Back in the good old days, if you weren’t a union supporter, you
were un-American. Those of a certain age remember movies like
Norma Rae, where poor, impoverished Southern women were
crushed under the heels of evil, white slave-drivers before being
rescued by altruistic union organizers. Or the made-for-TV weeper,
The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal, where poor,
impoverished Northern women leapt to their deaths because of evil,
white slave-drivers who were later punished by altruistic union
organizers.
Thanks to tremendous amounts of propaganda over the years,
an inordinate affection for unions has, over time, wormed itself
into our national psyche. Name one Hollywood movie made in the past
30 years that fails to portray them in a good light. The last was
probably Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, which actually
only bashed the crooked leaders, while continuing to sanctify the
rank and file; a practice which has continued unabated in the media
up to this very day.
But it had to happen sooner or late in this age of 24/7
media coverage: the lid has finally been lifted from the boiling
cauldron of government union corruption; friendly fire from class
warfare has finally caught up with the liberal machine. In
Wisconsin and across the nation, the ugly stew of union thuggery
and liberal skullduggery has come to the national forefront and is
widely available for sniffing. And, try as they might to
euphemize away the struggle — calling groups of
hyper-organized, bused-in union members, “citizen uprisings” — the
American people are finally seeing through the rhetoric and getting
a glimpse of a truth once obvious only to us right-wing
extremists.
Gone are the days when Hollywood screenwriters and their
fellow storytellers in the media can sing sad songs and paint
pathetic pictures of downtrodden, peons laboring under the brutal
yoke of big business. Some of the largest salaries and benefit
packages in the nation now belong to those sucking the lifeblood
out of U.S. taxpayers. Although the dirty dealings between public
section unions and the Democratic Party have been well-chronicled
in certain
circles, the public has been mostly unaware of the
self-perpetuating aspects of this unholy marriage; until now, that
is.
Inevitably, after private sector unions have almost
vanished in this country by bankrupting nearly every industry
associated with them, they have now demonstrated their smothering
effect on our city, state and federal governments. But how did this
happen?
Decades ago, people became civil servants because they
either truly wanted to serve the community or just couldn’t get
jobs elsewhere. The pay was not too hot but the benefits were
usually good. Then came the big labor organizers and with them, the
attendant brain-washing. Just try and talk to a civil servant; or
worse, an uncivil postal employee on the subject. Otherwise
clear-thinking men and women turn into raging monsters at a hint of
questioning the justice of collective bargaining or the mere
mention of Ronald Reagan’s name. Their union membership all but
made them the worst caricature of one-issue voters as well as a
breeding ground for generations of dependable Democrats.
But you know the tide is turning when even New York’s
Governor Cuomo, son of liberal demigod Mario, has seen the light
and taken the
pledge. It’s getting so bad that even my ultra-liberal hometown
paper had a front-page piece
exposing the outrageous pay and practices of our police
department, where one officer made a total of $274,988 on the city
payroll and another made $95,962 in overtime alone. No, it’s
getting harder and harder for liberals to claim that the salaries
of corporate America are obscene, when the true obscenity is as
close as your local police station or the schoolhouse
door.
We were lectured ad nauseam by our president for two years
— until the 2010 midterms — that “elections have consequences,”
and so they do. More and more Americans are finally getting the
connection between more taxes and less freedom; between socialism
and labor unions and most importantly, between government employees
and the heretofore unwitting dupes who pay them.
They are looking around at their fellow citizens who are
members of government unions and seeing, not dozens of poor, noble
Norma Raes who desire only enough to feed their struggling
families, but six-figure earners who will retire at 55 with
lifelong pensions and benefits; all on their dime.
