This is a HUGE problem. Michael Barone has written an excellent in-depth article on this increasingly important issue and you can read it on Townhall.com, Mon Feb 8, 2010. I don’t wish to duplicate his work but I don’t think it can be stated strongly enough. These unions have to be brought under control before it is too late – and it is very late indeed. Public service is an exercise in searching for oxymorons. They serve not the public but themselves, and are in place only to perpetuate their own power and existence. They flourish at the expense of the private sector. Mr. Barone said very succinctly that the public sector unions are a PARASITE sucking the life out of the private sector.
Let me reprise: GOVERNMENT PRODUCES NOTHING! Fully seventy percent of all new jobs in this country come from small business. By and large, small businesses do not use private sector unions, though are not necessarily anti-union. Unions in this day and age accomplish little and obstruct much. Unions have destroyed productivity in this country. With their intransigent attitudes towards management they have forced development and manufacturing off-shore to more business friendly environments, leaving the unions to complain bitterly at the dearth of jobs. It’s akin to circling the wagons and firing inwards. They have forced prices higher, made the very companies that were feeding them unprofitable and forced many out of business.
The unholy alliance between the public service sector unions and the CROOKED and UNPRINCIPLED politicians who prop them up must be broken. Like the politicians, these unions have forgotten whom they serve and why.
Here in the ONCE magnificent state of California we have unions and union thuggery run amok. This State is a model for exactly what will happen at the federal government level. Unions have a death grip on the state. The unfunded liability for pension funds alone in the state of California is ONE HUNDRED THIRTY BILLION DOLLARS. To bring that figure into proportion, the State at present faces a budget shortfall of FORTY BILLION dollars.
In a sad parody of the Washington Democrat binge-spending, the insane and out of control California State Assembly is pushing a ridiculously unsustainable ’single payer’ health care system of their own, to the tune of TWO BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR.
Is it any wonder that the citizens of this country are up in arms? The measure of our discontent is palpable in Washington, Sacramento and rest of the country. The people are on the march they are being heard… and they will be COUNTED next November.
Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis
© Skip MacLure 2010

Neil Stevens
Steve Maley
Daniel Horowitz
Alan Keyes had a good one:
michael_68_1999 (Diary) Tuesday, February 9th at 2:03PM EST (link)“Bureaucracies are inherently antidemocratic. Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve.”
What is prized in a bureaucracy isn’t accomplishment of its mission or service of its clients. It is self-preservation. Awards, promotions and honors in a bureaucracy are bestowed on those who excel at growing the organization’s scope, not its effectiveness, unless the latter accomplishes the former.
Kafka's Novels Tell You Everything About The Dangers of a Bureaucracy
Ausonius (Diary) Tuesday, February 9th at 3:41PM EST (link)The other problem with bureaucracies is the transference and sublimation of responsibility: the buck never stops anywhere.
The creation of micromanaging rules, with the accompanying paperwork (for what real purpose?), serves only to strangle a society’s freedoms and its economy so subtly that most people realize it only when it is too late.
As a Catholic school teacher in a diocese almost devoid of educational bureaucrats, I can tell you that I have a better teaching environment than public school colleagues who are nitpicked and paper-trailed by bureaucrats, who are either failed teachers or have never even attempted a teaching career, and know nothing first-hand about education.
Ausonius: 310-395 A.D. Teacher, Poet, Consul, General, Farmer.
Personal Tutor to the future St. Paulinus of Nola and to young Gratian, heir to the throne during the turbulent final years of the Western Roman Empire. When his former student Gratian was assassinated, Ausonius threw up his hands and retired to his farm in Gaul. Rome was captured by barbarians 14 years after his death.
Cato@rock.com
BART can't make it but Obama wants more rail
Common_Cents (Diary) Wednesday, February 10th at 2:05AM EST (link)Bay Area Rapid Transit relied on stimulus money to make its budget, now wants to lay off SEIU union workers instead of raising fares or taxes.
Look at the list of salaries, wow! Average is $120,000 per year salary/benes
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/02/rapid-transit-salaries-look-at-beloved.html
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“Any number of layoffs is unacceptable,” said Lisa Isler, chapter president of the union.
Directors said they are reluctant to lay off employees but pointed out that the transit agency’s finances are dire.
“It is unrealistic to think we can keep the system going as it always has,” said director Gail Murray of Walnut Creek. “We just don’t have the money.”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/28/BA0O1BP8C7.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0f72lJ7QU
Ridership isn’t strong enough to raise fares. We just don’t have the money. So Obama is going to build more.
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Meanwhile in Minnesota:
Metro Transit Ridership Is Dropping
Reporting By: Cory Kampschroer
(WCCO)
Ridership on public transit across the country is down by nearly 15 percent.
Bob Gibbons, the spokesman for Metro Transit, said ridership last year in the Twin Cities was down 6.6 percent.
Gibbons said two factors are leading to the decline: stable gas prices and a higher unemployment level.
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so Obama wants to build more trains.
Obama=Golfer in Chief, Leading from,
behind, the Back Nine.Leaders don’t create movements. Movements create leaders. Get involved. Your future depends on it.
Govt “invests” YOUR tax money for POLITICAL return rather than economic return.