Like many others in the fraternity of armed tax-feeders, Mercer County, New Jersey Sheriff Kevin Larkin is “douple-dipping”: He is drawing a salary and a pension for the same job, sucking down money earned by productive people to the tune of $215,000 a year.
Recently Larkin removed his snout from the public trough long enough to engage in Brownshirt-style classroom intimidation of a professor who dared to speak his name in a tone other than that of chastened reverence.
During a February 1 political science class, Michael Glass, an associate professor at Mercer County Community College, “was conducting a discussion of what changes students would propose to the state budget to avoid the expected $2 billion shortfall,” reported Dmirty Gurvits in the college newspaper. “Some students suggested cutting the salaries of what they felt were overpayed [sic] state administrators.”
After Glass mentioneded officials who “double-dip,” the students asked for an example. He cited “several law enforcement officers, including Sheriff Larkin, who collects a Police and Fire Retirement System Pension as well as a government salary” — an $85,000 annual “retirement” pay-out, as well as a $129,634 salary.
When one of his students commented that he didn’t know what he would do with that much money, Glass reportedly commented: “In the case of the Sheriff, it’s not that much. He has [to pay] child support and alimonies.” (Of course, many people in the productive sector deal with similar problems without getting more than 200K in money plundered from others at gunpoint.)
Glass wasn’t aware that one of his students, a Mercer County Clerk named 26-year-old Brooke Seidl, had — in the fashion of a secret police informant — relayed the Sheriff of Glass’s comments via text message.
Shortly thereafter, campus security received a message from Larkin saying that he needed “to reach Prof. Michael Glass.” When the note was delivered to the instructor during class break, he dismissed it as a joke and returned to his lecture.
About a half-hour before the class ended, “Sheriff Kevin C. Larkin, dressed in a trenchcoat, opened the door to Prof. Glass’s classroom,” continues Gurvits’s account. The Sheriff, accompanied by a female aide, summoned the teacher to a brief conversation outside the classroom.
When they returned to the room, the professor — with the Sheriff looming no more than “six inches from him,” according to one eyewitness — apologized for “making disparaging comments” about the stainless public servant who had barged into his class.
“This isn’t over,” growled Larkin as his swagged from the classroom, leaving the choking stench of bullying arrogance in his wake. Just before the doors shut, the sheriff fired off a parting contemptuous salvo: “You’re a terrible teacher, you should get your facts from a book.”
Not content to pollute Glass’s classroom, Larkin on the following day made a phone call to Jose Fernandez, executive director of the college’s Human Resources department, to complain about Glass’s “conduct.”
Dr. Robin Schire, Dean of the Liberal Arts Division at Mercer Community College, offered an apt summary of the episode: “The idea of having a police presence challenging a professor and taking him out of class is something seen in a police state.”
It is also a likely harbinger of what we can expect from the coercive caste as it protects its perquisites amid an accelerating economic collapse.
11:35 am on February 20, 2010
