[Brian]

As someone who had hoped to retire in 10-15 years, and on the New York Public Employees pension fund, I have never really expected that it still will be there then, or that Social Security will be there, either. However, reading this (https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/global-extinction-within-one-human.html), I have to say, what difference does any of this make?

I had rather hoped to see the hurricane hit Tampa and blow the RNC and all its foul excretions into the ocean – if anyone needed any further proof that Republicans are insane, the fact that they planned their big event in FLORIDA in AUGUST should settle any doubt. But even the prospect of a Romney-Ryan dictatorship is put in perspective by that Arctic News analysis.

So frankly, I think I’ll spend my remaining time smelling the flowers, as long as they last.

[Brian]

I notice a few high-and-mighties here relishing the thought of public employees going on assistance. As a public employee myself, at the municipal level, I’d like to clear up a few misconceptions.

Most of us are not making great money, unless you think $29K a year for 40 hours a week, no overtime, and dozens of evening meetings (unpaid) to attend, is something to drool over. I accepted a gigantic pay cut to take this job, partly so I could get some lousy health insurance and the bare possibility of a pension (which, since I live in New York State, will probably vanish long before my retirement), and partly so I could work a job that gave something back to my community, instead of working for corporate attorneys helping to make the corporations richer and the world poorer.

I’d also like to remind people that if it weren’t for public employees, you wouldn’t have streets to drive on, safe water to drink, semi-efficient sewer service, public parks and pools, and all the other little amenities that everyone tends to forget about — until they’re broken or gone. Then the screaming starts. As a municipal employee, I receive calls from irate citizens telling me there’s a dead bird in their backyard, and what do I intend to do about it? Why isn’t there a nativity set up in the public park by Thanksgiving? My neighbor’s building a deck and I don’t see a permit in his window, why aren’t you ticketing him? I have cold water but not hot water, what am I paying my taxes for? And all this in upstate New York, the reddest of the red, where there are maybe three Democrats in the entire county and everyone else is a war-loving, big-government-hating Republican; yet when anything goes wrong or they have a grudge against a neighbor, they run to get the government involved.

Our State retirement plan is in the same trouble every other state’s is. Our city’s contributions to the plan have gone from approximately $150,000 a year to just under $1,000,000 a year. And I work for a city that has a population of about 7,500. That’s a quarter of our entire budget! Can our property taxes cover that? Of course not. The city has more than doubled our health insurance contributions (having an alderman who is an insurance agent hasn’t helped). A large part of our workload is fulfilling unfunded State mandates. And the staff here has been cut by more than half over the last 10 years.

We are the workers who get things done. The elected officials, unfortunately, are another matter. They are amateurs, they don’t know how things are run but they sure think they do, and everything we do, every dime we earn, is dependent on their approval.

So I hope that when some people get their self-righteous panties in a wad, they remember that we are all people, we all have to live in this world, we’re all stuck in the money system, at least until it collapses, some of us are trying to do decent work that helps out our communities, and we’d like to be paid a decent wage to do it. Without having folks who haven’t thought things through blaming us for all their ills.

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