In his initial statements as party leader, however, Steele has stuck to tried-and-true themes, including invoking the GOP’s 1994 victory as a model and praising House leaders for their stimulus vote. “The goose egg that you laid on the president’s desk was just beautiful,” he told them. “You and I know that in the history of mankind and womankind, government — federal, state or local — has never created one job. It’s destroyed a lot of them.”
This will come as a shock to the hundreds of thousands of Americans currently employed by federal, state or local government.
I’m guessing that’s the Republican idea that any government job destroys at least one job in the private sector. Like regulating business - if you have a government regulator, that takes a job from a paid industry regulator.
Looks like Steele will fit right in with unethical sleazeballs like Norm Coleman:
http://tinyurl.com/bs6fow
Michael S. Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, arranged for his 2006 Senate campaign to pay a defunct company run by his sister for services that were never performed, his finance chairman from that campaign has told federal prosecutors.
Federal agents in recent days contacted Steele’s sister, a spokesman for Steele said yesterday.
Looks like Steele will fit right in with unethical sleazeballs like Norm Coleman:
http://tinyurl.com/bs6fow
Michael S. Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, arranged for his 2006 Senate campaign to pay a defunct company run by his sister for services that were never performed, his finance chairman from that campaign has told federal prosecutors.
Federal agents in recent days contacted Steele’s sister, a spokesman for Steele said yesterday
Come on Zack, a very high percentage of those “government” jobs can be outsourced to a private sector company that can improve the efficieny and lower the cost of the operation (remember, outsourcing, not offshoring). I would exempt police from that to keep the libs from really squealing, but look at the long list of areas where outsourcing has worked.
Water/Sewer Authorities
Refuse collection
Red Light Cameras
Administrative work
Accounting
IT
Purchasing
Why has it worked? Many reasons. The need for large capital improvements tht the local water authority could not finance. Efficiency of scale and upgraded technology on garbage trucks. Competitive wages, not politically bloated wages/bennies, etc. Greater purchasing power/volume of enterprises that scale over many municipalities, not just one. I could go on but by now many of you are yelling LIAR LIAR LIAR.
Facts are Facts. Bring yours. Except you Richard. You wouldn’t know one if it didn’t increase it’s wage by 150% in the past 8 years.
BIOYFL
Really?
Really?
You listed opinions, not facts. In order for those opinions to be factual, you’ll need to prove your assertion that those privatization projects did indeed improve efficiency and lower cost.
We’ll wait.
Perhaps Really Mr Crabs.
In the interim, I will submit that the US has some of the highest per capita costs of health care. Significantly higher than Canada, which covers all of its citizens, and has better health care outcomes across the spectrum of age.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/33/38979719.pdf <Relative costs of health care in the US and Canada.
http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1 <Meta analysis of health outcomes in the US and Canada.
How efficient and cost-effective was Halliburton in Iraq, Really?
Canada’s single-payer health insurance coverage is both more cost effective, and has demonstrably better outcomes than the US insurance system.
What was the cost of Blackwater vs.cost of our awesome military to do the same thing?
Oh I don’t know if the thousands of dead brown people in far away lands over the last 50 plus years really care which name was on the paycheck of the person who killed them.
If you were to use rational, meaningful accounting standards (the kind businesses are legally supposed to use when they haven’t paid off the right congressman and gained an exemption) the U.S. government has outflows that are greater then the real GDP. We simply make up the difference by pretending that social security, medicare and other promised future spending are nothing like the rest of the debt. Of course they are, and our blending of payroll tax revenue into the general fund is a complete fraud. One perpetrated consistently by both parties.
If that doesn’t get you consider the fact that the statistics reported for unemployment today have nothing to do with the numbers we are use to hearing about from the 1930’s. Kennedy and Clinton (not that statistical malfeasance is a Democratic feature alone) each changed how unemployment was measured. Not surprisingly the change both times resulted in lower numbers than what were real which if left unaltered would put the current rate a maybe twice as high. The same type of favorable manipulation has been happening for years with both inflation numbers and GDP. After all if government under reports inflation it makes income growth appear better than it really is and reduces the amount they have to increase payments through all sorts of entitlement programs. It does of course completely discourage savings, otherwise known as investment.
Having a higher than reported inflation rate also makes borrowing ever more attractive as every dollar people pay back is in reality worth far less than the dollar they borrowed. Don’t be fooled by the short term slowing of the inflation rate we are currently seeing. Just about every business in the country is ditching any inventory they can, at a loss, including services just to try and stay afloat. Once the inventories and jobs are gone the “deflation” will be as well.
