Today on The BradCast, new polls reveal Bernie Sanders far outpacing Hillary Clinton in head-to-head match-ups against all potential Republican challengers and public sector unions take a beating in the U.S. Supreme Court.
First up today, new pre-election polls from NBC/WSJ and PPP in both Iowa and New Hampshire echo recent national polling suggesting that, contrary to so-called “conventional wisdom”, Sanders is more electable against the leading Republican opponents than Clinton is.
Then, constitutional law expert Ian Millhiser joins us to report on the “brutal” oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case which threatens to gut public sector union funding.
Millhiser, author of the new book, Injustices: The Supreme Court’s History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted
, was at the Court for today’s hearing, and the news is not encouraging. As he explains, the case challenges the federal government’s allowance of “agency fees” charged to non-union members in public sector union shops to help defray the costs of union negotiations. That fee makes sense, since non-union workers must receive the same wages and benefits at such shops as their union colleagues. Non-union workers benefit from those negotiations, he says, since “workers in unionized shops on average receive about 12% more pay than workers in non-unionized shops.”
“As a general rule,” Millhiser wrote after the oral argument, “the First Amendment does not permit the government to compel someone to say something they disagree with, and the plaintiffs claim that requiring non-union members to subsidize collective bargaining by a union that they may not agree with essentially rises to the level of compelled speech.”
He tells me today that striking down the right to charge these agency fees “creates what’s called a ‘free rider’ problem. If I get something, whether I pay for it or not, a lot of people are going to say ‘Well, why would I pay for this when I get it for free?'” That, in turn, threatens the viability of such unions entirely.
Millhiser goes on to say: “It was pretty clear today that there were five votes that are ready to strike down these agency fee agreements – and that’s going to be not greatfor the future of many public sector unions.”
We also discuss how an adverse decision for the public unions here may also potentially be used by the Right to go after private unions as well. “What we’ve seen from conservative movement attorneys over the last seven or eight years is an extraordinary entrepreneurship. They’ve been really, really clever in coming up with creative news ways to try to convince courts to implement their policy preferences,” he says.
Citing both that point and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s new call for nine, incredibly radical (and regressive) amendments to the U.S. Constitution (which Millhiser describes as the new Republican governor’s “plan to repeal the 20th century”), I ask why it is that Democrats and progressives don’t show similar “entrepreneurship” in pushing forward their own agenda.
In response, Millhiser defends Dems and progressives by noting a peculiarity about this particular moment in history: “I think conservatives right now increasingly believe that the last 80 years of American history are illegitimate. They believe that our society has started to go off the rails and we have to fundamentally rethink what our government does. Democrats are now in the unfamiliar position of being the nation’s conservative party. I don’t mean in the sense that they are now to the right of the Republicans. I mean ‘conservative’ in the sense that Democrats are conservative in the sense that it wants to preserve the gains that we already have.”
The result is that Dems are put on the defensive, instead of pushing new, progressive programs forward, as I argue in return, leaving voters less than clear about what it is Democrats hope to do when and if they are elected to office.
Finally, we offer a short goodbye to David Bowie and receive late breaking word from the the U.S. Supreme Court concerning imprisoned former Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL)’s final appeal for a new trial … Neither of those news items are encouraging either, unfortunately.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 500 new monthly donors in the next 10 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy