lotsa talk about budgets, but one target seems immune. Why's that?

reply to post by ararisq


Yes, lets toss them out of work. Keep in mind the negative economic effects of the very work they do. Passing absurd regulations and laws, enforcing same, requiring professionals such as accountants and lawyers to constantly school themselves up on the new laws and regs. All of the small businesses that then must conform and in many cases report on compliance. Of course there are the enforcement regimes that go after the gent who has improperly filled out some 294-AT-00091 form with the right kind of pen, the work it takes to true up the worthless laws and regs with existing laws and regs. The cost of printing and distributing the laws and regs.

All of these folks have executive branch add on employees that do the field work for the insanity they call public service.

-some tool on a congressional staff has the idea that the waste from wine making is an environmental problem and sells that to his congressman. The congressman buys it
- The tool is then told to chat with two other tools, one who's boss is on the agriculture committee and one who sits on the environmental committee. They agree. The wine production waste is a problem.
- Those two folks then go and brief folks in the EPA and DOA on the proposition that a regulation needs to be created to properly account for wine production waste and ensure its proper disposal. The folks in the Executive branch, discovering this looming disaster inform the staffers that the regulation will be supported by the Executive Branch
- The gents craft a regulation outlining what needs to happen with wine production waste and it is added to a bill, which is passed.
- Local folks in the EPA get the new reg and begin to produce forms to send out to wine producers and then schedule up a bunch of visits for wine producers in their area
- Wine makers, getting the new regulations begin to put in place steps to comply with the new regs. They have the forms, have their staff fill them out and then store them for the mandated 7 year retention period.
- The gents from the EPA pay a spot visit to the winery and check out the forms, ask some questions and potentially look at the disposal site that is supposed to be on site.
- After that visit, they fill out their trip report and send it into Washington. The forms are entered into databases that sit on infrastructure run by the government, all of that infrastructure needing all of the care and feeding that technical infrastructure requires.
- The forms being collected from around the country are complied and presented to both the agriculture and environment committees who review them.
- The reports are published and a congressman makes a profound statement about how they are cleaning up the environment.

I probably missed two dozen other steps in the mix and did not even get into what happens when a wine maker gets sued or fined by the EPA for not complying with the regulations.

All of that to tell a handful of folks who are in the business of making wine to recycle or compost their vines and grape leaves, something that people have been doing for about 5000 years.

Yes, lets cut them loose and take the hit on the economy. The economic benefit of kicking these leeches to the curb, would eclipse the lost income tax these folks pay.

reply to post by davidgrouchy


*groan*

I was hoping you'd expand upon defense spending but instead, you attack public employees.

Pretty typcial ATS-grade garbage.

reply to post by The Sword


Who do you suppose works for the DOD? Public employees. As much of the bs that goes into form this beautiful mosaic we call the government is a direct result of the employees. Employees act out of self interest. They make work, they create waste, they do what they need to do to keep their jobs. They do what they need to do to expand their roles and organizations.

For how long and how many public employees were dealing with the $500 hammers or $2000 toilet seats before someone actually had the stones to raise the issue? In a private company, if someone approved one $500 hammer they would be fired immediately. In the government its no big deal.

Public employees = government. We need less government, hence we need fewer government employees.

It would be interesting to take one, just one example. Take a complete branch of the Executive committee and privatize it. Void all of the union contracts and put world class management in there. The service would improve and the costs would be halved in a year. The costs would be halved and 2/3 of the employees would be gone.

I agree that the guys who run for office sell you a load of promises and treat themselves really nice on your dollar and don't generally deliver. However. There are a bunch of us who are public servants who do useful things like provide water to your house, remove your waste, and pick up your garbage. We are the ones who are hurt by this, not the guys who are campaigning on how they will cut our pensions if you elect them. Not the guys in Washington who are set for life. It's your neighbor next door who loads baggage for the airport. The guy who turns up to paint over the graffitti you reported that defeced the wall down the street. The guy who works for Parks and Rec, clearing the black widows and mosquitos so your kid can safely play on the playground. The guy who checks your local restaurant to make sure their freezer is at the right temperature so you won't get food poisoning after you eat the steak there. The guy who fixes the water main break on your street. Why do you want to hurt us? We are you - we are the ordinary working people! We pick up your garbage. We live next door and down the street, not in some mansion somewhere! We are your brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. Please don't lump us all together with your frustration with Washington. We take jobs that pay 2/3 of what the private companies pay in order to serve you and keep your communities running. If we aren't there, you do have some choices. You can dig your own well, contract out your sewage and trash pickup, etc. Do you realize that for us to raise rates there have to be public hearings and the community has to be involved, whereas for the private company you replace us with, they can raise your rates as much as they want, at any time, with nobody saying "Boo?"

