Monday, June 14, 2010

With that little brain activity, how do they remember to breathe?

Every now and again, you stumble across a statement on the internet that displays such a profound lack of mental agility that you wonder how its author mastered, not the word-processing program, but the On/Off button on the computer.

Random Nuclear Strikes quoted a winner from the HuffPo comments section the other day, on the increasing gap between pulic- and private-sector wages:
The chief difference: public employees are doing necessary work while private employees are trying to convince use of what brand of pickles to buy.
This guy is so dense that if he were a liquid, gold would float on him. Light bends when he walks in the room. The guys in the Army R&D department are trying to figure out how to make projectiles out of depleted him.

I'll grant you that there are employees on the public payrolls whose services we would miss sorely if they were to suddenly pull a Left Behind, at least until we could come up with replacements; on the other hand, there are also vast swathes of bureaucrats whose absence would only be noticed by a lack of red tape stuck to our shoes and a certain extra heaviness in our pockets every payday.

Hey, let's see which one you can live without longer: Your state lottery commission, or the grocery store?

31 comments:

Retardo said...

What's funny about this moron who wants to close Sears because he thinks the government provides his underwear, is that if you call him a socialist, he'll honestly believe you're crazy.

og said...

Let's get back to the core of the lesson: The .gov can only consume resources, and only produce dependants.

wolfwalker said...

The guys in the Army R&D department are trying to figure out how to make projectiles out of depleted him.

Screen-spitter on that one. Consider it stolen, er, borrowed for future use.

LL said...

He would postulate that if EVERY grocery store was a GOVERNMENT grocery store, they could hand out "free food". Sort of like Russia - with the six block long lines where you didn't know what was being sold that day until you got to the head of the line.

Anonymous said...

"What's funny about this moron who wants to close Sears because he thinks the government provides his underwear"

In prison (and the service) the government does provide your underwear.

Incarceration is the new freedom.

Shootin' Buddy

og said...

"in prison (and the service) the government does provide your underwear."

Which they buy from Campbellsville apparrel,(military) and Anchortex (prison) among other places. Don't worry, the .gov will ignore them (like BP) long enough to force them into receivorship, use money stolen from my grandkids to bail them out, and then start producing really superior drawers.

I'd rather have Mitt Romneys magic underwear.

Beaumont said...

Also heard today about a study (via Boortz) about the relationship between economic knowledge and political leanings. The more leftist one is, the more ignorant. As if we didn't know.

Anonymous said...

That dude is dumber then the dirt he is standing on!!!
Cripes!!

But check this quote from out from our local communist House Representative. Kinda see what were up against!

"Government spends money so that the economy can be stimulated and money can be made. You have to spend money at the macro level to make it work. This is different at the household level. The private sector creates money by pulling it out of thin air.~David Bly"

With people like this running around......

MO Bro said...

And how is it those people see stupidity in others but not in themselves? Sheesh!

Anonymous said...

Umm..."they"?

I'll have you know that the dense and depleted among us (like goose-jugglers and chess-boxers), are some of the finest...well, dense and depleted "theys" in the world.

Further, "they" are a testament to the effectiveness of today's American academic, political, entertainment, and media systems.

But...based on what we know of them from their stated beliefs and politics...probably not shooters.

It's not just that "we" like and believe in guns and our right to them, Tam, but what else that like indicates that we probably also like and believe.

(Just to pound the carcass of this ol' dead nag into oblivion...but what the heck).

AT

NotClauswitz said...

kinda like watching Green Day preform at the Tony Awards on Broadway - a measure where the densitomiter needle was bent.

Borepatch said...

Extracting rents from the masses has always counted as "necessary work" for the governing class, all the way back to Sargon.

Versailles is particularly nice on a Sunday afternoon - all those rents extracted from the French peasants payed for the hundreds of fountains.

Mike W. said...

The guys in the Army R&D department are trying to figure out how to make projectiles out of depleted him.

Soylent green, weapon and nourishment!

Anonymous said...

Hey, it be necessary to send out my check! Ain't none of you private employees gonna sends me moneys. It only wright that I gets as much dollers as you cause my great,great, great,great,great, great uncle sold his bro to the slavvers an thats why I be hear insteads of in Africa where the rightful rulin race rules.
Yeah!

Tam said...

AT,

It continues to be goddam tiresome, too.

It should be so obvious as to not require refutation, but since you want to go there:

Just because somebody is fascinated with firearms or P-51 Mustangs or whatever other thing happens to tickle your fancy at this particular moment does not necessarily make them part of some magic Elect that treasures freedom, truth, justice, and the American Way. There are plenty of assholes in this world who like guns, planes, and/or Superman who think Hitler was a swell guy, ore believe that the aliens and JFK are running the planet from a secret bunker or couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions printed on the heel.

Most people are good decent people.

Most people are also pretty simplistic and uncritical and inclined to believe what their friends believe unless life somehow forces them not to.

Some very few people are predatory jerks.

There is nothing particularly "special" about "shooters" qua "shooters", and any quick look up and down the local firing line or peek through the doors of the local gun show will back me up on this: They exhibit the same range of personality types, quirks, and foibles that make people people.

I realize that you love nursing grudges and arguments until they grow up big and strong and giving them pet names and whatnot and then turning them free in other comment threads or on completely different blogs altogether, but have you ever stopped to think how annoying that is to outsiders?

og said...

" but have you ever stopped to think how annoying that is to outsiders?"

Well, you pretty much excluded AT from that. "Stop" and "Think" don't seem to register.

global village idiot said...

I don't know whether my stand on this is contrarian or not but I'll toss it over the palisade anyway:

It is essentially important that the government create as many soft and bureaucratic jobs as possible. You rarely see the Best and the Brightest going into the Federal service (and never at, say, the County Recorder's Office level). No, they go into business and get things done.

