Plunder!: How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation

by Steven Greenhut

Book Overview

Public employees have become the new American elite. In the past, Government workers earned less money but had slightly better job security and benefits than Americans working in the private sector.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0984275207
• ISBN13: 9780984275205
• Release Date: November 2009
• Publisher: Forum Press
• Length: 297 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Telling it like it is!

Steven Greenhut has identified one of the key problems with our political system - the power of public employee unions to control and manipulate the legislators who are beholden to them. Usually the unions donate most of the money and provide the foot soldiers for election campaigns - and thereby "own" the legislators. The legislators in turn give juicy contracts to the union members. This sort of thing was supposed to have gone out of style with corruption and ethics rules, but is alive and well. Notice that autoworker unions donated over $ 40 million and countless hours of campaigning in three key midwestern states that provided a margin for victory for Barack Obama. Their payback? Billions of dollars of Federal (ie your and my tax dollars) subsidies supposedly to the automakers - but in reality simply a way to preserve the wages and benefits of the those who had helped him get elected. Chicago-style politics at its worst.

Europe PIIGS - Exactly Why California and The Rest of States Will Follow

Mr. Greenhut's book detail the same reason Europe PIIGS public debts deficits facing. Remember the baby boomer? if they are born 1946 they are 64 years old this year 2010. So there will be more public employees eligible for pension and retirement benefits in the coming years, if you are 65 wake up early and go to work today spent 8+ hours in the school/office/field in your golden years... will make you $0.00 more than you stay at home/having a good time with your grand children/Golf course/Caribbean cruise/Travel around the world/... May be some will feel bore at home and choose to work but it doesn't make a lot of sense in general for a lot of people. Most people will stop working and the states need to hire somebody to replace his/her post, paying say 70% of salary of the retiree and now the states budget need to pay 1.7 times salary for 1 person to work, repeat this in couple generations we have the mess in Europe, US and Canada Those who cries "we don't want socialism" indeed we are already in it at the day public employees form union. They sit in the both sides of negotiation table while the tax payer sitting outside of the room. Buffett once said to stop sinking into a hole the first thing is stop digging. We need to first stop the pension and medicare for life for public employees and facing it out immediately in a scale out manner just learn it from IBM,GE... and use 401K. Let the members plan their retirement themselves. 2. Print more money to subsidize the unfunded current pension fund and cause (huge) inflation at the meantime not increase the tax - this in fact is to even it out for everybody to share the burden of past couple generations irresponsible act. Our national debts is not sustainable and we have to solve it one way or the other - someone gotta pay. Japanese and Chinese probably will not be happy if US going this route, but...

Every voter should read this book

I had a fairly decent understanding of the ticking fiscal time bomb created by pension obligations to public employees before reading this very informative book. What I didn't know was the shocking scope of the problem and the flagrant greed of the unions at the public's expense. I knew the public employee unions were powerful and had great influence. I was shocked at just how much influence they have and how they use it with total disregard for the public. This book not only deals with the problem at the local and state level but there are some very scary statistics about the scope of the problem for the Federal entitlement programs of Social Security, Medicare and prescription drugs as well. The statistics on the growth of government and the rise in unfunded liabilities for public employee pensions are beyond alarming. If you wonder why this problem is all the sudden showing up and is so big (e.g. why hasn't this come out before on center stage?#... think Bernard Madoff. He ran his Ponzi scheme for many years without detection, but the financial crisis exposed him when more clients wanted to withdraw money than new investors could be found to contribute in order to cover the withdrawals. This is exactly what is happening with the Public Employee unions as the huge losses the pension funds have recently taken #and not properly recognized# combined with the dramatic raises in pension benefits over the last decade #often awarded retroactively# will have to be picked up by the tax payer. The tax payer is being asked to contribute more money they don't have to cover the lavish pensions. The pension funds such as CALPERS were able to take reckless risks, even borrowing money to invest knowing that if they lost the money #and they did) that the taxpayer would be on the hook. Read the book and find out how much we are on the hook for. It has already grown rapidly since this book was published just a couple of months ago. You won't want to believe it. Like Madoff the financial crisis and resulting losses has caused people to look closer at the problem and we are starting to see an incredible picture of greed and abuse that government officials allowed to happen at all levels. Greenhut's book does a fantastic job of pulling this all together and painting a very clear picture. You will understand the problem completely when you are done. This should be required reading for anyone who votes. Wait until you see where your tax dollars are actually going and why government is in a desperate situation across the board. A wave of bankruptices at the local government level is the likely outcome if the Unions are not successful in their current effort to pass laws that would keep these bankruptices from happening without their approval. It is scary stuff. Greenhut offers solutions but I am not optimistic the Unions will give up anything given their history until the money is gone and there is nothing to "plunder" any longer.

A must read for those interested in saving California from fiscal collapse

This insightful book clearly explains why and how California got into the fiscal mess it is mired in. It describes inordinate power of Public Employee unions: their money, organization and aggressiveness and their control over the State Legislature. It is contemporary and specific. Have your blood pressure medication close at hand as you read, because it will incense you (unless you are a member of a public employee union). It may spur also you to action, as it did me.

Plunder! Dissects Government Unions

How's your government treating you lately? I thought so. Unjust wars. Torture. Inflation. Wild spending. Record deficits. Record debt. Bankruptcy. Police brutality. Officious officials. Depression. It's time to get even. Or at least get an explanation. That's just what you get in Steven Greenhut's shocking Plunder!: How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation. Although it covers government at all levels, it mainly focuses on state and local governments' assaults on citizens' pocketbooks and liberties. Greenhut is familiar to LRC readers as the deputy editorial page editor and columnist for The Orange County Register from 1998 to 2009. He was my colleague there for eight of those years. He is the best journalist of local and state government in America, digging into the roots of corruption, largesse, and repression that have grown so alarmingly in recent years. This fall he left The Register to head the new Investigative Journalism Center and News Bureau at the Pacific Research Institute in Sacramento. You won't find a better writer, so this is an easy read of 240 pages - plus some resources in back to continue the fight. But you'll find yourself stopping every few pages to open a window, stick your head out, and scream, like Howard Beale in Network, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not taking this any more!" Although the central ("federal") government's oppression is increasingly pervasive and poisonous, most of us still deal more often with local or state authorities. Most of us also have a favorable opinion of a great school teacher, a fireman who brought down a child's cat from a tree, or a cop who helped change a flat tire on a car. And most of us have local government workers as our neighbors and friends. Government is so big now, it's hard not to. But in just the past three decades, government has far outstripped any rational limit on its size. As Greenhut reports, as recently as the 1970s (and I can confirm this from memory), government workers usually were paid a salary slightly less than private-sector counterparts. But they got great benefits, a decent pension, and sterling job security. Since then, government pay and benefits have ballooned like Gov. Schwarzenegger when he used to inject himself with steroids. An example: The local firefighters' union in Orange County "gets annoyed when anyone refers to" their average annual pay and compensation of $[...], Greenhut writes. "Officials there confirm its accuracy, but complain that it unfairly angers taxpayers because the number includes the cost to the county for every benefit that firefighters receive." Poor babies. Imagine buying a new car for $[...]. When you pull out your checkbook, the salesman says, "Actually, it's $[...]. We have to ad in pension and other benefits for the auto workers." And though firefighting is an essential job, Greenhut notes that in most communities volunteer fire departments do the job. *Dangerous jo