Two Cents: Whose Right is it Anyways?

With all of the rancor going on lately about who gets what from Proposition 75, it easy to lose sight of Prop 75 itself. This initiative is a seemingly sincere call to unite the workers of America - the teachers, the firemen, the police, and the nurses, among others - and give them even more power to combat the evils of capitalism that they face, even, allegedly, from within their own union organizations. Its premise - require that union members be allowed to opt-in to contribute their dues to their union's political causes - seems like a pretty decent, worker-friendly initiative.

The problem is that it's not. Darrel Steinberg from VoteNo75.com provided an interesting insight into how paradoxical this claim of "workers' rights!" is in light of the reality of this initiative:

They [Republicans] claim to want limited government. Yet, they propose a ballot initiative that imposes government intrusion into how private organizations collect dues from their members and participate in politics.

Essentially, Prop 75 is an intrustion by the state government of the rights of a private organization to administer its finances. Ironically, Republicans, the ones who are most adamant about the rights of private organizations to work free from government regulation, are also the ones most adamant about passing this initiative.

What's going on here? Why target unions specifically? Is this really about rights?

I think not. Like many of the iniatives on the ballot, Prop 75 has a definite conservative agenda. Republicans know that by passing this iniatitive, not only do they score a big one for the government by getting more control over those irksome unions that are constantly getting in the way of big business with their calls for unnecessary things like worker protection and decent pay, they also get to diminish the voice of union members within their own unions. That is to say, funding for union political funding will undoubtedly be diminished as a result of this initiative, which means that unions will have even less power to defend the rights of their members in general - which means even fewer calls for a decent amount of state funding for institutions such as hospitals and schools.