The mainstream press hasn’t shown much interest in reporting on unions’ campaign spending, which amounted to some $400 million in the 2008 cycle. And it hasn’t seen fit to run long investigative stories on why public employee unions — the large majority of which work for state and local governments — contribute so much more to campaigns for federal office.
Nor has it denounced the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last January allowing unions to spend members’ dues on politics without their permission and without disclosure.
[…] Before public employee unions won the right to represent employees in New York City in 1958 and federal employees in 1962, almost all union members worked in the private sector.
But unions today represent only 7 percent of private-sector workers. In 2009, for the first time in history, most union members were public employees.
This would not have gone down well with President Franklin Roosevelt. “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” he said in the 1930s. A public employee strike, he said, “looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.”
It still is at the federal level, thanks to presidents of both parties and especially to Ronald Reagan’s firing of the striking air traffic controllers in 1981. But successful strikes in many states and cities have given public employee unions huge clout and hugely generous salaries, benefits and pensions.
Even more important is the political reality that, as New York union leader Victor Gotbaum said in 1975, “We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss.”
The anomalies don’t end there. Public employees’ union dues and contributions to union PACs come from directly from taxpayers. So if you live in a state or city with strong public employee unions, you are paying a tax that goes to elect Democratic candidates (plus, perhaps, a few malleable Republicans).
The problem is that, as Roosevelt understood, public employee unions’ interests are directly the opposite of those of taxpayers. Public employee unions want government to be more expensive and government employees to be less accountable.
[…]
Public employee unions have collected big time from the Obama Democrats. The February 2009 stimulus package contained $160 billion in aid to state and local governments. This was intended to, and did, insulate public employee union members from the ravages of the recession that afflicted those unfortunate enough to make their livings in the private sector.
How it benefited the society as a whole is less clear. State governments in California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey are facing enormous budget deficits and much, much greater pension liabilities. Much of the life of their private-sector economies has been sucked out by the public employee unions, with a resulting flight of middle-income citizens unable or unwilling to bear such burdens.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, elected in 2009, has become a kind of folk hero for his defiance of the states’ teacher unions, which expect 4 percent raises in years of no growth or inflation and balk at having members pay any share of health insurance premiums.
Public employee union members have become, as U.S. News Editor in Chief Mortimer Zuckerman writes, “the new privileged class,” with better pay, more generous benefits and far more lush pensions than those who pay their salaries — and who are taxed to send money to their leaders’ favored candidates.
Franklin Roosevelt thought public-sector unions were a lousy idea. Do you?
Greece could not be reached for comment, busy as it is crumbling under the weight of public sector worker strikes while it waits for money to begin growing on fucking trees.
Andrew Sullivan — who hasn’t any real clue what the Tea Party is about — fears the GOP, if it is to regain power, will fail to make any substantive reforms. And ordinarily he’d be correct: the establishment GOP doesn’t much care about anything other than regaining power and control over the money spigot Washington has become.
But what he doesn’t seem to understand is that the Tea Party is an equal opportunity hater: Not only does its rank and file hate them the darkies and the gays and the Mexicans and the strong womyns, as Andrew and his cloistered clique of sniffing coastal (pretend) elites believe; but they also hate them the kinds of establishment Republicans — self-styled “realists” or “pragmatists” or “mavericks” — whose failure to understand conservatism / classical liberalism, and whose inept economic stewardship over the country when they last held governing power, created the conditions for Obama’s stealthy “progressive” coup, and our country’s current economic predicament.
All of which means that the GOP establishment will continue to undergo intense scrutiny from Tea Party types — and if they fail to bring about the kinds of changes grass-roots America is demanding, the GOP could very well find itself an impotent 3rd party as conservatism / classical liberalism / constitutionalism moves forward.
The Tea Party won’t go away after this election cycle. It is a visceral response to attempts to turn the US into a soft-socialist nanny state — and it looks to me like many Americans who are fond of American exceptionalism, the primacy of the individual, equality under the law, free enterprise, and the individual freedom born of self-governance, are quite willing to fight to take their country back from petty tyrants and the kinds of self-styled elites who despise representative government.
meanwhile propaganda whore Viv Schiller’s National Soros Radio is keen for you to know today that
I think what propaganda whore Viv Schiller’s National Soros Radio means is if you don’t count union monies… but then why didn’t propaganda whore Viv Schiller’s National Soros Radio say that?
Jeff, you kinda, like, ya know, nail it, as always.
I read so many misinformed opines about the Tea Party movement, but the fact is that it’s not about racism or hate, but simply about restoring the concept the government should not be the enemy of the people.
Being successful financially used to be called the “American Dream.” Now it seems like it’s become the “Socialist Nightmare.”
