by Lance Thompson

In the 28 July Idaho Statesman, Joe Estrella reported that a local union was hiring homeless people to walk its picket line.

“The Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters Local 635 is paying $12.50 an hour to anyone willing to walk picket lines,” Estrella reports. “Mixed among a few union members and their spouses are homeless people.” The non-union picketers are protesting the use of nonunion labor on a 26-unit condo project in downtown Boise. Evidently, there is so much highly-paid union construction work in the area that union members are too busy to protest the fact that some carpenters are working for less.

When asked about the practice of hiring homeless picketers for the union line, Local 635 representative Rob Robbins explained, “We’ll supplement with anybody who wants to work. I don’t ask their addresses.” Local 635's grievance with Commercial Constructors, Inc., a Boise area drywall and steel stud framing business owned by Steve Packard, is low wages and health insurance. Robbins said, “I have evidence that his average payroll is $15 an hour and that only 20% of his workers have health insurance.” Local 635 is paying its replacement picketers $12.50 an hour, and there was no mention of health insurance.

When an organization hires temporary replacement workers for less money and fewer benefits than their regular laborers are paid, don’t unions condemn such temporary workers as “scabs?” Aren’t such tactics by the organization known as “unfair labor practices?”

The temporary picketers hired by the union have no job security--the protest could end tomorrow, and they’d all be out of work. They have no right of collective bargaining--there is an endless stream of eager workers ready to step up if others tire of the conditions. Local 635 does not negotiate with the temporary workers—it’s $12.50 an hour, take it or leave it. The temporary picketers seem ripe for organizing, but, oddly, no one from the union has spoken to them about the benefits of forming or joining a union, the power of collective bargaining, or the exploitation they are suffering at the hands of an organization that enjoys a surplus of available labor to fill a small number of highly coveted jobs. Any company that employed such exploitive tactics would be excoriated by union spokesmen and labor activists.

In whatever industry unions have organized, the unions always portray themselves as the heart and soul of the industry, the victims of greedy corporate masters, the conscience of the company. In fact, unions are an industry unto themselves. Instead of goods or services, unions supply labor. However, while federal and state regulations prevent companies from monopolizing a particular industry or sector of the economy, the same regulatory agencies enable and encourage unions to monopolize the supply of labor. This monopoly enables unions to organize a company’s workers against their employers, demand ever higher wages, ever more generous contracts, ever more expensive benefits, all backed up by the threat of shutting down the industry with a strike. Or by picketing a place of business, sometimes with scab labor.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that an industry that supplies labor at the highest possible price should endeavor to obtain such labor at the lowest possible cost. This is the way all businesses function, whether they supply products or services. The difference between the cost they pay and the price they sell for is the profit, which pays for all other expenses of the business. When a company does this successfully, it is accused, often by unions of making “excessive” profits or by Congress of enjoying “windfall” profits. But when a union secures higher wages for its members, reaps greater income from higher dues, and has it all paid for by the customers and stockholders of employers, that is called “business as usual.”

Rob Robbins of Local 635 sees nothing wrong with hiring temporary workers to cover for his members, at a lower hourly wage than his members are earning elsewhere. It makes sense to fill the job of picketer with the lowest cost help available. Yet when employer Steve Packard hires workers, who willingly take the jobs, at the lowest possible cost, he is targeted and picketed. He is picketed, in fact, by individuals who would make more working for him than picketing his business. But the union doesn’t allow that.

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Lance Thompson lives in Idaho with his wife and daughter.

by  Lance Thompson
 

Movie buffs and political junkies don’t usually go together, but for all of you who check the boxes in both categories, tell me this, don’t Congressional investigative panels always remind you of the courtroom scene in the original Planet of the Apes, when an orangutan kangaroo court is convicting Chuck Heston of being a public menace?

Arlen Specter grilling Alberto Gonzales on the checks and balances in the Constitution reminded me of one of the best lines in the movie. Three talking orangutans are trying a naked human (Heston) on trumped-up charges. One of the panel of judges allows a line of questioning from Heston’s defenders, who are also talking apes, but then warns, “But do not make a mockery of this trial.”

Rod Serling wrote the screenplay for the original movie, and it has all the quality, cynicism and mind-bending reversals we had come to expect from the creator of The Twilight Zone. Most people remember the ending (which we won’t give away, for those of you who haven’t seen it). But many forget the long first act when the stranded astronauts are trekking across a hostile desert, ruminating about the nature of man in the universe. Charlton Heston, the leader, maintains that, in this vast universe, There’s gotta be something better--than man. As with most of Serling’s protagonists, he is proven right, but in the most mind-blowing manner possible.

