Madison

Elections have consequences.  2008 ushered in Obama's Chicago style politics of back room deals led by, and favorable to, organized labor overlords who for years have dominated Democrat Party politics.  As a result, we got the $800 plus billion stimulus which benefited labor unions by temporality propping up state budgets that staved off public employee layoffs.  Then we got the GM and Chrysler bailouts that stole private ownership from bondholders and gave it to unions who now own a 17.5% stake in GM.  Then we got Obamacare, but the union's own "Cadillac plans" were exempted.  On top of all that, we have a labor run National Labor Relations Board that has lost any vestige of impartiality or neutrality in deciding labor disputes, and who are currently trying to promote "micro unions" in lieu of an equally job-killing enterprise known as card check.  Is it any wonder then that when the electorate spoke back loudly in 2010 that all that just might be in jeopardy?

Governor Walker versus public employee unions in Wisconsin is just the beginning of what will become the defining issue of the 2012 elections.  Where does America stand in the fight for controlling their own destiny in wresting control over local, state, and even national budgets?  Despite the scenes of angry union members and supporters in and around the state capitol of Wisconsin, and guaranteed to be replicated soon in states like Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and any other capitol where Republicans rule (even some Democrat strongholds like California and New York), I'll place my bets and fortune with the opposition.  If organized labor thinks that they can win back independents for Obama and their Democrats by defending larger than average pay and benefits, for people who pay less than what most people pay for even less bountiful rewards, then they are even more ignorant and obtuse then even I can credit them.

I predict the power and influence of public sector unions will be greatly diminished over the course of the next few years and rightly so.  Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey has said of his fight with public unions, including the New Jersey Education Association, "If we don't win this fight, there's no other fight left."  As the Wall Street Journal put it recently, public-sector unions "may be the single biggest problem...for the U.S. economy and small-d democratic governance."  Even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned against the idea of public employee unions.  "Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government...The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."  He reasoned, that "a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to 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."

A New York Supreme Court in 1943 held:

To tolerate or recognize any combination of civil service employees of the government as a labor organization or union is not only incompatible with the spirit of democracy, but inconsistent with every principle upon which our government is founded.  Nothing is more dangerous to public welfare than to admit that hired servants of the State can dictate to the government the hours, the wages and conditions under which they will carry on essential services vital to the welfare, safety, and security of the citizen.  To admit as true that government employees have power to halt or check the functions of government unless their demands are satisfied, is to transfer to them all legislative, executive and judicial power.  Nothing would be more ridiculous.

Yet despite those sentiments, most state and local governments have become door mats for public sector unions and the bill has come due.  I proudly stand with Governor Christie, FDR, the New York Supreme Court, and any other entity willing to speak truth to power.  We are on the cusp of a realignment that could potentially free public employees, including teachers, from the debilitative cookie cutter world of forced unionization, and unleash their real talent and productivity to the market forces of free enterprise.  It all starts in Madison.