Transatlantic Angst on Public Union Pork: Zoo Edition

Bank of England governor Mervyn King warns unions accept cuts or 'fail your children'

“Market reaction to rising sovereign debt can turn quickly from benign to malign, as we saw in the euro area earlier this year. It is not sensible to risk a damaging rise in long-term interest rates that would make investment and the cost of mortgages more expensive,” Mr King said.

“The costs of this crisis will be with us for a generation. And we owe it to the next generation to seize this opportunity to put in place the reforms that will make another crisis much less likely and much less damaging.”

He stressed that reducing the Budget deficit, which is forecast to hit £149bn this year – the largest peacetime deficit in history and the biggest as a proportion of GDP in Europe, is one of a number of necessary reforms, and will require co-operation from the unions.

60% of their public sector workforce is unionized. In New Jersey, a bankrupt state, in company with California and Illinois, newly elected Republican Gov. Chris Christie is talking turkey, not pork. Video via RCP, on with Cavuto: Christie To Public Unions: You'll Be Thanking Me.

P.S. In DC Dem Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton attempts to extort $$$ from a lobbyist for a "stimulus" building project under pressure from Nancy Pelosi. So confident she leaves a voicemail. Audio. Well, they haven't gotten Blago yet but maybe they'll get this woman.

Listening to WLS Chicago's Don and Roma the disgraced Cook County Board President Todd Stroger is calling in to defend $1 million spent on inflatable jumping jacks this summer, a Mayor Daley program, and while he's on the line being called on the carpet for throwing flood victims a party at the zoo 2 years later rather than reimbursing them for some percentage of damages.

"I did call to ask what was going to occur at the zoo," said McGuire. "I was told that we were being given a day at the zoo to relieve the stress of everything we are going through. My stress will be relieved when I'm given help."

There was some help at the county zoo event, including prostate screening, and some of those who did attend were satisfied even if they have not received their flood relief funds.

You may have to wear a facemask in your house, but at least they checked your prostate.

Seriously, though. Must we pay for this flood relief? Isn't that what private insurance used to be for? If the city or county is responsible for it that's one thing (!), but this has all gotten way out of hand.

More. Via NRO, Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin takes on David Brooks:

The challenge goes beyond “the current concentration of power in Washington,” which Brooks rightly opposes. For the record, I first introduced A Roadmap for America’s Future when President George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office. The explosion in government spending and overreach has been a bipartisan failure, not for years but for decades. Politicians continued to make promises that simply cannot be kept. But reaping comes after sowing – and we now face a debt so massive that it will cause, sooner than we think, the collapse of our social safety net.

Read on. Just another day at the Big Government zoo.