Showing posts with label Ted Kennedy American Traitor. Show all posts

Sunday, May 17, 2015

JFK & The Mafia?

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Ted Kennedy: The Senator of Sleaze who was a drunk sexual bully... and left a young woman to die

By Charlie Laurence
Updated: 09:31 EST, 27 August 2009

Senator Edward 'Ted' Kennedy stood for sleaze. Bloated and drunken, he used his standing in the Kennedy clan to chase vulnerable women - which brought his dream of reaching the White House to a shameful end.

He was the youngest of the four Kennedy brothers, and by far the longest lived.

Incredibly, he was in line to inherit his brother John F. Kennedy's legendary presidency, but his chances were dashed following the drowning of the pretty, young campaign assistant Mary Jo Kopechne.

The hope of America that went so wrong: (From left) Jack,

Bobby and Ted Kennedy in July 1960 Forever known as

the Chappaquiddick Incident after the Massachusetts island

where it took place, the scandal in 1969 broke the Kennedy

grip on the White House.

A drunk Ted had been driving back from a party to the family 'compound' on Martha's Vineyard when he veered off a bridge and into a deep tidal dyke.

Drowned: Mary Jo Kopechne was killed after Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge with her inside

Mary Jo was in the back seat and, while he claimed he was just giving her a lift back to her hotel, it was widely thought that he had picked her up for sex. Kennedy swam ashore to save himself, but left Mary Jo to drown - in fact, it was even worse than that.

It was nine hours before he reported the accident. In the meantime, he walked back to his motel, complained to the manager about a noisy party, took a shower, went to sleep, ordered newspapers when he woke up and spoke to a friend and two lawyers before finally calling the police.
Divers later estimated that if he had called them immediately, they would have had time to pull out Mary Jo. She had not drowned, but had survived in an air pocket inside the car - she was asphyxiated only when the oxygen ran out several hours later.
As always, Ted used the family name to save his neck. In any other state but Massachusetts, the Kennedys' home turf, and with any other name, he would have been charged with homicide.
Instead, he escaped with a slap on the wrist: a two-year suspended sentence and the loss of his driving licence for a year. He had been allowed to plead guilty to no more than the charge of leaving the scene of an accident.
Kennedy lawyers arranged for him to pay £55,000 to the Kopechne family from his own pocket with a further £30,000 from his insurance. Mary Jo's mother later said: 'I don't think he ever said he was sorry.'
At the height of the scandal, Kennedy went on TV to explain himself in an extraordinary 13-minute address in which he denied driving drunk and rejected rumours of
'immoral conduct' with Kopechne.
He said he was haunted by 'irrational' thoughts immediately after the accident, and wondered 'whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys'.
He said his failure to report the accident right away was 'indefensible'.
Yet the tragedy and his actions appalled millions of Americans.

Tragic: The wreckage of Ted Kennedy's car in which he

left Mary Jo Edward Moore Kennedy was born on February
22, 1932, and took over the U.S. Senate seat once held by
JFK in 1962. He was 30, the youngest age allowed.

By this point in the family's extraordinary history, JFK - John Fitzgerald Kennedy - was President and the next in line, Robert 'RFK' Kennedy, was Attorney General. Their eldest brother, Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr, had died in World War II.
Ted at first impressed his family and his electorate with hard work and legislative skill in the Senate.
When JFK was assassinated just a year later, Ted was at work on a committee and reportedly stood stunned and unable to move when he heard.
The assassination would prove to be the opening shot in the destruction of the family that in 1960 had held the promise of an era of unprecedented hope in the U.S.
Less than a year after the assassination, Ted experienced his own brush with death in a plane crash. The pilot and one of his Senate aides were killed. He was left with a permanent back injury, broken ribs and a punctured lung.
He was immobilised for seven months, but the family's dominance of Massachusetts politics was so powerful that he nevertheless easily won his first re-election.
In 1964, as his brother 'Bobby' Kennedy began to prepare for his own accession to the White House in the 1968 election campaign, the younger Kennedy made his name in the Senate by steering crucial reforms through Washington with President Lyndon Johnson.
But then RFK was gunned down in Los Angeles and Ted Kennedy became de facto head of the family.
The shattering blow left him barely able to deliver his brother's funeral eulogy in New York's St Patrick's Cathedral. He retreated from politics to spend the next ten weeks brooding and sailing alone off Cape Cod.

Eulogised: Ted Kennedy has been fondly remembered by politicians all over the world after his death

But then he stood before the TV cameras once again to announce: 'Like my brothers before me, I pick up the fallen standard. Sustained by the memory of our priceless years together, I shall carry forward the special commitment to justice, excellence and courage that distinguished their lives.'
It was not to be. The steamroller Kennedy political machine, combined with his popular opposition to the then raging Vietnam War, made him favourite for the 1972 presidential election, but the drunken drive that killed Mary Jo snuffed out his bid.
Edward Kennedy's character flaws would have sidelined any man from a lesser family before his career had begun. Schooled in the height of privilege, like his brothers, at exclusive boarding 'prep' schools, Kennedy went on to Harvard.
But he was expelled from that Ivy League bastion for persuading another undergraduate to take his Spanish exams for him. It was an episode that should have served as a warning to the voters.
Kennedy joined the Army to redeem himself and was later readmitted to Harvard. He followed the classic path of the American elite to law school, graduated and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar.

Irish support: Kennedy with Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams -

for years the Democrat was seen as a cheerleader for

American Irish supporters of the IRA

But he did not take a single case. He believed that, like his brothers, he was destined for greatness. As he could not stand for the Senate until he was 30, the Kennedy machine arranged for a 'stooge' candidate to hold the family seat for two years, when JFK left it for the White House.
Ted won his first election easily, but not before his rival for the Democratic nomination remarked with prescience: 'If your name was simply Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidacy would be a joke.'
As he entered the Senate, Kennedy was admired for his commanding 6ft 2in stature and the good looks that seemed a family blessing. But he was already drinking and womanising with the greed that has become known as a vice of Kennedy men.
Keeping such a vice under wraps seemed to run in the blood (as did charisma). His father, Joe, the patriarch who had got away with bootlegging in the Prohibition years to establish the family fortune, had also behaved that way.
While Ted drank and took advantage of compliant women in Washington, his wife Joan stayed at home in Boston to look after his three children. Like her sister-in-law Jacqui, she seemed to have learned that Kennedy women had to put up with humiliation.

The effort ruined her health, however. Kennedy's unending philandering turned her into an alcoholic and, in 1983, she could take no more.
She could no longer stand the hypocrisy of her husband posing for the public as if he lived for family values. She divorced, publicly confessed to her alcoholism and helped shatter what was left of the Kennedy aura.
Charisma, political skill, good timing and ruthlessness had enabled the family to dominate U.S. public life, despite foibles from links with Chicago gangsters to the sexual arrogance that had, according to legend, seen both JFK and RFK seduce Marilyn Monroe.
A writer once noted: 'Ted Kennedy born and bred to act like the last of the Regency rakes: to be a boor when it pleases him, to take what he wants, to treat women as score markers in the game of sexual sport and to revel in high stakes risks.'

