Good article:
Public employee unions needed? Or harmful?
February 22nd, 2011,by Mark Landsbaum
The hubbub in Wisconsin may end up visiting California soon, considering that we have lots of powerful public unions and fiscal calamity. (Notice how those go hand in hand?)
& poll for freeping:
Government workers should have
* it no better than anyone else
* civil service protection
* collective bargaining
* luxurious health and pension benefits
* #s 2, 3 and 4
http://orangepunch.ocregister.com/2011/02/22/public-employee-unions-needed-or-harmful/41511/
Anyway, that's a good article. Here's another by Mark Steyn:
You don’t have to go to Athens to find “public servants” happy to take it out on the public. In Madison, politicized doctors provide fake sick notes for politicized teachers to skip class. In New York’s Christmas snowstorm, Sanitation Department plough drivers are unable to clear the streets, with fatal consequences for some residents. On the other hand, they did manage to clear the snow from outside the Staten Island home of Sanitation Dept head honcho John Doherty, while leaving all surrounding streets pristinely clogged. Three hundred Sanitation Department workers have salaries of over $100,000 per year. In retirement, you get a pension of 66 grand per annum plus excellent health benefits, all inflation proofed.
That’s what “collective bargaining” is about: It enables unions rather than citizens to set the price of government. It is, thus, a direct assault on republican democracy, and it needs to be destroyed. Unlovely as they are, the Greek rioters and the snarling thugs of Madison are the logical end point of the advanced social democratic state: not an oppressed underclass, but a spoiled overclass, rioting in defense of its privileges and insisting on more subsidy, more benefits, more featherbedding, more government.