people on the local paper's website

[KellyHabersham]

*Not a big deal, just felt like ranting about it because it gets on my nerves*


Whenever one of the local papers has a city budget-related article on their website, people will frequently comment on how city employees allegedly make a lot of money, receive all sorts of benefits, and should have to take huge cuts in pay/benefits like the "rest of us".

And while people are certainly welcome to their opinion, whenever I've pointed out that it is NOT true that all city employees receive benefits or large salaries, people always "have" to give such comments a negative rating..........whereas comments towards firing or cutting the salaries/benefits of city employees ALWAYS receive positive ratings. It's like people seriously believe that because the city manager might make X amount of dollars, that "must" mean the same for all city employees.

[HYHYBT]

Some people don't realize the scope of "city employee" and do think only of city managers, the mayor, that sort of thing.

Others, sadly, are dumb enough to think the lady who takes your utility payment is making big bucks.

Never assume someone deserves a pay cut unless you know, at minimum, both what they do and how much they're paid.

[KellyHabersham]

My guess is that it's a little of both with some of these people..........and admittedly it's hard to comment on such articles without revealing which city department I work in and where, especially back when my library was on the list of places slated for closure.

[Red Panda]

Its been my experience that anybody on a local paper's website, or something that is similairly local, are the most biased people you will ever meet but also the people too dumb to find a more wide spread website to voice their views on. I wouldn;t take anything said on a local paper's website seriously in any way.

[Dreamstalker]

The Boston Globe's website is the same way, but the majority seems to be rational as in they actually listen. There are a lot of Tea Party trolls on the site that don't even live anywhere near here!

[MadMike]

The same thing happens in our local paper, but since we're in the Harrisburg area, which is the capital city of PA, it's the state employees that people like to take potshots at. Never mind the fact that our wonderful governor likes to cut the budget by laying them off and freezing their wages, and uses them as pawns to gets his stupid ideas passed (i.e. if this tax increase doesn't go through, we'll have to lay off even more state employees.)

Of course, other people will direct the blame at the governor and the legislators, which is where it belongs, in my opinion.

[AdminAssistant]

In the local paper for my town, most of the ire gets directed at the University. The faculty and administration are all grossly overpaid, the students are just rowdy and obnoxious, nothing but trouble. The basketball team is just a bunch of thugs, until they win the NCAA, then we love them. We don't want students to rent apartments in our neighborhoods because they reduce property values, but we'll put Port-a-Potties on our lawns during football season and charge $5/visit.

Nevermind that there are 20,000 full time students on the main campus, and the University is by far the largest employer in town of both skilled and unskilled labor. Seriously, if you don't like it here, move to Tonganoxie or to Western Kansas with the rest of the hicks.

Of course, if there's any serious crime that doesn't involve students, it's Topeka's fault. Troublemakers from Topeka apparently love to come to our town to start fights and such, since there isn't anything to do there. I don't get it.

[fireheart17]

The same thing happens in our local paper, but since we're in the Harrisburg area, which is the capital city of PA, it's the state employees that people like to take potshots at. Never mind the fact that our wonderful governor likes to cut the budget by laying them off and freezing their wages, and uses them as pawns to gets his stupid ideas passed (i.e. if this tax increase doesn't go through, we'll have to lay off even more state employees.)

Of course, other people will direct the blame at the governor and the legislators, which is where it belongs, in my opinion.

We get that down here to an extent.

The more common people they'll whinge about are:

-Supermarkets (they actually refer to them as people). They whinge about prices, policies, state laws surrounding retail...
-teachers (this pisses me off)
-young people (because all young people must be dumb, violent, drunk, stupid, vapid and fail to take responsibility for their actions )
-retail workers (more commonly young people-see above)
-immigrants (because apparaently according to those who do bitch about it, we either accept Muslims (their translation: terrorists), or they'll take our jobs blah blah blah)
-homosexuals (apparaently homosexuals are pedophiles, they also do "disgusting behaviour in public"-which apparaently means that heterosexual behaviour is OK even if it's to the point of the couple in question screwing)
-the government (this one I can agree with to an extent: they can find $525million for a new football stadium but can't find money to fund vital health services)

[Red Panda]

To be fair the new stadium will likely pay for itself in time.

[protege]

To be fair the new stadium will likely pay for itself in time.

Don't be so sure of that. Pittsburgh got two new stadiums in the 1990s, by forcing voters (who didn't *want* them at all) to pay for it. Never mind that debt floated for Three Rivers in 1970 still hasn't been paid off No, we just *had* to build a new stadium so our baseball team (who has sucked for the past 17 years, and *still* manages to suck) would stay here. At least when the Steelers got Heinz Field...we were rewarded with two Super Bowls...and that one *always* sells out, no matter how bad the team is doing.

Back on topic here, people are still bashing our local transit authority. Mainly because they've been cutting back service, and because of the union, pay their drivers quite a bit more than they really should. Also coming under fire (and rightly so) is the management of the authority. There's so much corruption and waste, and they can't figure out how to fix it.

Then we have people like the mayor--aka the Woy Blunder. He's constantly screwing things up, like taking a junket to Seven Springs, while the city is buried under 2 feet of snow, and then throwing a tantrum when he was called out on it. The entire city knows that he's an idiot, yet they keep re-electing him?

[MadMike]

To be fair the new stadium will likely pay for itself in time.

As Protege pointed out, we've had taxpayer-funded stadiums since the '90s. I don't know if any of them paid for themselves or not, but that really isn't the point. The point was that they did it despite the unbelievably loud vocal backlash against it. We're supposed to have government "by the people", the people didn't want to pay for stadiums, and our wonderful governor told us, "Fuck you, you're paying for it anyway."

Meanwhile, our roads still suck, despite a couple increases in our gasoline tax that they claim was to improve the roads. Our roads don't look any better, but we have a bunch of nice new stadiums.

[Rapscallion]

To be fair the new stadium will likely pay for itself in time.

Worth considering that the hospitals will get people back on their feet faster, paying for themselves eventually by improving the economy (or mitigating the deleterious effects of sicknes). Not sure of any figures for this, but the logic is sound.

Rapscallion

[Fryk]

Ah, I actually MISS the antics of little Master Ravenstahl