If Spain Collapses, Europe Collapses. And If Europe Collapses, America Collapses. And Terrified Spaniards Are Bailing Out Of Spain As I Write This.

Be afraid.  Be very, very afraid.  Because to paraphrase Obama’s demonic reverend for 25 years, the chickens of socialism have come home to roost:

Fears Rising, Spaniards Pull Out Their Cash and Get Out of Spain
Published in the New York Times: Monday, 3 Sep 2012 | 9:22 PM ET By: Landon Thomas Jr.

After working six years as a senior executive for a multinational payroll-processing company in Barcelona, Spain, Mr. Vildosola is cutting his professional and financial ties with his troubled homeland. He has moved his family to a village near Cambridge, England, where he will take the reins at a small software company, and he has transferred his savings from Spanish banks to British banks.

“The macro situation in Spain is getting worse and worse,” Mr. Vildosola, 38, said last week just hours before boarding a plane to London with his wife and two small children. “There is just too much risk. Spain is going to be next after Greece, and I just don’t want to end up holding devalued pesetas.”

Mr. Vildosola is among many who worry that Spain’s economic tailspin could eventually force the country’s withdrawal from the euro and a return to its former currency, the peseta. That dire outcome is still considered a long shot, even if Spain might eventually require a Greek-style bailout. But there is no doubt that many of those in a position to do so are taking their money — and in some cases themselves — out of Spain.

In July, Spaniards withdrew a record 75 billion euros, or $94 billion, from their banks — an amount equal to 7 percent of the country’s overall economic output — as doubts grew about the durability of Spain’s financial system.

The withdrawals accelerated a trend that began in the middle of last year, and came despite a European commitment to pump up to 100 billion euros into the Spanish banking system. Analysts will be watching to see whether the August data, when available, shows an even faster rate of capital flight.

More disturbing for Spain is that the flight is starting to include members of its educated and entrepreneurial elite who are fed up with the lack of job opportunities in a country where the unemployment rate touches 25 percent.

According to official statistics, 30,000 Spaniards registered to work in Britain in the last year, and analysts say that this figure would be many multiples higher if workers without documents were counted. That is a 25 percent increase from a year earlier.

“No doubt there is a little bit of panic,” said José García Montalvo, an economist at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. “The wealthy people have already taken their money out. Now it’s the professionals and midrange people who are moving their money to Germany and London. The mood is very, very bad.”

It is possible that the outlook could improve if the European Central Bank’s governing council, which meets Thursday, signals a plan to help shore up the finances of Spain and other euro zone laggards by intervening in the bond markets.

But right now, if anything, Spain’s picture is growing dimmer.

On Friday, the government’s bank rescue fund said it would need to pump up to 5 billion euros into the failed mortgage-lending giant Bankia, which the state seized in May. And on Monday, Andalusia became the latest of Spain’s semiautonomous regions to ask the central government for rescue money.

The wider prospects for the euro zone are also still bleak. Moody’s [MCO 39.72 0.12 (+0.3%) ] Investors Service said on Monday that it had changed its outlook on the AAA rating of the European Union to negative, and that it might downgrade the rating if it decides to cut the ratings on the union’s four largest budget contributors.

Spain’s gathering gloom comes despite a gradual return of capital to banks in Greece and the relative stability of deposits in those other euro zone trouble spots, Italy, Ireland and Portugal.

The continued exodus of money and people from Spain could be a warning to European policy makers that bailing out the country — a step now widely expected — may not stem the panic as long as the Spanish economy remains in a funk.

It was a lesson learned in Greece, where despite successive European bailouts, about a third of deposits have been withdrawn from its banks since 2009, as the public worried that Athens might have to return to the drachma.

Spain is still a far cry from a nearly bankrupt Greece: it has a much larger and more diverse economy, lower levels of debt and a bond market that is still functioning.

It might be more accurate to say that money is leaving Spanish banks at more of a jog than anything close to a sprint.

Although retail and corporate deposits are down 10 percent compared with those of July 2011, the country remains relatively rich in savings, with 2.3 trillion euros in overall deposits, according to data from Morgan Stanley.

But once under way, the flight of bank deposits can easily overwhelm rational facts and analysis.

