All posts by Wintery Knight

https://winteryknight.com/

Three cheers for the Janus SCOTUS decision and right-to-work laws in 27 states

Political contributions from unions are overwhelmingly given to Democrats and leftists
Contributions from unions are mostly given to Democrats and leftists

Some people think of unions as a force for good. Perhaps they were in the past, but a little reading of economics shows how they actually produce very bad results for workers. In addition to that, unions are actively trying to influence the outcome of elections in 2020, using the money collected from their members. Fortunately, there have been two great developments recently that limit their power.

Here’s a recent story from Just the News:

Leaders of several public and private sector unions are threatening to organize walkouts this fall for teachers, truck drivers and service workers in an effort to protest police killings.

“The status quo — of police killing Black people, of armed white nationalists killing demonstrators, of millions sick and increasingly desperate — is clearly unjust, and it cannot continue,” said a statement issued over the weekend by various arms of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees International Union, and National Education Association.

[…]The union leaders also called for defunding police departments and universal health care.

You can see their progressive convictions coming out in how they distribute the money they collect from their members.

The Washington Examiner reports:

Organized labor has given more than $1.3 billion to Democratic Party organizations and liberal nonprofit and activist groups since 2010, while 1 percent went to conservative groups or causes, according to a survey of federal data.

The giving is starkly different from the beliefs of most rank-and-file union members, many of whom lean Republican.

Having said all of that, there were two pieces of good news about labor unions that I think we should celebrate during Labor Day.

First of all, there was a very good decision to allow teachers to opt out of having to pay union dues in all 50 states. Second, a large number of states have enacted right-to-work laws, which allow employees in union-dominated jobs to be able to work without being forced to join a union.

This article explains both:

While every public sector employee across the country now enjoys right to work protections under the First Amendment as a result of the 2018 National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation-won Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision, private sector workers in the 23 states that have yet to pass a right to work law can lose their job for refusing to tender dues or fees to a union.

Right to work protects each worker’s freedom of choice, but the advantages of right to work hardly stop there. Enshrining workplace freedom also brings significant economic benefits to the 27 states that have passed right to work laws.

Between 2009 and 2019, right to work states saw the total number of people employed grow by 16.9%. That’s nearly double the 9.6% gain in non-right to work states, according to an analysis of federal government statistics compiled by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, or NILRR.

The study also found that, after adjusting for the cost of living, the mean after-tax household income in right to work states was about $4,300 higher than for households in forced-unionism states in 2018, the most recent year for which household income data is available.

The connection between right to work laws and better economic performance is not a surprise. Business experts consistently rank the presence of right to work laws as one of the most important factors companies consider when deciding where to expand or relocate their plants and facilities, where they will create new jobs and new opportunities.

Take the manufacturing sector, for example. The NILRR analysis revealed that employment in the manufacturing sector increased by 10% in right to work states from 2009 to 2019, over three times the 2.9% gain forced-unionism states saw over that same period.

Right to work laws clearly make economic sense, but protecting employee freedom has always been their central feature.

I really liked the Janus decision and right-to-work laws, because I don’t think that conservative workers should be forced to join a union in order to earn a living. The unions should not get access to worker money for free – unions should have to earn their worker’s money by providing value. And the worker should decide whether there is value there, or not.

You can see a full breakdown of union contributions by political affiliation for 2019-2020 here at Open Secrets.

Trump ends taxpayer-funded indoctrination in anti-American critical race theory in federal agencies

She's saying that her decision to be a whale is your fault, and you must pay her money
Her poor choices were caused by your racism, so you must pay her reparations

Good news, everyone! I think most people who are following the election closely know that there is almost no overlap between the Republican party and the Democrat party. It’s common sense that we not use taxpayer money to spread hatred and division. The Democrats have been using taxpayer money to do that in federal agencies. But Trump has put an end to it.

Here’s the story from Daily Wire:

The Trump administration announced late on Friday that it was cracking down on “critical race theory,” a far-left anti-American ideology that promotes racial division, from being taught in federal agencies and paid for by federal money.

The memo released by Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, called critical race theory “divisive” and “anti-American propaganda,” adding that the far-left ideology falsely promotes the notion that “there is racism embedded in the belief that America is the land of opportunity or the belief that the most qualified person should receive a job.”

The memo states:

These types of “trainings” not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce. We can be proud that as an employer, the Federal government has employees of all races, ethnicities, and religions. We can be proud that Americans from all over the country seek to join our workforce and dedicate themselves to public service. We can be proud of our continued efforts to welcome all individuals who seek to serve their fellow Americans as Federal employees. However, we cannot accept our employees receiving training that seeks to undercut our core values as Americans and drive division within our workforce.

“The President has directed me to ensure that Federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions,” Vought wrote.

Now, I don’t know about you, but my impression of the Republican party is that they were mostly fine with letting the Democrats warp the culture towards anarchy. Not just passively with Hollywood , Big Tech and professional sports, but actively, by subsidizing the universities, public schools, and public sector unions with taxpayer dollars. So this move comes as a big surprise to me. I would expect this from Jim Jordan or Mark Meadows, but not Donald Trump.

Critical Race Theory is nothing more than an attempt to remove responsibility from certain underperforming groups for the low results that are caused by their own poor decision-making. Not just their poor decision making with education, career, finances, but also with premarital sex, drugs, marriage and children.

