By: Nick Huftel
********WARNING********
If you are any of the following
1) easily offended
2) have no sense of humor
3) dislike sarcasm
4) can’t stand jovial narcissism
Then you are going to HATE this. 🙂
The Event:
2/19/2011 was certainly a day that I won’t soon forget. All week the whole country, check that, the world has had its eyes on the state of Wisconsin. In November a democratic majority of voters elected an individual who ran on a platform of balancing the budget, getting control over public sector unions, and eventually lowering taxes. This fact has apparently been lost on a great many.
I, and the group I was with, approached the capitol building on foot from the East. As we got closer we saw an increasing concentration of people who apparently never learned how to dress themselves, use deodorant, or demonstrate in a civil mater. Say hello to the DNC rent-a-mob. Yes, many public workers from Wisconsin were there, but all week the organizing/agitating wing of the Democratic National Committee had been bussing union thugs into Madison to protest. The scene has undeniably been a community organizer’s wet dream.
The support rally was located on the South lawn of the capitol. Surrounding the entire building was this protesting mob. They moved around the capitol, counter clockwise and did everything they could to block access to the South lawn. Very common sign being held by the protesters accused Scott Walker, and therefore the voters, of being bullies and dictators.
Oh really? The mob blocked the street, banged their silly drums, played with their cow bells, blew their vuvuzelas(grenade horns), chanted hateful epithets, cursed at us, threw soda cans, smelled…… well you know. Basically the protester mob was doing everything in its limited power to intimidate and bully. Keep in mind these are not happy people. Their faces were frozen in a permanent frown, foreheads deeply furrowed, marching mindlessly in a circle simply following the person in front of them, showing all the signs of unconscious group think. No message. No speakers. No plan. Just hate and anger directed at the people who pay their salaries.
Then, we broke through. Upon entering the South lawn the atmosphere was dramatically different. Hope and optimism coupled with determination was in the air. People were smiling. Big time speakers delivered a message of common sense and fiscal responsibility.
Now, at this point I would like to make a side note and point out a fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals, especially the dried up old hippies, (apparently my spell check thinks I should consider writing hippos there….. can’t say that I blame it) are not happy people. These people live their lives looking with envy at the possessions and success of others. The blame every bad thing that happens on “the rich” and think there is a cabal that seeks to keep them down. Contrast this with conservatives. Tend to be happy people who focus on the good and strive to fix the bad rather than wallow in self pity. We love people. We want everyone to be as good as they could be. We want all people to be able to reach the potential that they would have if certain obstacles were removed from their path like high taxes, excessive regulation, and too much government. We celebrate the success of the wealthy and encourage the drive of those who haven’t made it yet. We DONT try to convince people that they are incapable of achieving their dreams and need someone else to take care of them.
So as I was saying before that side note. The hate and anger was not in the tea party group of supporters. It was left out on the street. The signs on the South lawn were decidedly more clever. Free of hate and instead dripping with sarcasm. It was great. However like all good things it came to an end. As the supporters tried to leave the South lawn a mass of union thugs blocked the way. Chanting a broken record of hateful epithets that almost deserved a laugh track. Indeed I learned many things about myself. For instance. Did you know that I am a racist? Or that I am a blood sucking union buster? How about that I am bought and paid for by millionaires. I apparently can’t read. I was especially concerned to find out that I suck Koch! I pressed through and witnessed all the tell tale signs that the protesters were envious of our intellectual freedom from unionized group think and my ravishing good looks! As the mob demonstrated where all the hate and uncivil rhetoric is located in our political discourse I made my way over to the side of the street where a couple walker supporters were staked out, proudly holding the sign that read “Walker For President”.
This, of course, garnered many insults. Think about what the mob has done though. The whole country is watching this. A decided majority support the measures Walker stands for. Their silly temper tantrum has placed Walker on the fore of the national stage. Now that he is on the stage he looks…. Presidential. His resolve and determination is winning the hearts and minds of conservatives and independents across the fruited plain!
Over time more of us collected. A small contingent emerged from the crush and approached a man standing with us and demanded to know “why he hates teachers” He responded by informing them that HE is a teacher. In fact he teaches US history at UWM. This clearly got me interested so I baited him by asking what FDR had to say about public sector unions. After a couple more minutes the group sensed the weakness of their position and fled before they would have to admit anything embarrassing.
