Public Unions Are A Privileged Class Built On Greed
With regard to the exponentially worsening economic crisis here in the United States, maybe we are just not being direct and honest enough.
The next time you see a city, county, state or federal public employee — be they teachers, postal workers, librarians, in the mayor's office, or even police or firefighters — don't view them as neighbors, friends or friendly civil servants, but rather as the destroyers of your economic future.
To be sure, the vast majority of these people are incredibly decent human beings — and no doubt see themselves that way. Just as the vast majority of them are very intelligent and know right from wrong.
And yet, given those absolutes, they also fully understand that their unfunded public pensions and elaborate health-care plans are depleting the savings desperately needed for the vast majority of Americans who are not public employees, and they just don't care. They are putting themselves before all.
When asked about it, many hide behind their corrupt unions and try to justify their naked greed as deserved compensation for the "measly salaries" they are paid.
Give me a break.
Every honest American knows that if one of these public service jobs was offered tomorrow with zero pension — jobs that pay from $20,000 to well over $100,000 per year — thousands of the unemployed would line up immediately and consider themselves blessed with good fortune if they landed one.
In large part because of the unchecked greed of the public employee unions and workers, San Bernardino this week became the third California city to seek bankruptcy protection.
Of course, if you were looking for that honest explanation from Democrats and pro-public employee union media outlets such as the Los Angeles Times or Reuters, good luck. They either ignore the elephant in the room (pun intended) or mention the toxically unfunded public employee pension issue in the last half-sentence of the story.
With regard to our economic crisis, the conduct of the majority of the mainstream media has not only been unethical and unconscionable, but legally questionable.
They have known for years that these unfunded public employee pensions and health care plans were destroying the budgets of cities, counties and states, but purposely looked the other way to protect liberal politicians and corrupt unions.
Because most of the mainstream media are in the tank for the Obama White House or the liberal "cause," you will not hear or read in their outlets that Moody's just tripled their estimate of the national pension debt to $2.2 trillion. That's trillion with a "T." Some analysts believe it's even higher.
As non-public employees continue to raid more of their precious life saving to pay for these unfunded gold-plated public employee pensions and health care plans, the obvious question has to be asked: Do these public employees deserve a pension at all? The answer of course is "no."
In the United States of America, other than liberty, we are entitled to nothing.
As the something for nothing, big-government proponents cripple the economies of Greece, Italy, Spain, California, Illinois, New York, Maryland and numerous other countries and municipalities, when do the Americans not participating in this threat to their welfare and the welfare of their children scream, "Enough is enough!"
Maybe when they take off the rose-colored glasses and see these public employees for what they are: Destroyers of their economic future.
• MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official and author of the memoir, "Rolling Pennies In The Dark." |
