When public unions squeeze the taxpayers

As I've said time and time again. I'm not a conservative for me I'm a conservative for those in our society who have few choices.

So when public unions squeeze the taxpayer's, who's most likely to feel the impact. Hint, it's not the rich and here's a liberal who gets it...........

Let's hope, then, that current popular sentiment turns against the unions, and soon.

How can any compassionate person say such a thing? At a time when so many middle- and lower-income Americans have lost their jobs and homes, while many in the elite haven't even lost their bonuses, isn't it only decent to stand up against further assaults on struggling folks? Exactly whom are these Republicans targeting when they portray unions as big, fat, and overpaid? Janitors? Hospital attendants? Street cleaners?

Those are all painfully fair questions — and they should shape the way officials deal with the problem of a burgeoning public work force, not serve as an excuse to avoid the issue. Simply put, if politicians are scared away from revamping the public sector, they will be leaving in place a major structural flaw in the national economy. Ironically, no one will pay more dearly for this than the average worker.

Think about it: When education unions succeed in wringing every concession they can out of their particular piece of a school system, the squeeze is felt mainly by people who have to rely on the whole of that school system: Goodbye, gym class; hello, parents' paying out of pocket for all kinds of "extras" — and these are not, by and large, parents who can just throw their hands up and say, “That's it, he's going to Buckley!” When transit workers' demands shut down services or drive up fares, it barely registers with the rich who ferry themselves in taxis and towncars from one gilded district to another. It hurts those who can't get to their jobs without a bus or subway — and who need to count every cent that commute costs them. When a city's police force receives so much in salary and benefits that the city is then unable to hire enough cops on the beat, who is going to feel it more? The professional who must ask the cabdriver to idle in front of the building until the doorman appears, or the woman who cleans that professional's office, and has to hustle up a dark street before letting herself in? In short, when any government is forced to starve one set of programs in order to feed another, it affects the people who most need those programs — people who are rarely found at the yacht club.

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