The real ‘two Americas’: government and the governed

I remember talk from many years back about how, in order to get a higher quality of government employees, the government needed to start offering pays and benefits that were more in line with those offered in the private sector. Sounds like the shoe is on the other foot now. So. What to do. Bring private sector pay and benefits in line with government or vice versa.

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To me, one of the most incriminating things Shirley Sherrod said in the recently released video was that government workers never lose their jobs….or something to that effect.

I recall the time when I worked for my local Board of Commissioners…I was hauled before the Civil Service Board three times–not because of anything I did wrong…it was a personal grudge. The Chairman’s EXECUTIVE secretary didn’t think I, (the administrative secretary) was doing HER job well enough. Never mind that my workload was twice what hers was…she expected me to do her job as well. She made twice the salary I made.

It was just a matter of waiting her out. She was fired for assault with a deadly weapon.

A real nut job, she…EXECUTIVE material.

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Bruno
Thanks…but you know me and her!

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Plus….Cynthia’s is Mrs. Godzilla’s terrain. She and I don’t get along too well.

Bad blood.

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“instead of ct’s where you can’t even post a link?”

No problem with the links, guys:

www. youtube. com/watch?v=Gm1ibHUyJjA&feature=related

P.S. to josef–Cynthia’s out on the town tonight, just the boys hanging out now.

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JayNot:

You so smart!

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There has always been a disconnect between the government and the people it governs and I don’t see it getting better any time soon. I don’t even know if there is anything that can be done as it seems to be a virus that infects all the political parties all over the world as soon as someone enters politics as a career.

As for the huge difference in salary and perks between public and private workers, That also seems to be a world wide disease. Here in the UK it seems like even if there is a hint that people will lose jobs in the public sector there are threats of strikes. While people in the private sector have been losing jobs for a while.

BTW, if people only blog on topics that are there ” to get your knickers in a twist” (sorry if I am being rude) then articles like this fall by the wayside.

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“Plus….Cynthia’s is Mrs. Godzilla’s terrain. She and I don’t get along too well.”

LOL! I forgot about the nursing home resident. She’s about as relevant as a Ford Pinto. Old, ugly and blows up if you look at it the wrong way.

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“Everyone is invited!”

Everyone is invited…..as long as you’re not white.

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josef,

Thanks, but the credit goes to Shady j$.

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Sandra @ 8:48
There has always been a disconnect between the government and the people it governs – at it is large and growing larger. The virus that infects all the political parties all over the world: POWER. Once they have, it’s difficult to take it away – especially when they can take your money and property by force – at the end of a gun if need be.

I wouldn’t worry about anyone getting “their knickers in a twist” – it’s not rude. On the other hand, if something was said to cause someone to get their “panties in a wad” – that could be rude.

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Kyle, I think that its time you adopted the terms “private-voluntary productive sector” and “forced non-productive sector” for that is truly the difference. One is fully paid for through voluntary exchange of goods and services for money and the other is fully financed through the forced extraction of involuntarily taken taxes. One produces goods and services while the other produces nothing (but lots of death and destruction, unemployment and dislocation, debt and suffering).

Yes, of course thanks to government intervention, forced purchases like Obamacare, car insurance, and the like, not all of the supposed private voluntary sector is truly private or voluntary, but you get the picture.

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Well, Kyle, I looked up your $85,000 maintenance mechanic supervisor job:

Job Title: Surface Maintenance Mechanic Supervisor
Department: Department Of The Army
Agency: National Guard Units
Job Announcement Number: T-10-125 (369897)

SALARY RANGE:
$35.08 – $40.88 /hour
OPEN PERIOD:
Monday, July 26, 2010 to Tuesday, August 24, 2010
SERIES & GRADE:
WS-5801-10
POSITION INFORMATION:
Full Time Indefinite
PROMOTION POTENTIAL:
10
DUTY LOCATIONS:
01 vacancies – Calhoun, GA
WHO MAY BE CONSIDERED:
Open only to current on-board, full-time GA ARNG DOL Officer or Warrant Officer technicians.

So are you now picking on the military?

Here is the link for the rest of you: http://jobview.usajobs.gov/GetJob.aspx?JobID=89605023&JobTitle=Surface+Maintenance+Mechanic+Supervisor&q=maintenance+mechanic&where=30096&x=103&y=15&brd=3876&vw=b&FedEmp=N&FedPub=Y&pg=1&rad=50&rad_units=miles&re=0&AVSDM=2010-08-13+10%3a42%3a00

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Let me get this straight Kyle. For the past 30 years CEO pay has exploded, we have the greatest income disparity since the 1920’s, the top 25 hedge fund managers made a total of 25.3 BILLION dollars last year and something like 50% of all the increase in income over the past 10 years has gone to the top 1% of Americans. Wake up! It’s not the money you see the government taking from your check we should be upset about, it’s the money that we never even see in the American paycheck because corporations seek out the modern day equivalent of slave labor around the world. Heck, 80 cents an hour is probably cheaper than slavery since there’s no food or shelter they have to provide. And to top it all off, China devalues its currency just to make sure the American worker can’t possibly compete. Do you really think that a 1.4% increase for federal workers is what is wrong here?

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Just goes to show how bad the private economic sector really is!

Besides causing economic meltdowns and disastrous industrial accidents and spills, private industry and finance can’t compete with European and Asian enterprises in the domestic and world marketplaces, can’t provide full employment for those Americans willing and able to work, and can’t even provide the tax revenue needed to support our privileged public sector.

Don’t blame government for the mess! Blame overpaid, under-performing business executives who prefer to market goods made in China rather than to manufacture products in the US. Blame the wealthy class who gamble American capital on derivatives and hedge funds rather than invest in American industry and commerce. Blame huge, monopolistic corporations that buy-up, merge with, or destroy potential competitors.

The several million Americans employed by federal, state, and local governments have steady, good-paying jobs, good health insurance that is not subject to frivolous cancellation or lifetime benefit limits, and good retirement benefits. Don’t you wish we all had that?

The public sector sets the standard for what we should expect from the private sector.

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What a ditto head.

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I agree federal payer is higher across the board. But just try to get one of those jobs–you’ll see how difficult to get through the application process and wait week after week. Then one day, an e-mail arrives saying you didn’t get the job. You’re already at a disadvantage, since veterans (nothing against you per se) receive a 10-point preferential. Good luck!

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From today’s AJC.com…

“…the UGA Athletic Board approved a five-year contract that will start McGarity at $420,000 per year with $20,000 raises each subsequent year. He’ll also get a $125,000 longevity bonus if he completes the contract.”

Don’t you just love socialism!

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Some very simple math is in order here. With the government employee count expanding and government salaries and benefits outpacing the private sector, where is the revenue to offset these costs? Tax revenue is DOWN. Provate businesses are down. Private personal income is down. Entitlements are UP (99 weeks for unemployment???).

Obama has repeatedly claim that Bush drove the car into the ditch, and left it there. Indeed, Bush created more problems than he solved. BUT… This Administration is driving the bus over the cliff, full speed, with you and me on board.

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I love reading the rant of progressives in here. Their answer to this probmem? The government is wonderful. Capitalist pigs are terrible. These people don’t think the explosion of government jobs with its guarentee of almost no layoffs or pay losses is wonderful. We have 10s of millions of government workers in all levels of government, federal, state and local. These people are in fact parisites. For every government worker, you need at least 10 public sector workers to pay for them and the current numbers don’t work. The democrats in the last 18 months have in all likleyhood increased the number of government employees by and least 10s of thousands with the creation of this new healthcare entitlement and the other expansion of government legislation they’ve rammed down or throats. We are fast reaching the point where all who are not governement workers will in fact be serfs who’s only function is to provide the money necessary to keep the lumbering giant of governement alive. The progressives in here whine about the “rich”. The sucessful people who actully create things and in the process create wealth and jobs. Sorry but these aren’t the problem today. Giant beauracratic government is todays problem and it most likley will only be solved at the point of a gun. History shows this is most likley inevitabe. Governement only knows how to do one thing well and that’s grow and sieze power. Why would anyone think ours is any different

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You want government jobs???? Here’s your government job! Join the military.

1,400,000 on active duty;

833,000 reserves, many of them full time.

1,600,000 Americans work in companies that supply the military.

Defense Sec Gates is trying to find ways to reduce the defense budget by $100 billion over the next 5 years. Republican lawmakers are furious. Not because the budget cuts will make us less safe. They are furious that there would be job losses and economic downsizing in the districts they represent.

jconservative is right on the money. To imply that one party is more responsible than the other for the mess we are in is absurd.

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what up Josef Nix— got barred from Bookman? I was ….

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This writer could have spared all the ink and paper which was wasted on this silly piece of anti-government propaganda. Private companies and firms include minimum wage and low income workers such as the millions working in fast food chains, landscaping and gardening, which have no counterparts in the government. The two should not be compared with respect to income differential from the very outset given they are about, in most cases, entirely different jobs and one sector is so much larger and more diverse in occupations than the other. Government workers are in general better educated than the norm with virtually all being at least high school graduates and with a higher percentage of college degree holders than on average in the private sector. The author leaves this out because of either his conservative bias or intellectual laziness or incompetence.

