Played For Saps

Every now and then WaPo's Richard Cohen comes through with a corker. Here's one.

In New York City, the No. 2 guy in the fire department retired on a pension worth $242,000 a year. In New York State, a single official holding two jobs and one pension took in $641,000. A lieutenant with the Port Authority police retired with an annual pension of $196,767, and 738 of the city's teachers, principals and such have pensions worth more than $100,000 a year. Their former employer, it goes almost without saying, is steamed. Their former employer is me.

Read it all.

Meanwhile, Cohen's colleague Ezra Klein writes something that is stunningly stupid:

And let's let go of the idea that the public is on the hook for unions made up of government workers but not for unions made up of janitors in Las Vegas hotels. If private-sector unions negotiate higher wages that lead to higher corporate costs, those costs are passed on to the consumer.

Klein does not seem to understand that if Las Vegas hotels pass the higher corporate costs on to the consumer, at least the consumer has the choice of staying at the hotel in question, going to another hotel or staying home. Whereas, if public employees negotiate higher wages and benefits with politicians, they are paid for by taxpayers who have no choice but to pay the bill, unless they are willing to move to another state or another country.

Like, I said, stunningly stupid.