There was a recent miracle in Wisconsin, and it is the kind of miracle that merits some reflection.
After facing the fury of the public employees for weeks, Scott Walker, Republican governor of Wisconsin, was able to sign into law restrictions on the collective bargaining rights of state employees. This was the bill that the Republicans in the state legislature had managed to pass even while the Democrats in the state senate were hiding out of state, attempting to deny them a quorum).
It was miraculous enough that the Governor and the Republican legislators hung tough in the face of the union-orchestrated onslaught of confrontational — nay, hysterical — demonstrations by spoiled teachers, duped school kids, poseur leftist college students, and union rent-a-goons (all apparently unchecked by sympathetic cops), not to mention a massive ad blitz portraying the Republicans as subhuman brutes bereft of all compassion.
But after the bill was signed, the unions went to the Left’s time-tested Plan B: use the court system to get what you want. And fortuitously for the unions, there was an election for a seat on the state Supreme Court, in which fairly conservative Justice David Prossner was up for reelection. Unions plowed an astounding $3.5 million into defeating Prossner and electing their chosen tool, JoAnne Kloppenberg, who made it clear that if elected she would rule the troublesome law unconstitutional. It was an egregious display of a complete lack of judicial temperament, not to mention intellectual integrity.
The race promised to be close — remember, another of the time-tested tools of leftist unions is to use their organizational power and endless dues money to win off-year elections, relying on the fact that the rationally ignorant taxpayer is usually too preoccupied with other things—such as actually having to work for a living — to vote in minor elections.
Initial reports showed that the union stooge had squeaked out a victory — she even went on TV to crow about it. But then another miracle occurred: during the certification process, County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus discovered that the City of Brookfield’s votes had not been counted into the statewide total. When they were, it turned out that Prossner won going away, with a margin large enough that the usual Democratic election-stealing tactics (finding a few mysterious votes that appeared to be cancelled ballots, for example) won’t work to reverse it.
This is a huge setback for organized labor in particular, and the Left in general. Be crystal clear on this: if organized labor can’t count on winning an off-year election in a blue state after spending millions of dollars and rallying its myrmidons to march, scream, and vote in lockstep, it is in very profound trouble.
Why? What accounts for all these developments?
Several recent stories help us understand why rightist Republicans, usually pathetically lacking in anything remotely resembling electoral savvy and political street-smarts, are beginning to achieve some measure of success in enacting their agenda. The stories have to do with the looming approach of the public choice tipping point — the point at which rational ignorance ceases to be rational.
The first is a nice article by libertarian economist and all-around BFB (brilliant French babe) Veronique de Rugy. She brings to our notice the growth of that glorious illustration of the law of unintended consequences, the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax).
The AMT was passed by a hysterical Congress back in 1969, when it was discovered that about 150 wealthy Americans were — gasp! — using legal deductions to avoid paying taxes. (Ironically, most were elderly people who had put their money in tax-free municipal bonds, bonds that, of course, fund government.) Under the AMT, certain higher-income taxpayers must file two tax forms, the regular form, and the AMT form. If the latter shows that they owe more than they would if they used the regular form, they have to cough up the difference.
The Governor and the Republican legislators hung tough in the face of hysterical demonstrations by spoiled teachers, duped school kids, poseur leftist college students, and union rent-a-goons.
The cruel joke on the taxpayer is that the AMT was never indexed for inflation, so as each year passes it molests more and more taxpayers. In fact, the number of hapless filers hit by the AMT rose from a couple of hundred in 1970 to about a half-million in 1979 to 4.5 million in 2009. In that year, Congress had to pass a short-term patch, so that in 2010 the number of taxpayers eligible to be AMT’d wouldn’t rise to 27 million! No doubt the taxpayers who would be targeted were made aware of this by their accountants, and pressured Congress to stop it.
The second article is a superb piece by the SAG (smart American guy) Stephen Moore. Moore contends (rightly, in my view) that “we’ve become a nation of takers, not makers.” He mentions a number of statistics that illustrate this.
There are now nearly two government workers for every worker in manufacturing (22.5 million versus 11.5 million). He notes that back in 1960, there were 15 million workers in manufacturing versus only 8.7 million in government. To put this in another way, we have more people working for government “than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining, and utilities combined.” Almost half of the combined $2.2 trillion that state and municipal governments cost taxpayers every year is spent on public employee pay and benefits, including pensions. (Moore doesn’t note the fact that this outlay will soon explode, as the Baby Boomers retire.)
California now has twice as many government workers as workers in manufacturing. New Jersey has two and a half times as many. Florida and New York stand at about three to one, government to manufacturing. Even more amazing, Iowa and Nebraska — classic farm states — now have five times as many government workers as farmers.
Pointing to recent surveys of college grads, which show that these people would rather work in government than in private industry, Moore makes the devastating point: “When 23-year-olds aren’t willing to take career risks, we have a real problem on our hands. Sadly, we could end up with a generation of Americans who want to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles.”
A third article illustrates the reason for the attractions of government work. This New York Times piece reports on a growing practice of government workers — retiring on full pension and immediately going back to work; in effect, double dipping. In true Times fashion, it builds the story around a human sample case, one Carlos Bejarano, who is the superintendent of an Arizona school district of about 7,000 students in grades K through 8.
In the middle of a fiscal crisis, in which the district is planning to lay off staff and close two schools because of economic hard times, Bejarano will retire, this year, on a pension of $100,000 per annum — but will continue at his existing job. Oh, by the way, his job pays a modest $130,000 a year, plus health and other benefits, that come to a total of about $150,000 yearly. At one hearing about the school closings, an outraged citizen sputtered out, “How dare you?”
Cases like this are legion, and the populace is beginning to know it. Try explaining to the average worker why he is paid a fraction of Mr. Bejarano’s wage, and has a 401k instead of a defined-benefit pension, or is even unemployed, while his taxes go to pay some public school administrator what Bejarano makes. Good luck.
So there you have it. These stories illustrate what I think is driving the increasing boldness of the Republicans. People are becoming ever more aware of the possible increase in their taxes, and there is increasing awareness of how vast government has become, and how often these multitudes of government workers are ridiculously overcompensated. It is this growing awareness that is changing the rules of the game — changing it from a game that favors “progressive” liberals to one that just might favor classical liberals.
