Friday, Feb. 8, 2008 | 2 a.m.
Tony Cook’s Wednesday article (“At county, two at top looking out for workers”) about Clark County Commissioners Tom Collins and Chris Giunchigliani was both enlightening and depressing.
Both commissioners have a real passion for the welfare of working people. That passion is genuine and it applies to all workers, both government and private sector. But here’s their problem: They can’t do anything about private-sector employment, which grew less than 1 percent in 2007 in Clark County (versus 5 percent growth in Clark County government employment).
Make no mistake, if they could push a button and give back the 8,000 jobs lost in construction, finance and real estate in ’07, they’d do it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, they can’t. They can, however, push their voting buttons and give to government workers the highest possible compensation and best benefits imaginable, which is exactly what they always do.
It is this mind-set, of taking care of the government workers they can help while leaving the rest to their fate in a market economy, that turns their well-intentioned passion into a cruel, vicious and heartless political machine that has already destroyed the fabric of our society and twisted these two decent people into nothing more than coldblooded agents for Government Inc.
Their minds are closed. They are happy and secure in their dogmatic delusions and it is the people of Clark County who suffer because of it.
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