Example: Rate increase

While the district is the private water company’s designation for service areas encompassing most of Surprise, council members said many residents are unaware of this since Arizona American water bills rarely make mention of it.

If the military budget where to be cut.......hmmm we just might get out of this debt pull back our troops and build our OWN country and allow the eastern world to solve its own problems for a while. out military technology already surpasses the rest of the world kinda dumb now to be spending billions of dollars on advancing it further, Give the rest of the world maybe some time to catch up to our 2000 era military. and by that time we will be debt free

With all the squabbling and infighting by congress about potential cuts, I think most of us know where they should be cutting. This is just my thoughts where they should cut and how to get this country back on track.

-Drastic cuts in military spending -Bring home all our troops stationed around the world and end the wars.
(This alone would save trillions and put our tax dollars to much needed use in the U.S.. Let make "protecting America's interest" mean protecting our homeland and not policing the world).

-Stop all foreign aid. (We have dire problems at home we need to address).

-Cut all elected officials pay by 35%, have them pay into health care and social security, limit them to (2) terms (this would eliminate career politicians and their enormous pensions), freeze their pay until the deficit is eliminated. (They mismanaged tax payers money they should be the ones to sacrifice their income and perks).

-Eliminate tax exempt status to religious organizations. (If their going to publicly get involved in supporting candidates and political issues, then they should lose their tax exempt status).

-Re-evaluate government programs such as welfare, create guidelines and close loop holes to stop system abuse. (Put welfare recipients to work for city and state government to justify their government checks and food stamps).

-Stop corporate welfare, corporate tax loopholes and tax cuts for the rich. (It's about time corporations and the rich pay their fair share).

-Create tax and loan incentives for people who start new businesses. (This would help create jobs).

-Increase import taxes to make American goods competitive. (It's about time we stop corporations from sending their manufacturing facilities overseas because of low wages).

-Stop insurance fraud in our health care system.

-If the U.S. isn't going to stop illegals from coming over the boarder, than they should be paying tuition to attend our public schools, and pay for their medical care. (Tax payers shouldn't be footing the bill).

-Overhaul our prison system to reduce population. (Too many tax dollars are being wasted building prisons and feeding and educating our prison population).


...So with just these ideas, it would save America trillions of dollars and keep them from cutting beneficial programs for the average Joe on the street.

reply to post by gwynnhwyfar


There is a huge difference between local public employees who are engaged with their communities and consume the services they provide. You are correct that those functions keep our communities running. The difference between someone who works at the local and a congressional staffer, the type of public employee mentioned in my original post is night and day. The only relationships between the two are that both work for government and that the local guy has to accomodate the trash that comes out of the congressional staff.

Public employees are not the only ones off limit . So are ethanol subsidies to the tune of 40 billion , 40 thousand million dollars per year on a hoax . 25% of the food crop agricultural land has been taken out of production for the grand failed experiment of putting food in the gas tank forcing food prices higher while the corn farmers , agri-businesses and refineries can't stay in business as a stand alone business and never will . All things factored in it takes 1.5 barrels of crude to make 1 barrel of ethanol and it will never get better but they are a big money voting lobby and block now . Brazil is the only country on the planet where it marginally works , but still with subsidies as sugar cane has 3 times the distillable content of sugar over corn and they can take 3 crops per years . That can't be done in our climate . 40 thousand million dollars per year on a hoax while food prices soar . Until about 1990 , internally we had 6 months of food in the country . Now it's two weeks so if the crunch comes or disaster strikes , stick a hose in your gas tank and suck hard .

reply to post by davidgrouchy


Well, I will give you credit for your keen eye at the building metaphor being used for economics (+ECONOMY AS HOUSE+ --> debt ceiling, foundation of our economy, economic collapse, etc.) For more, might I suggest Lakoff & Johnson (1981), Metaphors we live by.

