RUSH: Let’s go to the Supreme Court ruling on the unions. I don’t think people are yet aware how momentous and huge this is. A lot of people are focusing on it, properly so, just like a lot of people are focusing on Joe Crowley losing in New York to the 28-year-old Millennial Marxist. And, of course, on that, people are gonna worry the Democrat leadership, is this a wake-up call for them? Just one district, doesn’t really represent anything.
If you people at the Democrat Party want to know what this means, I’ll be glad to tell you. And, folks, don’t worry about it, ’cause they never listen to me, even when I try to help ’em. But I’m gonna explain this. This Supreme Court ruling, wait ’til you hear the money that we’re talking about. Here’s the nub of this. The Supreme Court today ruled 5-4 that nonunion workers cannot be forced to pay fees to public sector unions.
Sam Alito, Samuel Alito wrote the court’s opinion. He said, “Compelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable violates that cardinal constitutional command, and in most contexts, any such effort would be universally condemned.”
Meaning, these people cannot have their First Amendment rights violated by unions. The unions can’t first coerce money from them and then redirect that money to causes people don’t believe in. Do you know how long this has been going on? This has been going on not only with fees, but union dues and any other myriad number of ways unions collect money from members.
Now, let me explain something before I go further into this. I previously characterized this whole arrangement between the Democrat Party and unions as kind of like a money laundering agreement. And here’s how it works. The Democrat Party can’t go to the United States Treasury and write a check for a hundred million dollars every election. Yet they end up getting it. How? How do they do it?
Well, look at Obama’s stimulus. That stimulus package ostensibly was to rebuild schools and roads and bridges. It was to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. But that’s not what the money went to. That money was about $800 billion, or million. You know, I get the M’s and the B’s — it was almost a trillion dollars. No. Can’t be. That’s one-third of the budget. It had to be $800 million. The money went to unions. It went to unions at a time of a recession. People were losing their jobs left and right. That money kept union employees employed. But the reason that was important is because union employees working meant that fees and dues could be extracted from them, and a significant percentage of that goes back to the Democrat Party as political contributions.
And so federal programs that appropriate money to unions is really a secret way of having a portion of that money get back to the Democrat Party. It’s a very clever money laundering operation. (interruption) What? It was billion! Whew. I had forgotten. You’ll forgive me, folks. You know, the Brinks truck brings my check, and sometimes these B’s and these M’s, the millions and billions, they get confused in my head. Yeah, $800 billion and a great percentage of that went to unions to keep them employed.
School unions in Wisconsin and California, we documented all of this. And then those people have their dues collected in other fees, and a portion of that goes back to the Democrat Party. So where Obama couldn’t go to the Treasury and write the Democrat Party a check for a hundred billion, million, whatever dollars, he can get it this way. And the Democrats have been doing this for years.
And the origination of it is all of these fees and dues that the unions have been demanding from members, the court said today that nonunion workers cannot be forced to pay these fees to public sector — did you know that the unions were able to extract this money from nonunion employees, too? They were. That is what has ended.
Now, this story’s at CNBC. The case, one of the most hotly anticipated of the term, concerned whether public employees can be forced to pay fees that fund the work of public sector unions. “Some experts had said a finding in favor of the plaintiff, Mark Janus, would be the most significant court decision affecting collective bargaining in decades.
“Janus, an employee at the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, asked the court last summer to overrule a 40-year-old Supreme Court decision. It found that public sector unions could require employees affected by their negotiations to pay so-called agency fees, which have also been called ‘fair share fees.’
“Those fees, approved by the court in the 1977 case Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, cover collective bargaining costs, such as contract negotiations, but are meant to exclude political advocacy.” But they don’t.
Okay, so that’s the ruling. Nonunion workers cannot be — and, believe me, there are many more nonunion employees in America than there are unionized. Unionized employee percentage is at an all-time low. Which, if that’s the case, how do the unions keep sending so damn much money to the Democrats? If union membership is at an all-time low — and it is — then how the hell do the SEIU and the teachers unions and all these others, where do they get the money to send to the Democrats?
