Feeding at the public sector trough…
…will bankrupt us. The powerful public sector unions have obtained unsustainable benefits for their retired members, and the bills are coming due.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
…will bankrupt us. The powerful public sector unions have obtained unsustainable benefits for their retired members, and the bills are coming due.
The whole need for public employees unions is absurd on its face and should be illegal. Weren’t labor unions supposed to be established to protect their unskilled and immobile members from unscrupulous exploiting employers? Does government believe that description fits their operations when government is supposedly the upholders of fair and equal treatement for all citizens? If unions are not primarily providing members a guarantee of fair treatment, what are they providing? Is it coersive collective bargaining for more than fair treatment like others get in the free market place? Reagan had it right when he told the air traffic controller’s union to go pound sand.
I wonder if the employees of the Labor Department and the NRLB need union protection? LOL…
Oops I meant NLRB…
Public sector unions do appear to be an oxymoron.
The Gov’t. should just tie pay for public employees to the comparative private sector average for that job. Obviously there would be some exceptions but that might go a long way to solving the problem.
Other than the Military and Intelligence sectors, no special pensions, set them up with a Gov’t. 401k like the private sector.
The key to keeping pension obligations under control is to make that pension reflect and be dependent upon, the employee’s savings. That applies to every level of gov’t. fed, state, municipal and county. No ponzi schemes where future employees pay for the pensions of the retirees.
Disturbed Gurus
Cult leaders are often charming, charismatic figures with above-average intelligence. The “charismatic charmer” is one their false faces – a pseudo-personality.
Many cult leaders suffer from borderline, disassociate or multiple personality disorders. Members feel honored to be with, and be seen, around them. But their personality can change dramatically in a flash. Cult leaders are always very disturbed individuals. They are usually victims turned persecutor, having a history of involvement in other social, political or religious cults and/or suffering the effects of a traumatic childhood. Behind their strong and confident exterior (pseudo-personality) they need their leader position to compensate for a very fragile sense of self-worth, self-esteem and self-identity.
This is also shown by the fact that they cannot “hack it” in the real world and need to live in a cult/sect environment to live out their problems. Their past histories show social marginality and a tendency to drift from one cause to another, one cult to another, one job to another, one marriage to another, etc. They spend their lives dedicated to their cause (also, increasing through the Internet, now). They are obsessive-compulsive, fanatical and manipulative.
Nothing will stand in the way of their visions, schemes and self-glorification – not even the well-being of their partners or children. They manipulate the minds of vulnerable members, extorting money and sexual favors and/or abusing them psychologically, physically and/or sexually.
The cult claims to have A Guaranteed Ticket To Heaven, or A Simple Formula for Happiness and Enlightenment, or a Simple Never-fails Cure-All for whatever ails you. Just chant or meditate or pray all of the time, they say, or just follow their ‘simple’ program, and you will find happiness.
The cult is the only way to Heaven, or world peace, or enlightenment, or clean and sober living, or do-it-yourself psychotherapy, or whatever the goal is supposed to be.
The cult and its members are special
* “We are different from ordinary people.”
* “Only another cult member understands.”
* “We are special because we belong to the right religion.”
* “We are special because we have the new technology.”
* “We have the new dispensation.”
* “Our leader is the new messiah, and only he has the new wisdom, which he is giving to us.”
* “Our organization is a wonderful new movement that is sweeping the world. We will usher in a new age of peace and enlightenment.”
* “Our organization is the latest manifestation of God’s generosity towards mankind.” [Moonies]
* “We are God’s Chosen Children.”
* “We are the wave of the future.”
* “We have been trained, processed, audited, purified, tested or prepared in ways that no one else has.”
* “No non-Scientologist has ever seen a thetan, much less checked it for electricity, so how could anyone possibly disprove this [L. Ron Hubbard’s] theory?”1
* “Our group is so special that only another group member can even understand how wonderful it is.”
The Reds had found that the easiest way to subdue any group of people was to give its members a guilt complex and then to lead them on from self-denunciation to self-betrayal. All that was required to put this across was a sufficiently heartless exploitation of the essential goodness in people, so that they would seek self-sacrifice to compensate for their feelings of guilt. The self-sacrifice obviously made available to them in this inside-out environment is some form of treason.
Brainwashing, From Pavlov to Powers, Edward Hunter, page 169.
Edgar H. Schein, in his book on brainwashing and thought control, listed “give the victims new identities” as a critical part of the process of “changing” peoples’ minds.
