“Drowning” Government: Be Careful What You Wish For
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By Steven Mikulan
The Frying Pan
It was Grover Norquist who famously said he wanted to shrink government to a size where he could drown it in a bathtub. Norquist’s Paulist allies in Congress (Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan) show no interest in stopping there, however, and probably would go after the bathtub next – or at least indoor plumbing. Of course, things like indoor plumbing and electricity are some of the creature comforts that were brought to millions of Americans by their federal government decades ago, because private enterprise saw no immediate profit in spreading such “luxury” to everyone.
Without New Deal programs such as the Rural Electrification Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority and Farm Security Administration, many of us might still be sitting in the dark, as well as sitting – well, elsewhere, if you get my drift.
It’s become bad manners today, however, for government to remind us of the things it does for Americans – or rather, what Americans do for themselves through their government. Instead, in the blogosphere and on places like Fox News we are treated to an endless propaganda loop in which civil servants are denounced as free-spending bureaucrats, organized society is dismissed as “big government” and both are equated with Big Brother. In last Sunday’s New York Times, columnist Timothy Egan pointed out how, in Mitt Romney’s views on shrinking the federal government, “public servants are dishonorable, and maybe even less American.”
But where do the Norquists and the Pauls go, once they’ve drowned government and sold the bathtub for copper scrap? Probably to very lucrative sinecures on foundation boards, paid for by the only people to benefit from their efforts – Big Business. These Boer conservatives are not actually devotees to miniaturization, per se – their interest in molecular government shouldn’t be mistaken as a sign they are against everything big. Far from it. They are very much for Big Pharma, Big Media, Big Tobacco, et al., and for massive profits.
Such free-market Salafists only abhor the “big” in government when it stands in the way of corporations and banks doing as they please. Which is why Norquist and Co. have demonized another “big” bogeyman – organized labor.
Unions, as anyone who has read this blog knows, are fighting an existential defensive battle against unrelenting assaults launched by Norquist’s friends at Fox News and corporate-funded front groups. Norquist was behind Proposition 226 (so was whack-job billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife), the unsuccessful 1998 ballot initiative that sought to weaken California’s unions under the banner of “campaign reform.”
Norquist also played Generalissimo in then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s failed attempt to privatize the CalPERS pension fund in 2005. This November California voters will be confronted with the cynically christened “Paycheck Protection Initiative,” whose only long-range goal is to cut paychecks by gutting the political influence of the state’s unions. Norquist may not be directly behind the measure, but his fingerprints are all over it.
Last week columnist Harold Meyerson, sounding uncharacteristically glum about labor’s future, noted too the danger in its decline for everyone, not just workers:
“As historian Fred Siegel, a leading opponent of public-sector unions, remarked to me many years ago . . . before unions, the common form of protest for workers seeking a better life was rioting. That may eventually prove to be the common form of protest after unions, too.”
Is that where we want to go? Is Big Business really willing to push the country into the class warfare of the late 19th and early 20th centuries?
When our politicians let us down, we draw inspiration where we have always found it: from the movies. And, when contemplating the short-sighted motives of the men and movements that are trying to shrink and drown government and unions, there’s no better place to turn than the Chinatown scene in which the private eye asks an old, rapacious millionaire why, at his advanced age, he is involved in a complex electoral scheme designed to swindle Los Angeles out of water it is stealing from farmers.
“How much better can you eat?” asks the detective, played by Jack Nicholson. “What can you buy that you can’t already afford?”
“The future!” exclaims John Huston’s old tycoon.
Norquist and others like him pretend that it is the future that they’re working for and dream about at night. But it is really the past – the dark, cobble stoned jungle of a lawless industrial America– that they are taking all of us back to.
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Frying Pan editor Steven Mikulan is a Los Angeles writer.