Now, let’s go to the numbers. You want to hear the numbers affected. Now, the numbers I’m gonna give you are contributions 2017, 2018. Not all of this is gonna be lost. Just a percentage of it. The percentage donated by nonunion, the forced — this is no different than a union boss reaching into a nonunion employee’s back pocket or checkbook and writing himself a check claiming “You owe us this because you are benefiting from union contract negotiations and so forth and so on.”
The American Federation of Teachers 2017-2018 donated six and a half million dollars to the Democrat Party and various liberal groups, none to Republicans. The American Federation of State, City, Municipal Employees, $5,027,000, all to the Democrat Party and liberal groups. We are up to 11 and a half million just with two unions. The National Education Association, $2,300,000, 95% of it the Democrat Party and liberal groups.
The American Federation of Government employees, $1.8 million. Same scenario; most of it to Democrats and liberal interesting. A smidgen to Republicans. The International Association of Firefighters, one and a half million dollars. Now, it looks like about 30% of that went to Republicans; the rest to the Democrat Party. The National Association of Letter Carriers, $833,000. The American Postal Workers Union, $611,000. This is all in one year.
The National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, $481,000. The list keeps going. There aren’t but three of these groups that gave any money to Republicans. That’s why there is abject panic today in the Democrat Party. Let’s go to the audio sound bites starting with sound bite number 2. Jeffrey Toobin on CNN — did you hear about CNN’s ratings? CNN’s audience last week fell below that of the Food Network. The Food Network outrated CNN.
I’m gonna go to Jeffrey Toobin this morning on CNN. The anchorette, Poppy Harlow is talking to Toobin, is a chief legal analyst. She says, “Jeffrey, how significant is it anatomy when we’ve already seen the decline of unions in this country?”
TOOBIN: It’s a real blow. This is another 5-4 conservative-winning decision like the travel ban case yesterday, like the abortion free speech yesterday, three opinions in two days, all of which illustrate how successful it was that Mitch McConnell stopped Barack Obama from appointing Merrick Garland and saved that seat for Donald Trump, many Democrats believe stole that seat for Donald Trump.
RUSH: Yeah, well, Mr. Toobin, let me give you a different perspective. I don’t deny McConnell did that, but certainly not unprecedented. You guys have written the book on denying Republican presidents their judicial nominees. You’ve written the book on delaying confirmation votes. So don’t start whining and moaning about Merrick Garland, because we don’t have any tears for you, buddy. Our smiles are too broad.
The idea here that the court 5-4, another conservative winning decision. Jeffrey, what you need to consider is that the Supreme Court is defending the presidency here in some of these cases. Not Trump. They’re defending the Constitution because your little judges out there in the hinterlands are usurping their authority by claiming they can stop federal executive action from their little courthouse bench out in Bohunk, Oregon. No offense, Oregon.
There’s much more.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And, by the way, there has not been any reduction in unions in government. Government unions are getting bigger. Union employment, unionized workforces around the country have been shrinking for the longest time. Government unions are growing, and a lot of this government union money ends up in the pockets and the coffers of the Democrat Party. But not as much anymore. Couple more sound bites here. Judge Naps, the Human Eddie Munster, at Fox News this morning. He was on with Bill Hemmer. Question: Judge Naps, “Have you considered the financial impact of a ruling like this on unions in America?”
RUSH: Right. Even though there is — he’s right here — significant Republican blue-collar membership in unions, they don’t have any control over where their donations go or the fees extracted by the union bosses do, and that all goes to Democrats, as we demonstrated here with the figures that I just gave you. It’s massive. It is genuinely massive. Stop and think of it: As union membership has shrunk, union donations to the Democrats have grown. How does that happen? By virtue of this coercion.
Now, here is Andy McCarthy on with Sandra Smith earlier today on the Fox News Channel. She said, “Andy, you say that conservatives are on a roll in the Supreme Court. The travel ban was the first big ruling on the Trump administration policy. Does this give the administration some momentum?”
