There is absolutely no reason for public sector unions to exist. They should be illegal. As Jonah Goldberg points out in his latest article:

“Traditional, private-sector unions were born out of an often-bloody adversarial relationship between labor and management. It’s been said that during World War I, U.S. soldiers had better odds of surviving on the front lines than miners did in West Virginia coal mines. Mine disasters were frequent; hazardous conditions were the norm. In 1907, the Monongah mine explosion claimed the lives of 362 West Virginia miners…

Government unions have no such narrative on their side. Do you recall the Great DMV cave-in of 1959? How about the travails of second-grade teachers recounted in Upton Sinclair’s famous schoolhouse sequel to “The Jungle”? No? Don’t feel bad, because no such horror stories exist.”

People in government already make good salaries with great benefits that are very difficult to find in a private sector counterpart. They have no legitimate reason for unionization. Hence, the history behind public sector unions is purely political:

The argument for public unionization wasn’t moral, economic or intellectual. It was rankly political.

Traditional organized labor, the backbone of the Democratic Party, was beginning to lose ground. As Daniel DiSalvo wrote in “The Trouble with Public Sector Unions,” in the fall issue of National Affairs, JFK saw how in states such as New York and Wisconsin, where public unions were already in place, local liberal pols benefited politically and financially. He took the idea national.

The plan worked perfectly — too perfectly. Public union membership skyrocketed, and government union support for the party of government skyrocketed with it. From 1989 to 2004, AFSCME — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — gave nearly $40 million to candidates in federal elections, with 98.5 percent going to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Big Labor insists the issue isn’t about money, but about “rights.” Since when is it a “right” to collect far more salary and benefits at the expense of everyone else? According to the Maciver Institute: “For the first time in history, the average annual compensation for a teacher in the Milwaukee Public School system will exceed $100,000. The average salary for an MPS teacher is $56,500. When fringe benefits are factored in, the annual compensation will be $100,005 in 2011.”

Government unions negotiate with friendly politicians over taxpayer money, putting the public interest at odds with union interests, and, as we’ve seen in states such as California and Wisconsin, exploding the cost of government. California’s pension costs soared 2,000 percent in a decade thanks to the unions….This is why FDR believed that “the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” and why even George Meany, the first head of the AFL-CIO, held that it was “impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”

Probably one of the only things FDR got right economically speaking.

As it turns out, it’s not impossible; it’s just terribly unwise. It creates a dysfunctional system where for some, growing government becomes its own reward. You can find evidence of this dysfunction everywhere. The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner notes that federal education spending has risen by 188 percent in real terms since 1970, but we’ve seen no significant improvement in test scores.

It’s time to end the public sector union parasitism on the private sector.

So what do Democratic lawmakers resort to when they lose the debate and are shown to be corrupt incompetents? They simply adopt “the petulant child from of democracy,” as Roger Kimball writes. “One paper called their action an “exodus.” I call it a gross abdication of responsibility and a slap in the face of the people who entrusted them with the conduct of their public affairs. What lessons can we draw from the behavior of these truant lawmakers? One important lesson is this: that they view democracy as a game worth playing only when they get to call the shots.  They are happy to sit down and do business just so long as they get their way. If they do not get their way, their recourse is not the time-honored democratic strategies of debate, persuasion, and compromise. No, their response is to take their votes and go home - or to Illinois, whichever is safer.”

Or they urge their supporters to become violent. Rep. Mike Capuano, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said that emails aren’t enough to show support and that it is time to “get a little bloody.” So this is what they meant by political “civility.”

The largest organized crime ring in the country - government, unions, and Democrats - will do anything to maintain power and economically damaging cronyism.