The People vs. Unions: Cash, Credit and Corruption
While it’s a truism that for every finger you point at someone
else you’ve got three pointed right back at you, for liberals it’s part
of their laws of physics.
It would be impossible for the laws of liberals to govern without this binding hypocrisy that keeps them in orbit.
That’s why it shouldn’t surprise you that for all the leftist
rhetoric about corporations and greed contributing the decline of the
country, there’s one corporate outfit that’s really screwing up this
country- and it’s a creation and a creature of the left.
Like most Big Left organizations it is a corporate body that is
funded by you and I, but serves only the holy trinity of liberals,
leftists and liars.
That corporation is, of course, Union, Inc.
Some call it Big Labor, but that’s an insult to the dignity of labor.
And if you want to see examples of corporate personhood gone bad you
needn’t look to Wall Street. No; the stakes there are too high and the
disclosures too transparent for mere corporation law to shield
corporations from poor governance.
The laws of economics- the real laws, not the theories- usually take care of things in the private, corporate marketplace.
Instead- like many things in the country- you need to look farther left for real-life examples of rogue corporate personhood.
Union domination of the Democrat Party has become so entrenched- and
so full of government money- that it’s impossible to tell if Union, Inc.
is the parent corporation of the Democrats, or if the Democrats control
the unions. And the symbiotic and sybaritic relationships between the
unions and the Democrats have helped screw up corporations,
municipalities and public policy in this country for too many decades.
Even as the so-called recovery notches another year, and state
revenues begin to stabilize, municipalities and school districts are
increasingly filing for bankruptcy in order to containing the rising
cost of benefits demanded by unionized public workers.
In California, the greedy, union-benefits outfit working for public
employees, called Calpers, is treated with kid gloves in both law and in
practice. Law says that when municipalities file for bankruptcy,
Calpers must be paid even if the benefits paid to Calpers are causing
the bankruptcy. Police can be fired, private vendors stiffed, teachers
laid off, investors in public debt can get zero pennies on the dollar,
but union benefits must be paid.
The city of San Bernardino however is challenging union dominance
over their balance sheet. The city is $5 million behind in pension
payments, “the city simply says it's broke,” reports the
San Francisco Chronicle.
But “San Bernardino is treating CalPERS like any other creditor that's not getting paid.”
Of course the Chronicle is livid over union benefits being treated “like any other creditor that's not getting paid.”
“We urge San Bernardino to come to a solution with CalPERS that
doesn't involve shorting the fund and its own retirees - or dumping its
burdens on California's other taxpayers,” says the Chronicle.
But that’s exactly what Calpers already does.
Calpers is under-funded by anywhere from 55 percent to 75 percent in
large part because Calpers uses math that would land private pension
managers in jail. Calpers uses annualized growth rates of 7.5 percent
when in fact the pension system only returned one percent last year. A
30-year Treasury right now only returns 2.79 percent. Last year the
stock market returned zero percent and this year is up about 5 percent.
And really, under the law, a private pension manager would go to jail
for using a 7.5 percent assumption to manage their pension fund.
That’s because someone will have to pay the difference between the
assumption and the real rate of return.
In both the Calpers and the
private cases it will be the taxpayers who will pick up the tab.
Why should the city have to lay off workers because
previously-elected officials entered into unsustainable retirement
programs with unions who bankrolled their candidacies? Or because unions
don’t have to use generally accepted accounting practices?
Cities -and states- shouldn’t have to choose between public safety
and other necessities so that liberal council members and legislators
can have an adequate supply of yard signs and bumpers stickers during an
election year.
And taxpayers shouldn’t have to bailout union bad behavior again,
just because they bought the Democrats with cash, credit and corruption.