Obama: Private Sector Doing Fine; Let's Help Government Unions Instead

In a week in which the voters of Wisconsin and California dealt stinging rebukes to public service employee unions, telling them, in essence, that cash-strapped, overtaxed taxpayers will not foot the bill anymore for their plush pension and health care benefits, President Obama states:

The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have [sic] to do with state and local government. Oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, Governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don't have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in. ... [What Republicans] should be thinking about is how do we help state and local governments.

Could there be anyone more out of touch with the mood of the American electorate than Mr Obama? Well, perhaps, there could be. We also learned this week that San Jose police and firemen, after Measure B to reform their pensions was passed with a 70% majority, have filed suit to challenge the reforms in court. The website of the San Jose Police Officers Association, with the wonderful domain name www.protectsanjose.com, provides an excellent confirmation of my Thesis 6:

Increases to government spending or programs that benefit particular special interest groups are always justified by noble-sounding, plausible arguments about promoting the general welfare: ... when we increase the pay of policemen, firefighters, and prison guards, we are "improving public safety;" ...

Every opponent of the Progressive movement should welcome this suit and rejoice at the utter tone-deafness of Obama and his government union supporters. Nothing can be more self-defeating for these union members and their Democratic enablers than the spectacle of public service employee unions using their deep coffers (filled with taxpayer dollars laundered through mandatory unions dues) to attempt to overturn a law passed by such an overwhelming majority and enacting such modest reforms.

The actions of the San Jose firemen and policemen are an illustration of my Thesis 8:

[T]he modus operandi of public service unions (teachers, firefighters, policemen, and others) is a.) gather mandatory dues from all union employees, b.) use these union dues to fund massive lobbying efforts to elect to office officials who will support the efforts of the unions to increase union pensions and benefits. In this way, the government officials who end up negotiating with the unions are bought and paid for by the unions themselves.

The only thing I would add to that at this point is that, apparently, the unions are now using their funds not only to back political candidates, but also to pursue litigation. I will have to modify Thesis 8 accordingly.

Think about if for a moment: firemen and policemen are using dollars that ultimately derive from the taxpayer to engage in litigation whose effect will be to funnel more taxpayer dollars to firemen and policemen at additional cost to the City, which will now have to fight this suit.

Addendum
I just watched the Sunday morning talk shows. The Democrats made the following points:

The troglodyte Republicans want fewer teachers, firemen, and policemen. It used to be that being a public service employee -- a teacher, a fireman, a policeman -- was an honorable profession. The Republicans are now demonizing people in these professions when they should instead be giving thanks for their selfless service.

Yes, being a public service employee -- a teacher, or fireman, or policeman -- used to be and still is an honorable profession. My wife has been a teacher for 30 years. But something has gone terribly wrong when teachers abandon their classrooms and occupy the statehouse of Wisconsin, disrupting government and screaming threats of physical violence against the governor. Something has gone terribly wrong when the firemen and policemen of San Jose file suit to thwart the will of a 70% majority of San Jose voters, voters in a city that has been exceptionally generous to those city workers over the last several decades.

As for the claim that Republicans want the number of teachers to be reduced, it has turned out in Wisconsin that the reforms instituted by Republican governor Scott Walker have had just the opposite effect: they have preserved the jobs of teachers, who otherwise would have been laid off without the reforms. Or look at San Jose. The reason why the number of policemen has been reduced so drastically is not because a Republican has been slashing their jobs; ferchissakes, the mayor of San Jose is a Democrat, Chuck Reed. No, the reason why Mayor Reed has been forced to cut the number of policemen so precipitously is because the cost of the pensions and benefits for retired policemen has soared out of control over the last decade. That is why Mayor Reed supported Measure B: limit the pension costs, as Measure B does, and you have more money to hire new police officers, as well as to spend on other public services. What is forcing massive cuts to be made to the ranks of public service employees is not Republicans, but the simple fact that so much money is now being spent on pensions and other post-employment benefits for retired employees that there is no money left to pay for or to hire new current employees.