Public Employee Unions ?

Should they exist ?

The obvious answer is no.

Do taxpayers have a union ? Nope.

Can taxpayers go on strike ? Nope.

Federal labor laws do not apply to States and localities. Why ? Read the 10th amendment and the rest of the Constitution. There is no Federal power to force the States to do anything (except obey the Constitution and have a Republican form of government).

Public employee unions are inherently corrupt. The union gives campaign donations of member in-kind support and money; in turn, the beholden legislator or governor gives them more pay and benefits. Where is the taxpayer ? The taxpayer is entangled in a web of corruption and self-dealing, paying and paying for ... nothing of value.

Civil service laws, service boards and other protections can and should prevent governmental corruption from harming worker groups or individual workers. Cronyism is rampant in government - it's likely an inherent nature of the beast. The balance, however, is not to put taxpayers at the mercy of more crony tactics. Why create another beast of prey to suck the blood of taxpayers ?

Taxpayers have no choice in whether to pay or not. It's pay or go to jail or be killed resisting arrest. In the private sector, a consumer can buy another product or do without. One can buy a car made in Alabama by a non-union plant. A taxpayer in Wisconsin has no choice, but to pay ... and pay ... and pay.

All powers of public employee unions should be eliminated. If public employees want to join an organization to lobby or whatever, fine. But DO NOT give that entity any powers whatsoever.

Public employee unions - no way, no how, no where. They have no place in a fair society.

Actions

None. All is in balance after yesterday's sale of some gold & silver. Budding sell signals for some stocks are now dormant. Krypto is still waiting for QE2 to end to get better prices on taxable bonds and TIPs.

Notice

Tomorrow's blog post will be R rated.

Word of the Day

"Gallous" - adjective [$10 ? or $1,000 ? unclear]; formed from the noun, "gall" [$10] but not listed in dictionaries of any value.
Gall means (usage #1) 1. impudence; 2. asperity, rancor; 3. bitterness, anything bitter.
Gallous means having a bitter, rancorous, or impudent quality.
Sentence: Gallous actions of public employees unions in extracting money from taxpayers and exercising power must be challenged and defeated. Nearly insolvent state and city governments show that their power must be eviscerated.

"Gallous" was used in the famous play by J. M. Synge, Playboy of the Western World (written in 1907 and first performed in Dublin, causing riots). The character, Pegeen Mike, says, "There's a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed." I read that line in a chapter in the Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats, page 123, as Yeats' influence on Synge was described. The title of the play is now a cliché, but the drift in meanings of words in time and space since 1907 in Ireland has caused its usage to have almost no relation to the play.