Top Worst State Budgets: Unions Have Put EVERY State’s Budget In The Hole

-By Warner Todd Huston

When you or I overspend our family budget and end up not being able to pay our bills a few things happen, all of them bad. At best we do without luxury items, at worst a bank comes and takes our cars away, our homes away, or, worse yet, we go hungry. When government unions spend government budgets into a black hole of trouble what happens? Apparently the citizens are expected to lose more of their own money for the comfort of government union members and to assist big spending Democrat politicians to keep indulging a wild bacchanalia of spending.

The worst mess that states are in is because government unions have been handed luxurious and unsustainable pensions and healthcare plans by those very Democrat politicians that unions have paid off to do so. Again all at the expense of the suffering taxpayers.

Maddeningly, these city, county, and state workers end up making far more than the poor citizens forced to pay for those government union member’s high living and comfortable retirement benefits while the citizens do without.
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Top Worst State Budgets: Unions Have Put EVERY State’s Budget In The Hole”


While Illinois Citizens Lose Jobs, More Government Workers Get Union Protection

-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.
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While Illinois Citizens Lose Jobs, More Government Workers Get Union Protection”


Corruption and Political Intrigue in Government Employee Pensions

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Los Angeles Times has a disheartening report about the graft, corruption, and nest-feathering infesting the administration of California’s government employees pension fund, CalPers (California Public Employees’ Retirement System). It reports that subordinates were pressured into investing in to firms run by political buddies and that one of the former CalPERS administrators was “lucky” enough to have been handed a high paying new job in one of those politically connected firms after he left the government agency.

Some of these officials now under investigation are also accused of falsifying documents to further their schemes of self-enrichment at the expense of the people, accepting large gifts that went unreported, and earning millions in “placement agent fees.”
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Corruption and Political Intrigue in Government Employee Pensions”


Just Can’t Win Dept: Unions Honor Traitor Republicans, Dems Call Unions Traitors

-By Warner Todd Huston

Traitors to the right of them, traitors to the left of them, traitors in front of them… behind them, around them within them… in the they-just-can’t-win department, unions held a soiree for the traitor Republicans that voted in favor of some of the pro-union provisions in last week’s temporary budget and their pals in the donkey party were heehawing in rage to beat the band over the whole thing. The news is quite revealing in a number of ways, really.

On March 10 Politico reported that 15 labor groups held a little “thank you” party on Capitol Hill for those Republicans that voted in favor of the few pro-union amendments to the CR. Only those Republicans that voted in favor of the unions were invited.

Of the pro-union amendments, one would have repealed the Davis Bacon prevailing wage law and the second would have prohibited the federal government from observing project labor agreements (PLAs). The latter failed by a 210 to 210 tie vote. Some Republicans claimed that they voted in favor of the PLA amendment by accident due to the flurry of amendments offered in a short space of time before the votes came due.

Democrats on the Hill were not amused by the union’s reaching out to the GOP, though.
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Just Can’t Win Dept: Unions Honor Traitor Republicans, Dems Call Unions Traitors”


VIDEO:Big Unions, Big Money, Big Payback

Video courtesy of the Workforce Fairness Institute. WFI’s YouTube Channel.

Unions: Losing friends all around
By Nina Easton, Fortune/CNN Money

As Barack Obama stood on that frigid inaugural stage in 2009, labor leaders could envisage the glorious future awaiting them. Here, at last, was a President determined to help unions rebuild their sagging ranks by supporting a “card check” bill that would change the way unions are allowed to organize workers. Here was a President who openly criticized fellow Democrat Bill Clinton for signing the North American Free Trade Agreement. And here was a President who would put government health care for the uninsured at the center of his agenda.

Two years later card check is dead, Obama is out promoting free-trade deals, and his health care reform plan — passed without a government option — faces an uncertain future in the courts. And now a costly new front has opened in labor’s struggles: the states, where budget-cutting governors are targeting union salaries, benefits, and even collective-bargaining rights.

Not even the most union-friendly President in three decades can soften this harsh political terrain — a problem sure to vex his 2012 reelection bid…..

Read the rest at CNN Money.


Dueling Union Bills in DC

-By Warner Todd Huston

First Congressional Democrats offered a national forced unionzation bill, and now Republicans have countered by putting forth a national worker’s freedom bill. With the luck breaking against unions in Wisconsin and the issue in an uproar in Ohio and Indiana it is now surprise that Congress has come to loggerheads with the same issue.

On Tuesday eight Republicans introduced the National Right to Work Act. Senator Jim DeMint says that he hopes it will, “reduce workplace discrimination by protecting the free choice of individuals to form, join, or assist labor organizations, or to refrain from such activities.”

