Recommended: Public sector: An anchor as we sink

I recommend Katherine Kersten's article Public sector: An anchor as we sink, in the Feb 14, 2010, issue of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I found some of the statistics startling.

The federal government has added almost 9,000 jobs a month, and the federal payroll has spiked a whopping 10.5 percent, since the current recession began in December 2007, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

and

The average federal worker now earns $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector, according to an analysis by USA Today. "Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months," the paper reports -- and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.

and

New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that, for the first time in history, a majority of American union members -- 52 percent -- now work for the government. James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation points out that "three times more union members now work in the Post Office than in the auto industry."