How Teachers Can Dodge The Union

Teachers can receive a $300 – $400 ‘rebate’ for CTA’s political spending

Teachers must submit written notice by November 15

Although California is not a right-to-work state, public school teachers have the ability to receive a yearly rebate of $300 – $400 from the California Teachers Association.

Teachers have these options because the United States Supreme Court has held that a union can’t force a non-union member to pay for the union’s political and other activities unrelated to bargaining and representing workers.

A teacher’s ability to exercise these options is limited, however, and the necessary paperwork must be sent to CTA by November 15. (All teachers in LA Unified and those represented by the California Federation of Teachers have different rules and information is available on CaliforniaTeacherFreedom.com.)

First, if teachers are CTA members, they must leave the union. A generic resignation letter is available here. Teachers only have to opt out of CTA one time.

Next — and this must be done yearly — those who have opted out must submit written notice to CTA between September 1 and November 15 requesting a “rebate” for the portion of their dues that goes to political and other non-chargeable activities. This rebate is usually between $300 – $400, depending on a teacher’s local school district. A generic rebate-request letter is available here.

Alternatively, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ensures that workers with a strong moral objection to the union or its activities, like union support of abortion or gay marriage, can become a religious objector and redirect their union dues to a charitable organization. If a teacher wants to become a religious or conscientious objector, a how-to guide is available from National Right to Work and free legal assistance is available by contacting NRTW’s Bruce Cameron at bnc@nrtw.org. Teachers wishing to become religious objectors should not request to become agency fee payers.

Because teachers are busy teaching from Sept. 1 to Nov. 15 and most don’t even know these options are available, it’s important to remind teachers of some of the reasons other teachers are exercising these options.

Via: California Political Review

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Obamacare will question your sex life

‘Are you sexually active? If so, with one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?”

Be ready to answer those questions and more the next time you go to the doctor, whether it’s the dermatologist or the cardiologist and no matter if the questions are unrelated to why you’re seeking medical help. And you can thank the Obama health law.

“This is nasty business,” says New York cardiologist Dr. Adam Budzikowski. He called the sex questions “insensitive, stupid and very intrusive.” He couldn’t think of an occasion when a cardiologist would need such information — but he knows he’ll be pushed to ask for it.

The president’s “reforms” aim to turn doctors into government agents, pressuring them financially to ask questions they consider inappropriate and unnecessary, and to violate their Hippocratic Oath to keep patients’ records confidential.

Embarrassing though it may be, you confide things to a doctor you wouldn’t tell anyone else. But this is entirely different.

Doctors and hospitals who don’t comply with the federal government’s electronic-health-records requirements forgo incentive payments now; starting in 2015, they’ll face financial penalties from Medicare and Medicaid. The Department of Health and Human Services has already paid out over $12.7 billion for these incentives.

Dr. Richard Amerling, a nephrologist and associate professor at Albert Einstein Medical College, explains that your medical record should be “a story created by you and your doctor solely for your treatment and benefit.” But the new requirements are turning it “into an interrogation, and the data will not be confidential.”

Via: New York Post

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Leaders, Followers, Fence-Sitters, and Obamacare

When conservatives look for elected Republicans to stand for our values, we are not just looking for someone who might vote with conservatives when convenient; we are looking for someone who will give voice to conservatives.  Hence, we are looking for leaders – people who will articulate the message, fight the conservative battles, and move the polls.  We have no need for more followers, fence-sitters, and finger lickers.  The recent developments in the fight to defund Obamacare serve as a quintessential example of this divide between the leaders and the fence-sitters.

After several months of hard work from Jim DeMint, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Tom Graves, Mark Meadows, and some of the outside groups, there is tremendous momentum behind using the budget bills to force the issue on Obamacare once and for all.  Obamacare is now more unpopular than ever.  It is so unpopular that Republicans are viewed as more favorable on healthcare than Democrats.  This has never happened in years.  As Erick noted earlier today, when the leadership void is filled, the polling begins to move.

Naturally, all of the establishment followers and fence-sitters are joining the bandwagon of fighting Obamacare on the budget bill (or “the next fight” – the debt ceiling).  However, they want us to believe that they have a “smarter” plan to accomplish it.  They will push to delay the law for one year or focus on some other aspect of Obamacare.

Let me submit that without the efforts of the conservative leaders, the GOP establishment followers would never be talking about fighting Obamacare in any form.  They are terrified of brinkmanship – be it over defund or delay – and had no intention of ever picking this fight, even as Obamacare goes into effect next month.  Their call for delaying the law is just the latest subterfuge to undermine the fight and capitulate to Democrats while concurrently co-opting the fight against Obamacare – as if they were supportive of the effort all along, albeit with a craftier strategy.

