Pravda On The Hudson Comes Home To Reality

After two days of swooning over Obama's "We Are Proud Liberals Who Are Right About Everything" inaugural speech, the NT Times comes home to a grim reality. First, the gun ban won't be happening any time soon:

Democrats in Senate Confront Doubts at Home on Gun Laws

And Union Power is fading to black:

Share of the Work Force in a Union Falls to a 97-Year Low, 11.3%

And that includes public sector unions; in the private sector the picture is ludicrous:

The percentage of workers in unions fell to 11.3 percent, down from 11.8 percent in 2011, the bureau found in its annual report on union membership. That brought unionization to its lowest level since 1916, when it was 11.2 percent, according to a study by two Rutgers economists, Leo Troy and Neil Sheflin.

Labor specialists cited several reasons for the steep one-year decline in union membership. Among the factors were new laws that rolled back the power of unions in Wisconsin, Indiana and other states, the continued expansion by manufacturers like Boeing and Volkswagen in nonunion states and the growth of sectors like retail and restaurants, where unions have little presence.

...

Labor unions have boasted of their political successes in helping re-elect President Obama and in helping Democrats pick up seats in Congress.

But the figures announced by the bureau point to grave problems for the future of organized labor. The portion of private sector workers in unions fell to just 6.6 percent last year, from 6.9 percent in 2011, causing some labor specialists to question whether private sector unions were sinking toward irrelevance. Private sector union membership peaked at around 35 percent in the 1950s.

The BLS release is here; Pravda OTH did not highlight this fact (but I did):

In 2012, 7.3 million employees in the public sector belonged to a union, compared with 7.0 million union workers in the private sector. The union membership rate for public-sector workers (35.9 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private-sector workers (6.6 percent). Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 41.7 percent. This group includes workers in heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and firefighters.

Pretty soon unions will exist only to shake down taxpayers so they can contribute to Democrats.

Comments

[Rob Crawford]

Pretty soon unions will exist only to shake down taxpayers so they can contribute to Democrats.

Some say this has already happened.

[henry]

Fun facts, union membership dropped 15% in WI last year. It should continue to fall as government workers tire of paying fees. Michigan should be interesting next year.

[Porchlight]

Pretty soon unions will exist only to shake down taxpayers so they can contribute to Democrats.

We are pretty much there, now that TBTF is enshrined and any union member who loses his job can count on Uncle Sugar setting him up for health care and other entitlements. Eventually the taxpayer will be on the hook one way or another.

[maryrose]

henry:
Your state and Indiana have blazed the trail for all other states to follow. I know Michigan can do it too. Now that Michigan is Granholm -free and doesn't have felons as their mayors there is indeed hope.I would love to see Philly follow suit but I am not holding my breath on that one.

[Peter]

I heard on the radio today that New York has the highest percentage of its government workers unionized. Something like 73 %. Hell to pay.

[NK]

TomM and the rest of you are al correct. Public Unions, the Legacy media, University industry-- they are all part of TeamLeft, who look to ripoff the productive classes as much as possible and accumulate as much political power as possible to capture the productive classes and make them cronies. there's a word for this... fascism.

[Ignatz Ratzkywatzky]

What is the word for a nation that sits American Idoly by while the fascists pull a coup?

[squaredance]

Poltroon? Idiots? Useful Idiots?

(how about "Independent Voter"?)

And they are not fascists, they are Marxist-Leninists and Maoists (with a dash of Peron and Chavez thrown in).

Watch them steal the House in '14. There is little to stop them. Then they will strike the final fatal blow. You ain't seen nothing yet. We are in completely new territory, and only about 25% to 30% of the country is even aware of it.

We need to know nothing more than how Hillary and Obama have completely buried this Libya Business, or how they got away with Fast and Furious.

All of this would have brought any prior president down--even a Democrat.

You think that the country is unreconizable now just you wait four years.

It always amazes that these hideous mediocrities may well destroy the USA, and do it right out in the open.

A people that allows this deserves what it gets. America has lost its soul.

At least the UK had to go through WWI. What great cataclysm have we gone through to break us so? None. We just weakly give up the country because of spiritual sloth, because we believe what the media tells us, becuase we did not pay attention to what they were teaching our children, because we were cowed by political correctness.

In the end these people will be more powerful than the European aristocrats of yore, and they will do much greater damage to Civilization over the long haul. For what? Hillary's lust for power? Feminist narcissism? Obtuse Boomer nostalgia? An ideology that we fought tooth and nail for 50 years and triumphed over?

Ir is perhaps the saddest and most tradgic turn of evens in history.

[Mark Folkestad]

Links for the T-Mobile gal on the old thread, if anyone needs eye candy.

[Mike Giles]

"Watch them steal the House in '14. There is little to stop them."

You can always tell the people in Nevada, it was really those idiots in New York; who elected Obama. Or you can tell the people Upstate, it was those idiots Downstate who elected our idiot of a Senator. But it's harder to tell the people in the district, that it was the people on the other side of the district who elected our idiot in the House; because unlike those other situations people in the same Congressional districts often physically close enough to talk to each other. And when everyone in the local Walmart start exchanging information, and no one seems to have voted for someone, questions will arise, and answers will be demanded. That may be the only reason the GOP still controls the House. Too difficult to steal elections at that level.

[Landru]

I have tried in vain to explain to people that the Obamacare "stay on your parents plan until 26" was essentially a giveaway to the govt employee unions. Most of these people pay little to nothing for their insurance plans, which are usually 'Cadillac' plans with low/no deductibles. Each and every 'child" of these people will be getting this plan at taxpayer expense until age 26. Even people in the private sector, who pay on average about 25-30% of the premiums, will have all their "children" on this. It will be 100%, not just a few. Every single person aged 18-26 with a parent getting insurance thru an employer, either a govt job or other, will be getting a free insurance policy paid for by everyone else. Not just some, but each and every one. Nobody seems to grasp this.