Posted on 04/24/2011 5:09:14 PM PDT by smoothsailing
By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Labor unions fight on in Wisconsin, as the Germans did during the bitter winter of 1944-1945. But the war is lost.
To see how grim is the outlook for public employee unions, let's go to Detroit, where Mayor Dave Bing proposed Tuesday a budget which would cut contributions to public employee health plans by 20 percent and would skip a payment to city pension funds.
"If we do nothing, by 2015 fringe benefits are on pace to consume half of our entire general fund revenue," Mr. Bing said. "We cannot afford benefit packages so rich, nor can we afford to protect the interests of 30,000 people at the expense of 700,000."
Mayor Bing is a Democrat in a heavily Democratic city. Yet he has gone "all Scott Walker" on public employee unions, said Matt Continetti of the Weekly Standard.
Scott Walker is Wisconsin's Republican governor, and Wisconsin is to public employee unions what Stalingrad was to the Nazis: the site of their first major defeat.
Democratic state senators fled the state to try to prevent a vote on Gov. Walker's bill to trim the power of public employee unions. But GOP lawmakers braved massive protests and death threats to pass it.
So Maryann Sumi, a circuit court judge in liberal Dane County (Madison), whose son is a labor organizer, issued an injunction to keep the law from going into effect...
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Funny how the whole thing is bass ackwards.
Sore Loser kloppinghorse
(Vanity) On Beyond Zillion, by Dr. Sue-us (with a nod to Fredrich Hayek)
Cheers!
The greedy become the needy when other people’s money runs out.
HA! Sweet!!!
Moderate, humble, public servants, or unemployed feral animals fighting over park benches, their choice.
They never really die.
Once the nation rebuilds itself, the parasites will revive and begin feeding on the host again.
It may be part of a natural cycle.
She looks like Dingbat in “All in the Family.”
Yes.
Unions are huge corporations that could care less about their members.
Each one is a corporation.
It’s worth noting that this is from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, a liberal rag from a town with 50 years of Democrat one-party rule.
More and more legal citizens are wondering what services without corruption or bribes or demands that the so called public service unions perform for
America. We know that private sector jobs create wealth and opportunities while the worker benefits. But,there is a production of goods and services. Union jobs more and more seem to be just fodder for Dem pols and what services they perform seem to be couched in demands and radical posturing. A long way from the time of Gompers and Meany.
It’s over for the left in general...at least in concept. They’re whole mantra is taxes and spending. We will get to a point where we can’t even fund the basic programs. The left may be putting effort in to get as many immigrants as possible, in hope they’ll keep this country to the left...but the concept of tax and spend is coming to an end. Unions are the first casualty.
Are you from the Pittsburgh area?
..........
The author has an interesting biographical profile....
Jack Kelly was born September 9, 1947, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and “reared in rural Wisconsin, Mr. Kelly was graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin (Madison) in 1970. Upon graduation, Mr. Kelly went to Vietnam as a correspondent for the Lavine Newspapers (Portage Daily Register and Chippewa Falls Herald-Telegram). His reporting won first prize in UPI’s feature competition for that year. Mr. Kelly entered the Marine Corps in November, 1970. He received an honorable discharge as a corporal in February, 1972, in order to run for Congress in the Second Congressional District of Wisconsin. Had he been elected, Mr. Kelly would have been the youngest Representative in history, but there was never any danger of that. The only portion of his district he carried was a community in which he had never campaigned.
“With a fresh perspective on his suitability for elective politics, Mr. Kelly returned to journalism. He became a (very junior) member of the Washington bureau of the Dallas Times-Herald. Kelly was with the Times-Herald until the summer of 1975, when he became press secretary to Sen. John Tower (R-Tex). Kelly left Sen. Tower’s staff in September, 1976, to become deputy press secretary for the Vice Presidential Campaign Unit of the President Ford Committee. That made him eminently eligible for other employment after the election in November.
“After a brief stint as deputy press secretary for the Republican National Committee, Mr. Kelly, in April, 1977, joined the staff of Rep. Bill Armstrong (R, Colo), who was planning to run for the senate. While working for Sen. Tower, Mr. Kelly had joined A Co., 2d Bn., 11th Special Forces Group, U.S. Army Reserve, so that he could jump out of airplanes. While working for Armstrong, he received a direct commission as a captain in the Marine Corps Reserve. He joined the 4th Civil Affairs Group, based at the Anacostia Naval Station in Washington, D.C. Bill Armstrong was elected to the senate in November, 1978. Mr. Kelly became his legislative assistant for defense and foreign relations. He remained in that position until becoming a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in December, 1983.
“Mr. Kelly’s wife, Holly, died of a rare form of brain cancer in February, 1986. Feeling the need to do something more dangerous than he could in the Marine Corps Reserve, Mr. Kelly transferred back to Special Forces, and wound up commanding an A Team in the company in which he had served as an enlisted man. Mr. Kelly was called to active duty as a public affairs officer during DESERT STORM, and ended his military reserve career as a major assigned to Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C. After several distressing child care experiences—Mr. Kelly’s daughters, Courtney Lynne and Kendra Leigh, were aged seven and seven months when their mother died—he moved to Colorado in February, 1989, where he could be the nanny. In Colorado, Mr. Kelly worked in two election campaigns and ran his own business (into the ground) before becoming director of communications for the Center for the New West, a think tank based in Denver. Mr. Kelly was working for the Center when, in September, 1995, he was hired as national affairs writer by the Toledo (Ohio) Blade. He began his column in May, 1998, and moved to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Blade’s sister paper, in November, 1998. His column began to be syndicated nationally in 1999.” Kelly married Pamela R. Winnick, “a former attorney who was then a reporter for The Blade and later was a reporter for the Post-Gazette” in January 2000.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Kelly#Profiles
Excellent article; everyone should read it in it’s entirety.
“Unions are huge corporations that could care less about their members.”
I disagree. I believe that unions are huge corporations that could NOT care less about their members.
Yes, I am. And I am also a former subscriber to the Post Gazette. I’ve read Kelly before. That interesting bio does not negate the fact that the PG is a liberal rag in an overwhelmingly Democrat controlled town.
It also doesn’t negate the fact that Kelly is the one sane voice on the P-G’s editorial pages.
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