You'll Understand My Fury Momentarily.

The big news today sneaked in under the radar. Not that we're not interested in real news; it's just that Russell Crowe playing the Crocodile Hunter in an upcoming biographical movie is more of interest than the impending bankruptcy of state and local governments across the country. [*Updated to add: Well, maybe not.]



If you guessed I was pissed about the bankruptcies, though, you'd be right.



Pretty much the situation is this: state and local government workers are by and large unionized.



The unions routinely extort promises from the government to pay huge pensions, health care with legacy clauses, and other benefits to their workers.



The government routinely agrees.



And now it's time to pay the piper.



The Government Accounting Standards Board has recently amended its rules to require that state and local governments disclose to the public how much money the taxpayers are really shelling out for the bored woman at the DMV that can't answer your question because she is on break at her desk.



Let's see:

1. California owes between 70 and 200 BILLION DOLLARS to its pension / healthcare funds.
2. New York, between 47 and 54 billion. That's greater than the total net worth of all positive assets owned by the government of New York: 49.1 billion dollars. Nice.
3. Maryland's initial estimate is 20 billion dollars.
4. Alabama, 19.8 billion.
5. Massachusetts, 13.2 billion. Good job, Teddy boy!
6. Alaska owes 7.9 billion. That dividend is gonna get harder and harder to pay out, I suspect.
7. Nevada owes somewhere between 1.62 and 4.1 billion dollars.

Now, let's see what we're dealing with here. California and New York are historically Democrat, so no surprise there. Alabama has had exactly one Republican governor in 130 years. Maryland's current governor is Republican, but he's the first in 36 years. Governor King of Massachusetts is a Democrat. Alaska is traditionally Republican, making it the lonely exception. Nevada famously fence-sits; the governor is Republican, as is one Senator; the state Senate is Republican controlled, but the other state Senator and the House are Democrats.



I guess what I'm getting at is that they're both inept, but the Democrats seem to be worse.



At any rate: the web article here did not contain the part that really angered me. Ohhhhh no. That, I found in my local newspaper. Although I will admit the web article had enough GEMS of such brilliance that I was aggravated, such as the unions saying "it's not our fault if the government can't pay for us."



However, sadly, the online version of my local paper doesn't seem to have the same article as was on the front page today, and I checked both of them. The article I read that infuriated me so badly seems to have vanished into the ether. However, I have faith. I will try tomorrow to run down a copy of today's paper - the library should have it - and update with a scan of the front page.



[*Updated to add:]







But I'll tell you what it said: it said that the only way state and local governments will be able to make up for the shortfall is by cutting the budgets - to education, public safety, police, and other services. [*Updated to add: See?]



Nothing whatsoever, of course, was said about the possibility of simply dropping the pension plans.



Let me say up front that the notion of a pension has never made sense to me. If you start work at a company when you're 20 and work until you're 50, then live to be 95, the company should be forced, by virtue of your "loyal service," (which of course was totally uncompensated, and you were never paid in the least,) to pay you your full salary, or a large portion of it, for longer than you worked at the company in the first place?



Crap.



I am 100% in favor of a retirement account of some kind - get a couple of accountants together, and I'm sure you can devise a plan under which the employee and employer - private sector or government - provide equal funds to the account, which then makes money, even if only by virtue of interest payments from a CD, for example, and then is turned over to the employee upon retirement or separation from the company.



However, the notion that the company should be forced to provide you with a paycheck when you no longer work there smacks of communism. How much worse, then, to claim this privilege when the source of the funds is the taxpayer? And how much more communist can you get? You're taking money from someone else, and putting it into your pocket, without doing anything to earn it. Bottom line, that's what it is. Because unless you worked for free all those years, YOU WERE ALREADY PAID FOR YOUR TIME.



But it gets worse. The unions, who famously strike in government jobs, who have for years extorted huge salaries from the public wallet for people who cannot otherwise earn such salaries, are washing their hands of the whole matter. "It's not our fault they can't pay us." And so, because the unions are unable to see that it IS their fault, the public has to endure reduced education for their children, fewer firemen and police, worse road conditions... so that the unions can get paid.



But it gets worse than THAT. Much of the pension furor in recent years, and the reason that so many companies are now abandoning the entire concept, comes from a series of lawsuits allowing, for example, the children, ex-wives, widows, and other assorted family members of former employees to demand that despite the fact that they themselves have never worked for the employer, the employer should continue to pay THEM the former employee's pension benefits despite the former employee's DEATH. That's right; the worker can DIE, and other people can grub at the employer for money.



I'd be forced to say that even if there IS a pension plan in place, the employer's responsibility to the former employee ENDS AT DEATH. There is simply no moral way to justify paying people who did not contribute to the company for the contributions of one who did but is now dead.



Basically, the situation is that state and local governments are being asked to hand their citizens a huge tax burden after years of being put over a barrel by the unions. Either pay the pensions, agree to the pensions, health care, whatever, or the unions strike and the local government comes to a standstill. And because of this institutionalized blackmail of companies, and state and local governments, now that the bill is due, the organizations that caused the whole mess are washing their hands of it and expecting the public to simply pay them off.



I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Despite the objections of many, many misguided people, unionization is organized blackmail. It is a threat of force, and is inherently morally wrong.



Now that the inevitable bill for caving to blackmail is coming due - corporate bankruptcies, gigantic layoffs, immense shortfalls in funding for retiree benefits and healthcare, possible interruptions of government services - the organizations which have caused the entire situation are trying to pretend that they didn't make this happen, and that they're somehow entitled to the fruits of someone else's labor.



Don't let them get away with it.