effectively, the post blames the unions of public service employees for all the fault in stockton's finances (and vallejo's before that). it's very self-righteous that the unions need to accept cuts for their pensioners because they city can't afford to pay them. the comments are quite interesting, with one person stating the union heads of public sector employees should suffer unrelenting chest pain. wow...
look, i get it. unions = devil. slight hyperbole there but read the comments. the unions ain't the boogie man here. it's not all the unions fault. they didn't negotiate those deals with themselves. according to the comments (amazingly omitted by the writer of the article), republican administrations of this city were in charge. meaning the negotiated these deals! meaning they bear as much culpability in this fiasco! meaning they're the boogie man too!
the talking heads want to argue that the public service employees must accept cuts for the good of the city. why? the unions negotiated these deals for the benefit of their members. that's what unions do so spare me your sanctimonious bullshit. they did their job and they continue to do their job with refusing to accept cuts. why should they? what is being offered to them in return? by my reading and understanding, nothing. but if they don't accept the cuts, the unions get vilified by poorly sourced articles written by hacks for national publications.
