Most of you will have nothing in common with the following scenario.  Understandably, when this columnist refers to frustrating memories of his childhood of being the last person standing for consideration at any neighborhood pick-up sandlot football game, there will be marked consternation amongst my readership about the validity of the imagery I present.  For some reason my hobbit-like physique did not evoke in my fellow playmates images of gridiron prowess and a young boy quickly understood that it was simply a numbers game whether I got to play or not.  If my “friends” needed another body on the field, then I was picked.  Even if I got the chance to play, the ball wasn’t coming my way, I wasn’t remotely part of the play calling and no one was aware I was in the huddle.  There is more to this diatribe than to foist my psychosis upon you the reader.

Nothing is more infuriating to an individual than that helpless feeling of be used by, but excluded from, the process.   As a small non-athletic boy, my larger more talented friends regarded me simply as a prop to stage and show their athletic prowess around.  This is natural human nature and there is really no stopping it except when the little boy realizes its time to stop being used and finds a different set of friends.  That natural human desire to form exclusionary mutual beneficiary relationships has been, these past weeks, on full display.

The role of unions in the private sector, its benefits and detriments, has been the subject of much debate with strong points on both sides.  The one telling evidence of public mood towards these specific unions has been the steady decline in membership.  The public sector unions, however, have been experiencing strong growth to the point they nearly outnumber the private sector unions.   Union leaders and Democrats have found a boon in the public sector.  Taxpayers have to play the game but they can be kept out of the huddle.

There is an old adage that if you worked for the government you might not have great wages or benefits but at least you had job security.  Now that has changed drastically.  The average weekly income for a public worker is $939 a week while the average private worker makes $855 a week.  The average yearly compensation for a public worker is $50,744, which is $1,800 more than the average private sector worker.  Now, not only do you have the job security, but also you have better wages and better benefits.  Ironically, it is the private sector that pays these wages.  So, essentially, the workers are making more than their employer.  That’s just not good business.

Taxpayers elect officials such as governors and commissioners to oversee these public workers, but the workers answer to union bosses rather than to the elected officials, again blocking the taxpayer from the process.  This was full display in New York City when the public service workers refused to plow the streets during a snowstorm to retaliate for budget cuts.  The very people who pay those truck drivers wages were blocked in their homes, some even losing their lives to union arrogance.

Unions have spent billions of dollars electing Democrats to office so that those same Democrats will set at the collective bargaining table when its time to negotiate wages and pensions.  But there is a conspicuous entity that never seems to get invited to these negotiations: the taxpayer, the wage payer.  This is why unions and collective bargaining do not belong in the public sector.

In the private sector, workers have the right to unionize and bargain collectively.  This is because the wage payer has some recourse.  The business can, if it cannot meet the demands of a greedy union, move their place of business elsewhere or they can declare bankruptcy.  There are other methods of recourse for both sides.  Workers then must deal with free market repercussions of their decision to unionize.

Public sector jobs function solely off private sector tax dollars.  Yet, the private sector is barred from the bargaining table.  Union elected Democrats set at the table with union bosses and set the wages you the employer, the taxpayer, must pay.  You, the employer, have no recourse.

Recent non-partisan reports have the national debt at the same level or higher than our gross domestic product.   A non-partisan report shows at least 200 billion dollars a year is wasted in redundant programs.  That is agencies that do the very same thing.  Many of these agencies are a direct result of public sector unions and Democrat bargains.   If we just stopped playing “Keystone Kops” with tax dollars….but… the Republicans are struggling to come up with 61 billion to cut. The President says he will meet them halfway with 6 billion….what the….halfway?  I guess that’s new math….remember…57 States…yeah.   Government needs to remember its private sector money that pays the bills and the private sector needs its money to pay the bills.

Elections have consequences.  It is an age-old adage that has proven its veracity time and time again.  The voters in Wisconsin elected a Governor who campaigned on bringing reform to the State’s overburdened pension and collective bargaining agreement systems.  This was the will of the people of Wisconsin and they elected a Congress to help him achieve that goal.  As usual, the Democrat Party is not interested in the will of the majority but maintains its consistent fixation, at the behest of the President, upon trampling the Constitution, which is the bedrock of this great Democracy.

