For years now the talk of special interest groups drew ire and bile from the public at large. It started with Big Tobacco and has moved onto Big Oil, Big Pharma and will likely lead toward Big Food (McDonalds) and Big Retail (Wal-Mart). In a nutshell we have sequestered these groups into scary categories so we can have a public enemy. Someone or something to blame for whatever ails us.
Big Oil is the one talked about because of last year's spiking gas prices and record profits. Pols lined up on both sides of the aisle and talked of "windfall" profit taxes and demanded congressional inquiries on price gauging. Not shockingly no one was showed outrage 10 years ago when oil was $10 a barrel and the industry was in a tailspin.
So we're in the business of naming scary categories and in order to roll with the cool club let's please show we are objective and add Big Labor the lexicon. When they are not busy blaming everyone but themselves for out of control cost structures in the auto industry they are black balling the President to close successful charter school's in Washington DC.
For whatever reason we romanticize the teacher's and labor union. We see them portrayed as the "little guy" fighting to educate and keep America producing. While that may have been true at one point, today it is simply not. Today's labor is nothing more than a legion of hacks more interested in protecting the weak performers in their rank and dragging down standards to non-competitive levels. The next step in this continual downward slide will be when "card check" comes online in the next two years. This is Big Labor's big move. Card check will eliminate secret ballots and require only someone to check a box in order to join a union. While labor claims it will make it easier to organize (duh) what they neglect to state is that it will proliferate corruption and intimidation. There continuing exploits only make America less of a great place.
