My Enemies List - Public Employees Unions

The blogosphere and the conservative and libertarian press have come alive lately reporting and documentation of how the public employees unions are buying off state governments and creating an unsustainable welfare state. The size of state government budgets accrues not only to the amount of "services" delivered by the state, but the cost per employee of delivering same. Included are burgeoning retirement costs, and generous health care benefits. To provide my readers with a little background on this subject and to remind us of why the Tea Party is so desperately needed by the people of this state and the country as a whole, I have a little round up.

Back in January, Reason magazine got me tuned in to the magnitude of the problem with their cover article, Class War, How Public Servants Became our Masters. From things as small as running red lights with impunity, to rigged retirement rules that lets public employees live of taxes for half their adult lives after they quit work, it dives into the whole entitlement mindset and the unions who enable it. They followed with this quick hitter, also posted on YouTube (also read the article):



The most blood boiling article was this one from Steve Malanga, The Beholden State, in City Journal. He focuses on the unions' highly successful in the California to increase their own pay, and specifically points to the methods behind their success. As previously noted, this got my blood boiling so bad, I needed a med check, and had to read it in small doses.


Meanwhile, union marches continue unabated to squeeze more tax dollars out of you. TempleOfMut linked me to this article where union marchers demanded $40 billion in tax hikes in California, that's right, in the middle of 12% unemployment in the state. Dean has some great video from Illinois, where the lefty political unions are demanding more tax hikes. Taken together, we see a movement that can only be compared to the communist party of the old Soviet Union, where membership confers privilege and wealth not available to the average member of society. I do not make such comparisons lightly.

Given this extraordinary level of self serving by these unions, and the fact that their heavy influence over politicians comes from campaign cash and get out the vote efforts, I think that the Tea Party members must never vote for candidates with public union endorsements; including police and firefighters, maybe especially. I know that police union endorsements used to mean a candidate was tough on crime, but it is safer to say that is no longer true. From Malanga:

Even cops who run for office have felt the wrath of public-safety unions. Allan Mansoor served 16 years as a deputy sheriff in Orange County but angered police unions by publicly backing an initiative that would have required them to gain their members’ permission to spend dues on political activities. When the conservative Mansoor ran successfully for city council several years back in Costa Mesa, local cops and firefighters poured resources into helping his more liberal opponents. “I didn’t like seeing my dues go to candidates like Davis, so I supported efforts to curb that,” Mansoor says. “Union leaders didn’t like it, so they endorsed my opponents by claiming they were tougher on crime than I was.”

This is why I can't bring myself to endorse Howard Wayne in San Diego Council District 6, even though he was the most knowledgeable at the debate I covered.

So as the unofficial chief ideologue, I am asking the Tea Party movement to not vote for those candidates endorsed by the public employees unions. Along those lines, I would ask that Democrat readers of this blog give serious consideration to supporting Mickey Kaus for U.S. Senate against Barbara Boxer. Nice article on Kaus at Politico.

Disclaimer: I am an employee of the Federal Government, though not represented by a union. The opinions I express in this blog are my own and not that of any agency of the federal government.