In the last couple of years, many of us have been laid off, worked at places where people have been laid off, had friends who were laid off, or had to lay people off. It is tough, but often it has to be done by management for them to be responsible stewards of the organization. Last week, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles (and former Speaker of the California Assembly) Antonio Villaraigosa described the “tough decisions” that he had to make in “extricat[ing]” the people of LA from 3,500 government employees.
In Villaraigosa’s own words, “we’re doing furloughs and layoffs, we’re doing everything we can, including early retirement, to reduce the size of our payroll.” Sometimes a responsible leader in the private sector or the public sector has to do this. But that isn’t what you are going to hear from Democrats this year. Democrats like Barbara “Ma’am” Boxer are going to demonize Republicans, like Carly Fiorina, who were involved in layoffs because it was the responsible thing to do. Of course, the dems will have supporters and fundraisers, like Mayor Villaraigosa, who sometimes do the right thing. Not because they want to, but because they have to.
Erick has lead the charge in picking candidates who will do the right thing in office. They will fight against ridiculous bailouts for the public employee unions. (that’s what these state stimulus bills are, just like the auto-bailout was a bailout for the pension plans of the United Auto Workers) These leaders will also need to make the “tough decisions.” We And when they do it, regardless of party, we need to support their efforts to shrink public expenditures and public payrolls.
And when the Democrats attack on “layoffs” and similar demonization of responsible leadership, we need to fight back harshly and expose their hypocrisy.