However, I'm confused. You put Politicians' pay on the list, but then seem to denote "public servant" as something beyond this, even though you allude to Washington (which is a metonymy, meaning Washington stands for the political system of our country - while we were on the subject). I'll agree that politicians make more than they deserve (and they stay in office too long...whatever happened to going back to private life??? Career politician is a horrible concept). We can argue about the teachers, firefighters, police, postal workers (though they are paid by postage, not taxes), city inspectors, and the like, but I don't think the whole lot of them could come anywhere near to touching the 56 cents on the dollar that we spend on defense (meaning the wars).

I would argue that although "defense spending" is on the list you made, that is actually a catch-all that really is not. In other words, "Defense Spending" is really a synecdoche (totum pro parte) for those aspects of the defense budget that can be privatized.

**Keeping mind that when you privatize a service, the government still actually pays for all ("no-bid contracts") or part of it ("subsidies"), the actual function is then performed by a separate entity that may or may not charge citizens for the good or service.

When the politicians say "lower defense spending", they are talking about trivial bs. They still are not touching the wars (taboo in a war economy?) with a ten-foot pole.

There you go, examples of metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche as they relate to the somewhat misleading language used to discuss this whole debacle.


**Just to be clear, I'm aware that a no-bid contract could still go to a bus company or rail service, where the ridership would still pay a share (or even provide all financial support) through ticket prices, I just could not think of a "full on term" for subsidy...then again, by definition, a subsidy just means to "prop up" or "sit behind" and could, in theory, provide 100% of the financial support, right?

reply to post by dolphinfan


Thanks for understanding. A lot of people don't make the distinction. Here in my town, the people running for Mayor are in fact campaining almost entirely on pension reform for us. People are eating it up and the news spins it to make us ordinary worker bees sound like greedy fat cats. Do people even realize we pay into our pensions, just like a private employee pays into a 401k? On top of our pay already being lower than private companies, we have taken pay cuts, have to take mandatory furlough days, and have lost so many jobs in the past three years that we are operating with skeleton crews.

I think WeRpeons ideas are really good and focus in the right areas.

reply to post by gwynnhwyfar


No, people do not know what pension means. So, when a politician or political think tank comes up with a sound-byte to be repeated over and over again, it replaces or fills the semantic gap regarding just what "pension" means.

In truth, yes, taxes do pay pensions, in that taxes go towards worker salaries that are then sliced, so that some goes into the pension fund. However, the soundbytes make it seem as if the tax payer pays directly into some pension program, rather than paying taxes like normal and then having some sort of contractual agreement with the public sector professional groups as to what percentage will be held in a pool for them until retirement.

In linguistics, this is called framing and goes 100% with the other terms I listed above.

When I was a child, I was taught through repetition of the word "Communist" in a derrogatory way that it was a bad thing. i had no idea what it was. Neither did the other kids in school who used it. And I'm willing to bet that the vast majority have little or no understanding of communism as they get older. (I'm still learning about it). So, in the end, all that's left are the emotional responses through framing. I'm willing to bet that the first thing that comes to mind to someone in my age group (child of the 80s) is either "The Hunt for Red October", "Red Dawn", and the 90s (post-Cold War-yet-still-stuck-on-that-theme) movies from our adolescence. You know, nuclear war; the enemy who wants to kill you. No practical understanding of Communism required, just the logical semantic links that lead you "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon style" right to nuclear war, gulags, Stalin, Berlin Wall, good enough...

reply to post by PlantGirl


If this is true then this is truly obscene. IS this what they mean by belt-tightening. I keep telling the gullible ultimately it is the working class that get stitched up every time.