Setting off the flight was the failure of Bankia, which came as a shock to Spanish savers who had been assured by government officials that the bank was in good shape.

Instead of calming fears, the state takeover prompted comparisons to Argentina in 2001, when peso bank accounts denominated in dollars were frozen in order to stem the flight of deposits.

The corralito, or corral, as the Argentine action is known, has become part of the public conversation in Spain. The million-plus Argentines who have since immigrated to Spain have provided ample and gory stories of desperate legal battles and wiped-out savings.

Eduardo Pérez, a Spaniard who was working in Argentina during that period, remembers the events all too well. He said he lost four-fifths of the money he had kept in an Argentine savings account, though he declined to say how much money was involved.

“Some of my friends lost everything,” Mr. Pérez said. “So yes, everyone in Spain knows about the corralito.”

Recently, Mr. Pérez, who lives in the northern city of Bilbao, removed about a third of his euros from his Spanish savings account and sent them to Singapore, converting them to Singapore dollars.

Having lost his job at a multinational company a few months ago, Mr. Pérez, 48, is trying to make ends meet by focusing on his travel Web site and blog, which aggregate Spanish-language travel videos.

But as the job outlook worsens, he is contemplating following in the path of his savings and starting a new life in Singapore with his wife.

“Two years ago, we never would have thought of this, but now I have real fears that there will be a breakup with the euro,” he said. “And when you keep hearing people saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not going to happen’ — well, that is when you have to start worrying.”

Analysts said that the record-high outflow from Spain in July was probably spurred in part by July’s being a taxpaying month for many corporations, which prompted them to withdraw cash from deposit accounts.

Also playing a role were investment funds that moved cash reserves to foreign banks in light of the credit downgrades at Spanish banks.

Still, as the examples of Mr. Vildosola and Mr. Pérez show, individual deposit flight is becoming more pronounced.

Some people are willing to fly to London for the day just to open an account there, as most banks in the city require such transactions to be made in person.

Spanish bankers working for British financial institutions say they have been hit with a barrage of questions about how to open savings accounts in London.

“It seems as if everyone I know in Spain is getting on an easyJet to come to London and open a bank account,” said one such banker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing his company’s policy.

That is what Mr. Vildosola did before he took the more drastic step of moving his family to England.

“It’s sad,” he said. “But I just don’t think there is a future for me in Spain right now.”

This story originally appeared in The New York Times

You want scary?  CNBC reported that the withdrawal rate is equal to 52% of the entire GDP of Spain:

The flight of capital from Spain is now worse than what Indonesia, one of the hardest hit countries during the Asian financial crisis, experienced in the late 1990s, according to analysis by Nomura.

On a three-month rolling basis, portfolio and investment outflows from Spain totaled 52.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), (that’s) more than double the outflows from Indonesia, which reached 23 percent of GDP at the time of the Asian crisis, Jens Nordvig, global head of G10 FX strategy at Nomura wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday.

Spaniards and foreign investors have been pulling money out of Spanish banks as the economy has worsened in recent months, and Nordvig said without the single currency and the flows from the ECB, Spain would already be going through a major currency crisis. (Read More: Depression, Suicides Rise as Euro Debt Crisis Intensifies)

We would stress that the broad-based nature of the capital flight, which involves both banking claims and securities and flows from both residents and non-residents, makes for a rather extreme overall outflow, and one that raises serious concerns about the implications for banking sector stability and economic growth,” Nordvig wrote.

For the record, the French are fleeing France and they are making it very clear that they are fleeing France because of the socialism that France just chose for itself:

Indigestion for ‘les Riches’ in a Plan for Higher Taxes
By LIZ ALDERMAN
Published: August 7, 2012 763 Comments

PARIS — The call to Vincent Grandil’s Paris law firm began like many others that have rolled in recently. On the line was the well-paid chief executive of one of France’s most profitable companies, and he was feeling nervous.

President François Hollande is vowing to impose a 75 percent tax on the portion of anyone’s income above a million euros ($1.24 million) a year. “Should I be preparing to leave the country?” the executive asked Mr. Grandil.

The lawyer’s counsel: Wait and see. For now, at least.