By way of allegory, think of the "gamma" operating the elevator early on in Brave New World. Supremely happy at his switch, ecstatically crying "Roof! Oh, Roof!" Do you really want the Gammas of America working at YOUR bank? At YOUR architect's office? At the plant that made your car's brake pads?

Every thick nitwit gobbled up by the Organs of the State is a thick nitwit prevented from gumming up the works of the private sector. To the degree that it does work, government serves a vital purpose by protecting private industry from being overrun by those unqualified even to work the picture-menu cash register at McDonalds.

Since it's looked down upon to use such drones as reactor core shielding (though there's surely both engineering and economic merit to the notion), we as a Nation must keep them off the streets and out of the way to the greatest extent possible.

gvi

Joanna said...

The stoopid! It burns!

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine the object of my derision.

Anonymous said...

the aliens and JFK are running the planet from a secret bunker You mean they're NOT??!?

cap'n chumbucket

Joanna said...

Do you really want the Gammas of America working at YOUR bank? At YOUR architect's office? At the plant that made your car's brake pads?

It's call ditch-digging, and there's no shame in it. I'd rather have them doing honest work than stamping forms at the DMV.

global village idiot said...

And in addition, allowing them their own feelings of self-importance is only humane. We don't try convincing our dogs, for example, that we really aren't as omniscient and wonderful as they think we are - we leave them happy in their illusions. Similarly, to disabuse the Gammas of America of their feelings of self-importance ought to be seen as equal cruelty.

gvi

Joe in PNG said...

The problem is that the Gamma Double Minus Stapler Operator will, through time and seniority, eventually float up through the ranks. Soon they are put in the position where they can actully do some real damage. I mean, if it's a choice between a few cops or attending this month's Urban Develpoment Workshop in Nassau, well...

(And the Special Vice Assistant to the Undersecratary for the Council of Advisiors to the Staff of the Board of Budget Compliance... yeah, she needs to hire a few more folks. Time to cut some firefighters.)

Joanna said...

Let me remind you that Screwtape was an Undersecretary.

Anonymous said...

Well, now you're all upset. Not my plan or my nature, which is simply to argue an obvious and accurate point 'til the cows come home, my wifey calls me for supper, I grow weary, or the other party convinces me that I am wrong.

None of that has happened yet, but I do note that a few pawns are gathering to their queen's defense, even though she didn't ask and God knows doesn't need (especially) their help. I'll leave it to the gentle reader to determine the objects of *that* derision.

The facts are these: I believe that there are inherent "special" qualities shared by most if not all people who also share an appreciation of firearms and all that they symbolize, and you don't. Got it. We disagree.

AT

Joe in PNG said...

Huh??

I have no earthly idea what this AT guy keeps going on about.

og said...

Don't feel bad, Joe. neither does he.

Anonymous said...

GVI - Less government and no other place for them must just result in the gammas breeding themselves out.

Jim

jimbob86 said...

"It's call ditch-digging, and there's no shame in it. I'd rather have them doing honest work than stamping forms at the DMV.
2:57 PM, June 14, 2010"

Yeah, let him jack up the slope of that ditch, and he'll flood your basement. I'll risk the rubber stamp idjits.

global village idiot said...

Less government and no other place for them must just result in the gammas breeding themselves out.

Let me make sure I've got this straight, Jim...you want to give mental midgets on the government payroll - a stratum of humanity who from time immemorial have shown that the only thing they're really good at is screwing like minks and reproducing like rabbits - you wanna give these selfsame people 8 more hours of idle time, on the assumption that they won't use this time to screw and reproduce.

Is that really the long and the short of it?

gvi

Anonymous said...

Of parts of .gov, at least the state lottery commission works as designed.

George said...

Up here, Tam, in the Great White North, we have an even better competition.

Firstly, some one convinced the political masters that it was necessary to hire and PAY serious business type experts to run crown corporations, act as senior civil servants, etc.

We now have hospital CEOs ... an organization whose income comes from the government ... being paid half a million bucks. (I know ... I know ... that's in Canuck dollars but we're mighty close to par with yours.)

We had the CEO of our provincial hydro-electric power generation corporation receive a $3.5 million payout when she was bounced after less than a decade on the job. (She's also earning a $25k MONTHLY pension.)

All this so that governments ... federal, provincial and municipal ... can attract superior people from industry. The inevitable result has been that all civil servants have seen their pay increase, dragged up by the pay levels at the top.

One of our local universities recruited a senior bank exec to run the School of Business. (I think he was originally from the US.) Ever since, there's been wailing and gnashing of teeth from the ivory tower types because their boss actually knows how to make business work.

The pay level differences have largely disappeared. The Great Recession has caused unemployment, reduction in pay and benefits, etc. ... but only for the private sector. The unionized (to a fare-thee-well) civil service has only seen cuts in program ... not in people.

But the big and grating difference lies with pensions. It is the practice in the private sector for contributions ... sometimes matched by the employer ... to a money purchase plan. Contributions are invested (usually with little input from the employees) and whatever the plan is worth after 25, 30 or 35 years is what the new retiree gets.

Not with government employees. They contribute to a defined benefit plan ... which, by our definition, cannot go broke ... such as the one I had when I was a high school teacher. If I had stayed in that profession, at 58, I would have started receiving 75% of the average of my five best years ... plus inflation protection and continuation in the medical benefit plan.

Look around you and find a group of private sector employees with such a pension plan. You won't find many.

In summary ... government employees are protected by their unions, receive salaries equivalent to those received by your average private sector employee, have better benefits (medical, vacation, stress leaves, etc.), work unfettered by any of the stress of the market or the street, and have a pension we could only dream of.

So ... what do they contribute?

Regards.