SALARIES ARE TOO DAMN HIGH: The public sector is out of control; the legacy of collective bargaining

A crime has been committed among all tax payers. We have been told by unions that we must support our firefighters and police without question as to the actual costs, because of safety, and a sense of righteous duty. We must support our teachers because we want to save our children’s future without actually looking at why the budgets are so expensive, and what they are actually learning. We have been played by our own guilt into a scam of epic proportions, a shell game that is the direct result of “collective bargaining.”

Doc Thompson discusses this vile evil on 700 WLW. It’s an evil topic because the perpetrators having knowingly committed the crime, no different from selling someone a car knowing the transmission would go out on the buyer 1 mile down the road. Is that a crime, to knowingly commit deceptive practices against someone else? Yes, because the taking of taxes is a theft no different from a robber that held you at gunpoint and said, “give me your money or I’ll shoot.” “Pass this levy to protect our kids.” Pass this levy police levy for ‘protection.’” The ethical standard is the same, because my question is, “or else what?” Why does the implication that more money means better service even come into play? My experience is that money does not always get you the best employees, so why do people think that more money gives us anything of value? The reason is that public employees have knowingly lied to the tax payers, manipulated them using emotion, in order to secure outrageous salaries for themselves without any care for the sustainability of the tax revenue system. It is greed at its absolute worst.

I’ll use the Lakota School District as an example because it’s my school district that I pay direct taxes to, but it is beyond reason that Lakota has over 625 employees that make over 65K per year.  No private business could be so irresponsible with their payroll and expect to survive, yet government workers just expect taxes to increase to pay for their unrealistic expectations. I pay a reasonable sum of taxes to them, and like everything I spend my money on, I expect performance. When I spend more than $50 on anything I inquire about the value of the task. When I spend thousands, the same kind of money I might spend on a new car, a new television, a high-end computer, or a trip to Europe, I will look closely at the situation, and when people waste my money I get angry. When they lie to me I become furious, and even vindictive. Because lying to me is not acceptable. Manipulating me is not acceptable. Attempting to ruin my community is not acceptable.

It’s not inflammatory to say such things. It’s calling the situation for what it is. What has to happen is America has to shrink its government, and you start that shrinking government in our local communities. The list that Doc is talking about needs to be reduced by about 2/3rds of what it is. Management control must be given back to “management.” It is abysmal that Bill Cunningham, Bill Seitz, and Sheriff Jones and these types of people even endorse collective bargaining. The Sheriff I understand because he’s a “cop.” But other conservatives that support such things are out of their mind, and have largely contributed to the debacle we are looking at. It’s corrupt…….it’s corrupt because we’re paying people too much for a government that is too big and inefficient. We’ve made our management systems in government to be inbred, inefficient and completely useless, especially with the presence of public sector unions. And it won’t get any better just leaving things as they have been.

We can expect a major fight this fall over repealing S.B.5. Every one of the government people making these extraordinary salaries will show up to vote. The rest of us won’t be so motivated, unless they understand what’s at stake. If we keep S.B.5 we’ll be on the march to drive these terrible government costs down, and we’ll be able to get control of the situation. If the unions and public workers get the bill repealed, then we’ll go bankrupt within a few years. That is a certainty. The people running things are not smart enough to regulate themselves. So it will take people with real management control to step into local government on a “volunteer” basis and actually lead. But the power-hungry people who want a big desk and a name plate need to go. Those people who have achieved nothing in their lives but an elected office by using fancy, manipulative words and must be removed, because those employees are ineffective and way too expensive.

This is a fight. Don’t kid yourself that it’s not. We are in a different kind of war, not one with guns, that is counted in casualties. But one of laws, one of money, and one counted in submission to new controls. One of those controls is high taxes and high taxes will kill American society, and there are MANY that want that. Some of those insurgents lead these unions. Many that serve in office and fund those campaigns, are at war with us. Call it that! I no longer have the patience for the enormous smallness of these self-inflated ego driven fools such as senator Schumer at the federal level, and big time progressives like what we had in Governor Strickland at the state level. They have created the system we are seeing clearly for the first time, that big government costs big money, and leads to incremental losses of freedom with every new law passed to give that big government some reason to exist.

The incredibly high wages in the public sector are a power grab which lures complacent soldiers with comfortable wages who gladly look the other way while the taxpayers are spent into oblivion. It has nothing to do with fairness, or actual rights. It is all about money, and using that money to purchase the souls of the complacent public worker to the demise of everything we trust.

The salaries of public workers are TOO DAMN HIGH. And it’s time we put an end to it before it’s too late.

Rich Hoffman

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