New York's Unions Organize Circular Firing Squad

New York has a $9 billion budget deficit and its spending is so injudicious that it makes California look thrifty:

• $15,987 per pupil on K-12 education, more than any other state.

• $7,927 per Medicaid enrollee, second highest in the nation, 73 percent above the national average.

• $36,835 per prison inmate, fifth among the states.

• And $989,892 per member of the Legislature on the budgets for the state Assembly and Senate.

... Census numbers (for 2007, the most recent complete data set) reveal that New York spends far more per capita on state and local government ($12,920) than any other state but two. And those exceptions are Alaska and Wyoming -- two atypical states with low populations and vast energy industry-derived revenues.

Indeed, if the Empire State simply cut its per-capita spending to the level of the next highest state, California (No. 4 on the list at $10,940 per capita), [it would] save some $38 billion a year.

Democrats, including the Lieutenant Governor, have proposed a clever solution: raising taxes and taking on more debt.

And are the public sector union bosses doing their best to help? Uhm, no. They appear to be scooping as much money out of the system as possible before the entire Ponzi scheme collapses altogether.

230 hardhats working to repair the city's crumbling Alexander Hamilton Bridge will likely lose their jobs soon, thanks to Gov. Paterson's emergency freezing of state construction funds...

The hardhats, though, can be forgiven some bitterness, given their own circumstances -- though the anger should be directed at their labor "brothers" in the state's public-employee unions.

Those fat cats last week came into 4 percent raises -- which Paterson has pleaded with them to forgo, citing the state's budget crisis...

Freezing wages for this year alone would save more than $400 million -- a sizable chunk of Albany's $9.2 billion deficit.

The unions' response: scorn.

While the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) and its sister, the Public Employee Federation (PEF), continue to suckle at the teat of the taxpayer, other union members haven't been so lucky.

You'll find this hard to believe, but despite the Politburo's Democrats' immense "stimulus" program, New York has shed 33,000 construction jobs in the past year with more cuts in the forecast.

And I thought that $840 billion we borrowed from China was supposed to create construction jobs, not kill them?

Meanwhile, the PEF and CSEA have dropped only 3,000 jobs in the last year -- entirely through natural attrition, according to the Post. And the remaining workers continue to collect large raises.

I'm reminded of the following dialogue.

Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.

Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?

Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.

Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.

Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!

Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...

Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!

Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

But, even with an apocalyptic meltdown underway, I feel confident that the public sector unions will continue to collect their outsized paychecks, along with raises, courtesy of Jane and Joe Taxpayer.