Lately, I keep noticing a completely bizarre and biased tone on stories NPR is airing. Thursday night, it was the piece about how Camden, NJ is falling apart 100% thanks to the wildly overpaid and prone-to-outrageous-absenteeism police force. A more ludicrously anti-union and anti-worker piece of propaganda I can't even think of right now, it was deeply mystifying.
I can think of MANY occupations which are objectively overcompensated. "Cop" is not one of those. Maybe the mixed these public servants up with "CEO", another job description of three letters and starting with a C ... ?
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As a New Jersey native, I have to say, NPR is on to something here. There are gigantic problems with legal loopholes regarding public-sector pensions, often involving cops, judges, and others taking on a couple of part-time jobs and reaping truly unbelievable benefits.
A police chief near my hometown recently "retired" from his $150,000 job, received a roughly $150,000 annual pension, and returned to the job a year later as a contractor--while continuing to collect the pension. One employee for the price of two! That's the public-employee culture in New Jersey, and no one in "public service" has an interest in closing those loopholes.
Taxes are already super-high in N.J., prompting a net population loss in recent years. (The house my parents sold in 2006 now costs $12,000 a year in property taxes alone. Absurdly, my hometown, with only the usual sorts of suburban crime, employs an anti-terrorism SWAT team! And the part-time mayor hired a relative to be his "press spokesperson," even though we no longer have any press in town.)
Seriously, because of everyone in New Jersey grasping for public money, the state is flat broke. When a teacher can retire in her early fifties and get a full pension for herself and totally free healthcare for life for herself and for her spouse well into their eighties--as nice as that idea is, it was never really sustainable, and won't be unless the state gets ruthless about completely rampant corruption.
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