Public workers growing prosperous while private sector shrivels

America’s recession is exposing societal fault lines, as various groups fight over increasingly smaller pieces of the pie. Tensions are particularly flaring between government workers and employees of private businesses.

David Walker, the U.S. comptroller appointed by President Bill Clinton who continued in the role under George Bush, on Friday gave a bracing indictment of the pension and salary benefits being rewarded to government workers at the federal, state and local level. Walker said that public sector workers are growing prosperous on the back of private sector workers.

“There is a huge gap. State and local plans on average … are much more lucrative than typical plans for employees. State and local government employees, on average, have greater job security than people in the private sector. And state and local government employees, in the middle of government, in many cases make more money than their private sector counterparts,” Walker said during a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. According to Pew numbers provided by the Chamber, the budget gap to cover state employees’ benefits totals $1 trillion.

“Therefore, if governments expect taxpayers to pay more taxes to fund lucrative benefit programs that are much better than the average employee gets, in jobs that more job security and in some cases make more money than their private sector counterparts, that ain’t gonna happen,” he said. “But the only way it’s not going to happen is if there’s transparency and if the cover is blown, so that pressure is brought to bear to make changes.”

Through TARP, tax hikes, new taxes, public sector unions and Obamacare, Obama is seizing control

President Obama is setting a record for proclamations to alter the shape of American society. Every few weeks there is another edict, beginning after his victory with moving the Census from Commerce to the White House in order to jigger the figures to his political liking. Then came the TARP stimulus plan. As debt is repaid, the money is remaining in the hands of the White House rather than going to reduce the frightening public debt.

Then came the health care "overhaul"; climate change initiatives; the out-of-character call for offshore drilling; the announcement that we would increase troop strength in Afghanistan (but wiring the move for doom with a public withdrawal date); reductions in U.S. nuclear weapons capability; announcing the closing of Gitmo; the prosecution of CIA operatives whose only crime was to do their job; insulting our allies Great Britain and Israel; the move to try terrorist suspects in open court; and the presidential order to avoid identifying the enemy in the war on terrorism, a politically correct maneuver that smiles on the machinations of the radical scholars.

To fund his reordering of power in the midst of a steep economic downturn, Obama has signed into law 25 tax increases totaling $670 billion over the next ten years, according to a report issued by the House Ways and Means Committee. And Paul Volcker and Nancy Pelosi -- reacting to the reality that increased income taxes cannot save the country from going broke -- are pushing a Value Added Tax, the most pernicious of levies that will empower the IRS to enter places of business unannounced to demand records and enforce compliance.

Accompanying the crescendo of taxes, edicts, and thinly disguised manifestos is an undertow of societal tectonics that will rearrange the free-market system beyond our ability to salvage it. The steady advance of unionization in the public sector under Obama -- and the use of federal power to increase organized labor in the private sector -- is leading the U.S. to the edge of syndicalism, the takeover of capitalism by unions for the purpose of political control.