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Leaping Off Tall Buildings

In the Great Depression, reputedly, when Wall Street crashed bankrupted financiers leapt to there death out New York windows.  In todays Great Recession public employees are being pushed to leap off City Hall roofs.
Last week, pleading looming pension crisis and budget gap, the City of Costa Mesa, California laid off 200 of it's 450 employees, mostly less well paid ones, and a pink-slipped 29 year old maintenance worker committed suicide. Apparently to explain the suicide, the layoffs and the plans to  dissolve departments outsource city services to profit making companies, the city hired a $3,000 communications officer.  Perhaps he will be able to explain how outsourcing the services saves money after you add profits onto the cost of services.  What is clear is that whomever is brooming and mopping City Hall will be making less.  

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