When the commercial began, it was clear in the first 5 seconds that it would be a tear-jerker.  The nurse in scrubs asking why he would cut nurses.  The blind man asking how he could do this to him.  The mother with children asking how he could do this to them.  Who would deny people health care?  S.E.I.U. 1199 wants to know.

Granted, it’s the same formula they use when they are in contract negotiations, frightening the public about the death of patient care while settling for a 5% raise.  But it’s always been a very effective formula, which is why it gets pulled out whenever needed. 

As Governor David Paterson tries to figure out a way to keep New York State afloat this year, lobbying groups will spend their war chest on convincing the public that cutting their members, or their members income, will cause grievous harm.  Even the New York Times isn’t biting this time around.  But now that the battle has commenced, the other players will either have to get in the game or be left out in the cold.  The teachers will be fighting for educational dollars, which means that students are better educated when they are paid more.  Cops are a perpetual player, with Willie Horton raping your mother unless they receive fully paid health benefits.

Whenever scarce resources are allocated, someone has to come up short.  For the citizenry, it usually doesn’t have a great deal of meaning since we pay for it regardless and get less than we are due because that’s how government delivers services.  If the private sector can’t deliver well, the public will always deliver worse.

But necessity is the mother of invention, and situations are rarely as static as everyone predicts.  Something will likely emerge to alter the landscape over the next year, even though we don’t know yet whether it will be for better or worse.  For example, the unions might decide to plow their war chest back into their members’ pockets, giving them back the money they took from them to help them through this upcoming hard year.

Or the public, for the first time ever, will see through the television commercials intended to strike fear into our hearts and make us believe that we will die, our children will go uneducated and our mothers will be raped, lest we underfund the union members pensions. 

State governors, big city mayors, county supervisors, all look to the big guy above them for a bailout.  But the money always comes from the same source, the only difference being whose hand is in the taxpayers pocket.  Every politician would prefer it be someone else’s hand, as that makes them less culpable for the pain.  The rationale is that the big guy above them is the one demanding that they do something, and therefore should pay for it.  Whether the mandates make sense today, given our circumstances, requires far more time and thought, as well as a very good understanding of competing priorities.  The public isn’t really in much of a position to make a reasoned decision, and most really don’t want to think that hard.

The unions know this.  They are well aware that they can protect their turf by manipulating our desire for basic necessities.  Health care, education and public safety will tug at our heart strings.  More esoteric interests, like providing defendants with lawyers, won’t cause many tears to be shed, even if there was a lobbying group prepared to go to bat for them.

As you watch these TV commercials, don’t expect anyone to champion the cause of justice.  The accused have no union and only evoke sympathy from a very small and enlightened segment of the population.  Think instead that it will be left to us to keep the defense going through hard times, particularly the public defenders who will carry the bulk of our system on their shoulders.  They will be overwhelmed, and few will care.  No priorities will be shifted from hospitals to indigent defense. 

As you watch television, and as the union commercials air to create an atmosphere of support for their members, never forget that whatever they gain comes at a cost to someone else.  It’s not that healthcare is unimportant, but that the same freedom worth dying for in foreign lands is important in our own country as well.  But we won’t have any commercials to remind people.  It’s up to us.