THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Yes, the silence is blessed, but their legacy lives on. It is just amazing when you think about how a generation, who really lived most of their lives in unprecedented security and comfort, were able to cobble together such a profound sense of entitlement. I was even amazed by this when I was kid. To me it was just a weird urban phenomenon. Where did all these comfortable and completely secure men get off at thinking they had it so tough?

This lives on today in that portion Boomer generation who belong to public employee unions.

The corruption is simply out of hand, as bad as anything in the 19th century urban political machines. We have a situation today, for example, in many urban police departments where every single police officer and fireman is out on workers compensation pensions by early middle age.

This is on top of a situation where these police and firemen are being paid full time, with Cadillac medical and pension benefits, but are in fact only working part time, holding down jobs with municipal contractors on their police and fireman's time and thus double dipping on the public payroll. $200K annual incomes for police and fireman are not uncommon in many urban jurisdictions, even smaller ones.

Any budding politician that wants to cross this system will quickly have their careers terminated before they get out of the starting gate. The basic rule in municipal politics is do not even mention police and fire fighter's unions exist. Thus, the basic rule is very Orwellian. These union contracts are concluded with whispers in most council and commissioners chambers in the country, not even a wink is allowed. Terms are simply settled politely according to the unions' dictate. Here, you will never find any political posturing whatsoever. It simply isn't permitted, which disproves the rule that politicians are hardwired to posture.

Workers compensation system administrative law judges are typically political appointees, ex-city attorneys, etc., pulling down $200 an hour courtesy of the workers comp system for half-time jobs which they in fact put in perhaps 2 hours per week of real work. Do the math. That's $4,000 per week for 2 hours of real work. Defined benefit pensions, publicly guaranteed, come with these jobs too.

If you are a cop or a fireman, these administrative law judges will disability you out with a Cadillac workers compensation system pension, no questions asked. It is routine and never challenged. That' s on top of your defined benefit pension and guaranteed Cadillac medical benefits you get from your municipality.

Schwarzenegger and Buffet made a clumsy attempt to attack this system in California and were quickly turned into sophisticates on the issue, giving up the attempt almost immediately to avoid further embarrassment.

That's why Buffet is an absolute cynic on municipal finance. Just how many ways can you spell organized crime? Which quickly leads you back to the real meaning of public employee unions.

Those who think that this can be reformed without a revolution need to have their brains perforated with a 50-caliber bullet to improve their thinking. And that is exactly what they are going to get before these public employee unions let up their relentless looting of private sector businesses and the working public, regardless of any contracting economy, no matter how severe.

That's why I have contempt for Libertarians who think that opening up the Mint to the unlimited coinage of gold and silver is going to solve the problem. Their solution sounds very religious to me.

But this is just little vignette on the municipal side of public employee unions. Want to talk about the Federal side?

Where in the hell do you think the Department of Homeland Security came from anyway?

Finally the youth can get to work solving THEIR problems without having to bow down to the elderly.

The baby boomers are going to have it tough. They don't have any excuse for the god awful mess they helped create. They went through no war or depression, so I think their going to have a much harder time trying to garner 'respect' from the younger generation.

Many of my generation already despise them.

thawat, formerly known as AFKAN, replies to Dave:

The self-proclaimed "Greatest Generation" - SPGG, after this - has managed to avoid any sort of Day of Reckoning, for far too long. The Reagan Recession was blunted, and horrific debts have been incurred since to pay for the "earned" fantasies of others.

In my undergrad Public Choice Economics seminar, I argued the Army was simply a massive workfare exercise, and the idea that the 90% that never saw anything resembling combat got twenty year retirement, with medical benefits, was financially unsustainable.

I caught more Hell than I thought existed from the Nam vets in the seminar. The way I backed them down was to have them get their DD 214, and match up how much time they actually saw in "combat."

In short, the entitlement position of their elders, who said you weren't a man until you were shot at in combat, was extended to them.

I pointed out the painful demographic truth - they had no future before entering the Army, and no future after, and, as REMFs, didn't really do all that much that was all that courageous while they were in "the Service."

Their anger at being public identified as unskilled/barely trained blue-collar workers was stopped barely short of physical violence.

This will be true for the SPGG, and, as they die out, financially unsustainable municipal pensions will be abrogated, one way or another. I've been skimming the pension blogs, and the smart money sees the Day of Reckoning coming. Remember, many of our large counties were formed as a result of the financial restructuring of smaller counties during the First Great Depression. A lot of promises were not kept, and that was that. Even the Bonus Marchers were forcibly disbanded, and their squatter camps destroyed, in a fairly final manner...

I look at the amazing series of economic and political measures Putin and his associates put in place, and how quickly they have transformed the Russian economy, and the Russian State, to serve the interests of the Russian People - the Russian Race.

I look at how THEIR SPGG awoke one morning to be told, "The money isn't there. That's that."

I suspect, as we face the Second Great Depression, something like that will apply here, as well.

It will be truly exciting times for one and all, one way or another.

I find but a single downside to the passing of the "Greatest Generation," and that is that mine is next.

Backbay, When I feel like that, I remind myself that Jesus Christ has done that, died that is, and then He didn't STAY dead.

in reply to Dave:

This is a small taste of what is coming:

http://www.nbc11.com/news/15345539/detail.html

Note that this is a MUNICIPALITY filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, and their big burdens are unsustainable pension/health costs.

This is just the beginning.