“We’re getting a lot of calls from high earners who are asking whether they should get out of France,” said Mr. Grandil, a partner at Altexis, which specializes in tax matters for corporations and the wealthy. “Even young, dynamic people pulling in 200,000 euros are wondering whether to remain in a country where making money is not considered a good thing.”

A chill is wafting over France’s business class as Mr. Hollande, the country’s first Socialist president since François Mitterrand in the 1980s, presses a manifesto of patriotism to “pay extra tax to get the country back on its feet again.” The 75 percent tax proposal, which Parliament plans to take up in September, is ostensibly aimed at bolstering French finances as Europe’s long-running debt crisis intensifies.

Europe is imploding.  Spain is one of the PIIGS (the ‘S’ in PIIGS, in fact) who are leading that collapse.  And Obama is pushing for an economic and environmentalist model that most copies collapsing Spain.

And liberals are DETERMINED to do the same thing here.  Go to Illinois, the king of the deadbeat states.  You watch a 60 Minute Story and you will be PISSED at what slimebag Democrat cockroaches have done.  Go to California, where Democrats have created a $500 BILLION unfunded pension black hole of doom.  Look at America under Obama and take note that America just passed the $16 trillion mark that was $10 trillion when Bush left office.  Barack Obama DEMONIZED George Bush for increasing the debt by $4 trillion over eight years – look what that Marxist weasel has done in HALF the time by piling on $6 trillion in debt in only FOUR years!!!  Oh, and America’s REAL debt isn’t a paltry $16 trillion; it’s actually a supermassive $222 trillion.  And all that debt was created by Democrat boondoggle-takeovers of what should have been privatized.

Democrats have murdered America.  And we are merely waiting for our turn to completely implode before the Antichrist comes and the Book of Revelation prophecy becomes the news story account of the end of human history.  You can hear the hoofbeats of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse riding hard toward us even now.

The last couple of years, as Europe has slowly imploded, the dollar has been given a boost as terrorized Europeans seek some haven from their weakening Euro.  But if Europe goes – and it WILL go – America will fall right afterward because Europe is our largest trading partner and there won’t be anybody to buy our stuff from us.  And because Obama has spent the last four years racing us toward that same direction and that same catastrophic collapse.  And when America goes the dollar will flush down the toilet right down with it.  And you better take a look at the terror on the faces of Spaniards; because YOU will have that same look on YOUR face soon thanks to your vote for Obama and Democrats in 2008.

In 1980, the last year of Jimmy Carter’s failed presidency, 300,000 businesses filed for bankruptcy.  In this last failed year of Obama’s failed presidency, 1.4 million – very nearly FIVE TIMES as many – businesses have filed for bankruptcy.  If we vote for Obama, we vote to die as a nation just as Spain previously voted to die and just as Europe previously voted to die.

Everything about this failed president is Marxist – including his damn Marxist slogans:

New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism
By Victor Morton – The Washington Times
April 30, 2012, 06:56PM

The Obama campaign apparently didn’t look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, “Forward” — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism.

Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name “Forward!” or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has an entire section called “Forward (generic name of socialist publications).”

“The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications,” the online encyclopedia explains.

The slogan “Forward!” reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism.

The Obama campaign released its new campaign slogan Monday in a 7-minute video. The title card has simply the word “Forward” with the “O” having the familiar Obama logo from 2008. It will be played at rallies this weekend that mark the Obama re-election campaign’s official beginning.

Vote for Obama.  March “forward” right into hell, you fools.  Because that’s what you’ve got to look “forward” to under your demonic false messiah Obama.

You just watch what will happen to the DOW the day Spain goes the way of the Dodo bird.  And you realize that we’re going down hard in our own day of reckoning because we chose the same stupid and immoral course that Spain chose.

What’s Obama’s “strategy” to deal with this crisis???  To try to call on Europe to not collapse until after he’s reelected so he won’t have to face the voters’ wrath over what hell has befallen America under his failed leadership.

The collapse is coming.  Democrats gave us that when they voted for Obama and let him kill America with his socialism.  The Antichrist is coming.  He’ll be riding in on his white horse to save the day from the disaster and collapse caused by the previous false messiah Obama.  And Democrats will welcome the beast even more enthusiastically than they welcomed Obama and they will worship him and they will take his mark.

