This is just what I need, right here in my back yard. The fight over public sector unions has come here to New Hampshire.
First up, the Professional Firefighters of New Hampshire sent their Communications Director to attend a GOP fundraiser recently. Prior to that job, though, Catherine Broadbent D’Ambruoso had been a reporter for a local radio station — and she chose to cite that affiliation and not her current one when she was challenged at the door.
But that’s just the appetizer. The main course? Our public unions decided to stage a mini-Madison in Concord, occupying the gallery of the State House and shouting down the elected officials trying to conduct state business.
I find it most annoying — but quite telling — that these demonstrations always seem to happen on weekdays, when I and most people have to work. If these union members can just all take off on a business day to go yell at politicians (an activity that, in and of itself, is done far too infrequently), then obviously they are underworked and/or simply not that important.
There’s one very important principle to keep in mind when dealing with public sector unions. In a proper parallel to the private sector, the politicians are the management — charged by the owners to look after the owners’ best interests. The owners in this case are the general public. The union members are also owners, but a very small minority who have found a way to leverage that ownership fraction into greatly disproportionate power and influence — if not outright control — who gets put into management positions, so they end up controlling both sides of the negotiating process.
Well, unions, I’m one of the owners. It’s MY money that you’re demanding more and more and more of, so you can bribe more of the managers who are supposed to answer to me.
That’s starting to really piss me off.
And I’m far from alone.
