Michael Barone had an interesting column on the union thing.  I had heard this comment made before, but didn't get how this worked, until now:  Taxpayers are funding these public employee unions.  Say what?  How's that?

Well, ironically it's trickle down economics at work.  Taxpayers (and/or the Chinese) fund the payroll that pays government workers their wages.  These wages are then involuntarily deducted for union dues and initiation, hence, taxpayers are really the ones funding these unions.  The Democrats and their union cronies are crying foul over the idea that taxpayers should not be made to fund what is essentially an organ of the Democratic Party.

A widely held belief among the invincibly ignorant rank-and-file of the left is that those pesky Republicans are all funded by those Corporate fat cat millionaires and billionaires, while the humble left is funded by the po' folk and the tired, woebegotten middle class.  Absolutely false.  Gobs and gobs of money flow to Democratic coffers from Corporations.  The biggest among these contributors are Wall Street firms, who all live in NYC - a bastion, if not a fortress, of liberaldom.  Yes, you got that right - Wall Street has been in bed with Democrats for many years.  Corporate money flows to both parties, but much of the taxpayer derived union money goes to the Democrats.  So taxpayers have been funding the very foundations of the Democratic money machine, and those Dems don't like to see the cash moo cow threatened with slaughter (I like my steak medium rare).

Perverse eh?  Yeah, it is.

Read the Barones' essay, it's thought provoking.

PS - Speaking of perverse.  Obama says it's not nice for people to denegrate and vilify the unions.  It's not nice to denegrate and villify Sarah Palin and the Tea Party either, but libs have no problems at all with that.  There is an old saying Mr. President:  What goes around comes around, and it's coming around.