Public workers growing prosperous while private sector shrivels

America’s recession is exposing societal fault lines, as various groups fight over increasingly smaller pieces of the pie. Tensions are particularly flaring between government workers and employees of private businesses.

David Walker, the U.S. comptroller appointed by President Bill Clinton who continued in the role under George Bush, on Friday gave a bracing indictment of the pension and salary benefits being rewarded to government workers at the federal, state and local level. Walker said that public sector workers are growing prosperous on the back of private sector workers.

“There is a huge gap. State and local plans on average … are much more lucrative than typical plans for employees. State and local government employees, on average, have greater job security than people in the private sector. And state and local government employees, in the middle of government, in many cases make more money than their private sector counterparts,” Walker said during a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. According to Pew numbers provided by the Chamber, the budget gap to cover state employees’ benefits totals $1 trillion.

“Therefore, if governments expect taxpayers to pay more taxes to fund lucrative benefit programs that are much better than the average employee gets, in jobs that more job security and in some cases make more money than their private sector counterparts, that ain’t gonna happen,” he said. “But the only way it’s not going to happen is if there’s transparency and if the cover is blown, so that pressure is brought to bear to make changes.”

For Michigan's government, the question is, What recession?

"Barack Obama hates businessmen...the entire profession...the evidence is overwhelming"

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Okay, it’s time to finally admit it: Barack Obama hates businessmen. Not just certain businessmen, mind you, but the entire profession.

Of course President Obama will deny this. He told Businessweek magazine in a recent interview that he is not anti-business and that he believes in the private sector. But the evidence is overwhelming, and it helps explain why he is pursuing kamakazi-like economic policies that will damage the private sector in America.

Obama has demonized just about every business sector in America. Through the 2008 campaign to the present, he has gone after credit card companies, the coal industry, mortgage companies, real estate companies, steelmakers, utilities, drug companies, doctors, oil companies, Wall Street, defense contractors, and health insurance companies, just to name a few. In each case he has dinged them for greed, taking excessive profits, and failing to put people first. His criticisms have not been over minor matters but over their basic core functions, and their values or lack of them.

Obama demonstrates almost complete ignorance about the private sector and it’s no wonder: he has so little experience in it. He has spent his adult life in college, teaching college, and organizing communities. The one private sector job he has held, for a consulting firm in New York, he recounts as a terrible experience. In his memoirs he describes the experience as working for a private business “like a spy behind enemy lines.” He also recounts in his memoirs that the multinational corporations in the Indonesia of his youth were propelling the average worker “into deeper despair.” He likened the presence of corporations in his native Africa to a form of “neocolonialism.” Michelle Obama has beseeched young people, “We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we are asking young people to do. Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers, work for the community, be a social worker, be a nurse….move out of the money-making industry, into the helping industry.”