Soon after, a couple approached us with a slate of rehearsed insults. The man has had his testicles in a vice for so long he has forgotten that he has them and the woman certainly appeared to be a card carrying member of the National Association of Gals…… and she needed to trim her mustache. They informed us that we were all idiots and Walker is a shill for big business and immediately, upon taking office, proceeded to make give-aways to big business and thereby created the deficit. I tried to make the point that businesses have been fleeing the toxic business climate of Wisconsin and so the idea is that if we encourage the remaining ones to stay here and others to relocate their operations here that we can grow the tax base and make it easier to fund government. Economics was apparently a language she doesn’t speak. So she moved on to her next haymaker. “We state workers already have it so bad why do you want to take our benefits”. *sigh* If you have it so bad why then do you work for government? Me thinks you protest too much! We asked what was so bad about her situation. She told us she does engineering services for Madison and she could do the same job in the private sector and make double….. So sure are you? After factoring in benefits to her total compensation package this is undoubtedly a falsehood but let’s just take it at face value. If she could make double elsewhere, what does it say about her intelligence that she refuses to change jobs. No one is forcing her to stay in that job. In fact if the government is able to keep their people and have more qualified applicants than they have positions wouldn’t that be a sign that the tax payer is paying them more than the position is really worth? We received two emphatic yet remarkably feeble single-digit-solutes and they disappeared back into the mindless crush.
Then two more came by and really made my day. One approached and started yelling at me demanding to know what I have against unions. Of course the correct response would have been to ask how much time she had but I was being civil 😉 She stated that she is not in a union but her husband is a carpenter and he is in a union. “What do you have against my family?” She was clumsily using a number of Alinsky’s rules but I doubt she knew this. I calmly explained how in the private sector if a union requires too much then the company will lose bids and end up out of business so there is at least THAT market check on the power of the union. Public sector unions are a different story. I pointed out that FDR was against public sector unions etc etc. At this point the other woman interjected “WHY?”. Now I was a little caught off guard. Not by the question but more by the fact that this woman had apparently applied her makeup with a paint roller. She stated that without her union of…. whatever, possibly the union of people who need a makeover, she would have no protections. She asked “if I am sexually harassed what would I do?”. Now the thought that she would flatter herself by making herself think that she will ever have to worry about anyone being interested enough in her to harass her sexually made me smile. So I started to explain that we have plenty of worker protection laws that apply to everyone but she cut me off with a series of epithets and that I am a….. racist (non-sequitur does not even begin to describe these people). I returned to the subject at hand and pointed out that I don’t have a union. She responded by suggesting that maybe everyone should have a union…… hmmmm Sorry I am not ready for a lobotomy. After this we had determined that we had had enough and we returned home.
Unions:
Once upon a time our worker protection laws were non-existent and employers were able to do some ghastly things to their people not only at work but elsewhere to keep them coming back. Without these laws the only way workers could protect themselves was by organizing! Since then we have passed reasonable levels of employment regulation (and then some) so this need no longer exists.
Now the recent days have seen a number of sad little arguments get made by union members that don’t want to lose their collective bargaining privileges (that’s correct it’s not a right). State nurses have been convinced that without their union they would have to work repeated 16 hour , sweatshop style, shifts and patients would start dying. They claim “I care about my patients so I need my union”. Well, you can always quit and go to a hospital that is run better in your estimation. The need to maintain a quality group of nurses would necessitate the other hospitals to also schedule better. Furthermore, if patients start dying left and right because administration is doing such a poor job then I would venture to say that a lot of the administration would find themselves out of a job. The same holds true for teachers. They claim that without the collectively bargained work rules the schedules would get all screwed up and the students would suffer. They claim that teachers would be required to work too much and they would all quit and then there would be no teachers in the school. They have an array of similar claims. Well if the school’s schedule gets screwed up wouldn’t administration fix it to satisfy the parents of the students? If the deals became so bad and the work load so onerous that all the teachers quit wouldn’t they back off on the requirements until an equilibrium is reached? For the rest of us we take care of these issues by using the market to our advantage. If we demand too much we lose our job. If our employer demands more than is fair we leave and go work somewhere else. Competition between prospective employees maintains a check on the demands of the little guy and competition between employers acts as a check on the demands of the big guy. This ladies and gentlemen is true fairness.
Union hacks would never believe any of this is possible so allow me to illustrate. In September when I started the job that I currently have there were a number of rules. I stipulated that I need to be able to leave at a certain time on nights I have class. Also, from time to time it may be necessary for me to leave early to study for an exam or work with a group on a project. When these times come up I need to be able to leave without having any problems. I INDIVIDUALLY NEGOTIATED this. I have never had any problems with this arrangement. Now according to the union mentality this should not be possible. As far as they are concerned I must never be allowed to leave when I have to, and I am likely getting raped by my employer all the time since I have no union.