Get ready for hell on earth.  And then get ready for hell itself.  Because the beast is coming.

Want To Know How To Balance The Budget And Have Full Employment? Ask Republicans Who Are DOING It

Nebraska, a state governed by Republican conservative Dave Heineman.

First there’s the unemployment rate of 4.1%.  Second lowest in the entire nation (behind fellow Republican state North Dakota, for what that’s worth):

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say Nebraska’s unemployment rate dropped to 4.1 percent in May, a drop of a tenth of a point from April’s 4.2 percent.

Then there’s the fact that this Republican state has a balanced budget.  And how did it balance the budget and get low unemployment?

[M]aybe there is something Washington can learn from Nebraska. How did Nebraska, with an estimated budget shortfall of almost $1 billion November 2010, get to a unanimous decision May 2011 and approve a balanced biennial budget of $6.9 billion?  A balanced budget that does not raise taxes and leaves nearly $300 million in the state’s cash reserves.

Some might presume that life is difficult for Nebraskans, what with their state government required to balance the budget and not allowed to borrow.  Actually Nebraska  is ranked #10 by Lifestyle Statistics, it was 3rd in top jobs behind North Dakota and Texas, and to top it off, the unemployment rate for Nebraska is 4.1%.

How did it happen? Strong leadership. A state constitution that requires a balanced budget and doesn’t allow for borrowing. Tough decisions made during tough times, not delayed.  Priorities identified. Discussions. Debates. Negotiations…and the use of a red line.

An interesting quote from Gov. Dave Heineman occurs midway through this snippet from an article entitled, “Caterpillar Threatens To Leave Illinois Over Taxes“:

“If Illinois doesn’t want your business, Texas does,” wrote Rick Perry, the governor of that state.

The governor of Nebraska, Dave Heineman, wrote: “In Nebraska, we balance our budget by controlling spending, not by raising taxes.”

An official in the South Dakota governor’s office chimed in: “In South Dakota, you make a profit, and you keep your profit.”

The Illinois tax increase will cost Caterpillar’s 23,000 employees in the state about $40 million this year, said Jim Dugan, the company’s chief spokesman. Higher taxes make it harder for Caterpillar to attract and retain engineers, accountants and other employees, Dugan said. He added that Caterpillar’s corporate taxes in the state also will increase but provided no estimate on the added cost.

“The state unfortunately continues to put off the tough decisions” about potential reductions in government spending and pension costs, Dugan said. He said Caterpillar was offering to advise the governor on cost-cutting based on the company’s own experience chopping pay and laying off workers during the 2008-09 recession

First, liberal Democrat Illinois is a hellhole.  And that’s because Democrats own that state.  Some interesting figures: 4 out of the last 7 governors of Illinois are convicted felons.  It’s government union pension program is the biggest disaster in the nation.  It’s major city Chicago is so filled with gang violence that even Democrats have been pleading for the National Guard to come in.  And, if that isn’t bad enough, Democrats are so dishonest that they just altered their congressional map to undo the clear will of the people.  That’s what Democrats bring.

All over the nation we’ve got cities that have voted Democrat for a hundred years.  And they are all hell holes.  While a jackass is in many ways an accurate symbol of what it means to be a Democrat, it would really be far more fitting if the symbol of the Democrat Party was a black hole surrounded by the white-hot fires of hell.  Because “Democrat” is really a portmanteau for “Demonic Bureaucrat.”  And hell is what demonic bureaucrats invariably bring.  Along with socialism and totalitarian control.

And with that said, did someone say Texas?  Did someone say Rick Perry?  Oh, that’s right, I haven’t talked about Texas and Republican Rick Perry yet.

From a liberal writing in the Los Angeles Times:

For the last few weeks, I’ve been unable to get a startling statistic out of my head: Since the recession officially ended, Texas has created more than 4 of every 10 new jobs in America.

That’s right, Texas: the reddest of red states, home to gun lovers and school textbooks that openly question whether the Founding Fathers intended for the separation of church and state. I am no ideologue. Still, whenever I get political, I tend to tilt reflexively to the left, making the jobs figure a bit disconcerting at first.

