Framing The Public Sector Employee As The Enemy

While listening to Nation Public Radio--that government-subsidized, socialist/communist promoting radio--this afternoon, I got to hear Michael Barone talk about an op-ed piece he wrote (published in the Washington Examiner).

He contends that public sector unions, different from the adversarial private sector unions, are collusive in that they "strive to elect their management, which in turn can extract money from taxpayers to increase wages and benefits -- and can promise pensions that future taxpayers will have to fund."

The definition of collusive is "involving collusion; fraudulently contrived by agreement".

During the discussion on the radio, Mr Barone indicated that union dues paid by public sector employees are essentially government funds used to finance an organization that exists to extract more money from the government. Using that same logic, a public sector employee's home is government-funded housing because the government is giving them the money to pay their mortgage or rent. I have to disagree with this line of reasoning. A person's paycheck, regardless of who they work for, is that person's money and they're free to do with it as they please. As to being collusive, public sector unions have been willing to negotiate and accept reductions--even in Wisconsin and Washington--because they recognize the reality of these economic times. That hardly supports his position.

Mr Barone presents some pretty selective evidence for his argument.

States such as New York, New Jersey and California, where public-sector unions are strong, now face enormous budget deficits and pension liabilities.

Yes, and states that don't allow public section unions their collective bargaining rights--probably their greatest strength behind striking (unless that's illegal too)--are also facing huge budget deficits. Texas, for example, has a larger deficit projected for 2012 than New York does.

While the private sector has lost 7 million jobs, the number of public-sector jobs has risen. The number of federal government jobs has been increasing by 10,000 a month, and the percentage of federal employees earning over $100,000 has jumped to 19 percent during the recession.

He's repeating numbers that we've heard before from our own Cathy McMorris Rodgers just over a year ago which I covered in a post back then. I'm not going to rehash all that now.

The public sector employee is the new enemy.

Fear me.