasons.

Had we continued the AAM, our relationship with Iraq would have continued to migrate into the regular dealings between two allies.

Certainly, Iran would not be resupplying the Syria regime by the skybridge over Iraqi airspace.

Read below the message President Barack Obama sent to Congress this week continuing the May 22, 2003 finding that the situation in Iraq is troubling and that trouble means trouble for the Unitied States.

Message -- Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to the Stabilization of Iraq

TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES:
Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)) provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, within 90 days prior to the anniversary date of its declaration, the President publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date. In accordance with this provision, I have sent to the Federal Register for publication the enclosed notice stating that the national emergency with respect to the stabilization of Iraq that was declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, is to continue in effect beyond May 22, 2013.

Obstacles to the continued reconstruction of Iraq, the restoration and maintenance of peace and security in the country, and the development of political, administrative, and economic institutions in Iraq continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. Accordingly, I have determined that it is necessary to continue the national emergency with respect to the stabilization of Iraq.

BARACK OBAMA

There was a time in America called: 'Watergate'

Excerpt from the Articles of Impeachment drafted by House Judiciary Committee staffer Hillary Rodham for President Richard M. Nixon:

1. He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.

Chalkboard rebellion in the Golden State

[This article origninally appeared at Townhall.com]

Ten California teachers are suing to break one of the strongest iron triangles in American politics, where the taxpayers pay the teachers; the teachers’ union supports candidates and referenda, and that leads eventually to the teachers getting better pay, benefits and working conditions.

A civil rights law firm filed a federal law suit April 30 on behalf of 10 California teachers and the Christian Educators Association International challenging the state’s closed shop law that has them contributing to support political activity they opposed.

"Individual teachers have a constitutional right to decide for themselves whether to join a union and financially support its efforts," said Terry Pell, president of the Center for Individual Rights, the Washington-based non-profit law firm taking on the case.

"The government may not compel teachers to provide financial support to policies with which they fundamentally disagree,” he said.

Rebecca Friedrichs, one of the teacher plaintiffs, said, “The union spends millions of teachers' hard earned monies supporting causes and candidates that many of us oppose.”

Friedrichs said she does not want to control or stop the union from its activities. “The union is free to press its agenda, but individual teachers should not be forced to pay for it.”

It comes down to fairness, she said. “It is shocking to me and many other teachers that union officials have the power by law to spend our wages to press for causes that many of us oppose on moral, fiscal, or philosophical grounds."

By going after the California Teachers Association, these teachers are going after the biggest fish in the 50-state pond. In the Golden State, the CTA donated more than $150 million in political donations between 2003 and 2012, according to the website followthemoney.org. The other defendants are the National Education Association as well as 10 affiliated local teachers’ unions and local school officials.

In the last decade, the CTA gave 89 percent of its contributions to ballot initiatives, 10 percent to Democrats and less than 1 percent to Republicans, according to the site. The union backed 299 winners, 77 losers and a total of 625 incumbents.

California is a state with a huge political tradition of getting things done by ballot referendum, and the union was deeply involved in left-wing causes. In 2003, the union gave $250,000 to a fund called: Californians Against the Costly Recall of the Governor, during the recall election of Democrat J. Graham “Gray” Davis Jr., and 2008 the union donated $1.3 million to defeat Proposition 8, a referendum that amended the state constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage.

In 2012, the CTA spent $21 million to successfully defeat Proposition 32, which would have prohibited paycheck-deductions to unions to support political causes. If that seems like a lot of money, consider the teachers union was only in for a third of the $65 million raised from dozens of other unions in the state.

With the defeat at the polls, California opponents to compulsory support of union political activities are turning to the courts.

“Forcing educators to financially support causes that run contrary to their political and policy beliefs violates their First Amendment rights to free expression and association and cannot withstand First Amendment scrutiny,” said Michael A. Carvin, partner with Jones Day and lead counsel for the plaintiffs.

“The Supreme Court questioned the continued constitutionality of ‘agency shop’ laws last year in the Knox decision,” he said.

The Supreme Court ruled in the 2012 Knox v. Employees Intl. Union that the Service Employees International Union in California violated the First Amendment rights of its non-union members by forcing them to pay a 25 percent increase in union dues without their consent to help fight ballot initiatives in the state, he said.

In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., wrote: “Because a public-sector union takes many positions during collective bargaining that have powerful political and civic consequences, the compulsory fees constitute a form of compelled speech and association that imposes a significant impingement on First Amendment rights.”

Dues and agency fees yield the CTA 2011 revenue of more than $191 million. The revenues came not only from member dues. The “agency shop” law means to compensate unions for their work “collective bargaining” on behalf of all workers, members and non-members, so non-union teachers are obligated to pay dues to a union they do not belong.

Depending on the local union, non-union member teachers in California can pay more than $1,000 a year to cover their share of collective bargaining expenses. These expenses include the CTA magazine “The California Educator,” despite the publication’s intense political tone and messages.

The CTA similarly charges programs advocating the gay rights agenda and union conferences and activities as collective bargaining.

Annually, non-union member teachers can opt-out of the mandatory dues, but the law suit contends that the process is complicated and exposes teachers opting out to harassment.

The suit argues there is no compelling reason to continue that agency shop process.

McCabe on BlazeTV with Wilkow! talking gun rights, NRA

‘Wilkow!’ Thursday featured two segments involving the Lone Star State; one about its junior senator and the other its most famous current visitor.

“Guns & Patriots” Editor Neil McCabe first joined the show to discuss President Barack Obama’s trip to Texas to promote manufacturing jobs — and the irony that comes with that as gun makers are already planning to move to Texas after their home states passed strict gun laws. In the clip below, McCabe and Wilkow discuss the vanishing pro-gun Democrats and the left’s strategy from Capitol Hill for national gun control laws: