How about we stop fixating on size, like a bunch of giggly adolescent boys, and start thinking in terms of effectiveness? Let’s stop describing governments as “big” or “small”, whatever that even means, and concentrate on less nebulous qualities, such as effectiveness and productivity!
A Small Suggestion
Clarissa's Blog 
“Effectiveness” and “productivity” slide right into MBA-speak, if you’re not careful and then people only think about the next quarter, not the next twenty-five years or the next century.
We live in a representative democracy. Government is only as good or as bad as we the people make it.
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““Effectiveness” and “productivity” slide right into MBA-speak”
I’m trying to speak to them in their language.
“We live in a representative democracy.”
After witnessing Rauner’s dictatorial tantrums, I’m beginning to doubt it.
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After witnessing Rauner’s dictatorial tantrums, I’m beginning to doubt it.
I don’t doubt we live in a representative democracy. What I do doubt are the personal qualities of the majority of people who vote in midterms. It doesn’t do much for my misanthropy. 🙂
“Government is terrible, so let me vote for people who keep saying the government is terrible and will confirm my suspicions by being terrible at governing.”– the people in my state.
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““Government is terrible, so let me vote for people who keep saying the government is terrible and will confirm my suspicions by being terrible at governing.”– the people in my state.”
So true. And so damn annoying! The problem with the Illinois budget will have to be solved at some point. All we are doing with this Rauner fuckery is delay the inevitable and make the problem worse.
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““Effectiveness” and “productivity” slide right into MBA-speak”
Yup. Then we have arguments about why the US Postal Service should shut down because it is not generating any profits. As if the function of the government is to generate profit.
I personally don’t even care for ‘efficiency’. At what cost? Amazon drivers are timed right down to the second from the time they unbuckle their seat belt to when they buckle it back after making the delivery. All day, every day. Fuck this idea of efficiency that treats people like robots.
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You are not one of the people who are fixating on government size either. I want the folks who keep repeating the mantra of “big government bad!” to stop for a second and try to look at the issue in a different way.
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Also, note how conservatives get OUTRAGED that some meter maid in Chicago is getting a pension, but don’t bat an eyelid at the tremendous waste in defense spending. Pentagon has to be the #1 in inefficiency with so many backdoor defense deals for things the military doesn’t need. The corruption there is enormous and scary. Read up on the F-35 sometime. Jesus.
It really isn’t about big or small government, it’s about what we envision the priorities of a government should be. For the functions we support, we don’t mind certain inefficiencies. For things we don’t, even $100 seems like a lot.
So, fuck the conservatives who brand themselves as finance experts and the adults in the room when it comes to teachers’ pensions (‘but who will pay for it?!!’) but stay silent at trillion dollar inefficiencies.
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/31/how-dods-15-trillion-f-35-broke-the-air-force.html
“The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive, and possible the most error ridden, project in the history of the United States military. But DOD has sunk so much money into the F-35 — which is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over the 55-year life of the program — that the Pentagon deemed it “too big to fail” in 2010.”
Military experts unanimously agree that the fighter itself (forget the cost) is a piece of shit. But that doesn’t matter because the game is rigged. Politicians need their campaign contributions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Cunningham#Scandals_and_corruption
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“It really isn’t about big or small government, it’s about what we envision the priorities of a government should be.”
Exactly!! Which is why I’m so tired of hearing the idiotic “big government/ small government” rhetoric. It makes no sense!
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Oh, this is too precious. But yeah, let’s defund planned parenthood because that’s the one thing that’ll balance the budget. It’s funny how Fox news have fed them with so much shit information, they actually believe that ‘Abortion Services’ make up like 43% of the national budget.
Scan of a document submitted as evidence by the prosecution and included in their February 2006 sentencing memorandum against Cunningham, penned by his own hand on his own Congressional office stationery for the benefit of “co-conspirator#2” (defense contractor Mitchell Wade). The left column lists millions of dollars of government contracts; the right column lists the thousands of dollars in bribes required to secure them.
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