We had an economy that has for decades been run on debt and now even a zero percent interest rate, free money, can’t get banks to lend. Not becasue they can’t get money but becasue they know any lending will loose them money due to the low interest rates and the higher than reported inflation. Getting 6% interest on the money you lend doesn’t look so hot when inflation is 8%.
We don’t have a credit crisis, we have a debt crisis. We simply have no method of paying off our total debt, public and private, other than to inflate the hell out of our currency by printing so much of it that a couple trillion doesn’t seem like so much anymore. The banks finally figured it out there is no longer a reason to lend money to anyone, good credit or not.
All of this had the affect of discouraging savings and encouraging borrowing beyond our means as a method of “stimulating” the economy. It is of course simulative in the way borrowing on a credit card stimulates your income. A method we have been using for many long years. We are now to the point where we might not even be able to pay the interest on our debt. No amount of spending will save the country. There will, at best, be a few generations that will be forced to pay back the debt created by the last three.
Maybe it’s the jobs that don’t do any creating. Pretty soon our government will be like social security, too few private workers to pay for the government workers.
So yeah, I think what he was talking about was the whole public/private thing, which doesn’t mean that I think he’s right.
There are any number of research projects that the government has supported/run which have produced jobs in both the public and private sector both immediately and later on (e.g, without NASA we don’t have GPS or cell phones, without DARPANet we don’t have the internet). Government obviously has a role in undertaking projects where the benefit won’t be immediate but where the long term good is served. We also don’t want our judicial system to be privatized, and we can’t trust industries to be self-regulating - government needs to regulate industry, and we need to hold our politicians accountable when government regulation fails.
And even though there are a number of examples where a government service could be run more efficiently by the private sector, there are also a large number of examples where privatization has created waste, fraud, abuse, has caused loss of life, where the parties have behaved criminally and not been held accountable, and where contracts have been awarded because of connections rather than merit.
Willyou look at that.
Only one post in 12 hours, I post, and then the stalkers come out within 4 minutes. I love my fans!
Really guys, get a life.
KH,
you stated
“We don’t have a credit crisis, we have a debt crisis. We simply have no method of paying off our total debt, public and private, other than to inflate the hell out of our currency by printing so much of it that a couple trillion doesn’t seem like so much anymore. The banks finally figured it out there is no longer a reason to lend money to anyone, good credit or not.”
I agree. Which is why Obama looks like a fool when he wants to pile on the debt
donn,
I didn’t mention research as a possible savings. could be, but not sure.
I agree with almost all of your 3rd para above. There is also a lot of examples where government has done the same things (waster, abuse, frad,, etc).
Yes, Really? Your rank douchebaggery elicits responses. Whoda thunk?
Really?
Care to prove your assertions? We’ll wait, I suspect for a lengthy time, if not forever.
Since we are going to start having the Federal government regulate pay rates I think it would be important to make sure those in charge of creating and enforcing those regulations have their incomes capped as well. It seems smart that we shouldn’t have people profiting unreasonably from their positions of power over the population.
How about we cap the salaries of all elected officials, government employees, lawyers, judges and others in the legal profession to the lower limit of the highest quintile of income earners in the country. They would still would have the potential to make more than 80% of the population even if their top salary would be what might seem to many of them a paltry $88,000. That way we can make sure they are not using their influence to reward themselves unduly at the expense of the average worker.
Maybe we can put in a clause that says that no one that has ever held a government position, elected or otherwise can have an income more than that for the rest of their lives. Just to make sure they don’t get paid off with a cushy board of directors position after they leave.
I mean if we are going to be honest and start calling what we have socialism we might as well make some sort of effort to do it right and keep the corruption to a minimum. Rather than screw it up as badly as we did the socialism-light we have had for the last eighty plus years.
Really?
“Which is why Obama looks like a fool when he wants to pile on the debt”
Did your support of George W. Bush make you look like a fool, Really?
Really?, you left out a comma:
Really?, guys, get a life.
Pete,
Thank you.
KH - never happen - makes too much sense.
I tried to call Chuck Schumer’s offices today. Imagine, the lines were busy at both his Washington and New York offices. He’s either getting hammered or they took the phone off the hook. What an egotistical arrogant buffoon. The “chattering class” doesn’t care about “porky amendments” in this stimulus bill. This is a good look at the enormous problems we face when our highest elected officials can directly say things like this to the American people. To him, our money, is nothing more than Monopoly money. Shameful!!
CMan:
“chattering class”
Whom would that be?
“our highest elected officials can directly say things like this to the American people”
Things like what?
You sound like you have the vapors or something, CMan.