Pretty sad.
It is a visceral response to attempts to turn the US into a soft-socialist nanny state — and it looks to me like many Americans who are fond of American exceptionalism, the primacy of the individual, equality under the law, free enterprise, and the individual freedom born of self-governance, are quite willing to fight to take their country back from petty tyrants and the kinds of self-styled elites who despise representative government.
Sorry, you need a permit for that. Step to the next window, please.
I think I linked this Mark Hemingway piece a while back, but it dove tails nicely with Jeff’s post.
I hope that the Tea-Partiers don’t go away, but instead stay involved. Because in part it was that apathy, rationalized by the common excuse that “their voter eally didn’t matter”.
I understand the anger with the Rethugs; not only for “allowing” it to get so bad-essentially facilitating-the rise of the progressives to this level of power, but for signing on with the whole “compassionate conservative” notion-one that seemed to countermand the GOPs espoused principles of limited government.
I still though disagree that it is the entire GOP that has been debased, instead of the actions of some men in key positions; I view it like somne of the scandals that have rocked the Catholic church-the tenets of the faith aren’t damned because of the actions of individual, or even groups of, men.
I view G.W. Bush as kind of a stealth Rockefeller Republican, much like his father was but only more stealthy. This influence clearly needs to be exorcized from the GOP, if you’ll pardon another Catholic allusion.
But, unless the Tea-Partiers continue a high level of engagment, the whole prospect of a third party triumphantly rising and displacing the GOP is wishful thinking that would probably only serve to ensure that would only serve to cement the progressives grip on power via Democrat politicians.
The Tea-Party folks need to take control of the GOP from the inside, like the Reagan “wing” did in their day, and unfortunately like the progressives have done with the modern Democrats.
The Tea-Party folks need to take control of the GOP from the inside, like the Reagan “wing” did in their day, and unfortunately like the progressives have done with the modern Democrats.
Tea Partiers already have made inroads into a few local Republican apparati.
Pardon the poor typing in #5.
And the first part should read:
I hope that the Tea-Partiers don’t go away, but instead stay involved. Because in part it was that apathy, justified by the commonly heard excuse that “their voter really didn’t matter”, that has allowed the progressives to get as far as they have; both within the Democrat party and in the political process overall.
JeffG,
I value your thoughts, opinions, and expression of those greatly; it’s the reason I count PW among the few sites I regularly visit.
But, I still have to disagree with your opinion regarding the wretched equivalence of the two parties.
It’s the same problem I have with Glenn Beck, although I would say that he’s another person, like yourself, that I find myself largely in agreement with otherwise.
But, unlike yourself, I am increasingly uncomfortable with Beck seeming to relish his position as a power broker for the tea-party movement; as well as what’s beginning to look like, at least to me, him trying to capitalizing on it. It wasn’t so many years ago when he could be heard vociferely criticizing Bush over Iraq, and essentially parrotting the line that the war was lost. Which is admittedly off topic, but has stuck in my craw ever since…
I don’t see a wretched equivalence Bob, but do see a large pile of qualifiers delimiting the problems. So, the thing is in no way muddy to me. As to Beck, yes, he’s often unwise. Still, what sets him apart from the run of the mill jaw-jacker is his willingness to be plain, more or less, about his ignorance.
I hope that the Tea-Partiers don’t go away, but instead stay involved.
I think they will Bob, and agree, in that I don’t think any party is really safe anymore. Voters are pissed off, and are simply giving Republicans an opportunity in a week; with the understanding that the smoke filled Cloak Room bullshit is over and the giant pig trough is now closed.
The key was getting the “Joe & Jane alls’ of us” with the $80K combined income who are usually too busy with work and bills, and the kids football games, softball games, MMA classes, and preparing tax returns (and have never bothered with politics much past the newspaper or a little cable news), to really look up and say “ENOUGH!”
That’s happened. My favorite Tea Party sign is, “My Kid is NOT Your Damned ATM!”
That’s real. It’s visceral, and there’s skin in the game now.
Anyway, it’s called The Tea Party Express. So even if the pork fed RINOs or the socialist proggs want to, they can’t stop a train on a dime. I think it will roll on full steam long after Nov 2nd. And get bigger.
“I am increasingly uncomfortable with Beck seeming to relish his position as a power broker for the tea-party movement; as well as what’s beginning to look like, at least to me, him trying to capitalizing on it”
I don’t watch nor disparage him, particularly, but isn’t Glenn Beck a party of one, albeit on cam with millions of viewers? Seems to me anyone asserting, however obliquely, leadership of the Tea Party co-opts its very nature and reason to be.
