Modern News

Carol Platt Liebau posted a piece on RealCleaPolitics.com that also clangs the warning bells over the unsustainable situation that the various states find themselves in between their public employees unions and the states’ fiscal obligations. She focuses on California, but nearly every state in the union is quickly approaching the mess California is in.

Liebau writes of the effort that the teachers union in California led to get kids as young as five-years-old out of school so that they could be bussed to the state capitol in Sacramento in order to protest school budget cuts. Me, I think she races by this outrage too quickly.

It is outright disgusting that these teacher thugs wanted to slight these kid’s day of education in order to use them as political pawns. It is infuriating that these people thought so little of these children that they’d do this to them. And did these union thugs tell the parents that this was going to happen? I don’t know, but likely they didn’t.

Fortunately, the school Superintendent decided that there would be a “safety issue” and nixed the union’s idea.

Still, Liebau did want to get to the more important matter and that is the undeserved riches that these union members are seeing. Liebau reports that California’s teachers make 145% more than other teachers in the nation yet they are still carping and whining about budget cuts.

… a California teacher’s salary is 145% that of an average worker in the state (who works 12 months per year!). What’s more, California teachers are the most highly paid in the entire nation, even as the state teeters on the brink of fiscal collapse. And yet, the prospect of any cuts to state government spending elicits nothing but a storm of protest.

Sadly, even as the state is drowning in red ink, the Democrats in power just keep voting for tax increases as if that is the answer.

Liebau sums up thusly…

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the system, as it exists, is unsustainable. The state’s fiscal crisis is reaching proportions that will require real and significant cuts to avoid an economic meltdown. Making the changes necessary to save the state will necessitate resisting the destructive influence of public sector unions. And that’s fine. It’s long past time that public sector unions start working to serve Californians, rather than demanding that Californians work ever harder to serve them.

And she could be talking of New Jersey, Illinois, or nearly any other state. Public employees unions need to be eliminated as they are destroying our country.