Ben Franklin explains it for you...

"There will always be a party for giving more to the rulers, that the rulers may be able in return to give more to them."


Franklin, Dangers of a Settled Bureaucracy (1787)

Glen Reynolds observes:

JAMES TARANTO: Occupy Wall Street, funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “One common characteristic of the four unions the Times cites is that they all include members who work for the government or, in the case of the UAW, for corporate welfare cases. . . . In the interest of truth in advertising, the unions ought to print up signs that read ‘Project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.’ And now of course President Obama is demanding yet another stimulus, which would subsidize these protests further.”

The unions are simply part of the bureaucracy. 

Here is the Taranto observation:

The Hippie Stimulus


Occupy Wall Street, funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The so-called Occupy Wall Street movement is drawing some support from beyond the standard assemblage of superannuated hippies, dopey college kids and fatuous liberal journalists. Yesterday "several prominent unions, struggling to gain traction on their own, made their first effort to join forces with Occupy Wall Street," the New York Times reports: "Thousands of union members marched with the protesters from Foley Square to their encampment in nearby Zuccotti Park."

"Several major labor groups--including the Transport Workers Union, the Service Employees International Union, the United Federation of Teachers and the United Auto Workers--took part in the march," the Times adds, although "some more traditionally conservative ones, like those in the construction trades, stayed away."

One common characteristic of the four unions the Times cites is that they all include members who work for the government or, in the case of the UAW, for corporate welfare cases. As Michael Barone noted in a February 2010 column: "One-third of [2009's] $787 billion stimulus package was aid to state and local governments--an obvious attempt to bolster public-sector unions."