Via: Red State

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12 Years after 9/11 Weak Oversight of DHS Keeps U.S. Vulnerable

Weak congressional oversight over the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) keeps the United States vulnerable to terrorist threats posed by small aircraft and boats, cyber attacks and biological weapons, according to a diverse panel of lawmakers and security officials.

This may be difficult to swallow twelve years after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history but it’s the conclusion of a task force of Homeland Security officials and experts as well as current and former members of Congress from both political parties. The task force found that one of the key recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission, the special panel that Congress created to investigate the terrorist attacks and prevent them in the future, has not been fulfilled.

After all these years one of the commission’s most significant recommendations to guard against future attacks has not been implemented.  It’s the call for consolidated Congressional oversight of DHS, the monstrous agency created after 9/11. Jurisdiction over DHS is fragmented and that impedes the agency’s ability to deal with the three major vulnerabilities mentioned above, the experts found.

DHS has no oversight structure like other crucial agencies such as the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), the panel of intelligence experts and lawmakers reveal. Instead, more than 100 Congressional committees and subcommittees claim jurisdiction over it creating a seriously disintegrated oversight system and massive bureaucracy.

The new report indicates that, as a nation, we’ve learned little from the 2001 terrorist attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans. Here are some of the experts who helped put the report together; former Florida Governor Bob Graham, former Bush DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, Obama DHS Undersecretary of Intelligence Caryn Wagner and California Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, the second-highest ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

“The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission addressed problems that contributed to the United States’ vulnerability to attack” in 2001, the report says. Graham, who was co-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on 9/11 offers an example: “We found among other things that there had been inadequate communication among the agencies with a responsibility to alert us to a security threat. The FBI and the CIA had information which, had it been brought together, might well have allowed us to have avoided 9/11.”

Via: Judicial Watch

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Obamacare’s Useful Idiots

One by one, the dupes have been double-crossed by Obama and the Democrats.

Remember that March day in 2010 when the President, surrounded by devout supporters, solemnly signed Obamacare into law? It was, as Joe Biden brayed, “a big f——-g deal.” Obama and his army of righteous reformers had finally triumphed over the forces of evil and passed legislation that would drive the moneychangers from the temple of U.S. health care. Many of those beaming down on the President as he wielded his terrible swift pen represented prestigious national organizations and coalitions whose support had made the glorious moment possible. Some of these groups, however, have since seen the error of their ways.

The most recent such coalition to repent of its support for the “Affordable Care Act” (ACA) has been the AFL-CIO. As has been widely reported, that federation of unions approved a resolution during its recent convention declaring that Obamacare will increase health insurance premiums so dramatically that many of its members will have to drop their coverage. In order to avoid this inevitable consequence of their support for the health care law, union goons like Richard Trumka have been putting pressure on the President to honor his backroom promises to provide unions with special dispensations from inconvenient provisions of “reform.”

One of the most controversial union demands, which would have resulted in extra ACA subsidies for union members, was rejected by the Obama administration on Friday: “The Treasury Department issued a letter that confirmed that people in multi-employer healthcare plans could not receive the Obamacare tax credits.” This letter merely reiterated the clear language of the law, but the union bosses are not amused. Terry O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers International Union of North America, has even begun using the “R” word: “If the Affordable Care Act is not fixed… then I believe it needs to be repealed.”

Via: American Spectator

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Congress’s Exemption from Obamacare

Make Congress get insurance the same way the little people do? Hill denizens howl in fury. 

Prostitution. Bribery. Blackmail. Thuggery. Hypocrisy.

Those were just some of the incendiary words thrown around the U.S. Senate last week, and that doesn’t count what people said in private.

The Senate may still have a reputation as a genteel club, but lawmakers seemed to abandon rules of decorum completely last week in arguments about whether Congress should be treated like the rest of the country when it comes to Obamacare. 

Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, has demanded a floor vote on his bill to end an exemption that members of Congress and their staffs are slated to get that will make them the only participants in the new Obamacare exchanges to receive generous subsidies from their employer to pay for their health insurance. Angry Senate Democrats have drafted legislation that dredges up a 2007 prostitution scandal involving Vitter. The confrontation is a perfect illustration of just how wide the gulf in attitudes is between the Beltway and the rest of the country — and how viciously Capitol Hill denizens will fight for their privileges.

In 1995, the newly elected Republican Congress passed a Congressional Accountability Act to fulfill a promise made the previous year in the Contract with America. For the first time, the Act applied to Congress the same civil-rights employment and labor laws that lawmakers had required everyday citizens to abide by. With some lapses, it’s worked well to defuse public outrage about “one law for thee, one law for me” congressional behavior.

