Best of the Blogs: One Lump or Two?
November 2 is fast approaching, and the nation is awaiting the election results to see whether the Tea Party Movement will be revealed to be a force in American politics or an over-hyped media sensation. This week’s “Best of the Blogs” feature provides everything a political junkie needs to learn more about the Tea Party Movement.
The obvious starting point might be Butch Cassidy’s (or Paul Newman’s) famous question, “Who are those guys?” Amy Gardner at the Washington Post tries to answer that question here (hat tip to Steven Easley). Despite her best efforts, a definitive picture of the Movement remains elusive:
[A] new Washington Post canvass of hundreds of local tea party groups reveals a different sort of organization, one that is not so much a movement as a disparate band of vaguely connected gatherings that do surprisingly little to engage in the political process.
When most hear about public employment law, they believe the topic involves unions and collective bargaining between government employers and public employee unions. This is not correct. Although public-sector labor law is an increasingly important area of inquiry given the robust union movement in the public sector, an equally important area concerns the constitutional rights of public employees. This is public employment law. It is important area of the law both because only public employees, with a government employer, have the protections of the federal constitution under the state action doctrine and because of the sheer size of the public workforce in this country: currently around 23 million workers or about 17% of all workers in the United States.