One only has to dipstick around the blogosphere to pick up on the national tone against public servants. You know, your teachers, your cops, your fire fighters and first responders, your county and city employees, your state workers–all those people who are out making the wheels or progress grind along.
Why are these people suddenly the victims of public wrath? The slumping economy. Public employees are paid out of state and local public coffers. When times are tight, all of a sudden the government employees become dog biscuits. If people have to pay higher taxes to keep their public services alive and well, then the public employees who do the work get kicked about a bit.
Politico addresses this issue:
Spurred by state budget crunches and an angry public mood, Republican and some Democratic leaders are focusing with increasing intensity on public workers and the unions that represent them, casting them as overpaid obstacles to good government and demanding cuts in their often-generous benefits.
Unlike past battles over the high cost of labor, this time pitched battles over wages and pensions are being waged from Sacramento to Springfield to New York City and the conflict is marked by its bipartisan tone, with public employee unions emerging as an intransigent public enemy number one in cities and state capitals across the country.
They’re the whipping boys for a new generation of governors who, thanks to a tanking economy and an assist from editorial boards, feel freer than ever to make political targets out of what was once a protected liberal class of teachers, cops, and other public servants.
Republicans around the nation have cheered New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose shouting match over budget cuts with an outraged teacher—“You don’t have to” teach, he told her without sympathy—became a YouTube sensation on the right last week.
And even Democrats, like the nominee for governor in New York, Andrew Cuomo, have echoed the attacks on unions.
Christie is merely the most florid voice for a calculated, national effort to fundamentally reshape the debate on the labor costs that account for the bulk of government spending at every level. And at the core of the shift is a perception among many political leaders that public anger at civil servants is boiling over.
“We have a new privileged class in America,” said Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who rescinded state workers’ collective bargaining power on his first day in office in 2006. “We used to think of government workers as underpaid public servants. Now they are better paid than the people who pay their salaries.”
“It’s a part of a very large question the nation’s got to face,” Daniels told POLITICO in an interview. “Who serves whom here? Is the public sector—as some of us have always thought—there to serve the rest of society? Or is it the other way around?”
What about those public employees in most of the southern states, including Virginia, where there is no collective bargaining? Most employees are not union workers. There is strong resentment of these workers. I not only don’t see it, it incenses me.
People, especially those living in suburban and urban areas, expect public services like schools, police, fire fighters, libraries, county and city services. They are busy and they don’t like standing in line. they want their children to receive top notch educations and they don’t want a rescue squad to take a half hour to get to their house. Services are a major reason to move to the suburbs.
People need to be mighty careful about what they complain about. Too much government? Put your own house fire out. Clean up your own oil slicks. Is it the pensions? Is it the 401k plans? Perhaps that is small compensation for those who served the public rather that going into the private sector.