Unions are less than 8 percent of the work force at this point yet those states that have more union members than others are doing less well. DeMint says that having unions is part of the problem.
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Dueling Union Bills in DC”


For Crying Out Loud: Taxpayers Forced To Pay for Union Workers’ Coffee

-By Warner Todd Huston

It is absolutely impossible any more to come up with parody about how much government unions are ripping off the taxpayer. Witness the fact that a city in Connecticut is being forced to pay for the coffee and related refreshment supplies of its government union members.

Todd Starnes of Fox News reports that the town of Orange, Connecticut has been told by the State Board of Labor Relations that it must provide “free” coffee and milk to the members of the United Public Service Employees Union.

The union ripoff artists got upset when town administration eliminated the free refreshments in order to save money in the budget. Instead of seeing it as a logical belt-tightening measure, the union decided they were being persecuted and took their case to the Democrat heavy State Labor Relations Board which dutifully ruled in their patrons, the union’s, favor.

Of the expense for the “free” coffee, Wayne Gilbert, the regional director and chief spendthrift of the UPSE, scoffed that “It’s like a couple of bucks a week.”
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For Crying Out Loud: Taxpayers Forced To Pay for Union Workers’ Coffee”


Government Union Collective Bargaining 101

-By Warner Todd Huston

Are you a bit hazy on why government employee unions are a problem? If so the Heritage Foundation has made a great video to help you understand the deal. It’s a sort of Government Unions 101.

The Heritage Foundation also has a great fact sheet to help you learn more.

Here are some of the points on that list:
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Government Union Collective Bargaining 101″


Obama Says Gov’t Employees Not to Blame, Yet in 41 States They Make More Than Everyone

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a recent interview with Channel 4 TV News in Milwaukee, President Obama denied that government employees are responsible for the “budget problems” that the nation faces and that employees such as those in Wisconsin are not to blame. We shouldn’t “vilify” them, he said. Yet, seeming to contradict Obama’s claims USA Today has reported that in 41 states government employees make more on average than workers in the private sector.

In a fine demagogic manner Obama told Channel 4 that we need to understand that these public employees are “our friends and neighbors.”
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Obama Says Gov’t Employees Not to Blame, Yet in 41 States They Make More Than Everyone”


Roskam Urges Democrats to Join in Spending Cuts While Majority of Dems Vote Against Pelosi on Cuts

-By Warner Todd Huston

Significantly 104 House Democrats voted in favor of the GOP led temporary budget plan that is now on its way to the Senate. This majority of House Dems voted against former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif.) who voted against the cuts. Even Dem. Number two man Steny Hoyer (D, Maryland.) voted in favor of the GOP’s continuing Resolution budget plan.

The remaining moderate Democrats that were not swept from Congress in the 2010 midterms are worried that Pelosi is marginalizing herself by catering to the far left and not trying to appeal to the centrist voters that fled for the GOP.

On Tuesday I spoke to House Majority Chief Deputy Whip Congressman Peter Roskam (R, Illinois) and he said that this vote was an important first step toward a more fiscally responsible budget. It was also important for the legitimacy of the GOP led House, too. “Imagine how the media would be spinning this if we didn’t take this step toward cuts,” he said.
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Roskam Urges Democrats to Join in Spending Cuts While Majority of Dems Vote Against Pelosi on Cuts”


Left-Wing Group Takes Down Conservative Website — Petty Little Children Affecting Nothing

-By Warner Todd Huston

The left-wing Internet-based group calling itself “Anonymous” briefly took down the website of the conservative activist group Americans For Prosperity on Sunday, Feb. 27. Yet all the sturm und drang signifying… what? Me thinks that “Anonymous” is reading too many comic books.

Amusingly, with the Denial of Service (DNS) attack “Anonymous” imagines themselves striking a blow for the oppressed, or something. “Anonymous hears the voice of the downtrodden American people,” they sonorously tell us on their website. The amusing thing to me is that they imagine the oppressed are government employee union members. Only, here is the thing… people that work for the government are on average the best paid people in America. They have the best benefits, the earliest retirement ages, and the cheapest healthcare in the entire country — cheapest to them anyway, not to us the taxpayers. It is a fact that government employees are the new elites in America today. It is also a fact that they live high on the hog off the backs of the working poor.

