This might be one of the best articles I’ve ever read on this topic — if only more people understood this! Here is Michael Bargo, Jr. writing at American Thinker:
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in the 1930s that allowing government workers to unionize would be a bad idea. That it would institutionalize their influence over elections and public policy. That FDR was right is shown by the fact that four of the six biggest campaign contributors to national campaigns are now public sector unions.
Public sector unions have grown to the point where their power is applied in two ways. First, they tax Americans so they can redistribute tax revenue — and borrow even more when revenue isn’t enough. And they also have a second area where they exercise this power: they force you to pay their high salaries and pensions, not just through state taxes but through state laws that protect and enforce their contracts even if these provisions violate the Thirteenth Amendment.
Some of these public servants now have retirement plans equaling those of the wealthiest corporate executives. But unlike executives they don’t have to sell products to make money. They just increase the taxes you pay for a gallon of gasoline or property taxes or income taxes or sales taxes, and on and on.
Democrats tell people that if they cut back on spending, the benefits to the poor are the first thing that will suffer. And they mean it. In Illinois, Democrats cut back programs in special education and mental health facilities. Meanwhile, not one cent is ever cut from pensions, not even from those who collect pensions of over $500,000 a year. Pensions are sacred, even though Democrats get elected saying only the poor and elderly are sacred. And through campaign donations of your money they pass laws stating that their pensions can’t be diminished or impaired.
This vast conspiratorial network of public sector unions is not well known for the simple reason that it is all perpetrated by the Democratic Party, and since the news media largely endorse Democrats they refuse to expose this, the most abusive, of their practices. Since FDR, Democrats have pursued a carefully crafted and executed plan to dominate the government of the US at all levels. And having achieved domination over taxpayers in most big states, they are now using this power to transfer the wealth of Americans to their own wallets in amounts that are at historic levels.
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That this can be considered involuntary servitude, a practice violative of the Thirteenth Amendment, is shown by two facts. That it is involuntary is shown by the fact that public sector union contracts in Illinois and many other states are called “enforceable contracts” whose benefits cannot be diminished or impaired. In effect taxpayers are banned from making public pension changes. This gives taxpayers no choice but to support union members. This makes it involuntary, and unconstitutional. Future appropriations will not be authorized by their state representatives, a violation of the concept of the consent of the governed.
What makes it servitude is that taxpayers are coerced to pay the excessive and unreasonable pensions. In Illinois, a classic Democrat stronghold, the state university system is so bloated with administrators and pensioners that now 53% of the tuition bill goes exclusively to pensions.
Read more: American Thinker
Image credit: Illinois Policy Institute.