And noticeably absent from the picture, again because it didn’t fit his political views, is any mention of the overpaid, overcompensated, and overly protected CEOs. Does he recall the Bank of America president laying off workers while he remodeled his office to the tune of $1.2 million including $87,000 for a rug? And did this guy do a good job? No, the stock value of the Bank of America fell 80% during his tenure and then the government had to step in and bail out the private sector. He then walked away with a cool $130 million in money and benefits. And what happened to those workers he laid off? They found themselves on unemployment. And this is a common story in America whose businesses pay their executives far more than any country in the world, hundreds of times as much money as their average workers. CEOs are insulated from the sometimes terrible consequences of their decisions never finding themselves on the street or collecting unemployment and their workers pay for those bad decisions with the loss of their livelihoods. Not to mention that as companies do better the management rather than the workers reaps most of those benefits and the higher up the ladder the more the wealth is distributed upward.

Does the author look at the health care system which is a for profit business in the private sector and a large one? Of course not, because that would also count against his thesis. The United States is the only country in the world with a for profit private insurance companies financing most of the health care. However, what were they legally allowed to do prior to the “socialist” health care reform? Deny anyone who was poor or had a low income which meant that they had to go without health insurance or if they were really poor go on Medicaid. They selected the healthy patients and excluded the others, decided what to approve of and pay for based on profit, not the needs of the patients, capped their coverage at levels they chose, and practiced “recission” or the dropping of people when it looked as if they would cost too much to provide care for, often by finding a remote, unrelated preexisting condition. And when the real health care bills mount in old age turn that unprofitable group over to Medicare. Doesn’t this look like a system intended to benefit the private sector at the expense of the health of most citizens? The government provides good health insurance packages for its employees. That is a good thing not a bad thing and policy reforms should continue so that all citizens in the private sector are adequately covered as they are in all other prosperous societies.

I would suggest that this author look a little deeper into the CDC as he will find world class scientists with multiple advanced degrees who could make far more $100,000 working hard for the benefit of the public health. Instead of taking their MD, MPH, and other degrees into the private sector and pulling down over a quarter a million a year they work in medical research for far less money because they care about the public good. But he was too interested in trying to find an overpaid janitor than to look at the function and overall staffing of the CDC and what they accomplish with the budget they have.

The author might also have taken a look at the salaries of those teaching in public colleges and universities at each level from adjunct to full professor and he would see that outside engineering, law, and medicine they are adequate at best, abysmal at worse, relative to the educational requirements of the profession and that they receive, on the whole, much less than their counterparts in private universities and colleges.

Another area, quite substantial, which he left un-examined, was the huge defense contracts given to private business and the huge salaries that go with them especially for those designing weaponry. The military industrial complex as Eisenhower famously warned us against cobbles up over 30% of our tax dollars to support a massive defense industry and over 700 military bases in over 130 countries which is not necessary for our national security. And while I am on the subject of military spending the privatization of what was formerly done by the military has yielded astronomical salaries for private contractors sometimes doing similar jobs to those in the military for four times the salary. Medical technicians without a BS degree could pull down over $120,000 for eleven months in a protected sector of Iraq without being taxed when their counterparts in the Army being exposed to real danger in the field would make less than $40,000. Both are paid for out of tax dollars with one working in the “private sector” and the other for the government since the military, as people sometimes forget, is a part of the “public sector.”

The problem of social injustice in the United States and that is what it is when people find themselves working harder every year, making less money, and subject to layoff at the drop of a hat while the rich get richer in the private sector and the share of wealth collectively produced goes more and more into their hands is not the fault of government workers. It is the result of many factors such as global competition, bad public policy instituted by politicians who serve business interests, poor labor law which affords little protection of workers in comparison with their counterparts in other Western countries, and a tax policy which has enriched the top 1% even more for the last eight years. And what is very sad is the fact that the victims of these global forces and unjust policies are the ones who buy into the right wing propaganda of this writer, Limbaugh, Fox television’s screaming heads, and the GOP in general.

One of the reasons I discontinued my subscription to the AJC some years ago, apart from the general decline of coverage and quality of the newspaper, is the concession made to its conservative readers by employing third rate intellects such as this person and the use of “independent” writers such as the loathsome Mary Graybar. This newspaper is providing a forum by Ann Coulter wannabees in the later case and the print equivalent of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck in the case of this “journalist.” No service is done to the public by continuing the dumbing down and debasement of political discourse we find in the circus barkers of talk radio and Fox television and the demagogues of the GOP such Broun who is a disgrace to Congress.

However, this piece did serve one minor purpose in that I will use it in my logic class this semester and allow my students to apply the reasoning skills they acquire in that course to yet another “editorial” which was not fit to publish.

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I take Kyle’s figures about government vs. private sector pay with a large block of salt. The`federal government doesn’t have McDonald’s or Burger King workers. It hires largely specialists who command higher salaries.

And forget this bunk about the “growth” of government jobs. The American taxpayer has just been through the biggest scam in American history, one in which private employees hired by big Republican campaign contributors were placed in government jobs at 25% higher cost to the taxpayer. They formed up to 45% of the work force at agencies like CDC. All that’s happening now is a replacement of these “contractors” with lower-paid civil service workers. That’s the “growth.” You see, these contractors didn’t count as workers, so naturally people like Clinton and Bush could talk about how they have “reduced” the growth of the federal work force.

You want a pay scam? You’ve just been through a huge one. Check out the truth of what I’ve asserted and then come back with your rants about the growth of the federal work force and how much more government workers earn.

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Kyle,
If you think things are bad now, wait until the Republicans take over once again. They will continue the work they began under Reagan, and the Bushes of destroying the middle class, enriching a small, narrow wealthy class. All of their work aided by a self-destructive, Fox brain-washed bigoted underclass.

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Sorry for the typo, I’m Gator Joe, not “Garor” Joe.

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This guy would kick Obama’s child-like @ss in 1 second flat. Too bad we can’t deport the muslim back to his native Indonesian land and import an actual leader like Bibi.

Gotta hate left wing retards for voting in this utter disaster of a president.

Netanyahu’s warning

When Israel declared independence in 1948, it had to use mostly small arms to repel attacks by six Arab armies. Today, however, Israel feels, and is, more menaced than it was then or has been since. Hence the potentially world-shaking decision that will be made here, probably within two years.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/13/AR2010081304474.html

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The “twice as much” statistic is misleading. Most federal jobs require 4 year degrees. I would be interested in an “apples to apples” comparison of jobs by industry. I’m sure federal jobs would still pay more, but the gap would not be as large, and in some industries might be smaller.

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The times we live in certainly do not favor having a president whose both a radical and an incompetent. The left continues this childish ploy of referring back to the Reagan and Bush years, while trying to ignore the present and the future.

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“But hey, don’t blame the feds for feeling like they’re getting shortchanged this year: Even adjusted for inflation, their pay has climbed almost 37 percent since 2000, or four times faster than wages for the rest of us.”

Well, one of the problems is that productivity increases did not translate into pay for most workers who, in fact, produced the productivity increases. The pay increases went disproportionately to the top.

Second problme is we don’t know the time period being measured. I get the year 2000 part. But is the end point this year, in the middle of a terrible recession/depression. It seems to be stating the obvious to say that wages have declined if your end point is now.

always, always, always suspect an “average”. Far more telling is the median and the shape of the line across low, middle, and high. always know the time range. for all I know, this is smoked glass and mirrors.

this being said, I agree that governmetn workers probably are overpaid and have benefits much greater than those offered in private business.

When, when will the dim Dems start paying people to work on infrastructure rather than paying them to do nothing. Any more “unemployment benefits” need to be work-while-you-earn benefits. At least the public will get something out of it.

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“”The left continues this childish ploy of referring back to the Reagan and Bush years, while trying to ignore the present and the future.”"

Oh yes the childish ploy of having a memory that goes back a whole year and a half. Mean while Georgia is about to elect ex-Democrat now Republican Nathan Deal. The man who recently as a Republican congressman…

Voted YES for the $26.5 Billion No Child Left Behind act

Voted YES for $100 Billion in farm subsidies

Voted YES for $16.6 Billion on welfare programs

Voted YES on the $350 Billion on Medicare Part D.

Voted YES for the $23 Billion Head Start Program.

Voted YES for two UNFUNDED wars.

Voted YES on the Bush tax cuts that increased the deficit because of skyrocketing spending.

A man that joins corrupt public officials like Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel who can win elections despite all their baggage.

Great logic.

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“A man that joins corrupt public officials like Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel who can win elections despite all their baggage.”

Can’t argue with you there, ma’am.

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shorty

Sweet, so I guess you have no problem with the KKK opening up operations near the MLK center, cowboy museums on Indian reservations and neo-nazi offices near the NAACP offices.

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“Some argue that nations like Saudi Arabia do not allow any Jewish or Christian places of worship to be built on their soil, so we should not allow Islam to build any here.”

Uh, big difference, ma’am. We don’t go out and behead and kill muslims for wanting to build mosques here. Muslims DO kill Christians, Jews, gays, women etc for anything and everything.

You need to do some research, ma’am.

