The American Spectator

br> Re: Ben Stein’s Deep Throat and Genocide : /p> p>I have long been a Ben Stein/ American Spectator fan and much appreciate Stein’s piece excoriating Mark Felt and the Watergate so-called journalists. Stein asked, in effect, what was Nixon’s sin? I believe Nixon made one major mistake as president, but no one ever mentions it. He committed the very liberal sin of signing the bill granting public employees the right to engage in collective bargaining. Over time, this gave us the budget crises we now see at all levels of government — unionized public employees holding elected government officials and the taxpayers hostage to their wage and fringe benefit demands. Guaranteed cost-of-living increases irrespective of performance, ability or funds available result in the overpayment of a huge segment of Americans, continued deficit borrowing and spill over into the now overpaid private sector. No wonder inflation hovers relentlessly. Labor contracts guarantee government employees near immunity from termination regardless of performance. Unionized public employees have a stranglehold on California that not even the clever and determined Gov. Arnold seems able to break. One hears similar stories from other states. The unionization of public employees has hastened America’s descent into the discredited economic morass of socialism that rendered once-powerful Europe an economic has-been. President Nixon should have vetoed that bill. br> — Barbara Wanvig br> San Francisco, California /p>