Or, it could be every naturally sprouting and widespread grassroots movement gets seeded, then overrun, by personality, but serves a limited purpose, meanwhile. We’ll see if the TP reforms what is or becomes what is. My hope is it stays centered on constitutionalism and remains democratically dispersed and everpresent as a burr in the butt of whomever.
sdferr,
So you think the paries are more alike, in the bad ways, that they are different?
My thoughts are that for the last few years the actions of their major players may have been, but their professed ideology is still worlds apart. Does that mean there are a lot of lying RINOs in the fold? To be sure, there are definitely folks in there who display the opposite of “classical disinterest”. The GOP needs to rid itself of those folks.
But, shouldn’t there also be an acceptance of local variation? A great metaphor that geoffb and bh came up with independantly, much like Newton and Liebnitz, was a multi-legged stool; the legs representing the major tenets of ideology and policy thought professed by the party as a whole. Now their use of this was in the vein of controlling entry to the “big tent”; and was expressed by the simple idea that if there were not enough legs, shared thoughts on issues and ideas, the stool would not be stable.
In other words, can we ever expect a person raised in and residing in a deep-blue state to ever elect a “staunch” team red representative? Or is it more realistic to accept as candidate one that agrees with the iseology on most of the “dogma”, with an emphasis placed on the most pressing issues of the day; in the same vein as Daniels opining that in light of our fiscal crisis we shoulod put social-con issues on the back burner for now?
It’s obviously off topic here, and the subject of another thread, but of interest to be sure; at least to me :)
“We’ll see if the TP reforms what is or becomes what is. My hope is it stays centered on constitutionalism and remains democratically dispersed and everpresent as a burr in the butt of whomever.”
I concur.
“stay” and “remain.” No edit function here is hinterlands survival of the fattest dics and semanticists.
The old old old distinction between professing on the one hand and doing on the other still obtains Bob. Nothing that I can see that Jeff has written (nor that I’ve written here) draws an ideological equivalence between the two major parties in the US.
The qualifiers in this fragment
more than adequately define the sorts of individuals within the Republican party Jeff is taking aim at, I think, and what it is they are failing at, in an ideological context (“failure to understand conservatism / classical liberalism”). As to blue states, well, they got that way somehow, no? Then we may think, they can un-get that way somehow else I reckon.
I think it’s quite imperative to make sure, beyond all else, these goobers do not get bailouts. They’re unstable as is. They’re pensions have no money. It’s gonna be ugly.
Republican politicians? The hill you die on is no bailouts for union pensions in any form, direct or indirect. Let them die of their own insolvency. Any dirty trick in the book, if needed – no pasaran. No pasaran, no pasaran, no pasaran!
And while you’re at it, do everything in your power and take an opportunity to crush and annihilate them all the faster and more completely.
It’s a goddamn trifecta: It’s the best policy for the country; it’s the most popular position in the polls; it’s to the great detriment of your partisan opponents. If you can’t do that, what can you do, besides use my money to name libraries after yourselves?
It’s after 2012 that the real test of the Tea Party comes. To that point, I can stomach (though not be wildly enthusiastic about) a strategy of “This far and no farther,” but, come election day in ’12, its got to become, “Start backing the f*** up, you!” Hopefully, pikes will be pressed forward sonner than later, and everywhere it’s possible, but we’ll have to see. I know that I’ll be demanding it, regardless.
More like co-opting his own credibility. One can only lead them that will follow. If the Tea Party movement, as such, does not consider him its leader, he is not its leader.
I’m with RTO. I can live with small victories, and no ground given up, until 2012, but not after that.
The strength of the tea parties (lower case, plural) is that there is no leadership to Alinsky. So long as it stays that way it will continue to be successful. Beck isn’t a “leader” — he’s a philosopher and evangelist, as are some of the other talk-radio personalities. His value is being able to gather a crowd, and his continuing adventure into the founding philosophies of the Founders and later thinkers (Hayek, e.g.).
Every silver lining is obscured by a dark gray cloud. The techniques used by the leftoids to isolate their opponents and defeat them in detail will tend to militate against the rise of a Tea Party (capital letters, singular) with a Maximum Leader. This is a good thing in the long run. We poon-pooh their fears, which are mostly screechingly over-the-top and dismissable, but we need to keep in mind that the Rev. Nehemiah Scudder is out there somewhere.
Regards,
Ric
You make a good point sdferr,
Perhaps I’m just reacting incorrectly of the use of the term establisment Republicans when referring to these people, and am wrongly extrapolating some correspondance between their ideological turpitude and that of the party overall.
The real key going forward is to hold those newly elected folks accountable to their promises, within the limits that McGehee mentioned, that is, will the Senate pass the legislation they are sent by the House…