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“How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy.” Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, “Four Deformations of the Apocalypse.”
Get it? Not “destroying.” The GOP has already “destroyed” the U.S. economy, setting up an “American Apocalypse.”
We’ve arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Democracy. Capitalism. The American dream. All dying. Why? Because of the economic decisions of the GOP the past 40 years, says this leading Reagan Republican.
Please listen with an open mind, no matter your party affiliation: This makes for a powerful history lesson, because it exposes how both parties are responsible for destroying the U.S. economy. Listen closely:
Reagan Republican: the GOP should file for bankruptcy
Stockman rushes into the ring swinging like a boxer: “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt … will soon reach $18 trillion.” It screams “out for austerity and sacrifice.” But instead, the GOP insists “that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.”
In the past 40 years Republican ideology has gone from solid principles to hype and slogans. Stockman says: “Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses too.”
No more. Today there’s a “new catechism” that’s “little more than money printing and deficit finance, vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes” making a mockery of GOP ideals. Worse, it has resulted in “serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy.” Yes, GOP ideals backfired, crippling our economy.
Stockman’s indictment warns that the Republican party’s “new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one:”
Stage 1. Nixon irresponsible, dumps gold, U.S starts spending binge
Richard Nixon’s gold policies get Stockman’s first assault, for defaulting “on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world.” So for the past 40 years, America’s been living “beyond our means as a nation” on “borrowed prosperity on an epic scale … an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves.”
Remember Friedman: “Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct.” Friedman was wrong by trillions. And unfortunately “once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors.”
And without discipline America was also encouraging “global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve.” Yes, the road to the coming apocalypse began with a Republican president listening to a misguided Nobel economist’s advice.

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Kyle,

The real question I have is why on earth we are hiring a Federal employee to supervise mechanics in Calhoun? How many Federal workers and vehicles can there be in Calhoun? I assure you there are plenty of qualified mechanics there to handle the job. These jobs should be contracted out, and private sector employees hired to do the job, at half the price I might add.

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Grand Forks, are we to blame Muslim American citizens for the attacks on Ground Zero? Is Islam equivalent to KKK and neo-nazi?
Can you respond with intelligent arguments instead of name calling?

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Miller,

So how much more should a Federal employee make than his/her counterpart in private industry? 20%? 50%. Why don’t you give us a number so we will know when we can get upset.

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What is pretty amazing is that most of the U.S. public isn’t even aware of the discrepancy in salaries and benefits. I think if the voters knew that government workers, who generally are minority hires where possible, and almost impossible to fire once they are “in”, get way more than they do and across the board increases, the public would be very angry. A fairly well educated liberal friend of mine was laboring under the misapprehension that government salaries were lower than private until I directed her to the Dept. Of Labor Statistics website where it became clear they are out of sight. We are paying for these idiots, getting lousy service, and they are retiring with fat pensions while we try to figure out who we are going to live with in our old age. Not right at all. The revolt is overdue.

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Nancy Pelosi is a government employee. She has a military pane that flies her to California every weekend. It is a 757-200 Jumbo Jet. It seats 186 passengers. This plane costs 22,000 dollars per hour to operate. Nancy uses this plane because it can fly coast to coast without refueling.
With government employees, it is not the salary, it is the fringe benefits.
Nobody really cares anymore, with trillions of fedeal dollars spent every year money has lost its meaning to federal employees. It does not mean anything, either you have food and shelter or you do not.

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No more progressives…Not all of us worship at the alter of the market place god and accept the arrogant blowhard assertions of people like you as gospel and the fact that you make a lot of money is completely irrelevant to the merits or truth of falsity of anything you claim. I would like to see you in a serious intellectual setting as you would be laughed out of the room in less than two minutes.

The “free market” does not hold CEOs accountable at all for the consequences of their mismanagement. You won’t find any of them collecting unemployment, unlike the workers who lose their jobs because of poor decisions. Instead, we have the government bailing out inadequately regulated greedy financial institutions. And their failures cannot be blamed on unions or workers.

No country practices an unregulated market system and no wealthy, stable, democratic society in the world lacks a substantial role for government. That is the reality of the 21st century.
America

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Conservative…..intellect,

Can we assume then you are a Federal employee, or an “educator”? You have just written a long post full of emotion and calling lots of conservatives very unflattering names in an effort to tell people conservatives are blowhards who just call people names…….how ironic.

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Is Nancy Pelosi the first speaker of the house to waste federal dollars on flying to his/her home state?
Wasting our tax money is a bi-partisan project.

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Kyle, I love the way you use data – you compare a goverment sector job that “pays up to $85,000″ (i.e. the very top of the pay grade, which is in practice almost never obtained) with the AVERAGE private sector salary in that community. Way to make the numbers support your conclusion!

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When you start with a conclusion and then only cite facts that support your conclusion, you have another partisan opinion piece. GOP Senator Scott Brown has been going around claiming how much federal worker pay is out of step with ‘real americans’. A little bit of research would show that all of these claims are based on comparing oranges to watermelons.

In this piece Kyle says: “Of the other 157 (federal jobs), a staggering 110 were for more than the average wage in their county…” What this misses is that the “average wage of the county” includes a lot of jobs that are not part of the federal workplace. Some federal jobs pay more, some pay less when compared to the private sector..

But tis the season to demonize the government and government employees. Republican Senator Scott Brown’s similar claim was outed as false months ago:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/feb/03/scott-brown/politifact-debut-brown-says-federal-jobs-pay-twice/

.

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Booger,

One’s occupation is evidentially irrelevant to whether their argument is a good one or a bad one. Whether one is a CEO, policeman, teacher, fireman, or preacher their arguments stand or fall on the evidence that is given. And I notice that, as usual, you didn’t say a thing of substance or address any of the content of what I said.

According to several political scientists and real journalists Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Hannity are the most influential conservatives in America listened to my millions of gullible people every day. None of them has a degree in any field, none of them has any journalistic training at all, and they seem to have read virtually nothing about economics, international relations, history, literature, science, education, or anything else. Sara Palin kicked around at four different colleges before becoming graduating with a degree in the tough field of sports journalism. She makes up words, cannot answer questions beyond repeating the same stock phrases and talking points, and she is the most popular GOP politician in America at the moment. George Bush didn’t know the difference between Shiite and Sunni Islam going into Iraq, didn’t know who were the leaders of India, Pakistan, and Canada after wining the the GOP nomination (and we paid a heavy price for his ignorance and incompetence didn’t we?)

How can you or anyone defend this lack of intellectual substance in the leading figures of American conservatism? The fact that they are popular means nothing with respect to their lack of credentials and lack of knowledge.

Why not heed the advice of the two young conservatives now editing The Atlantic Monthly who have written a book calling for the moderation and intellectual rescue of American conservatism from a bunch of empty headed demagogues? Why not at least read people like George Will and David Brooks? Is intelligence and education some sort of vice? It would seem so to listen to the thousands of people who post and speak just like those we see here today. Will has a PhD in philosophy from Princeton. I guess that means that he should be ignored as one of the snobby “elite.” He is a snob but he is also a smart conservative. Though I seldom agree with him though often I agree with Brooks who formerly edited the Weekly Standard I respect them both. What I cannot and will not respect is a collection of ignorant circus barkers in talk radio and Fox and politicians like Palin who invoke mindless claims and rhetoric about “death panels,” “socialism,” “government takeover,” Obama is a “Muslim,” who wasn’t born in the United States and so on.
There is no justification or excuse for this and intelligent, educated conservatives admit this why can’t the rest of you?

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When the White House released its staff salaries as all administrations have done annually since 1995. The list went from the top, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, all the way down to the lowest-level employee. The Office of Vice President and Office of Management were not included. The staggering sum for the Obama administration staff came in at $38,796,307.00 .

In comparison, the White House staff salaries for President Bush’s last year in office, 2008, came to $33,193,021.00. That’s a difference of $5,603,286.00, or an increase of 16.9% from the Bush administration to the current Obama administration. That’s a lot of “change.”

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Yeah, some people have a real tough time

http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/01/markets/hedge_fund_manager_pay/

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Wallbanger, the number of workers, many illegal, who are employed in the private landscaping differs by an order of magnitude to the small number who keep up the grounds of the White House and other public domains. Moreover, as many have pointed out here the public sector is non-profit, needs a stable workforce, is much smaller, and has different purposes from the private sector. And this is why this ideological journalist’s piece is a non-starter.

Consider that Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States and the world with 1.4 million workers in the United States. The government is a non-profit entity not cheap retailer which exploits its workers and imports cheap goods from dictatorships such as China. Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, has detailed its practices, in his book is called “The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business.” And the same has been done by other economists.

It is quite sad how so many people who are gaining the least from American capitalism are unable or unwilling to examine its practices and what is flowing from them and instead choose to follow the prevailing reactionary ideology and blame government and attack it for everything under the sun. Fox has done a great job with its propaganda and one has to confess that the GOP has been superb as well in working with its unofficial network and its talk radio allies.

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Booger, most conservatives, unfortunately, have never heard of George Will let alone watch or read him and similarly for Brooks who is lambasted by Limbaugh who has an audience which is probably 30 times the size of those two combined. Those who are considered to be the most influential conservatives in America by political scientists and media communication academics are Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity. And Will and Brooks are not even on the radar screen.

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Don’t care much for Brooks, and I am not surprised that you base your statement that most conservatives rely on Rush, Sean and Glenn, on a study by academics, liberal no doubt. The fact is these are talking heads who get most of their input from others who are well studied in their fields. I would say most conservatives would look to sources like Gingrich and Levin for a more philosophical opinion.

