Public Employees Unions Guarantee Bankruptcy

Guest Post by BATR http://batr.org/view/082910.html

Presidential executive orders have a long history. Both Democratic and Republican presidents exercise such commands. Are EO’s a privilege in law or are they simply a technique to skirt passing a Congressional statute? The executive branch adopts a pattern of rule that undermines the fundamental purpose of separation of power. The historic result is that the legislature is relegated to a junior collaborator in their partnership of crime. The bureaucracy has developed into a full-fledged imperial juggernaut that has a life of its own. Who started such an ill-conceived practice?

“Executive Orders have two main functions: to modify how an executive branch department or agency does its job (rule change) or to modify existing law, if such authority has been granted to the President by Congress. Executive orders are not mentioned by the Constitution, but they have been around a long, long time. George Washington issued several Presidential Proclamations, which are similar to EO’s . EO’s and Proclamations are not law, but they have the effect of statutes. Executive orders are subject to judicial review, and can be declared unconstitutional”.

The Kennedy pandering to government “hired help” put the bankruptcy of state and federal budgets into motion. Consider for a moment the absurdity of encouraging a permanent class of government slackers who conspire to steal from the productive wealth creators of society. Anyone who accepts that state or federal employees provide invaluable and necessary public services must be a “civil servant” or come from the long tradition of government parasites.

One of the most destructive of initiatives encourages the unionization of state and federal public employees.

“In 1959, the state of Wisconsin enacted the first state statute permitting municipal employees the right to form, join, and be represented by labor organizations. Three years later, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10988, which granted federal employees the right to join and form unions and to bargain collectively. The order established a framework for collective bargaining and encouraged the expansion of collective bargaining rights to state and local government employees. Beginning in 1976, the federal courts have ruled that the First Amendment’s freedom of association prohibits states from interfering with public sector employees’ right to join and form unions. These decisions invalidated the sovereignty doctrine, contributing to the growth of unions.

The Supreme Court held in Smith v. Arkansas State Highway Employees, Local 1315 (1979), (3) however, that nothing in the U.S. Constitution requires public employers to either recognize or collectively bargain with public employee unions. Employees can form and join unions without the benefit of protective legislation, but public employers are not compelled to recognize or bargain with unions. Public employers are required to bargain only under laws that mandate bargaining. The duty to bargain can be imposed only by statute”.

A Baron’s cover article, The $2 Trillion Hole lays out the dire dilemma.

“According to a survey last month by the Pew Center on the States, a nonpartisan research group, eight states — Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and West Virginia — lack funding for more than a third of their pension liabilities. Thirteen others are less than 80% funded.

According to the latest compensation survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average state and local employee out earns his counterpart in the private economy with an hourly wage of $26.11, versus $19.41. That’s before benefits (pensions, health care, paid vacations and sick days and leaves) drive the disparity even higher, to $39.60 an hour for public employees and $27.42 for private workers.

Besides the politicians, the primary culprits are the public-employee unions, which have used their growing power to dramatically enhance pension benefits. They curry favor with sympathetic politicians, lavishing them with large donations and manning campaign phone banks. They also engage in full-court-press lobbying at all levels of state and local government”.

Watch the video Plunder! by journalist Steven Greenhut, who details a number of ploys that both workers and management use to maximize their retirement checks. The brilliant WSJ article, Public Employee Unions Are Sinking California by Mr. Greehut points out the insane aftermaths from allowing public employee unionization.

“Approximately 85% of the state’s 235,000 employees (not including higher education employees) are unionized. As the governor noted during his $83 billion budget roll-out, over the past decade pension costs for public employees increased 2,000%. State revenues increased only 24% over the same period. A Schwarzenegger adviser wrote in the San Jose Mercury News in the past few days that, “This year alone, $3 billion was diverted to pension costs from other programs.” There are now more than 15,000 government retirees statewide who receive pensions that exceed $100,000 a year, according to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.

Many of these retirees are former police officers, firefighters, and prison guards who can retire at age 50 with a pension that equals 90% of their final year’s pay. The pensions for these (and all other retirees) increase each year with inflation and are guaranteed by taxpayers forever—regardless of what happens in the economy or whether the state’s pensions funds have been fully funded (which they haven’t been).

A 2008 state commission pegged California’s unfunded pension liability at $63.5 billion, which will be amortized over several decades. That liability, released before the precipitous drop in stock-market and real-estate values, certainly will soar”.

If you think that there are exceptions within the public sector unions that are above criticism you are wrong. Teachers like to cling to the myth that they are essential and sacrifice to educate the children. By any objective and empirical standards the results of their social engineering and indoctrination is an underclass of illiterate and brain dead idiots. Government schools are tombs for zombie reproduction. NJ Governor Chris Christie is spot on in his assessment of the Teachers Union video.

It is beyond common sense and pragmatic necessity to sit back and allow the “dumbing down” of America by a system that rewards failure and steals tax dollars to pay the Teacher Unions blackmail. If you think reform is possible, forget it.
In, The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand, Steven Brill writes.”The teachers’ unions have become accustomed in recent years to fighting off reform efforts by Republicans and think-tank do-gooders. They ignore the rhetorical noise, while sticking to the work of negotiating protectionist contracts with the politicians who run school systems and depend on their political support”.

The fact that the education bureaucracy comprises a union paradise is obvious. Why citizens swallow this insult might best be explained that most feudal subjects were trained to accept unlimited abuses from the state in government schools.

Municipal jurisdictions do not fare any better. View the Public Sector Union Bosses’ Stranglehold on Mayors video. America does not need cradle to grave government services and certainly cannot afford its cost.

The Freeman sums up the essential problem in Government Workers Are America’s New Elite.

“The bottom line: Public-safety officials have many ways to gin up their already generous retirements benefits to astronomical levels. Most garden-variety government employees get lucrative pensions also. It is common for them to retire at age 55 with more than 80 percent of their final year’s pay. Most public employees receive defined-benefit retirement plans, in which the taxpayer promises a set rate of return, as opposed to private-sector workers who have 401(k)s and other defined-contribution plans in which the market sets the return”.

Public Employee Unions came into being because of harebrained executive orders. The legislature has the authority to put an end to the abuse of power from the executive. Indeed the theory is sound. The election of courageous representatives dedicated to unwinding of the tyranny from the public sector is remote even under the best of circumstances. The lobbying and funding from public service unions keep a stranglehold on the process.

The U.S. is broke. Public Employee Unions refuse to void their unconscionable contracts. The taxpayer can no longer afford this destructive fraud. Society can only be rejuvenated through a total downsizing of all public services. The biggest deadbeats that skim off the system are your phony public servants. The only bright spot from a collapse and natural bankruptcy is the evaporation of the public sector. Can you say Bye Bye to those decadent pensions? The government wants total control and public employees have made their – UNION – bargain with the devil.

Author: Roy

80 year old retired AF officer with VA combat related disability, educated beyond my intelligence with three at taxpayer expense Degrees. I am a Deist (hedged Atheist) who believes man made god in his own image and what we call god is what I call mother nature. I agree with Bertrand Russel that with all these different religions they all cannot be right but they can all be wrong, same applies to economic theories. View all posts by Roy