University days: Ted Kennedy (right) playing football at Harvard in 1955

His brothers got away with it, but Ted Kennedy's divorce removed the last bounds of shame and he plunged into a life that left him looking like a Saturday night drunk, waving a bottle and calling for any woman who could tolerate him. He staggered from scandal to scandal, reduced to fodder for lurid ' supermarket' tabloid newspapers.
One congressional aide, just 16, told of being propositioned by Kennedy from the back seat of his limousine in Capitol Hill. She testified that he leaned from the window, waved a wine bottle and asked whether she or a friend she was with wanted to join him.
He reeked of drink by nine in the morning and could be relied on to be bawling drunk at four in the afternoon. In Washington's top La Brasserie restaurant, he once threw a waitress over a table in a private room and tried to have sex with her.
His face, once handsome, became as round as a football, bloated and criss-crossed with the broken veins of an out-of-control drinker.
Remarkably, he held on to his political clout and his legislative skills. He won re-election after reelection, dying in office as America's second-longest serving senator.
He was also responsible - or credited by the Left - for an unrivalled body of 'liberal' legislation. He reformed immigration and labour laws, supported 'pro-choice' abortion rights, voted for tougher gun laws and against the Iraq war, and supported gay marriage.
It wasn't long before he became embroiled in another Kennedy family scandal. In 1991, the U.S. was outraged when clan-member William Kennedy Smith was accused of a date rape.
The Kennedy men had gathered at the family's winter beach house in Florida. Smith (Ted's nephew) was accused of taking a young woman, Patricia Bowman, on to the beach late at night and forcing her to have sex against her will.
Smith was found not guilty after building a defence of 'rough', but consensual, sex.
But at the young man's trial, Kennedy was left, once again, with his trousers down. Witnesses testified that he had been lounging in his boxer shorts as Smith coaxed Bowman on to the beach, and did nothing to intervene.
It had been Kennedy who had earlier woken the younger men in his party and insisted that they go out to a nightclub to hunt for women.
After that, Kennedy seemed to seize a final chance to gain a measure of personal control. He offered a mea culpa in which he said he recognised his 'shortcomings, the faults in the conduct of my private life'.
He married a second time, to Washington lawyer Victoria Reggie, who survives him, and said of her: 'She has enriched my life beyond measure.'
At 60, his Kennedy mane still thick but snow white, it finally seemed as if the youngest brother had learned his lesson.
Indeed, it was another tragedy that devastated the family and the nation that partly rehabilitated Kennedy in the public mind: the death in the light aircraft of John Kennedy Jnr, the son of JFK and the heir presumptive to his Camelot.
He was the little boy photographed saluting his father's coffin, and who had become a handsome young man with true potential. America was heartbroken.
Edward Kennedy, for once, rose above his own character defects to preside over the mourning at the funeral.
In his eulogy for John, he said: 'We dared to think, in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would live to comb grey hair. But like his father, he had every gift but length of years. He had a legacy and he learned to treasure it. He was part of a legend and he learned to live with it.'
In his own right, Ted Kennedy was a legend, too - but for all the wrong reasons.

Friday, May 15, 2015

Ted Kennedy American Traitor

http://www.forbes.com/

Ted Kennedy's Soviet Gambit

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.
“On 9-10 May of this year,” the May 14 memorandum explained, “Sen. Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow.” (Tunney was Kennedy’s law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) “The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.”
Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. “The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations,” the memorandum stated. “These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.”
Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.
First he offered to visit Moscow. “The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.” Kennedy would help the Soviets deal with Reagan by telling them how to brush up their propaganda.
Then he offered to make it possible for Andropov to sit down for a few interviews on American television. “A direct appeal … to the American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and interest in the country. … If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. … The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side.”
Kennedy would make certain the networks gave Andropov air time–and that they rigged the arrangement to look like honest journalism.
Kennedy’s motives? “Like other rational people,” the memorandum explained, “[Kennedy] is very troubled by the current state of Soviet-American relations.” But that high-minded concern represented only one of Kennedy’s motives.
“Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988,” the memorandum continued. “Kennedy does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to lead the fight against the Republicans and elect their candidate president.”
Kennedy proved eager to deal with Andropov–the leader of the Soviet Union, a former director of the KGB and a principal mover in both the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the suppression of the 1968 Prague Spring–at least in part to advance his own political prospects.
In 1992, Tim Sebastian published a story about the memorandum in the London Times. Here in the U.S., Sebastian’s story received no attention. In his 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, historian Paul Kengor reprinted the memorandum in full. “The media,” Kengor says, “ignored the revelation.”
“The document,” Kengor continues, “has stood the test of time. I scrutinized it more carefully than anything I’ve ever dealt with as a scholar. I showed the document to numerous authorities who deal with Soviet archival material. No one has debunked the memorandum or shown it to be a forgery. Kennedy’s office did not deny it.”
Why bring all this up now? No evidence exists that Andropov ever acted on the memorandum–within eight months, the Soviet leader would be dead–and now that Kennedy himself has died even many of the former senator’s opponents find themselves grieving. Yet precisely because Kennedy represented such a commanding figure–perhaps the most compelling liberal of our day–we need to consider his record in full.
Doing so, it turns out, requires pondering a document in the archives of the politburo.
When President Reagan chose to confront the Soviet Union, calling it the evil empire that it was, Sen. Edward Kennedy chose to offer aid and comfort to General Secretary Andropov. On the Cold War, the greatest issue of his lifetime, Kennedy got it wrong.
Peter Robinson, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a former White House speechwriter, writes a weekly column for Forbes

http://thefederalist.com/

Ted Kennedy Secretly Asked The Soviets To Intervene In The 1984 Elections

March 10, 2015 By Sean Davis

Earlier this week, 47 Republican senators published an open letter informing the leaders of Iran that any nuclear deal with the United States that failed to be approved by the Senate would likely expire in 2017, once President Barack Obama’s term ended. You can read the full letter here.
The letter enraged progressives, who immediately began accusing the senators of treason for having the audacity to publish basic constitutional facts about how treaties work. Here is but a small sampling of the response from the outrage brigade:
If these progressives want to know what actual treason looks like, they should consult liberal lion Ted Kennedy, who not only allegedly sent secret messages to the Soviets in the midst of the cold war, he also begged them to intervene in a U.S. presidential election in order to unseat President Ronald Reagan. That’s no exaggeration.
According to Soviet documents unearthed in the early 1990’s, Kennedy literally asked the Soviets, avowed enemies of the U.S., to intervene on behalf of the Democratic party in the 1984 elections. Kennedy’s communist communique was so secret that it was not discovered until 1991, eight years after Kennedy had initiated his Soviet gambit:

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.

“On 9-10 May of this year,” the May 14 memorandum explained, “Sen. Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow.” (Tunney was Kennedy’s law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) “The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.”

Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. “The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations,” the memorandum stated. “These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.”

Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.

First he offered to visit Moscow. “The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.” Kennedy would help the Soviets deal with Reagan by telling them how to brush up their propaganda.

Then he offered to make it possible for Andropov to sit down for a few interviews on American television. “A direct appeal … to the American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and interest in the country. … If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. … The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side.”

Kennedy would make certain the networks gave Andropov air time–and that they rigged the arrangement to look like honest journalism.

You can read the full KGB memo detailing Kennedy’s secret letter and request for electoral intervention here.

