A novel legal theory: you have a right to have guns, but not buy them. Unions using their friends in the press to help them negotiate. The state's pay system isn't perfect, but it ain't a nightmare
So, according to a novel new legal theory the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms (that is to have them), but not to buy?
The longer I read (and write) about legal matters, the more I am reminded of what a friend said. She's Catholic and in response to a discussion about all the things one CANNOT do in the Catholic church, she said something akin to "you can do almost anything in the Church, you just need to find the right priest".
You see, I think that legal success is as much a matter of finding the right judge, not so much a matter of the law being the law. I mean, some things are obvious: did the guy's blood alcohol level exceed the limit or not? Some are not, and end up being a judgment call where one judge says that the facts clearly demonstrate "A", while another says they clearly demonstrate "B".
Well, apparently some liberal judges are approving a new legal theory I've seen a time or two: that the Second Amendment (along with the Supreme Court's new test as to how to weigh controversies around same), guarantees a right to POSSESE a firearm, but says nothing about BUYING one.
That's the essence of the Reload blog post below, absent the clever language.*
Two judges thus far have bought this argument (one of them being the judge who saw the case about Colorado's 3 day waiting period).
One of the judges (NOT the Colorado judge--yet) got overturned on appeal. I'm not a huge fan of prognosticating about courts, but I have the intuition the other will as well.
The essence of the appellate court ruling being that you cannot ban "around" a right: that is you cannot say someone has a right but then remove every way they have to access/exercise that right. Sound logic and appropriate reasoning unless you're trying to help people ban guns in my view.
Let's hope the same holds with the Colorado ruling.
All the more reason to push for a balance of power in this state and in this country. The way that judges are picked is political. The judges themselves are (to varying degrees) political. Thus, to have a system that is centered on the middle-ground, we need our politics to have tension and balance, not single party dominance.
*Maybe you're more clever than I, but I swear it took me three runs at this below to understand exactly what the hell was going on. When the author talks about the "one weird trick" argument this is what he means. The argument I mention above.
**I'm reminded here of the wording about the government not coming to take your combustion appliances, merely that they'll effectively remove your choice to buy anything but electric. Suppose a court case will pop out of this if things ever get restrictive?
https://thereload.com/analysis-federal-court-dismisses-one-weird-trick-argument-in-maryland-pistol-case-member-exclusive/
The state employee pay system isn't perfect, but it's far from a nightmare.
The Sun article below details all the deficiencies in the state's employee pay program. Reading it, you might easily think that the state is a nightmare to work for: low pay, bad retirement. I mean, no wonder people are leaving a jobs sit vacant right?
While, as a state employee myself, I am not going to say the system is perfect, it's also not as dire as the Sun article (linked first below) has it.
The Sun article mentions a few things worth noting about how our state pays its employees (there is more and you're welcome to read the article to see the full context, but these are the things I wanted to point out.
--How state employees make less than comparable jobs in the private sector.
--How paying more would cost taxpayers a lot (it already has since the state employees unionized).
--How the retirement, which has often been seen as one of the plums in a government job, has gone to seed in Colorado.
In order to put more context to these claims, I linked the 2022 contract with the state employees union second below along with some op eds by Mr. Scharf (who serves on a state PERA board) on PERA third and fourth.
I won't go point by point on everything, but I will hit the high spots.
IF (and I'm not certain of the claim's truth and/or missing context) the state is paying less than comparable jobs, they're catching up quick with an across the board pay raise courtesy of Polis last year, another one coming, and a pay for seniority system in the works.
Quoting the Sun article, this system of pay will be costing us taxpayers dearly: "The 3% across-the-board raises will cost the state $93 million next year, according to a JBC staff report. Getting employees up to their new pay grades under the longevity system will cost even more, $109 million."
And while we pay more for our union state employees now, I want you to look at screenshot 1 (from the 2022 contract linked below) and see what else they're pushing for. Yep, on top of the pay raises, our state employees want spending upwards of$2.8 million on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives adding more permanent full time positions to the state's payroll.
All this for a highly-regulated contract that has provisions in it that most private sector employees don't enjoy. You see, this is something missing from articles like the Sun's that just talk about money and retirement: one big benefit for some of government employment is its near permanence.
To see what I mean, take a look at screenshots 2 - 6 from the same contract as before. In addition to the blue numbering label, I included the page numbers in red. Give them a quick look and compare all the rules and regulations around temporary vs. permanent hire status, layoffs, discipline and then tell me whether you (if you've ever worked a private sector job) had similar.
Government jobs may not pay much, but you know that once you hit permanent status, you are dug in like a tick and you can feel much more secure than a similar private sector job. This is something that has no value.
Now, let's turn to retirement. This is something that the Sun article mentions as being something that, to some at least, helped keep people in government jobs even if other parts of the job were not as satisfactory.
The article gets it right in describing a lot of the current state of public employee's pensions, but there is some missing context here.
It's worth noting the broader societal trends at play here. Earlier generations commonly had defined benefit pensions** and this was true for both many private and public sector jobs. Those types of pensions, for good or bad, are going the way of the dinosaur and the public sector is one of the last holdouts.
In fact, I was offered a choice of signing up for a PERA (public employees retirement association) defined benefit or defined contribution (basically an IRA) when I signed on to the college where I work now, so it's probably safe to say that defined benefit pensions are on their way out even for government jobs.
But what about the system as it sits now? As noted in the Sun story, there are problems, but as was NOT noted in the story, many of those problems are the result of poor choices by our politicians.
Our public employee retirement system has been continually plagued by issues and our state seems content to just keep kicking the can down the road and ignoring the problems. In fact, attempts by some to make others aware of the problem or to try and fix the system have been met with resistance. More in the third and fourth links below.
There is a lot that could be improved about how we are hiring and paying our state employees. I for one think that we could be paying more without such a huge burden on taxpayers if we could make the hiring, firing, and etc. more in line with what the private sector is doing.
Fixing the retirement to not only help attract/retain employees but also make good on promises made should start now. It needs to start now while it's cheaper and easier.
Lastly, when we look at these issues, we need to have a fuller discussion than articles like the one from the Sun would engender. We need to consider more than just pay amounts and raises; we need to look at all the things that might influence how and why people choose the jobs they do.
**If you're not familiar, a defined benefit pension is like one my grandma had: you retire and get the same amount of money from that day til the day you die. This is in contrast to a defined contribution pension which is essentially a savings account you put money into and then can start drawing down when you retire.
https://coloradosun.com/2023/12/04/colorado-state-workeas-improved-other-jobs-still-pay-more/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lvkm04vAyAnbCWvvwB_AQYK-vGrspm08/view
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2023/09/21/sharf-keeping-taxpayers-in-the-dark-about-public-pensions/
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2023/10/14/sharf-threats-to-colorados-public-pension-stability-still-loom-large/