Deja vu: Aging rockers back rich government workers

Oct. 5, 2012

By John Seiler

I’m still partial to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s early albums. I’m listening to “Deja Vu” free on YouTube.

But along with their waistlines, their left-wing politics haven’t improved with age. They’re backing the ultra-powerful state government-worker unions, whose policies have spiked pay and pensions while bankrupting the state, in opposing Proposition 32. Among other things, Prop. 32 would ban unions from extracting political contributions from government-workers’ paychecks. The workers still could contribute on their own to political campaigns.

The antiquated folk rockers just joined Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine in an anti-32 fundraiser. Morello charged that Prop. 32 “is another of the brushfire wars in this ongoing class warfare assault of the ruling class on working families.”

He’s raging the wrong way. In California, the “ruling class” is the fat-cat government-worker unions, obsessed with protecting $100,000-plus pensions. And California’s government workers, according to a new analysis by the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, average $70,777 a year in pay, the highest of any state.

The rockers sang Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” reportedly including the line, “As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking/ Is this land made for you and me?”

“stood there hungry” on $70,777 a year? These guys obviously have been inhaling too much medical sherm.

If anybody’s “hungry” it’s private-sector workers laid off from their jobs because the high taxes and absurd regulations backed by the government-worker unions have laid waste to the private sector.