Gov. Brown campaigns for rich public-employee unions

by CalWatchdog Staff | October 31, 2012 8:48 am

[1]Commentary

Oct. 31, 2012

By Mark Cabaniss

If you have the stomach, listen to Jesuit seminary dropout (1957)  Gov. Jerry Brown out on the campaign trail recently, selling[2] his newest tax hike, Proposition 30[3]:  “I like to quote from St. Luke: ‘From those who have been given, much will be asked.’”

To Brown and others of his ilk, it is always “the other” who has been given and from whom much should be asked.  People like him don’t own mirrors, or at least, don’t know how to use them.

He was talking to a teachers union. But since California teachers are the highest paid teachers[4] in the nation, shouldn’t anything be asked back of them? Like maybe making it easier to fire teachers who have been accused of acts of perversion against schoolchildren? This past summer, the Democrats killed a bill[5] in the legislature that would have done just that.

Maybe the governor should sit down with his Bible and find some scripture where it says we are supposed to protect the little children from those who would abuse them; I seem to remember something like that[6].  Then you could quote that same scripture at a press conference announcing your effort to get rid of child molesters in the schools.

How about California prison guards, among the highest paid in the nation[7]. Should they be asked to give up anything, such as the “right” to commit crimes like smuggling in and selling drugs and cell phones[8] to prisoners?  His Democratic pals in the Legislature gutted a bill that would have made such smuggling felonious, keeping such crimes mere misdemeanors[9] instead, arguing that it would be “wrong” to be too hard on the li’l fellers just because they had made a mistake like commit a crime or something.  Er, the guards, not the prisoners.

Pension hogs

Or how about some of these pension hogs we read about, people like Randy Adams, former police chief of the city of Bell.  Remember him?  At a hearing for all the other former Bell officials who had been charged, the judge herself asked the befuddled prosecutor why Adams wasn’t one of the defendants.  Randy Adams is on the notorious CalPERS top ten list[10] of highest paid pensioners in the state, currently receiving a pension of $265,437.48 per year.

Most people would say that he has been given a lot. Do you think he should give anything back, like some of the loot?  No?  Can’t reform pensions?  No matter what?  Never?

Here’s the governor in a non-scripture-quoting mood, talking about his own significance, or lack thereof: “At this stage [of his life], as I see many of my friends dying — I went to the funeral of my best friend a couple of weeks ago — I want to get s*** done.”

Like what?  Building a giant 19th century choo-choo to nowhere, the cost projections for which actually assumed that gasoline would be $40.00 a gallon?  If gasoline doesn’t get to $40.00 a gallon, the choo-choo won’t be cost effective, and shouldn’t be built.  Even worse, it may be built anyway, becoming a huge and ongoing cost for the state, literally taking food from the mouths of babes.

Is that the kind of “stuff” the governor wants to get done?  Snatching food from the mouths of the 99 percent to stuff it into the faces of the 1 percent, his overfed, gluttonous supporters?

No reforms

What a joke.  As long as Brown and his pals insist that child-molesting teachers shouldn’t be fired without the sort of endless due process rights that make it literally impossible to fire them; as long as he and his pals insist that cleaning up the worst abuses of the prison guards should emphatically not be part of cleaning up our ridiculous, absurdly expensive prison system; as long as there are more than 15,000 retired state and local government workers receiving “pensions” of more than $100,000.00 per year, for life, no one should be paying higher taxes, no matter what the fig leaf “purpose” dreamed up by the taxers.

For myself, I think it is wise to be mindfully reticent about trying to co-opt the words of the Bible to use as ammo in partisan political battles.  However, I recognize that some people, people who like to put on a Jesuitical affectation, disagree with me, and indeed, find it necessary to quote from the Bible to put on that very same Jesuitical affectation.

To them, a word of caution:  Before you go quoting the Bible, read it.  Deeply ponder the idea that it might apply to you as well as those you are lecturing.

 

Source URL: https://calwatchdog.com/2012/10/31/gov-brown-campaigns-for-rich-public-employee-unions/

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