MUTH'S TRUTHS Government Should Stop Doing Unions' Dirty Work from <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Posted: 06 Dec 2008 06:36 PM CST This column is going to appear to be a "Marco Polo" – all over the map. But bear with me, Nevada taxpayers. I'll tie it altogether at the end. In Washington, DC, this week, auto executives groveled at the feet of Congress, begging for a $34 billion government bail-out to save their companies. What few will say out loud, but everyone knows in their heart, is that the Big Three are on the brink of extinction for one main reason which can be summed up in four short words: United Auto Workers union. Remember, unions don't create jobs; they destroy jobs. But jobs aren't the only things unions destroy. Once the envy of the world, America's public education system has been wrecked by the teachers unions which relentlessly lobby for more money for its members (who are then able to pay higher union dues) while blocking every education reform or parental choice proposal that comes down the pike. Meanwhile, the government employee unions are also primarily responsible for the bankruptcy earlier this year of the city of Vallejo, California. And Vallejo is probably the first of many local governments which will soon go belly-up thanks to ridiculous labor costs and unsustainable benefit packages forced on taxpayers by public employee unions. Oh, and when Congress re-convenes immediately after Barack Obama is sworn in, the first order of business for Big Labor is to eliminate secret ballot elections. Lovely. How un-American. The bottom line is that unions aren't the knights in shining armor they would have you think they are. Much like Big Government, Big Labor isn't the solution to today's problems; it's the cause of them. OK, with that established, let's move on to a seemingly unrelated topic. One of the most insidious inventions of the 20th century, other than the creation of the income tax itself, was the establishment of the practice of payroll "withholding." Instead of you getting all of your paycheck every week and then paying your taxes at the end of the year, the government requires that your employer estimate how much you're going to owe, take a proportional amount out of every paycheck, and submit it to the government in advance. That way the government gets its money upfront - and you have to apply every April 15th to get any overpayments back. If not for this system of payroll withholding, the government would have one hell of a time collecting taxes from an outraged and unwilling citizenry. It's always more difficult to get people to write a check to pay what they owe than it is to just confiscate that money right from their paycheck. The same is true when it comes to collecting sales taxes in Nevada. Consider this. Let's say you no longer pay the tax you owe on purchases at the store level. Instead, you need to add up everything you spend money on – separating that which is taxable from that which is not – and then calculate the amount of sales tax you owe on your purchases and write a check to the government every month. An accounting nightmare, right? And can you imagine how many people would fudge the amount they owe, or refuse to pay their sales taxes outright? So instead, the government forces private businesses to collect the sales taxes you owe on your purchases, keep track of it all, add it up every month, and remit the money to the government. At the retail level this isn't as much of an accounting nightmare as it would be for you individually, but the paperwork alone is a royal pain in the arse, not to mention the government audits by the Department of Taxation businesses are regularly forced to endure. As such, the government allows retail businesses to keep a very small percentage of the amount of combined sales taxes it collects every month in exchange for providing this collection and accounting service for the government. Which brings us to the current budget "crisis" in Nevada. On Monday, the Legislature will be called into a special session to come up with some $300 million needed to cover the current revenue shortfall. And one of the gimmicks being considered is to cut the amount of money businesses are paid to do the government's sales tax collection work. Businesses, fearing an even worse "solution" – such as a business tax hike – probably won't raise much of a stink over being paid less to do the government's dirty work. After all, it's kinda hard to protest when there's a loaded gun pointed at your head. But if the governor and legislative leaders pursue this change next week, pro-business and pro-taxpayer legislators should similarly insist on another change to help the state out of its fiscal mess: The government should stop doing Big Labor's dues collection dirty work. In this country unions have the right to negotiate their way into bankrupting major industries and even American cities. They also have the right to destroy the education and futures of generations of American kids. But taxpayers shouldn't be footing the bill to collect the dues money used to accomplish all of this for public sector unions via taxpayer-funded payroll deductions. You see, the public employee unions have negotiated an agreement with the government whereby the government withholds the amount of dues owed to the union from the workers' paychecks, accounts for it, and then submits it each month to the unions. It's the same insidious practice used by the government to withhold taxes from your paycheck. But while every other private organization has to collect its own dues from its own members – including us here at Citizen Outreach - taxpayers are paying to provide this service for Big Labor. It's way past time for that practice to end. Public employee unions should have to do their own dues collection dirty work. The government's public payroll system shouldn't be making payroll deductions for anything other than mandatory deductions required by federal law, tax withholdings, judicial liens and garnishments, deductions for health or other insurance, deductions for retirement plans, and legitimate charitable deductions. Not union dues. It's time for the public employee unions to incur the same expenses and collection challenges that other private organizations – such as taxpayer protection groups, gun rights groups, environmental groups, senior citizen advocacy groups, boys and girls clubs, etc. – face on a daily basis. Why should taxpayers fund and operate this collection service for unions committed to sucking every last penny out of taxpayers' pockets? If the Legislature is going to reduce or eliminate the fee it pays private businesses to do the government's sales tax collection work, then it should also eliminate the cost to taxpayers of providing that same service for public employee unions bent on destroying public education and bankrupting Nevada cities, counties and/or the state itself. Enough is enough. So let it be written; so let it be done. Subscribe to the feed version of MUTH'S TRUTHS in a feed reader. If you prefer to subscribe via postal mail, write to: MUTH'S TRUTHS, c/o FeedBurner, 20 W Kinzie, 9th Floor, Chicago IL USA 60610 I'M MAD, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- With ACORN, La Raza, and Ohio Dem officials sitting on 20,000 suspect voter registrations and other Dept heads releasing Joe the Plumber's confidential information, this has been an incredibly, uncreditable election. Hope you didn't waste your time and gas to stand in line at one of their polling places hoping the electoral system isn't a fraud. Rich Martin --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