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We do need a government. However, government has gotten wildly out of control. Even things that you think are good really may not be. Let me give you an example: Education. I was reading REASON the other day and it had a wealth of statistics. Here was one that caught my eye: between 1970 (when I graduated public high school) and 2010 there has been an increase of 8.5% of children enrolled in public schools. The number of public employees has increased 96% over that period. The cost of this is $210 billion across the country. For all of this "investment" there has been no measurable difference in outcomes. Graduation rates aren't better, achievement scores, etc. Yet, we hear from every politician that we need to "invest" more in public education. It is obvious that the problem is not money.
You can, of course, apply this to legions of government programs. Head Start, for example, has been studied to death. Almost every study shows that there is NO lasting benefit to children beyond 9 years old. Still, we spend over $20 billion a year on that program. Study after study shows the "jobs training" programs don't work, yet every politician is pushing yet another one.
the government has no common sense. A private industry doing the same would have long since been bankrupt. At some point, our government is going to go bankrupt, too.
Clearly, you stayed in school to get at least a High School Diploma.
While it may be true there has been an increase of "8.5%" of children enrolled in public school and the number of employee may have risen "96%" for the period you described, the cost of this (public schoolings)in the tune of "$210,000 billion a year across the country"; I agree there are no measurable difference in the educational outcome in our investment to our kids. Achievement score and graduation rate aren't any better.
So WHY? What is the problem? And why do you think the NEED for public schools came to be?
Since the inception there has been a boom in public school so that our citizens should be able to have the basic skills of Reading and Arithmatics. This was a "basic academic necessities as our nation progress into the industrial revolution.
Ordinary citizens should be able to read signage and be able to transact its way into currency exchanges for goods and services.
That was the "basic education" that public schools offered. The schools has evolved and Parents were required by law to have their children educated in school. Not all students wanted to go for any higher education. They were more interested in working for a labor and earning money.
Perhaps if public schools are limited to the basic education(reading and writing)and student who do not wish to participate in expanding their education may someday realize how valuable education IS as they go through life. Perhaps they may learn NOT to take "good education" for granted when public education is limited to the basics.
The right to education should only be granted to those willing to exercise THAT right. Those who wish to NOT pursue any education beyond that should be free to do so. Why waste "GOOD" money to those unwilling to learn. They maybe taking it for granted that "public school" will always be there?
Government should realize that "EDUCATION" is not for all. Perhaps only then will our elected officials learn a lesson to spend the taxpayers' money conservatively. When a person has the "ambition" to further himself or herself; there are other opportunities for them. Perhaps they may want to work in the field rather than complain that "illegal immigrants" are taking away their jobs.
Why are there so many more people on public school payrolls and why are the costs so high? I used to be on a school board and here are my opinions:
1. We have a lot more overhead at schools that is sort of meaningless. When I was a student at high school we had a principal, an assistant principal, three halftime counselors and two secretaries. The same high school today will have a principal for each grade, fulltime counselors for each grade, curriculum co-ordinators, and security staff. these are all pretty pricey people. do we need them? No. Some are dictated by state and federal mandates (curiculum co-ordinators input a lot of data into state and federal programs). Security is much more of a problem than it used to be. I think there are other, better ways of dealing with it.
2. We have stupid overhead. for example, in the system I was on the school board, each high school had an Athletic Director. I thought that was wildly extravagant.
3. English as a second language takes a lot of staff. We should just junk it and have people transition into regular classes. Sure, for the first year it will be tough, but kids can learn languages quite well.
4. We have to have the freedom to dismiss teachers who cannot teach. Now, we just hire someone else to do the job and transition the teacher into something else. We need to pay good teachers more and poor teachers less.
5. Way too much overhead about the school level. We have assistant school superintendents, purchasers, etc, etc. We need to strip that out.
Everbody--except anarchists-- wants government service and understand that it takes money; but there has to be cap on what is spent. E.g., we want police and fire protection, but we don't want to pay a salary of over $150,000 for each position-- as found in many CA cities. W want our country to be safe, but we don't want trillions spent on useless wars and weapons that even the Pentagon doesn't want,but that members of Cngress want to protect jobs in their jursidiction. Some things I don't want at all: e.g, farm subsidies, foreign aid to uncooperative countries, )e.g., Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc), federal money-- with strings-- for education, benefits to illegals.