Hard times for AFSCME in Wisconsin, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, as Governor Scott Walker’s collective bargaining reforms cut an astounding 45 percent from the union’s revenue stream. A union official lets slip the reason, in the course of attempting to peg a smiley face to the end of the grim news: “Council 40 executive director Rick Badger says that while the declines in revenue stemming from Act 10 are expected, he has been encouraged by the number of workers who have continued to pay voluntary dues.”
In other words, once the government isn’t acting as a taxpayer-funded super-powered collection agency and stripping mandatory dues out of public employee paychecks – a service every business enterprise in America would pay handsomely to receive, never mind getting it for free – the union’s financial muscles immediately went limp. Were they really expecting more than forty or forty-five percent of their members to stop paying dues, and therefore find last year’s receipts encouraging?
Public employee unions are absurd, and should be disbanded immediately. Governor Walker had to fight an incredibly powerful political machine to implement his reforms. He probably had to sit through a round of “you’re crazy to try this” lectures from friends and advisers. He ended up spending a horrific amount of time and energy just hanging on to his office, but if the stress ever got to him, you couldn’t tell from his cheerfully confident demeanor. His success illustrates just how much money is surging through the veins of the parasitic political organism that went to war against him, and lost.
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