Since you seem to equate intellectualism with degree level and institutional prestige, I will share that I have worked in a research lab environment which was almost exclusively Phds. I commented to the Lab Director once that to be so smart, many of the scientist required a lot of help with everyday situations. He explained that getting a Phd is the process of learning more and more about less and less. A particle physicist for example, has spent a great deal of their time in a world very few can comprehend or understand, but they have done so at the expense of social skills, and general everyday knowledge.

The point was that their is a place for everyone. You wouldn’t hire a Mechanic to build an atomic reactor, and you would hire a physicist to work on your car. To think the Phd is better at all things is intellectual elitism.

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Conservatism needs some Intellect,

Clearly you don’t understand conservatism. Conservatives in sharp contrast to liberals, which presumably you are, don’t fall on every word spoken or written by George Will, Brooks or for that matter Beck, Limbaugh nor Hannity as do many on the left follow every word uttered by left wing pundits. Over on the Bookman blog the far majority are left wing bloggers who cut and paste or provide links to far left journalists or op ed commentators and call that proof of the correctness for their position on issues. I call it the lemming mentality that drives far-left ideology. Conservatives, which BTW most Americans identify themselves as such come with a variety of views on a variety of issues. The common bond, however, is the belief that America is a great country with a great history and culture that needs no transformation. Most identify themselves as believers in God and although may not be practicing Christians themselves. They do, however, for the most part agree that this country was founded on Christian Judeo beliefs. Most conservatives, while for the most part may not be “intellectual conservatives” per say, do consider themselves to be traditionalists and offended that some would challenge their deep belief in this country and wish to transform it into something far apart from their cultural values. This probably explains Obama and far- lefts disconnect with the American majority as evidenced in the polls.

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Conservatism needs…

One more of your gems:

“Booger, most conservatives, unfortunately, have never heard of George Will let alone watch or read him and similarly for Brooks…”

So you are also a devotee of unsubstantiated generalization?

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Private sector pay increased by 1.5% this year. So, the fed raisers are in line with both inflation and private sector. But, you failed to mention that state employees received no raises, and have not for 3 years. You are mixing and picking data to suit, wait a minute, what is your point? As someone said earlier, 2/3 businesses fail in the first 3 years… that’s the mark of a really well-run sector!

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A full-time secretary for a part-time public hospital board of trustees makes more than $50K, while I, a 25-year professional with a college degree to not. Both seem kind of out of whack.

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Privately contract MARTA bus operations. Step 1.

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1st line: “The public sector sees a totally different America than the rest of us do.”

Right out of the gates, already sounds like it’s straight out of Orwell.

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Oh “Conservatism needs some intellect”

Please kill my children and take my money and control me and tell me what to do. I only exist for the needs of others. My efforts and my wants are secondary to the general welfare of the collective.

And please butt rape me too. I promise to feebly bend over and succumb to your lustful advances.

ALL HAIL THE PROGRESSIVES. GIVE UNTO THEM YOUR LIFE.

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You sure Cynthia wasn,t at the skynard concert last night? thought I saw her back stage with Herman Cain…………..

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The primary difference between private and public sector jobs is that the “employer” in the public sector assumes no risk and is able to extract funding for the jobs at the point of a gun or threat of imprisonment.

The private sector employer assumes the risk of capital along with the risk of a government intent on his destruction, at least which appears to be the case with the current administration.

How are so many of the posters here able to support a President and administration so clearly aiming our government down the same path as Greece? When will you Libs learn that eventually there is no more “other people’s money” to confiscate?

When will you Libs learn that the government, or the Federal Reserve, can not continue to print or create money from nothing? To call you “progressives’ is a gross misuse of the word.

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Dawgdad,

Your earlier “question” put to someone else was a complete straw man and not worthy of any more of a response. And why I am not surprised that you don’t care for a moderate, fairly reasonable conservative such as David Brooks who admits when the other side has made a legitimate point and sometimes even shares their view of some matter?

Of course I expected the stock canard that academic studies are done by liberals rather than accept the results of objective, rigorously done social science aimed at arriving at the most accurate picture of the media-cultural landscape. (By the way one of the people who argues that Beck is the most influential conservative is a libertarian who writes for Reason magazine.) One can bring a horse to the trough but you can’t make them drink and it seems that no matter how much evidence is presented to a typical American conservative they will find some excuse to avoid engaging with it.

Gingrich is not the main source of influence among conservatives in the right wing media in contrast with these two but he is an utterly dogmatic ideologue who resorts to cheap tactics such as referring to the “socialist-secular” agenda in the title of his latest book. No self-respecting intellectual with a pretense of objectivity would write such drivel and it is intended for the same audience of dummies who swallow the swill of Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, and Palin hook line and sinker.

No, you are wrong about Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity getting their information from those who are genuine experts as anyone who listens to or reads any of their comments could attest. They seldom cite anyone of note, never give the slightest evidence of having read anything of substance, and make false and inaccurate claims so routinely that it would take books to list them. And again, consider the fact that none has a degree of any kind, none learned to research, write, and report as a part of their “careers” and Beck claims that he only goes to the “library where books are free.” Unfortunately he gives no evidence of having read them. (Whenever I bring this up conservatives either ignore these very important facts or resort to their anti-intellectual name calling as “degrees don’t matter” and “those who can do and those who can’t teach” or “academics are all liberals” and so on, which only shows that they have no value for truth and prefer ideology and wishful thinking.) Their “books” are little more than polished up versions of their nightly rants and they are on the air too much to spend any time doing the research and writing that a responsible person who cared about getting things right would have to do to have anything resembling an informed opinion. Even a political satire program in the Daily Show is able to pick apart these silly people and show the inaccuracy of so much of what pours forth from them on daily basis. The fact that you cannot or won’t recognize the sheer stupidity and ignorance of these people speaks volumes.

Some years ago several journalists at The New Republic magazine listened on one single day to the Limbaugh’s program and took three of his claims at random to research. They contacted Limbaugh’s program before and after they investigated his claims. None of the three could be confirmed. When the writers told those working for Limbaugh the results and offered them a chance to comment they responded “he is an entertainer not a journalist and he cannot be held accountable to journalistic standards.” Of course you will reject that as coming from a “liberal” political magazine even though it was edited by the conservative Andrew Sullivan at the time. When Beck was called on one of his false claims earlier this year he begged off that he was a “commentator” not a journalist. Apparently being a “commentator” on Fox television means little more than having a mike in front of you and saying whatever you feel like regardless of whether you can support it with any evidence.

Some years ago I listened to Limbaugh read an interview with a German scientist attending a global warming conference in New York. The scientist offered carefully qualified claims in which he asserted that global warming was not part of normal cyclical patterns in the climate and that it is caused by human activities and warranted more research. Limbaugh was either so illiterate or locked into his beliefs that he interpreted this scientist as denying global warming! An ordinary 10th grade high school student would have understood what the scientist was saying and you tell me that this idiot actually reads experts or people who have read the relevant literature? Give me a break. 90 seconds of listening to this circus barker should tell anyone with a brain that Limbaugh is a ranting, raving, idiot.

Let’s look at your last straw man misrepresentation. “The point was that their [your spelling] is a place for everyone. You wouldn’t hire a Mechanic to build an atomic reactor, and you would hire a physicist to work on your car. To think the Phd is better at all things is intellectual elitism.”

Gee, when and where did I make or imply the last line? I don’t hold the view that “PhD’s are better at all things” so don’t attribute such a silly view to me. Yes, I have a PhD and everyone I know has heard and used the line about specialization, at least in the sciences, involving knowing more and more about less and less. But the only mention I made of the PhD degree was in reference to George Will who is not an academic but decided to become a journalist who reads widely in many areas.

No, I wouldn’t ask a mechanic or any single individual to build a reactor that wouldn’t be possible and neither would I take seriously any claim or statement about anything under the sun from such profoundly ignorant people like Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, and Palin. I “equate intellectualism” as you so awkwardly put it not with institutional prestige, though that is usually earned, but with actually knowing a lot about what you are talking about and being able to support what you say with evidence. And again such abilities are wholly lacking in the above foursome. And yes there is a place for everyone and the place for Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and Palin is in a three ringed circus.

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Right Ok Kyle. The US goverment is just like Somolia, or Sudan (or fill in whatever country you like), totally non existent and does nothing at all. The people that report for duty just clock in and sit and wait their desks and wait until 5pm to clock out. But yet miraculously somehow your government is up and running and functional, stable, savings lives, defending against enemies protecting it’s citizens. Any idiot who complains about how awful the US government and fed employees are has never been travelled outside the country and never will.

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Conservatism, If you really were really smart, you would know that no one reads long posts. You are talking to yourself. Have at it. You will not waste my time.

Good night!

