Main Street

Firefighters and teachers become the villains in politicians’ tales

The subjects of yesterday’s Washington Post piece on the Ohio budget battle are public workers who have been shocked to learn from politicians, some media, and even their neighbors that they are overpaid, pampered, and the reason for Ohio’s budget woes:

Judy and Jim Embree, an operating room nurse and paramedic and firefighter, were attending a rally at the state Capitol when they discovered that everything they thought to be good and right about their lives was, to an alarming number of people, completely wrong.

The people who showed up that day in support of a plan, since adopted, to cut the power and benefits of public-sector unions said that people like them were the problem. That their “high wages” and “exorbitant pensions” were crippling cities and counties across Ohio. Some, even, said their jobs were unnecessary.

It had never occurred to the Embrees that firefighters and nurses could be unnecessary. They thought of themselves as linchpins of the community — and one of the biggest rewards of their jobs was knowing that the rest of the world thought so, too.

“Kids go trick or treating in firemen’s costumes,” Jim Embree, 48, said. “Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts come and take tours and sit in the truck and blow the horn. People talk to you in the grocery store. I’m used to positive interactions with people. So it shocked me. To hear people speak in a public venue like I’m a Rockefeller . . . it shocked me.”

Along with runaway governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Florida, and Maine attacking the rights of public workers, there has been a similar assault on the airwaves fueling the perception that teachers, nurses, and firefighters are “thugs,” or “parasites.”

Don’t get sucked in. You know the truth. If you’ve met even one public school teacher, or one cop, or one RN, you know that that the vitriolic claims about public workers coming from Kasich, Limbaugh, and the Tea Party are rooted in their own agendas – not truth.

The people who run into burning buildings, teach our kids, and deliver our mail aren’t in it for the money, or even the stability. Most of them, like Judy and Jim Embree, are compelled by the desire to serve their communities, or because they love doing what they do. Again, don’t be fooled: you’ve met these people. The lazy, overpaid monstrosities you hear about on Fox sound so strange because they don’t exist.

“The people who have been underrepresented in this are taxpayers,” Kasich said is quoted as saying, “This is about the long term, about being able to do things that our local governments and our state can afford.” What kind of insane mental jujitsu is this guy doing? He gives huge tax breaks and keeps corporate exemptions and loopholes, increases salaries for his own staff, and flies around on state-funded air travel – and he has the gall to say straight-faced that he cares about Ohio taxpayers, and the long-term interests of Ohio, and talk about what we can and cannot afford?

Could he look Jim and Judy Embree in the eye and say that, after stripping their rights to bargain with their employer?

Florida firefighter Stacey Ivey said it right: “When times are great in this country, no one pays much attention to us, we keep making the same amount of money… But when times are tough, people look at us like we have it so great, but really we’re just steady.”

The folks who are “just steady” are under attack by those who want to give a quick fix to the wealthy.