Rachel Maddow Show: New GOP Scapegoat-Public Workers

[Grassy Knoll]

Run time: 07:06 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ5byLyKPRI   Posted on YouTube: January 04, 2011 By YouTube Member: StartLoving4 Views on YouTube: 9   Posted on DU: January 04, 2011 By DU Member: Grassy Knoll Views on DU: 1119

 

[mackerel]

1. They've made the PSU the scategoat in my town.

The city filed for bankruptcy, broke union contracts and now we're really hurting. The police force was reduced by 35% and they closed down 2 firehouses. The homicide rate has doubled since the city filed 2 years ago and the crime rate has increased 40%. Now they're working on cutting back on all the public workers here. I can't even sale my house and move-on, nobody wants to buy and no newbies want to live here.

[freshwest]

2. I'm sorry to hear that. We just barely fought off the starve the beast crowd in the last election.

Things are tight, and public workers are stressed and working more than one jobs since they are not full time, but we vote for the police, fire department and schools. The GOPhers are moving in and trying to tear the place to shreds. I don't know about the next election.

[gadjitfreek]

3. In a bad economy, it is not politically expedient to go after those who actually caused it

In a bad economy, it is not politically expedient to go after those who actually caused it...bankers and investors who gambled away the pension fund money, leaving those with whom the State had a contract high and dry while the bankers and investors look for another source of revenue to gamble with. Why do you think politicians are clamoring for public sector pensions to become privatized? The bankers that own them want new sources of gambling money. In bad times, it's always those who can least afford it who are asked to sacrifice the most. In good times, they never get back what they lost in bad times. We are witnessing the destruction of organized labor in this country, and when workers lose their benefits and right to certain workplace conditions, we become China...where workers are little more than slaves. We are engaged in an economic race to the bottom, where there will be a huge number of poverty-stricken masses who claw at the few crumbs the small number of incredibly wealthy people allow them. When we saw who was available to vote for back in November, the "Rent Is Too Damn High" guy was actually looking like a viable option. The answer to high unemployment seems to be to create more unemployment. As long as it's public sector workers that are out of work, that seems to be fine by most people...heck, they aren't even real people, right? Just faceless bureaucrats. Let 'em starve.

First they came for the State workers and I did nothing...because I wasn't a state worker. Then they came for the teachers, but I did nothing...because I wasn't a teacher. Then they came for the police and fire workers and I did nothing...because I wasn't a policeman or fireman. Eventually, when they came for my job, saying that someone in another country could do it cheaper...there was no one left to speak for me.

[Enthusiast]

5. NICE post!

Welcome to the DU.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. very well said.

What shocks me is that this is all cyclical. They have been after public workers before. Decades ago they went after civil servants because they tended to vote Democratically. Now they're taking it to the next step, which you have described brilliantly.

They are worse than leeches and will undoubtedly bring our country to ruin.

[BaltimoreDemocrat]

4. Not new at all...

...the rethugs have always hated government employees and unions. Always. Think about Ronald Raygun. He supported and sang the praises of the Solidarity movement in Poland, a group based mostly on craft workers, while breaking the back of the air traffic controller union here at home. This fiscal crisis (mostly of their own doing; "taxes=bad") is the excuse to go after the public employee and union. What the regressives want is to pave the way to privatization.
One can only hope a) the GOPee'ers in office now don't destroy everything and b) when things start to suck maybe the average American won't vote for these hateful charlatans.