What Goes Around, Comes Around

Boy, do I love it when Liberal policies come around and bite Liberals. Rahm Emanuel, former Chief of Staff to Obama, and current Mayor of Chicago, has dispensed a lot of poison in his political career. Now he’s getting to drink some of it.

Most Liberals are New Age in nature, so they probably think of what is happening as “Karma.” I think of it as payback, and I’m having a great time watching it.

In a nutshell, as a Democrat legislator and “strategist,” Emanuel worked hard for unions, particularly public employee unions. They are, after all, the power base of the liberal Democrat party. He and his fellow Liberals put cities, counties, and states on the path to bankruptcy in exchange for campaign workers and contributions.

His work made it possible for unions, particularly teachers unions, to hold a gun to the head of local and state governments in negotiations for pay and benefits. He has been extremely supportive of cops, firefighters and teachers having the ability to endanger the public safety and welfare by threatening to walk off the job if they didn’t get all the money and benefits they demanded.

He stands in stark contrast to an American hero, Ronald Reagan. When 13,000 air traffic controllers threatened to walk off the job, Reagan reminded them that it was illegal under federal law for them to do so. He reminded them of their responsibility to keep hundreds of thousands of travelers safe from mid-air collisions. Then he gave them 48 hours to return to work or be fired.

Today Emanuel’s Liberal policies are likely to be his undoing as an effective mayor of Chicago. The teachers union of that city has in the past negotiated the shortest work week of any in the nation, with a school day that lasts only five hours and thirty minutes. Take away lunch and recess, and the kids are lucky to get four hours of instruction each day.

Yet the teachers are demanding a 30% increase in pay! They’re calling Emanuel a hypocrite for opposing them. And rightfully so.

He supported policies that have bankrupted local governments from his lofty perch as a US legislator. Many municipalities have gone under due to fat benefits packages and huge, unpayable pension obligations, and many more will follow. In fact, one of the nation’s smartest economists, Marc Nuttal, has predicted that many states will become insolvent in the near future. (See www.DebtWall.org.)

Now that he has the responsibility of balancing the budget of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel is seeing the error of his ways. He would never admit it, but I’m certain that he regrets all the years he spend building up unions so that they could threaten his administration with bankruptcy.

Emanuel is a foul-mouthed, in-the-gutter, classic Chicago-style politician. He is famous for calling members of his own party “F------- retards” when they didn’t support his position on ObamaCare. (He had to apologize to the chairman of the US Special Olympics for that one.) He has always been a dirty fighter who would do anything for his political masters (which is why it was no surprise that Obama chose him for a position more powerful than Vice-President).

Now he is trying to imitate squeaky-clean Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who forced his state’s unions to (heaven forbid!) pay a small percentage of their own health-care and pension costs. In Wisconsin, as in most states, private workers are paid only 60% of what public union workers are paid for doing exactly the same jobs. The private workers get less than half of the benefits the union workers rake in. And the taxes of the private sector workers pay for all that unfairness with their taxes.

Rahm Emanuel is getting a taste of his own medicine. He’s trying to convince the teacher’s union that it shouldn’t do what he has taught them to do for the last three decades. Good luck, Rahm…