A crook on the board

Here's an amazing and disturbing new story about public employees. Journalist Steven Greenhut, author of the new book "Plunder: How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation" (good summary and review here), talked about it this week on WPR. You can listen to the entire 45min show for a limited time.

Although Greenhut focuses on California, he makes very clear that this is a serious nationwide problem. And although he focuses on public employee unions, they are assisted in their plundering by administrators, legislators, and the courts—the three branches of "government". Could anyone possibly believe it's just coincidence that the people who write the laws also happen to have the best pension plans, the best health care, the best benefits packages, and the most vacation time..? And that's not all. Despite being grossly overpaid to begin with (e.g. $175,000/year for Orange County firefighters!?), many public employees manipulate loopholes in the law—laws made up by their fellow state employees—to obtain extra benefits. Many even engage in actual criminal behaviour to obtain even more cash. All of this comes from the taxpayers, of course, i.e. from the people the state employees supposedly work for. Meanwhile, the rest of us have expensive health plans, or none at all. We have shaky retirement "investment" plans, limited unpaid vacations, and we work 70 hour weeks like slaves. As if that weren't enough, the state employees work actively to eliminate social security, they refuse to pass national health care, they charge us with every little violation they possibly can (to wring even more money out of us), and so on.

Take a minute to read this short but stunning Wall Street Journal article on the issue.

What does all this have to do with Hoofers..? I think you know (sung in melodic voice).... All Wis. Union and Hoofer staff are State of Wisconsin employees. Most of them are grossly overpaid (e.g. Susan Dibbell: $101,000/year plus benefits!?), and many of them are crooks.

For further reading [click]

At the risk of straying too far from HSC topics, it's worth noting that the United States has more people in prison (as a percentage of its total population) than any other country. Whatever your theory to explain that, it indicates that something is wrong. We're researching the percentage of inmates who are state employees, but those stats are not easy to find.

Corruption permeates every level of American government now. This means that most or all judges are corrupt. That's self evident because the more power you get, the more corrupt you become, and judges are right at the top of the power pyramid. Check this story out. Two Pennsylvania judges were convicted in 2009 of extorting more than $2.5 million in kickbacks to sentence minors to private prisons! Predictably, the Pennsylvania Bar immediately decried the judges' behaviour and assured the public that all remaining judges are honorable, upstanding guys. Anyone with a brain knows better. Those were only two judges who got caught, the tip of an enormous iceberg of corruption.

Yale scholar James Whitman writes: "Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror" (Social Research 74:2, 251-68, 2007). Similarly, Hoofers should be viewed with horror by anyone who desires a functional, egalitarian, and nourishing club environment.