Alright, Mr. Walker, you figured it out. The jig is up. The teachers of the world are going to have to open their checking accounts (we don't have savings accounts) and give every penny back to the state coffers...all four of them. I'm going to have to take my 2002 Corolla back to the dealer, my uncle Dave, and buy something more economical. I may even have to go back over my taxes...perhaps I owed even more than it said I did. That's right my fellow Americans, I am a "fat cat" teacher and I've been bilking this country for thousands, literally thousands, of dollars each year.

     I suppose I did get into the profession for the money in the first place. It seemed like such a great deal! Work for 9 months, arriving at school every day to attempt to convince the most apathetic generation this country has ever seen to care about the difference between a noun and a verb, and then I get three months off! Three months to work a totally different underpaid position so my family can afford to go to the doctor (even WITH insurance), or to go on a vacation. That's right, my colleagues and I have just about sunk this economy with our insatiable greed.

     The fact is that the recent attacks on public employees by business and government leaders is absolutely financially motivated. Other contributors on this blog have pointed out clearly how that is the case in Wisconsin, but this battle is taking place in many other states across the country. In Nebraska, for instance, the governor is waging a backhanded war on the Commission of Industrial Relations (CIR) wich is the state arbitration agency when public employees and their governing boards reach an impasse during collective bargaining. It doesn't sound like an attack on public employees, which is politically savvy, but without the CIR public employees will essentially have to take whatever package they're handed. It's a cost-saving sleight of hand by the state's conservative right and their business partners. Dissolve the CIR and schools will need to spend less money on teachers, and will mean they need less in state aid. I'd like to point out that salaries for teachers in Nebraska are ranked 43rd in the nation.

     If we really need to point a finger at someone for our economic woes, I find it strange that the large corporations have been left out of legislative discussions. In the March 23rd issue of The Nation, William Greider pointed out the complete inefficacy of our justice system to prosecute executives of large corporations. Essentially the idea is that if a bank is "too big to fail", it is also too big to prosecute. Any high-level prosecutions of corproate executives could result in a lack of public trust and hurt the company's overall capacity to turn a profit, which could in-turn hurt productivity nationally. Instead, the justice system resorts to a system of "deferred prosecution", in which the executives must pay a penalty and make what amounts to a public apology. Since corporations have been defined as citizens in this country, (albeit, citizens that aren't subject to the same laws, live forever, exist in many places at once, and create billions of dollars a year) those fines come from the corporate coffers. Since the profit from breaking laws, such as fraud and tax evasion, make much more money than the fines cost them, it simply encourages further illegalities. How widespread is the practice of deferred prosecution? According to the article, 108 deferrments or cancellations during the younger Bush administration, 53 in Obama's first two years. Among those whose prosecutions were deferred or cancelled were Boeing, AOL, AIG, BP, Wachovia, Chrysler, Pfizer, and Merrill Lynch.

     Ironically enough, many of the people perpetuating these attacks on bargaining and benefits for public employees are the same people that continue cutting taxes and creating policies that benefit big business. How have our perceptions in this country become so ass-backwards that, as a nation, we're actively attempting to bolster big business and simultaneously undercutting our public employees? Where a multi-national CEO gets a slap on the wrist for hundreds of millions in fraud and a teacher has their ability to negotiate for a decent wage stripped from them because they have a state retirement plan? This is not a legislative issue, or a judicial issue, or a private industry issue, this is a systemic issue. If we, as a nation, continue to ignore the slow degradation of our values by big business interests and their bank-rolled legislators, we may find ourselves without the need for ideas like "civil service" or "civic duty". Then what are we?