The news carries a nice illustration of intellectual incoherence by conservatives. The litigation involving the former senior management of Fannie Mae has cost $100 million in legal fees, to date. (Set aside the whether the defense of any such small set of individuals would warrant such expenditures.) The reason the defense must be paid is because it is in the contracts the executives were given. Quite like the reason the bankers and traders who crashed their respective companies and the economy had ot be given bonuses. It was in the contracts. Contracts are sacred. Contrast that attitude with the view about contracts with public employees. Those contracts are not sacred. Wisconsin, New Jersey, and son, the contracts with public employees are no more than chips to be tossed on the fire. Where it would be horrible for a government to interfere in at all with the contracts of bankers and traders, it is just good policy to interfere with the contracts of public employees. (It is even worse -- a bank bailing out someone properly may impose onerous conditions and strip out rights and compensation -- when the new money has a different source, then the same conduct is horrifying.) It looks like it is class warfare, of the usual sort.
There are two other aspects of the assault on public employeesI find curious. The first is the notion that they are not taxpayers. As far as I can tell, public employees are subject to almost all of the same taxes as are others (the only exception I know of is that some categories do not pay into social security, and get nothing out). The second thing I find curious is that these reductions in the safety and compensation of public employment is not expected to seriously degrade the quality and dedication of the employees. Teachers are supposed to be dedicated and hardworking at the same time that pay and benefits are reduced. So it is the dregs that are wanted?
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