Letter Details Kennedy Offer To USSR

[A repost of a S&L article from December 2006.]
This letter which details Senator Edward Kennedy’s offer to help the Soviet Union defeat Reagan’s efforts to build up the nuclear deterrent in Europe was unearthed by a Times of London reporter in the 1990s after the KGB files were opened.
It got little or no attention, however, until the publication of Paul Kengor’s book "The Crusader – Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism."
But even then the actual text of the letter (which is in the book’s appendix pp 317-320) has gotten short shrift:

Appendix
TEXT OF KGB LETTER ON SENATOR TED KENNEDY _________________________________________ Special Importance
Committee on State Security of the USSR
14.05. 1983 No. 1029 Ch/OV
Moscow
Regarding Senator Kennedy’s request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Comrade Y.V. Andropov
Comrade Y.V. Andropov
On 9-10 May of this year, Senator Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant J. Tunney was in Moscow. The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Center Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.
Senator Kennedy, like other rational people, is very troubled by the current state of Soviet-American relations. Events are developing such that this relationship coupled with the general state of global affairs will make the situation even more dangerous. The main reason for this is Reagan’s belligerence, and his firm commitment to deploy new American middle range nuclear weapons within Western Europe.
According to Kennedy, the current threat is due to the President’s refusal to engage any modification on his politics. He feels that his domestic standing has been strengthened because of the well publicized improvement of the economy: inflation has been greatly reduced, production levels are increasing as is overall business activity. For these reasons, interest rates will continue to decline. The White House has portrayed this in the media as the "success of Reaganomics."
Naturally, not everything in the province of economics has gone according to Reagan’s plan. A few well known economists and members of financial circles, particularly from the north-eastern states, foresee certain hidden tendencies that many bring about a new economic crisis in the USA. This could bring about the fall of the presidential campaign of 1984, which would benefit the Democratic party. Nevertheless, there are no secure assurances this will indeed develop.
The only real threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations. These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign. The movement advocating a freeze on nuclear arsenals of both countries continues to gain strength in the United States. The movement is also willing to accept preparations, particularly from Kennedy, for its continued growth. In political and influential circles of the country, including within Congress, the resistence to growing military expenditures is gaining strength.
However, according to Kennedy, the opposition to Reagan is still very weak. Reagan’s adversaries are divided and the presentations they make are not fully effective. Meanwhile, Reagan has the capabilities to effectively counter any propaganda. In order to neutralize criticism that the talks between the USA and the USSR are non-constructive, Reagan will grandiose, but subjectively propagandistic. At the same time, Soviet officials who speak about disarmament will be quoted out of context, silenced or groundlessly and whimsically discounted. Although arguments and statements by officials of the USSR do appear in the press, it is important to note the majority of Americans do not read serious newspapers or periodicals.
Kennedy believes that, given the current state of affairs, and in the interest of peace, it would be prudent and timely to undertake the following steps to counter the militaristic politics of Reagan and his campaign to psychologically burden the American people. In this regard, he offers the following proposals to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Y.V. Andropov:

1. Kennedy asks Y.V. Andropov to consider inviting the senator to Moscow for a personal meeting in July of this year. The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA. He would also like to inform you that he has planned a trip through Western Europe, where he anticipates meeting England’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President Mitterand in which he will exchange similar ideas regarding the same issues.
If his proposals would be accepted in principle, Kennedy would send his representative to Moscow to resolve questions regarding organizing such a visit.
Kennedy thinks the benefits of a meeting with Y.V.Andropov will be enhanced if he could also invite one of the well known Republican senators, for example, Mark Hatfield. Such a meeting will have a strong impact on American and political circles in the USA (In March of 1982, Hatfield and Kennedy proposed a project to freeze the nuclear arsenals of the USA and USSR and pblished a book on the theme as well.)
2. Kennedy believes that in order to influence Americans it would be important to organize in August-September of this year, televised interviews with Y.V. Andropov in the USA. A direct appeal by the General Secretary to the American people will, without a doubt, attact a great deal of attention and interest in the country. The senator is convinced this would receive the maximum resonance in so far as television is the most effective method of mass media and information.

If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interview. Specifically, the president of the board of directors of ABC, Elton Raul and television columnists Walter Cronkite or Barbara Walters could visit Moscow. The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side.
Furthermore, with the same purpose in mind, a series of televised interviews in the USA with lower level Soviet officials, particularly from the military would be organized. They would also have an opportunity to appeal directly to the American people about the peaceful intentions of the USSR, with their own arguments about maintaining a true balance of power between the USSR and the USA in military term. This issue is quickly being distorted by Reagan’s administration.
Kennedy asked to convey that this appeal to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is his effort to contribute a strong proposal that would root out the threat of nuclear war, and to improve Soviet-American relations, so that they define the safety of the world. Kennedy is very impressed with the activities of Y.V. Andropov and other Soviet leaders, who expressed their commitment to heal international affairs, and improve mutal understandings between peoples.
The senator underscored that he eagerly awaits a reply to his appeal, the answer to which may be delivered through Tunney.
Having conveyed Kennedy’s appeal to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Tunney also explained that Senator Kennedy has in the last few years actively made appearances to reduce the threat of war. Because he formally refused to partake in the election campaign of 1984, his speeches would be taken without prejudice as they are not tied to any campaign promises. Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988. At that time, he will be 56 and his personal problems, which could hinder his standing, will be resolved (Kennedy has just completed a divorce and plans to remarry in the near future). Taken together, Kennedy does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to lead the fight against the Republicans and elect their candidate president. This would explain why he is convinced that none of the candidates today have a real chance at defeating Reagan.
We await instructions.
President of the committee
V. Chebrikov

Lest we forget in our grief.

Remembering Teddy’s KGB Connection

Connie Hair | Thursday Aug 27, 2009 8:55 AM

The death of Sen. Edward M. “Teddy” Kennedy this week marks the end of an American political era colored in crayon by the media-generated notion of American royalty. Ted Kennedy will be laid to rest at Arlington Cemetery, the last of the three Kennedy brothers who once dominated the American political landscape, and the only one of the four Kennedy brothers to live to see his fifties.
As his fellow liberals attempt to shove the national takeover of health care through Congress, even suggesting renaming the bill after Kennedy in a memorial tribute, it becomes urgent to set aside the perfunctory kind words one usually says about the departed — regardless of truth. A whitewash of Kennedy’s history cannot be used as an emotional power play to push through government-run health care in his “honor.”

I will not belabor the story of Mary Jo Kopechne, the young woman left behind in her own water torture at the hands of the late senator. That particular miscarriage of justice has come to mind for many as we all heard of Kennedy’s death this week and has even been reported as part of his sordid legacy by a few media outlets.
But Kennedy’s private outreach to the KGB Soviet intelligence agency in attempts to undermine first President Jimmy Carter then President Ronald Reagan say as much as Chappaquiddick did about the man who appeared to have no moral restraints whatsoever on his personal pursuit of raw political power.
Documents found in Soviet archives after the fall of the Iron Curtain revealed a great deal about the character of Ted Kennedy.
As HUMAN EVENTS first reported on December 8, 2003:

