-By Warner Todd Huston
If this isn’t just the way the most corrupt state in the country works, there’s nothing that will show it. As the state of Illinois loses businesses and her citizens lose their jobs by the thousands, government workers in Illinois get richer and government unions are even adding members. Now there’s more government union members in Illinois than ever leaching off a dwindling base of taxpayers.
As the state sinks in red ink, government unions have grown to the point where nearly 97% of the state’s government workers have become unionized with better pay, more lucrative pensions, and richer healthcare than every other average citizen who is forced to pay the government union member’s exorbitant pay.
According to the AP, more than 10,000 state employees have joined unions. This is a four-fold increase over the previous eight years.
John O’Connor makes some great points about Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s hypocrisy on his, too. Quinn is quietly trying to get the government unions in Illinois to give back some of their lucrative benefits because he knows that the union demands are killing the budget. Yet even as he is pushing unions to give back bennies, Quinn goes before the news cameras and lambastes Wisconsin’s governor for attacking the poor, poor unions!
What a slimeball politician Quinn has become.
It is plain that the unions are ignoring Quinn’s quiet, behind the scenes pleading, too. Applications for even more government unions are in the process.
Currently, the Labor Relations Board is considering 31 applications seeking unionization for more than 1,100 employees. That would bump up the number of unionized state employees to 96.5 percent from 94.3 percent, according to an analysis of CMS numbers.
So, what will union puppet Quinn do? Crack down, or shrug his shoulders and give in to unions like he has since he became the accidental governor of the Land of Lincoln?
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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, RightPundits.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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