Smash the public employee unions

We are now into the third day of non-stop mayhem perpetrated by Wisconsin public employees in that state's capital city. There is no longer any doubt that the words "public employee" and "professional" do not belong in the same sentence.

Teachers called out sick en mass, students be damned!, to march and protest against having to contribute toward their health care and pension costs. But this was no peaceful Tea Party, no siree. Doug Ross compiled a brief review of the odious messages on display. Civility is not the watchword of the day. But if you're in the market for some Hitler imagery and death threats galore then unionized Wisconsin teachers are your kind of people.

Let's see. The supposed rabble of the Tea Party were condemned by liberals everywhere for waving American flags and peacefully petitioning their government for a redress of grievances. Now in Madison, Wisconsin union goons intimidate lawmakers' families and The New York Times embraces the notion of mob rule.

"Push back hard." How hard Pinch? Greece hard? I'm sure Frances Fox Piven would approve!

Local protests have to accumulate and spread — and become more disruptive — to create serious pressures on national politicians. An effective movement of the unemployed [in America] will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.

Piven's protests are catching on. For sure no pregnant mothers have been burned to death (yet) in Wisconsin, but the protesters do say that they're just getting started and they don't intend to give up.

I guess it's all fun and games until Americans start getting barbecued on national television. That is what happened in Greece. People died.

Oh, but Wisconsin is so far away from the corridors at the City University of New York. It's practically a foreign country! Surely none of those brutish rioters would dare to impinge on Piven's Manhattan enclaves. That would be gauche.

Meanwhile Wisconsin's bought-and-paid-for democratic state legislators set out to do their union masters' bidding by taking a page from "Profiles in Courage". They fled to Illinois to prevent the legislature from achieving a quorum. Tea Partiers found them hanging out in a titty bar. Now I'm sure Illinois appreciates the business, they have budget troubles of their own, but it does seem ironic that the supposed champions of the little guy didn't think to keep their dollars in their own state's g-strings.

Alright, so I guess it's time I got around to making my point. Which is, public employee unions are evil.

At this point, the teachers' union and their Democratic supporters have conceded the argument. They could not defend their refusal of Governor Walker's relatively small demands and so they launched into ridiculous ad hominem, violent rhetoric (shudder!), and, eventually, cowardly flight. We should take instruction from what has happened in Wisconsin over the past two days. Public sector unions are, as I have said before, a blight on our states and nation. We should do everything in our power to rid ourselves of them entirely and make sure, by law if necessary, that they can never come back again. It would make me very happy if Governor Walker fired every single teacher who called out sick over the past two days. They let down the taxpayers of Wisconsin and, more importantly, taught their students that it's okay to lie, cheat, and steal in order to get what you want.

Remember when President Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers? That was a great day for America. Gov. Walker should put his foot down. Show up for work on Monday morning or don't bother coming back. Ever.

You'll no doubt be surprised to learn that the Father of modern progressives, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, opposed public sector unionism. He wrote, "action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable." I'm sure the thugs in Wisconsin will take notice just as soon as they're done paralyzing the government.

Professor Bainbridge lays out the case against public sector unions with clarity and precision. He concludes thusly:

In sum, public sector unionism lacks the economic justifications for private sector unionism. It results in significant distortions of the political process, which have real adverse consequences for the taxpayers. What's happening in Wisconsin (as ably monitored by University of Wisconsin law professor/blogger Ann Althouse) thus is quite heartening. The efforts by the Governor and the republican legislative caucus to reform public sector collective bargaining rights is an essential step towards fiscal sanity and political democracy.

Yes. The only way to save us beleaguered taxpayers is to smash the public employee unions into oblivion. Patriots like Scott Walker, John Kasich, Mitch Daniels, and Chris Christie are leading the charge. I stand with them in support of fiscal sanity. And a significant majority of Americans seem to agree with me.

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(Everybody and his brother has an opinion on this judging by the size of the Memeorandum thread.)

Posted at 15:27 by Chris Wysocki   [/rants]   Comments | Perm Link |
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