After biting my tongue through several nights of this ad (In This Together Connecticut) I find myself needing to make comment. The ad is state-employee minded–which of course I’m not at all against–but is tipped and twisted by one group to appeal to another group (non-government employees) by threatening their safety.
Workers have stepped up and made sacrifices. Now it’s time for the wealthy and big corporations to pay their fair share to help fix our state budget.”
This annoys me for several reasons. First of all, the government is not only the last one to make the sacrifices and take the hits as the private sector has taken for the last year and a half, but it’s that so typical whiney “well if we’re going to have to do this, everybody has to do this” that indicates to me that belief in spreading the wealth is also a strong belief in spreading the pain when they’re the ones hurting. I hate that every time there’s a possible layoff looming in the government sector, the public is made to feel guilty and must bear the threat of loss of security, education, playgrounds, et al, everything that is important to them rather than gearing the cuts at the ever present waste in state spending. Oh and government, by the way, is one of the biggest hirers right now. Yet the corporations as employers are being asked to help keep state employees in their jobs–jobs that pay well over comparable positions in private industry. Well, if they had their druthers, I’m sure they’d just as soon keep their own employees in their jobs.
While government employees are important, to be honest with you, I’m just as dependent if not more so upon my auto mechanic, my doctor, my grocer, my banker and a host of others in the private sector as I am on the state.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology