Government Compensation

I read via another blog the following from USA Today:

So where is the new focus of the U.S.? Where are we devoting our resources? Here’s the scoop straight from USA Today… if you think you might throw up, stop reading:

“The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA Today analysis of federal salary data.

“Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months -- and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.

“Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time -- in pay and hiring -- during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.

“The highest-paid federal employees are doing best of all on salary increases. Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more increased from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009, the most recent figure available.

“When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.”

At college, your editor took a few law classes (it was a phase). We remember a phrase judges threw around a lot, especially in situations of gross injustice or patent obscenity: As they would say, this “shocks the conscience.”

For some reason this has me really pissed off, even on a Friday! Someone please talk me down. I realize that our government workers are really working hard for our benefit these days, looking at ways to save our society (and even the world), but how can this be happening at a time with huge deficits, huge unemployment (in the greedy private sector, of course), with no one talking about it with disgust? Maybe I'm being short-sighted, especially with the transportation dept.. I mean they've probably been working their fannies off given all of the shovel-ready projects they've had to oversee. I don't know about your roads, but ours here in Washington and Idaho are just dandy - as long as you have a 4-wheel drive to get through the pot holes!

Sorry to rant on a Friday