One of the documents, a KGB report to bosses in the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee, revealed that “In 1978, American Sen. Edward Kennedy requested the assistance of the KGB to establish a relationship” between the Soviet apparatus and a firm owned by former Sen. John Tunney (D-Ca.). KGB recommended that they be permitted to do this because Tunney’s firm was already connected with a KGB agent in France named David Karr. This document was found by the knowledgeable Russian journalist Yevgenia Albats and published in Moscow’s Izvestia in June 1992.
Another KGB report to their bosses revealed that on March 5, 1980, John Tunney met with the KGB in Moscow on behalf of Sen. Kennedy. Tunney expressed Kennedy’s opinion that “nonsense about ‘the Soviet military threat’ and Soviet ambitions for military expansion in the Persian Gulf… was being fueled by [President Jimmy] Carter, [National Security Advisor Zbigniew] Brzezinski, the Pentagon and the military industrial complex.”
Kennedy offered to speak out against President Carter on Afghanistan. Shortly thereafter he made public speeches opposing President Carter on this issue. This document was found in KGB archives by Vasiliy Mitrokhin, a courageous KGB officer, who copied documents from the files and then defected to the West. He wrote about this document in a February 2002 paper on Afghanistan that he released through the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, found contemporaneous KGB documentation and published a story in February of 1992 of an additional communiqué by Ted Kennedy to the Soviet intelligence agency through Tunney. Full text of the letter from the appendix of Paul Kengor’s book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism can be found here.
This time it was President Reagan in Kennedy’s crosshairs as he attempted to arrange a meeting between Kennedy and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Yuri Andropov.
In this May 14, 1983, letter written by underling Viktor Chebrikov to Andropov, he relayed Kennedy’s offer to meet, Chebrikov explaining that Kennedy blamed poor American-Soviet relations not on the Communist country, but on President Reagan. According to Chebrikov’s letter, Kennedy said he wanted to stop Reagan’s re-election effort in 1984.
Chebrikov’s letter also claimed that Kennedy was “very impressed” with Andropov and that Kennedy was reaching out to the Soviets to thwart Reagan’s forceful defense policies. Kennedy suggested the Soviets reach out specifically to Barbara Walters and Walter Cronkite to counter in the American media what he said Kennedy considered Reagan “propaganda.”
Chebrikov’s letter to Andropov also stated that Kennedy himself had offered to travel to Moscow to meet with Andropov if he would extend an invitation.
These revelations reported in 1992 suggest insight into a man so obsessed with the acquisition of personal political power that he would reach out to the communist Soviet Union for help in undermining not one but two American presidents, one from his own political party.
Kennedy’s strong support for the government takeover of health care and the effort to pass this legislation in memorial tribute fails to warrant a second glance.
Rep. Smith Prompts Senate Judiciary to Stop Perez Nomination
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, requested in a letter to Senate colleagues yesterday that they place a hold on the nomination of Tom Perez to be Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division. Smith requested the delay of the confirmation process until the Justice Department provides Congress with sufficient information regarding the sudden dismissal of a case alleging voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party on Election Day 2008.
According to Smith, the Justice Department’s response to Congress was “overly vague, raising concerns about possible political interference in this case… If the Department’s political appointees applied pressure to career attorneys to dismiss this case, then they have committed an offense that undermines every American’s right to choose their elected officials.”
Stay tuned.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

The Trouble with Public Sector Unions

http://www.nationalaffairs.com

FROM ISSUE NUMBER 5 ~ FALL 2010

DANIEL DISALVO

When Chris Christie became New Jersey's governor in January, he wasted no time in identifying the chief perpetrators of his state's fiscal catastrophe. Facing a nearly $11 billion budget gap — as well as voters fed up with the sky-high taxes imposed on them to finance the state government's profligacy — Christie moved swiftly to take on the unions representing New Jersey's roughly 400,000 public employees.
On his first day in office, the governor signed an executive order preventing state-workers' unions from making political contributions — subjecting them to the same limits that had long applied to corporations. More recently, he has waged a protracted battle against state teachers' unions, which are seeking pay increases and free lifetime health care for their members. Recognizing the burden that such benefits would place on New Jersey's long-term finances, Christie has sought instead to impose a one-year wage freeze, to change pension rules to limit future benefits, and to require that teachers contribute a tiny fraction of their salaries to cover the costs of their health insurance — measures that, for private-sector workers, would be mostly uncontroversial.
The firestorm that these proposals have sparked demonstrates the political clout of state-workers' unions. Christie's executive order met with vicious condemnation from union leaders and the politicians aligned with them; his fight with the public-school teachers prompted the New Jersey Education Association to spend $6 million (drawn from members' dues) on anti-Christie attack ads over a two-month period. Clearly, the lesson for reform-minded politicians has been: Confront public-sector unions at your peril.
Yet confront them policymakers must. As Christie said about the duel with the NJEA, "If we don't win this fight, there's no other fight left." Melodramatic as this may sound, for many states, it is simply reality. The cost of public-sector pay and benefits (which in many cases far exceed what comparable workers earn in the private sector), combined with hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities for retired government workers, are weighing down state and city budgets. And staggering as these burdens seem now, they are actually poised to grow exponentially in the years ahead. If policymakers fail to rein in this growth, a fiscal crack-up will be the inevitable result.
New Jersey has drawn national attention as a case study, but the same scenario is playing out in state capitals from coast to coast. New York, Michigan, California, Washington, and many other states also find themselves heavily indebted, with public-sector unions at the root of their problems. In exchange, taxpayers in these states are rewarded with larger and more expensive, yet less effective, government, and with elected officials who are afraid to cross the politically powerful unions. As the Wall Street Journal put it recently, public-sector unions "may be the single biggest problem...for the U.S. economy and small-d democratic governance." They may also be the biggest challenge facing state and local officials — a challenge that, unless economic conditions dramatically improve, will dominate the politics of the decade to come.

THE STATE OF THE UNION

Since the middle of the 20^th century, organized labor in America has undergone two transformations with major implications for the nation's politics. The first is the dramatic decline in overall union membership. In 1955, organized labor represented one-third of the non-agricultural work force; today, it represents just 12.3%. The second transformation, however, is even more significant: the change in the composition of the unionized work force.
As private-sector unions have withered, public-sector unions have grown dramatically. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, in 2009, for the first time ever, more public-sector employees (7.9 million) than private-sector employees (7.4 million) belonged to unions. Today, unionized workers are more likely to be teachers, librarians, trash collectors, policemen, or firefighters than they are to be carpenters, electricians, plumbers, auto workers, or coal miners.
This shift has produced a noticeable change in the demographic profile of union members; gone is the image of a union man as a beefy laborer in a hard hat and steel-toed boots. According to data from the University of Michigan's American National Election Study, in 1952, about 80% of union members were blue-collar workers, while 20% were white-collar workers; by the mid-1990s, those classified as white-collar workers gained majority status. Nor do men dominate unions any longer: In the 1950s, more than 80% of union members were men, but today there is near gender parity. Union members also have much more schooling than they once did. In 1960, more than 35% of union members had not finished high school and barely 2% had college degrees. Today, almost every union member has completed high school, and more than 25% have college degrees. The typical union member no longer lives in a major city center close to the factory; by the 1990s, union members were more likely to live in suburban than urban areas. Unions have also become multi-racial: Nearly a quarter of union members are now non-white. Unions today represent a vastly different slice of America than they did at the height of the country's manufacturing prowess.
The rise of government-worker unionism has also combined with the broader transformation of the American economy to produce a sharp divergence between public- and private-sector employment. In today's public sector, good pay, generous benefits, and job security make possible a stable middle-class existence for nearly everyone from janitors to jailors. In the private economy, meanwhile, cutthroat competition, increased income inequality, and layoffs squeeze the middle class. This discrepancy indicates how poorly the middle class has fared in recent decades in the private economy, which is home to 80% of American jobs. But it also highlights the increased benefits of government work, and shines a spotlight on the gains public-sector unions have secured for their members. Perhaps this success helps explain why, on average, 39% of state- and local-government employees belong to unions. (Differences in state and local laws of course mean that the percentage varies from state to state; New York tops the chart with roughly 70% of state employees in unions, while many Southern right-to-work states hover in the single digits.)
The emergence of powerful public-sector unions was by no means inevitable. Prior to the 1950s, as labor lawyer Ida Klaus remarked in 1965, "the subject of labor relations in public employment could not have meant less to more people, both in and out of government." To the extent that people thought about it, most politicians, labor leaders, economists, and judges opposed collective bargaining in the public sector. Even President Franklin Roosevelt, a friend of private-sector unionism, drew a line when it came to government workers: "Meticulous attention," the president insisted in 1937, "should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government....The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service." The reason? F.D.R. believed that "[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable." Roosevelt was hardly alone in holding these views, even among the champions of organized labor. Indeed, the first president of the AFL-CIO, George Meany, believed it was "impossible to bargain collectively with the government."
Courts across the nation also generally held that collective bargaining by government workers should be forbidden on the legal grounds of sovereign immunity and unconstitutional delegation of government powers. In 1943, a New York Supreme Court judge held:

To tolerate or recognize any combination of civil service employees of the government as a labor organization or union is not only incompatible with the spirit of democracy, but inconsistent with every principle upon which our government is founded. Nothing is more dangerous to public welfare than to admit that hired servants of the State can dictate to the government the hours, the wages and conditions under which they will carry on essential services vital to the welfare, safety, and security of the citizen. To admit as true that government employees have power to halt or check the functions of government unless their demands are satisfied, is to transfer to them all legislative, executive and judicial power. Nothing would be more ridiculous.