White people are doing a bad job of keeping non-whites down
White people are doing a bad job of keeping non-whites down

We should be telling everyone, regardless of race, to act like East Indians and Asians and Africans in order to have success. Date like East Indians and Asians and Africans, Marry like East Indians and Asians and Africans. Educate yourself like East Indians and Asians and Africans. Work like East Indians and Asians and Africans. Follow the law and don’t antagonize the police. This is not “acting white”. This is taking responsibility to make good decisions and be disciplined. We need to teach people of all races to work backwards from the results that other non-white races are achieving, to the decision-making that produces those results. Critical race theory is teaching people the wrong message – don’t make good decisions, cry racism when you fail to achieve good results. Awful.

In America, your success is largely determined by your decision-making, not by how other people treat you. We have non-white populations who are able to achieve far above whites, because they work harder, study harder, obey the law better, marry earlier, etc. than white people do, on average. The problem of failure to succeed cannot be caused by skin color when so many non-white groups are achieving far above native-born whites.

There is no path to stability and success that involves making decisions like the woman in the photo above. If a woman watches TV all the time, doesn’t study in school, is overweight and makes babies with bad boys in order to go on welfare, then the solution to her problems won’t be found in critical race theory. She’ll have to start to control herself and make better decisions if she wants different results.

Instead of having taxpayer funded indoctrination to blame others for poor decision-making, we should remove all taxpayer-funding for failure, including student loans for non-STEM degrees and single mother welfare, and just pay people who try hard in school, who marry, and who have children after they are married. We should penalize people for divorce and drug use. We are getting failure in this country because we make excuses for people who make poor decisions. It’s nice to see Trump at least stopping the flow of money from successful workers who pay taxes to irresponsible, reckless losers who think that teaching racism is a real job.

Feminist explains how she chose to drink alcohol before recreational sex

College students puking in toilet
College students puking in toilet

Guess where I’m linking today? To a radical feminist web site named Jezebel, to an article written by a radical feminist who writes for the radically leftist Slate.

No, I’m not crazy. Just read it:

Much of the conversation around alcohol and sex has focused on assault—the line at which intoxication becomes incapacitation, for instance—but what we fail to mention is how haunted people can be by the sex they actually, technically consented to.

[…]I wonder what my sex life would even look like if alcohol hadn’t been there. Alcohol gave me comfort in my own body, and it allowed me to turn my erotic curiosity and hunger for experience into an action plan. I was tired of being the stuttering girl sucking in her stomach after the lights went out. I wanted to be the woman who roamed wild and free.

Alcohol also helped me cut the girlish strings on my heart, an action my college years demanded. Three months into my freshman year, I split a six pack with a dashing sophomore, and we wound up partially clothed on his bed, my bare legs wrapped around his waist, my hands around his neck. I pulled back slightly and asked him the question, the naive question of a girl who does not yet understand her fate: “What does this mean?”

He looked past me, into his studio apartment, and then back into my eyes. “It means that I’m a 19-year-old boy, and we’re having fun.”

What is interesting is that she didn’t see this man’s using her for fun after getting her drunk as any disqualification for a serious relationship. On the contrary, she believes that a serious relationship built on self-sacrificial love and commitment that lasts through difficulties can be found in a man who uses her for fun sex:

I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy that night with the dashing sophomore. I’m saying the fun part for me might have been turning our physical intimacy into a sustained attachment.

Amazing. She wasn’t looking for men with good educations, good jobs, lots of savings, who were sober and chaste – they would have made her unhappy with their bossy leading, and strict plans about courting and marriage. She thought that she could get to live-long married love by choosing what was free, easy and fun in the moment.

She is 35 now, and still single. I’m sure if you ask her, she would like to be married “some day”, but who would say that her past decisions were good preparation for the challenges of marriage? Marriage is about self-sacrificial love, and endurance. To prepare for marriage, you practice self-denial and self-control. You learn how to accept expectations, obligations and responsibilities. You grow up.

Anyway, back to the article. She choose the alcohol herself, and she did it for a very specific reason:

I wanted to have fun, too. And alcohol evened the score. I cared less about everything when I was drinking: What you thought of me, what I looked like in this dress, whether that taco was warm or cold when I stuffed it in my mouth. I don’t want to make it sound like I drank in order to have sex. I drank for a million reasons.

[…]Booze downshifted my intense body consciousness, and it revved up my bravado. Sex was scary—but alcohol made me feel safe.

She drank in order to have sex. Got it? She chose to get drunk in order to feel safe about having sex. Many young women think that recreational sex with hot guys is a pathway to marriage. They drink in order to make progress towards the marriage they want – the marriage to the man who is fun. Not the man who is serious. They don’t want the serious man who makes plans for marriage, and expects the woman to sober up, behave responsibly and honor obligations.

Why are millenials acting like children into adulthood?
Why are millenials acting like children into adulthood?

This reminds me of the Institute for American Values study. Despite their name, it is not a conservative organization

Look at this citation from p. 15:

A number of students noted that being drunk could later serve as your excuse for the hook up.

A Yale University student said, “Some people like hook up because they’re drunk or use being drunk as an excuse to hook up.”

A New York University student observed, “[Alcohol is] just part of an excuse, so that you can say, oh, well, I was drinking.”

A Rutgers University student commented, “If you’re drinking a lot it’s easier to hook up with someone… [and] drugs, it’s kind of like a bonding thing… and then if you hook up with them and you don’t want to speak to them again, you can always blame it on the drinking or the drugs.”

[…]A University of Chicago junior observed, “One of my best friends… sometimes that’s her goal when we go out. Like she wants to get drunk so I guess she doesn’t have to feel guilty about [hooking up].”

I hope that many of the men out there who refuse to hold women accountable for their own desires start to understand that not everything a woman wants is good, and not every plan a woman makes will work. Sometimes, you need to calmly and constructively challenge them about their priorities, plans and actions. It’s for their own good.