But there’s no escaping it. The number is real. Which means that if you care about putting people back to work at a time when nearly 14 million in this country are unemployed, maybe Texas has something to teach us.

[…]

According to the Dallas Fed, Texas generated 43% of the net new jobs in the U.S. from June 2009 through May 2011 — an enormous share when you consider that the Lone Star State accounts for about 8% of the nation’s economy.

So let’s see.  Nebraksa is flyover country as far as liberals are concerned; they prefer their completely failed major metropolitan areas that their completely failed polices have turned into complete failures for a good solid century.  But Nebraska – with it’s 4.1% unemployment rate (second only to ANOTHER state governed by Republicans) and it’s balanced budget – has the last laugh.  It’s kind of like that “Annoy a Liberal – Work hard and be happy” bumper sticker – only with a whole entire STATE.  If you want to try to weasel your way out of contemplating Nebraska’s success by arguing that it’s a small state and it’s low tax, spend-on-a-budget ways wouldn’t translate to a large state, let’s consider Texas and the 43% of ALL U.S. JOBS it has created, instead.

Basically no matter how you slice it, conservatives rule and liberals drool.

We’re coming upon a major decision: do we want four more years of the hellhole of God damn America, or do we want to pursue the economic policies that actually have the advantage of WORKING???

[Update:] Oh, my goodness, I forgot to point out that – after all the unhinged rabid liberal HATE that came out in Wisconsin – Governor Scott Walker was able to sign a balanced budget with no business-hostile tax increases.

Liberals Lie On Public Sector Compensation And The Terrifying Crisis America Faces

There’s a rash of liberals out there (liberals being quite comparable to a rashes and other nasty conditions) saying that public sector jobs don’t earn any more than the private sector.

And, of course, that you should feel sorry for those poor government union employees in Wisconsin who are in danger of losing their collective bargaining rights and therefore the ability to hold the public hostage for even higher pay.

But, of course, “lying” and “liberal” is more than just an example of alliteration; the two words are also synonyms for one another.

So How Much Do Public Union Workers Really Make?
By John Lott
Published March 01, 2011
| FoxNews.com

President Obama lashed out at Republicans Monday for having “denigrated or vilified” public union employees. Without collective bargaining and the ability to go on strike, he said we wouldn’t be able to attract “the best and the brightest to public service.” Are public employees simply the best and the brightest? Or are we simply lavishing them with much better employment deals than their private counterparts? 

To measure how attractive a job is, economists study how employees vote with their feet — that is, comparing the rate at which different categories of employees voluntarily quit their jobs. 

Over the last six months, private workers have been 3.4 times more likely to quit their jobs than either state and local or federal workers. Indeed, no private industry comes close to the low “quit rate” for government employees. Manufacturing, which has the lowest rate, still faces twice the quit rate as the government. 

Firms compete to hire workers not just through offering good salaries and benefits, but also through working conditions and hours. Firms that offer comparably better deals not only find they have more potential workers lining up to get a job, but once an applicant gets the job, they will want to keep it. 

Some union supporters claim that this low turnover rate actually demonstrates an efficiency of government. How? Because a low turnover means the government saves money since it doesn’t have to retrain replacement workers. But here is the problem: if the saved retraining costs really outweighed the higher salaries and benefit costs, private companies would also volunteer to pay higher compensation. 

It appears to me that unions generally try to ensure that their workers don’t have to work too hard — with mandatory breaks guaranteed and rigid protections over exactly what kind of jobs workers can be asked to do. That is on top of getting paid much more. 

Take public school teachers. Over 41 percent of state and local public workers are in education. If state and local government costs are going to be reined in, state governments must deal with. By any measure, the government pays public school teachers much more than non-religious private school ones. During the 2007-08 school year, the Department of Education reports that the average public school teacher’s salary, even without their much more generous benefit package, was $49,630, 37 percent higher than the $36,250 earned by private school teachers. 

