printThe following is excerpted from “Public Enemy No. 1: Government Unions,” my new WND.COM column:
“For evidence of the power of the teachers unions acting out on the streets of Madison, Wis., look no further than your property taxes. Almost 50 percent of mine are garnished for ‘Local School Support.’ ‘Port, Fire, Hospital, Library’ constitute a miniscule 5 percent of the property-tax bill. Law enforcement is not even itemized. Other states confiscate even higher percentages from their propertied taxpayers in the service of government-employed teachers.
Yes, do use the term ‘government unions,’ won’t you, as ‘public sector’ or ‘public servants’ implies, incorrectly, that these people serve the public. Besides, have you seen these slackers? In his path-breaking book, ‘The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education,’ Peter Brimelow left us with a lasting mental image of our children’s over-sated role models, attending one of the National Education Association’s annual meetings. The same apparition is everywhere apparent in Madison, as teachers ‘wobble and waddle through the teeming crowds of [supporters] … thighs like tree trunks, bellies billowing, jowls jiggling.’
Over and above the property tax – the federal income tax claims from those who pay it more monies for the educational oink sector. Whether the taxpayer has children in the system or doesn’t, whether he chooses to homeschool his offspring or pays for a private school, whether he approves of the job government pedagogues are doing or doesn’t – he has to pay them, even go into hock for them.
To compound it all, America has a most progressive tax code. According to USA Today, the number of Americans who owe no federal income taxes, and do not share in the cost of government, stood at 47 percent in 2009, and is increasing. What has come to pass John C. Calhoun predicted in ‘A Disquisition on Government,’ where he described the devolution of a democracy in which all private property is, eventually, subjected to the vagaries of majority rule. …”
The complete column, “Public Enemy No. 1: Government Unions,” is now on WND.COM.
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UPDATE (Feb. 26): Tom DiLorenzo points out the power of the monopoly that is the government union:
The enormous power of government-employee unions effectively transfers the power to tax from voters to the unions. Because government-employee unions can so easily force elected officials to raise taxes to meet their “demands,” it is they, not the voters, who control the rate of taxation within a political jurisdiction. They are the beneficiaries of a particular form of taxation without representation (not that taxation with representation is much better). This is why some states have laws prohibiting strikes by government-employee unions. (The unions often strike anyway.)
Politicians are caught in a political bind by government-employee unions: if they cave in to their wage demands and raise taxes to finance them, then they increase the chances of being kicked out of office themselves in the next election. The “solution” to this dilemma has been to offer government-employee unions moderate wage increases but spectacular pension promises. This allows politicians to pander to the unions but defer the costs to the future, long after the panderers are retired from politics.
As taxpayers in California, Wisconsin, Indiana, and many other states are realizing, the future has arrived. The Wall Street Journal reports that state and local governments in the United States currently have $3.5 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities. They must either raise taxes dramatically to fund these liabilities, as some have already done, or drastically cut back or eliminate government-employee pensions.
I’m not sure it’s fair to characterize teachers with an anecdote like. My kids received public education in an area where the public sector was so competitive the only private school around had trouble attracting pupils. So this is MY anecdote.
Government unions are just one facet of the real problem which is government bureaucracies. Ordained to life by politicians, structured by senior (non-unionized) civil servants, and all-too-happily staffed by big unions, this is what is strangling us.
Oh, there are cuts sometimes, but always it the front-line troops that feel the blows. You get teachers in classes filled with pupils who should be in special-ed, overworked nurses, imperilled cops or prison guards. Paper-pushers might be pushed out, but only in the direst of circumstances ! Know thy enemy !
“Money is a great power—because in a free or even a semi-free society, it is a frozen form of productive energy. And, therefore, the spending of money is a grave responsibility. Contrary to the altruists and the advocates of the so-called “academic freedom,” it is a moral crime to give money to support ideas with which you disagree; it means: ideas which you consider wrong, false, evil. It is a moral crime to give money to support your own destroyers.” Ayn Rand, THE SANCTION OF THE VICTIMS
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reg_ar_sanction
With the consent of the unthinking masses–which Rand refers to as “social ballast”-the ruling elite has put principled and moral Americans between a rock and a hard place. Under penalty of incarceration or confiscation of their property moral Americans are forced to support with their tax money public schools and the “irrationalists, nihilists, socialists, and communists” who infest them.
