No one can argue that Romney is being unclear about the direction in which he plans to take the country: lower taxes on the rich, and correspondingly fewer police, firefighters, teachers, and other public services. In short, a privatization of America, a reaffirmation of the power of wealth, and a return in many respects to America’s economy before WWI. A regressive vision. Romney of Obama, per WaPo:
“He says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”
And PlumLine reporter Greg Sargent’s commentary: “It’s hard to argue that the message from Wisconsin was that Americans don’t think we should hire more firefighters and cops. They were exempted from Scott Walker’s crackdown on public employee bargaining rights. …”
Discuss
12 Comments . Leave a comment below.Americans are sick of the abuses from Government, the bureaucratic bloat, the pension abuses, the 50 something year old civil servant retiring with $150K pension which the state will pay for the next 40 years because he/she gets a pension based on the last three years of their employment (including tens of thousands in police details…).
I don’t think Americans dislike Police, Fire or teachers… we love them. Many of us “are them” or are related to those groups. They protect us, they save us from fires and teach us from when we’re little kids and on… We don’t like the “deals” these people have gotten from our elected officials in lieu of their political support. Get rid of the abuses, the scammers, the union support of these outrageous negotiated terms and people will go back to unconditional support. Why do people defend these abuses? Wouldn’t it be easy for Obama (and BMGers) to fight against these pension or working condition abuses instead of defending why MA has to be the only state with Police being paid for construction details instead of some unskilled flagmen (or a flagman machine)? Wouldn’t it be easier to remove the arguments from people like me if you consider them to be red herrings?
People think government employees make too much money and their benefits are too expensive. Check out the top 80 people working at the Fire department at MassPort You have to go down almost 80 people before you get under $100K and that’s just the Fire Department at MassPort. It’s everywhere! If someone tells me the average state worker’s pension is $X.. I don’t care. We can agree that the little people with their $26K pension are fine and I don’t think “my people” care about their pensions. We care about abuses… don’t you?
They pay much higher salaries to top civil servants in Singapore, and they have a much more successful economy. Private businesses can only make money if they have a strong and effective government to support them. Just ask the Eritreans. You get what you pay for, John.
Obama doesn’t get that money for public sector workers only comes from private sector workers.
Private sector employment sucks right now, believe me. It’s not the time to be adding government employees who can never be fired and who have guaranteed benefit packages in perpetuity whatever the condition of the economy. We don’t need more of those people.
That is what Fox News would have you believe. In fact, private success requires a government, and private wealth would last no longer than an instant absent the public sector. If you don’t believe me, visit countries with weak governments: they are all poor.
As to “government employees who can never be fired and who have guaranteed benefit packages” probably a lot of people agree with you. I do. But Romney didn’t say anything about them: he attacked police, firefighters and teachers, period.
Spot on, Bob.
Someone on MSNBC today was trying to use this argument that “you only get the money for public employees if the private sector is successful”. Well, cut back police enough so that your place of employment and employees are susceptible to crime. Cut back fire and rescue so that response time isn’t fast enough when you have a fire or an employee has a heart attack. Cut back on teachers so that the schools are so bad nearby that no potential employees want to live close enough to commute to your business. Now tell me again how that relationship between public and private sector employees works…
So public-sector workers don’t use their salaries to buy goods and services created by the private sector? Slashing public employees at a time where the private sector can’t absorb them, raising unemployment and reducing overall purchasing power, would have zero effect on the private sector?
…per ThinkProgress.
ThinkProgress is also reporting that the Romney campaign doubled-down on his comments.
Oh, and JohnD, you are setting up a strawman here. I don’t know anyone who will defend pension abuses, though often it is the laws themselves that have the real problem rather than the people taking advantage of them. In fact BMG is very often a platform for railing against such hackery.
that problem only representing 4% of the total so let’s not waste time on it. Well states and municipalities are collapsing from the costs of these 3. Schools usually take 60-70% of a town’s budget and salaries account for 85% of that total. These issues have severe impact on the services that citizens receive and for every abuse someone suffers.
Are you saying that you’ve pointed out pension abuses here, and the response has been “let’s not waste time on it?” If so, I’d like to see a link.
Even citizens who don’t have children benefit from public education. Imagine any given town where none of the children went to school, or where the parents all had to pay for private school. You think that wouldn’t quickly have a severe impact on tax revenues and services?
Well, Mr. Romney, which is it? If you want to help the people you have to invest public resources; if you want to cut back government you hang the people out to dry.
…and I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. My solution is to target the specific problems without making all suffer – the scalpel vs. sledgehammer analogy. Schools should have a good chunk of the public budget and salaries should be a decent amount of that. I’ve never seen a school budget where my reaction is that’s too much, though I do occasionally question allocations within it.
« Blue Mass Group Front Page
Mon 20 May 2:30 AM