MCCARTHY: It does two things. It vindicates the presidency more than it does President Trump, because these are powers of the presidency whoever is the president. But from President Trump’s perspective, the very disturbing thing about the federal judiciary since he’s become president is they’ve tried to install this jurisprudence of Trump. That he somehow, because he is a unique president, is not entitled to all the prerogatives and all the legal privileges that other presidents have. And I think the court’s effectively given that the back of the hand.
RUSH: Exactly. That is exactly right. Have you heard during the travel ban even some of these left wing Democrats — yeah, I think even the judge in Hawaii — said, “If any other president had authored this, we couldn’t have stopped it but because it’s Donald Trump, we’re gonna stop him.” Well, that’s not constitutional. The president’s the president. He won the election. He’s entitled to the constitutional directives, protections, and responsibilities of the presidency, the executive branch.
I think Senor McCarthy here is exactly right on the money. The left is wondering what happened to Anthony Kennedy. He’s the swing vote, usually goes with Democrats on cultural and social issues, and they’re saying, “What happened to Kennedy? What happened to Kennedy?” What happened to Kennedy is that he reveres the Constitution, as he understands it. I don’t think there’s any doubt that that is happening here. By the way, you know, folks, it really is important because all around us it seems like institutions upon which we have always been able to depend are failing us.
They’re crumbling. And many have thought that about the Supreme Court. But in these rulings this week, the travel ban and this union case, now, remember also about this union case. This union case was before the court previously, before Justice Scalia… It had been debated, oral arguments and so forth, at the same time he died. So a 4-4 decision, a tie decision in the Supreme Court means the lower-court ruling from which the case came is affirmed. Can’t overturn or reverse anything on a tie.
So they brought the case back after Neil Gorsuch been confirmed, and that’s the difference here. That’s why Keith Ellison, who is… I guess he’s in the DNC hierarchy. He’s out there claiming Gorsuch has been bribed. “Yeah. That’s what happened! Gorsuch was bribed. That’s why he voted this way.” But this is an institution rising to the moment and defending the Constitution, slapping back at these federal judges and leftists who claim that Donald Trump, because he’s so Donald Trump, is not entitled to presidential powers because he’s so odd, weird, unsophisticated, brutish, or whatever.
RUSH: Here’s Curtis in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Great to have you with us, sir. How are you doing?
CALLER: Great, Rush. Dan’s Bake Sale dittos to you.
RUSH: Thank you very much. Dan’s Bake Sale. You were there?
CALLER: Yes, sir. I grew up in Colorado.
RUSH: How about that.
CALLER: And I never saw that little town so overrun by enthusiastic, positive minded people, trash free, I would say. It was just a great time. There was a lot of energy in that crowd.
RUSH: There was. That’s great. It’s great to talk to somebody who was there.
CALLER: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Rush, my comment has to do with your talking about the Supreme Court case about unions and really how government a lot of times can empower union members directly and indirectly. Couple examples, actually three examples. The auto bailout, if you remember that, unions were made whole at the expense of investors and some nonunion members as well.
RUSH: Now, wait a minute, wait a minute, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s not gloss over that. That’s exactly right. This is Obama. The federal government took over the auto companies, then transferred ownership to the union.
CALLER: That’s correct.
RUSH: You’re exactly right about that.
CALLER: And investors who actually would hold first position in a normal bankruptcy, they were given pennies on the dollar.
RUSH: People who held bonds in the auto companies were totally screwed; you’re exactly right.
CALLER: Yes. And just some more information, for instance, Delphi, they had union and nonunion members. And some of that money was diverted to their pensions of the union members to make them whole.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: And nonunion members were taken over by a pension benefit guarantee corp and were later terminated. So nonunion members definitely got screwed in that whole deal, at the expense of union members. So that was my first example, anyhow.
RUSH: Go ahead. We have a few minutes. What’s second example?
CALLER: I don’t know if this really applies. I don’t know if unions benefited directly, but the DOJ slush fund, the money taken from large settlements of bank fraud were given to left-wing community organizing groups — La Raza, Urban League, National Community and Reinvestment Coalition — things like that. I’m not sure if unions benefited directly.
