Willie Brown (!) on Out-of-Control Public Sector Unions

This issue is personal to us because we are part of the California public sector pension system. The current state of the pension system means that future benefits are no sure thing.  We are also painfully familiar, with the corruption and destruction which accompanies the conviction, on the part of many State workers, that extremely generous salaries and benefits are their iron-clad right, particularly if they have friends or relatives in the right places in State government.  This situation played a big part in California's current dramatic decline.

The guy who ruled the California legislature for years (term limits were voted in largely to end his reign) has become a champion of public sector pension reform. Willie Brown has now apologized for his role in dramatically increasing salaries and pension for public employees:

Earlier this year he wrote a widely-circulated column in the San Francisco Chronicle lamenting the "out of control" civil service: "The deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private sector workers in exchange for an understanding that they had job security for life. But we politicians -- pushed by our friends in labor -- gradually expanded pay and benefits . . . while keeping the job protections and layering on incredibly generous retirement packages."

Reason's commentary:

Willie Brown has been fairly consistent: an extremely likeable political pragmatist with no particular attachment to principle or ideology. Which makes his new campaign worth listening to: It shows that facts on the ground are no longer possible to ignore.

Parts of the assessment of Brown were challenged in the comments.

Past over-spending is now causing serious anxiety for current State workers.  AGAIN.  William A. Jacobson:

The path of big government and the welfare state is the path to broken promises and inter-generational warfare. . . .

Those who feed the big government addiction are the cruel ones.

Is it time to go with the Irish solution? Tie government salaries (and pension payments?) to the deficit? This might be difficult for us, personally, but it could possibly help save the State of California from itself.

Or does Calfornia need someone like Chis Christie in order to avoid inter-generational warfare?   More on Christie, with a comparison to Winston Churchill.    Read the whole thing.   Could Willie Brown be effective in challenging public sector unions which are helping to destroy California?

The Federal Government faces similar challenges in the future.   Britain is further down the path of decline.

 For now, the pain in the U.S.  is being felt primarily in the private sector. “Oh, so that’s what John Edwards meant about the two Americas!”. Ironic that government workers, many dedicated to ideologies from the Left, have now inadvertently become oppressors of the working class, in a practical sense.