…as Dan here at UltiMAK said about this.
I’ve often said that the socialists are calling the anti-socialists socialists for not being socialist enough. Or the Communists are angry at the socialists for not being communist enough.
Christie is being called “Hitler” for trying to cut government spending. The name-caller would have more credibility if he simply called Christie a “snotty nosed poopy pants”.
There is the fact that the communists are often bitterly angry at Progressives (who believe in achieving the goals of Marx through progressive steps). The communists think the time is right to pounce– to take off the masks and have the “People’s Revolution” right now. The Progressives are still in progressive mode, so there is a real conflict, but invoking the name of a famous socialist, as an epithet, doesn’t help their case.
There is also some conflict between the National Socialists verses the global socialists (FDR, Stalin and Hitler all held the same basic tentets, but differed only on the details and the execution) but I’m no more interested in the details than in the differences between rival crime gangs. They’re all enemies and they all have to be ground into the dustbin of history if we’re going to have a free society.
ETA; You public employees around the country seem to be terrible confused. See, you’re not “The People”. You’re The Government– our servants. Big difference. Your jobs, your pay and your benifits, exist at our pleasure. It’s when you tell us what our jobs, pay and benefits etc. should be, that’s Nazi-ish. Get it?
HT to Drudge.
Meh. It isn’t all that black and white, my friends. Someone has to shovel the town’s crap. If a troglodyte town decided to fire all it’s public employees, and cut the taxes by the amount the town saved, who would want to live in that town, with filthy, trashy streets, backed-up sewers, schooling for the children at the lowest levels only, etc?
Yes, yes, all that could and does get contracted out to private concerns, but the “savings” realized are never enough to crow about, and as the contractors gain experience, and thereby can do the job cheaper, they DON’T pass those savings along to the town, they put those savings in THEIR pockets, then when the contract is up for renewal, they ALWAYS ask for a bigger fee.
You don’t have to believe me, just go sit in on a few of your town’s Budget Committee hearings as they discuss these contracts.
The bottom line is that the same sort of extortion practiced by the public employee unions is practiced by the contractors when they replace the public employees. Pirates, public or private, are still pirates
We’re not even talking about firing everyone, Riverdog–just cutting their benefits, and seeking to save the State some money. This doesn’t even consider the fact that governments need to prioritize their services, and cut out those non-essential services which it can no longer be provided.
I’ll go so far, though, as to say that if a municipality does fire everyone, that doesn’t mean that everything will go to pot. People can step up to the plate, and provide these services (on either a volunteer or fee-based basis) for those in the town.
One reason we can’t just offer better services than the city, though, is that in addition to monopolizing these services, they turn around and forbid private individuals from providing the same services as well; and even if individuals did, customers would still be paying for services they don’t use!
I can’t think of any services that cities prohibit private individuals from providing…
Have you ever looked into the cost of private refuse collection? It’s not cheap.
The first thing that comes to mind is public transportation. Private entities are forbidden to compete with the Utah Transit Authority, and taxi licenses are limited to 300–which means that taxis are almost practically limited to driving you to the airport and back. There’s no reason why these things should be limited, at all!
I’ve never looked into private refuse collection, but I have vaguely thought about providing a refuse collection service of some sort. I have no idea what kinds of regulations would await me for that! But I have also thought about the possibility of owning a snowplow, for the purpose of plowing my street, because the city seems to take its time to get around to my neighborhood. It’s another area, as my wife pointed out, that may be rife with city regulation…
In any case, it seems that when a government decides to take a role in doing something, they also like to use their power to make it difficult, if not impossible, for others to compete with them!