What’s Wrong About “Card Check”?

The Heritage Foundation explains how the system presently works and how “Card Check” will destroy the freedom of the American worker to choose:

For more than 60 years, American workers have decided whether to form a union with a private vote… neither management nor union organizers know how each individual worker voted. The secret ballot lets workers vote their conscience without risking job loss or physical assault for making the ‘wrong’ choice… . The EFCA would make it easier for union officials to pressure workers. Under the card-check process, union organizers would publicly solicit signatures on union authorization cards… Without secret ballots, union organizers know exactly who has signed union cards and who has not. In the past, union organizers have repeatedly approached and pressured-and, in some cases, threatened-reluctant workers. They have also used pro-union co-workers to solicit signatures, putting peer pressure on ‘holdouts’ to change their minds.

Under Card Check, union organizers and their enforcers will be able to go into any small business, hospital or construction site and coerce workers into signing cards. If they get 50 percent plus one, the deal’s done, and the workers are forced into a union. And if management and the new union fail to reach a negotiated contract, the federal government will just impose one. Coerced unionization allows for what is effectively a new, unaccountable form of forced taxation. Workers will have a portion of their paycheck going to the union to be spent as the bosses see fit, including political donations to parties and candidates that the workers may not even support.

Let’s say that union organizers come into your workplace and through coercion or peer-pressure – or even physical intimidation – “convince” a simple majority of your co-workers to form a union.

At that point you only have two choices. You either join the union or face job termination. You can’t opt-out!

And once you “join” the union, you are forced to pay union dues. Again, you cannot opt-out. You have no choice in the matter, and the union dues will come directly out of each and every paycheck you receive!

Not only will you have no choice but to have those union dues taken out of your paycheck every week, you will have little or no say in how those dues are spent!

Read more here. . . .

Revelation And The Gentiles Trampling Jerusalem

Part 13

This Is Grace

Quoting Thomas Goodwin:

“Grace” is more than mercy and love, it superadds to them. it denotes, not simply love, but the love of a sovereign, transcendly superior, one that may do what he will, that may wholly choose whether he will love or no. There may be love between equals, and an inferior may love a superior; but love in a superior, and so superior as he may do what he will, in such a one love is called grace: and therefore grace is attributed to princes; they are said to be gracious to their subjects, whereas subjects cannot be gracious to princes. Now God, who is an infinite Sovereign, who might have chosen whether ever He would love us or no, for Him to love us, this is grace.

Socialism And The Kingdom Of Christ By Charles Spurgeon

For many a year, by the grand old truths of the gospel, sinners were converted, and saints were edified, and the world was made to know that there is a God in Israel; but these are too antiquated for the present cultured race of superior beings. They are going to regenerate the world by Democratic Socialism, and set up a kingdom for Christ without the new birth or the pardon of sin. Truly, the Lord has not taken away the seven thousand that have not bowed the knee to Baal, but they are, in most cases, hidden away, even as Obadiah hid the prophets in a cave.

Representative Barney Frank Calls Justice Antonin Scalia A “Homophobe”

Barney Frank

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and radical homosexual activist, said in a recent interview that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a “homophobe.”

“At some point, [the Defense of Marriage Act] is going to have to go to the United States Supreme Court,” Frank said. “I wouldn’t want it to go to the United States Supreme Court now because that homophobe Antonin Scalia has too many votes on this current court.”

Such baseless accusations are much too common in today’s political climate. Barney Frank loves to argue his opinions from the point of view that if you disagree with him, you must be a “homophobe”. Barney Frank helped to create the current financial crisis through his personal incompetence or worse. Yet, he resorts to name calling to obscure his own personal indecency. Frank also wants President Barack Obama to reverse the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the U.S. military.

Read more here. . . .

Octavius Winslow: Life In The Spirit

“God, who quickens the dead.” Romans 4:17

The commencement of spiritual life is sudden. We are far from confining the Spirit to a certain prescribed order in this or any other part of His work. He is a Sovereign, and therefore works according to His own will. But there are some methods He more frequently adopts than others. We would not say that all conversion is a sudden work. There is a knowledge of sin, conviction of its guilt, repentance before God on account of it; these are frequently slow and gradual in their advance. But the first communication of divine light and life to the soul is always sudden-sudden and instantaneous as was the creation of natural light-”God said, Let there be light, and there was light.” It was but a word, and in an instant chaos rolled away, and every object and scene in nature was bathed in light and glory-sudden as was the communication of life to Lazarus-”Jesus cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth!” it was but a word, and in an instant “he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes.” So is it in the first communication of divine light and life to the soul. The eternal Spirit says, “Let there be light,” and in a moment there is light. He speaks again, “Come forth,” and in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the dead are raised.

Striking illustrations of the suddenness of the Spirit’s operation are afforded in the cases of Saul of Tarsus and of the thief upon the cross. How sudden was the communication of light and life to their souls! It was no long and previous process of spiritual illumination-it was the result of no lengthened chain of reasoning-no labored argumentation. In a moment, and under circumstances most unfavorable to the change, as we should think-certainly, at a period when the rebellion of the heart rose the most fiercely against God, “a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun,” poured its transforming radiance into the mind of the enraged persecutor; and a voice, conveying life into the soul, reached the conscience of the dying thief. Both were translated from darkness into light, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” How many who read this page may say, “Thus it was with me!” God the Eternal Spirit arrested me when my heart’s deep rebellion was most up in arms against Him. It was a sudden and a short work, but it was mighty and effectual. It was unexpected and rapid, but deep and thorough. In a moment the hidden evil was brought to view-the deep and dark fountain broken up; all my iniquities passed before me, and all my secret sins seemed placed in the light of God’s countenance. My soul sank down in deep mire-yes, hell opened its mouth to receive me.”

Overlook not this wise and gracious method of the blessed Spirit’s operation in regeneration. It is instantaneous. The means may have been simple; perhaps it was the loss of a friend-an alarming illness-a word of reproof or admonition dropped from a parent or a companion-the singing of a hymn-the hearing of a sermon-or some text of Scripture winged with his power to the conscience; in the twinkling of an eye, the soul, “dead in trespasses and sins,” was “quickened” and translated into “newness of life.” Oh blessed work of the blessed and Eternal Spirit! Oh mighty operation! Oh inscrutable wisdom! What a change has now passed over the whole man! Overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, that which is begotten in the soul is the divine life-a holy, influential, never-dying principle. Truly he is a new creature, “old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” For this change let it not be supposed that there is, in the subject, any previous preparation. There can be no preparation for light or life. What preparation was there is chaos? What preparation was there in the cold clay limbs of Lazarus? What in Paul? What in the dying thief? The work of regeneration is supremely the work of the Spirit. The means may be employed, and are to be employed, in accordance with the Divine purpose, yet are they not to be deified. They are but means, “profiting nothing” without the power of God the Holy Spirit. Regeneration is His work, and not man’s.