To the editor:
As public employees — school teachers, policemen, firefighters, whomever — come under increasingly aggressive and ugly attack from so many Republican politicians looking to score cheap political points, and because those public employees are fortunate enough to have good health care and retirement benefits, I have a question for two Cape Ann Republicans who have spent their entire careers in the public sector.
I am, of course, referring to the Tarr brothers, Brian and Bruce.
The news that Brian Tarr is retiring after 33 years in the Gloucester Public Schools system, most recently as assistant superintendent, also means he is going to begin receiving an extremely generous, publicly funded pension that many in his party — and the party of his brother, our state senator — claim we cannot afford.
Likewise, the younger Tarr brother, Bruce, has spent his professional life not in the dog-eat-dog world of private law practice, but in the cushy environs of Beacon Hill, where he now holds the most senior and important legislative post a member of the minority party in Massachusetts can hold.
Those many years of service, like his brother's time in the school system, guarantee Bruce Tarr a hefty public pension for the rest of his life, no matter how much longer he may serve in the state Senate.
My question is this: If, as members of the Republican party, you agree with the wholesale attack so many in your party are waging against public sector employees, would you please have the courage of your party's convictions and pledge to us all that, because so many people who have worked in the public sector are such obvious leeches and entitled ne'er do wells, that you both are going to forego your generous public pensions because, as public employees, you know, deep down, you really didn't earn them.
I am not being facetious here, I am quite serious.
And, given the ugly assault so many in the Republican party are waging against so many dedicated public service sector professionals, I think it is a question that warrants an answer from two of Cape Ann's most prominent Republican public servants.
MICHAEL COOK
Porto Viejo de Limon, Costa Rica,
and Gloucester