Andrew Meacham discussed this in his book Selling Serenity:
In The Social Construction of Reality, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman link political indoctrination and aspects of psychotherapy with religious conversion. In extreme cases, they write, an individual “switches worlds,”12 joins a religious community, and through socialization, discovers the “plausibility structures” that make the new world coherent, fully tangible and fully believable.
As an individual blends into the religious community, or an equally potent community espousing a kind of political or therapeutic transformation, he redefines his past in terms of the new present. The formula for reinterpretation of the past is, “Then I thought… now I know.”13 Moreover, Berger and Luckmann write:
Prealternation biography is typically nihilated in toto by subsuming it under a negative category occupying a strategic position in the new legitimizing apparatus. “When I was still living a life of sin,” “When I was still caught in bourgeois consciousness,” “When I was still motivated by these unconscious neurotic needs.” The biographical rupture is thus identified with a cognitive separation of darkness and light.14
The cult is preoccupied with fund-raising.
This is simple. The cult is just always scheming to make more money, one way or another, either from cult members or from outsiders, and often, from both.
-=-=-=-
Disturbed Members, Mentally Ill Followers.
This one is tough. Some anti-cult pundits like to warn that cult leaders are so slick and so clever that they can instantly hypnotize anyone, and just suck them right into the cult. Supposedly, in no time at all, the cult leaders can have newcomers brainwashed and turned into drooling zombies and fawning sycophant followers who mindlessly parrot cult dogma forever after. Alas, it ain’t necessarily so.
Baba Ram Dass stated that cult members actually con themselves – A slick cult leader is good at reading body language, and seeing what excites a member – sex, wealth, power, grandiose claims of spirituality, big ego trips, possible immortality, or whatever – and then the con artist cult leader will pretend to offer those things to members. Likewise, the leader will see what members are afraid of, be it death, shame, rejection, ostracism, embarrassment, weakness, or whatever, and the phony guru will use those fears to manipulate members’ minds.
But in truth, the cult members still con themselves. It isn’t like they can’t ever see that something is fishy, that things are not what they are advertised to be, that the phony guru isn’t delivering the goods, that the guru and his cult are dishonest. The members have to deliberately overlook a lot of contradictions and discrepancies in order to become and stay true believers. They have to rationalize and explain away a lot of stuff, and deceive themselves about what is really going on. So in the end, the cult members con themselves.
Wanting to believe is perhaps the most powerful dynamic initiating and sustaining cult-like behavior.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 137.
there is literally hundreds and hundreds of pages.
as most dont get is that these people turn the nation into a cult…
the financial thing here is a great example…
sigh
[its incredible how people who would say they would never be a part of a cult dont realize taht they are]
It’s set to get a whole lot worse, if this American Thinker article is accurate:
Fix Is On by Obama and Congress in Union Fight
It’s articles like this that make me think that there is no longer any peaceful way to fix it.
I had the occasion at a wedding i went to in Michigan recently of over hearing some UAW guys talking shop. What struck me about their conversation, was the total abscence of an urge to do something they enjoyed with their life. These guys were job locked and they knew it. And i could detect the resentment of it.
Unions that prop people up with a standard of living they don’t neccessarily deserve does something to people. And it ain’t pretty. I actually felt sorry for those guys.
If the article I link to below is right, GM “repaid” the money it borrowed from the US with TARP money! And the media went right along with it….
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/64629
During college I cleaned government offices in Eugene, Oregon, which, by the way, is being visited by Sarah Palin.
The employees were all of a type. No diversity there. What a waste.
I know a fellow, not a bad sort, who likes to brag that he retired from his job as a NYC garbageman at age 45 with a full pension and benefits. He’s now 58 and quite ablebodied. Always has been. He’s taking it easy on our dime.
And even when he was working, by his own account, “I could get my route done in three hours. Then I’d go back to the break room with the guys and get drunk as hell. Then I’d stagger home after eight hours on the job.”
So, by working less than half-time for less than half a career’s length, or ONE-FOURTH of the hours the rest of us put in, this guy Jimmy gets to loll about for the rest of his life.
He also says that they got paid “good salaries. Salaries you could buy a house, raise a family on.”
I finally got tired of hearing him brag about his good fortune, and pointed out to him that it was in rather bad taste to do it while the rest of us, who foot the bill, have either lost our jobs or are taking pay cuts, and we have, many of us, no prospect of EVER retiring.
He shut up.
Good job, Beverly.