Just once, I would like someone to explicate the reasoning, if any, behind the distinction being made by the political class between public sector unions and garden-variety criminal conspiracies against the taxpayer.
These organizations have no redeeming societal features, whatsoever - unless one counts as a social benefit that the lowest sort of characters are attracted to these sinecures, and the better sort of person can therefore mostly avoid them by avoiding government offices as much as possible.
There's something to that, I reckon.
Their pension plans belong to the employees simply because taxes were paid before 10% was contributed to the pension fund twice a month. Excellent financial officers invested in good, strong stocks - no hedges or derivatives.
A year or two ago, dumb Arnie wanted to get his sticky fingers on the over 3 trillion in L.A. County's fund. The other day, he wanted to buy the Collesium. It isn't for sale.
I think the county did loan the city 30 million, which we'll probably never see again.
You can't have more people on welfare than contributors to the system. Duh! Anyone who runs for public office needs to be given an IQ test - heavy on both Federal and State Constitutions, along with a psychological and a polygraph exams.
So, please don't lump all unions together.