Government Unions: How They Rob the Tax Payer, Terrorize Workers, and Threaten Our Democracy by Matthew Vadum

Author:Matthew Vadum
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: The David Horowitz Freedom Center
Published: 2012-09-04T07:00:00+00:00

Revolutions are everywhere—in the Middle East, in the middle west. But there is a difference: in the Middle East, the protesters are marching for democracy; in the Midwest, they’re protesting against it. I mean, isn’t it, well, a bit ironic that the protesters in Madison, blocking the state senate chamber, are chanting “Freedom, Democracy, Union” while trying to prevent a vote? Isn’t it ironic that the Democratic Senators have fled the democratic process? Isn’t it interesting that some of those who—rightly—protest the assorted Republican efforts to stymie majority rule in the U.S. Senate are celebrating the Democratic efforts to stymie the same in the Wisconsin Senate?12

The public union supporters in Wisconsin were cheered on by Rev. Jesse Jackson, who compared the anti-Walker disruptions to the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. “This is a Martin Luther King moment, this is a Gandhi moment,” he said.

The protesters were praised and encouraged by the nation’s foremost radical guru, Noam Chomsky, an MIT professor. Chomsky told the leftist radio program Democracy Now! that he hoped the protests would resemble the violent demonstrations going on in Egypt that year. “It was heartening to see that there are tens of thousands of people protesting in Madison day after day in fact. I mean that’s the beginning maybe of what we really need here, a democracy uprising. Democracy’s almost been eviscerated.”

Agreeing with Chomsky, the Democrat-labor-academia-media complex wrote the narrative in deficit-riddled Wisconsin. Their storyline focused on teachers, anointed as public-spirited, criminally underpaid heroes in a David-and-Goliath struggle against a mean, tightfisted Republican governor owned by special interests. In reality, the state’s teachers are well compensated, earning an average of $89,000 annually in salary and benefits. The average U.S. private sector employee earns just $61,000.

Show Us the Money

Government employees have become “haves” and taxpayers have become “have nots,” as Scott Walker said before his inauguration. “I asked the unions to pay into their own health care insurance (just as their Wisconsin neighbors do) and they said I was being unreasonable,” he wrote in a letter to supporters. “I requested that they contribute toward their own pensions (just as their Wisconsin neighbors do) and they screamed it was unfair.”

On average, state and local government employees make $80,000 annually—45 percent more than private sector employees. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, public school teachers received family health coverage valued at $26,844, and before Walker’s reforms they contributed zero to their own plans. And many government workers are allowed to retire at age fifty-five or younger and collect six-figure pensions until they die.

Union bosses think their members are entitled to a comfortable standard of living regardless of the actual condition of the economy or the ability of taxpayers to fund their salaries. Over time, government unions in Wisconsin and elsewhere have evolved into permanent tax-supported lobbies that push for bigger government and oppose efforts to reduce government spending. Politicians promise more spending and shower government employees with generous benefit packages. Government unions, determined to keep this political equivalent of perpetual motion on track, respond by supporting those big-government politicians with big money.

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