Posted by JM Ashby
Any wingnut you can stick in front of a camera these days expresses fantastical visions of cutting the federal work force to reduce spending and to force public employees to "learn how to make it like the rest of us," as if public employees don't actually do any work.
The idea of a public employee is often framed as some kind of abstract idea or person who doesn't actually exist, but these are real people doing real jobs who have real families and real bills to pay. Unfortunately for David de Alba of Vallejo, California the fact that he had a real family and bills to pay wasn't enough to save his job. The city of Vallejo went into bankruptcy following the crash of the real estate market and rather than draw money from property, and risk offending bond-holders, they have chosen to take it out on the working class instead.
David de Alba, a 45-year-old mechanic who has worked for the city for eight years, typifies this process. Vallejo has slashed its budget to get its books in order, reducing its general fund payroll by more than 100 workers, or about 30 percent, since 2007. De Alba has seen his monthly pay drop by about $1,000.
Last summer, after missing mortgage payments, he went into default. In November, he filed for personal bankruptcy. Financial troubles strained his marriage, and his wife left him, taking their teenage children with her. This month, the bank foreclosed on his house. He moved out last Friday, relinquishing his home of nearly two decades. He now plans to move to a trailer park.
De Alba puts the blame for this descent squarely on the city.
"They pretty much destroyed my life," de Alba says. "They put the whole burden on the working class guy."
There seems to be little thought paid to the fact that cutting public programs means cutting jobs, and as long as public employees are painted as an abstract idea or group of people that don't really exist, their jobs will be threatened. The narrative that civil servants don't count when it comes to creating or saving jobs needs to be retaken.
If you want to see just how little compassion some people have for government employees, just watch these two Teabaggers on Hardball last week
Venomous.