The Public v Private Sector War

I enjoy the Bill Maher show because it is about people sitting around, and speaking truthfully about what's on their mind. Christopher Hayes the editor of a liberal magazine called the Nation was one guest and the other guest was a known liberal hater Ann Coulter. As expected it started off with a bang by Ann Coulter saying that anyone working in the public sector was a leech on society. Christopher Hayes said his mother worked as a schoolteacher for 37 years, and she certainly was not a leech. Ann Coulter did not back down, saying anyone that does not contribute to the production of a product is a leech. I guess she doesn't consider molding young minds a worthwhile product. Therein lies the problem, it's about fundamentalism, ideology, and terminology. "It depends on what the meaning of the words 'is' is." –Bill Clinton

I remember during our  own Victoria County cutbacks people were applauding the decision to lay off county workers and reduce their health care benefits. That laid off employee is no longer a productive person who will now be on public assistance. I don't have the county budget in front of me but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that they could've saved those jobs by cutting something else. I used to work for a company that retained its employees doing hard times because they had a lot invested in us, so the cost to retrain new employees would be counterproductive. There was no guarantee that we would come back to the same job when the economy improved. In 1974 I had to do some work that was normally done by contract labor but I retained my job. That works both ways.The public and private sector employee are both human beings that pay taxes. People in the private sector do not pay the salaries of public employees,they pay for the service that employee provides.

I just saw where someone repeated the old Reagan line” were from the government and we are here to help you" along with " government is not the solution it's the problem" but those are words to make the average person think that government is the enemy. Clearly we have a bloated government and at times the bureaucracy slows things so much that it makes it ineffective. I remember an old line we had when I was in the military and it went like this  “yes I know, make everything in triplicate" and what do we do with that third piece of paper?” If you said " you put it in file 13 (trash can)" you can go to the head of the class.It's the same way in the private sector. Having said all that, I can't imagine a country without an environmental protection agency. A food and drug agency or public education, libraries, law enforcement and fire fighters. We need agencies that will not cut services to remain profitable.

Bill Maher ends his show with a segment called "New Rules" where he goes through a litany of stupid things we do. I am paraphrasing so it will not come out as funny. He said" when did the CEOs get so sensitive, that we can't say anything that might make them unstable because it might scare them, and they won't be able to lay their golden eggs with the jobs in them. He went onto say "we tried that in 2004, but the corporations took the taxpayers' money and still shipped the jobs overseas."

I just got a response on my blog from a poster named neighbor who was trying to make Texas the model state because we starve our people, don't educate them or give them health care but we are business friendly because we don't have a corporate tax rate. That is  straight from the “trickle down" manual. I don't think it would be presumptuous of me to think that he  hates lawyers,poor people,unions,taxes,government people,unions,taxes,government,liberals,environmentalists ACLU,gays,Muslims,regulations and lot more he thinks is un-american. It's like Jon Stewart said one time “conservatives are patriotic Americans but they hate 50% of the country."...:-)