There it was staring me right in the face the whole time, The Pigs and Dogs have it really well.
This page title and the pigs and dogs line, for those of you who do not remember, is a reference to the book, Animal Farm, by George Orwell. I am referencing this because what we have for The State Of Maine, is the double standard of the Pigs. If you remember in the story the Pigs deserved all the apples, for their brain work was hard. The Pigs also controlled all the money, to use for the greater good (which turned out to be their greater good). Whenever the Pigs had a desire they changed one of their seven laws ever so slightly, that the animal population did not really notice. Today the Pigs still run the state and the Dogs have all the paying positions in the private state. The private state has changed with the Dogs in charge, the public state has not. No longer do Dog companies offer full pensions, no longer do their companies offer good health benefit packages. Most companies have some form of 401k, which is really just the worker saving money in a gamble that it will increase, or even be there, when that imaginary day of retirement comes. The Dogs companies have lousy overpriced health care offerings for their employees, where the employee shells out more than half of their earnings for marginal benefits, with high out-of-pocket costs on top of high deductibles.The Dogs also seek and get many tax breaks from the Pigs, who have always been thankful for the Dogs.
The State worker, the Public worker, the Administration, almost without exception make more in salary and benefits, than their private state counter parts. Why is this? Is it justifiable? What do you think? Perhaps at one point, we, the state, thought it was the model for business to follow. Perhaps at one point we followed an old business model. But that model is dead. In the private state only executive Dogswine get the benefits they deserve for their brain work. In the private state business uses outside contractors and independent sources for much of its labor to reduce cost and liability. In this way, the private state has power to negotiate its contracts, always reaching a lower price; thus a satisfactory outcome. Our state needs to find ways to create jobs with our tax money. I say contract out the work to the people in the state. Let more Dogs in. Why does the state need to pay a $40,000 salary plus benefits to a photographer in the state's employ? Are there no photographers willing to take the state's call, when it's picture day? Why must all the plowing be state trucks on state runs? Are they better, more capable of doing the job right? Are the state plows cheaper to run? Probably not.
The state has actually sucked away the jobs for itself. It only wants to invest in itself as well. Take for example, investments in subsidized housing. We artificially lower the rent, so the private sector does not have to pay the employee enough to rent. We pay the rent for them through the state taxes instead. Yet we already gave the low interest loan to the private LLC to build this beautiful new low cost housing unit. The Dog makes money, The Pig gets fat and Human Services keeps their low income clients. We get hit three times for this. Our money is continually wasted.
Another example, we have a huge mental hospital, Dorothea Dix (BMHI), which costs millions to heat, has minimal clients, could never ever turn a profit as a private business, and we pay state employees to run it with huge benefit packages. The Dogs would never own it. These things, and many other examples of this kind of thinking need to be addressed. We need to get some share of those apples back from the Pigs. Let's start saving the state money by creating a private, competitive jobs market. Everything from Accounting and Labor to Photographer and Priest should be outsourced by the state, to the state. No other business really tries to pay a livable wage. Why should we? Well it's all something to think about.
Talk to you soon, Ms. Paula Page
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