Eugene T. Paslov: What are the Republicans doing?

It's difficult to discern if Republicans are doing anything to solve our economic problems. The Republican governors have an ideological agenda and are attacking unions, teachers and public employees. They're against collective bargaining and for vouchers (cripple public schools and now Medicare). They lash out at universities, cut middle class teacher wages and benefits (including retirees), dismantle government services (especially for the poor), and all the while allow the wealthiest corporations off the hook - tax breaks or no taxes at all. Republicans have no visible job-creating programs.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker jammed through a law forbidding collective bargaining for public employees (no deficit reduction there). He and his Republican State legislature, had more than 100,000 people show up in Madison, protesting, including Wisconsin farmers with their John Deere tractors. Farmers protesting. Pay attention.

There's an injunction restricting the anti-collective bargaining law's enactment because of an alleged open-meetings violation. Walker has ignored it.

Now, there's a state Supreme Court race in contention. He'll try to ignore that as well. And about half of the Republican State Legislators face recall petitions, and voters are ready to implement them.

The once-popular Republican governor's approval ratings have "tanked." It's doubtful Gov. Walker could get elected dog-catcher. Of course, he's trying to wait it out, hoping it will all go away. Not likely.

Other Republican governors in Michigan, Ohio, Florida and Nevada are experiencing negative reactions from the voting public when they attack teachers, police officers, firefighters and union-protected workers. These public employees are neighbors. The public also doesn't like it when neighbors are denied rights. They may not be pro-union but they believe in their neighbor's democratic rights. Governors should pay attention and talk with the neighbors (the workers' neighbors, not the governors').

In Nevada, a traditional right- to-work state, we've had protests - hundreds/thousands of student citizens - concerned about our university, colleges, K-12 schools and proposed wage and benefit reductions for retirees and public employees. Citizens understand, you can't impose draconian cuts on people and institutions, wage and benefits, government services and expect our state to survive. It won't.

Budget cutting has already occurred, and we still will have to increase taxes. That's the discussion the governors should be having, not how to put teachers on welfare and retirees on food-stamps.

This ideological agenda is compounded by Congressional Republican House members declaring an emergency meeting to cut funding for NPR (federal money spent on NPR is negligible). And then there is Congressman Peter King's hearings imposing a McCarthy-like hate spectacle on Muslim Americans - in the name of preventing terrorism. Incomprehensible.

This insanity leaves the R's without job-creating programs and bereft of traditional American rationality, common sense and decency.

• Eugene Paslov is a board member of the Davidson Academy at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the former Nevada state superintendent of schools. n