A Cancer among Us

In the 50’s and early 60s my father owned a logging company in Arcata, California. He had a truck shop there, where the drivers would arrive early each workday (4-5 AM) and start the diesels. While the engines warmed (15- 20 minutes) the drivers would congregate around the coffee pot, (provided by the company) and chew the fat.

This routine had gone on for years, until one day a union organizer talked the drivers into ‘organizing’ and demanding that the company pay for all those 15 minute coffee klatches, built up over years. Nevermind that the company had paid for the coffee and occasional donuts, while they waited.

Well, long story/short was that the company had to pony up more than $50,000 dollars, not an inconsiderable sum in 1961. And the big payoff was that one year later the company closed and assets auctioned off. And even though I was only eleven at the time, that event has never been forgotten.

In later years, I had the acquaintance of a gentleman who owned a lumber mill in Redding. He not only paid his employees well, but also provided them benefits comparable to the larger union operations. Again, his employees were seduced by promises of big paydays and bloated benefits, even though the owner promised that he would shut the plant down if it went union. And it did.

The next day, the owner shut down the main power switch and within a few weeks the mill had been reduced to a concrete slab. Of course threats of criminal charges and lawsuits followed, as did plenty of rebuttal showing that pending pay and benefit concessions would bankrupt HIS company.

What these two micro-examples demonstrate is that unions, in their zeal to enrich themselves, think nothing of destroying both businesses and jobs. Unions seldom if ever “organize” companies in the beginning, but rather patiently wait, like a cancer, until the Host is developed and healthy before striking. And just like any leech, they don’t disappear with the demise of the Host, but rather reappear on another healthy Host once they have destroyed the last.



But in case of public employee unions, the zeal is unrestrained, while the symptoms are masked with budget surpluses, tax increases, fees, taxes, duties, permits, assessments, levies, fines, tariffs, tithes and tolls where none had been imposed before. As we all know, a transparent government is the perfect place to hid greed, mismanagement and waste.

However, as in any Ponzi scheme there will always be a ‘Reckoning‘. And unlike New Jersey, Florida, New York and California, who are so far in the hole they can‘t see daylight, a Reckoning has come to Madison, Wisconsin.

You see, Madison did the unthinkable, they elected a Conservative (you’ll notice I didn’t confuse it with Republican, where the Washington D.C. version is just a Liberal in wuss’ clothing) who ran on “cutting the budget” and damn if he isn’t.

Of course you wouldn’t recognize the ‘Madness in Madison’ if you watched the MSM or MSNBC or CNN or listened to NPR or PBS. Because they will spin it like the pot of gold is just over the hill and there is no problem with the budget until June. UNTIL JUNE!! Well Hell, that’s light years in Liberal Speak. That’s like a welfare junkie thinks that preparing for a famine is getting a rent-subsidized apartment next to a Burger King.

So here is Governor Walker planning for a fiscal doomsday and Liberals know that he is missing some dryer lint somewhere. Their minute-by-minute mantra is that the ‘collective bargaining RIGHT’, (which, by the way is precisely why they are, where they are) cannot be taken away. That’s like telling an alcoholic that he can’t tend bar or a pedophile he can’t work at a day care center. THE INHUMANITY! IT’S UNCONSTITUTIONAL! IT’S IN THE BIBLE!!

No my friends, the Madness in Madison isn’t a “Right” it’s a symptom. The Cancer that is unfettered ’collective bargaining’, that has been spreading within the Host for quite some time, is the disease. Only now both the prognosis and the diagnosis is in plain view for all to see.