Notes from the Field
Submitted by Frank Murphy, March 24, 2011
We live in a time where good public policy is seemingly being usurped by the ideological agendas of extremists. In these times of financial crisis, bad ideas that would gain little traction during normal circumstances are increasingly being turned into awful government policies and legislation.
We can see this happening in Wisconsin where Governor Scott Walker under the pretext of closing a budget gap, has worked to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christi has similarly exploited the state’s budget crisis in order to decrease school funding, promote school vouchers, and launch an attack on the pension benefits of state employees.
In his 2011 budget proposal, Governor Corbett of Pennsylvania has earmarked drastic cuts to education funds throughout the state.
Budget crises, whether real or fabricated have been used recently as an excuse to launch all out attacks on teachers and other government sector employees in many locals across our nation. The anti-democratic nature of many of these efforts to eliminate the rights and jobs of public service sector workers is becoming an alarming trend.
Such attacks are becoming real crises themselves as in the case of Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder, who is using his state’s budget deficit to take the privatization of the public sector to an entirely different level.
Here is an interesting account of his efforts to suspend the rights of the citizen’s of his state.
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