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Not casual observer (or non-observer would be a better handle)

You are a superb example of what I have been talking about. Obama is a Harvard law school graduate who edited the law review there. He taught Constitutional law at the University of Chicago as an adjunct professor for eight years. So, I suppose that his vast conspiracy to cover up his undergraduate record fooled both Harvard and U of C and everyone else. Funny that one of my old girlfriends and current brother in law who studied at Columbia both remember him. And I suppose the birth certificate and announcement in the newspaper were planted there 49 years ago so Obama could become the first Muslim president. Are you really as insane as you sound? I no more have to refute this absurd list of claims anymore than I have to respond to the loons who claim that we didn’t send Apollo missions to the moon. Obama doesn’t have to prove anything about his past which is already well documented (though you couldn’t care less) the burden of proof is on you wingnuts to prove your silly conspiracies. I am going to post one response below which of course you and others who share your Alice in Wonderland reality can dismiss as coming from a liberal (though he isn’t) and waste no more time with you. I teach ethics in a college and sometimes we treat issues in biomedical ethics. One of the leading figures in the entire country in this field wrote this about Sara Palin’s “death panel” claims and you can treat it however you will:

There is not a single statement in the voluminous number of pages under study that contains the slightest consideration, no matter its remoteness, of death panels, euthanasia, or any such fearsome concept.
In reality, the legislation simply calls for the reimbursement of physicians who counsel patients on end-of-life decision-making–counseling that is already required by a 1990 law and that is now covered by many insurance plans. But the specifics of the present bill are irrelevant to the loony conversation the right has sparked during the August recess. After all, even if there were some provision before Congress that could conceivably be interpreted as establishing a “death panel,” centuries, if not millennia, of established medical ethics (in addition to existing U.S. law) would prevent its actualization. In the midst of this crucial debate on the future of health care, somehow, the proponents of the euthanasia talking point seem to have forgotten everything we know about the practice of medicine in America….
the notion of forced euthanasia would contradict the long-held body of medical ethics to which all American doctors must adhere… Even if some wild-eyed legislator, special interest group, or purposeful troublemaker were to ignore the personal ethical behavior that has long been among individual and organized medicine’s strongest influences, no bill could legally include any deadly provision of the kind being bruited about. In 1990, responding to several high-profile court cases–notably, those of Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan, two young women in deep and irreversible comas who were kept on life support for unconscionably long periods, even as their families petitioned for cessation month after month–Congress mandated that any health care institution receiving Medicare or Medicaid funding (which means all but a very few acute and chronic care hospitals) must, on admission, provide patients with three statements: one outlining their right to accept or refuse any type of treatment; another laying out their right to issue advance directives to ensure that their wishes about continuing life-sustaining therapy be carried out; and a third explaining any policies that govern the institution’s withholding or withdrawal of life-supportive treatments…. In order for patients to make knowledgeable decisions under the 1990 law, it is essential that they thoroughly discuss with their physicians the implications of the directives they are choosing, such as “do not resuscitate” orders. H.R. 3200 would, for the first time, legislate that the physician receive a fee for these discussions, making it more likely that they will take place and that they will be of real substance. From these provisions of the bill, the ignorant, the nefarious, and the just plain stupid have extrapolated that the purpose of the periodic consultations is really to determine life or death, with government officials and even physicians–heaven forfend–taking on the role of Dr. Mengele. It is ironic that the very legislation designed to protect patient autonomy is that from which Sarah Palin and her ilk have derived the fantastical notion that her son, Trig, who has Down syndrome, would be euthanized if H.R. 3200 were passed.

Even if such a gruesome threat were real, the combination of morality, ethics, and the law would stop it early in its malodorous tracks. The entire issue–or non-issue, which it surely is–contains the ingredients of travesty unworthy not only of the attention of the bioethics community, but of the general public as well.
Sherwin B. Nuland, the author of How We Die, is Clinical Professor of Surgery at Yale University and a member of the Executive Committee of The Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. Sarah Palin, meet Hippocrates in The New Republic, September 2, 2009

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Everyone is talking past themselves. Has anyone noticed that Kyle’s evidence is not in sync with his argument and that his argument fails to be logical? These posts are like throwing red meat to hungry wolves who compete for a short term gain while the real problems encircle the pack. In the long run, continued non-civil discourse will be the death of this country.

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Wow! So the rude, ignorant , gumsnapping ‘lady’ on the other end of the phone when I make a call to the GA state gov. earns more than her counterpart in the private secter?? Obviously, she is worth it! She has the smarts to game the system-get a job where competence is irrelevant and she cannot be fired. She wins. Honest taxpayers lose. Oh, should we speak of her pension? YOu know the one her neighbors are paying for?

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Conservatism, there you go again. Kyle writes the articles. We merely comment. Got it?

I have a science degree from one of the largest universities in the southeastern US but a BS, let alone a master’s or PHD does not always trump common sense. Anyone who passed third grade & has any common sense whatsoever knows that air (specifically carbon dioxide) does not cause global warming & that without it or without enough of it, we all die. Only an idiot would believe that politicians can control it as they have promised.

I know the progressive agenda.

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errata – 2010

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Enter your comments here

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As to unfunded liabilities, (also known as OPEB – Other Post Employment Benefits like insurance for retirees, unfunded pensions, etc) – Graham-Leach-Blilely required public and private sector organizations to acknowledge those liabilities as part of the movement towards transparency. While many have acknowledged, most public sector orgs have failed to fund OPEB (Georgia’s obligations alone are in tens of billions). Private sector organizations have written them off through bankruptcy, and other means.

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Kyle,
I also included Walmart which is the largest private employer in the world and in the United States in a later post which I think alters the picture somewhat don’t you? The government does not have millions of retail and fast food workers so your whole article is a non-starter and is indeed like comparing apples and organs. The comparisons of averages here means little since the functions of each sector are different, the percentage of the workforce constituted by the federal government minus the military is around 2% of the total. It is illegitimate to compare entities which are different in so many ways.
I think you missed my point in invoking the CDC and others in that your tendentious selections of occupations, facts, figures, constitute part of the stereotypical attack on government which is one of the favorites of conservatives who seldom look into the details which do not fit their view. Indeed, the story about the Bank of America is all too typical. And your bias in calling federal employees “the political class” is what is laughable…and stupid. You may bamboozle the conservatives here but I see you as a supercilious young man and a journalistic fraud. The AJC has gone to a hell in basket and it is this kind of Fox level economics and other such concessions to the most reactionary members of the AJC readership which led me to drop my subscription years ago and occasionally visit online at most.

I don’t take classes anymore and haven’t in years. I give them as a professor.

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Anne, his article was about federal government employees who are generally I think better paid than those in state governments for the same or similar positions. I get plenty of “gum snapping” rudeness from those working in the service occupations in the private sector as well.

The truth is that too many conservative journalists, “commentators,” and “talk show” hosts and most conservatives who post here start with their ideology and it provides the framework which determines the facts that they choose. We all have perspectives and frameworks through which we in part see the world but when you look for what fits your view, in this case the stock hatred of government held by so many conservatives, then you are merely engaging in confirmation bias.

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I think Conservative needs some intellect, sadly needs some intellect.

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that was a pithy statement not

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Linda, I will acknowledge that so long as people close their minds to discussion, as you make clear by inviting anyone not to agree with you to take their thoughts elsewhere, this republic will fail.

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“and racist fools like Grand forks who thinks that a Harvard educated lawyer who taught Constitutional law at the University of Chicago for eight years is “an idiotic, retarded, child-like, stupid, in-over-his-head, troglodyte” and that he is a “Muslim” I realize what how a reformed alcoholic and drug addict in Glen Beck with no degree of any kind, no college credits, no journalistic training, no knowledge, and a probable bipolar personality is taken seriously.”

Suck it, ma’am.

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another pity comment..not

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JD,
Excellent comments and I saw virtually nothing else worth reading here (including the original article) besides what you wrote.

Linda,

Who made this a “conservative” blog? I thought it was a public place where people can post what they choose. I made the mistake I guess of thinking that I was living in a free, open and democratic society in which one could express dissenting or different views. But I do agree that conservatives posting in a “conservative blog” cannot be “swayed” by argument or evidence and often don’t even have a concept of the evidence such as your unintelligible remarks about global warming show.

As I said earlier, I seldom watch MSNBC, I read the print media, left and right. It is mostly conservatives who have created this alienating, adversarial mode of political discourse, and who seek out echo chambers such as talk radio and Fox television where they can just hear their views repeated back to them. Virtually every time a conservative responds to me here they just provide more evidence for the claims I make about their dogmatism and refusal to engage evidence.

The first indications of global warming appeared in work as early as the 60s and received increasing attention from scientists worldwide by the 1990s. By the way “climate change” is Frank Luntz’s (used the wrong name in an earlier post) substitute for “global warming” meant as a euphemism to downplay its significance. The phrase does not actually designate a new phenomenon as you seem to think. (Luntz is the same man who gave us the phrases “death tax” for “estate tax” and “tax burden” and “tax relief” and most recently “government takeover of health care.”) You can dismiss global warming through some unclear (which is what I meant by I don’t understand what you are trying to say earlier) gestures at “common sense” and the “third grade” and a misunderstanding of changes in the terminology but it is a matter of scientific investigation. Why does the National Academy of Sciences, arguably the most prestigious science organization in the United States hold the view that global warming is a real phenomenon and has issued annual reports on it for almost ten years? Do elite scientists have no “common sense?” Did the International Panel on Climate Change comprised of 2000 scientists from around the globe systematically misread the literature and lack common sense or did they look at all the data and arrive at well founded scientific conclusion? I don’t know where you obtained a degree in science but your comments show a breath taking ignorance and irrationality.
If you have “…never seen the American people so awake & angry, protesting in the streets!” you must not remember the 1960s in which many thousands more of a much smaller population took to the streets for civil rights and in opposition to an unjust war. All I see now is a mob of angry, empty headed conservatives who think Obama is a Muslim who wasn’t born in the U.S., that the government “wants to kill your grandmother” and so on. And if you think that distrust of government originated with Obama you must not remember Watergate and the resignations of both a vice president and then a president. You must not remember before that LBJ saying that he “would not send American boys to do what Asian boys should be doing” before he escalated the troop levels in Vietnam to 500,000. And you most have short memory indeed if you don’t recall the lies and manipulation of the American public by “W” who told us that “Iraq harbored terrorists including al Qaeda” and Saddam was an imminent threat with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons which he didn’t have. You “memory” is determined by your conservatism I would suggest but it certainly isn’t grounded in history.

