Tea Party Union Members are the Key

Most any honest observer can see that unfunded pension liabilities, particularly of public employee unions, are right in the middle of federal, state and local budgetary crises throughout the nation (as well as in many European countries). We’ve already made the case for phasing out all public employee pensions (click here). But what America and the countries of Europe will need in the near term is a demonstration of character, honesty and decency among individual rank and file union members. Quite simply, they are going to have to be the force that humbles and tempers union leadership at a time when the White House and the Pravda media have never been more socialist and collectivist in their orientation—and are fanning among union leaders the overreach and intransigence and ‘greed’ they so relentlessly denounce in the free market.

Public employee pension obligations represent promises made by politicians using other people’s money (the taxpayers’). It’s evident now that those promises cannot be kept. That’s not the fault of the union leaders and negotiators, and it is certainly not the fault of the union rank-and-file. But fault has to some degree become an irrelevant concept. The money is not there. The private sector has been neutered; the engine of growth that expands the taxpaying base is stalled. The taxpayers don’t have more to give. The evil of socialism is rearing its head: eventually you run out of other people’s money, but in the determined denial of this basic fact, leftists plow forward with class warfare themes: attempting to pit government employees against their fellow American citizens who are not government employees; attempting to indoctrinate and intimidate Americans as a whole into believing the problem lies with the hated rich not paying enough taxes.

We believe the necessary character, honesty and decency exist in all Americans—whether or not they belong to unions—such that they will not be led around by the nose with class warfare nonsense. We frankly don’t believe the rank-and-file are ignorant or greedy, and we don’t think they are willing to join in destroying the country they love by striking or otherwise holding out to demand payment of amounts that never should have been promised and are not affordable. They are not liberals or conservatives; they are tea party Americans.

The entire nation is an economic mess due first and foremost to a government that has grown far beyond its Constitutional limits and is plainly out of control. All Americans know this, and all know there will be no exceptions to the universal sacrifice necessary for recovery. As the saying goes, we’re all in this together. The need now is for discerning, courageous, and competent leaders able to shutdown the loudmouths and ideologues, and exercise and call on the universal American qualities of honesty and decency necessary to navigate out of the mess.

Paul Gable

January 3, 2011