As shown in this figure, using data from the Department of Education, public school teachers continue to earn much more money than their private school counterparts. This goes across the board no matter what their level of experience, level of education, age, race, whether they teach in an elementary or secondary school, or where the schools are located. The smallest difference between public and private teacher salaries exists for those with a Ph.D. (about 13%) and the largest difference appears for those who are black or who work in towns (public school teachers make about 57 or 58 percent more). 

It is easy to see how public school teacher salaries increase simply by being on the job longer. From 2 years to 29 years of experience, public school teacher salaries just keep rising relative to private school teachers — going from earning a 29 percent premium during their second to forth years on the job to 49 percent markup when they have been there for 25 to 29 years. 

So how do public sector unions get away with this? Simply put, they have a kind of monopoly. Parents pay for public education through their property and other taxes — whether they send their kids to public or private schools. 

Parents must really believe that the private schools are much better than the public ones to be willing to pay the public school taxes and still pay private school tuition on top of that — effectively paying twice for school. In contrast, private schools that kept paying more and more for teachers would quickly find themselves out of business. 

With all this money at stake, public unions’ reactions to proposals to weaken their power and make them more like federal workers are understandable. But still there are some surprises. On Sunday, AFL-CIO’s head, Richard Trumka, in a television interview refused repeated attempts to answer questions about whether or not it was innappropriate for union activists to compare Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker to Hilter and other dictators. 

A couple of weeks ago, Obama told leaders of private companies at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that they had an obligation to hire more workers regardless of whether it meant they would lose money on hiring them. Alas, this is also his attitude towards public spending. 

We’ve got to either end the public sector union monopolies or they will end America.  That is the bottom line.

We are in a crisis that is so giant that it boggles the imagination.  And the professional left, the Democrat Party, the unions and the mainstream media are all doing everything they can to keep you from knowing that your country is about to implode because of public employee benefits.

Take just ONE state, California.  According to a study done by Stanford on public employee pension liabilities:

The study concluded that the state’s unfunded pension liability has topped half a trillion dollars – six times the present state budget.

Put another way, future California taxpayers are going to be on the hook for more than $500 billion simply to make up the difference between the pensions we’ve promised to today’s state workers and the money we’ve invested to pay for them.

That’s tax money that will have to be shelled out before a nickel is spent on the public services of the future.

Or consider this news:

Big US cities could be squeezed by unfunded public pensions as they and counties face a $574 billion funding gap, a study to be released on Tuesday shows.

The gap at the municipal level would be in addition to $3,000 billion in unfunded liabilities already estimated for state-run pensions, according to research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the University of Rochester.

Basically, while the mainstream media continues to depict public sector union employees as valient stalwarts fighting for the rights of the working class everywhere, what they really are is vindictive eco-terrorists viciously and repeatedly stabbing your children in the eyes and then pissing in your children’s blind and gaping eye sockets.  Because what they are really fighting for isn’t the nonexistent “right of collective bargaining”; what they are fighting for is the “right” to implode America and ensure that your children suffer like no generation of Americans has ever suffered before.

When I say that the Democrat Party which backs this disaster and fights to sustain it until America is a bankrupt banana republic is the party of genuine moral evil and the party of treason, I mean it.

During the next two years, culminating in the 2012 national elections, America has one last chance to survive as a nation.  We either massively elect conservative Republicans who will break the government union stranglehold that even FDR said was “intolerable and unthinkable,” or we go the way of the Dodo bird.

Vote Democrat: Vote To Enrich Government Class, Impoverish Private Sector Workers

Democrats love to play Marxist class warfare: the rich against the poor.

But there’s another division of “class” that Democrats don’t want you to know about: the elitist government class against the lowly private sector working class.  Democrats love the former, and to hell with the latter.

State Employee Pay Grows 25 Percent Above Inflation Since 1999
Total Payroll Up $1.5 Billion Despite Fewer Workers
By James M. Hohman | April 23, 2010

The average state employee compensation package costs approximately $93,039. Inflation-adjusted wages and benefits have increased 25 percent since fiscal 1999. The figures include the value of all benefits from state-paid retirement contributions to dry cleaning allowances.

The largest cost increases came from retirement benefits (which increased from $309 million in fiscal 1999 to $772 million in fiscal 2008) and health insurance (which increased from $273 million in fiscal 1999 to $554 million in fiscal 1999).

