Extremely important issue - fundamental to 'draining the Swamp'. "The president could say it’s within his power under Article II to terminate the agreements." A shame Mr. Howard didn't try to work with President Trump on this matter. It certainly won't be President Biden, 'the most pro-union president in history', the Constitution be damned.

When government emplotee unions exist, the "public servant" becomes "public master" for the "moral hazard" and our country becomes a people of the government unions ,  by the government unions, for the government unions.  The people become servants of the government,   subjects of the government unions, for the government unions.

This is important.   How is he going to go about this process?

The teacher's union destruction of education is another example. Consider how this has corroded government: 95% of government political contributions went to Hillary. 97% of Justice Department contributions went to Hillary. 94% of IRS contributions went to Hillary. 99% of State Department contributions went to Hillary. 99.7% of Education Department contributions went to Hillary.

Thanks to JFK we now have a federal government Deep State of 2.1 million people who are more than 95% Democrats in collusion with the Democrat Party. The Deep State was created when President Kennedy enabled public sector unions to bargain for wages and benefits by Executive Order in 1962. He did this in opposition to both houses of Congress and all prior presidents. This could be the most corrosive thing to happen to government in my lifetime. Public sector unions are in collusion with Democrats and they actively work to further enable unions, obtain unaffordable compensation packages, restrict services, avoid employee accountability, and implement bias against anti-union voters. We end up with the entire bloc of government employees (federal, state and local) favoring liberal Democrats, favoring big government, and harming any opposition (e.g. conservatives).

Ms. Kehnemui is a 12-year veteran of FoxNews.com, where she was a reporter and then senior politics editor. She subsequently worked as managing director of digital communications at American Enterprise Institute.

Government is failing in its core responsibilities because an unelected and unaccountable group has “seized control of the operating machinery,” according to a noted attorney and author, who is proposing a challenge to the constitutionality of public sector unions.



Fifty years of collective bargaining in the public sector has created an ineffective, unresponsive, and uncooperative workforce that is violating the tenets of democracy, the founder of Common Good, Philip K. Howard, says. “Democracy is itself a process of accountability, and these union controls have made it so that no one in government, as a practical matter, is accountable,” he told the Sun.



Mr. Howard’s newest book, “Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions,” released Tuesday, asserts that Congress and executive branch officials do not have the authority to turn over their responsibilities, particularly their power of the purse, to unelected officials. 



“The government cannot delegate its sovereign power to any private group. If I'm an elected executive and the legislature wants to give power over to someone else to make governing decisions, they can't do that. They must retain the responsibility and be accountable to voters,” he said. 



Mr. Howard has written several books over the years on government inefficiency, including “The Death of Common Sense” and “Life Without Lawyers.” In 2017, he served on President Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum to offer insight  on how government policy affects economic growth, job creation, and productivity. He has previously advised Vice President Gore and several governors on legal and regulatory reforms.



Currently, about 33 percent of government employees in federal, state, and local positions are unionized. That’s about 7.1 million union employees working in public jobs, including 4.6 million teachers and 357,000 members of the Fraternal Order of Police.&nbsp;



Mr. Howard offers multiple examples of unaccountability in these professions, including the case of a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, who had at least 17 complaints against him at the time he suffocated George Floyd in 2020. He shares the story of teacher unions that refused to teach, even remotely, during the pandemic, because live remote instruction was not included in their contracts.



The results on student achievement during the pandemic have been well documented, with African-American third-graders performing 17 percentile points lower than the same cohort had two years before and white third-graders scoring 9 percentile points lower.



“Some teachers just aren't cut out for the job,” he said. “For government to work well, the people in the supervisory [position] have to be able to make choices” to terminate bad apples. 



Citing city budgets that appropriate as much as 70 percent to labor costs, Mr. Howard says mayors and municipal authorities have given away their ability to make decisions on taxing and services. Bargaining impasses are left to arbitrators, whose decisions effectively operate as legislative choices.



Worse, he says, unions are greasing the wheels with their political influence, effectively funding congressional or executive elections and then negotiating their pay with those that they helped elect. “It's not an adversarial negotiation. It's a payoff,” he says.



To make the constitutional case against unions, Mr. Howard cites Articles II and IV of the U.S. Constitution, which, respectively, vest executive power in the president and require a Republican form of government to be exercised by officials accountable to voters.&nbsp;



He also asserts that the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which codified earlier executive orders requiring the president to collectively bargain with unions, is unconstitutional.&nbsp;



“The Supreme Court, in many decisions, has interpreted what ‘executive power’ means and has written opinions on the extent to which Congress can limit executive power. And under those decisions the executive has the ‘exclusive and illimitable power’ of removal,” he said. “Congress can’t take that away.”&nbsp;



Initiating a court claim, he said, will require finding an executive with standing who is also willing to file suit. The president could say it’s within his power under Article II to terminate the agreements. If he does so, then he would be sued by the unions and the case would go to the Supreme Court.&nbsp;



“The argument is pretty simple and straightforward,” Mr. Howard said. “There is a serious governance issue here and we do need to look at this more closely.”

In a new book, noted attorney Philip K. Howard says public sector collective bargaining is dereliction of presidential, congressional duty.

Members of the Seattle Education Association picket outside a school district building at Seattle.

Conservatives in the House who want a balanced budget, or at least to trim federal spending, have been eyeing major entitlement programs like Social Security as part of their efforts.

Those aspiring to fill his shoes could learn a lot from his joyful temperament.

Advocates are confident that a proposal to raise the state’s minimum wage to $20 an hour, the highest in America, has the support to pass this year.

Who will step forward to articulate a western plan of action for  winning the war?

The basic point here is that they will do anything, I mean anything, to avoid any spending cuts. 

Beware of advice to the contrary — the 14th Amendment was designed to ensure government debt was repaid in gold.

Crime, not police reform, is top of voters’ minds in 2023, which is a problem for someone elected on a police reform platform.

The poll found that Trump is leading Biden in the general election race by three points, 44 percent to 41 percent.

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