The very nature of many public services — such as policing the streets and putting out fires — gives government a monopoly or near monopoly; striking public employees could therefore hold the public hostage. As long-time New York Times labor reporter A. H. Raskin wrote in 1968: "The community cannot tolerate the notion that it is defenseless at the hands of organized workers to whom it has entrusted responsibility for essential services."
Another common objection to collective bargaining with public-employee unions was that it would mean taking some of the decision-making authority over government functions away from the people's elected representatives and transferring it to union officials, with whom the public had vested no such authority. In this view, democracy would be compromised when elected officials began sharing with union leaders the power to determine government employees' wages, benefits, and working conditions. Furthermore, collectively bargained work rules could alter what public servants did day to day in ways not condoned by either elected officials or the voting public.
Given the forces and arguments aligned against public-sector unions, what led to their enormous growth? Three conditions prepared the ground for the legal reforms that facilitated collective bargaining in the public sector (and the subsequent swelling of the ranks of unionized government employees).
The first was the weakening of party machines at the state and (especially) local levels. In many of America's large cities, the responsibility for filling government jobs fell to the party machines; turnover in government employment was therefore high, connected as it was to election results. In New York during the 1930s and '40s, for instance, the average tenure of a cop or garbage collector was five years. Another effect of the machines' influence over government hiring was political: People in patronage jobs inevitably devoted a portion of their nominal working hours to party affairs. Because government employment under the machine system was both relatively brief and partisan in nature, a culture of professionalism was never really able to take hold.
Reformers' chief weapon in the war against the machines was the enactment of civil-service laws. Such laws sought to deprive ward bosses of control over patronage, which was their lifeblood. Civic groups, the press, and public-employees' associations believed that greater professionalization of the government work force would draw in talent, increase efficiency, and reduce corruption. In the 1950s, according to historian Leo Kramer, the leadership of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) "saw itself as part of a great movement to reform government," one of whose principal aims was "the extension of the merit system to all nonpolicy determining positions in all government jurisdictions."
By the end of the 1950s, reformers had put the old machines on the defensive. And professionalization had had its intended effect: In their 1963 book City Politics, Edward Banfield and James Q. Wilson found that, by 1961, 52% of cities with populations over 500,000 had placed nearly all government employees under civil-service protections.
One important consequence of civil-service reform was that, with the end of election-based turnover — and with protections against undue political interference in hiring and firing — public employees gained nearly lifetime job security. This gave workers a long-term interest in their jobs and increased their capacity to express themselves collectively, thereby helping to make the unionization of public employees possible.
The second precondition for public-sector unionization was economic and demographic change. In the post-war period, the number of government jobs grew rapidly: Between 1950 and 1976, state- and local-government employment increased from 9.1% to 15.3% of the non-agricultural work force (an increase from roughly 4 million workers to about 12 million). A large part of this spike was the result of increased demand for government services caused by the Baby Boom. Huge numbers of young people meant a greater need for workers in schools in particular; the number of Americans working as teachers, principals, and administrators thus increased dramatically. It is hardly surprising, then, that some of the first public employees to unionize (and some of the most militant) were teachers. In the 1970s in New York state alone, there were, on average, 20 teacher strikes a year.
Finally, the third precondition was the solidification of the alliance between organized labor and the Democratic Party. Franklin Roosevelt's signing of the Wagner Act (which protected the rights of private-sector workers to organize and bargain collectively) in 1935 fully bonded labor to the Democrats; their partnership was reinforced during the fight over the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which was a Republican initiative to rein in union power. By mid-century, Democrats began to rely on labor unions for both funding and on-the-ground campaign organizing. In the 1950s and '60s, according to political scientist J. David Greenstone, "labor functioned as the most important nation-wide electoral organization for the Democratic Party." As a political tag team, both Democrats and labor had an incentive to broaden the base of the labor movement — and they came to see public-sector workers as the most promising new hunting ground, especially as private-sector union membership began to decline.
Democrats began to mobilize this new constituency in the late 1950s. In 1958, New York City mayor Robert Wagner, Jr., issued Executive Order 49, known as "the little Wagner Act." It gave city employees bargaining rights, and provided their unions with exclusive representation (meaning that the unions alone were legally authorized to speak for city workers, regardless of whether those workers belonged to the unions or supported them). And in 1962, President John Kennedy issued Executive Order 10988, reaffirming the right of federal workers to organize and codifying their right to bargain collectively.
From the mid-1960s through the early '70s, states and cities followed with a plethora of laws providing public-employee unions with collective-bargaining rights. In many cases, the consequences were almost immediate. In New York state, one year after the passage of the so-called Taylor Law in 1967, 360,000 state- and local-government employees became unionized; the New York Times described the law as having an "almost revolutionary effect." Other states and cities experienced similar expansions in the number of public-sector union members. For example, in 1968, California passed the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act — a law granting local-government workers bargaining rights — and then extended those rights to teachers a few years later; in the 1970s and '80s, both membership in public-sector unions and the number of strikes in California skyrocketed. Nationwide, by 1970, the AFSCME had negotiated more than 1,000 collective-bargaining agreements, nearly twice the number in place in 1964. And by 1972, nearly half of the states had public-employee collective-bargaining laws in place at either the state or local level.
Collective-bargaining laws gave government workers powerful incentives to join unions. Between 1960 and 1980, the portion of full-time unionized public employees jumped from 10% to 36% of the public-sector work force. The AFSCME grew from 99,000 members in 1955 to just under 1 million members in 1980. Over the same period, the American Federation of Teachers grew from 40,000 to more than half a million members. Today, its membership stands at more than 1.5 million — which makes the AFT larger than the largest exclusively private-sector union, the United Food and Commercial Workers (1.3 million members). But even the AFT is dwarfed by the largest labor union in the United States: the National Education Association, which claims 3.2 million members.
Organized labor in America thus increasingly consists of government employees, and government employees increasingly belong to unions. This shift has clearly reshaped the country's labor movement. Far more important to most Americans, though, is the way it has transformed the relationships between public employees, the governments they work for, and the public they serve — often with less than salutary results.

