The New American Mafia

If you look up the definition of mafia, here is what you get:  Mafia is a blanket term used to describe a type of organized crime syndicate that primarily practices protection racketeering.

So then we looked up protection racketeering and this is what we found:  A protection racket is a scheme whereby a criminal group provides protection to businesses through violence outside the sanction of the law. Through the credible threat of violence, the racketeers deter people from swindling, robbing, injuring, sabotaging or otherwise harming their clients. Protection rackets tend to appear in markets where the police and judiciary cannot be counted on to provide legal protection, either because of incompetence (as in weak or failed states) or illegality (black markets).

Protection to business – threat of violence – police and judiciary cannot provide legal protection, etc.

This is almost a dead on definition of public employee unions.

Instead of being a business; well, they really are a business, they masquerade under the banner of organized labor.  They most certainly threaten violence, just try operating in their jurisdiction without their imprimatur of approval (which means paying them off) and the cops and judges will not intervene because they either belong to one of their unions or have been bought off by one of their unions.

The new American mafia is the public employee unions.

They control the government and the law making arms of the government and the law enforcing arms of the government.

Any protection racket that can access the public treasury is golden.  In the olden days the real mafia, the one founded following true Sicilian principles of omerta and deadly enforcement did their darnedest to get at the public treasury.  And they sometimes did – public contracts for various public works projects:  road building, other construction and local services – cleaning, waste management, linens, etc.  Think about it, today’s mafia, the public employee unions, control it all.  They aren’t running small schemes – some linen services and a few gambling games.  They control the schools, a lot of the health care industry, the teachers, the police and darn near all the 22+ million who work for various government agencies across the land.   Elected officials, from the president to governors to mayors and local council representatives are terrified of them – as well they should be.

They make Tony Soprano, the Godfather and the rest of la Cosa Nostra look like choirboys.  We all work for them and they cost us plenty. 

They did not exist until 50 years ago – in most places they were outlawed.  Even the labor leaders of the early 20^th century never tried to organize the public employees – they knew it would destroy the relationship between the community and their government.  No citizen can confront a government employee without great risk.  Government employees will always be protected by their union – they will not be subject to the same judicial process; the same laws; the same indictments or even the same punishments that they impose on the citizenry.

For years the mafia controlled entire communities and only an occasional law enforcement effort was made to rein them in.  Today law enforcement, the entire judiciary, virtually every government employee – they are the new American mafia.  Try to stand up to them; try to find a candidate who will stand up to them; or a judge.

The deterioration in trust in government all over America, at a high point today, can be traced directly to the growth, control and lack of accountability of public employee unions – the new American mafia.

We cannot call in the Untouchables to clean up this new mafia - they all belong to it.

The states and local communities who control their public employee unions will thrive – the rest will struggle and fail under the corruption and cost of these outfits.