Tuesday, April 17, 2012


Unions & Democrats Can't Stop The States 
From Re-Asserting Fiscal Sanity
Any More

The Unions & Democrats Strategy Of Using 
National Money & Organizations To 
Thwart Individual State's Attempts At 
Reform & Right To Work Is Being 
Successfully Thwarted


First a little history lesson about Right To Work: It used to be almost every state in America was closed Union shop.  You had to belong to a union to get a job.  Or the way Liberals snidely put it,  you were 'volunteering' to join the union and pay dues to get the job.  


Roundabout the 1940's many Americans had had enough of that union strong arm BS and many states started to enact Right To Work laws, making being in a union and paying dues voluntary activities instead of necessities to be employed.  


But by the early 1960's, the unions had figured out how to counter what was happening.  


Take a look at this chart: 


Click image for a larger version

From 1940 to 1960, a total of 18 states enacted Right-To-Work laws.  But notice what happened between 1963 and 2001: a grand total of just 4 states managed to follow suit.  That's 4 states in 38 years as opposed to 18 states in the 20 years between 1940 and 1960. 

So what happened?  Unions learned to nationally coordinate with money and manpower to isolate and then turn back any attempt of a single state to enact Right-To-Work legislation.  Until Indiana managed to do it last year,  only 4 states in the South or West with big Conservative majorities managed to fight off the national union & Democrat coordination: Wyoming, Louisiana, Idaho and Oklahoma.  

Not only have Unions been pumping millions into Democratic coffers to turn back Right-To-Work laws, they've also been nationally coordinating to turn back any attempts at reforming the union's contracts and collective bargaining ability.
  
Click on Image for Larger Version

This is why the fight currently underway in Wisconsin is so crucial.  Unions have used the millions they've raised in dues money to bribe Democratic politicians to give them unbelievably generous contracts, pensions and benefits for decades.  And they've used their clout and influence to stall and destroy any attempts to stop the insane spending and tax increases that have to be made to keep the machine fed.  

Any single Governor, Legislator or Senator that tried to reign in the union's free-for-all big spending ways quickly found themselves surrounded, outnumbered, outspent and out-manned.  The fight was often over before it even really got started.  Because the Unions would coordinate nationally with millions of out-of-state-money and manpower, quickly and easily overwhelming the local state opposition.  

NOT ANY MORE.  

With the advent of the New Media and the internet, it's not just the Unions and the Democratic Party nationally organizing $ and manpower to the point of attack.  Now Conservatives can too.  

And now there's more than one battleground.  Instead of having just one state to target, isolate and overwhelm, the Unions have to disperse their national money and manpower among several states where these fights are going on simultaneously.  

And don't think the Old Media, the Unions, and the Democratic Party haven't noticed this.  Instead of a quick, easy victory over Walker's reforms, they are not only having to fight for it, they are LOSING.  



And they are NOT used to losing. At all.  

For decades they were able to run up spending, taxes and benefits without any accountability because with millions in union dues to spend on buying politicians, it was hard to take them on.  

That all changed with the 2007 recession however.  Economic times are so bad that problems that were reckoned to be decades off are now looming just around the corner, and they have to be dealt with now.  So state governors and legislatures are being forced by economic reality to finally come to grips with the problems represented by unfunded pension liabilities as well as over-promised - and often way overgenerous - benefits packages awarded to unions in the past.
This is how attempts to keep from raising property taxes again and asking state workers that contribute 0% to their own pension funds became Ground Zero in Wisconsin as a national war to reassert fiscal sustainability got  started because Unions wouldn't budge.  Temporary givebacks were not going to solve these problems, what was needed was real reform to the unsustainable structure itself.  
Public employee allowed to unionize? 
Ooooh - bad idea! 

People need to remember unions for public sector workers didn't exist in America until the late 1950's.  Even FDR wouldn't allow public employees to unionize, and for good reasons.  Now we are seeing states teetering on the brink of fiscal insolvency, with plenty of cities and towns having either gone bankrupt or about to because politicians in the union's pockets have been over-promising benefits and pensions, spending billions of future dollars that might not ever materialize now.  


We can't lose this fight in Wisconsin and in other states where the battle is being joined.  Do everything you can to support Scott Walker and his fellow Republicans in fighting off this attempt to return to the status quo.  

3 comments:

  1. Fiscal responsibility and fiscal sanity are Republican buzz words for austerity measures. Undoubtedly, the next Republican that gets in will institute harsh austerity measures. Unfortunately, austerity measures don't work in the way that you would hope for. They are designed to bring us to the brink of collapse and chaos. - JF

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ah, got it. So unsustainable contracts on benefits/pensions for unions under Democrats = ruin, and Republicans scaling back on those = ruin too.

    Great, so we're doomed either way. Is this what you're saying?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Pretty much. This is a long game about to go into the third quarter. The Dems have to look like they are looking out for the middle class. Of course they aren't. They're just playing for time and doing nothing. By the time the football gets passed to a Republican whitehouse, things will be bad enough for people to accept austerity measures. The hardline slash and burn union-busters like Scott Walker are like point men in a PR campaign - like a market tester.

    There's going to be a lot of people in the streets in the meantime. The next four years should be interesting. Look to Europe. That's what's coming.

    ReplyDelete