A War on Public Servants
Posted: January 11, 2011 Filed under: just because | Tags: gilded age, plutocracy 31 Comments
I’ve noticed a developing villager meme about the people who put out our fires, teach our children, complete the paper work to give us driver’s and hunting licenses, and paint the picnic tables at parks. Are they the new enemy or just the collateral in the War for Austerity? Are we experiencing the first shot heard round the world in the Battle against Public Servants?
If you believed the senile President Reagan, government was the problem. If you believe the current set of villagers, government workers are the problem. This actually appears to be part and parcel of a plan to tear down any sort of union where ever it possibly could sprout up. Silly government workers still want and get pensions, health care plans, and are not subject to firing on management whimsy. Their examples must be held up as source of public disgust and disgruntlement. The Power class certainly wouldn’t want their serfs getting any ideas. Therefore, we’ll just shuffle public workers into the bigger theme of they’re wasting your tax dollars and all because their unions can get them a decent work arrangement. I continue to be amazed how they get us dogs under the table to fight for scraps and bones while they continue the feast up top.
Truth-Out riffs on this them in an article called We Welcome Our New Plutocratic Overlords. It describes the new ‘ruling’ class as mostly comprised of Wall Street Bankers and Silicon Valley Geeks. Chrystia Freeland explains this concept in the cover story of Atlantic Monthly. Because these folks don’t necessarily come from wealth, they assume they are wealthy because they’re gifted and deserving. They ignore a lot to maintain that frame. The new old buzz word is Plutocracy. Freeland argues the super-rich are a nation to themselves. She explores this in a section called Winner-Take-Most. The deal, she says, is that the same thing that’s caused the rest of us to be poorer is the very same thing that’s mega-enriched the new plutocrats.
Many corporations have profited from this economic upheaval. Expanded global access to labor (skilled and unskilled alike), customers, and capital has lowered traditional barriers to entry and increased the value of an ahead-of-the-curve insight or innovation. Facebook, whose founder, Mark Zuckerberg, dropped out of college just six years ago, is already challenging Google, itself hardly an old-school corporation. But the biggest winners have been individuals, not institutions. The hedge-fund manager John Paulson, for instance, single-handedly profited almost as much from the crisis of 2008 as Goldman Sachs did.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of U.S. workers, however devoted and skilled at their jobs, have missed out on the windfalls of this winner-take-most economy—or worse, found their savings, employers, or professions ravaged by the same forces that have enriched the plutocratic elite. The result of these divergent trends is a jaw-dropping surge in U.S. income inequality. According to the economists Emmanuel Saez of Berkeley and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, between 2002 and 2007, 65 percent of all income growth in the United States went to the top 1 percent of the population. The financial crisis interrupted this trend temporarily, as incomes for the top 1 percent fell more than those of the rest of the population in 2008. But recent evidence suggests that, in the wake of the crisis, incomes at the summit are rebounding more quickly than those below. One example: after a down year in 2008, the top 25 hedge-fund managers were paid, on average, more than $1 billion each in 2009, quickly eclipsing the record they had set in pre-recession 2007.
So, their new frame is that they did it ‘on their own’ and the rest of us are just plain lazy and insufficient. Unions are our ‘affirmative action plans’ that cripple the American Dream. Their frame also translates into the refusal to recognize obligations to the public and public goods as being part of a society. This makes public workers easy targets.Truth-out takes the Freeland frame down to the nitty gritty examples within the battlefield. One of their first examples is ‘Class warfare on public sector pensions’.
In The Nation, Eric Alterman assails the Republican-controlled Congress’s decision to scrap the popular and effective Build America Bonds program as an act of little-noticed class warfare:
These bonds, which make up roughly 20 percent of all new debt sold by states and local governments because of a federal subsidy equivalent to some 35 percent of interest costs, ended on December 31, as Republicans proved unwilling even to consider renewing them. The death of the program could prove devastating to states’ future borrowing.
Alterman notes that the states could face up to $130 billion shortfall next year. States can’t deficit spend like the federal government, which made the Build America Bonds program a lifeline to the states.
According to Alterman, Republicans want the states to run out of money so that they will be unable to pay the pensions of public sector workers. He notes that Reps. Devin Nunes (R-CA), Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) are also co-sponsoring a bill to force state and local governments to “recalculate” their pension obligations to public sector workers.
Ah, yes Darrell Issa. You remember him. He’s the one the built his business and millions on car theft, insurance scams, and management styles taken from The Godfather movies. There’s some real meritocracy for you. Professors and garbage collectors are not the problem. The newest war propaganda includes blaming public workers for not removing snow efficiently from streets of New York ignoring that Mayor Bloomberg failed to declare an emergency and tell people to move their cars so they wouldn’t block snow plows. Here’s Bloomberg on that Bloomberg apology.