Apes lording over humans was a provocative and unimaginable scenario in 1968, but those House and Senate panels seem determined to keep the concept alive. It doesn’t matter which party presides, who’s on the hot seat, or what the topic is, Senators and congressmen always play the part of the bullying apes, applying their own self-serving rules to badger helpless witnesses toward a foregone conclusion. If there’s a congressional investigation that doesn’t follow that scenario, I haven’t seen it.

Planet of the Apes is a terrific movie, which holds up well even though the premise and resolution are widely known. Heston is terrific as the granite-jawed cynic, Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans make you forget the constrictive makeup with their expert acting, and director Franklin J. Schaffner’s off-kilter camera angles add a disorienting perspective to the impossible fable (he would win an Oscar two years later for Patton). Most of all, Rod Serling’s script is a gem of science fiction, adventure thriller, and political commentary all rolled into thought-provoking entertainment, in the best tradition of one of America’s finest writers.

But ultimately, no matter how much fun it is to watch all the simian silliness, Planet of the Apes is a powerful warning we must all heed--not to let the monkeys take over Washington.

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Lance Thompson lives in Meridian, Idaho, with his wife and daughter.

by Lance Thompson

Last November, six Islamic imams, after behaving in a suspicious and provocative manner, were thrown off a US Airways flight after other passengers complained. The complaining passengers were threatened by lawsuits, which gave rise to legislation to indemnify citizens who in good faith report such behavior to authorities. The measure was passed with a bipartisan majority in the House–all Republicans and 105 Democrats supporting. In the Senate, Democrats Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton, and Chuck Schumer also support the legislation, along with Republican colleagues.

However, a 23 July Wall Street Journal Opinion piece noted that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers are working hard to prevent the inclusion of this citizen-protection provision in the upcoming homeland security bill. Characteristically, they will not debate the merits of the provision, but instead are using parliamentary trickery to sidetrack it.

Put aside, for the moment, the question of what constituency Democrats Leahy, Reid and Conyers are serving when they refuse to protect concerned citizens from repercussions of a good-faith act that could save innocent lives. The fact that there is any opposition at all highlights a disturbing trend in our society.

The influence on our young people by rap music is profound, but nowhere more than in the area of citizen support of police. Hip-hop culture and gangsta rap have embraced the “Stop Snitchin’” code, making cooperation with police a transgression punishable by ridicule, persecution, even death. In this backward world, committing a crime is an achievement, but reporting or preventing one is a despicable act. We cannot tolerate a society that inculcates into our youth a culture of criminal conspiracy.

We are at war. Admit it or not, like it or not, politically correct or incorrect, we must face the fact that an Islamic army is sworn to our destruction.

Further, it is evident that soldiers of this army adroitly use our system against us. They use our freedom of religion to indoctrinate new soldiers, our freedom of speech to denounce our government and culture, our freedom of assembly to organize and plot against us. When apprehended, they use our system of civil rights to elude prosecution, hamstring our justice system, and expand their ability to plan further attacks. They use our courts to deter authorities and ordinary citizens from interfering with their deadly plans.

Our culture must fundamentally change. We must teach our young people that it is their duty as citizens to report criminal activity, whether it’s a casual drug deal on a corner, a gun in a school locker, or a gang of imams in an airport condemning our country.

The Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s 18 year campaign of terror was brought to an end with the help of his brother, who recognized his writing. The six Islamic terrorists who were plotting to murder soldiers at Fort Dix were exposed by an alert Circuit City clerk who saw their gun-toting rants during a video transfer. The six flying imams were reported by concerned fellow passengers who realized that in this war against an enemy that can strike anywhere, every American citizen is on the front line.

We must teach children utterly to reject the hip-hop creed of “Stop Snitchin’” and instead render assistance to the natural allies of a free society–the police, FBI and government agencies tasked with keeping us safe and our nation secure.

Civil libertarians will object strongly that we will raise a generation of informers. Society’s predators, from schoolyard bullies to career criminals, will understandably condemn those who dare to expose them. And the Islamic terrorists who hide behind the rights and freedoms that generations of Americans have fought and died to defend will protest loudest of all. Because they know they can only succeed with the tacit complicity of a population that won’t tell, won’t report, won’t “snitch.”

We must teach our children that exposing evil, in any form, is an honorable, commendable civic duty. We must encourage them and reward them and tell them that the lives they save could be their own, or those of family and friends, or maybe those of 3000 innocent people reporting for work on a sunny September morning.

There are American political leaders, like Leahy, Reid and Conyers, who want to strip away protections from citizens who perform this vital service. We must insist that these politicians answer two direct questions: Who are they trying to protect, and whose side are they on?

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Lance Thompson lives in Meridian, Idaho, with his wife and daughter.

by Lance Thompson

“Flip-flop” has become a severe political criticism, most memorably applied to John Kerry’s unfathomable “I voted for the war before I voted against it” explanation.

