Corbett's Slashing of Teaching and other Public Sector Jobs Featured in The Nation Magazine

Last edited Thu Mar 29, 2012, 02:02 PM - Edit history (1)

The above photo is from a recent protest by college students outside the Pa. capitol.
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http://www.thenation.com/article/167050/states-went-red-2010-massive-public-sector-job-losses-came-next

"Red States See Massive Public Sector Job Losses

March 27, 2012

"The conservative Republicans who took power in Pennsylvania in 2010 have had a busy year. Republican state legislators, empowered by new control of the governorship and the state house, proposed one of the most stringent mandatory ultrasound bills in the country. The House passed a voter identification law that could block 700,000 Pennsylvanians from voting, most of them young, of color, and poor. Meanwhile, the same state legislators led a successful charge to shrink public employment. The number of government employees fell over 3 percent that year, one of the sharpest declines in any state. Before the cuts, “Pennsylvania [had] the second lowest number of state workers per capita, already,” said Rebecca McNichol, Pennsylvania state director of the CLEAR Coalition. Yet, she says, “this past year the budget was devastating” in deeper cuts.
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Pennsylvania isn’t alone. Republicans seized control of both branches of the legislature in 11 states after the 2010 elections. It’s in these very states that public sector layoffs are disproportionately concentrated, leading to one of the biggest rounds of job losses for the public workforce since record keeping began. Governors and state legislators promised to focus on creating jobs and balancing budgets during campaign season—even newly elected Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett still claims that creating jobs is one of his “top priorities.” Instead, these newly Republican states are targeting public workers, causing a significant drop in employment in the public sector that has threatened the entire economy.
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Nearly all of the job losses took place at the state and local level, and they were most severe in a handful of GOP-controlled states In other words, erosion of public sector employment isn’t a problem affecting the entire country equally—it’s a problem in particular states, thanks to very particular legislators. As the following chart shows, seven states laid off more than 2.5 percent of their own state and local workforce. Other states lost, on average, less than half a percent of their workforce.

... the legislators who took office in 2010 are not just dedicated fiscal conservatives focused on balancing the budget. Many of these losses were suffered after right-wing state governments made decisions not to raise revenue or to trim fat where it could be trimmed. Governor Corbett came into office with a promise not to raise taxes, but went even farther by lowering corporate tax rates and imposing a low effective tax rate on drilling in the Marcellus Shale. These choices made the deficit even worse. “There could have been fewer layoffs than there were,” said Mark Price, an economist based in Pennsylvania. “They could have avoided this.”
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"I can't go down without a fight. Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to... to show the Capitol they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games," says Peeta.

(From the book The Hunger Games)