If you read this blog for more than five minutes, you learn I have been somewhat unsparing in expressing my concerns about the management of the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System. I want to assure my readers that nothing I say on this topic should be viewed as a criticism of those who choose to make their careers in public employment.
Joyce and I have many dear friends and acquaintances in Eugene and elsewhere who have been public workers. Please know we have the deepest admiration and respect for them and everyone like them.
Going back as long as I can remember, I never felt our government at any level was bad or evil. I grew up in the 50’s and early 60’s, and I believe my view of government was shared pretty widely back then.
Then, as we passed through the 60’s and 70’s, this changed dramatically, not without justification. Those were times of major upheavals in our society, and, as we know, large numbers of Americans came to distrust, even hate, their own government.
This distrust was institutionalized if not further fomented with the election of Ronald Reagan. His message that “government is the problem” took strong root and persists to this day.
I still don’t buy it.
Our public workers are people who show up every day, without fanfare, often without the compensation available in the private sector, to teach our kids, keep us safe and healthy, provide our electricity and water, keep us moving, and stand ready to respond to any emergency. Their contributions have always been vital to our nation, but over the course of this pandemic, they have distinguished themselves as heroes.
I could cite many events where we all thanked God there was a public employee on the other end of the line. But I want to share a story about one person in particular whose name most of us would not recognize.
This is the story of public worker Pat Harten, a regular person like you and me, doing his job as he did every day, when he was confronted with an extraordinary situation. Pat Harten was the air traffic controller at La Guardia airport in New York who received the mayday call from Sully Sullenberger on January 15, 2009.
What follows is a 13-minute interview with Pat Harten on the tenth anniversary of this event. His description of the event is riveting enough, to be sure, but that’s not the sole reason I am sharing this. Be sure to listen to the last part starting at about 8:45 into the interview. That part speaks volumes about the goodness in us as Americans, something we don’t seem to hear enough of anymore. God bless him and all our public workers.
If you’re interested in a little more to this story, here’s an article about Pat when he ran the New York marathon in 2018.
I’ll get to the video later but would like to throw out a few comments.
Ronald Reagan’s election and reelection was testimony about the public opinion of “government” after the one term of Jimmy Carter. It was a chaotic period as I recall: hostages, shortages of everything from sugar and canning jars to gas lines.
While few would argue our Oregon public servants are not deserving of their pay and benefits, there’s pretty wide agreement that the teacher unions have outsized political clout through both candidates and ballot measure campaigns. This permeates all branches and levels of state government and foments public distrust.
And shame on the politicians and their supporters who advocate defunding, redirecting funds and disarming our police!
You and I are on the same page about a lot of what you say, namely public employee unions and calls to defund the police (brought on in many cases by police unions).
With respect to your comment about Reagan and Carter: it’s important to view presidencies through increasingly longer lenses as the years go by. It provides needed prospective and usually shows that the prevailing myths about their terms in office are just that: myths. Reagan, wasn’t nearly as good a president as Republicans to this day make him out to be (I may elaborate on this in a future post). And Carter wasn’t nearly as bad as the standard takes (see Jonathan Alter’s recent book).
The Carter presidency was an especially complicated one. He likely was in over his head, too detail oriented, etc. But he was also handed a massive problem by the Nixon/Ford years: inflation, brought on by then Fed Chair Arthur Burns, hand picked by Nixon. Burns allowed Nixon to convince him to keep fed rates low despite a hot economy and rising prices to enhance Nixon’s 1972 re-election bid. By 1973, inflation was taking off like a rocket, only to be staunched by new Fed chair Paul Volker starting in 1979. Volker was very aggressive and by election day 1980 the U.S. had entered a recession. Carter, also wrestling with things like the hostages and oil price spikes, didn’t stand a chance. Reagan got none of the blame for the recession and all the credit after Volker had smashed inflation.