Posted on 08/08/2011 11:23:05 AM PDT by ml/nj
So I was driving the NY Thruway up to Saratoga this past weekend and I saw a few old Obama 2008 bumper stickers. As I saw each one I thought to myself, "How stupid must that person be not to have removed it yet."
But then I passed a car with one of those old stickers with a new one that had another with nothing more than "2012" on it pasted next to the old one. A white, 40 something woman was driving. And it hit me. She is a government employee. She is quite happy about what is going on. For her, the recession is something she reads about in the newspaper. She does not sense that her job is threatened. She got her usual automatic pay raise last year. She might work for State or local government. She might be a teacher. It doesn't matter.
She is the enemy.
She is hardly alone. Her side is the one that is well armed and well organized. All of the people who decide that she will keep her job and her raises are also employed by government. That includes every Republican too, including the supposedly confrontational NJ Governor Christie. Has he laid off even one NJ employee? (Duh. No.) Has any Republican in Congress or any State Legislature call for layoffs? (Duh. No.) If some citizen were to go to court to try to end this madness, who would decide the case? (Another government employee.)
At the track, I talked to a number of strangers. One guy sitting next to me on Friday had a smart phone, and so I asked him how the market was doing. What site did he call up? Kitco.com! (Gold/metals sellers) And we started talking. He is surely one of us. Afraid, scared, not sure what to do. Another guy saw me walking with a cigar and asked for a light for his cigar. I took two matches out of a box and gave them to him with the box. (I always use two matches together.) He only used only one and I commented to him that that was very conservative of him, not really thinking about anything political. He just had to tell me that he IS a conservative, and so we commiserated. I mentioned the bumper sticker thing to him and my notion that the government is our enemy. His response was, "You sure got that right." I'm sure there were some government employees there, but I didn't talk to any of them.
ML/NJ
Add to the 47 percent the government employees who may pay federal taxes, but who are paid BY federal taxes, and you have a majority.
Even FDR considered it absurd that employees of the government should unionize. Yet here we are, and government employees unions have become the most powerful and radical of all the unions and Barack Obama is nothing if not the very embodiment of SEIU and the interest of government employees against that of the American people.
The radical left views government employees as a way-stop to full-blown socialism, as these people are already dependent on the government for their livelihood and highly susceptible to the development of class consciousness.
It is a giant parasite that will be only be removed and restored to its original purpose after a terrible struggle, as we got a glimpse of in Wisconsin.
They can choose integrity.
My GF is a gubment employee. Yea, she got a COL increase last year, then Zero froze her pay. She’s bitching about that. BTW: She did NOT vote for the Great Pretender! And before you get all bitchy about her working for the government; she’s a nurse at the VA. Defense is a Constitutionally mandated expense, and taking care of our Vets, while not so mandated, is the least we can do for them. And I’ve told her as much. We owe them.
That being said, defense will take a bigger hit in cuts, despite it’s relatively low % of GDP, than the real domestic vote getters that Congress likes to pass around like candy.
I guess I’m just trying to remind us, that there are folks in government that are like minded, and do right and honorable service. Perhaps they’re not the majority, but they are out there.
That, and I’m just stickin up for my girl. Gotta keep the peace on the home front dontchaknow.
I believe you are correct. NOT ONLY is the the difference economic, but it is cultural, philosophical, and even attitudinal.
You are correct that this person is not only untouched by cutbacks, she, and her Gov’t cohorts, have probably been trained for 30 years to think the way she has.
That makes the problem even more difficult to solve. There is a whole generation of people, numbering in the millions, who will be forever in their hearts part of the Gov’t Leftist apparatchik class.
Or a union member (pick a union, any union...).
That is why I believe that more taxes should be imposed .... On that 47% that currently pay NOTHING at all.
As the old saying goes, "When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you will always be assured of Paul's vote."
Only by forcing Paul to walk at least 100 yards in Peter's shoes will Paul ever agree with Peter that sensible shoes are a good idea.
The Flat Tax does exactly that: It forces the Pauls to pay something in Federal taxes.
The reason that the Flat Tax won't fly, however, is that those of us that have worked our butts off and have already been Federally income taxed out the wazoo to save our retirement savings will not stand for being Federally taxed again when we spend those already taxed savings in retirement.
What I am saying is that the non-producers wanted me to be Peter during the Income Tax era and the Flat Taxers want me to be Peter during the Flat Tax era. Both of them want to be Paul while I remain being Peter.
No Paul ever seems to want to walk even 100 yards in Peter's shoes and, soon, the Pauls will out number the Peters. Once that happens, it will all be over.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship,... ." ----Alexander Fraser Tytler .
No, they are not idiots. As the start of the thread noted, they are voting their own perceived self interest.
University employees are not affected by recession. People still go to college, professors' research grants are still paid, etc.
What would flip them out would be some common-sense fixes for out-of-control university costs, like making student loans dischargable at bankruptcy AND making such defaulted loans chargeable to the university. Pretty damn quick, colleges would stop accepting people who would be unlikely to be self-supporting in their fields after graduation, and would stop allowing people to major in "womyns studies" unless they paid tuition "cash in advance".
It has always been true that government is the enemy and always will be. The Founders knew it and tried to erect constitutional barriers to the governments (state and federal) but Wilson and, to a much greater degree FDR used a perversion of the commerce clause and the general welfare provision to enable the Feds to do anything. These people suck.
A friend has obama stickers all over her car. It broke down last month and she asked me what I thought could be wrong with it. I told her it probably ran out of hope and change.
http://www.cafepress.com/+obama_ass_sticker_bumper,529690120
http://www.cafepress.com/+are_you_better_off_now,392044147
I’m with you. FrogDad works as a Civil Servant teaching new soldiers his area of expertise - which he spent 24 years on active duty learning.
The brush gets a little broad at times.
I think that it also needs to be noted that Republican congress sessions during GWB and Democrate congress sessions during GWB both increased the number of federal employees. Sure, some of it was during the bost 9/11 defense build-up and troop support with the new technology and force protection demands, but the staff load and Education virtually doubled.
The increase in federal employees is the responsibility of the Congress, with vetos possible by the current President, but the Congress and not the employees themselves who are our countrymen looking for jobs and careers.
In some areas, these employees can become an interest group with a political agenda to protect their personal finacial interests, the economy be damned, but that is hardly the case of all government employees across the board.
LOL!
“Collect the entire set!”
Just drove from Ft. Lauderdale to South Carolina, 10 hrs. only ONE obama sticker seen!
lol! That’s funny!
You have just been nominated for Tagline of the Year.
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