Like Wisconsin, Washington State faces a multi-Billion dollar budget deficit and is constitutionally required to balance the budget. Past efforts have come up short and although balanced on paper, have resulted in the deficit gap just being kicked down the road to be dealt with later.
Later has arrived and even governor Gregoire is calling for drastic cuts in areas she doesn’t agree with. But, difficult decisions must be made in order to avoid slipping into bankruptcy.
Democrat Representative of the 49th legislative district, Jim Moeller continues to create ways to take more money from citizens in the state, showing his unwillingness to cut out wasteful spending, which has gotten us into this budgetary crisis. One such example would be his tax we all dubbed the ‘candy & soda tax’ that heaped taxes on some candy bars and other comfort products. It was easily thrown out by voters in the November 2010 election, after we succeeded in having his legislation put before voters.
One area of concern that has been the subject of calls to be dealt with by taxpayers is public union benefits and wages, often that are much more generous than those a private sector counter-part. A report issued by the State Auditor’s Office in December 2010 shows that the State’s Unfunded Liabilities are a Whopping $24.1 Billion, a significant portion of which is union pensions.
State Legislators, mostly Republicans with maybe a couple Democrats, have began the task of giving these liabilities more scrutiny and seeing how Wisconsin and some other states have rolled back on collective bargaining for public unions to save jobs and revenues, are discussing following suit.
Fiscal hawk, Senator Joe Zarelli of the 18th legislative district as introduced a bill, SB 5870 “calling for the Legislature to reject contracts Gov. Chris Gregoire has negotiated with state workers” as reported in the Seattle Times recently.
As I previously showed HERE, HERE and HERE, the public unions have been resisting calls that they make equal sacrifices and pay their fair share during these depressed economic times.
Instead, as we still going on in Wisconsin, even after the measure passed and was signed into law by Governor Scott Walker, protests, riots, violence and Death Threats from public union members and supporters seem to have become the norm, instead of sharing in the sacrifices all of us are making.
A look through the many comments left at the Seattle Times article shows the bill isn’t being well received, as expected. Even from across the river in Portland a call has already gone out to oppose any measures to bring spending under control by organizing a rally at Terry Schrunk Plaza this Tuesday by organizers from Moveon.org.
The announcement of the event, labeled “Defend the Dream” claims,
“Republican attacks on workers and public programs are escalating in Wisconsin and in Washington, D.C. We have to stand up to Defend the Dream! So on Tuesday, we’re getting together in Portland. At the event, we’ll stand in solidarity by wearing Wisconsin red and white, hear from local speakers impacted by Republican attacks, and be a show of community force to stop this onslaught on the American Dream.”
If you are like me, I bet you never envisioned the “American Dream” being standing in the unemployment line or waiting outside of a soup kitchen.
As more and more taxpayers are broke, unemployed and struggling to make ends meet, greedy public union bosses and their supporters manipulate members into thinking all is okay and the pot of gold under the rainbow is real and that they are exempt from sharing in the sacrifice equally.
Union violence led by union bosses has a deep history in America and whenever unions don’t get their way, they have quickly resorted to it. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a strong union supporter warned public unions in 1937,
“I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.”
Apparently that is a part of FDR public union bosses pay no heed to as just this morning, I was speaking with a legislator from Olympia who told me that some are already receiving phone calls from people identifying themselves with the unions and saying words to the effect of, “if you go down the road as Wisconsin did, there will be blood to pay.”
My hopes that unions in our state would be more cool-headed and not resort to the thuggery seen elsewhere were dashed as I realized the thuggery is already here and just waiting to be unleashed should unions not get their way again.
A recall an ad campaign years ago that said “look for the union label.”
I guess they just conveniently left off the “or else.”
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