THE PUBLIC-SECTOR DIFFERENCE

When it comes to advancing their interests, public-sector unions have significant advantages over traditional unions. For one thing, using the political process, they can exert far greater influence over their members' employers — that is, government — than private-sector unions can. Through their extensive political activity, these government-workers' unions help elect the very politicians who will act as "management" in their contract negotiations — in effect handpicking those who will sit across the bargaining table from them, in a way that workers in a private corporation (like, say, American Airlines or the Washington Post Company) cannot. Such power led Victor Gotbaum, the leader of District Council 37 of the AFSCME in New York City, to brag in 1975: "We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss."
Since public-sector unions began to develop in earnest, their importance in political campaigns has grown by leaps and bounds. Starting from almost nothing in the 1960s, government-workers' unions now far exceed private-sector unions in political contributions. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, from 1989 to 2004, the AFSCME was the biggest spender in America, giving nearly $40 million to candidates in federal elections (98.5% of it to Democrats). It is important to stress that this was spending on federal elections; the union represents mostly state and local workers. But given the magnitude of federal contributions to state budgets, the AFSCME is heavily involved in electioneering to shape Washington's spending in ways that protect public workers and the supply of government services. And so over that 15-year period, the AFSCME was willing and able to outspend any other organization in the country.
The political influence of public-sector unions is probably greatest, however, in low-turnout elections to school boards and state and local offices, and in votes to decide ballot initiatives and referenda. For example, two of the top five biggest spenders in Wisconsin's 2003 and 2004 state elections were the Wisconsin Education Association Council and the AFSCME-affiliated Wisconsin PEOPLE Conference. Only the state Republican Party and two other political action committees — those belonging to the National Association of Realtors and SBC / Ameritech — spent more. The same is true in state after state, as unions work to exert control over the very governments that employs their members.
This political dimension of public-sector unionism also changes the substantive priorities and demands of the unions themselves. Although private-sector unions in the United States have engaged in leftist "social activism," they have mostly concentrated their efforts on securing the best wages, benefits, pensions, and working conditions for their members: "pure and simple unionism," as longtime American Federation of Labor president Samuel Gompers used to call it. Rarely do they demand more hiring, since — given the constant private-sector imperative to keep operating costs minimal — increasing the number of a company's employees can limit wage and benefit increases for the workers already on the company's payroll.
By contrast, as economist Richard Freeman has written, "public sector unions can be viewed as using their political power to raise demand for public services, as well as using their bargaining power to fight for higher wages." The millions spent by public-employee unions on ballot measures in states like California and Oregon, for instance, almost always support the options that would lead to higher taxes and more government spending. The California Teachers Association, for example, spent $57 million in 2005 to defeat referenda that would have reduced union power and checked government growth. And the political influence of such massive spending is of course only amplified by the get-out-the-vote efforts of the unions and their members. This power of government-workers' unions to increase (and then sustain) levels of employment through the political process helps explain why, for instance, the city of Buffalo, New York, had the same number of public workers in 2006 as it did in 1950 — despite having lost half of its population (and thus a significant amount of the demand for public services).
For a case study in how public-sector unions manipulate both supply and demand, consider the example of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, the CCPOA lobbied the state government to increase California's prison facilities — since more prisons would obviously mean more jobs for corrections officers. And between 1980 and 2000, the Golden State constructed 22 new prisons for adults (before 1980, California had only 12 such facilities). The CCPOA also pushed for the 1994 "three strikes" sentencing law, which imposed stiff penalties on repeat offenders. The prison population exploded — and, as intended, the new prisoners required more guards. The CCPOA has been no less successful in increasing members' compensation: In 2006, the average union member made $70,000 a year, and more than $100,000 with overtime. Corrections officers can also retire with 90% of their salaries as early as age 50. Today, an amazing 11% of the state budget — more than what is spent on higher education — goes to the penal system.^{[Correction appended]} Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger now proposes privatizing portions of the prison system to escape the unions' grip — though his proposal has so far met with predictable (union supported) political opposition.
A further important advantage that public-sector unions have over their private-sector counterparts is their relative freedom from market forces. In the private sector, the wage demands of union workers cannot exceed a certain threshold: If they do, they can render their employers uncompetitive, threatening workers' long-term job security. In the public sector, though, government is the monopoly provider of many services, eliminating any market pressures that might keep unions' demands in check. Moreover, unlike in the private sector, contract negotiations in the public sector are usually not highly adversarial; most government-agency mangers have little personal stake in such negotiations. Unlike executives accountable to shareholders and corporate boards, government managers generally get paid the same — and have the same likelihood of keeping their jobs — regardless of whether their operations are run efficiently. They therefore rarely play hardball with unions like business owners and managers do; there is little history of "union busting" in government.
Additionally, the rise and fall of businesses in the private sector means that unions must constantly engage in organizing efforts, reaching out to employees of newly created companies. In government agencies, on the other hand, once a union organizes workers, they usually remain organized — because the government doesn't go out of business. Public-employee unions can thus maintain membership levels with much less effort than can private-sector unions.
Finally, public-sector unions enjoy a privileged position in relation not only to their private-sector counterparts but also to other interest groups. Public-sector unions have automatic access to politicians through the collective-bargaining process, while other interest groups must fight for such entrée. Government unions can also more easily mobilize their members for electoral participation than other interest groups can — since they are able to apply pressure at the workplace and, in many cases, can even arrange for time off and other benefits to make members' political activism easier. Furthermore, most interest groups must devote a great deal of time and effort to fundraising; public-sector unions, on the other hand, enjoy a steady, reliable revenue stream, as union dues are deducted directly from members' paychecks (often by government, which drastically reduces the unions' administrative costs).
Taken together, the intrinsic advantages that public-sector unions enjoy over private-sector advocacy groups (including private-sector unions) have given organized government laborers enormous power over government at the local, state, and federal levels; to shape public finances and fiscal policy; and to influence the very spirit of our democracy. The results, unfortunately, have not always been pretty.

