At the considerable risk of inconveniencing Indiana’s Mitch Daniels with their timing, several governors around the country are making valiant attempts at rectifying a wrong done more than four decades ago.
Of course, the midget from Monongahela got busy walking back his statements after burning Governor Scott Walker two days ago, but the moment should not be lost on the few deranged Republicans who consider Daniels as a presidential contender.
What Daniels has presumably missed is that the time for saving innumerable states from insolvency was yesterday; and regardless of how inconvenient it may be for his political ambitions, now is not a moment too soon to make drastic reductions of government unions benefits.
Collective bargaining for public employees, like Medicare and Social Security before it, was an oversight that has come back to bite the American taxpayer right where he sits. We are stuck with the latter two, but government unions are not entitlements we must live with.
These are the teachers, street sweepers, and other bureaucratic props who have better insurance benefits than seven out of ten Americans; they enjoy more paid holidays, vacation days and live in better homes than their masters.
In the words of John Wayne, “Listen up” Badger staters, Hoosiers and Buckeyes, because this argument was lost on Michigan and Illinois: the job you cut today—those of the overpriced teachers, janitors and power-tripping desk clerks at the DMV—is the job that won’t go to South Carolina and Tennessee tomorrow.
Pubic employee unions are burying your states in debt; they are simply pricing you out of the industrial marketplace. General Motors and Chrysler spent the first half of the twentieth century building plants and the last half closing them down. They stand as rusting cairns to the Industrial Age because of the ever-increasing demands of the AFL-CIO and Teamsters.
Missing in this equation—so far at least—is the Republican fast gun, come to town a huntin’ a showdown. We were looking for him in Scott Walker but the boy is slow. This is no job for wimps. It will take creative legislating to get around the fleebagger Democrats hiding out across the borders, and pink-slips aplenty to squelch the deadbeats with fraudulent doctor’s notes.
Eat your Wheaties John Kasich, your country needs you.
As painful as it is to say, the United States can live without Chevys and Chryslers, as long as Hondas and Nissans are being made in America. What the country cannot live with, however, are overpriced public servants who can walk off the job until they achieve their demands. The nation is literally bursting at the seams with as-or-better-qualified workers who will replace them at half the price.
Is this about union busting? Hell yes! What, are you people deaf? We are broke. Hello! The money we used to pay these pampered teachers is in Shanghai feeding young communist workers, who are learning how to build cars and airplanes.
Editor’s Note: Grant O’Neill is a former union organizer and negotiator with expertise in strike strategy and work slowdown techniques.