So who the heck do these fools in “Anonymous” think they are come to the aid of?
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Left-Wing Group Takes Down Conservative Website — Petty Little Children Affecting Nothing”


Government Employee Unions Undemocratic, Unfair, Unsustainable

-By Warner Todd Huston

A lot has been said about the thuggish behavior of these teachers in Wisconsin and other union toughs across the country who have been caught on tape calling people Hitler and dictators, and attacking peaceful Tea Partiers. The behavior of union supporters has been ignorant to say the least. But as we’ve focused on the behavior of these ignoramuses, we’ve also neglected to explain just why their unions are illicit in the first place.

To start with we should remind everyone that government employees have not always been allowed to unionize. Collective bargaining for pubic employees only started in 1958 after New York Mayor Robert Wagner signed what came to be called “the Little Wagner Act” allowing city workers to unionize. In fact, collective bargaining itself was only legalized even in the private sector in 1935 when Wagner’s own father, New York Senator Robert Wagner, sponsored the National Labor Relations Act, or the Wagner Act. Nationally, collective bargaining for government employees began in 1962 when President John Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988 allowing federal employees to unionize and gain collective bargaining.
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Government Employee Unions Undemocratic, Unfair, Unsustainable”


Union Thug Attacks a Young Woman Outside Freedomworks HQ, Wash. D.C.

-By Warner Todd Huston

Another union thug reveals the hate and violence in his heart…

This incident occurred outside of the Washington D.C. headquarters of the conservative activist group Freedomworks (spokesman former Representative Dick Armey) on February 23, 2011. This particular thug was wearing the (fittingly) red T-Shirt shirt of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The young woman being assaulted is the 20 something Tabitha Hale, Freedomworks new media maven.
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Union Thug Attacks a Young Woman Outside Freedomworks HQ, Wash. D.C.”


Hate is What Unions Sell

-By Warner Todd Huston

This situation in Wisconsin has brought out the truth about unions: they peddle hate. Unions are exactly what Democrats try to claim the Tea Party is, a hate-filled, uncivil, mob of name callers. Unionistas use hateful and violent rhetoric, they call everyone that opposes them Hitler and they lie about their ultimate goals.

Many of you out there may be saying that we shouldn’t hold the obscene actions of a few bad Wisconsin teachers against the whole of uniondom. But we don’t have to restrict ourselves to Wisconsin to see this sort of hateful, violence themed rhetoric.

Yesterday, for instance, Massachusetts Democrat Representative Michael Capuana told a union crowd that sometimes the protesters have to “get a little bloody” on the streets to prove their fealty to the unions.
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Hate is What Unions Sell”


Defunding Obama’s Union Led Regulatory Army

-By Warner Todd Huston

You might recall that with great fanfare and the slobberingly positive coverage by the Old Media, President Obama made Reagan-like and claimed that he thought it was time to get rid of the regulations strangling American business. Since that time he’s met with businesses and pretended to suddenly be a pro-business, pro-economic growth president. His actions, however, give the lie to his sudden turn around from anti-business to pro-business man. Thankfully the GOP is making to help the president become what he’s selling himself as, despite his best intentions.

One of those ways that the GOP is assisting Obama to become business friendly — no matter how much Obama hates the idea — was announced last week by John Kline and the Republicans of the Education and the Workforce Committee of the House of Representatives.

Subcommittee Chairman Phil Roe, M.D. (R-TN) announced the closer scrutiny that the GOP intends to level upon the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal entity that is supposed to act as a mediator for disputes between labor. That closer scrutiny is a result of Obama’s appointees moving the NLRB from mediator between business and labor to outright advocate in favor of Big Labor.
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Defunding Obama’s Union Led Regulatory Army”


Getting Rich Off the Taxpayers: School Administrators Double Dipping Pensions

-By Warner Todd Huston

It must be nice to work for the government. Sadly it’s the most lucrative way to make a living in American history. To “win life’s lottery” all you have to do is get a job with the government — whether the federal or state government — at practically any level and voila, welcome to easy street. Here we have yet another case of the milking of the taxpayer by our “public servants,” this time it’s school superintendents that jump from state to state in order to double or triple their pension takings.

The Chicago Trib revealed the newest way for “public servants” to rip off the public by reporting that it has become common practice for school superintendents to “retire” from a school district in one state only to migrate to another state and take the same job in order to earn another lucrative pension. Some of these guys are making upwards to $500,000 a year off the backs of the taxpayers.

