New Jersey police and firefighters protested at the Statehouse on Saturday to show support to their Wisconsin brothers, and to send a message to Gov. Chris Christie that they aren’t the enemy.
While that may be true, New Jersey is not Wisconsin, and too often we read about public safety workers retiring with a $200,000+ sick time payout and a pension bloated by years of overtime abuse.
Just yesterday, a report by the Press of Atlantic City shows city officials used $2.2 million gained from layoffs of 60 police officers and 30 firefighters last year to help offset $7.1 in terminal leave payments to veteran police and fire employees upon retirement.
One retiring deputy fire chief received more than $272,000, three other public safety workers collected more than $200,000 each and 12 more cleared at least $100,000.
So far, Christie isn’t trying to end collective bargaining the way that is Wisconsin counterpart, Gov. Scott Walker, is. In fact, one measure of Gov. Christie’s “tool kit” to help municipalities better manage their growing financial burdens it to cap sick-leave payouts at $15,000.
Do not confuse poor government administration and complacent public officials with the notion that ‘government is the problem.’
President Ronald Reagan was wrong about everything. He opposed creating Medicare, traded arms for hostages, exploded the national debt, signed the biggest tax hike in history, turned the greatest creditor nation into the largest debtor… When he said ‘government is the problem’ he was wrong.
Big, whopping, intrusive government lifted millions of impoverished people into the middle class. A giant government bureaucracy stopped the Japanese & Germans from taking over the world.
After WWII, returning GIs were entitled to soak up public largess, in the form of free college education and guaranteed home loans, which fueled an unprecedented economic boom.
Social Security — a program so socialist that it is part of the name — provided seniors support in their twilight years and kept most of them out of poverty.
Another giant government bureaucracy prevents polluters from killing American citizens with deadly chemicals while yet another protects us from poison in our food.
One of the biggest government bureaucracies has provided American children with free public education for more than a century — and we are better off for it.
When they talk about nameless, faceless bureaucrats, they mean the people who do back-breaking labor to keep our roads clear or those who risk their lives to stop fires and crime. When they describe people living on the dole, they mean you… if you have ever lost of job through no fault of your own, attended school or college, or used Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
If one added up the entire cost of everyone who is ‘playing’ the system and sponging off society, it would be a drop in the bucket compared with the return on our investment we get from government spending. Peace, freedom, opportunity, justice and equality are all things that do not naturally result from the free enterprise system but they are the aims of government.
Americans can do better, and nothing is ever perfect, but throwing out the baby with the bathwater is the stupid prescription offered by Ronald Reagan, and 30 years later we are still following in folly. There is a class war in America but only one side is engaged and it it time to fight back!