For forty years, Republicans in Maine had experienced what it meant to operate in the minority under a Democrat majority.  This columnist, when doing research, could find long lists of Republican sponsored bills that had been deemed not worthy of debate by the Democrats and never allowed to the floor or out of committee, much less to vote.  Despite being completely ignored by the Party across the aisle, not once did Republicans take off for a Republican controlled State to stage a pouting party decrying the fact that the people of Maine had made a choice to elect liberal leadership.  Instead, Republicans decided to honor the oaths and the people of the Districts they were elected to represent.  They engaged in the Constitutional Democratic process as the minority.

The behavior of the Democrat Party is indicative of an underlying belief system that only their ideas matter regardless of the consequences.  The very hint that their concepts, ideas, and or policies are in desperate need of reform or repeal, due to their devastation to our economy, is incomprehensible and reprehensible to the liberal.  So as public opinion and facts mount against the Democrats, they have decided the best thing for them to do is…hide.  They throw their oaths and the Constitution into the tempest and the people be damned.  The Presidential precedent has been set and the Democrats are in lockstep to his bidding.  It is teenage politics.  If at first you can’t get your way, throw a temper tantrum….but make sure it is in a crowded public place to ensure maximum embarrassment.  Then leadership will cave.  This is a disturbing precedent to be sure.  One, I hope, the Republicans never emulate if they are ever in the minority again, as it makes mockery of our Democracy.

The biggest loser in all of this is the teachers and public workers who form these Unions.  Through the encouragement of corrupt politicians and even more corrupt Union leaders, these people are throwing away a chance for the very job security they want and Governor Walker hoped to enhance with these reform measures.  As I write this column it almost certain that in the next few days or perhaps even hours many of Wisconsin’s people will lose their jobs.  Not because it was inevitable, but because Democrats were, again, cavalier with the futures of Americans in order to promote an agenda.

As a boy living in Berlin, New Hampshire, I spent a lot of time with the sons of my father’s best friend.  I remember their mother going on strike to ask for better benefits from the Converse shoe company she worked for.  The company warned that they could not afford these benefits and would have to close the plant if workers did not return to their jobs.  Union leaders insisted they needed to send a “message” to business owners.  They did send that message and Converse shut down the plant.  Converse wasn’t bluffing.  They couldn’t afford Union demands.  Later, I would often hear my friends’ mother say she never should have listened to the Unions.  The Union leaders moved on to the next crisis and hundreds of residents in the city of Berlin lost their jobs…but hey, they sent the company a message…

A couple of years ago, Nancy Pelosi held a tyrannical control over the House of Representatives.  The Republicans were not even allowed to bring amendments to the floor and a HealthCare bill was rammed through against the will of the people.  Did Republicans run and hide?  No, they fought on against all odds with the dogged dignity of the Alamo soldiers.  Not once did they compromise their solemn oaths to the American people.  But, of course, the Democrats are the intelligentsia.  They are smarter then us, Soooo…that means….they can break a promise, right

The President is finally in his comfort zone.  This is an area in which he really shines.  After two years of dropping the proverbial ball on foreign affairs, playing “everybody else but me” politics with balancing the budget and ignoring the will of the people on healthcare, our President can breathe a sigh of relief that at least a domestic crises has arisen that is right down his wheel house.  There is nothing a community organizer relishes more than a little domestic unrest.

So delightedly, Barack Obama has jumped into the thick of the civil discontent of union teachers and state workers in Wisconsin and, with federal pompoms in hand, is cheering the teachers on to violate their contracts and the trust of the parents whose children they are supposed to be instructing.  Mr. Obama seems oblivious to the federal statutes prohibiting the Executive office from interfering in State matters, but then, when has the President ever showed deference to the Law or the Constitution for that matter.  What’s a little thing like State sovereignty when some community organizing is to be had?  The President seems downright giddy at the prospect of finding something to do that he is really good at.  Civil disturbance is what he knows best.

