Sovereign states ought to, of right, be free (of undo, especially excessive external influences) to conduct their business in due/effective consideration of what's best for their own citizens' short-term and long-term interests. That's not to say national or regional interests should be disallowed from consideration at state and local levels. However, when a nationally-organized and considerably strong special interest pours monumental nationally-derived resources into influencing a state's voting it can make it difficult if not impossible for that state to self-govern in its citizens' best interests. In fact, they become mere pawns in a nationally-organized, nationally-targeted agenda. That's not freedom of the kind envisioned by our founders is it?
The unbalanced biases created by a highly organized external political publicity onslaught in effect renders the state's citizens unwittingly subservient to that external political agenda in the interests of biases not really the citizens' own. Sensible opposing political interests within the community and/or state, lacking the ability to match the national resources coming at it, may find it impossible to mount an effective opposing campaign. The battle is over before it even begins. Brute force wins over sensibility and due, independent and wise consideration.
When a semblance of balance of interests is achievable there's no harm done. In fact, the resulting debate (ie, education on issues) is healthy. But if a national special interest with a virtually bottomless pocketbook lays siege to completely defenseless thinking of a state's population, the result may not be good for the state's citizens. Additionally, such a win can provide important leverage to the national special interest making it easier to expand its agenda elsewhere more easily, including into the courts and congress.
I wonder whether unions are becoming too powerful and influential in gaining outcomes that serve their own interests too much. (What else do they serve, really?) We see what unions have done and are doing in places such as Greece. It's not good for any state in the end, much less a nation. I don't think one special interest ought to have such power to influence outcomes simply by outspending individual states until it gets its way nationally via a simple majority of politically key states. Manipulation of political outcomes on this scale is not ... I say not ... a good thing for our republic.
Citizens ought to be educated on issues, not brainwashed by an unmatchable external(!) onslaught of biased publicity and fact-twisting political machinery. Citizens effectively become mere pawns at the mercy of a national political agenda which they have neither the will nor capacity to assess or resist appropriately by way of their own independent thinking, rationale and effort.
Political interests which have as their goal, the protection of a state's citizens' rights, property and prosperity are doing the good work intended by our founders. Political interests which have as their goal the advancement of their own narrow and selfish interests (invariably at a high price to those who oppose them and to those who aren't members of their group) have no business exercising the kind of power that unions are trying to exert, indeed succeeding. Conscience and morals do not prohibit them from taking whatever they are able to from non-members or even from their own unwitting members. Whatever they can get away with in the near term is by their definition (which is the only one that matters to them) good, regardless its long-term consequences to the community, state or nation. Even regardless the long-term consequences to their own group/organization.
Thoughtlessly killing the golden goose is never an issue with them as long as there's goose on the dinner table this week. We should be asking the average Greek or citizen of other EU countries in a similarly precarious economic condition, how it has worked out for them!
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