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-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
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"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

The Public Option for Dummies
Posted by Jill | 5:02 AM
Every idiot screeching about Hitler at town hall meetings should watch this:



OK, things like police and fire fighting are done and financed at the local level, so these are probably not the best examples, though they are examples of things to which people can perhaps relate more than they can to NOAA or the Department of Agriculture. But let's go to this essay of unknown attribution titled "I Am An American Conservative Shithead" that's been winding its way through the intartoobz for more of how government-run agencies and programs benefit people every day and how ludicrous it is for people to claim they don't want any government:
This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

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Saturday, October 04, 2008

If I'd done this, I'd still be unemployed
Posted by Jill | 9:53 AM
An Americablog commenter makes a very good point:
The process of campaigning is, in essence, a job interview, no?

In what universe would does the applicant (candidate) get to choose what question(s) they will be asked or deign to answer and from whom they will be questioned? That is how disrespectful of the electorate (we are supposed to be the bosses last time I checked, no?) the McCain/Palin 08 campaign has been since he put Palin on the ticket.

I think that there should be a full page ad in every paper (on every channel and website) reminding EVERYONE of these simple facts and the GOP’s standard bearer’s jaw-dropping disregard for their (potential) future employers.

As ye campaign, so shall ye govern, no?

We’ve been down this road the last two elections/terms. By adopting their tactics they have more than proven they will be Bush/Cheney/Rove redux.

Would you hire anyone who so disrespected you during the interview process? Would anyone?


As someone who recently went through the job hunting process, I think this person makes a very good point. In the interview for the job I now have, I was asked a number of tough questions about what I've done and also "soft questions" about how I'd handle particular situations. I was even asked the "Where do you want to be in five years?" question.

My experience covers part of what this job entails, but there is a piece of this job that I've never done before. I know that there are some who advocate lying your way into a job, but that's not something I believe is a good idea, because unless one is more nimble than I am, it always comes back to bite you. I answered the questions honestly, and let the voters, or in this case, the interviewers, decide.

The "Where do you want to be....?" question is a "gotcha" question. I'm not sure there's a good answer to it. But if I had Sarah Palin's attitude, I would have either ignored the question or called it a "gotcha." Instead, I answered "Still alive, still healthy, and still employed."

I got the job.

People tend to forget that the government works for us, and that campaigning is, or ought to be, an interview process in which we, the voters, have the power. It's our chance to take a look at the candidates and see who best fits our requirements. When the candidate sees himself (or in Palin's case, herself) as being somehow above or exempt from the requirement to answer questions, that candidate ought to be automatically disqualified from the job.

Most of us are so unaccustomed to being in that powerful position of being the interviewer, rather than the interviewee, and we've so long confused "leadership" with "authoritarianism", that we've forgotten that we're the boss here.

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Tuesday, August 07, 2007

The consequences of tax cuts
Posted by Jill | 7:02 AM
Funny how Republicans change their minds about taxes when a high-profile disaster takes place in their own state.

With giant maw of the 24/7 news cycle requiring constant feeding, most of the cable news time has been taken up for four days now with the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis -- and now that they're running out of human interest stories, the fact of neglect of this country's infrastructure, largely due to Republican policies of low taxes and spending and the resulting deferred maintenance, is becoming clear.

And suddenly, the tune changes:

In the past two years, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota twice vetoed legislation to raise the state’s gas tax to pay for transportation needs.

Now, with at least five people dead in the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge here, Mr. Pawlenty, a Republican, appears to have had a change of heart.

“He’s open to that,” Brian McClung, a spokesman for the governor, said Monday of a higher gas tax. “He believes we need to do everything we can to address this situation and the extraordinary costs.”

Even as the cause of the bridge disaster here remains under investigation, the collapse is changing a lot of minds about spending priorities. It has focused national attention on the crumbling condition of America’s roadways and bridges — and on the financial and political neglect they have received in Washington and many state capitals.

Despite historic highs in transportation spending, the political muscle of lawmakers, rather than dire need, has typically driven where much of the money goes. That has often meant construction of new, politically popular roads and transit projects rather than the mundane work of maintaining the worn-out ones.


The grunt work of keeping roads and bridges under repairs doesn't generate the opportunity for smiling politicians to cut ribbons while surrounded by smiling and applauding citizens. If it's not glamorous, and it doesn't directly contribute to a politician's re-election chances, it doesn't get done.

The irony is that we are in a time when individuals have been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain and update their homes, but have allowed their leaders to defer maintenance on the larger "home" that is the community and state in which they live. Crumbling roads and bridges are every bit as unsafe as a termite-eaten, mouse-accessible house. If there were a house in every neighborhood that was as neglected as many of the bridges in this country, the neighbors would scream at authorities to do something.

If we had any kind of Democratic leadership at all capable of framing an idea in a way that the simple-minded fools who have fallen for the "All government spending = welfare for lazy minorities" meme that has been drummed into their heads since the Reagan years, this would be a perfect time to demonstrate what government spending does. But alas, we don't.

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