A UNIONIZED GOVERNMENT

The effects of public-sector unionism can be grouped under three broad headings. The first centers on compensation, which includes wages, pensions, health care, and other benefits easily valued in monetary terms — the core issues at stake in collective-bargaining negotiations. The second involves the amount of government employment, or the size of government, as reflected in the number of workers and in public budgets. The third involves the productivity and efficiency of government services. Insofar as unions negotiate detailed work rules, they share the power to shape the day-to-day responsibilities of public servants — which influences what government does, and how well it does it.
These are complex matters that are hard for social scientists to measure, and on which scholars disagree. Nevertheless, the evidence supports a few broad conclusions.
Most economists agree that public-sector unions' political power leads to more government spending. And recently, Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute documented how government unionism has abetted growth in public-sector compensation. Generally speaking, the public sector pays more than the private sector for jobs at the low end of the labor market, while the private sector pays more for jobs at the high end. For janitors and secretaries, for instance, the public sector offers an appreciably better deal than the private economy: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual salary for the roughly 330,000 office clerks who work in government was almost $27,000 in 2005, while the 2.7 million in the private sector received an average pay of just under $23,000. Nationwide, among the 108,000 janitors who work in government, the average salary was $23,700; the average salary of the 2 million janitors working in the private sector, meanwhile, was $19,800.
For workers with advanced degrees, however, the public-sector pay scale is likely to be slightly below the private-sector benchmark. Private-sector economists, for instance, earn an average of $99,000 a year, compared to the $69,000 earned by their government colleagues. And accountants in the corporate world earn average annual salaries of $52,000, compared to $48,000 for their public-sector counterparts.
Not as easily captured is the comparable worth of those government workers who lack counterparts in the private sector, such as policemen, firefighters, and corrections officers. But that very monopoly status has given the union representatives of these workers enormous leverage, which they have converted into major gains. For example, in New York state, county police officers were paid an average salary of $121,000 a year in 2006. In that same year, according to the Boston Globe, 225 of the 2,338 Massachusetts State Police officers made more than the $140,535 annual salary earned by the state's governor. Four state troopers received more than $200,000, and 123 others were paid more than $150,000. While people whose jobs entail greater risk of life and limb certainly deserve higher pay, union power has clearly added a substantial premium.
When all jobs are considered, state and local public-sector workers today earn, on average, $14 more per hour in total compensation (wages and benefits) than their private-sector counterparts. The New York Times has reported that public-sector wages and benefits over the past decade have grown twice as fast as those in the private sector. These aggregate pay differentials stem partly from the fact that government work tends to be more white-collar, and that public employees tend to be better educated and more experienced, and to live in urban areas. Another factor is the hollowing out of the middle of the income distribution in the private sector. But union influence still plays a major role.
When unions have not been able to secure increases in wages and salaries, they have turned their attention to benefits. USA Today journalist Dennis Cauchon notes that, since 2002, for every $1-an-hour pay increase, public employees have gotten $1.17 in new benefits; private-sector workers, meanwhile, have received just 58 cents in added benefits. Of special interest to the unions has been health care: Across the nation, 86% of state- and local-government workers have access to employer-provided health insurance, while only 45% of private-sector workers do. In many cases, these plans involve meager contributions from employees, or none at all — in New Jersey, for instance, 88% of public-school teachers pay nothing toward their insurance premiums.
The unions' other cherished benefit is public-employee pensions. In California, for example, state workers often retire at 55 years of age with pensions that exceed what they were paid during most of their working years. In New York City, firefighters and police officers may retire after 20 years of service at half pay — which means that, at a time when life expectancy is nearly 80 years, New York City is paying benefits to 10,000 retired cops who are less than 50 years old. Those benefits quickly add up: In 2006, the annual pension benefit for a new retiree averaged just under $73,000 (and the full amount is exempt from state and local taxes).
How, one might ask, were policymakers ever convinced to agree to such generous terms? As it turns out, many lawmakers found that increasing pensions was very good politics. They placated unions with future pension commitments, and then turned around, borrowed the money appropriated for the pensions, and spent it paying for public services in the here and now. Politicians liked this scheme because they could satisfy the unions, provide generous public services without raising taxes to pay for them, and even sometimes get around balanced-budget requirements.
Unfortunately, the hit pension funds took recently in the stock market has exposed the massive underfunding that results from states' and municipalities' not paying for the public services they consume. In Illinois, for example, public-sector unions have helped create a situation in which the state's pension funds report a liability of more than $100 billion, at least 50% of it unfunded. Yet many analysts believe the figure is much higher; without a steep economic recovery, the Prairie State is looking at insolvency. Indeed, Northwestern University finance professor Joshua Rauh puts the date of collapse at 2018; he also predicts that six other states — Connecticut, Indiana, New Jersey, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Oklahoma — will see their pension funds dry up before the end of fiscal year 2020. What's more, according to the Pew Center on the States, 18 states face long-term pension liabilities in excess of $10 billion. In the case of California, like that of Illinois, the unfunded pension liability exceeds $50 billion. In fact, Pew estimates that, when retiree health-care costs are added to pension obligations, the unfunded liabilities of the states total an astounding $1 trillion.
The skyrocketing costs of public employees' pensions now present a huge challenge to state and local governments. If allowed to persist, such massive obligations will inevitably force a fundamental re-ordering of government priorities. After all, if government must spend more on pensions, it cannot spend more on schools, roads, and relief for the poor — in other words, the basic functions people expect their governments to perform. But because many states' pension commitments are constitutionally guaranteed, there is no easy way out of this financial sink hole. Recent court decisions indicate that pension obligations will have to be fulfilled even if governments declare bankruptcy — because while federal law allows bankruptcy judges to change pension and health-care packages in the private sector, it forbids such changes in public employees' agreements.
Yet as skilled as the unions may be in drawing on taxpayer dollars, many observers argue that their greater influence is felt in the quality of the government services taxpayers receive in return. In his book The Warping of Government Work, Harvard public-policy scholar John Donahue explains how public-employee unions have reduced government efficiency and responsiveness. With poor prospects in the ultra-competitive private sector, government work is increasingly desirable for those with limited skills; at the opposite end of the spectrum, the wage compression imposed by unions and civil-service rules makes government employment less attractive to those whose abilities are in high demand. Consequently, there is a "brain drain" at the top end of the government work force, as many of the country's most talented people opt for jobs in the private sector where they can be richly rewarded for their skills (and avoid the intricate work rules, and glacial advancement through big bureaucracies, that are part and parcel of government work).
Thus, as New York University professor Paul Light argues, government employment "caters more to the security-craver than the risk-taker." And because government employs more of the former and fewer of the latter, it is less flexible, less responsive, and less innovative. It is also more expensive: Northeastern University economist Barry Bluestone has shown that, between 2000 and 2008, the price of state and local public services has increased by 41% nationally, compared with 27% for private services.
Finally, insofar as government collective-bargaining agreements touch on a wide range of economic decisions, public-sector unions have extraordinary influence over government policies. In the classic model of democratic accountability, citizens vote in competitive elections for candidates offering distinct policy agendas; once in office, the winners implement their programs through public agencies. But when public-employee unions bargain collectively with the government, elected officials partially cede control of public agencies to unelected labor leaders. Many policy choices are then settled in the course of negotiations between office holders and unions, rather than originating with the people's duly elected representatives. Over the long term, these negotiated work rules can drive public policy in directions that neither elected officials nor voters desire. And once enacted, these policies can prove very hard to reverse, even through elections: A new mayor or governor — no matter how hard-charging a reformer — will often find his hands tied by the iron-clad agreements unions managed to extract from his predecessors.
Stanford University political scientist Terry Moe has made exactly this argument with respect to the education sector. "Teachers unions have more influence on the public schools than any other group in American society," Moe argues. "Their massive memberships and awesome resources give them unrivaled power in the politics of education, allowing them to affect which policies are imposed on the schools by government — and to block reforms they don't like." One need only look at the debates over charter-school caps or merit-pay proposals to see Moe's point.
Public-sector unions thus distort the labor market, weaken public finances, and diminish the responsiveness of government and the quality of public services. Many of the concerns that initially led policymakers to oppose collective bargaining by government employees have, over the years, been vindicated.
As a result, it is difficult for defenders of public-sector unions today to make a convincing case that such unions benefit the public at large. Their argument has basically been reduced to three assertions. One is that most public employees live modest lives, and so criticizing efforts to improve their lot distracts attention from wealthy CEOs and Wall Street bankers who are the real culprits behind today's economic woes. Another is that the unions defend the dignity of public service, thereby preserving a middle class that would otherwise be plunged — through conservatives' efforts to privatize such work — into the vicious race to the bottom that now plagues the private sector. Finally, government-workers' unions help advance leftist politics by keeping the labor movement hobbling along.
To be sure, there is some merit to each of these arguments, though none is especially convincing. But even if these claims were completely true and obvious, they would not offer sufficient reason to put up with the other, manifestly negative consequences of public-sector unionism.

