So the war on the workers continues in Biddeford. As our “proud city” pursues its transformation from blue-collar to designer-collar, a relentless campaign grinds on to push public employees backward economically.

Tuesday’s (10/11/16) Journal Tribune carried only the most recent evidence of municipal policy: A stated assertion that traditional compensation packages earned by public employees “are an incredible liability to the city.”

As is typical in such reactionary gambits, “big numbers” are thrown around without any context in which to understand them: “A press release issued by the city said an unfunded bill in excess of $13 million awaits Biddeford taxpayers in the form of employment benefits resulting from several municipal employment contracts.” (JT)

In much the same way, average homeowners grimly confront such an “unfunded bill” with their mortgages. These poor “leveraged” souls are sadly in the same allegedly desperate pickle as the so-called “taxpayers” for whom Biddeford’s mayor/council sheds tears/rends garments.

Quoting again: “‘It’s nothing that’s due immediately,’ (Mayor Alan) Casavant said, ‘but we are liable for that eventually to be paid, and that’s a substantial amount of money.’”

Substantial, but sustainable. In the same way that it’s considered quite mainstream for private households to indenture themselves to banking interests for hundreds of thousands of dollars over decades in order to secure a place to live, it’s long been accepted that doing the important work of civilization in municipalities required something like fair compensation for those who actually do the work. But – apparently, no longer.

Similar games have been run on our distracted population before. A decades-long (and ongoing) jihad against Social Security has been based on the same kind of dishonesty and mean-spirited spin. The privatizers throw big context-free numbers around and bemoan a (supposedly unanticipated) “demographic tidal wave” that will, they cry, sweep away fiscal “sustainability” and lead to inevitable “bankruptcy.”

Oh, dear. That sounds bad.

Luckily, neither the phony Social Security “crisis” nor this local antisocial attack on public employees’ living standards are based on facts. But it’s a sad commentary on what’s left of our declining political culture that such shameless societal aggressions are even attempted.

Richard Rhames
Biddeford