Public-Sector Unions and Their Government Bosses: Partners in Crime
The 3-day New York City transit strike is a mere eddy in a noxious swamp that is asphyxiating taxpayers in many states and localities.
While taxpayers either weren’t looking or were being taken in by phony rights rhetoric, an intolerably corrupt coalition of public employees and public employers has gained muscle in the last 35 years.
Public employee unions contribute heavily to political campaigns. They affect legislation and crucially influence who is elected. They then sit down and bargain over wages and benefits with the same units of government they have so busily bought and paid for.
Breathing in the stench, the taxpayers afterwards suffocate under the tax bills. Unions hand in hand with politicians, lobbyists cheek by jowl with statute-sellers — these faces fill the portrait of that ugly and immoral creature we name democracy. A government with the powers ours today has cannot help but fertilize fetid monstrosities assembled by their creators to devour taxpayers.
Taxpayers no doubt feel that (a) they are paying through the nose and (b) they can’t easily do anything about it. Both are true. They will not get out from under by anything less than radical downsizing and privatizing of services that they now thoughtlessly assign to local government. The swamp needs to be drained and cleared.
Harold
ACGR's "News with Attitude" 