“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” – Eric Hoffer
There is little that I do not detest in the politics of the current administration in Washington, and that extends to a stolen Supreme Court seat awarded on such cynical manipulation, I can hardly see how Judge Gorsuch could permit himself any sense of personal dignity.
Unfortunately, the sense of shame that once prevented people from benefiting in such unseemly and corrupt ways seems to have been vacated from our public ethic.
However, this sense of entitlement extends to many sectors of society, including our public service unions who got nothing less than they deserved and perhaps even caused themselves, with the ruling in the Janus case.
Let me be clear: if any employee of any company is exploited, underpaid, or whose services and sacrifice are abused in any way, shape or form, I will stand with that employee to assert their rights. Dignity is not a privilege.
It’s a responsibility of the employer, along with producing a product or service, to provide it for their workforce. With power comes responsibility.
But the abuse of power is hardly limited to management.
Because over the years, in certain parts of the country, notably our own, this power has been egregiously abused. And that abuse comes from the civil services creating a captive government, comprised of spineless elected officials, who are content to let the county remain in perpetual insolvency with dystopian policies, rather than make the right choices.
In a certain sense, the unions’ success in obtaining out-sized remuneration for their members was almost accidental: thanks to the unrestrained costs of health insurance, and public service employees and teachers pay such a small portion of it, the burden falls on the homeowner and the taxpayer, putting an automatic, annualized tax elevator as costs rise, with nothing in place to restrain it.
That’s on top of the taxpayer funding their own double-digit hikes for coverage.
Twenty years ago, this arrangement was problematic.
Today, it’s disastrous.
There is also a knock-on effect: commercial property taxation is so off the chart, the county has to offer generous abatements just to get businesses to stay, much less locate here. That revenue shift has to be made up somewhere. If you need a clue who that is, it’s someone reading this.
The unions, in order to justify what is nothing more than the systemic looting of other workers and businesses in the county, have embarked on an endless campaign of self-adulation.
Read any teacher message board online to marvel at this institutionalized narcissism: The NYSUT has every third-grade teacher convinced they’re storming the beaches at Normandy every semester.
The message here is they’re worth every penny and more, and to hell with whoever they impoverish or displace.
The obvious solution and one which will happen one day is that each person is responsible for funding their own health insurance, (and pensions) and the costs effectively siloed individually.
Not only is it manifestly absurd for someone working two jobs to fund the retirement and health care of someone with a $200,000 pension, it should be dawning on American businesses that adding health insurance to the cost of production affects our own competitiveness, which is something we can’t hang on China.
But think of the benefits.
Property taxes are slashed, especially critical under the new tax laws, and we become newly competitive again, on our own merits, not on giveaways.
Economic distortions melt away, and the property tax system may begin to function with a glimmer of normality.
The Janus ruling could erode public service union leverage.
That is indeed a shame because there are parts of the country where teachers and law enforcement are grotesquely under-compensated, and even under-equipped with basic supplies, something I am greatly appreciative of not having to put up with here.
No teacher in this country should take a penny out of their pocket for so much as a pencil. But there’s such a thing as overplaying your hand.
No doubt alarm bells are ringing at the CSEA, ASFCME, and NYSUT offices.
They should be afraid. They should also acknowledge that they are no less avaricious than any hedge fund manager. But like Judge Gorsuch, I doubt they’ll acknowledge their own hand in their duplicity.
And that is because from the Supreme Court to the Village Hall, our national polity is in ruins.
Donald Davret
Searingtown
