In today’s New York Post, we learn a public sector union leader, one Chris Mesley of the Albany (NY) police officers’ union, committed a major gaffe. That is, Mr. Mesley told the truth. He said, referring to the union’s contract:

I’m not running a popularity contest here. If I’m the bad guy to the average citizen . . . and their taxes have go up to cover my raise, I’m very sorry about that, but I have to look out for myself and my membership. As the president of the local, I will not accept ‘zeroes.’ If that means . . . ticking off some taxpayers, then so be it.

Mr. Mesley provided a valuable public service by letting the mask slip. Unions don’t give a damn about taxpayers any more than cancer gives a damn about its host. At least until the host up and dies on the cancer, er, unions. Or the host carves the cancer right the heck out of itself.

For an example of metaphorical chemotherapy, let’s take a gander at the Central Falls, Rhode Island school district. Over half the kids in the district fail every class, and over half fail to graduate ever. The average high school teacher earns about $75,000 per year, while the average district resident earns about $22,000 per year.

The district superintendent requested concessions from the teacher’s union to address the high school’s persistent failure. Among these onerous concessions were: teaching 25 more minutes each day, occasionally eating lunch with students, weekly after school teacher meetings, rotating pre and after school tutoring, better evaluations and two weeks of summer training. Not such a bad deal for a part time job that pays three times what the average local taxpayer makes, right? Wrong. The union told the superintendent to pound sand. The superintendents responded by firing each and every teacher and administrator in the building. ‘Puter could just kiss the superintendent for excising the cancer and focusing on the kids and taxpayers.

Public sector unions are a cancer, and the only way to beat the cancer is to kill it before it kills you. Just ask the Central Falls superintendent of schools.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.