An emergency declaration would have banned traffic from major streets, aiding the movement of plows, and alerted the public and work crews, Stephen Goldsmith, deputy mayor for operations, said today. The city should have used GPS devices and cameras for better accountability and communication, and provided better management of its 911 emergency system, he said.
Basically, this says that failure came from the top. But, that’s not what you see in the various Youtubes of snow plows dealing with vehicles that don’t belong in urban areas any way scattered through out streets in amazingly high drifts. The right’s declared war on the people who never got the order instead of the man at the top who didn’t give the order.
That’s the deal. Any one that’s only worked in the private sector cannot actually judge what goes on in the public sector all that efficiently. I’ve worked both in private and public sector jobs and I’ve consulted for both. I’d rather form a company using former public employees.
A lot of problems with the various systems right now in Louisiana are a good example. There’s been a hiring freeze on peons since Governor Jindal took office. There’s been incredible cuts to budgets. There’s also been a bump up in unemployment and need for public services. This is a recipe for disaster and it happened. People were made homeless waiting processing of unemployment checks. You want help? You’re directed to a functionally limited website or a phone number where you wind up in automated menu hell realm and wait 3 – 4 hours to get some one. Is this the fault of the workers processing the claim or the person in charge who is most likely a political appointee of the Governor who wants to starve the beast so he can get the Republican nod for VP or President. None of those people answering the phones designed the website or limited the resources. Because every university has been facing cuts of 20-30 percent since the man took office, we officially have a war in the LSU system on the Public Service Employees union. If you actually look at who makes the big money, it’s not those covered by the unions. For LSU, the big bucks go to the top adminstrators and the atheletic coaches. For the State, most well paid folks are Bobby Jindal’s appointments in high positions.
Robert Reich provides information at Alternet on this blame them not me strategy. Reich appears to be one of the remaining Democratic partisans who hasn’t joined the villagers, the Republicans, and the Plutocratic Wing who brought us Obama to hype the war. Public servants are not overpaid and their pensions aren’t bankrupting the economy. Please read his entire article. It has data not memes.
The Republican trick is to compare apples with oranges — the average wage of public employees with the average wage of all private-sector employees. But only 23 percent of private-sector employees have college degrees; 48 percent of government workers do. Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be – all need at least four years of college.Compare apples to apples and and you’d see that over the last fifteen years the pay of public sector workers has dropped relative to private-sector employees with the same level of education. Public sector workers now earn 11 percent less than comparable workers in the private sector, and local workers 12 percent less. (Even if you include health and retirement benefits, government employees still earn less than their private-sector counterparts with similar educations.)
It’s just not the USA that has the problem. It’s Europe too. There’s a huge front cover on The Economist reading ‘The battle Ahead: The struggle with public-sector unions should be about productivity and parity, not just spending cuts’. The same plutocracy has joined the aristocracy there to fix blame. How is this for hyperbolic hype?
LOOK around the world and the forces are massing. On one side are Californian prison guards, British policemen, French railworkers, Greek civil servants, and teachers just about everywhere. On the other stand the cash-strapped governments of the rich world. Even the mere mention of cuts has brought public-sector workers onto the streets across Europe. When those plans are put into action, expect much worse.
“Industrial relations” are back at the heart of politics—not as an old-fashioned clash between capital and labour, fought out so brutally in the Thatcherite 1980s, but as one between taxpayers and what William Cobbett, one of the great British liberals, used to refer to as “tax eaters”. People in the private sector are only just beginning to understand how much of a banquet public-sector unions have been having at everybody else’s expense (see article). In many rich countries wages are on average higher in the state sector, pensions hugely better and jobs far more secure. Even if many individual state workers do magnificent jobs, their unions have blocked reform at every turn. In both America and Europe it is almost as hard to reward an outstanding teacher as it is to sack a useless one.
from the Merriam-Webster dictionary on line
Are your eyes seeing yellow (journalism) yet? It’s the fault of the unions. They’re milking our greater potential for bonuses! They took our tax money!! So the headlines are all about how public sector employees are not productive. But, the only real numbers I read aren’t on productivity measures. They’re on the numbers of public employees covered by unions–hence the frame of better wages and benefits–than private employees. Teachers are at the front of this battle. If we did such a bad bad, how did these folks get to be so damned wonderful? Watching Cartoons on TV? (Shameless plug: Look for Wonk’s essay on charter schools coming up later today).
I’ll return to Robert Reich’s ‘The Problem Is That America’s Richest 1% Are Raking It in — Not Public Employee Pensions’ bottom line to make this essay short and let you go read the links.
We can’t let the conservatives pit private-sector workers against public servants — it’s a distraction from the ongoing huge wealth transfer to the richest Americans.