Via: National Review Online

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NBC’s Pete Williams Identifies Navy Yard Gunman As Aaron Alexis, 34, of Ft. Worth, TX

NBC News reporter Pete Williams identified one of the gunman who attacked the Washington Navy Yard on Monday morning as Aaron Alexis, 34, of Ft. Worth, Texas. Alexis was killed at the scene, but police have asked for Washington D.C. residents to remain on the lookout for two additional suspects. 

RELATED: CNN’s Barbara Starr: ‘We’re Talking About a Conspiracy to Attack the U.S. Military’

“There’s only one confirmed gunman and authorities say he’s 34-year-old Aaron Alexis of Fort Worth, Texas,” Williams reported. “That he had just recently begun working as a civilian contractor for the Navy.

Williams noted that reports indicate Aaron infiltrated the highly secure facility by using the identification of a current employee of the facility who has not yet been identified.

“What his motive was is a long way from determined,” Williams continued.

Watch the clip below via NBC:

Via: Mediaite.com

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Obama Campaign Group Comes Out Swinging – and Scaremongering – on Obamacare

The Hill reports that President Obama’s campaign group, Organizing for Action (OFA), is out with a new ad campaign, which contains inaccurate claims about the fight to defund Obamacare.

First, OFA claims that those who want to defund the law “are threatening to shut down the government if Obamacare isn’t dismantled.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Conservatives don’t want to shut the government down; they do want to shut down Obamacare. And legislation accomplishing both of these objectives—funding all of the federal government except for Obamacare—was introduced last week.

As we’ve previously noted, the only person who wants to shut down the federal government is President Obama himself. The Obama Administration has threatened to veto multiple House-passed spending bills. The Administration made these threats because liberals want to replace sequestration’s spending cuts, agreed to by both parties, with tax increases. And if they don’t get their way, the President and his advisors have pledged to shut down the federal government.

Second, OFA claims that if a shutdown occurs—and as noted above, it would occur only because President Obama wants it to occur—such a scenario “could disrupt Social Security and veterans’ benefits.” That’s just not accurate. As a previous Heritage Foundation fact sheethas noted,

The term shutdown substantially overstates the matter. The most essential services continue, such as: (1) providing for national security, (2) conducting foreign affairs, (3) providing for the continuity of mandatory benefit payments, and (4) protecting life and property. These services include military, law enforcement, veterans care, and others. Social Security checks are still mailed and self-funded agencies like the Postal Service would continue operating.

It couldn’t be more clear: Social Security checks would still get mailed, and the Postal Service would remain in business to mail them.

Via: The Foundry

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[VIDEO] Obama: ‘Gun Control—We Had 80, 90% of the Country That Agreed With It’

(CNSNews.com) - Appearing on ABC News’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday, President Barack Obama said he had 80 to 90 percent of the country agreeing with him in favor of gun control, but the he could not get gun-control legislation enacted because of a “faction of the Republican Party.”

Obama made the observation about the supermajority of Americans he believes favor “gun control” when Stephanopoulos asked him why the issues he had chosen to focus on at the beginning of his second term seem to have stalled.

“You put gun control at the top of the agenda, immigration reform, climate change--all of it's stalled or reversing,” said Stephanopoulos. “How do you answer the argument that beyond the deficit, this has been a lost year, and how do you save it?”

First, Obama said the Senate-passed immigration bill, which creates a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal aliens, would win in the House if Speaker John Boehner brought it up for a vote.

Via: CNS News

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Washington Navy Yard the 'beating heart of the United States Navy'

The Washington Navy Yard, where police were responding to a shooter Monday morning, may not be one of the capital's most well-known facilities. But it serves as a major headquarters for several Navy divisions. 

Fox News security analyst K.T. McFarland described it as the "beating heart of the United States Navy." 

One of the most prominent facilities, which is where the shooter at one point was reported, is the Naval Sea Systems Command headquarters. This headquarters is the office for about 3,000 people.  The command's job is to "engineer, build, buy and maintain ships" and other systems, according to the Navy. Its annual budget is nearly $30 billion -- accounting for a quarter of Navy spending. 

Capt. Chuck Nash, former Navy captain, said the command's principle job is "acquisition" and not military operations. 

"It's mostly a civilian organization," he told Fox News. 

Details about the shooting are still emerging. Navy officials say at least 10 people have been shot, including multiple dead. 

The Navy Yard as a whole has been in operation since the early 19th century. It is the Navy's oldest shore establishment, and went from being a shipbuilding center to an ordnance plant. Now it is described as the "ceremonial and administrative center" for the U.S. Navy. 

Via: Fox News

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