More Americans work for the government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined

Wonder why we're in economic, creative and production trouble? Look at our biggest employer, the government(s).

We've Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers

Where are the productivity gains in government? Consider a core function of state and local governments: schools. Over the period 1970-2005, school spending per pupil, adjusted for inflation, doubled, while standardized achievement test scores were flat. Over roughly that same time period, public-school employment doubled per student, according to a study by researchers at the University of Washington. That is what economists call negative productivity.

But education is an industry where we measure performance backwards: We gauge school performance not by outputs, but by inputs. If quality falls, we say we didn't pay teachers enough or we need smaller class sizes or newer schools. If education had undergone the same productivity revolution that manufacturing has, we would have half as many educators, smaller school budgets, and higher graduation rates and test scores.

The same is true of almost all other government services. Mass transit spends more and more every year and yet a much smaller share of Americans use trains and buses today than in past decades. One way that private companies spur productivity is by firing underperforming employees and rewarding excellence. In government employment, tenure for teachers and near lifetime employment for other civil servants shields workers from this basic system of reward and punishment. It is a system that breeds mediocrity, which is what we've gotten.

Our Nation's Deficit Explained Or Why We Can't Afford This Crap Anymore

via Protein Wisdom

Imagine that you had an average monthly income of about $170 balanced against average monthly expenses of about $940–and that you were more than $14,000 in debt.

Then imagine that as of today, you had only $58.60 in cash left in your bank account and $130.50 left on your line of credit.

Now multiply these numbers by 1 billion and you will have the up-to-date financial situation of the U.S. government.

Now, just how important is it for our federal government to fund yet another study of left handed lesbian nuns playing right handed flutes while simultaneously painting a portrait of a dancing tuna? Naked, except for their spirituality? Opposed to, say, ensuring the viability of our currency.

I Love Joe Klein

Really! Who else can ridicule and dismiss that which scares him politically the most?

It is always an education to watch our American writhings from overseas. It is particularly excrutiating watching the Republican Party presidential candidates who, on a daily basis, pronounce some ignorant racist or irreligious twaddle...which--amazingly enough--manages to be heard around the world.
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Twaddle! Everyone loves twaddle especially irreligious twaddle as highlighted by such a religious man.

And then there is Herman Cain, the former chief executive of Godfather's Pizza who is pretending to run for President, proving that a black man can be as gutter-cheap bigoted as anyone.

Wait! What happened to the liberal rule that blacks could not be racist? Oh, nuance. Cain isn't racist, he's a bigot. Joe, that really clears it up for us twaddlers. Besides, who wants a black pizza tosser in the White House when we can have a black real world community organizer who won't do those jobs. Or any job that actually does something like creating jobs and meeting payrolls.

And so I plead, as an unflinching American patriot--please Mitch Daniels, please Jeb Bush, please run. I may not agree with you on most things, but I respect you. And you seem to respect yourselves enough not to behave like public clowns.

Please, in the name of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, run.

Nothing screams patriot like the unflinching Joe. Really. And unflinchingly Joe weeps with love for dead Republican presidents just to show he is a multicultural political animal. He really loves dead Republican presidents if they've been dead for at least 100 years. Those less dead, not so much.

Joe would never try to pull the wool over our eyes with "some bilious nonsense escaping his lizard brain" because Joe is a straight shooter, clear thinker and a card carrying member of Team Time which in and of itself shouts TWADDLE from the spires of religious exactitude down into the canyons of New York City and out across the clown filled pastures of Washington, DC.


I love Joe Klein, but not in that way.