The flip-flop criticism is leveled against Republican candidates on the issue of abortion, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson among others. The underlying accusation is that candidates who once supported abortion rights have switched their positions to curry favor with pro-life voters and the conservative base.

I cannot say what is in the hearts of candidates who change their minds on abortion (a group that includes Ronald Reagan). But I do know that my own views have changed on the matter, and I have never run for anything but a bus.

When I was young, pro-choice sounded like a good position. It coincided with the views of most of the women one was likely to meet on a college campus, the Supreme Court was behind it, and it was the ace in a hole for a guy suddenly confronted with the responsibility for an unwanted pregnancy. Being pro-abortion simplified life considerably.

Later, I met and fell in love with the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. We were married, and decided to have a baby. It was just as impersonal as that sounds–we knew very little about parenthood, kids, or any of the other surprises that come with families. We were unexpectedly excited when we found out a baby was on the way, and even more surprisingly devastated when my wife suffered a miscarriage. This unborn child we’d never met, had no relationship with, was taken from us, and we felt that loss deeply.

The following year, we learned again that a baby was on the way. We were once again very exited, and went through all the classes, preparations, and baby-equipment shopping sprees. Because we had been through it all before, we were aware that anything could happen during the pregnancy. Our emotional investment in this unborn child increased every day, along with our concern that something would go wrong.

The suspense built as we passed the mid-December due date, and ended up in the delivery room the day after Christmas. I was there as my wife endured the hours of labor, marveling at her ability to maintain a positive attitude through what, to a male, seems like a nearly impossible ordeal. I was there for the countdown, for the flurry of activity that comes prior to delivery, for the agony and ecstasy of childbirth. And I was there the moment our daughter took her first breath.

After months of waiting, hoping and praying that everything would be all right, we were blessed with a healthy baby girl. Having witnessed the birth of my child, I was left with the firm conviction that you’d have to have a heart of stone and a soul of Teflon not to believe that a newborn baby is the most precious gift God can bestow upon two parents.

It’s hard to say when the flip-flop process began for me, but I know where it was completed–right there in the delivery room when I held by newborn daughter in my arms. It seems impossible that a parent would have any other instinct than to protect and cherish that helpless new life. To consider destroying that life in the womb seems as wrong as any act one could imagine.

I don’t know if any of the candidates’ positions on abortion changed in this way, or if they share any of my feelings. But to have switched from some one who is comfortable with abortion to some one who is unshakably opposed is not evidence of political expediency. It simply shows me some one who has taken the same journey as I have.

Those that have come recently to the conviction that abortion is wrong may not have reached that conclusion for the same reasons I did. But I have much more in common with them than with those who haven’t made the journey at all.

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Lance Thompson lives in Meridian, Idaho, with his wife and daughter.

*** From the Miniature Babies collection by Camille Allen (www.camilleallen.com)    

by Lance Thompson

Earlier this year, when Vice President Cheney voiced the opinion that Speaker Pelosi’s initiative to withdraw troops from Iraq was playing into the hands of the enemy, Pelosi demanded, "How dare he question my patriotism?" From Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha to left-wing talk show host Bill Maher, those who advocate withdrawal from Iraq answer every counterargument by gathering all the self-righteous indignation they can muster and fuming, "How dare you question my patriotism?"

First, patriotism is not an inherent or intrinsic quality. Rather, it is an attribute that must be developed, tested, and proven by word or deed. Patriotism is not conferred on Americans as citizenship is. It is not a birthright, but a quality that is either present or absent in varying degrees in each citizen. Thus, just as one’s sobriety is questioned when one is drunk, one’s eyesight is questioned when one fails a vision test, and one’s virginity is questioned when one is pregnant, so one’s patriotism can be questioned when one acts or speaks to the detriment of his country.

Neither is patriotism a quality that, once attained, is irrevocable. It must be maintained with a consistency of behavior. For example, the anti-war views of John Murtha, a champion of the withdrawal-at-any-cost coalition, are trumpeted by the left as particularly powerful since he was once a Marine. Once, long ago, there was no such thing as an ex-Marine, but the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and Saddam apologist and child-molester Scott Ritter have established that category to which Murtha deservedly belongs. Joining the Marines is a noble act, but it is not an inoculation against treasonous rhetoric or despicable behavior in later life.

Nor is an oath of office or a career in public service necessarily proof of patriotism. Former President Carter took an oath as a naval officer and as President to protect and preserve the Constitution, but he has spent much of the time since leaving the White House (and quite a bit as an occupant) denigrating this country, its foreign policy, its allies, and its leadership. One may agree or disagree with Carter’s views, but one cannot automatically classify them as patriotic merely because he was elected to a single term as President.

