In his latest contribution to The Detroit News editorial page, Teamsters General President James Hoffa claims the title of “defender of the middle class” on behalf of the union movement.  One wonders why he bothered — aside from that, the article is devoid of content, lacking even the raw anger of a class-warfare broadside. Seriously, who is this middle class? How exactly does the union movement fight for them? By shooting down modest reforms to our public schools? Concocting clever schemes for sucking money out of the state treasury? Questionable lawsuits? Even more questionable grievances?

Meanwhile, Michigan continues to have the highest unemployment rate of any state in the union — a title it has held for four years straight. Our economic development programs backfire, and government budgets groan beneath the weight of unsustainable employee benefits. A Quixotic “Renewable Energy” mandate threatens to make power more expensive, further hamstringing manufacturers and making life more expensive for families.

One reads and rereads Hoffa’s musings in vain for some hint of a solution to the state’s problems — even a misguided one — but there is none. Hoffa has no answers.

The awful truth is it that whatever good the union movement did this state, it did decades ago.  Hoffa has nothing to offer Michigan now except a great history — or is it a mythology?  The Teamsters chief resorts to grandiose and empty rhetoric because his movement is intellectually bankrupt.

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