The beneficiary is the Democrat Party. This is the whole point. Let me give you another reminder that we learned that was happening during the Obama administration. The justice department would fine any number of culprits. They would fine a business that had run afoul of the law. They would fine a criminal defendant who’d been guilty of running drugs or whatever.
Remember what they were doing with the money? They were sending proceeds of the fines to special interest groups that benefit the Democrat Party, such as La Raza, take your pick. It didn’t matter. That’s how these special interest groups on the left were partially funded. And some of that money, then, would come back to the Democrat Party. It’s all a money-laundering operation of a kind.
So Obama’s DOJ fines the ABC Widget Company $10 million. The money comes to the U.S. Treasury, but Obama directs that it go to a series of special interest groups, like Planned Parenthood or the Service Employees International Union or whatever. Well, those people receiving those proceeds, the fine money, will then turn around, as they always do, and some of it comes back to the Democrats as campaign donations.
So whereas Barack Obama and the Democrats couldn’t take fine money from somebody that lost a court case and just have the fine paid to the Democrat Party, this is how they get some of the money. And Jeff Sessions has announced and did announce shortly after becoming attorney general a total end to this practice. A lot of people, “Hey, Jeff, why don’t you give some of the money to Republican groups.” But Sessions said, “Nope, we’re not doing that, we’re not gonna bastardize it,” and fine revenue stayed within the United States Treasury.
So in any example you give, the ultimate beneficiary of all of this is the Democrat Party and their related support groups. In every example you gave, look at who benefited from Obama administration action. The bondholders, and these are people more important than stockholders. The bondholders that invested in General Motors lost out everything.
The Obama administration basically told ’em to pound sand and the way it all worked out was they found a way to, public ownership of General Motors for a time, transferred it to the union. And of course, again, some of that money is gonna come back to the Democrat Party.
Again, this is why the Supreme Court decision on union coerced union fees from nonunion members is such a devastating blow to the Democrats because it eliminates a significant source of their campaign funding.
Anyway, I appreciate the call. Thanks much.
RUSH: Darren in Louisville, Kentucky. Great to have you. How you doing, sir?
CALLER: Thank you very much. I’m doing well. Thanks. A few weeks ago, you were talking about people in Illinois’s property taxes going up, and just thinking about it. We have an Illinois resident who’s a public servant that refuses to pay the unions tax and then they turn around — due to the fact that they’re giving that money to the Democrats. I just find it… Ironic I guess would be a word or stupid. I want to hear your thoughts, please.
RUSH: Well, yeah, it is ironic. What are you asking actually me my thoughts about?
CALLER: Well, here we have a state that’s bankrupt, pretty much. They don’t have a budget. You know, they’re asking their employees to — well, really to join the union or pay —
RUSH: Are you talking about Kentucky or Illinois?
CALLER: No. Illinois. Well, Illinois in particular, but anywhere. It’s just the guy from Illinois is refusing to pay his dues, and, you know, the residents of Illinois are being asked to pay property taxes to make up the shortfall, and I just… I think it’s ridiculous.
RUSH: Okay. I… (interruption) Yeah, I know he’s… But I still, I don’t… He’s conflating property taxes with this union thing, and I’m not getting what the connection to it is. Let me see if I can figure this out during the break and I’ll get back to you.
RUSH: Okay. Now, I’m gonna be polite to the previous caller. The reason I was having trouble is he was trying to say that Illinois was losing money with their property tax thing and they’re a bunch of Democrats and now that their unions are losing money with this, and it was a double whammy. But they’re not losing money in Illinois in property taxes. What’s happening in Illinois with property taxes, is there’s a surcharge. People are having to pay an additional fee on top of their existing property tax, which is making their property worthless!
They can’t sell it! They can’t escape paying the new property tax by moving, and the people that designed the program even bragged about that. They said, “Part of the brilliance of this plan is that Illinois residents cannot escape this new tax by moving because we’re making their property worth less, ’cause who’s gonna buy it?” So Illinois is not losing money on their property tax like the unions and the Democrats are gonna be using money on the Supreme Court deal.
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