I read an article in our paper recently written by someone who was well advanced in age and who came from a part of our country where, in the past, big industry took advantage of its workers. I could not argue with his point about the good that labor unions did in these instances. However, like many well intentioned movements, they can over time become corrupted and fail to serve the ones they originally served. Once the treasuries of these organizations are fat with union dues, the thieves among us target them for plundering. The rank and file member becomes a pawn in a game he or she can't get out of. You either go along with the crowd and continue to support and be a member of a union, or in some places, you don't work. Our labor unions today are breeding grounds for mediocrity. Public service unions are particularly heinous because the public is held hostage and refused basic services by those sworn to serve them. Why? Because these non- profits are being used by the union leadership to plunder the public treasury (tax dollars) to allegedly benefit the workers while using extortion techniques to force favorable action from State and Federal legislators. The legislators knuckle under because they take huge donations from the various public service unions. Our current president worked as a creator of havoc in this milieu before becoming the "Creator of Havoc in Chief." The oaths taken by public service employees to serve and protect are negated by the bullying tactics of their various unions. Industry has in recent years been crippled by the increasingly absurd demands made by the various trade unions, and our national production has dropped as a result. The worker who is allegedly being helped, is now without a job and must be supported by tax dollars while the union officials live off the never ending supply of money from dues and pension plan plundering.
"A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves against those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear." Marcus Tullius Cicero
"The president just weighed in on the Wisconsin budget deadlock, suggesting that Gov. Scott Walker was out to punish public-sector unions more than to figure out a way to close a $3 billion state deficit. But unlike the federal government, Walker cannot print money, and he cannot so easily raise taxes without losing residents who might flee to lower-tax states. That the president wants unions to know he is on their side is clear; that he cares how the people of Wisconsin are going to pay for sky-high public-employee wages, benefits and health care is not so evident." Victor Davis Hanson (Excerpt from "After Obama, The Deluge")
The voices in my head may not be real, but they have
some good ideas!