Well, I have seen enough here. I won’t be back to renew my sense of horror at what passes for “thought” among ordinary conservatives and journalism by a little boy “journalist” with a bee in his bonnet about the big, bad, federal government.

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“Did the International Panel on Climate Change comprised of 2000 scientists from around the globe systematically misread the literature and lack common sense or did they look at all the data and arrive at well founded scientific conclusion?”

No, they were bought off by Al Gore and the left wing communists.

No one cares about global warming because people realize that it was nothing but a scam.

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John @ 8:10, Really?

Quite frankly, I think the global warming alarmists could have come up with a better culprit than our breath, such as things that actually get hot.

Where are these scientific specialists in these appropriate fields? At East Anglia, Professor Mann, the UN, etc. who have all been discredited?

I don’t think my fifth grade teacher was obnoxious or foolish. She was right then & would still be right today.

The problem of addressing scientific issues with scientific evidence is that it makes no common sense. Why did Obama when he was on the Joyce Foundation direct over a million dollars to the Chicago Climate Exchange? What was the connection between the Chicago Climate Exchange, Al Gore & Goldman Sacs? Why did the Federal National Mortgage Assn., responsible for the world-wide economic recession, obtain 2 patents for climate change gimmicks, while under the direction of Franklin Raines who was fired after earning $91 M while cooking the books? Would you like more questions that pertain to real scientific evidence?

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linda, fannie alone did not create the recession….it is just bs talking points…and makes you look stupid

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real cute fork you …..conservatism needs intellec kicked your arse

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Conservatism @ 9:23, Kyle is a conservative & this a conservative blog but you can express any rhetoric you choose.
Global warming did not appear in the 1960’s. Global cooling appeared in the 1970’s.
I read your entire ranting post & this is all I could come up with.
May God bless you.

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Linda, yes, I work for state government for less pay than that of my equivalent position in the private sector. I say that not to complain, I see my work as service. The thesis Kyle proposed was that because of the disparity in average pay between federal workers and private sector workers, we have created two classes of people. Ironically, President Bush was responsible for creating this “class warfare” as he privatized the more common parts of the federal workforce, keeping positions of upper management, specialists, and those whose education, expertise and experience is not that of the average private sector employee. In other words, to compare apples to apples, we must compare the types of jobs now populating the federal work force with equivalent types in the private sector in order for Kyle’s data to begin to support his thesis.

As to how we pay for government and how much we should pay for government — those are arguments that are valid and necessary to have. But, to say that we should impose a “one size fits all cut” to make things equal creates the hazard of “throwing the baby out with the bath water. Blaming the employees for the decisions made by the voters via their duly elected representatives is not the way to run a country.

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khc @ 10:01, What do you think these headlines have to do with the economic crisis?
1991: Opening Doors to Affordable Housing initiative is launched
1992: Fannie Mae Becomes the largest issuer & guarantor of Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS’s)
1993: Fannie Mae succeeds the Opening Doors goal of producing $10 B in purchases for low & moderated-income needs more than 16 mts. ahead of schedule
1994: Fannie Mae’s Trillion Dollar Commitment is launched targeting housing finance that will serve 10 million low to moderate income families

Fast-forward to 9/30/99 New York Times, 1999!!!!!!!!!!!
“Fannie Mae Eases Credit to Aid Mortgage Lending”
“In a move that would help increase home ownership rates among minorities & low income consumers, the Federal National Mortgage Assn. is easing the credit requirement on loans it will purchase from banks & other lenders…to extend mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough…the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton adm. to expand mortgage loans among low & moderate income people…pressing Fannie Mae to help them make loans to so-called subprime borrrowers…is taking on significantly more risk…prompting a govt. rescue…In July (HUD) proposed that by ‘01, 50% of Fannie…& Freddie’s portfolios be made up of loans to low & moderate income borrowers.

All this happened 3 yrs, before Bush was inaugurated.

There’s a lot of blame to go around for the current economic recession & I’m not holding Bush without blame.The main factor has to do with ideology, that home ownership was a right, not merely a privilege & that people who could not qualify needed to be given loans even though they were NINJAS: no income, no jobs & no assets, & it’s still going on as I write. Does that even sound like a conservative principle?

What am I stupid about?

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jd @ 10:59, Why do you work for the state govt. for less pay than your equivalent position in the private sector?

There are no classes of people, certainly not just 2.

If Bush was responsible for class warfare, then why does it seem than it’s worse under Obama? He seems to be dividing the country even further by pitting the rich against the poor, the CEO’s & Wall St. against Main St., the blacks against the whites, Fox News against the alphabet media, the truly radicals against the Tea Parties, etc. Why is that?

No one is blaming the fed. or state employees for the crisis, except for those whose unions will not work for a solution to solve the crisis. We must work together for a solution. Everyone must give or all will loose.

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Congress said, “Let’s end the Bush tax cuts so we will have more money to spend!” Let’s spend our way into oblivion! Now that we’ve convinced the Fed. Reserve to monetize the fed. debt, which they said 6 mts. ago under oath they would never do, we have a free reign at spending. Let’s bankrupt the USA!

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“real cute fork you …..conservatism needs intellec kicked your arse”

Ma’am, I’m not sure if you’re stupid or just stupid.

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wher you at josef nix???

I looking for you………..

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Do federal workers still enjoy the same pay scale all over the US? Part of this may be because it’s so expensive to live in the DC area. We have a relative who lives in a DC suburb. His very modest home in a pleasant but non-ritzy neighborhood is valued at $340,000.

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Much of the blame for a bloated and inept bureaucracy is well deserved.

Strange though, that the vast percentage of it is directed solely at the federal level. Show me a state-run political machinery that is not just as corrupt, bloated and incompetent. Look no further than Atlanta, my myopic friends, for plenty of evidence, where Pray for Rain and Gang has proven conclusively that the Democrats have no stranglehold on cheap talk, dirty deals and little if any beneficial action. Unless of course, you are one of the newly established American plutocracy.

I’m not sure what the rightist beef is about anyway. You “fiscal conservatives” got exactly what you’ve fought for since the days of Ronnie. An emasculated Uncle Sam and allowing the “free market” to police itself. Full reign. No consequences. Nobody watching the foxes guarding the American hen house. The entrenched incumbency racket of the Tweedledee and Tweedledum Parties turning a paid-off blind eye to staggering white collar crimes and thievery, at a level and scope only heretofore imagined.

Three decades on it is now fully matured and ready to finally replace we the people’s sovereignty with their own.

To the point where unchecked and imperious Wall Street corporatism has brought this nation to her knees and a second depression. And declares any who dare tries to expose their crimes as traitors. When in fact they are the unindicted criminals who hide behind that giant Old Glory on Wall Street. It should be taken down and given to someone more deserving.

Corporate lobbyists by the tens of thousands with billions of dollars, actually writing the legislation that holds them unaccountable for their innumerable misdeeds and at gigantic and needless cost to the American shareholder, taxpayer and consumer. You and me.

Throw in a few hundred million dollars every year in undeserved handouts, giveaways and “subsidies”, and they are now virtually untouchable. At least with these little men in Washington and plenty of other places who lack even a shred of moral courage to stand up to them and actually advocate on behalf of the interests of clobbered middle-class American. Who’ve watched their standard of living grow smaller by the year.

And yet the faithful faux conservatives believe these Titans of Criminal Negligence and Malfeasance and their army of lackeys to be their compassionate, trickle down, job providing benefactors, and the cops and law enforcement – of any kind and at any level – to be the bad guys.

Remember when the Republicans touted themselves as “tough on crime”? What the hell happened? Why and when did the GOP become the Anti-Law & Order Party?

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DO NOT BELIEVE FOR ONE SECOND THAT STATE AND FEDERAL EMPLOYEES MAKE ANYWHERE NEAR THE SAME SALARIES. Go the Georgia job site and see for yourself. Georgia was unable to fill tons of positions due to such low salaries before the recession. Now most are not available due to a hiring freeze. You want one of these GREAT jobs, Their waiting for you.

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“You “fiscal conservatives” got exactly what you’ve fought for since the days of Ronnie. An emasculated Uncle Sam and allowing the “free market” to police itself.”

This embolden part of the statement applies to THE OTHER LIBERALS, THE LIBERTARIANS not to any “fiscal conservatives” who understand the commerce section of the Constitution; which does not allow an unfettered capitalism to exist in the capitalist marketplace of this country that these LIBERTARIANS want.

There is no such thing as a so-called “Free Market!”

Where there is manipulation or regulation in whatever form it may take on there can be no “Free Market”. Whether the manipulation or regulation is done by the hand of government or done by the hand of enterprise, freedom in the marketplace is always limited by one or the other.

