The Liberated Centrist

Three employees of Kent State University on Monday, April 29  filed suit  against the University’s Board of Trustees and the Association of Federal, State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 8 because of the union’s refusal to recognize their resignation of membership. In August 2018, Annamarie Hannay, Adda Gape and John Kohl, custodians for student residence halls at Kent State, resigned from their union expecting the automatic deduction of dues from their paychecks to cease. The union refused to honor their resignation, maintaining that the plaintiffs could only resign within the union’s arbitrary opt-out window. The university has continued to deduct dues from the plaintiffs, who each pay almost $600 to AFSCME each year against their wishes. The case filed on Monday by the Buckeye Institute and  Liberty Justice Center  seeks to reaffirm the First Amendment rights of public employees as established in the Supreme Court’s decision in  Janus...

This week, the Maine Legislature’s Committee on Energy, Utilities and Technology held a public hearing on  LD 1364 , a bill that would prohibit state funds from being transferred to internet service providers (ISPs) unless they commit to abiding by the now-repealed  2015 FCC order  that instituted so-called “net neutrality.” Curiously dubbed the “Open Internet Order”, the FCC deemed that companies who provide access to the internet would be considered communications utilities, instead of information services. Chairman Ajit Pai  led the effort  to  repeal  that order, and restore the framework for ISPs that had functioned since the 1990s. Passing LD 1364 would double down on a misguided policy that would undermine internet freedom and ultimately hurt consumers. Proponents of net neutrality sell the idea as a critical safeguard for a free and flourishing internet. These claims ignore the fact that the rules were only adopted in 2015, after two dec...