OBAMA: Selling out to unions

President Obama promised he would raise "an army of citizens" as strong as our military. Are government and public school workers and their union bosses being groomed as Obama's civilian army and officer core? It certainly seems so.

Clearly, Obama has thrown his moral authority and Presidential "Bully Pulpit" behind the public employee unions' sit-ins, uprisings and unrest taking place in numerous states across the country.

Even though unionized federal employees are not allowed collective bargaining, President Obama thinks that this is somehow a God-given, Constitutional "right" at the state level. Serious governors and responsible state legislatures are desperate to put a lid on out-of-control and unsustainable public employee health and pension benefit costs by instilling modest co-pays that are common - ubiquitous, really - in the private sector. Meanwhile, state union activists and their armies of public employees are being financed by hard-earned tax dollars extracted by force of law from non-public-sector working stiffs who make less in pay and benefits than the government workers they are supporting.

This is nuts. It will bankrupt the states, and eventually, the country.

Today there are more union jobs in government than there are in manufacturing in the United States. And the ranks of union workers occupying these non-productive government positions continue to outpace all other job categories in growth. Alarmingly, Obama's army of union activists is now swelling with "new reserves" of college graduates. What's happening? Wake up America. Take a stand for your country before you have no country to love.

DENISE KENNEDY

Coeur d'Alene