Teachers in America are under assault. They are receiving a barrage of attacks from politicians, conservative commentators and worst, their own neighbors. The reason we are told these attacks are warranted is because today’s teachers are overpaid, incompetent bureaucrats living high on the hog from taxpayer money. The real reason is conservatives are taking advantage of high anxiety and anger caused by a prolonged economic downturn in order to strangle the remaining life left in the labor movement.
We’re told everyone must make shared sacrifices and teachers’ time is due. Every hour of every day the media, driven by the right-wing organ, is reporting how vital it is to reduce the nation’s debt. The reports are followed by talking heads blaming public employees for the nations’ and middle class’ continued economic hardship. This is all a ruse. The attacks have more to do with politics than with bringing the nations’ debt down.
Entitlement spending is where we reduce debt. If politicians wanted to reduce the debt, they would raise the age citizens are eligible for Social Security and Medicare and address the soaring cost of Medicare and Medicaid. But conservatives are not all that worried about the debt. In fact, the larger the debt, the more they can sound the austerity alarms, sending the public into a panic. This softens the public up for conservatives to reach their real goal: to end most public programs and safety nets, including SSI, Medicare and Medicaid, and to hand public education over to the private hands of Wall Street.
Several days ago, John Steward rightly highlighted the hypocrisy by a slew of politicians, commentators and writers in calling for teachers to accept lower wages and fewer benefits, and by ending their right to collectively bargain. He showed clips of several commentators demanding teachers’ contracts be shredded, then showed those same commentators demanding the government honor the contracts with the same millionaire CEOs who crashed the economy.
Why all the animosity towards teachers? Why wasn’t it aimed at the Wall Street bankers who were largely to blame for the Great Recession? I pose a large reason is average people cannot or do not relate to someone who makes five million dollars by lunch time every day. But they can relate to a teacher making $50,000 a year and has decent benefits. After all, many had it 10 years ago. But now things have changed. Many average citizens are either unemployed or working for much less with no benefits. They have become jealous of public employees who have not lost as much as they have.
The real question those who have lost so much should be asking is why they make so much less. Why has their quality of life deteriorated so rapidly in the last 10, 20 or 30 years? Instead, with the help of a robust Republican Party message and predictable Democratic impotence, they have chosen to drag what is left of a middle class down with them. It is a bit ironic that this conservative-led movement is having liberal-like results. In essence, people with less are demanding those with more give it up so everyone on their block can share the misery. Equality at its finest.