When questions over their greed are put to them these “public servants” demur from being characterized as fatcat, double dippers. They say that they are acting entirely within the law. They claim that there isn’t a single thing wrong with what they are doing. Well, maybe legally. Morally is another question.
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Getting Rich Off the Taxpayers: School Administrators Double Dipping Pensions”


Union Boss Says Advocates for Spending Cuts are ‘Mentally Retarded’

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a perfect example of why unions are the biggest problem for government budget reform, John Gage, President of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), has just pronounced anyone that wants to cut the overly generous pay, benefits, and pensions of government employees are “mentally retarded.” This is the to-the-hilt fight that the unions will go to, not only to keep their cushy remuneration, but to enlarge it still more all on the backs of the working poor taxpayers that don’t have luxurious government jobs.

Gage made the statement during a Feb. 8 march on Washington, DC.

When people say well we just have to pay less in wages whether it’s private sector or public sector, I think they’re mentally retarded to say something like that.

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Union Boss Says Advocates for Spending Cuts are ‘Mentally Retarded’”


Unions Realizing They Have Bad Reputation, Launch PR Campaign

-By Warner Todd Huston

So, what is the first thing that you do when you find out that everyone hates you? What do you do when you finally come to terms with the fact that you have the worst reputation possible? Do you sit yourself down and reassess your actions to try and pinpoint why everyone thinks you are a jerk? Well, that might be what a serious person or group might do. So, what has the AFL-CIO, the SEIU and other big unions done upon this realization? Why, hired a public relations firm, of course.

After all, the unions can’t possibly be at fault can they? Why, it can’t be the union’s fault that everyone hates them, could it? It simply must be that people out there are too stupid to understand that unions are wonderful, right?
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Unions Realizing They Have Bad Reputation, Launch PR Campaign”


In 2011 Public Employees Unions Must Be Targeted for Elimination

-By Warner Todd Huston

One of the biggest recurring themes in union reporting these days is music to the ears of any fiscally responsible American. It seems almost weekly that we are seeing stories that recount the ire being directed at public employee unions. Let us hope that this reporting is the first ripples of an anti-union tidal wave that will sweep public employee unions from our governments drowning in union-created red ink.

One of the latest is an editorial out of Wisconsin by the Lakeland Times’ Gregg Walker. Walker kicked off his piece with exactly the sort of sentiment that we should hope will lead to an end to public employee unions.
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In 2011 Public Employees Unions Must Be Targeted for Elimination”


90-Year-Old Post Office Workers Still Getting Workers Comp?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Years after most Americans retire, in fact years after the federal retirement age of 68, more than 100 U.S. Postal Workers in their 90s are still getting 75 percent of their salaries (tax free, yet) of federal workers compensation payments instead of having been graduated to the cheaper retirement payments at 60 percent of their salaries.

This is classic government waste.

Jim McElhatton of the Washington Times gives us this tale of government foolishness and waste as Senator Susan Collins (R, Maine) scolds the Post Office for its failed administration of the issue.
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90-Year-Old Post Office Workers Still Getting Workers Comp?”


Tim Pawlenty: Government Unions vs. Taxpayers

-By Warner Todd Huston

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty penned a great op ed in the Wall Street Journal that takes public employee unions to task for their greed and their destructive nature. I’ve said many times that public employee unions are antithetical to good government and should be outlawed. Pawlenty agrees that they make good governing impossible.

Public employees have not always had the luxury of unions. The idea that government employees should be allowed to enter into collective bargaining didn’t exist prior to 1958. The fact is, we will never be able to fix our public pension problems until we go back to a pre-1958 stance on public employee unions. They should be eliminated completely.

Now I don’t usually post whole articles. But this one is too good to just excerpt. I hope WSJ can excuse me…
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Tim Pawlenty: Government Unions vs. Taxpayers”


Pensions Troubles Getting Some Attention

-By Warner Todd Huston

Michael Corkery of the Wall Street Journal reports that congressional Republicans are finally paying a bit of attention to the coming pension bomb that is about to explode in nearly every state in the union, causing further damage to our economy and our state budgets. House Republicans are making moves to prevent bailouts of state pension funds.

Currently the federal government does not have too much influence over state pension funds. But with moves by some Democrats to change that so that the federal government can bailout their union supporters in the states, Republicans are looking to head off further federal involvement in the state’s floundering pension funds. (For more on Democrats trying to bailout state pensions see my earlier reports, here and here, among others.)

One of these moves is an attempt to force states to report more honestly on their pension problems before they are allowed to sell tax-free bonds.
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Pensions Troubles Getting Some Attention”


Chicago Cops/Firemen Retire as Millionaires

-By Warner Todd Huston

There really is no excuse for any public servant to retire with a pension worth $1.3 million dollars of the people’s tax money. None. But that is precisely what happens in the City of Chicago according to Chicago’s Civic Committee.

