-By Warner Todd Huston
This is a story that warms the anti-union cockles of my free-market heart. At the recent meeting of the Republican Governors Association in San Diego those governors gathered made a point to discuss angles of attack to take down the budget-busting, anti-democratic public employees unions.
In attendance was the ever present former Speaker of the House of Representative, Newt Gingrich, and he whipped up the crowd with the policy goal of taking down those Public Employee Unions with ideas centered on limiting union gains and cutting benefits to bring them more into line with reality.
Newly elected Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker had a great quote: “We cannot and should not maintain a system where public employees are the haves and the taxpayers footing the bill are the have-nots.”
I love it.
Tim Pawlenty, a much-discussed possible 2012 GOP candidate for president, also had some interesting things to say. Saying that public employees were “over-benefited and overpaid,” Pawlenty went on to warn those newly elected governors in the room that they should be ready for the unions to scream like banshees once they are targeted — especially teachers unions.
And another governor was in attendance that should know. N.J. Governor Chris Christie asserted that unless public employee union pay is trimmed and benefits cut, state budget problems cannot be solved. “If you don’t take on and solve that problem, you’ll never solve your budget problem,” the governor said.
I’ve said it a million times, but I’ll say it again: government employee unions are antithetical to good government. Previous to the late 50s and early 60s, public employee unions used to be illegal. They should be made so again.
I’ll leave you with Christie’s newest video hit…
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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