Attacks, verbal and canid

In recent news, I've seen attacks on two different groups, Wisconsin teachers and their collective bargaining, and Minnesota coyotes and their population spread. In both cases, it's hard to determine the virtue of the attacks. For example, what IS the benefit package for teachers? Has/will collective bargaining damage a fair balanced budget or damage student education? As for coyotes, some Minnesotans want to put a bounty on their head. Even if you accept killing as a management technique,would this be an ecologically sound response, or merely a way for the anti-coyote contingent to vent? Are both battles fights about symbols more than about the practicalities of community/environmental welfare? It makes someone feel vindicated to see an enemy fall. (Even if the enemy can rise again.)
The complaint in Minnesota is that coyotes are bothering and destroying more and more agricultural animals, like beef calves. (Anti hunting, pro animal rights groups tend not to value such arguments because they do not believe in raising and eating animals. The issue of deer eating plant crops is another matter.) But groups that support various forms of animal harvest, like the state's DNR which manages game hunting, do not think a bounty would lead to a significant population reduction and hence solve the "coyote problem." It's also difficult to exactly define damage by coyote. Picked over carcasses don't provide conclusive evidence. And evidence about "pest" animals is often anecdotal: I've heard of several nasty attacks on dogs, and in general it seems coyotes are a threat to outdoor pets.
 In Grundy County, Illinois, you get $15 for a dead coyote. Hunters of quail and pheasant think this will increase the number of birds they can flush and kill--so not a good deal for the pheasants anyway. But a representative of Illinois Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever  objected to the bounty, aiming to show that creating habitat with large inner core and reduced margins would be more effective. A much more disturbing case of coyote/human conflict occurred in Nova Scotia, when a young singer was mauled to death last year: that bounty is now $20.00 (Canadian). Human death by coyote is extremely rare, but all canid predators, including packs of dogs, can be dangerous.
Back to Minnesota, coyotes can be killed as nuisances; Janet McNalley had learned to protect her sheep from wolves with dogs, but the coyotes, those trickster figures, got around the dogs, and she went after the whole pack. For a different view of coyotes and predation, see:

I learned from a novel, Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, that coyotes, unlike wolves or mountain lions, are both predator and prey.That means they're programmed to breed prolifically, to be on the defense, and to be on the offense. That's a hard combination to beat. Coyotes tend to prove that we humans aren't so smart after all--or we need to be even more inventive in figuring out means of cohabitation. More thinking outside the box, which is something coyotes always seem to do.

Meanwhile, I'm not insisting on a strong correlation between labor unions and coyotes. Coyotes, after all, are not a dying breed.