Preach it, Sister!

Perhaps because we're of nearly the same age--and I'm sure her world weary cynicism about all things concerning the Democratic Party plays a part as well--Digby has rapidly become my favorite Liberal blogger. This piece is one of the best I've read from anyone in a while, mostly because she puts into words what I've felt for a long time: comparing the government's financial situation to that of a family is not just stupid, but it's dangerous, and does as she says, get us into trouble. (Can't begin to count the number of idiots who have written letters to the Free Press over the past couple of years making this same comparison--I usually have to keep myself from gagging when I read them.) One of the few points the piece doesn't make, is very few families who are tightening their belts these days are doing so at the risk of losing their job or blowing a job opportunity--I mean, seriously, no one's showing up at their office job in ratty clothes to save a buck, no one's letting the car run out of gas so they can't make the job interview to cut a few pennies, and no one's not buying paper and postage so they can't send out their resumes to shave off a few more cents. Let's face it--you've got to spend money to make money in a family, and the government shouldn't be short shrifting money at the expense of jobs and job creation.

She also calls the government should be run as a business as the second stupidest metaphor, which I would actually rate as the worst. For one, with the utter incompetence we've witnessed over the past couple of years on Wall Street, in the banking industry (AIG, Lehman Bros.), the automotive industry (GM, Chrysler)--and let's not forget MCI and Enron from the early part of the decade--um, this is how we want government run? Not to mention that if we run it like a business that means the President would be paid hundreds of millions of dollars, Governors tens of millions of dollars, ad infinitum...for really being cheerleaders pushing a bunch of platitudes that do nothing to increase efficiency. And let's not forget--there are NO civil rights in a business. Don't think so? Try writing a letter to your company's president in which you tell him in no uncertain terms he's a fucking idiot--my guess is you wouldn't have a job for long. But you can write a letter to the President of the United States using that same wordage, and no one can strip you of your citizenship (though you'd probably end up on the Secret Service's shit list).

In short, the country can ill afford simple minds with simple plans...pretty much a description of the republican party/tea party nation, now that I think of it.

Peace,
emaycee