-By Warner Todd Huston
Yes, that title, If You Work for Government, You Deserve to be Fired, is meant literally. I really don’t care what you do for government I think you deserve to be fired.* In fact, I think that you need to be fired to save this republic. Not only do I want you fired, I want your pension negated. You don’t deserve one.
I’ll let that sink in a bit.
Of course, conservatives have the reputation of wanting to oust everyone in office and for wanting to “vote the scoundrels out.” But, I am not just wallowing in a trope, here. In fact, I’d like to add one more level to the throw-them-out-of-government concept. Let’s fire every government worker from the smallest village receptionist or sewer worker to the staffers of the highest Senator and every menial clerk and recalcitrant paper shuffler in between.
I am, here, indulging a little bombast, of course, but only a little. A very little.
It’s not just pique at the famous laziness of government workers I’m talking about. I’m also not only deploying that stereotype contending that the only reason government workers get their jobs is because they are pals with a politician — or another government worker, for that matter. It’s not just that they are better paid than just about any real American in the private sector — whether they deserve it or not — and it’s not because they are impossible to fire, nor is it because they get a better pension and health care than anyone who really contributes to society… well, OK, it is because of that stuff. All that stuff and more.
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If You Work for Government, You Deserve to be Fired”
At first blush, the idea of having ballot initiatives on election day seems like such a great, democratic idea. Unfortunately, all too often, all they are is a way to enlarge government, chip away at freedom, and cost the taxpayers money without returning the benefits promised. California is the perfect example of these troubles.
Californians are being asked once again to fund a government boondoggle with a ballot initiative which will levy more taxes on an already over taxed state. This time it is
If the members of the California State Legislature had to get real jobs, most of them would have been fired by now. Incapable of solving any of the problems that have crippled California, they instead fritter away their time giving perks to special interests and passing endless new regulations that have decimated California’s business community. Then, when voters passed a measure that would withhold their pay if they don’t pass a budget on time,
While the Obama administration plays its games with “czars,” more “boards,” and “committees” to implement government accountability policies, Representative Darrell Issa (R, Calif.) has introduced some measures that would do a far better job to meet those goals.
Here is the
Ten friends decided that they would pay for their bar tab the way they pay their taxes. The first $100 beer tab was paid like this:
In 2008 Obama ran for president claiming that he wanted to make Washington more transparent than ever. Obama ran as the law-and-order man, he ran as the anti-lobbyist man, and he ran as the man for all the people, the great centrist that would finally work for the people. He ran saying that Bush was a lawless president and that he, Obama, would shut down the illicit Guantanamo facility and immediately end all the “illegal wars” that Bush was prosecuting.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed
Last week President Obama appointed the CEO of General Electric, Jeffery Immelt, to head up his Economic Advisory Board. This is, as Freedomworks’
The New York Times had a small story that it likely thought was just an amusing little tale of a quirky government program from Los Angeles. Centered on the gift shop run by the L.A County Coroner’s Department, the Times indulged such lines as “we’re dying for your business,” and headlined the piece “
Last January, Jennifer Cline sent a letter to President Obama telling him of her woes. She had been diagnosed with two kinds of cancer, she lost her job and was about to lose her home. Surprisingly the president wrote her back and told her that “things will get better.”
The federal government has built a one billion dollar office complex in Virginia to house some 6,400 Pentagon workers that are to be moved soon. It’s a beautiful new office complex that rises like a mountain next to Northern Virginia’s I-395.
Earlier this month the Obama administration floated a trial balloon about changing the way vehicle information stickers on new cars would be structured. The administration floated the idea of letter grades instead of the more full information that vehicle stickers now contain. The most fuel-efficient would get and “A” rating with less green cars having descending grades.
If the situation in Quincy, Illinois doesn’t scream “government stupidity,” nothing does. The city of Quincy is being offered $6 million in state funds to build a new train station that it doesn’t really need while at the same time the city’s school system is owed the exact same amount in unpaid state education funds.
James Lileks of the Minneapolis Star Tribune recently had a
If this doesn’t exemplify the left’s propensity to act in the mode of for-thee-but-not-me, nothing does. The Wall Street Journal (by way of the Wash. Examiner’s
In a sign of these dismal times, the oldest family farm in America is up for sale because its owners just cannot survive this down economy. After 378 years of contiguous family ownership and operation, the Tuttle family of Dover, New Hampshire is selling its 134-acre farm.
Michael T. Snyder has a 