Somehow, firing people with jobs became the Republican strategy for job creation. People who taught our children; policed our streets; picked up our garbage; put out our fires; built and maintained our parks, libraries, and roads for a living wage became the scapegoat for the impoverishment the private sector imposed on workers. Instead of organizing to win back their own living wages and lost benefits, people were convinced that taking away those of government workers would somehow make them better off. Divide and conquer politics. The politics of fear, hate, greed, envy and spite. The race to the bottom. Orchestrated by plutocrats, executed by conservatives, allowed by Democrats.