The reality of the situation is that the unions have repeatedly lied to their members and have brainwashed them into thinking that they would die a slow painful death next week if they lost their union today. This is total crap. Let me tell you who is really hurt by the unions. The poor! Take any unskilled labor union. There are people that would LOVE to have the opportunity to do the job that these union members are doing and they would be willing to do it for less pay than the unions require. These people are shut out of the workforce. Why? Because unions require a certain pay scale so the rights of the individual to negotiate are trampled by the privileges of the union. Now, if a you were to tell someone who is not employed they cannot compete for a job because you colluded with others and made your employer an offer they couldn’t refuse, and if they try to get a job you would damage them and the employer, you would be guilty of a crime. So why do we allow unions to do the same thing?
Now what about public sector unions? Let’s take the teachers union as an example. There are far more qualified applicants than there are positions. Why is this? Well it is because the word has long ago gone out that if you become a teacher you will be taken care of by the rest of us. You won’t get rich but you will have a Cadillac insurance package and a pension that will ensure that you will always be able to live comfortably. For the risk adverse this sounds like a great deal! The problem is that the scale removes the ability of the unemployed yet qualified applicant to negotiate a deal that is 1)better than their current situation of being unemployed and 2) better for the employer (the tax payer) because they will do the job for less money then what the position currently pays. The union has destroyed the right of this individual to bargain for a job. What’s more the union automatically takes dues from its members and uses those dues to elect officials that are more sympathetic to them. This perpetuates the cycle of big government as these officials are then the ones who will negotiate the next union deal. The new deal is better, yielding more dues to get the next sympathetic politician elected, and it goes on and on. What is happening here? Well if a band of teachers cornered you on the street…… or in Madison and demanded that you give them an exorbitant percentage of your earnings or charged you a confiscatory amount of money to LIVE IN YOUR OWN HOUSE!!!! or else they would throw you in their dungeon, these people would be guilty of a crime! So then why is it ok for them to do exactly this same thing but hide behind the union and the guise that they only care about the kids? This is nothing more than theft!
So then what would be the correct, free market, solution? Allow school districts to set the compensation and rules of every position. If you have a great deal of qualified applicants then you step down the compensation and if you get no qualified applicants then you sweeten to compensation and make the rules more friendly. The various districts will, over time, find an equilibrium point. This is the point that is fair for everyone. Why? Because the school can go to the teacher and say, with confidence, that this is the most I can give you without having someone just as good as you coming in and offering to do your job for less than you do. The school can then go to the tax payers and say that this is the least amount we can extract from you without losing teachers and ruining the schools. This ladies and gentlemen is real fairness!
Instead of standing for fairness an army of union goons are storming the capitol and demanding that the rest of us SUBMIT OR ELSE!!! This is not fairness. This is not what democracy (yes lower case) looks like. This is the situation that FDR warned about! Now FDR was never able to fathom the private sector or business at all but he did understand government very well. he had this to say about public sector unions.
“The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, “I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place” in the public sector. “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government.”
Frank Zeidler, the last card-carrying Socialist to run a major city, and the former mayor of Milwaukee said this in 1969, Government unions “can mean considerable loss of control over the budget, and hence over tax rates,” he warned there was “a revolutionary principle rather quietly at work in American government,” .
These are pretty apt descriptions of what is going on in Madison right now. So when the union thugocrats march around pointing out that WE THE TAXPAYER (specifically private sector tax payers) are engaging in union busting I say “here here!”
The Solution:
The solution to the deficit will take more than just cutting spending. We have watched as business after business has left the state of Wisconsin for states with more favorable tax climates. All taxes do is increase the cost of doing business in a particular location. If the taxes are high enough you increase the cost of doing business enough that you get less business being done. Also if a company can have a lower cost of doing business somewhere else they are then incentivized to go to the greener pastures. This is a concept represented by the laffer curve. Based on what has transpired so far it is safe to say that we are at “point B” on the curve. Increasing taxes will simply further shrink the tax base and the budget hole will just be bigger the next time we break out the ledgers (which will be in two years). So we must balance the budget by decreasing spending. This is painful to some, yes, but it is totally necessary. Then when that is done we will have sent an important signal to businesses that Wisconsin is dedicated to fiscal responsibility. We can target businesses and incentivize them to locate here and bring good jobs with them. The left will howl that we are making corporate “give aways”, ignore them. These jobs will grow the tax base and create a surplus. We use the surplus to lower taxes and further improve the business climate which then attracts more companies and the tax base grows more. Continue the cycle until we make our way to the “top” of the laffer curve. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the solution. This is real progress. Obstruct at your own peril!
It would be fun to start tagging people in this. But for the moment at least I will refrain.
The more you protest the more you put Walker on the national stage. But then liberals never consider the secondary and tertiary effects of their actions.
This is my favorite
It doesn’t take someone with a publicly backed defined benefit pension to teach this lesson
Get it? Got it. Good!
Medicinal Masculinity 