Michael Maiello's picture

    Pigs At The Trough

    By Michael Maiello on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 12:04pm |

    Leave it to my old friend Charlie Gasparino to just blithely toss out offensive descriptions of public sector workers in America.  Here, in an otherwise sane commentary about the political uses and abuses of investment analyst Meredith Whitney, he refers to public sector employees as "living off the public trough."

    Which is a funny way to put it.  Because nobody would say that Charlie Gasparino is "living off the trough of Fox Business News," which is his employer.  I bet that if you walked up to him and described his work that way that he would take umbrage.  He's actually one of business journalists great umbrage takers, so it'd be a site to behold.  He would tell you, quite rightly, about how he shows up at the studio early and stays late, making himself available for hits on any number of shows.  He would tell you that he earned his money, damn it.

    I would say the same thing if I were accused of "living off the trough" of my employer.  I'm not here hanging out.  I'm working.  There's a cost to me being here.  That cost is > free.  But there's work to be done and so the company pays me to do it.

    I'm not sure in what world that me and Charlie are any different than a municipal worker, or an employee of a charitable or non-profit institution.  Whether you're asked to put up drywall for a bank or a church doesn't change the fact that somebody is purchasing your labor, right?

    The demonization of public employees has got to stop.  It's already become so common that it's become casual.  I doubt Gasparino even thought twice about using those words.  When Jamie Dimon goes to Davos and tells people to stop bashing bankers because it isn't right and isn't fair, that gets worldwide press coverage.  But nobody seems to want to stand up for sanitation workers, for the people who keep the water flowing to your taps or who clean up the park and keep it safe.  Police and fire officers and teachers and social workers are all "at the trough" while the rest of us work for a living and earn our keep.  What a deluded moral world we inhabit.

    Comments

    Amen.  We've sure come a long way from the 9/11 aftermath in that regard, when some among the commentariat and elected officials were expressing a newfound appreciation for the contributions these dedicated public servants (and one actually heard descriptions along those lines at the time of the work of public sector employees) make to our society. 

    What has changed since that time?  Did these heretofore unsung heroes and heroines just stop doing their jobs since then?  It's as though within a year's time we've done a 180 from trying to stimulate the economy to thinking we can somehow cannibalize our way to economic health.     


    by AmericanDreamer on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 12:27pm

    I hate the term pigs at the trough.

    It isn't the pigs they're concerned about really; it's they don't want the older, fat ones, those making a decent living, they want young piglets, they can exploit. The big sows they want slaughtered.

    It's all about the cost benefit ratio, Adult (more mature) vs Piglets (newbies working for the government)  cheaper (factoring in Vet expenses and feed) than an older ones. 

    http://www.thepigsite.com/stockstds/4/pig-farm-costs-and-example-of-pig-farm-running-costs-in-the-uk

    They like a disrupted, high unemployed workforce, which directly relates to how much money they get to keep. 

    They don't want to pay higher taxes in order to get the sewers from backing up or the trash taken from the house, to eliminate the vermin that might gather.

    It's all about them and to heck with anyone else making a living wage. Selfish      


    by Resistance on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 1:00pm

    I <3 ya, destor.  I really <3 ya

    Somewhere in my disorganized clippings is one from a conservative economic commentator stating that public employees represented ~60% of the total workforce.  

    If we add to that employees of subsidized industries like defense contractors and their suppliers, the percent of people 'feeding from the public trough' is even higher.  One way of looking at it is that public employees are what keeps the general economy chugging along.

    Gee, I wish I knew some enterprising young journalist who could verify the percent of public to private employees. 


    by EmmaZahn on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 1:07pm

    http://wiki.answers.com/Q/List_number_of_us_employees_private_sector_vs_public_sector


    by Resistance on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 1:13pm

    That seems a good start.  Then you'd have to figure out how many private sector jobs would dissapear without the demand (both business and consumers) from the public work force.  Of course, there'd be a much higher percentage of private domestic workers if somebody hadn't outsourced all those jobs...


    by Michael Maiello on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 1:28pm

    Thanks for the attempt but did you actually read that non-answer?

    If you haven't already, please read this story about a company with a business plan to garner eyeballs for advertisements by flooding the internet with articles about everything from almost anyone and does not care whether or not the information is accurate.   It just wants to be the site(s) at the top of a search engine's list of finds.

    GIGO.  I generally hate new rules and regulations but in this case I may be willing to make an exception.   Polluting minds is probably more lethal than polluting bodies.

