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SCOTUS will hear Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 this term.
Damon Root|Sep. 28, 2017 10:55 am
Today the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that has the potential of delivering a death blow to the legal privileges enjoyed by public-sector unions.
The case is Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31. At issue is whether it is constitutional for state governments to compel public-sector workers to pay union fees as a condition of employment even when those workers are not union members.
The case was brought by Mark Janus, a state employee in Illinois who objects to paying mandatory fees to a union that he has refused to join. Janus argues that the state’s scheme violates his First Amendment rights by forcing him to support political speech and activity that he does not wish to support.
Janus’s overarching goal is to overturn the Supreme Court’s 1977 precedent in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, in which the Court approved mandatory public-sector union fees on the grounds that non-union “free riders” should have to contribute something toward collective bargaining activities that benefit them too. That ruling provided a massive boon to public-sector unions nationwide.
https://reason.com/blog/2017/09/28/supreme-court-agrees-to-hear-major-case
“We are seen as a town of soft targets.” Not sure what this means or how you arrive at this conclusion.
Ridgewood’s crime rate (measured in instances per 1000 of population) is historically low (9.3/1000) as compared to neighbors like Paramus (52/1000) or Paterson (39/1000). On a national basis, Ridgewood is in the top 17% of the safest (read: low crime) communities.
Are you implying that suburban privilege is inversely proportional to urban street smarts — giving Ridgewoodians only an illusion of safety — when in fact — we are easy pickings — or “soft” because our average income ranks 37th out of 702 municipalities — according to the 2010 census — and rich folks are easy pickings for criminals? It seems logical that a “good” criminal would want to steal from rich folks, but the opposite is overwhelmingly true. Nationwide, the poor living in poor communities are the most frequent victims of crime hence, considerably more “soft” than we are in this town.
I’m no fan of parking garages, and such structures do bring with them a degree of urban blight and perhaps a bit more property crime — mostly because they afford bad guys a convenient place to hide and steal cars and stuff from cars — which accounts for much of the Paramus spike. But by any reasonable measure, Ridgewood remains among the most crime free towns in the County, the State and the Nation — garage or no garage.