It seems ironic at best that after addressing the nation stressing the need for education as a solution to the fiscal crises, the next communication from the Oval Office would be to instruct the teachers not to teach.  Unless some students have finally perfected the lesser-known art of education through osmosis, this Constitution violating directive from the “Community Organizer -and –Chief” will certainly have a dampening effect on the best and brightest of Wisconsin’s future.  Perhaps the President has forgotten, or maybe he never knew, that the Federal government exists at the will of the States.  In other words, the States created his job.  So before the President does too much more chest puffing, community organizing, face slapping of State Governors, somebody needs to remind him that, on matters pertaining to those States, the Governors outrank him.  Yeah, it’s a little thing called checks and balances.  It was put in place by our Founders in the unlikely event we would ever have a leader who completely disdains the Constitution and the will of the majority.

If the President had chosen to remain a community organizer, he would be well within his rights to inflame and arouse the throngs to protest, but he chose to be President.  Presidents have to do quiet mundane things like propose a balanced budget and insure domestic tranquility, which is a lot different, last I checked, than domestic unrest.  What the President and his Party have not told these teachers is that the Governor has a responsibility, he too by oath, to insure the domestic tranquility of Wisconsin.  This means, since these teachers have breached their union contracts, that the Governor will be forced to fire the teachers and hire new educators.   So several thousand teachers and state workers will be out of work while the Democrats, who encouraged them to protest, to put their careers on the line, are, themselves, hiding out in a posh hotel somewhere.  These cowards will still have their jobs.  And some of the teachers demands are….to…keep their Viagra?  That and cowardly Democrats are worth ruining your careers over?   So, does Obama really know best?

Why does it seem we are so often determined to cut off our own nose to spite our face?   It seems to me, from many of demeaning sarcastic comments directed towards the whoopie pie legislation, some Mainers equate protection of an economic stalwart for this State a process that is worthy of mockery.  Once again, we seem fixated on exporting something that is decidedly and historically Maine in an effort to maintain some sort of pretentious imagined decorum and mask our self-absorbed arrogance with a haughty declaration that we only acknowledge “serious” legislation.  What can be more serious than safeguarding a revenue source that has been one of the few positives in the 40 years of business depression this State has just lived through?

Other articles have been written in defense of this piece of legislation and well they should.  LD 71 is rooted more in common sense than the whimsy that others have tried to portray the potential act as they move to dismiss its value.  Senator Doug Thomas has written a recent opinion editorial that is filled with facts showing the massive fiscal impact this little sweet has on the economy of this great State.  This has not gone unnoticed by other States.  Pennsylvania has been working hard to capitalize on the growing interest in this little pastry; in fact, there is a strong movement in that State to make the whoopee pie its own State sweet.   So once again, because of individuals who can’t see beyond their own nose, the State of Maine could find itself in the familiar position of putting the hard work into creating a resource and watching as the reward is realized elsewhere.

For the record, this columnist believes any source of revenue, any business that creates jobs no matter how “silly” or “insignificant” deserves to be protected by this State.  No job, no business should ever be characterized silly or insignificant by the leadership of Maine.  Maybe the passage of this Law could be the first positive step in developing a pattern of protecting business in the State of Maine.

It is worth noting that there is another valuable resource that Mainers continue to expend valuable sweat, financial and emotional equity in creating only to watch the rewards come to fruition and strengthen the economies of other fine States.  It is time to establish a standard of maintaining and utilizing our own developed resources here in our own State.  This legislation is a small step towards realizing that goal.  If we begin to prove ourselves worthy of building a robust economy and protecting it, the people of Maine may find themselves able to retain a resource much more sweeter and valuable to us all than the Whoopie pie, our children.  Imagine a Maine that had more than enough jobs to protect, support and keep our children.  Imagine that.  I can…and we can start with the Whoopie pie.