The wages and benefits of Michigan’s over 50,000 state employees cost taxpayers $4.7 billion in fiscal 2008. This is up from $3.2 billion in fiscal 1999, despite the state now employing 15 percent fewer workers.

This isn’t just going on in Michigan.  It’s going on all over the country.  But in particular, it’s going on in states that have had Democrat super-majorities for a generation.  Places like Michigan and California:

Public employee pensions under pressure
State and local leaders see the growing cost as a threat to California’s fiscal well-being. Efforts to reduce benefits are setting up a collision course with public employee unions.

Evan Halper and Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles Times
April 23, 2010

Reporting from Sacramento
— Across California, state and local leaders are moving to confront the cost of public employee retirement packages — an escalating financial burden that threatens to choke off funding for other government services.

Legislation now being debated in Sacramento would curtail pension benefits to future state employees. Elsewhere, city and county governments are looking at a variety of measures, including raising property taxes to cover shortfalls and reducing payments to retirement funds.

On Thursday, pension consultant Girard Miller told California’s Little Hoover Commission that state and local governments have $325 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, which he said amounts to $22,000 for every working adult in the Golden State.

“In California we had the Internet bubble, we had the housing bubble, and I see in the very near future the public pension bubble,” Gov. Schwarzenegger said this week. Confronting the pension crisis, he said, should be the state’s No. 1 policy priority.

If the problem is not addressed, the burden for funding government employee pensions would fall to the state’s taxpayers. Many elected officials are advocating a reduction in benefits mostly for new hires to stave off tax hikes — setting up a collision course with the state’s powerful public employee unions.

That’s right, private sector California workers.  Government union employees have amassed benefits that will cost $22,000 EACH to pay for them.  Let me just put a slave collar on each of you and say, “From now on, your name is Toby… Toby1… Toby2… Toby3…”

Now worry.  Let’s just raise Californian’s taxes by $325 billion to pay for those government worker pensions which dwarf everybody else’s.  That’s what prolls are for, right?  We have to toil and labor to support our commissar betters.  That’s what communists and Democrats want, right?

You’re damn right that’s right.

How are the government union employees handling this revolt of the prolls?

Not very well.  The loathsome little demon who has replaced their souls is angry:

“Raise my taxes!… Give up the bucks!”
23 April 2010 at 3:54 pm

Earlier this week, labor leaders bused in supporters to protest for higher taxes in Springfield, Illinois.

Of course, by “bused in supporters,” I literally meant bused in supporters! Grassroots, baby!

Thousands of protesters bused down by labor unions and social service advocates rallied at the Capitol today in an attempt to pressure state lawmakers into raising the income tax to avoid more budget cuts.

A spokesman for Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White estimated the rally crowd at 15,000, with more than 12,000 marching around the building. That would appear to make it the largest Capitol protest since the Equal Rights Amendment crowds a quarter-century ago.

Bus after bus pulled up on streets surrounding the Capitol complex and dumped sign-waving protesters clad in purple, green, red and blue shirts that represented a show of strength from a variety of public employee unions and dozens of groups that formed what they named the “Responsible Budget Coalition.”

“Raise my taxes! Raise my taxes! Raise my taxes!” they chanted, lined up shoulder to shoulder for a few hundred yards stretching a street in front of the Capitol.
….
She said she hopped on a charter bus this morning to Springfield “to raise hell, basically.”

These people don’t want THEIR taxes raised.  They want to “raise the hell” out of YOUR taxes to keep the benefits that are WAAAAAAAAYYYY dramatically superior to the private sector prolls going.

Democrat government union employees deserve better.  You and your children deserve to suck it up and pay for their massive wage-and-benefit packages that dwarf anything private sector employees are getting for similar work.  And if you don’t like it, they will bus in union headbusters from all over the country to get Democrat politicians to do their bidding.

It’s time to vote the Democrats out, put conservatives in charge, and let them go to work on the REAL “class warfare” of liberal Democrat special interests.

When the rich get rich, at least they have the basic decency to pay for themselves.  The liberal Democrat union government sector employee have you pay for absolutely everything – and continues to demand that you keep paying massive benefits to him or her until the day he or she dies.