In Madison, Wisconsin unionists whine that they deserve more taxpayer extortion as a human right. Gov. Scott Walker will learn that it is not enough to oppose these altruists on political, economic or even legal grounds. He must oppose them on moral grounds. He (and we) must fight them with what Rand refers to as “philosophical self-defense and self-esteem.”
Following Rand’s prescription, Gov. Walker should tell unionists that their mooching constitutes a moral crime. He should tell Wisconsin taxpayers that the battle for educational freedom in Wisconsin can be won…
“But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has every existed on this earth.”
The very idea that government is created to protect and serve the people by ‘fixing problems’ is the most specious of concepts; for from the moment a bureaucracy is created yet another idea sets root: If we (the highest to lowest ranked employees of the agency) fix the problem, we’re out of a job. Translated for application in public education, the manifestation of failure is evident in the product; especially in the most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods; where, by the way, the ‘problem’ is most apparent.
To acquire a better understanding of the profoundly negative impact organized labor in education has on our children, I strongly urge all to view the movie “Freedom Writers.”
Unions are evil. It’s that simple. These people initiate violence or its threat to fund its operations and line its pockets at everyone else’s expense. They produce nothing meaningful, and what they do produce is sub-par and exorbitantly expensive.
The good news is that we don’t have to elect anti-union politicians, assuming that can be done at all. No, we only need to wait for the dollar to crash, and it will. Once federal reserve notes buy nothing, the game is up. The public servants, including the parasitical teachers’ unions, will get an up close look at the new and frightening reality. The six figure salaries, cozy pension plans, and plush offices will be but a fuzzy memory. That day is coming soon. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
The issues are Constitutionality and morality. Constitutionally, a tax on work for pay was considered a bad idea by Jefferson and others. They were right. “A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread that it has earned, this is the sum of good government.
Unions do not thrive in a free CAPITALIST society because the CONSUMERS (customers) do not allow extortion of their money. The exception that proves the rule is the United Auto Workers where consumers freely prefer Toyota, Honda, and Subaru and it is the tax-extorting government that saves Unionist GM and Chrysler.
Similarly, if education was completely privatized (not quasi-fascistic “controlled” privatization), we would find that good teachers were UNDERPAID, bad teachers were OVERPAID (and need firing), and that the hundreds of Deputy Assistant Vice Principals who manage compliance with Leave No Child Behind are completely useless leeches.
As for money – in most areas, efficiency, computerization, etc. is taken advantage but in education, we keep DECREASING class size, adding extra bureaucrats, teacher’s aides, counselors, special Ed. – e.g. the equivalent of having 6 people changing a light bulb.
Bob is right – the entire educational “establishment” must be smashed (but the public lacks the moral clarity to do it). Penny – Amen to St. Thomas (Jefferson). Steve – I am not as optimistic – when the system implodes, the result is more likely to be tyranny than freedom (see Wiemar Germany).
Ilana – thank you for your perseverance in speaking the truth.
[Bravo; as brilliant as ever, MP.]
“Public Enemy No. 1: Government Unions,”
Yes they Are !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Unions are evil, government employee unions especially so for all of the reasons you so articulately listed. That said, the underlying problem goes far beyond unions: The absolute failure of mandatory universal public education.
Einstein’s famous definition of insanity (repeating the same act over and over while expecting a different result) is on full display in the never-ending effort to make government education work. Catastrophic failure is obvious in graduation rates and proficiency scores even as public “investment” skyrockets. It is time to wake up and smell the coffee.
I do believe that the damage done by unions far outweigh the good they claim to stand for. We are living the results of unchecked unions here in South Africa and the lessons are free to anybody that cares to look.
Our teachers unions really did us proud last year forcing government to intervene to cosmetically raise the achievements of pupils and in so doing flooding the market with uneducated and falsely entitled youths that will for the most part not be worth the minimum wage that government forces business to pay. Government will of course need to force business to employ this new workforce lest it leans on the increasingly fragile taxpayer-base.
So, basically a fundamentally stupid nation now also sacrifices its once proud and innovative business-base to emotional rather than critical decisions.
America might be able to absorb more of this nonsense than South Africa, but in the end the results will probably be the same.