Paycheck Protection

Late last night, while laying in bed, after we’d already said our “goodnights,” I suddenly remembered something I wanted to tell Kevin about. I had learned earlier in the day, at a meeting, that a “Paycheck Protection” initiative had just qualified for the California ballot. (This is a big deal.) And, apparently, the issue is polling really well (high) right now. So, I began to excitedly tell Kevin my story and then … I realized he was sound asleep. Completely dead to the world. This was quite the bummer since I was so worked up about it.

I think unions are valid for collective bargaining purposes but things have really gotten out of hand with powerful unions engaging in political battles that many, if not most, of their employee-members would find morally objectionable. The proposed initiative says it best: “It is fundamentally unfair to force public employees to give money to political activities or candidates they do not support.”

In the meeting yesterday, I sat next to my friend Xiaochin. She’s another twenty-something. When we got the information on the Paycheck Protection, we leafed through it and she remarked, “There’s no website on here.” Funny, that’s the first thing someone in our generation thinks about with these types of things – where’s the website? The guy who is the mastermind behind this initiative is really good at what he does. But he’s also very “old school” and apparently doesn’t use websites. Xiaochin and I were left to ponder and puzzle over how on earth a person could possibly qualify an initiative in the massive state of California without a website! (You need approximately 900,000 signatures here because many signatures end up being disqualified!!) But, we’re the newbies to the group. It’s pretty obvious we don’t know much. So we did the smart thing … we sat there and smiled.