    Demand Media's Planet of the Algorithims


    by EmmaZahn on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 1:39pm

    You saw Arianna Huffington's big search engine hit the day before the AOL deal, right?  A story headlined "What Time Does The Super Bowl Start?" with a lede that went, "Wondering what time The Super Bowl Starts?"

    Gack.


    by Michael Maiello on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 1:46pm

    Sorry, no, I missed that.   Niether Arianna nor Huffpo nor the Super Bowl are on my radar nowadays.

    But I did google gack because I could only guess what it meant from context.  

    I guessed you meant something like a reflexive gag since I remembered gack or gak as a messy toy thing that resembled... you know.   

    Still not sure which could be proof of the declining usefulness of search engines or the disintegation of English into various jargons -- or both.

    According to my google, it is very widely used --- probably because of how it sounds.

    http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Gack.

    No response required here - just stream of consciousness rambling.

     


    by EmmaZahn on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 4:09pm

    Actually I might call Fox News a trough. :-)

    I have mixed feelings about public sector employees. My first two or three jobs were as summer intern with a county Office of Facilities and Management and a now-defunct federal agency that happened to have an office a few miles from my parent's house. There were hard workers in both places, but there were some real slackers, too. One fellow showed up, read the Wash Post, read the Congressional Record, clipped out the articles he liked and put them in a scrapbook, did a little work, and thought about lunch. His afternoon was mostly a nap. He got really testy when the boss lady tried to get him to do something.

    An admin assistant there once advised two of us not to work so hard because we might not have anything to do tomorrow. (I recall being very surprised she had supported Wallace over Humphrey, her being black and all, but she said she knew what to expect from him. She wasn't sure about McGovern, either.)

    I've had various roommates, tennis buddies and GFs that were Feds. They all had stories of ingrained inefficiency. However .... I have also worked at private firms that were every bit as bureaucratic and hidebound as the government, with the boss's wives or kids snooting around those of us that had to look busy.


    by Donal on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 1:13pm

    I have no doubt that some public agencies are badly run or have slackers working there.  But, as you say, those things are true everywhere.  I suppose that because they're using taxpayer dollars people feel more of a right to take issue with the existence of, say, a lazy transit worker than a lazy employee at Facebook.

    But I suspect people are also looking for excuses to not have to spend their tax money and "those lazies don't deserve it," resonates nicely.  Otherwise they could just as easily argue that public agencies should have more money that they could use to hire better motivated people.


    by Michael Maiello on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 1:26pm

    Your experience supports my theory that the true economic purpose of so very many of our 'jobs' is to keep money moving.  I just wish we could find a less boring way to do that.   


    by EmmaZahn on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 1:51pm

    The right has two problems with public-sector employees: they are largely unionized, and the jobs -- by their nature -- are harder to outsource abroad. So the game plan is: first de-unionize the private sector (check); second, ship as many of those jobs as possible overseas (check); next, split the working class by demonizing govt. employees ("pigs at the trough"); then privatize the bulk of those govt. jobs on grounds that that the private sector is always more efficient (i.e., cheaper).

    Taxpayers buy in, only to find too late that their taxes have not fallen and they are instead doing a former public-sector job at half the pay while a middleman pockets the difference. In the process, the tax base has been decimated, and entire parts of the public safety net are deemed unsustainable. So if you've still got a job, hang on to it and don't make waves, because you're going to be working it till you die.

    Let's pray their plan never comes to fruition. Oh, wait.


    by acanuck on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 3:20pm

    Nice catch/comment


    by Michael Wolraich on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 3:42pm

    Things are so different from less than one year ago?


    by wabby on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 11:01pm

    What's the difference between the "pigs at the trough" argument and

    ....technocrats like flies. Highly educated but completely unimaginative people that when you suggest anything that is not within the realm of what they had drummed into their abused little brains, are totally at a loss. Most in Washington fit this description....

    ?

    Isn't it basically the same complaint about federal bureaucrats' salaries being not just a waste of tax dollars, but a threat to innovative thinking? Isn't it something liberals often complain about? Would you say that overall liberals in the blogosphere are happy with their financial regulatory bodies right now? Their State Dept. employees? Their Mining and Mineral Services? Etc.

    We can always avoid this blatant dichotomy in the liberal blogosphere by claiming that "they"  are only talking about teachers and fireman. But  in reality, that's not always who "they" are talking about. "They" are often complaining about the very same types that many liberals complain about while saying they support government employment. "They" just think it's hopeless and you are better off with smaller federal government and even smaller state government.

