On October 13, the US Department of Labor published a “draft rule” which, if adopted, will escalate California’s disastrous war on workers and the “gig economy” to the national level.

Like California’s Assembly Bill 5, the Department of Labor’s rule would force companies who use services offered by “independent contractors” (think Uber, Lyft, Instacart, et al.) to pretend that many of those contractors are, legally speaking, “employees.”

The theory of the anti-worker forces behind this movement is that they’re really helping workers.

Employees get guaranteed rates of pay (including higher wages for “overtime”) and other government-mandated benefits. Independent contractors get whatever they agree to accept for whatever they agree to do.

Who makes more money? That varies from job to job and person to person. An employee who shows up 40 hours a week probably knocks down more money than an Uber driver who works 15 hours a week between college classes.

That latter part explains the benefits of independent gig work:

Employees work when they’re ordered to, where they’re ordered to, and how they’re ordered to.

Independent contractors own, as Karl Marx would approvingly note, the means of production. They set their own schedules and determine their own work loads. They decide what they’re willing to do, and when, where, how they’re willing to do it. They’re their own bosses.  That flexibility is a benefit for students, single parents, and others for whom 9-5, Monday-Friday creates problems.

One fake benefit of employee status is that employees can form labor unions. That’s not a benefit. It’s the result of government acting — on behalf of business owners who didn’t like wildcat strikes and existing union bosses who didn’t want competition for dues revenues — to tame and cage organized labor with the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.

Absent the NLRA, independent contractors would be just as free (more free, actually) to form unions and drive hard bargains as employees are now. Having broken workers’ legs, it’s unseemly to expect gratitude for providing a second-hand crutch.

Why so much hate for gig work — which fits the classic definition of “socialism” — from alleged “progressives?”

If you have to ask why, the answer is usually money.

One of the National Employment Law Project’s complaints about the gig economy is that it may be “costing states billions of dollars in tax revenue. “

It may also cost Big Labor’s government-dependent unions  opportunities to “organize” gig workers, whether they like it or not, and siphon dues from their paychecks.

The war on the gig economy is just one of many examples of how conservative today’s “progressives” really are. They’re more interested in saving an old and busted system, in the name of “the workers,” than they are in  the actual interests of real workers.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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After decades as one of America’s most vicious and uncompromising drug warriors — and three years of promising to become less vicious and more compromising — US president Joe Biden finally took action.

On October 6, he announced pardons for thousands of Americans convicted in federal court of “simple marijuana possession,” urged governors to do likewise at the state level, and ordered a review of the federal “Schedule I” status that, contrary to reality, treats marijuana as a narcotic with “no currently accepted medical use.”

Why now? Well, it’s October of an election year, and Biden’s the kind of politician who keeps simple, easy, popular deliverables in his pocket until he believes they’ll produce positive impacts at the polls for him or his party.

It’s no coincidence that the Democratic Party’s candidates in all five close (even “toss-up”) elections for US Senate (Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) support legalizing cannabis. Biden’s move could could conceivably seal the deal with thousands of voters in elections that may come down to recounts.

“October surprises” come in all flavors. The surprise on my part is mild rather than extra hot, but it’s still a welcome move in the right direction, and consistent with Biden’s recent conversion to the position that “no one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana.”

No one should be in jail for growing or selling marijuana either.

Perhaps this move will get a bandwagon rolling toward the day when cannabis is treated like any other common plant — pick a few seedlings up at Walmart, try to remember to water them, and maybe put one on your desk at work.

The devil, unfortunately, is in the details. If the “review” of marijuana’s “scheduling” results in it being removed from that system altogether, good deal. If it locks marijuana up in the Food and Drug Administration’s approval and doctor prescription/permission systems, on the other hand, it could actually be a step backward, wrecking existing freer state regimes on both the medical and recreational fronts.

Nothing short of complete federal legalization — including a “hands off” mandate on the FDA — makes any moral or practical sense.

If you vote, let candidates who support moving in that direction know why you’re supporting them, and candidates who want to keep the war on drugs rolling along why they’re not getting your vote. We can’t count on little “October surprises” to get this job done.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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In every election cycle, one or more candidates for public office end up getting publicly dragged through the mud over alleged past non-political actions. Sometimes the allegations are true. Sometimes they aren’t. When they are true, they’re sometimes really terrible — and, given the candidate’s policy positions, indicative of hypocrisy — and sometimes blown out of proportion. Sometimes the scandal costs the candidate an election; other times it merely stains the elected official’s reputation.

The current poster child for that phenomenon is, of course, Herschel Walker, Republican nominee for US Senate from Georgia. In the course of his campaign, the “Christian, family values, pro-life candidate” has ended up admitting to fathering three children outside the confines of his marriages and now stands accused of encouraging, supporting, and paying for at least one abortion.

I understand why the GOP recruited Walker to run for Senate. He’s got (and deserves) great positive name recognition, especially in Georgia, for his career in football.  His public political positions prior to running clearly fell within the Republican ambit. What wasn’t to like?

Well, let’s be honest: There were signs long prior to his candidacy that he might not be the wisest choice. His first wife publicly accused him of domestic violence circa 2001. He wrote a 2008 book on mental illness. Not on mental illness in general, but on his own diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder, in which he described possessing a dozen distinct identities/personalities.

I guess Republicans might consider 12 senators for the price of electing one a darn good deal. Then again, if half of them are Democrats, it’s a wash, right?

Given the skeletons already released from Walker’s closet, it was a safe bet he had more of them still locked away, and that some of them would get out once he decided to run for US Senate.

We ALL probably have a few skeletons in our closets. Things we’d rather everyone didn’t know. Things we don’t talk about unless we have to. Things we’d find embarrassing, and that would damage our own reputations, if they pranced out and started dancing around in public.

But we’re not running for US Senate, so we don’t have to worry about that.

Herschel Walker IS running for US Senate, so he does.

Life hack: Don’t want your dirty laundry aired in public? Don’t run for public office.

If you feel like you have to run for public office (you don’t; plenty of other people are willing to), sit down with your campaign staff and discuss every embarrassing incident in your life from junior high school on, truthfully and completely, so they can at least have a plan for dealing with the coming live action re-enactment of Walt Disney’s 1929 animated short, “The Skeleton Dance.”

No one is really qualified to be a US Senator. The position shouldn’t exist. Giving some people power over other people’s lives is always a bad idea.

But some people are even more unqualified for the job than others. Herschel Walker seems to be one of them.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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