Again, watch the State of the Union address and listen. My guess is the narrative will also come from conservatives within and leading the current Democratic Plutocratic Party. They may have gotten student loans, but they made it on their own. They may have bought their homes with FHA/VA loans, but they got it on their own. They may have gone to schools with public school teachers, called firefighters to rescue their kittens from trees, and relied on 911 in emergencies, but remember! They made it on their own. They are lying to themselves and to you. They’re on the winning side of the adjustments being made in globalization that creates winners and losers and it’s not because they’re any more talented than their garbage man. They’re just in the right place at the right time with the right training.
Please don’t be fooled.
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When I got my drivers license renewed last month, it took over 2 hours of mainly standing in line. It would be nice if there were more workers but, there won’t be in this budget, we can’t afford them.
Doesn’t it look like public sector pensions are in similar condition to the remaining privare sector pension funds? I think both are drastically underfunded the last time I looked.
Like you I’ve worked in both the public and private sector but, so long as I get to pick the people, I don’t care if their background is public or private. I’ve seen good and bad in both.
I think that’s true of the the professional class and a lot of the workers, but I think managers in the public sector are more rewarded for knowing the job. Management in the private sector is more related to who you know, whose backside you kiss, whose agenda you’re willing to push, and political strategies more than actually knowing the work or the process. Other than political appointees, most public employees are long term employees and the supervisor and manager class come up through the ranks. There’s perpetual disruption in that level in the private sector and it’s wrapped up in short sightedness about current income. They also higher people that look like them because they wish to get the next big promotion and don’t think long term about what it means to actually stay in a position and deal with the idiots you hire.
Also, my experience as a Deming-trained consultant on processes showed me that the public sector was a lot more concerned with service and process and working together. Most of them planned to stay at the jobs and in that particular agency or department. They didn’t flit around as much. The only caveat I have to that was the work I did with the Navy and Air Force because they have ranks and you had to find away around some of the culture of ranks staying with like ranks. Just an observation. I also consulted with huge corporations and small businesses. The latter are much more vibrant. Big corporations are just about the worst way to do any thing that doesn’t require massive capital investment.
I heartily agree, especially about large corporations. I work for a giant now and it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in almost every way imaginable. Smaller is much better and can be a lot of fun.
and yes, both types of plans are drastically underfunded. It’s just there’s more obligation under private plans. And then, think ENRON and how many of their employees just lost everything because a lot of those plans are company stock too. You’re other in or you’re out.
OT:
TPM: “Tea Party Express Fundraises Off Giffords Shooting: ‘Tea Party Won’t Be Silenced’“:
Including a fundraiser in the same e-mail criticizing the politicization of a shooting? The teabots are stuck on stupid.
Whatever happens, and who ever does it, somehow it’s the liberals who are the ones taken to the wood shed…how’s that work?
It is quite clear that liberals are trying to exploit this shooting for their own political benefit, and they used deception and dishonesty to try and smear all of us and our beliefs,”
As we say in Philly…
Yo kettle , meet pot
dang tags! I was quoting
It is quite clear that liberals are trying to exploit this shooting for their own political benefit, and they used deception and dishonesty to try and smear all of us and our beliefs,”
Another OT…: NationalJournal.com – The Rhetoric Did Not Make Him Do It; But It Didn’t Help, Either – Tuesday, January 11, 2011
And a statement from the parents:
Jared Loughner’s Parents Statment | Randy and Amy Loughner Press Release | Mediaite
I really feel bad for his parents. I’m sure their lives are shattered like the other victims of the shooter.
Om the rhetoric, since there is no evidence of a connection to the shooter, it would be best to have those discussions next month when emotions have cooled. At this time, people will simply not pay attention to the subject.
The parents are just devastated. The father appears to be a bit odd. Hasn’t worked for years. This was up at CNN:
also, he evidently got caught tagging … of all things Christian graffetti which I guess goes along with that Santeria alter that’s now plastered all over the news although the fundies are calling him an atheist, satanic cult member, and a leftie still.
Amazing what people will do to try to convince themselves it couldn’t be any one LIKE them … poor kid’s mom was Jewish and they want to synagogue evidently. She’ll get support from the Jewish community imagine because their used to the incessant drum beat of things like christ killers for some sick quarters of the faith … like Mel Gibson.
Here’s more on the father … really weird.
Grave dancing any one?
Bernie Sanders is also fundraising off the tragedy as is a group called the 21st Century Democrats. A pox on all of them.
ABC
Of course it’s” off with their heads for public servants” …The villagers want the functions public servants perform taken over by private companies they have started or are invested in…I believe the Villagers would be satisfied ( for a week) if all public servants were fired and then the younger half were then rehired at 1/3 the wage with no benefits by the private companies set to take over…that’s fair isn’t it? /snark . As soon as a government hires a private company they have set the stage for their phase out…we are well along that path
That’s so true. Privatization of some of these services has just been a nightmare. I still can’t believe we have for profit jails.
