Why Public Employee Unions are a Menace

"Unions have come to rely on the public sector because government employees are easier to organize, and managers less resistent. Who's going to put up a fight over an organizing campaign with a politically active union when taxpayers are paying the bill? If the union wants nicer benefits, it's easy to cave in, tax dollars and budgets be damned. It's good for campaign coffers.

That mentality may have worked during a boom period, but it doesn't work in a bust when unemployment is rampant and the contrasts between haves and have nots are clear. Being a Wall Street banker may have some whiff of sin to the working man, but the loathsome element isn't merely the wealth of the AIG or Goldman Sachs executive, but that it has been compensated with taxpayer subsidies when taxpayers themselves are struggling to make ends meet. It's not so much about haves and have nots. It's about haves and have yours.

Taxpayers are becoming acutely aware of the have-yours as a class -- something like Angelo Codevilla's ruling class -- whose gains in salaries and benefits aren't associated with harder work and important innovations but political access. Public-sector unions rallying in Madison aren't even taking a hit for their political activism, given that their protest is made possible by paid sick days, negotiated for them by their collective bargaining units who, it must be said, donate to the very people with whom they negotiate."

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/02/wisconsin-reveals-class-war-between-haves-and-have-yours#ixzz1Ee5kJLc1"