Remonstrance sans the paper

In direct response to this post at Gort42, I must respond by stating that the affixation of a Drudge-like headline to a link is hardly “crowing” or “celebrating.”

That FDR reference of mine was a very timely reminder that even the much-ballyhooed patron saint of the Democratic Party staunchly opposed the unionization of government employees.

With that typed, the intent of this circumlocution is not to disparage Gort, or to pick a public fight with him. He’s a pro-union guy, and that’s fine. I am not a pro-union guy. And last I checked, that’s still fine for the time being. While I honestly dig the guy, politically speaking, he's just not my cup of brew.

As far as his “What Have Unions Done for America” list is concerned, that’s all well and good and wonderful. But it’s all become a bit dated, so, yes, it’s taken for granted. So, do I also have to be forever remindful of the caveman who first harnessed fire? Fact is, the Breaker Boy era has long since passed, and the public sector unions of today exist only to further enrich the public sector unions of today.

Having once been a trucker jockeying for docks at warehouses in three states, I can tell you that the definition of slow-motion is a unionized warehouse. Conversely, the definition of efficiency on steroids is a non-union warehouse. And a painfully slow warehouse makes it harder to deliver goods to market in a timely manner. In other words, it makes them more expensive to the consumer.

Also, the non-union warehouses are not the warehouses being shuttered while the accompanying jobs are transferred off to Mexico or some detainee camp on a Pacific atoll somewhere. But enough with real world experience, which usually comes across as Pig Martian to the slovenly who need the protection of a union.

The Democrat and union-engineered Wisconsin recall vote was more about protecting the power of public sector unions than that of their counterparts in the public sector. Let's be honest. It was an attempt to ensure that public sector unions remain the runaway vehicle by which the few--by law--can fleece the many, slowly but surely bankrupt said governments and school districts and lessen our quality of life in general. That’s what the pro-union folks were on about in Wisconsin last night.

What does it say about the sad state of the Democratic Party when it’s biggest, it’s most prized and it’s most protected constituency group is it’s unionized government workers? That relationship has become incestuous, it produces red-headed offspring in the form of wasteful largesse and demands that all of those not invited to the familial financial orgy pay for it all.

And what does the tired “What Have Unions Done for America” argument have to do with being a unionized government employee in 2012? Seen any unionized government employees working up a few blisters of late? Seen any teachers toweling sweat from their brows? What a vapid and banal argument for the continued fleecing of the taxpayers!

Just a few years ago, before we changed mayors here in Wilkes-Barre, a politically-connected high school dropout stumbling along in slow-motion behind a rusted, beaten garbage packer was entitled to 21 sick days per year, and a guaranteed taxpayer-provided retirement package after only twenty years of “service.” That, my friends, is what only public sector unions can make possible: the further fleecing of taxpayers.

Meanwhile, out here in the still profitable public sector, the last of the few remaining alpha males and tough-minded women drive what little is left of the U.S. economy in the face of ridiculously excessive government regulation, severely inflated variable costs due to governmental policy incompetence and having to do more with less because of the still exploding governmental largesse painting everything with that stifling broad brush of uncertainty.

So, while it may take a while, thanks to last night’s political shot heard ‘round the country fired from Wisconsin, it seems that what both the Dems and the union brethren told us was impossible--fiscal sanity and economic fairness--are both finally within our long-outreaching grasp.

I see the events of last night as a statement of remonstrance sans the paper.

Later