Yeah, for profit jails is big business…so is the food service for those jails. It is amazing what sort of money these companies make.
Which means there is huge incentive to place product,… er I mean …people in jails….a new type of slavery and press gang is upon us
And this is never discussed: the Privatization is supposed to cost less right? …but where does a private company find profit and well as perform the tasks on an even a smaller budget that the government is currently paying and struggling on?
It doesn’t. Privatization is a fraud set into motion to remove the concept of social services… Privatization is a stop gab on the way to the cessation of social services. imo
Just look at private prisons for proof of that scenario. Lamar Alexander helped start on of the private prison operations and I will bet we’d find numerous politicians amone the share holders of those companies.
probably judges and lawyers too
No doubt.
I think the plan is to keep all of us peons fighting with each other. If we keep looking over at our neighbor and get angry, maybe we won’t look at our government, the politicians (Who don’t even need a union because they can vote for their own pay raise!) and the wealthy that put them in power. They all can go on with their sweet lives untouched by the vast unwashed masses!!
Kate, exactly. there are a lot more of us than there are of them. the last thing they want is for us to get along – they hold onto their power by pitting us against one another. the truly sad thing is that it works.
Yes, I know. We are nothing but a bunch a rats in a maze being pit against one another.
Well, some of those lovely “public servants” made my car vanish in late July of this year. It had been marked as abandoned in April because my license tag was out of date, so it took them three and a half months to tow this “abandoned” car. Then, after towing it, they promptly lost it for three more months. I called them several times. Everyone I spoke to said that they didn’t have it. In late October, I get a letter telling me it was towed on 16 October, which was obvious BS. So I go down there and get sent on a paperwork chase that takes 7 hours and culminates in talking to the official who dealt with abandoned cars, who then sent me to the cashier. We hand her my paperwork and she looked at it, looked at me like I was from Mars, and we told her we had talked to the abandoned car lady. She then informed me that the abandoned car official DID NOT EXIST when he had just talked to her five minutes ago. A minute later, this official who did not exist walks into the cashier’s office along with another official. By now, all three of them are on the phone with three different people trying to figure out what to do. After they resolved that, I paid them 125 for the towing and get sent to the Almonaster car lot graveyard. We got the car, and were there for an hour and a half waiting for a tow truck. Not a single other person showed up during this time to claim a car, and most of them had been abandoned for a very long time (or at least as long as it takes to have plants growing in a car) and yet they had three people working there, who were all in one office gossipping and chatting when we came back into the building. No doubt all of these morons made cushy salaries and were going to retire on pensions that gave them 75% of what they had earned.
So that’s one story about why people have a low opinion of “public servants.” I think you’re making a false dichotomy by bringing companies into this. These aren’t the Reagan years when people idolized big corps and hated the govt (except for the “defense” part.) Most people now who have any sense dislike both equally because they’re both equally devoted to screwing us. If the public employees take more, it’s only because their theft is more visible and people are forced to deal with them.
Take more crap, that is. And how about other examples of “public servants” examples like cops running speed traps, TSA gropers, et al?
I hear stories like this all the time and am very glad to have never experienced one myself. Some years ago, my son was picked up by the police at a traffic stop for unpaid tickets. They let him go and didn’t hold him, he was in the Marine Corps at the time. They dropped the charge against him when it turned out that when those unpaid tickets had been written in Dallas, he was in Okinawa and proved it.
However, someone who couldn’t prove they could not have received a Dallas traffic ticket at the time would have just been screwed I’m afraid.
Public servants at work in my home town. 🙂
Two men riding horse, mule arrested for DWI
The police seem to have a category to themselves. I think it’s the guns.
They’re evaluated based on how many arrests and citations they make, with traffic tickets being the lowest, followed by misdemeanors, followed by felony arrests. It’s like that because they have to justify all of the federal grants and crap that they get by “proving” that a “crime problem” exists by making arrests. So when they see a guy on a horse, they check it out. Maybe the horse is stolen. Etc. According to this book I read on arrest-proofing yourself, four young men riding in a car makes them see dollar signs.
Is it really ‘driving’ under the influence? I mean, often horses are always the type where you could drop the reins and they’d take you home (some a bit faster than others, but still). I’d just drop the reins and autopilot home… Then one’d probably get a ticket about ‘driving without touching the steering wheel’ or something. Bah.
Mind, my drinking days are long over, so I guess that won’t be happening to me (herding goats while intoxicated).
I am so glad you are posting these essays on what you think is going to be in the State of the Union. They are preparing me to counter the gobblygook that my friends will be spewing after they listen to the Pres and the talking heads. Some of them actually listen and I can get them to think about things differently.
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