But now he's been fired as state Education Commissioner at his own request. You see, the governor had asked him to resign because he'd lied* about a screw-up that cost New Jersey $400 million in federal "Race to the Top" education funds. But Schundler asked that he be fired instead,... so he could collect unemployment benefits.
Here's the quote in the Star-Ledger:
“I asked if they would mind writing a termination letter, instead of a resignation letter, because I do have a mortgage to pay, and I do have a daughter who’s just started college,” he said in an interview this morning. “And I, frankly, will need the unemployment insurance benefits until I find another job. ... And they said fine. They said sure.”
Yes, people have mortgages to pay. People have families to support. Even when they've screwed-up, they still need to survive until they can find another job - and in this job market, that's not easy. This does make sense.
But Republicans like Schundler only value such things when it affects them personally. When it's other people facing joblessness, Republicans see no value in these programs at all. They're always eager to slash social spending. They rant about tax-cuts, tax-cuts, tax-cuts. They make government programs sound like it's all about black people (got to get the racial angle in there, don't they?) picking up welfare checks in their Cadillacs.
When it's about them personally, though, they're quite eager to take advantage of these things. After all, it only makes sense, doesn't it? They've got mortgages to pay and families to support. It matters, then. It just doesn't matter when it's someone else who needs this kind of help.
You see this with elderly Tea Partiers, too. They are adamant that government spending be slashed to the bone. However, you'd better not touch their beloved Social Security and Medicare (which just happen to be the biggest government spending programs of all). No, cut spending that benefits other people, not them. Because, obviously, spending that benefits other people is just... wrong.
In fact, polls show that two-thirds of people over 65 - people who are on Medicare, so they won't be affected by the bill at all - oppose the health care reform bill. A majority of people in every other age group - those who will be affected by it - support the bill. You see, the elderly have their own government health insurance, and they love it. But they fiercely oppose providing similar benefits to anyone else. After all, if it doesn't benefit you, personally, it's just a waste, right?
And most of these people reliably vote Republican (ironically, since the Republican Party fought tooth and nail against Social Security and Medicare and is still fighting against both programs).
Here's another example. Ken Mehlman, George W. Bush's campaign manager in 2004 and formerly chairman of the Republican National Committee, has just announced that he's gay. Apparently, it took a long time for him to come to grips with that. "It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life." Meanwhile, he was actively pushing a political party and a political philosophy that sought to deny civil rights to homosexuals.
Mehlman's leadership positions in the GOP came at a time when the party was stepping up its anti-gay activities -- such as the distribution in West Virginia in 2006 of literature linking homosexuality to atheism, or the less-than-subtle, coded language in the party's platform ("Attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country..."). Mehlman said at the time that he could not, as an individual Republican, go against the party consensus. He was aware that Karl Rove, President Bush's chief strategic adviser, had been working with Republicans to make sure that anti-gay initiatives and referenda would appear on November ballots in 2004 and 2006 to help Republicans.
Mehlman acknowledges that if he had publicly declared his sexuality sooner, he might have played a role in keeping the party from pushing an anti-gay agenda."It's a legitimate question and one I understand," Mehlman said. "I can't change the fact that I wasn't in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that. It was very hard, personally."
And, of course, why would you work to support civil rights for gay people if you hadn't realized you were gay yourself? Why would you support civil rights for other people? Republicans just don't seem to get that. If something doesn't affect them personally, why should they favor it?
Now, of course, Mehlman is all for gay marriage and other civil rights. Now it affects him personally, so now he sees it as important. The article mentions Republicans like Dick Cheney who also support gay rights (though Cheney never seemed to think it a particularly important matter, did he?). But Dick Cheney has a daughter who's a lesbian. Is that what Republicans need? Do each and every one of them need to be gay, or at least have a gay family member, before they'll support civil rights for homosexuals?
I just don't get that. I'm not gay, but I support civil rights for everyone. I'm not religious, but I support freedom of religion. I'm white, but I've always opposed segregation and discrimination of racial minorities. And I've never, ever, received unemployment benefits, food stamps, or welfare payments of any kind, but I still understand the need for a strong social safety net.
I'm not a Republican, so me, me, me isn't the entire focus of my political and economic thinking. I support some policies that would probably hurt me personally, in the short-term, but would be beneficial to the nation as a whole. I want a fair, progressive tax rate, even if it means that I pay more taxes myself. Of course, what benefits my country as a whole is going to benefit me personally as well, at least in the long run. I understand that, too.
More importantly, I see civil rights as important in themselves, whether or not I'm a member of a minority that really needs such protections. (The majority doesn't really need such things, not in a democracy. But this is the other side, the complementary side, of any modern democracy - one side: majority rules; the other side: minority rights.)
I've always liked this quote by Martin Niemoeller:
First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
Isn't that, basically, why we support civil rights for everyone in this country? If you allow discrimination and oppression of any group - because, after all, you're not a member of that group yourself - why should you expect help when you're the target? Likewise, you may not need a social safety net yourself, but you might someday. What then, when you've spent a lifetime trying to gut such programs?
There's a lot I don't understand about Republicans (including why most of their policies are considered to be "conservative" at all), but this might be the biggest. Why do they support only those policies which will directly help them, personally (and even then, only in the short-term)? We are social animals. We have to live together. So why aren't they even a little concerned with the welfare of everyone else? This is our community, after all.
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*PS. It's a bit off-topic, but regarding the Schundler affair in New Jersey, I thought this was kind of funny, too. From TPM:
On Wednesday, Christie held a press conference in which he strongly blamed the Obama administration for the loss of federal funding, saying that Schundler had tried to fix an error in the state's application during his presentation to federal education officials, but they would not let him. Then on Thursday, the federal Education Department released a video of the presentation itself, showing the officials pointing out the error to Schundler, who was unable to correct it.
Of course, the first thing Republican politicians will do, in every situation, is to blame Barack Obama. But in this case, federal officials had a video to set the record straight. Oops! It turns out that Schundler had lied. Heh, heh. Well, lies have worked very well for Republicans over the years. Just look at Fox "News." These days, I'm sure that's the first thing any Republican politician will consider as a solution to a problem: can he lie his way out of it?
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