Snippets from an interesting article in the Daily Beast …
Punch line: “The primary purpose of public unions today is to work against the financial interests of taxpayers”
The primary purpose of private-sector unions today is to get workers a larger share of the profits they helped create. But with a power greater than their numbers, these unions have destroyed the manufacturing sector, forcing jobs overseas by driving labor costs above the price consumers here will pay.
Public employees are already protected by statutes that preclude arbitrary hiring and firing decisions.
So,. the primary purpose of public unions today, as ugly as it sounds, is to work against the financial interests of taxpayers: the more public employees are paid in wages and uncapped benefits, the less taxpayers keep of the money they earn.
Public-union bosses collect real money from all taxpayers for the benefit of a few … public-sector jobs are funded by taxpayer dollars, forcibly collected by the government
A sizable portion of those dues is then donated by the public unions almost exclusively to Democratic candidates.
Of the top 20 biggest givers in federal-level politics over the past 20 years, 10 are unions; just four are corporations. The three biggest public unions gave $171.5 million for the 2010 elections alone.
Big money from public unions, collected through mandatory dues, and funded entirely by the taxpayer, is then redistributed as campaign cash to help elect the politicians who are then supposed to represent taxpayers in negotiations with those same unions.
In effect, the unions sit on both sides of the table and collectively bargain to raise taxes while the voters’ voice is silenced.
Michael Barone sums it up: “public-employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party.”
Daily Beast, More Politics End the Privileged Class, Feb 28, 2011
The Homa Files 
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