Alabama County On Verge of Bankruptcy? Public Employees Cause the Problems

THE DOCTOR IS IN _______________


LAS VEGAS- Hello America, and how is the world treating you?

The largest county in Alabama just slid by on the skin of their teeth avoiding bankruptcy. Jefferson County was trying to avoid bankruptcy for a long time. The saving factor was that Wall Street agreed to forgive about $1 billion dollars of debt and refinance about $2 billion dollars..

If the bankruptcy went through it would have over shadowed the record bankruptcy filed by Orange County. California, in 1994. whose debts were $1.7 billion dollars.

What brought Orange County, California to its knees was the over generous salaries, bonuses, COLA's (cost-of-living ) and fat, obscene pension and retirement plans for the public employee unions. But the taxpayer had to foot the bill and bail the county out. And, the same goes for Alabama and their public employee unions. These public employees and their unions demand and insist on receiving monies and retirement packages for their union members that are so big the payments cannot be sustained.

No private sector worker can be guaranteed a job, a salary, a cost of living of 4,5,6,7 percent a year, and free health care for the employee and their family for life. But the public employee feels entitled. In fact, Orange County, California has not learned their lesson from the taxpayer bailout because the county is right back doing the same things they did prior to the bankruptcy over a decade ago. They still write very lucrative, generous union contracts for their public employees. They have learned nothing from their bankruptcy. The sad part is, Alabama and many other states know what they did wrong but they continue to negotiate union contracts for public employees at the expense of the middle income taxpayer in the private sector.

I say, it's about time the cities, counties, states and federal government start laying off and firing the public employees and have them be treated like private sector employees. There should be no GUARANTEES of a job, continued raises in salary and guaranteed retirement and pensions.

A telephone company recently laid off over 30,000 employees, as we speak, Bank of America is laying off about 30,000 and Borders books recently laid off thousands of employees. Actions like this are common place and occurring each and every day across this country in the private sector. So, - - why not let the public employee union members feel the pain also? - And, that's my opinion. Make your own decisions. You decide.

Bradley W. Kuhns, Ph.D., O.M.D.
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Dr. Kuhns can be reached by e-mail at:
bradleykuhns@gmail.com