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Congress steps in on rail strike

There are times when labor disputes can spread beyond the worker-employer framework and spill over into the rest of society. In those times, the federal government has the authority to step in and impose a settlement in the dispute. President Joe Biden has asked Congress to act to prevent a national railroad strike this week, citing the huge economic impact that such a strike would have on the nation. The rail industry is tied in to just about every other industrial and commercial endeavor. It delivers tons of raw materials to processors and manufacturers, then takes those finished ...

Sedition conviction proves gravity of Jan. 6 insurrection

Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, and one of his subordinates were convicted on Tuesday of seditious conspiracy for their role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The conviction provides clear evidence that the riot that broke out in Washington that day was not just an exercise in freedom of speech or a tour group gone wrong. The a mob of far-right supporters of Donald Trump broke into the Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from approving the results of the 2020 presidential election. The mob wanted to thwart the will of the voters and keep Trump in ...

Vote approval hangup threatens Arizona voters

Arizona is home of some of the most strident election deniers in the nation. Donald Trump insisted the Arizona vote totals were rigged in 2020, and Republican leaders there have not let it go. Republican candidate for Arizona governor Kari Lake, who lost the election three weeks ago, still has not conceded and insists some problems with Maricopa County ballots being printed too lightly to be read by electric tabulators at the polling places is a sign of fraud and manipulation. Truth is, all the ballots were collected and counted. Now, in Cochise County in Arizona, a pair of ...

When sports, politics clash

Like the Olympic Games, the World Cup comes around once every four years, and it grabs the interest of soccer fans throughout the world. As such the World Cup, unfortunately, becomes a prime arena not just for sports but for all the political gamesmanship that comes with international competitions. This year the World Cup is being hosted by Qatar, a small, oil rich Middle Eastern country with a questionable human rights record, especially concerning the hordes of foreign workers it brings into the country to build its buildings and infrastructure in harsh heat, paying substandard wages ...

DFLers should focus on getting regular job done

When political parties attain a controlling majority in Congress or a state legislature, they tend to flex their muscle and try to push through all the pet bills and projects that the other party was blocking before. So it is in Minnesota this year, where the DFL has gained control of the State Senate to go along with its majority in the House. With DFLer Tim Walz in the governor’s office, the DFL is poised to do whatever it wants to do. It’s not quite that simple, of course. Not all members of a party necessarily want the same thing, and on some issues, they need a supermajority, ...

Democrats have mastered mail balloting — Republicans will pay if they fail to step up

The first thing Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) Republican Chairman Sam DeMarco saw on election night after the polls closed was the more than 100,000 votes from his home county that dropped for Democrat John Fetterman through mail-in ballots. Although he wasn’t sure just yet that meant the race was lost, he also knew Republicans needed to fix something in the party’s way of doing things going forward. “Those initial large dump of voters were mail-in ballots from Democrats,” he said of the advance voting that began in 2020 during the pandemic. Democrats embraced it with gusto, ...