Crain’s Greg Hinz reports that the Civic Commission sent an email blast out to its members late last week reporting that the typical Chicago Fireman who retires after 20 years of service will make $1.3 million in pension benefits. Cops make a bit less at $1.2 million.

These public servants can also retire at age 50, almost two decades earlier than the rest of us. This means that these retired city officers can potentially live one third of their lives or more on the public dime. After 20 measly years’ service.

Now, I certainly realize that cops have a high stress job. I also realize that both policemen and firemen can be called upon to put their personal safety, even their lives, on the line (though by no means do all of them do so). But these pensions are an impossible corruption of our system. No one deserves such luxury on the backs of the poor taxpayer.
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Chicago Cops/Firemen Retire as Millionaires”


Lame Duck Threat to Bailout Union Pensions

-By Warner Todd Huston

Connie Hair has an informative piece at Human Events about what Democrats are hoping to do in the next few weeks in this lame duck session by pushing another big union bailout.

In October, Sen. Tom Harkin (D, Iowa) heard witnesses advancing the “Guaranteed Retirement Account” (GRA) idea authored by left-wing activist and purported “labor economist” Theresa Guilarducci.

As an aside, Guilarducci being called an “economist” is an hilarious conceit. She is nothing of the kind but is merely a big labor activist disguising herself as an “economist.”

Anyway, the Democrats would love to slip this budget busting nonsense past the American people in this zombie congress. Here is how Hair defines the policy:
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Lame Duck Threat to Bailout Union Pensions”


Teacher Union Chief: Big Boss, Big Hypocrite

-By Warner Todd Huston

What was it that our apologizer in chief and his minions have told us? Wasn’t it that we all have to sacrifice because the U.S. is less than she used to be? Well American Federation of Teachers union chief, Rhonda “Randi” Weingarten, says phooey on that. Sacrifice if for the unwashed masses, not her.

Weingarten was full of dire warnings for Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Even though the commission said that funding for education should not be cut Weingarten wanted to warn the commission that she and her union would attack them anyway for their recommendations on cutting Social Security and Medicare. What this has to do with teaching is anybody’s guess.

She boldly asserted that “shared sacrifice means holding millionaires responsible” for footing all the bills. I’m sure she feels everyone else should be left off scot-free.
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Teacher Union Chief: Big Boss, Big Hypocrite”


GOP Guvs Ready to Take on Greedy Public Employee Unions

-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.
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GOP Guvs Ready to Take on Greedy Public Employee Unions”


Video: CEI’s Vincent Vernuccio on Where Union Dues Go

-By Warner Todd Huston

Vincent Vernuccio of the Competitive Enterprise Institute appeared on Fox Business Channel’s “Follow the Money” show and talked a little bit about where the dues that union members pay goes.

Fox Business only gave a snippet of the video that CEI made so here is the full video.

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Video: CEI’s Vincent Vernuccio on Where Union Dues Go”


New GOP State Rep. Turns Down Gov’t Pension

-By Warner Todd Huston

I’ll avoid any “the only good politician is a…” jokes here, but one thing is certain, newly elected State Representative Tom Morrison (R, 54th District) has taken the first step on the road to being a good politician. Or at least a good steward of the people’s tax dollars.

Mr. Morrison of Palatine has decided to forego the state pension benefits that he is legally eligible for because of his electoral success. According to the Daily Herald, Morrison was asked “are you sure you want to do that?” by an administrator when he turned down joining the pension plan this week at the state capitol in Springfield.

“I want to demonstrate to voters and taxpayers that since cuts have to be made, I’m willing to step forward and make a personal cut,” Morrison told the press.
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New GOP State Rep. Turns Down Gov’t Pension”


States that Force Union Membership Losing Population to Those that Don’t

-By Warner Todd Huston

Americans for Tax reform have done a study (download .pdf) that shows a very interesting trend. States that are losing population the fastest are predominantly those that force employees to join unions as a condition for employment while those that are growing are mostly states that feature right to work rules.

Because congressional representation is measured by population, those states whose population has shrunk will lose seats and those that are growing will gain them. ATR looked at those states losing congressional seats in the coming reapportionment and compared them to states that are gaining seats and found some interesting things where it concerns taxes and unions.

The average top personal income tax rate among gainers is 116 percent lower than among losers. The total state and local tax burden is nearly one-third lower, as is per capita government spending. In eight of ten losers, workers can be forced to join a union as a condition of employment. In 7 of the 8 gainers, workers are given a choice whether to join or contribute financially to a union.

As ATR notes, this shows that conservative fiscal policies spurs economic growth, creates jobs, and helps a state grow.
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States that Force Union Membership Losing Population to Those that Don’t”