How disgusting

reply to post by nuttin4U


Well, they are supposed to work - work being protect/represent their constituency. However, like I mentioned above, I don't think "career" should be put in here. I think the original idea is that for a period of time known as a "term" (2 or 4 years depending), a person would leave his or her regular profession and represent his or her neighbors. It was a civic duty for the most adept (a sacrifice should be what it really is) and then when they had fulfilled their term, they go back to what they were doing originally (doctor, farmer, whatever).

Again, in theory, this is a good idea. In practice it has been totally decimated and we have the advent of the career politician, who may or may not have had a previous professional life, but found it is far more lucrative to funnel public funds to private wealth and get the "middle-man" kickbacks, which also come with Union (read as "Party") support to all but insure their reelection except under the most sensational of situations (though even cheating, drug-dealing, drunk-driving and other skeletons don't get you kicked out ---- unless you post your weiner on twitter and happen to be actually fighting for the little guy, then you're out). If you represent a big corporation and do whatever needs to be done to secure their wealth, I have a feeling even murder could be kept under wraps.

**Just to be clear, what Weiner did was not appropriate in the confines of marriage and technically, in our society, it's not permissible for a public servant (as saintly as we might think these people are...hahaha). I need to stress that all of these politicians have their "pecadillos" and "skeletons" and I think it's only at the strategic time or upon realizing that they aren't going to "play the game" that these things get brought out into the open. For what it's worth, either Kucinich, Nader and Paul must be squeeky-clean or it's a dupe, because they bring things up that are supposed to be behind the curtain.

reply to post by davidgrouchy


Until we stop these crooks from taking away our rights as well as holding them accountable for their campaign
promises, their incomes, investments and lowering their pay to correctly reflect the median incomes in their respective counties, states and cities we will never give them any incentive to fix anything. Also limit their time to
steal from the people, exclude them from serving in any other federal positions and any private companies.
Get rid of all lobbying from corporations and make it so only individuals may lobby in a recorded environment.
I'm sure there are 10s of thousands of things we can change to limit, remove and amend our out of control government but this don't mean a thing if we aint got that bling. meaning only those with the gold make the rules.
Maybe we need to take the power out of the hands of a few wealthy individuals and put it into the hands of the people literally, through the internet by letting the people vote on when where and how to spend their tax dollars and congress can keep their jobs but will no longer have any real power but just make suggestions to the people.
Where the people will have absolute say over who is coming up with ideas to improve our republic. Though goodluck getting these crooks to step down for the people! I truely believe that these men will drive this country into the ground just like they have been for the past 50 to 100 years as the people wake from their slumber to whipe the sand from their eyes they will realize only too late that all is lost as they look for someone to blame with noone responsible to be found and they will never admit it is their own falts for allowing corruption to crush freedom!

Originally posted by gwynnhwyfar
Why do you want to hurt us? We are you - we are the ordinary working people! We pick up your garbage.

"Boo?"

Awww don't be like that.

I come from a family of career public servants and
we have given up on most of the flotsam and jesum that populates government buildings.
Or to put a finer point on it, we have given up on the public being able to identify the competent ones.

I'm not interested in thining the work crews, only in reducing their number of bosses.


David Grouchy

Originally posted by Sphota
reply to post by davidgrouchy

 

There you go, examples of metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche as they relate to the somewhat misleading language used to discuss this whole debacle.

edit on 17-7-2011 by Sphota because: I always forget the second parenthesis.

That was one of the best posts I've ever read.
Everyone in the room just gained ten IQ points by reading.
I myself learned something in every single paragraph.
I award you one Interwebz.
Full of win.

Originally posted by Sphota
reply to post by davidgrouchy

 

is really a synecdoche (totum pro parte) for those aspects of the defense budget that can be privatized.

Yes. Absolutely.
And it we have to put the military against Government
I'm far more satisfied with the competence and training the Military receives and produces
than the bottomless pit of inaction and seemingly random pattern of action Government seems capable of.

To tell the truth I would be happy if the military did take over the government and fix it's credit card problem.
As Katrina showed, fewer people would die than if we left it to existing government.
I find the military to be both extremely competent and efficient.
They produce some of the greatest governors the earth has ever seen.
The political class on the other hand seems to be deaf.
In the military academe's officers are trained to run world wide operations.
The lawyers in Washington know how to loose money.


David Grouchy