YES! Most business people know how to get things done.
10%
NO! Government should never be run like a business
90%
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Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
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I always find it a bit odd that People vote for successful business to hold public office. And here is why. I think People hold successful, wealthy, or seemingly and relatively “leisure class” individuals as their aspiratory group. They hold them esteem for their money accomplishments. But when it comes to whether or not you want to put a members of this aspiratory group in public office, People take another leap in thinking that the successful business person will somehow impart their Midas touch to all members of the 99% and/or a non-profit public governmental entity whose metrics for success aren’t necessarily denominated in dollars of surplus cash but intangibles like “quality of life” or “public service”.
Successful business People are nothing more than that – successful business People. They knew how to get themselves rich – period. And I mean PERIOD! Don’t endow them with other abilities like making someone else or everybody else rich. Time and time again, I watch successful business People get elected to public office only, it seems, to spend the vast majority of their time making themselves rich – period. After all it is what they do. It’s what they know. It is their “track record” and we were wrong to think that they would change their spots and becomes servants to the public! Think about it….really – “servants to the public”?! oh, hell no. They wouldn’t have the first clue of how to go about that and you’d be a fool to vote for them thinking that’s what they’d do once they’re in office. Being successful at Public service is, for the most part, a different beast.
Another thing that blows my mind is voters who demand “experience” out of candidates for national office. Are you nuts!? There is such a thing as bad experience. So, when some such candidate puff’s up his or her chest and claims superiority because they’ve been in public office for the past such and such years….during which time 1) the US has fallen flat on it’s face, 2) wealth has concentrated to an absurd extent, 3) the planet on which the country resides has been dealt a death blow, 4) labor has hit the pooper, etc etc etc etc ad naseum….I say take your experience and get the hell away for public service and avoid it forever more! You are NOT the candidate I want to see in office given what has allowed to occur over the course of your "experience". And I don’t want to hear any excuses, spin, how it is not the candidates fault, its the other party etc.
Business and government are two completely different animals.
I once thought someone like Lee Iacocco would have made a good politician, I read his book while he singlehandedly brought Chrysler out of the abyss in 1985. He did have his heart in the right place by taking a one dollar salary and giving ownership of the company to its workers, however, at the end of the day any business in the world is here for one thing... to make a profit.
Nothing wrong with that and it is the profit factor that motivtes business.
Government, on the other hand, is a non-profit organization.
To have someone effectively run the governement they need to have good fiscal sensabililties and general welfare of the population as their primary goals. When republicans say they want to privatize to save the taxpayers money, what they really mean is the want to privatize so their friends can make a profit off the American taxpayer. Bush and Cheney did a fabulous job of helping their friends, at the expense of the taxpayer and the lives of our military. Even Obama screwed up when he privatized the solar power initiative, He should created a governmental department to handle such an important undertaking, something like the Tennesee Valley Authority.
All we have to do, to see the proper way to run govrnment is to look back at the New Deal.