Byron York writing in today’s Washington Examiner pens this column, excoriating AFL-CIO head honcho Richard Trumka for equating unions’ lavish benefit packages to Blacks’ struggle for civil rights. You ought to read the entire column.

It is patently offensive that anyone would equate restraining public sector union overreach with Dr. King’s tireless work for equal rights for Black Americans. Here, in ‘Puter’s estimation, are Mr. Trumka’s most egregious allegations, as put by Mr. York:

“April 4 [is] the day on which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life for the cause of public collective bargaining,” Trumka said in another speech, in Washington, on Wednesday. And on the AFL-CIO blog, there is this notice: “Join us to make April 4, 2011, a day to stand in solidarity with working people in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and dozens of other states where well-funded, right-wing corporate politicians are trying to take away the rights Dr. King gave his life for.”

Oh. Martin Luther King was working tirelessly for gold-plated public union pensions, no-fire clauses and seniority rights. Dr. King’s struggle had absolutely nothing to do with securing the rights of Black Americans to be treated as Americans generally, no better and no worse. Dr. King’s long struggle and death had nothing to do with voting rights, education rights, and housing rights. It was all about unionism.

Mr. Trumka relies heavily on the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike as a basis for his outlandish claims. As crazy, right wing nutjob bastion Stanford University puts it, the struggle was about fair pay for Blacks, who were being actively discriminated against by a White mayor. It had nothing to do with unionism. Unionism was a means to an end. The end of equal rights for Black Americans.

If Mr. Trumka truly believes this, he has already lost the battle. No reasonable person can believe that Dr. King’s life and death were about ensuring public sector union rights to gold-plated compensation packages. Mr. Trumka has beclowned himself and his entire movement. Of course, none of Mr. Trumka’s comments will be widely reported in the media.

‘Puter is curious as to what his Black readers think of Mr. Trumka’s comments. Do you believe that the Dr. King’s (and Black America’s) struggle to be treated equally had anything at all to do with union rights, except tangentially?

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.