A Hartford newspaper made Connecticut history when it called unions “greedy” in an editorial.
Stubborn union leaders, the editorial pronounced, were perversely refusing to
do the right thing: “They still refuse to even talk about, let alone offer,
concessions in the unions' platinum-plated retirement and health care benefits
package to help Connecticut avert a major budget crisis. We hope that unions do
see the light, and quickly. This is the wrong time for greed.”
Legislative leaders of both parties and Governor Dannel
Malloy – NOT greedy, although he is the architect of the largest and second
largest tax increases in state history – the paper noted, had called union
leaders to the table “to talk about
money-saving ways to scrape some icing off the state employees' rich pension
and health benefits cake,” but union deciders said they had to put the
discussion offer to their membership before participating. The careful reader
will note the use of the expression “rich,” pensions – as in “Why don’t we
round up the rich and send them to re-education camps?” A bit of the
Bern there too, no?
When leftist legislators, noticing Yale’s indecently
profitable endowment of $23.8 billion, attempted to expropriate a portion of
the endowment for budget balancing purposes, President of the State Senate
Martin Loony was roundly denounced. “The Looney Principle” a political commentator noted, “is simply: What's yours is mine.” And the
Hartford paper suggested in another editorial that state number crunchers might
consider hiring the overseer of Yale’s endowment to run chronically inaccurate
state budget projections.
The two Democratic majority leaders in the General Assembly,
Looney and House Speaker Brendan Sharkey, have climbed aboard Mr. Malloy’s “New
Reality” ship, Mr. Looney warning that if union leaders do not reopen their
contracts, “… their own members are going to suffer more layoffs, which means
it is going to be very harsh on more junior employees with families than older
employees who are protected through bumping rights and seniority.”
Benefits and salaries for workers that escape
renegotiations, union leaders have determined, are more important than the
calamities visited upon approximately 1,900 prospectively laid-off union workers.
Prior to the French Revolution, anti-monarchical sans-culottes spread the rumor that Queen Marie Antoinette,
responding to the hunger of Parisians denied bread, said imperiously “Let’em
eat cake.” Similarly, union leaders respond to potentially jobless union
workers, “Let’em go on welfare.” And throughout the state, no revolt of the
masses who pay for both union excesses and welfare abuses appears to be
stirring.
The political condition of the capital city of Hartford may
be taken as an indicator of the condition of the whole state. Both Hartford and
Connecticut are one-party operations the governments of which have been for
years in thrall to special interests. Just now, newly elected Mayor of Hartford
Luke Bronin, once Mr. Malloy’s chief council, is begging the General Assembly
to give him the authority to wrest political control of the economic destiny of
his city from unions, which are largely responsible for turning the city into
the hands of Democrats. The same General Assembly leaders who are now urging
unions to renegotiate contracts will only reluctantly come to the rescue of the
city in which they write laws and offer special concessions to unions,
Connecticut’s fourth branch of government. And, of course, virtually all other
Democratic mayors of one-party cities in Connecticut will maintain a discreet
and union-enabling silence.
Their silence is worth a thousand position papers and
fanciful political promises. The unions, one may be sure, are taking names.
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