Silent Cal, Where Are You When We Need You?

“There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”

In 1919, the Boston police force went on strike. Calvin Coolidge, then Governor of the Commonwealth, and later President, called out the entire state militia. The strike collapsed, and war veterans were rehired to replace the strikers. Coolidge later made the pronouncement quoted above.

Now the transit workers in New York City are on strike. This strike is not one by a downtrodden and exploited minority, but a strike by a strategically placed group seeking to augment its monopoly rents, mostly at the expense of modestly paid working people who don't own cars and can't telecommute.

The Democrats are increasingly the party of government workers and the "knowledge workers" and "helping professios." Governmetn workers nowadays are overcompensated in many places, because they have the motivation and the clout to dominate the political machinery, about which many are too apathetic even to vote. California, where government unions' dogged defense of their power defeated the Governor's modest reform initiatives last month, is a prime example. Cities such as San Diego face bankruptcy because of unfunded pension liabilities won by public employees through collective bargaining and their motivated intervention in the political process.

Another Coolidge would know what to do. Alas, New York politicians are notable neither for taciturnity nor adherence to principle.

Things being how they are, however, don't look for a total union victory.

NB: For an interesting use of Coolidge's image, read, as I just did, John Derbyshire's novel, Seeing Calvin Coolidge In a Dream.