    Many liberals say they support government employment, but they seem to be very unhappy with the employees doing that work right now. How can one honestly support government employment when one is so unhappy with the federal government (outside of Congress, that is)? Where are we going to get all these clones of Elizabeth Warren and of the few other Federal employees that the liberal blogosphere supports? And what replacement jobs will be given to those that they don't support, all those over-educated uninnovative beltway technocrats (and worse, evil FBI and CIA such) that are supposedly dragging us down?

    And why is it bad for Obama to admit that some bureaucracy has gotten out of hand? Many liberals used to support William Proxmire and his Golden Fleece Awards..


    by artappraiser on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 4:22am

    Very well said, aa.


    by Verified Atheist on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 8:33am

    Hey Double A,

    I think more of them are talking about firemen and teachers than you might expect.  For one thing, this diss was in the context of a discussion of municipal defaults.  So the real issue there are local pensions.  Retirement for the federal work force is covered and, well, it's as solvent as anything.  It's the local governments that have a problem.  But even at the federal level, look what's being attacked -- wages for soldiers.  Veterans benefits.  The Republicans don't seem to me to be going after ineffective SEC investigators.

    I don't want to dismiss what you're saying though.  Federal employees bring a lot of this on themselves by drawing the public into Byzantine situations.  Government procedures are too often dehumanizing and even degrading to people who find themselves involved in them.  So, yes, these people could probably fend off a lot of criticisms by doing their jobs better, particularly when they interact with the public.  But I've had dehumanizing and degrading experiences with all manner of private-sector employees as well.  And fine, with Mistress Sylvia that was actually good customer service, but with my cell phone company?  Not so much.


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 9:12am

    in the context of a discussion of municipal default

    Yes, and I admit I wasn't, I was just talking about the general attitude that leads to the use of such a term.

    It's just gotten to the point where it drives me nuts to see liberal bloggers talk out of both sides of their mouth on the Federal government.  The message: "the Federal government sucks and are all elite clueless wankers, and the solution is to make it bigger and more powerful." Surprised And then they also wonder why self-identified liberals can't rise above 25% of the population, pondering why more people don't want to identify with liberals. Ever thought of promoting examples (besides SS and Medicare) of how the federal government doesn't suck? Is it they don't have any except from 80 years ago in a different age under different conditions? I.E., anybody up to supporting Obama's fight for high speed rail funds, or do they really just want to continue bitching about a centrist Democrat-in-name-only corporate-toady administration, all wankers?

    A suggestion to read  Joe Stacks' manifesto, the one he wrote before he flew his plane into the IRS building in Texas. He uses  the phrase"pigs at the trough" in it;  supposedly was a hero to some tea partier types, but he also sounds in many (many!) of the paragraphs exactly like a ton of liberal blogosphere rants I've read about the government and supposed corporate cronyism. He wasn't mad at teachers or firemen or government pensions, he just thought the federal government was useless. I think that's the most common use of the term "pigs at the trough." I think you in particular would get a lot out of it.

    P.S. Your friend Gasparino actually didn't use "pigs." He just said:

    the difficulty of telling municipal workers and others living off the public trough that there isn't enough money to give them everything they want, and of making the unpopular choices of cutting budgets drastically or raising taxes.

    You are actually doing a bit of making him into a straw man, he wasn't "bashing" those workers or calling them pigs.


    by artappraiser on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 2:15pm

    P.P.S. A just found example:

    In another such fortuitous coincidence, one of the top beneficiaries of the new White House rail bailout is GE Transportation — the leading manufacturer of diesel-electric locomotives. President Obama recently named GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head the new White House jobs council.

    Who said that? A liberal blogger? Nope: the answer.


    by artappraiser on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 2:27pm

    Charlie knows what image he's conjuring.  My point is really that when we talk about private sector employees we tend to say they "make a living from the work they do" while when we talk about public employees we say they "make a living off of the government."  As if one group is more noble or better or even more moral than the other.

    But I dont't want to make this about semantics.  I think you're absolutely right that people should point to government programs that do work rather than complain out of one side of their mouths while advocating bigger government through the other.

    But you know, municipal workers did a really good job getting me to work today, and then to and from my lunch meeting and they're going to take me home soon.  I pay for it, but it's a reasonable price, especially compared to what I used to pay to drive around in a previous life.


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 3:34pm

    Related news regarding Gasparino's suggestion that neither political side wants to help the states:

    Obama to propose relief for states.....


    by artappraiser on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 1:42pm

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