Public Unions And Slavery

Ever since the Wisconsin legislature passed sweeping collective bargaining legislation a few weeks ago, the unions have been up in arms about the state's assault on individual rights. Public unions are an abomination, and a letter from a University of Alaska professor to American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten sums up the issues perfectly:



"Dear Mr. Weingarten,

I am a professor, Vietnam era Veteran and, technically a member of a "minority" who would like to express my firm and absolute conviction that collective bargaining - when it consists of forcing anyone against his or her preference to join a group of any kind - may no more be termed a "right" than forcing someone to sit in one place on the bus - calling that forced seating a "right".

For years during and after my MM and Ph.D. studies (completed with 3.98 GPA) I lived largely debt free on incomes averaging $8,000 to $10,000 a year, on occasion less, and did so without expecting anyone to pick up my tabs.

I have been the recipient of both union members' bullying and mobbing as a high school student while doing summer work to save for my college expenses all the way through to the present-day when as a Veteran my own situation under Alaskan law have been dismissed as some kind of exceptional irrelevancy to the union agenda.

It is the purest definition of a corrupt process to force membership in any group hired by government and then, in any way, manner, shape or form, use involuntarily collected funds of that group to influence a political process that literally picks the taxpayer's pocket.

I am not writing this as an indictment of the great majority of fine educators. I am, however, writing this as an absolute indictment of the political, self-aggrandizing corruption and whining of those who do, indeed, disgrace the profession. We need to drop most of the pretense of bigger paychecks and benefits "for the children".

Respectfully,

Roland Stearns, Ph.D.
Anchorage, AK"(Mish's Blog)


'Nuff said.