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salaries by $3,300!!!!! At a cost of about $1.5 million, total. Think how many poor people's food, medical, education and gas bills that raise could cover, or how many hopes and dreams it could foster, with small business grants, scholarships or community projects.
Real pricks we have in the Diebold Congress.
I remember back in the so-called energy "crisis" when Enron was stealing $9 billion from California, and Dem Gov Davis was getting dissed by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies and Bushite fascists for being unable to control the budget, thinking that if everyone making fat salaries with full benefits in Calif's extensive government would take a 5% or 10% pay cut, starting with the governor, we might get somewhere with closing the Enron theft gap. And I thought: how great it would be if Dem politicians, out of sympathy for workers and the poor, would LOWER THEIR OWN SALARIES, even just a little bit. How heartening it would be! To know that somebody in power is not in it entirely for the money, and CARES and SYMPATHIZES with the all the people who have no power to raise their own salaries, and who nevertheless PAY TAXES--often with the poor paying at the highest rate--to bolster our politicians' lifestyles.
But no, it never occurred to Davis--and wouldn't occur to most other Dems.
Morales and Lopez Obrador have the right idea. When people are hurting, it is not okay to go on with business as usual. When people are hurting, the luxuries that public officials receive hurt them more--steal food from their tables, and clothes off their backs, and warmth from their homes.
It's so real, and so personal, to say: No, I will not accept this extra money, beyond my real needs, when those whom I serve have nothing.
And this means MORE than just the amount of money involved in cutting back public officials' salaries. The leaders WHO WOULD THINK THIS WAY would ALSO likely be the ones who would understand and sympathize with the plight of small farmers facing the giant U.S. agricultural industry. And the leaders who would never give a thought to their personal wealth and lifestyle, vis a vis their constituents, would be more likely to side with the rich and powerful, and be unable to see both the personal and social grief that big corporations inflict.
In my California dream, I went on the fantasize an army of young people, fresh out of college, and maybe old people, too, wanting a chance to contribute, willing to work in Calif's government for very modest, working class level salaries--replacing those with big salaries who are often doing the public disservice anyway--and re-energizing government of the people, by the people and for the people. Government professionals argue that they have to get salaries comparable to big corporations, in order to attract the best professionals to government. Not so! There are plenty of potentially highly motivated, brilliant people who would bring new ideas, great competence and a reformist attitude to government, who would work for less! And I think they would do so with fabulous enthusiasm, on a reformist program.
But I was dreaming. A dream of good government, of real government, of OUR government! It may come to that anyway--after this fascist coup has busted our country: that we all have to pitch in, and that ever increasing government salaries and associated corruption will simply be impossible. We will be bankrupt and sorely pressed to keep our roads in repair and bottom-line services. This is very nearly the case already, in many places. For Congress to RAISE its own salaries in these circumstances is mind-bogglingly corrupt. Just think of the inspiration they could have given by lowering them!
Kudos to Morales and Lopez Obrador! True men of the people!
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