The Halt and The Lane

Is Charles Lane stupid or just stupid? Here, Lane offers friendly advice to the rank and file.

If that's the way these guys negotiate, I really wouldn't want to be a public-sector union member in Wisconsin. If they had the interests of their membership at heart, they would give in on bargaining rights, which can always be restored under a friendlier government later -- but keep maximum cash in their members' pockets here and now.

Looks to me as if Wisconsin's union leaders have revealed their preference for political power. They want to preserve collective bargaining at all costs, because without it they will lose the flow of dues money. And without dues money, the unions have no political war chests, and without political war chests, they are no longer power brokers in state and local elections.

Assuming you've graduated from third grade, you'll see where I'm going here. How do those collective bargaining rights get restored under a friendlier government in the future when the union has no power or money to influence state and local elections and thus can't get a friendlier government elected? They don't. And the unfriendly governments that get elected in the future will continue to take maximum cash from the workers' pockets in the then and later, because there's no union around to stop them.

Lane could be a tool of the hard-right union haters, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's mentally impaired.