 From prison guards to police, public school teachers to city bureaucrats, anyone employed by the government is paid by taxpayer dollars. Government workers are forced to join unions, which negotiate contracts for pay and benefits.
Nothing wrong with that. But did you know that the Public Employee Unions are now the most powerful special-interest group in Sacramento because they have special powers that no one else has?
It’s these “special” powers that create the problems we now face.
They have the power to automatically take hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year out of the paychecks of government workers for “special-interest”politics – without having to ask for it! Who gives them that power? The politicians in Sacramento who take it from you through taxes. So when they send paychecks to government employees, the politicians withhold political funds and give those to the Public Employee Unions.
This system allows these Unions to amass huge war chests that they use to play politics -- to elect “their” candidates, pass “their” initiatives, and bully and seduce politicians into voting for “their” agenda. Virtually every politician – Republican and Democrat – either gets Union money to fund their campaigns or are too scared to stand up to the Union agenda for fear of losing their next election when that union money is used against them.
What does the Union agenda include? Growing government, of course, by creating more government jobs, increasing their own pay, hiking their pensions and preserving lifetime health benefits, while we, taxpayers, are left holding the bag of literally billions of dollars in debt that will be paid off through huge tax increases or drastic cuts in services, or both, as is happening now.
Unions spent millions of taxpayer dollars in 2009 to support Proposition 1A last May, which would have increased taxes on the citizens of California by $16 Billion! The voters rejected it by a two to one margin. But the Unions continue to push for increased taxes, because they know they will get their cut, and it will increase their power.
It’s a vicious cycle – a corrupt Political Machine – that is, quite literally, bankrupting California. The Political Machine must be stopped. Here’s how. |
