The Real Reason the Left Wants Public Employees to be UnionizedFebruary 21, 2011
BEGIN TRANSCRIPTRUSH: Chuck in Columbus, Ohio. Hi, sir. I'm glad you waited. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Hey. Thanks. I'm a nonunion state employee here in Ohio, and since you "know liberals like every square inch of your glorious naked body" I was hoping you could help to understand why liberals think it's okay for public employees to even have unions in the first place?
RUSH: Do you really want an answer to that?
CALLER: Yeah, I can't figure it out. I mean, what if the army had a union, and the soldiers went on strike every time there's a war?
RUSH: Well, if you think about it, you've just answered your own question.
CALLER: (chuckling) True, true.
RUSH: The reason they want to -- and I'm gonna get plastered for this. The truth is the greatest enemy to many people. I'll back this up with anecdotal story about who are hired to be teachers in some places, but bottom line is the reason that they want to unionize public employees is... (sigh) How can I say this? That's how you get around having to hire good people, and it's how you get around not having to get rid of failing or underperforming people, 'cause it's not about hiring the best. It's about strength in numbers and loyalty to the Democratic Party.
BREAK TRANSCRIPTRUSH: Unionizing teachers, unionizing state employees is not about better teachers. It's not about better employees. It's about more power for the Democrat Party. It's about institutionalized Democrat Party membership as state and federal workers and employees. How could you get them more loyal to the government than to make 'em union members? That's all that's going on here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPTRUSH: Why would governments want to unionize state workers, why would people that work in a state want to be unionized? I can remember my whole life, since I was in grade school, junior high particularly is when I first started being cognizant of the whole notion of we need to pay our teachers better to attract better teachers. And in fact my father was involved in efforts to pay teachers more in our little town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. I remember I had a junior high history teacher. What was her name, David? That's right, Kathryn Sackman. She was short. Well, when I was in junior high everybody looked 80. I'm sure she wasn't 80. She had this unique way of speaking, but she was a good teacher, and she loved my dad. I got good grades. She loved my dad because my dad was very vocal in teacher's salaries needing to be raised. He was involved in the community in his own ways, and so I was always cognizant.
As I've grown older I've heard all the arguments, how come we pay idiots like athletes all that money and teachers who are "incredibly more important, Mr. Limbaugh, you must agree with this," they say, so little? And that involved detailed explanations of how capitalism works, capital formation and all that. But now this argument, you know, many, many moons hence my junior high school days, we gotta pay our teachers more if we're gonna attract better teachers. Now, as we have learned, look at what teachers are making in Wisconsin, in some places teachers are now paid enough money where a lot of businesspeople would like to teach. There are some businesspeople who have retired and who have applied to be teachers in public schools and they're most always turned down, they can't be hired. There's hardly any way a school will hire them because they don't have education majors; they don't have a certificate; they didn't go to school to be teachers. Even though they spent a lifetime doing something in business, they still can't be hired to teach that. But I think the whole notion of wanting better schools is something that we could challenge the left on.
Look at Obama himself. There was this brilliant voucher program going on in Washington. If you go to poor neighborhoods, inner city neighborhoods, you talk to responsible parents in those neighbors and they will tell you the thing they want most is their kids out of those schools and into better schools. They know that education is the ticket out for their kids. So they set up this great voucher program that allowed poor inner city kids to go to great private schools. And Obama canceled the plan. One of his first acts as president was to cancel it, just let it die.
After its current funding perspired, he just let it die, and this was because he had to be loyal to the NEA. He had to be loyal to inferior schools because that's where the working strike force is, the unionized teachers, they're Democrats, they vote Democrat. Certainly most of them do. Certainly the leadership of these unions spends money on Democrat reelection campaigns. So the whole notion of wanting better schools and wanting better teachers is not the objective. What is wanted is more power for the union. It's not about better teachers. That's why they unionize as many public employees as possible. You in effect are paying them to be Democrats. You are paying them to be loyal campaign workers. It is not an accident that since Obama's regime took office that there have been an additional 200,000 federal workers hired in various federal unions. It's not an accident. So it's not about being the best, it's not about finding better teachers, it's not even about paying them more. I take that back. It is about paying them more to keep them there. But it's about loyalty to the Democrat Party, pure and simple.
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