New Waxhaw Gazette

John Tiley has released another new issue of the Waxhaw Gazette, but there's not a whole lot of Waxhaw related stuff in there.

He's got a piece on what he describes as a decade long degradation of America. There's plenty in there to disagree with in my opinion, so read the whole thing if you're interested.

He's also got a piece on governors going after public service unions. Once again, there's a plethora of stuff to agree or disagree with here depending on your political inclinations I suppose.

One of the main points John makes repeatedly is that since cutting back on the excess amount of money and benefits bestowed upon public unions years ago would not resolve all of a state's budgetary issues, then why bother? This does not compute for me. There is a time to start cutting back from our freewheeling spending days and that time would seem to be now, whether or not it magically resolves all of our serious budget issues.

Is it really necessary for politicians of today to be beholden to sweetheart deals given out by past politicians? And even if those sweetheart deals were oftentimes doled out by politicians of a certain party that just so happens to collect an inordinate amount of money from unions? Seems like a quid pro quo, no?

Per this website, the average teacher salary in North Carolina is $43992. For approximately 9 months of work. That doesn't seem all that bad to me, ; I suspect it beats a whole lot of private sector employees.

And if you care to watch this video from Reason TV (and to also read the corresponding article), there are a number of reasons to make you think twice about whether public unions are worth the money. Be forewarned the video is NSFW as it is interspersed with footage from the Wisconsin protests which is not always family friendly.