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Corporate lobbyists by the tens of thousands with billions of dollars, actually writing the legislation that holds them unaccountable for their innumerable misdeeds and at gigantic and needless cost to the American shareholder, taxpayer and consumer. You and me.

Granted, there are those MAJOR players of innumerable misdeeds, but the overzealous enthusiasm to paint ALL business as corrupt has resulted in an economic standstill.

Let’s call it the negative impact of “trickle down regulations”.

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Well dusty…As your hero on every occasion once said “there you go again”
“You assume right away that no one in Washington can figure how to cut expenses”.

Yes, my dear I do assume that based on their respective track record…

“Maybe you should talk to Defense Secretary Robert Gates who has a proposal coming to Congress to cut out a central command headquarters and a hundred “generals.”

What a hundred generals…wow what’s that assuming a generals salary is 175,000 per …. Chump change!

How about bringing all the troops home who are fighting ghosts in Afghanistan, and propping up an Iraq government filled with corrupt politicians.

“Gates is thinking like a man who has handled money, a man who realizes what debt actually means”.

Yeah I’m sure Gates is a man who has handled money…Lots of money…Like the billions that went missing in Iraq!

“I cannot go to Washington and instigate cuts in every department. I don’t know the particulars of every department”.

As your hero Ronnie would say there you go again!

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“U.S. military leaders inherited a faulty strategy for the war in Afghanistan at the end of the Bush administration and are still working to “refine the concepts,” the U.S. commander said in an interview airing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

And Dusty who is this Commander, I believe his name is David Patraeus.

And who was/is the Secretary of defense? Can you say Robert Gates.

When you come to the table Dusty don’t bring BS, as always you are made out to be a fool!

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Problem Solved, 2:44

So, what is your anti-war ID this time? You seem to appear on every blog available. Your white flag has been dragged hither & yon.

We are not fighting ghosts in Afghanistan. Those are the words of cowards who sit home and demean our military while they fight the Taliban. the sidekicks to al Queda. You had rather sit home and cry while the terrorists are kept busy in the Middle East.

You want to mention missing millions in Iraq while forgeting that the UN allowed Saddam ten years to squander millions for “feeding the children”. But that does not bother you. No, you want to make a stab at our military..

Yes, I do believe we can do something in Washington. But the spendthrift now is president Obama, a man without leadership experience. It shows as our country sinks deeper and deeper into his financial “programs”. When are you going to notice that he is president now and stop blaming past presidents for his actions?

We are supposed to be a country of independent people, of self suffiency and freedom loving. That is what I want us to be. That is what I want our government to be.

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The week in news:

General Petraeus goes on one of those liberal leaning Sunday morning host shows (you know the ilk like Meet The Depressed: four or five liberal Democrats and one token Conservative – at best) and says things could have been planned in Afghanistan better under the Bush administration. The liberal main stream media and their blog minions of course are running with it. Now you have to remember that these are the same people who snidely called Petraeus “Betrayus” on political blogs when he supported the surge in Iraq during the last two years of the Bush administration. It’s not surprising at their turn of support, really. Different president now.

Rangel has a birthday bash that even Bloomberg attended. It was a fundraiser event. Rangel and his cohorts all but threatened anyone to take him down. And these are the same ilk that strung up and quartered the late Ted Stevens who was later acquitted of ALL of his charges, albeit too late to save his career.

But the real winner of the week is Maxine Waters, aka Max The Knife: Rep. Hot Waters on Friday blamed BUSH for her ethics charges – saying she had to intervene with the US Treasury on for minority-owned banks seeking federal bailout funds. Yeah, like the ones tied to her husband. All because the Treasury Department wouldn’t schedule its own appointments. You truly can’t make this kind of stuff up. Liberal democrats are the gift that keep on giving. Seen the latest Obama and Pelosi/Reid-ocrat poll ratings?

Speaking of Obama, Teleprompter In Chief and family headed to the redneck riviera, aka Panama City Beach in Florida. Well better late than never I suppose. Especially after Queen Antoinette Obama was lambasted in this nation for her flamboyant Spain vacation and not vacationing in the US during a CONTINUING economic crisis under Democrat rule. Where are the Obamas going to vacation next week? Or is Obama this following week going to actually travel around the nation again on a circa-2008 campaign stunt bout and start trashing the Bush administration and Republicans again?

And there’s good news for all the liberal Democrat government lovers out there: While workers’ pay and benefits have fallen stagnate, federal government employees’ pay has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn. Now you have to remember that the Pelosi/Reid-ocrats are going to raise taxes on private business owners, cause companies to shell out unknown higher costs due to their ObamaCare, and continue to push for an even higher minimum wage – to something they call a “livable wage.” And to think the clueless economic buffoons on the left running this nation are telling business owners to create more jobs.

New housing continues to collapse because of tightening credit and Democrats are pushing for banks to give more loans and credit. Yeah, the same credit that the Democrats raked over the coals calling “Big Banking” evil and all in a dog and pony Congressional show earlier this year. Will you people make up your damned minds already?

The US just posted the highest trade deficit in 20 months as GDP growth continues to sputter. Yep, it’s got to be Bush’s fault.

Senator Reid is getting backlash from his comment “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, OK. Do I need to say more?” Isn’t that, so, liberal Democrat? Use race to further a political agenda.

Can’t wait for next week’s follies in liberal Democrat land!

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“But then you wouldn’t have a clue about war….Never having been in battle, never having to risk your life, and especially that war which is totally uneccesary! Don’t ever tell me about war I’ve been there, done that.”

Most people who have ever served with honor do not brag about it nor use it as a crutch for political – or argument – sake. I throw the BS flag on “problem solved.”

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Well “problem solved”…for someone who claims to have served in combat you sure aren’t defending your alleged service very well.

And yes, I stand by my BS flag. It’s up to you to remove it. Now, do you have any other comments about what I’ve posted here? Put up or shut up, liberal.

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No, you most certainly were, “problem solved.” Otherwise you wouldn’t have even brought it up. I’m right, you know I’m right, so let’s both move along……….

Week in the news, Part II:

CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on yet another Sunday talk show has the host Howard Kurtz host Harry Shearer as a guest to talk about his new documentary “The Big Uneasy.” Long story short it’s about Katrina and the aftermath. Pay close attention to this caption and note that Bush is not blamed ONCE!

HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: “But the other issue is the writing of the history as to why this happened and it could it happen again? Now, here, you zero in on the Army Corps of Engineers. Do you feel the mainstream media missed the mark, or is that overstating it?”

HARRY SHEARER: “I don’t zero in. The people who did the investigations, the scientists and engineers who actually know what they’re talking about, zeroed in on the Army Corps of Engineers, four decades plus of malfeasance and misfeasance that led to this disaster. I think the national news media basically did take a walk away from that as the core of this story, that this was a man-made disaster. And that’s why I was led to make the movie, to sort of try to correct the record now five years on.”

Interesting. Suddenly the liberals in the main stream media are not blaming Bush for Katrina and blaming – GASP! – the failure of GOVERNMENT!

Obama supporting the Mosque near Ground Zero has all but sealed his fate as a second term president. Just like the majority of Americans who were against ObamaCare. Bank on it.

The main liberal Democrats and their drivers in the main stream media just couldn’t figure out who the nutbag serial murderer/attacker was. Deep down you just KNOW they were salivating at the thought it may be some stupid redneck Southern Tea Bagger. But to their dismay, it turned out to be an Arab-Israeli citizen who was, by the by, caught right here in Atlanta trying to fly to Israel. Even then they wanted to blame Israel. But alas, anyone who knows anything – which generally rules out most of the main stream media – knows that the name “Abuelazam” is of Arabic descent, not of Israeli descent.

Moving along, the liberal Democrats who cut a food stamp program to fund a state aid bill (aka: state bailout due to failed liberal Democrat policies) will most likely have to strike again after Queen Antoinette Obama’s “Let’s Move” policy. No, again, you really can’t make this kind of stuff up. These are the same people who wet themelves when the Reagan administration called ketchup a vegetable.

Back to GDP growth for a second, as referenced earlier with the trade deficit report, a new GP report along with recent inventory data suggest the Department of Commerce will revise down second quarter economic growth from 2.4% annual rate to 1%. Sure am glad that trillion dollar “stimulus” bill is working as planned.

Now on to more lightened material, here was a headline: “For Tiger, a first round to relish at PGA.” My how the mighty have fallen. Tiger holds freaking PAR at a major event and it’s now headline sports news. Seriously???

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Awe, name calling so early here PROBLEM SOLVED? No comments about ANY of my points posted? How disappointing.

Damn I’m good.

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CARPET CLEANER .. Understand you are the moron who called me out..I was replying to another poster…

And you decided to be a butinsky, when you had no clue to which you were writing.

I proved my point to your unsolicated BS…so go away, I have nothing further to say to a babbling IDIOT!

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The White House needs to be white again, plain and simple.

Read the spin on msnbc all you want.

For your info Linda, Fox News tells more truth than CNN,NBC,CNBC,ABC,CBS.

Go ahead lady and drink your dark kool-aid.

Taste good now,don’t it??

Wait tell you drown your girly arse in taxes and debt……………..

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Problem ( NOT!) Solved.

And you voted for this piece of sheite for Pres…………….

Don’t complain now Mr./Mrs. Genious——————–

YOU ARE GETTING WHAT YOU ASKED FOR !!!

