Bread and Ciruses in NJ

Here's something I don't understand. An editorial in the Asbury Park Press blames increases in teachers' salaries above the rate of inflation as the cause of all of NJ's problems (well most of them). Yet, an article by Bob Ingle in the same paper notes that home rule hacks use their "complex, counterproductive, wasteful" tools to waste tons of our tax money. Ingle pointed out one town that spent $1M on lawyer fees for something (the town won't say what it spent the money on) and how another town wasted $345 (each) to buy cell phones for their bus drivers, plus pay them 6 hours of OT to charge them (must be some charge, I doubt I spend more than 5-10 min a month plugging & unplugging my phone over a month).

So which is the true evil? I don't mind getting my money's worth for something I purchase. Services by my town are something I pirchase via my tax dollars. Before thrashing a teacher or other government worker who provides a direct service to me or my town I'd expect all of us to have the wisdom to go after the true evildoers: those whose greed enables them to waste our tax dollars to hire friends to be political hacks, those who can't show fiscal watchdogs what they spent their money on and those who cozy up to unions to give benefiits, like the 6 hours OT for cell phone chargibg, that should defy the logic of the most liberal labor organizer, before attacking those who teach the citizens who will one day be supporting us.

Home rule hacks waste tons of money. Yet, all of NJ's problems will be solved if we can just keep increases in teachers' salaries to the rate of inflation and make those "slackers" pay more for health insurance. More bread and circuses! Why are we so stupid to allow these politicians to manipulate us so? Bad enough they waste our money spending millions of dollars to give their connected friends cushy jobs (too many to mention and better described elsewhere) and they blame those who actually work with the average citizen doing something productive, like teaching our children, cleaning our parks, staffing our libraries, paving our roads etc in lieu of those who sit in an office for a few hours and collect a few pension and a nice salary to boot (allegedly). However, we don't even have the guts to call them on this.Why? Why are we such suckers? What causes us to want to turn on our teachers, for example, for daring to want to get ahead before we demand that our politicians shut the F'up, get back to work and kick their corrupt friends to the street (ok, aside from the obvious that the entire system is corrupt)?

Perhaps teachers (and other government workers) should get lower raises, they definitely should contribute a bit more to health insurance (NJ is very generous in giving state workers great health insurance) and move to government versions of 401(k)s. However, I'm distressed that we are ignoring the true evil: those whose greed enables them to waste our tax dollars to hire friends to be political hacks, etc. Clean up that cesspool and we'll probably find we have more than enough money to pay our teachers and other government workers who actually interact with us average citizens what they deserve.

I'm not saying government workers deserve all they ask. I'm not saying that there aren't lazy, incompetent etc government workers (including teachers) that don't deserve to receive any raise and, in fact, should be kicked to curb too. However, I'm annoyed that our leaders blame that group as a whole for the financial mess this sate is in without looking in the mirror (and their piggy bank) and acknowledging that their corruption has played a major role in this mess. There's plenty of corrupt fat to get rid of. But instead of doing that, we're allowing our leaders to shift the blame to those who actually do the work. Pox on them for that BS. However, a bigger pox on us for allowing them to get away with it.