New York state and city are drowning in red ink, but don’t waste your breath telling it to government unions. They got theirs, and they’ll do anything and everything to keep it.

Gov. Paterson’s plan to delay 4 percent raises so the state doesn’t run out of cash is met with threats of lawsuits.

Mayor Bloomberg’s call for relatively modest spending cuts provokes warnings that the city will sink into the Hudson if a penny is subtracted from bloated budgets.

The way organized labor sees it, sacrifice is for suckers. Let somebody else pay.

There once was a time when public-employee unions were responsible citizens. They saw their members’ well-being directly tied to the well-being of the people and institutions they served. The movement was probably more militant 40 years ago, but it famously did its part to help the city out of the fiscal crisis of the ’70s.

That is ancient history. The modern movement has seceded from reality.

Instead of recognizing it needs a healthy New York to survive, it aims to bleed the public dry, then demand a bailout. Or maybe it thinks it can just move on to another “host” until it, too, runs out of money.

Haven’t the bosses heard? Greed is no longer good.

Oblivious to the pain inflicted on taxpayers less well off than they are, the state teachers union is sticking to its predictions of doomsday if education spending is touched. The union newspaper, New York Teacher, reports President Dick Iannuzzi warned that Paterson’s plan to cut $1.7 billion “will devastate New York’s schools and colleges and derail any hope for economic recovery.”

This is hooey, a ritualistic scaremongering that calls into question the ability of teachers to actually teach if they have no regard for facts. “Albany, do right by our kids,” the newspaper de mands on Page 1.

Here’s a novel thought: How about unions do right by our kids? If they care about New York stu dents, they’ll step up to the plate and help minimize the impact of sensible reductions.

The fat is easy to find. Educrats are spreading like poison ivy at the city’s Department of Education.

In the last decade, the payroll has swelled by more than 21,000 teachers and other “pedagogical” employees, pushing the total from 90,000 to 112,000. Meanwhile, student enrollment has declined by about 50,000, to 1.04 million, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office.

We know where hundreds of these phantom teachers are — in the rubber rooms, perfecting their napping skills. Thank ironclad union rules for that giant rip-off.

The ranks of other aides are also soaring. From about 15,000 in 2003, there are now nearly 25,000 full-time equivalents on the payroll, the IBO says.

The pension debacle is well known, with the city’s costs for all employees going from $1.4 billion eight years ago to $7.1 billion next year.

None of this would have happened had a succession of politicians not caved in to labor’s demands. But mayors and governors, council members and legislators have feathered their nests by buying off the unions.

And now the bill is busting New York. Paterson proclaims himself surprised workers won’t give back in the emergency.

“I am just shocked and amazed that every time you ask the special interests or the unions for some kind of sacrifice that the answer is either ‘no’ or ‘I’m going to sue you,’ ” he said.

The shock is that he’s shocked.

True sense of the word

From Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary:

Partisan: n, An adherent without sense.

Obama’s anti-Israel impulses

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly canceled his trip to Washington because he feared an Arab “ambush.” Maybe so, but it’s more likely he feared an ambush by President Obama.

That Arabs and Muslims want to bury Israel isn’t new. The change is that the United States is providing the shovel.

Netanyahu doesn’t have to be paranoid to see Obama’s nuclear conference as a set-up. Israel almost certainly has a nuke or three, yet won’t say and hasn’t signed the nonproliferation pact. Arab states say they want the truth about Israel’s arsenal and want to use the conference to push for details.

Notice none of them, including Washington, is doing much to stop Iran, however.

Netanyahu had another reason to unpack his bags, after reports surfaced that Obama is developing his own plan for an Israeli-Palestinian deal and intends to impose it on both sides. One report said he wants to force Israel to remove 133,000 Israelis from parts of Jerusalem and the West Bank.

It’s a risky move for the US to get so deeply involved, with Henry Kissinger warning in a recent forum that “if you impose it, you own it.” And the timing couldn’t be worse, with Obama already revealing his anti-Israel impulses.

The humiliating tongue-lashing he and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered to Netanyahu left most Israelis distrustful of him and the Israeli government far less inclined to bend to his wishes, especially because he seems ready to accept a nuclear Iran.

Meanwhile, Palestinians see the same beatdown and believe they don’t have to make concessions because Obama will force them all from Israel. The result is that Obama has taken a bad situation and made it worse.

Heckuva job, Mr. President.

More from the ‘spinster’ gray lady

Oops, they did it again. The New York Times’ article about the Qatari diplomat’s suspicious behavior on an airplane reveals more about the newspaper than the dopey diplo.

“Few Worry About Overreaction When Man Smokes on a Plane,” the above-the-fold Page 1 headline blared.

Declaring the response, which included air marshals guarding the Qatari and fighter jets escorting the plane to Denver, an “overreaction” is typical of the paper’s uber-left politics.

What wasn’t typical was that in finding that “Few Worry,” the Times was conceding that its own bias wasn’t shared by many Americans.

Here’s a safe bet about the process. An editor or a reporter looked at initial reports and decided officials grossly overreacted. That’s how the Times often works these days — get facts that fit the opinion.

But they couldn’t find any, so they sneakily stuck to their conclusion by writing in an incredulous tone about the national shrug of shoulders.

See, the Times is outraged, and it is outraged more Americans aren’t outraged.

Oh, I’m outraged, all right. I’m outraged the Qatari was using diplomatic immunity to visit a convicted al Qaeda agent in a maximum-security prison. The agent pleaded guilty to terror charges and admitted Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who planned the 9/11 attacks, sent him to the US in 2001.

And I’m outraged that when he was confronted about smoking, the Qatari made a joke about trying to light his shoe, like the shoe bomber. All of this behavior the Times finds “routine.”

That’s the real outrage.

Good riddance!

Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, who faced a hometown revolt over his vote for the health-care monstrosity, won’t seek re-election. You know what that is? A good start.