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People like ‘problem solved ‘ ARE THE PROBLEM…………..

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Mr Nads….Your tirade against Linda….

It’s always fun to watch someone eat their own…..

What a bunch of clowns!

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Mr. Nads @ 7:02, I’m on your side.

I only read MSNBC to see who Problem was actually quoting. I knew it wasn’t Patraeus.

For your info, did you know that last year, of the top 20 cable news shows, based on # of viewers, Fox had the top 13 & # 15? That guy who needs denture cream on CNN was #14? Fox has more viewers than CNN, MSNBC & the new one Nancy Grace is on—combined. More Americans want fair & balanced, we decide, than unfair & skewed, we already decided for you.

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Mr….No Go NADS

As a mattter of fact ill-informed one this is the first time I have ever posted on this site.

My pet MONKEY is at the vet so I needed some entertainment tonight.

And here you are. Right on schedule.

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S

orry Linda,miscostrued your thoughts, but not that of ps.

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And to AmVet, thanks for the kind words.I try to ALWAYS be scintillating,brilliant, and countermanding while analizing idiots like ‘problem un-solved’ ….

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And you voted for Obloma and have the gerbel rocks to admit it??

What an idiot.

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Problem @ 7:07, What you placed in quotation marks @ 5:32 & attributed to Petraeus & said, “is a direct quote of General Petraeus” was a quote from MSNBC. You lied.

What you placed in quotation marks @ 7:07 was what Petraeus actually said.

MSNBC said it left “little doubt” that he was blaming the Bush adm. I disagree. Petraeus knows better & is too much a gentleman than to get on national TV & criticize his former boss.

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He’s too busy now to talk about Petraeus .His/her drawers/panties in a serious wad.

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Mr. Nads

August 15th, 2010
7:38 pm
And to AmVet, thanks for the kind words.I try to ALWAYS be scintillating,brilliant, and countermanding while analizing idiots like ‘problem un-solved’ ….

So sorry moron I’m going to have to send you to bed analyzing your problems…OBTW did you notice how to spell analyzing? It’s a very common word. Especially for people who have your problem (s)

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Oh holy criminey and here comes Linda again….I’ve never had this much fun since my monkey jumped on my dog and shouted hi ho silver!

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gonna leave it with ya folks.
Got 3 dozen oysters on the half shell to consume.
Dexter’s hungry.

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Problem, Would you have voted for Obama if you had known that he would appoint a man as head of Medicare & Medicaid, with a budget higher than the entire military, during a congressional recess without being veted or even nominated, who said. “Any health care funding plan than is just, equitable, civilized & human must, MUST redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer & less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.”?

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Problem, would you have voted for Obama if you had known that he would appoint as manufacturing czar a man said, “We know that the free market is nonsense…convinced that there is a free lunch. We know this largely about power, that it’s an adults only no limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun & we get it that if you want a friend, you should get a dog.”?

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Linda…I’ll be responsive to that question…If I had known half of the people Obama would put in place in his administration the answer would be no. However the only reason I voted for him (I was a Clinton)
supporter….was that I considered him to be the lesser of two evils!

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The issue is not how MUCH these parasites get paid.
The REAL issue is that these parasites get PAID……………….period.

Federal Office of Child Support,
Rural Electric Authority,
Department of Education,
DEA,ATF,TSA,etc,,ad nauseum……………..

Let us take it back. CLAWBACK with extreme prejudice. We can do it the hard way or the easy way.

Alas, just a pipe dream. The R & D party ALWAYS wins as long as there is wealth left to be plundered.

Those who vote for these parasites are really worse than the parasites.

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Geez, Kookman goes on vacation and all the retarded leftovers come over here to pi$$ on the fire hydrant.

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Linda give it a rest I never misquoted anyone I just threw out the MSNBC report. Take it up with them…You are beginning to bore me!

U.S. military leaders inherited a faulty strategy for the war in Afghanistan at the end of the Bush administration and are still working to “refine the concepts,” the U.S. commander said in an interview airing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In his first interview since taking over as head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus told NBC’s David Gregory that when “a lot of us came out of Iraq in late 2008 and started looking intently at Afghanistan, we realized that we did not have the organizations that are required for the conduct and the comprehensive civil/military counterinsurgency campaign.”

In the interview, which was conducted last week in Kabul and aired Sunday, Petraeus did not specifically criticize former President George W. Bush, who promoted him to head of U.S. Central Command in April 2008. But the timetable he described left little doubt that he believed the Bush administration inadequately laid the groundwork for integrating Afghan leaders into the allied military structure.

“Over the last 18 months or so” — Bush left the White House 18 months ago — “what we’ve sought to do in Afghanistan is to get the inputs right for the first time,” Petraeus said. “We needed to refine the concepts — to build, in some cases, concepts that didn’t exist” seven years after the Afghan war began in October 2001.

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Left wing retards hate poor people.

Dems may use food stamp money to pay for Michelle Obama’s nutrition initiative

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/114271-dems-consider-more-food-stamp-cuts-to-fund-child-nutrition-bill

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Linda @ 9:27

I like your fine post. My thoughts exactly.

The Viet Nam stories by “Problem” are quite familiar. I believe he was banned from another blog for his persistent animosity. He loves to pick a fight. Seems to have a problem. I hope he gets help.

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Dusty….I have never been banned from any web site…..

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problem solved’s pet monkey stories remind me of something I saw on Redeye.

The topic of discussion was about the woman whose pet monkey tore off her face during an attack.

Anyhoo….Dr. Charles Lamont Hill was on that night….he turns it into a racial issue. The other guests moan that Dr. Hill always focuses on race. Hill laughingly says they should all know that he doesn’t like to talk about race.

He continues on with….but some woman, for all intents and purposes, marries a monkey, and authorities want to do an autopsy on the chimp to determine what HIS problem was????

Too funny!

His linking race to a chimpanzee made me a bit uncomfortable, but Hill is black so I thought what the hey…

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Problem @ 9:58, You were disrespectful to our soldiers & their commander by trying to to put the words from an ultra-liberal website into Gen. Petraeus’ mouth.

Your actions in 1966 have nothing to do with what you spun today & are still trying to spin tonight.
You are trying to change the subject at hand & cause my attention to be diverted to your actions from 44 yrs. ago. It’s not working.

I was testing you. If you actually served in the military, you would know & agree that disrespect is not tolerated.

You lied today. If you’re dishonest with you words, you’re dishonest with your actions.

Good night. May God bless you.

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Stooooooopid.

How’s it goin’ Grand? I saw Governor Christie (sp?) on the telly yesterday. Impressive…very impressive.

G-nite.

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Problem solved

Your stories are familiar, ’specially the one about the ‘Nam soldier getting the medal. I have heard them before. Perhaps you have not been banned with this ID but you sound just like one who was.

When did you mention Viet Nam? On this one blog? Try 5:32, 6:14. 8:24 & 9:58. You asked. There’s the answer. I will give you no more answers because you want to talk irresponsibly about our current military. Good night.

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@Conservatism needs some Intellect. Man you put Gran Folks in his place. People need to stop drinking the Kool-aide. Because families are out here trying to live off of minimum wages, and all these Glen Beck Zombies on here can rant about is Fox news talking points. “Quit relying on the Feds for help.” Not everyone will graduate from college, but still want the opportunity to make a decent livable wage in this world. The Midwest has almost died, with the closing of good paying factory jobs, that have headed to Asia. SMH????????

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gran need to change your need to mini forks….to match the size of your intellect

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I see that Kyle tolerates Grand Forks.

He’ll get over that.

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“I see that Kyle tolerates Grand Forks.”

Yeah, because Kyle isn’t a bed wetting baby like the other two ajc opinion writers.

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What’s the matter Kyle. Are you looking for a job?

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“I don’t know what “bed wetting” is supposed to actually mean”

Not my problem, ma’am.

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gran fup, what’s your address so i can steal your welfare check

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thanks missy

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kyle is just another angry conservative white rightwinger that hate to see a black family in the whitehouse…now after carrying water for the TEXAS THUG for the last 8 yrs…all of a sudden, the government is now the problem…typical

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I know y’all miss me now…remember 9/11, taking CLINTONS surplus and turning it into a deficit,remember declaring a war on a country that did nothing to us,thereby insuring thousands of our brave men and women will get killed and crippled, remember losing millions of jobs?..well i miss the good ole days too..vote republican

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@@ I happen to understand Grand Forks….A coservative North Dakota native as my parents were. Although I was born and raised in Oregon, which would shape my fundamental beliefs. Every summer as a teen my parents would put me on the train, and I would be off to Williston ND to work on my uncles wheat farm….some of my fondest memories! Like Oregon shaped my political beliefs…I assume growing up in North Dakota shaped Grand Forks beliefs.

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@problemsolved

so growing up in N. DAKOTA made GRAND FORKS so angry and bitter?

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The private sector has failed to become competitive, thus falling behind. Raises anyone ?

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@@…Let us not forget what party has been in charge of California for the last seven years…correct me if I’m wrong but is not Ah-nold a republican?

I know what you are saying about Oregon, my sister still resides there!

We used to have a republican governor named Tom McCall (a great environmentalist) who had billboards put up in strategic places that read…

“Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live”.

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if you voted for yosemite sam and the dimwit you are brainless

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