Patriots risk, patriots sacrifice, patriots selflessly serve their country. George Washington took command of the Continental army when it was untrained, ill-equipped and hopelessly outmatched by the enemy. It was unlikely that the revolution would succeed at all, and the commander of the army was sure to be severely punished if England were to prevail. He could easily have remained a prosperous farmer and property owner, but he answered the call of patriotism at great personal risk and sacrifice, enduring privation, hardship and combat with his troops. Later, after serving as the nation’s first president, he voluntarily yielded the office after two terms, setting an example for generations to come. That is a rare lifetime of patriotism that is truly beyond question. When a modern political leader wishes to be placed in the category of unquestionable patriot, let him or her match Washington’s risk, sacrifice and service.

When a politician visits heads of state sponsors of terrorism, as Speaker Pelosi has; when a politician accuses our troops of terrorizing women and children in Iraq and committing atrocities in Vietnam, as John Kerry has; when a politician compares our troops to the beastly sadists of Saddam’s torture chambers, as Ted Kennedy has; when a politician dismisses the global war on terror as a bumper sticker, as John Edwards has, when a politician characterizes the Iraq war as a lost cause, a mistake, an illegal act while our troops are engaged in combat, as many on the left have done; then none of them can claim the protection of patriotism. They should answer, however, charges of treason, because every one of those acts encourages, emboldens and supports our enemies.

Questioning anyone’s patriotism is not a crime. Questioning an elected representative’s patriotism is a legitimate test for office each voter should administer: Will this candidate serve my country and its interests? If a candidate or office-holder can’t endure that kind of scrutiny, he or she doesn’t deserve to be in the race.

It is certain we have not heard for the last time, "How dare you question my patriotism?" But we now know it is a question worthy of being asked.

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Lance Thompson is a freelance writer and photographer who lives in Meridian, Idaho, with his wife and daughter.

By Rose Pedenko and Tanya Simon

Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try.

These lyrics, by the late John Lennon, are about a world he envisioned where people lived in harmony, peace, and love. Coincidentally, the social revolution in the sixties saw a parallel movement advanced by the Chicano Youth Liberation toward the end of that decade. One such student movement was named MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, the "Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan").

Today in America, particularly in the southwest, that harmony has been replaced with discord, friction, and cries of "Reconquista!" (re-conquest). For those not familiar with the term and how it should be correctly applied, we offer a brief description of its origins.

Beginning in 722 and ending in 1492, the Reconquista was the method by which the Christian Kingdoms of Hispania (today's Portugal and Spain) crushed and excluded the Muslims and Moors at Al-Andalus, in the south, which ended 800 years of Moorish rule.

Just as with the word jihad, which is being misused by Islamic terrorists, so is Reconquista being misused. It is fast becoming a battle cry for illegal immigrants from Mexico.

"Reconquista" has become the manifesto of its activist leaders in Los Angeles, such as Art Torres, Chairman of the California Democratic Party. It was he who declared that Proposition "187 was the last gasp of white America in California." That 1994 ballot initiative was designed to deny social services, health care and public education to illegal immigrants. It passed with nearly 60% of the vote and became law, but was overturned by our liberal federal court. Additionally, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are among the vast south wing conspiracy of Reconquistadors. California government now reads like a Who's Who of present or former MEChA members who have successfully infiltrated all levels of power in the state.

MEChA's goal is this: to re-colonize America and make Los Angeles the capital of their mythic land--Aztlan. In spite of the fact California was a colony of the Spanish crown, Los Angeles has been chosen as the capital of Aztlan for its convenience. Hey, they're already here, and have announced, "legal or not, we are staying."

It is this expedient rewriting of Mexican history that causes us to postulate:

What is Aztlan without Americans?

Imagine for a moment, if we could return Los Angeles to the desert pueblo it once was as their newly claimed capital. The infrastructure would vanish: no highways, no freeways, no irrigation, or sanitation. There would be no seaports, airports, or factories. Not even a Starbucks in sight. They would be left with adobe brick dwellings, surrounded by barren wasteland, brushfire-prone mountains, landslide-riddled canyons, coyotes, jackrabbits and rattlesnakes. Oh wait, that's Mexico.

Conquest of foreign lands is not a uniquely American endeavor. It has occurred throughout ancient and modern history. We all know the clarion call after each bloody war: "to the victor belong the spoils." What that means: the new Reconquistadors are laying claim to the bounty of over 100 years of American enterprise without firing a shot. They are doing this not only on the backs of Yankee ingenuity, but on the backs of their own ancestors who came here legally and assimilated.

If U.S. citizens do nothing to halt the current and future "illegal" immigration, those spoils will not be just a mythic Aztlan, they will come fully furnished with American blood, sweat and tears.