US Action News

Unions are unpopular for good reason. They have a tawdry history of connection to organized crime and a continued reputation for thuggery. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Web page on organized crime: “Labor racketeering has become one of La Cosa Nostra’s fundamental sources of profit, national power and influence,” and, “For decades, the Teamsters has been substantially controlled by La Cosa Nostra.”

States with strong public unions — including California, New Jersey and New York — make the threat vividly clear. There, unsustainable budget deficits and public pension liabilities are killing economic vitality.

To think that Greece’s troubles are an ocean and a sea away from where we stand in North America is to have your head in the Mediterranean sand.

As is happening in many cities across the US, high wages and benefits for public employees which have skyrocketed in recent years, are unsustainable as tax revenues fall.

A federal commission has yet to enact a year-old executive order that President Barack Obama thinks will avoid labor unrest but one that critics say discriminates against non-union companies and non-union workers in federal contracting.

But the real scourge has been on the expense side of the ledger: salaries and pension benefits given — and I do mean given — to government workers.

Public-sector unions have amassed great power to extract taxpayer dollars from politicians. Politicians reward government workers with our dollars, and they in turn are rewarded at election time by donations, free labor (phone banks, people who pass out flyers), and votes.

But Washington’s spending habits are based on politics, not results, and the White House’s proposed education spending hike has the rancid smell of a political payoff.

Almost every dollar — 95% — of the $5.4 million that the teachers’ unions gave in the 2008 election cycle went to Democrats. Unlike taxpayers who get a miserable return on their “investment” in public education, unionized teachers get results when they spend.

Critics say the proposals would heavily favor unionized companies and significantly increase the cost and amount of time needed to award contracts. Estimates have the potential cost increase at 20 percent, adding about $100 billion a year to the federal budget.

If college graduates aren’t learning about concrete aspects of the American republic, what else might they be picking-up “civics-wise” while on campus? As you might suspect, the Academy’s liberalism has not been value-neutral.

A new Web site targeting the tea parties is a part of a complex network of money flowing from the mountainous coffers of the country’s biggest labor unions and trickling slowly into political slush funds for Democratic activists.