GOVERNING IN THE REAL WORLD

"At some point," New Jersey governor Chris Christie said in a February speech to his state's mayors, "there has to be parity between what is happening in the real world and what is happening in the public-sector world."
Achieving such parity will not be easy, as some early attempts to curtail the power of public-sector unions have shown. Some state and local officials (like California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger) have sought to appeal directly to the people through referenda, only to be thwarted by the unions' electoral clout. Others have pursued stop-gap measures like wage freezes and furloughs of public employees, which inevitably draw some public backlash. There have even been calls for some cities to follow the example of Vallejo, California, and declare bankruptcy so that they can renegotiate employment contracts with the unions.
A few places are attempting more serious long-term solutions. As the Wall Street Journal reported in June, public-employee unions in Vermont, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wyoming have recently agreed to modest reductions in pension benefits — though none of the cuts is large enough to bring the finances of that state's pension funds fully into balance. In the Garden State, Governor Christie succeeded in getting the state legislature to approve a 2% annual growth cap on property taxes in order to limit local spending — thereby indirectly curtailing the power of teachers' unions to demand more public dollars. Yet even well-designed tax caps can unleash unpleasant consequences, including more crowded classrooms, layoffs of state workers, and increases in pension debt. Few politicians will want to suffer those consequences, and the unions will fiercely oppose all policies that even hint at reform.
All of these efforts are, of course, attempts to deal only with the symptoms of the looming state fiscal crisis — not with its underlying causes. To address those causes, policymakers may even need to re-open the question of whether government workers should enjoy the privilege of collective bargaining.
After all, even without collective bargaining, government workers would still benefit from far-reaching protections under existing civil-service statutes — more protections than most private-sector workers enjoy. And they would retain their full rights as citizens to petition the government for changes in policy. Public-sector workers' ability to unionize is hardly sacrosanct; it is by no means a fundamental civil or constitutional right. It has been permitted by most states and localities for only about half a century, and, so far, it is not clear that this experiment has served the public interest.
It is true that ending government workers' ability to organize is politically inconceivable today in the states where it exists. But if states' and cities' fiscal ills grow painful enough, the unthinkable could someday become political necessity. For all Americans — including public-sector employees — it would of course be better if the situation did not reach that point of catastrophe. We can all hope that a robust economic revival will take the pressure off of states and cities and give policymakers more room to maneuver. If such a rapid recovery is not forthcoming, though, the most appealing solution will be for everyone to re-enter the real world — if only public officials and public-sector unions can be sensible enough to try.

^{*Correction Appended: The text
originally stated that California's penal system received more funds
than its public education system. It in fact receives more funds than
the state's higher education system. (Return to text)}
Daniel DiSalvo is an assistant professor of political science at the City College of New York.

National Affairs

Public Sector Unions Must be Abolished

October 5, 2013

By Michael Bargo Jr.

http://www.americanthinker.com/

The recent battle over a Federal government shutdown adds more evidence to the argument that public sector unions must be abolished. Cities are reeling under unsustainable pensions paid to government workers who are not working. And those in state government jobs are receiving the largest pensions of all. They are destroying the economy. Their contracts are not approved by voters but by secret quid pro quo arrangements with the politicians they support.
Federal collective bargaining rights were granted by executive order, not by an act of Congress. In 1962 John F. Kennedy granted collective bargaining to federal workers through Executive Order 10988. The voters of America had no say in this cozy relationship. The result is that today fFederal workers earn up to twice as much as their private sector counterparts. But since they are unionized they have a power private sector workers don't have: to force other workers to support them through taxation.
The debt created by these union pensions may be unconstitutional: the Constitution says Congress may levy tariffs and fees in support government services. If employees are no longer working and providing services, then the tariffs and fees are not providing any services. Furthermore, the money going to pensions deprives the neediest Americans of much-needed entitlements. When excessive debt is created, the service on this debt takes more money out of the Federal government, reducing its ability to help the poor even further.
Public sector unions have always been closely associated with the Democratic Party. This continues to this day with the four largest public sector unions. The Center for Responsive Politics states that according to Federal Election Commission records, the SEIU, National Education Association, AFSCME, and American Federation of Teachers, all public sector unions, are in the group of the 12 biggest campaign contributors of the past 22 years.
Illinois is one of the states most thoroughly dominated by the Democratic Party and its finances reflect it. Illinois has no law limiting excessive or improper salaries. The highest pension now is $528,000 a year, paid to a retired anesthesiology professor at the U. of Illinois. And of the top 100 pensions in the state, all 100 are received by public "educators." They raise tuition and fees at the state universities to pay for their 3% annual pension increase. It's no surprise that the two largest campaign contributors in Illinois are the two teachers' unions.
Federal union workers are closely associated with the Democratic Party and they are very much interested in keeping their jobs. This motivation contributed to the corruption of the IRS in recent years: they acted to delay or refuse tax exempt status to groups whose names contained the words "Tea Party," "patriot," or "conservative." This started when IRS employees noticed that in the 2010 election Tea Party candidates defeated Democrats. To preserve their public union status they acted to manipulate the election and obstruct the ability of the Tea Party to raise campaign money. These actions are clearly illegal and violate the Tea Party's First Amendment right to free speech. And of those IRS lawyers who gave campaign donations, 95% stated that they gave money to Barack Obama. Since the Supreme Court has already ruled that campaign donations are a form of free speech, the IRS are using their Federal bureaucratic powers to violate the Constitution to preserve their Federal jobs. They have the power to do it; private workers don't.
Public sector unions are not just taking wealth from college students through tuition hikes but are also taking benefits from the poor. In Illinois the poor are being kicked off of Medicaid rolls to preserve the luxury pensions of public sector union workers. It's a very sad but accurate commentary that the Democrats of Illinois used the "moral extortion" rhetoric to raise taxes, then removed the poor from Medicaid and did not apply one dollar of that tax raise to the so-called reason for the tax increase in the first instance.
Governor Quinn of Illinois was narrowly elected by only 20,000 union members. He rewarded them by keeping their unnecessarily high levels of salaries and benefits. But he and the unions are both out of touch: as a result of Governor Quinn's and the unions' excesses, Illinois has seen its bond rating reduced 13 times under Quinn's reign. It is now just one step above junk bond status. And the Chicago Public School System is also seeing its bond status lowered, to where it is now just three steps above a junk bond rating.
Clearly, public sector unions and the Democrats who support them have no interest in maintaining a stable economy for their voters, just in maintaining the salaries, benefits, and pensions of those who give them money. It is a shameful indictment not just of the growth of government but of Democrats themselves, who say they are not like Republicans, whom they portray as wanting dirtier air and water. For the Democrats to place themselves up on a moral pedestal, then kick the poor off of Medicaid to preserve their own outrageously high salaries, is beyond shameless.
As I have argued here, public sector unions, since they have monopoly control over their local governmental area, have been very active in promoting illegal immigration so they can keep their government jobs. The main beneficiaries are the teachers' unions, who fight to maintain the student enrollments in their schools. In Illinois they are the biggest campaign contributors and they have the willing cooperation of state politicians in providing documents to the "undocumented" they bring into Illinois and other states. Documents such as the "matricula consular" card and drivers licenses are issued by the state and county.
All of these actions have resulted in high taxes, slow economic growth, and high unemployment. The average family must pay higher income and property taxes, and since their incomes have declined, they have less disposable income. This causes a drop in spending at small businesses, which create 60% of all the jobs in the U.S.
The reason public union spending is out of control is that there are no economic constraints. They have monopoly power in their areas. Without competition there is no incentive to lower costs. And when they are allowed to contribute to the politicians who negotiate their contracts they are participating in an outrageously corrupt system that would not be tolerated in the private sector: there is no law prohibiting conflict of interest for unions working within the government.
Public sector unions have become so powerful they are now dominating the political system of the U.S. They are using every trick, strategy, rhetorical gimmick, and Machiavellian scheme they can concoct to stay in power. The unconstitutional efforts of the IRS to get President Obama reelected are just one example.
The current court battle over Detroit's terms of bankruptcy is a very important one: if a judge can rule that public unions must accept less in the states they are driving to bankruptcy, then there is some hope that the downward economic spiral caused by public unions can be slowed and eventually be brought under control.

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