Sandy Springs had a great opportunity and did not waste it. They broke from the bloated Atlanta government bureaucracy and set up their own city, privatizing most of its services, avoiding public unions and the pension liabilities that are sinking so many cities. It is admittedly easier to avoid money sucking institutions than it is to dismember them, but Sandy Springs at least gives us an idea at what is to be gained by eliminating entrenched special interests that are contrary to the interests of the taxpayers and citizens of a community.
My first personal experience with unions thirty years ago was an eye opener. The union campaign against our company was built on lies and intimidation. They got our employees to vote for the union by promising them that they would get the owners to pay 100% of their health insurance cost and that they would be allowed to get all of their money out of the profit sharing plan in a lump sum.
The union never had any intention of pursing those promises and said so directly at the bargaining table. When we refused to give in on dues check-off (requiring management to automatically deduct union dues) the union recommended a strike but our employees refused. They signed a contract without check-off and then just walked away.
Thousands of unions left the closed- shop requirements of the north and moved south. Union membership has showed a consistent decline because their demands were at least partially responsible for either bankrupting or forcing companies to relocate overseas, and management became more enlightened in their employee relations. Our largest American steel company, Nucor, is non union in the majority of its plants.
The only area sustaining the unions is the public sector. Unable to win in a free arena where employees have the free choice to join or not join a union, unions have turned from bullying business owners to bribing government officials with political contributions. Even FDR warned against the dangers of public sector unions.
This battle, currently focused in Wisconsin, is about raw political power. The unions want to continue to bribe elected officials to increase their wages even if it means raising taxes, and the elected officials, almost all Democrats, do not want to give up this source of campaign funds.
It is a delusional suspension of objectivity to compare their cause to the demonstrations in Egypt and the Middle East. The voters have spoken when they elected Walker as governor and his party to control the legislature. The workers should have the freedom NOT to join a union and NOT to have their dues pay for political bribes over their objections. In the Middle East voters are demonstrating to have a voice; in Madison they are demonstrating against the voice of the voters.
Union membership remains in a freefall. The public sector unions are now associated with the greed that was once used to label their adversaries. Like Icarus flying too close to the sun, the unions have destroyed themselves; by reaching for too much power and control they have lost the support of the ultimate funding source, the taxpayer. It is further ironic that the most pro union president in a half century may preside over the biggest reduction in union power of any administration during that same period.
Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, is one of the rising stars of the reinvigorated Republican party. He is fiscally conservative, and has taken innovative action to put his state in the black. Like Chris Christie of New Jersey Mitch is comfortable speaking in plain common sense and seems to understand that the budget is not about complicated economic policy- it is about simple math.
From The Future of Capitalism.com Mitch Daniels on the State of the Nation:
Second was Mr. Obama’s suggestion, before a student audience, of a proposal to forgive student loans for those who go on to work in government or the non-profit sector for a given amount of time. Mr. Daniels said he thought Mr. Obama had it backwards; the loans should be forgiven only if graduates “go out and work in productive sectors.”
Mr. Daniels predicted that Americans would come to realize how much of what government now does “we can get by without.”
Some of the anger out there now, he said, is directed at “not just Wall Street or overpaid corporate CEOs but government employees and their unions.”
Public education, he said, used to be “the bloody shirt of American politics,” a kind of conversation stopper that could be invoked as a way of saying if you want cuts, “you hate children.” Not anymore, he said, putting himself in the shoes of a voter who says, “The teacher next door I just figured out makes a lot more than I do but doesn’t work all year.”
Of the Tea Party movement, he said, “A little hell-raising’s not a bad way to get a conversation going.”
He called for a “policy of maximum economic growth.” That apparently includes encouraging large families, at least among Republicans. Mr. Daniels recounted encouraging Young Republicans to reproduce, telling them, “it’s easier to conceive ‘em than convert ‘em.”
On Mr. Daniels’s first day in office, he decertified the state government employee unions; in the first eight months, 92% of government employees quit paying their union dues.
Mr. Daniels said that Republicans are “presumptively” the “party of the rich,” but said that there were Democrats out there who wouldn’t know a working person if their limousine drove over one. Mr. Daniels himself travels his state by motorcycle, staying not in hotels but in peoples’ homes.
De-certifying the state employee unions is a bold and productive step. For those who fear the grip that unions now hold on government office this should be a model action all levels of government should emulate.
It is stunning to see such a reversal in the Democrat’s fortune in the course of one year. As the electorate sees the hopes and dreams degenerate into deficits and taxes, the administration will be inclined to spin the outcome into something other than the rejection that it is.
It is clear that the Democrats misread the mandate. But what should they have done?
Clearly the financial system needed reform. Obama could have started by addressing problems in the banking and financial system that would have clearly enjoyed bipartisan support, and would have been seen as a consensus builder.
The administration could have addressed unemployment with tax credits rather than reckless deficit spending. But when the first program out of the box is to force unions down the throat of business, trample bankruptcy law in the case of GM, pass a hugely flawed Cap and Trade bill, and then force and even more flawed Health Care bill riddled with blatant bribes, then he has created such political uncertainty that economic remedies are effectively neutered.
But the voters’ rejection is as much about style as policy. The unmitigated partisanship, arrogance and deafness to public concerns has pissed off the electorate.
The president prefers making grand speeches to the dirty process of passing legislation. He may have promised change but what we got were old leftists exploiting a crisis to pass unpopular legislation. His call for openness was greeted with contempt by his own party leaders.
If I were a Democrat I would place a large portion of the blame for this destructive hubris at the feet of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The party picked two horribly divisive leaders. If the Democrats hope to save the ship they need to mutiny and get better captains.
