There is a quaint Southern tradition, now defunct, in which a servant is paid nothing for his/her work and severely and publicly castigated if he/she does not do a good job.
It’s called “slavery”.
Granted, council members are not indentured, nor are they bound to their seats by chains. And, yes, they know about the slave wages going in. But, still…
$1,953? A year? Isn’t that the salary of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh?
Well, yes, but we have health insurance. And travel. At $6 per hour, a burger-flipper at McChick-a-Sub makes over $12,000 a year, and for that they’re so grateful to have it that they honk a lung oyster into your Frost-a-Flurzee when no one’s looking. (Yeah, sure they don’t). If compensation equals responsiblity, I’m taking fries and a chocolate shake with all of my zoning requests, because it must be the counter-girl at the fast-food restaurant who’s more qualified to rule on them. We expect good and wise government, practically free of charge, in a society that tells us in one of its maxims that “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” We expect that the interests of the people who can afford to serve in government, like the wealthy (Harper) will be aligned with our own. We expect that the retired, people who started working a generation ago, (Evans, Gupton, Davis, Wilkerson, and Yount) will empathize with the needs of the employed, the working stiffs of today who actually pay the bills. Worst of all, we criticize Daeke and Alston for not being at every impossibly scheduled morning meeting because they have the gall to earn a living for their families. How is Bernard supposed to pay his taxes, anyway, if he doesn’t work? And how can Garry stress the importance of family while abandoning his own? Here’s another great American aphorism: “You get what you pay for.” These people, the men and women of the council, they do not owe you deep-discount government. You should know by now that anyone who tells you that you have the right to something for free, or practically for free, is selling you a bill of goods. |
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Ask yourself this: could you do a better job than your representative on the council? If so, could you afford to serve? What’s your boss going to say when you tell him or her that you need the morning off (on the clock, because, heck, you’ve got bills to pay too) to go to a Public Works meeting to talk about trash pickup. Or how about when you ask three days off with pay to go on a lobbying trip to Washington?
Don’t worry. Henderson’s big $1,953 will more than make up that lost income. |