DG,
It isn't the current wage for police officers, firemen, and other public employees that are financially breaking state and local governments ... it is the totally unrealistic benefits packages that enable them to retire far earlier than most Americans and pay them retirement and medical benefits that pretty much keep them at the same level they were at immediately before they retired, as if they were still working! These unrealistic benefits packages are fraudulently "negotiated" between the public employee unions and the politicians the unions bought and paid for - so the politicians get political power (and all the goodies that brings); the unions get fat with taxpayer money because of dues paid from taxpayer-funded salaries and from fees on benefit plans they "administer" for their union members, and if they mismanage these benefit plans, they expect the government to bail them out; and the taxpayers simply get screwed. Some of these Socialistic houses of cards have fallen ... and many more are about to ... and many more Americans are cluing into the fact that the public service unions (unions that even FDR and George Meany did not believe should be allowed to exist!) and their puppet politicians have defrauded the taxpayers. The unions don't like the black eyes they're taking from the backlash, but the greedy lil' bastards don't have anyone to blame but themselves. 
B.
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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