There is a show on cable TV’s Discovery Channel that has me thinking about the best way to reform government. It’s called “Dirty Jobs” and the premise is simple: in each episode, host Mike Rowe endeavors to perform a job so unpleasant that most people wouldn’t want to do it if their livelihoods–or their lives–depended on it.
If it were up to me ( and I’m betting a lot of other Americans as well), one of the requirements for holding public office would be two years of employment in one of those so-called dirty jobs. No experience in the private sector? No running for the House, the Senate, the Oval Office, the Supreme Court or a Cabinet position–no exceptions.
Well, one exception: service in the military. Anyone willing to put their life on the line for America gets a pass.
Of course it’s a fantasy, but a man can dream, can’t he? Imagine the kind of government we’d have if it were populated with people who actually worked for a living before getting a lifetime’s worth of pension and health care benefits. Imagine policy and spending decisions being made by people who really knew the value of a dollar because they’d busted their butts for twenty-four months doing something really tough, most likely for a lot less money than they get paid in Washington, D.C.
Unfortunately government, by and large, is inhabited by people of privilege. People whose sense of “charity” begins–and ends–with spending other people’s money. People who think Americans who work dirty jobs for a lifetime should shut up and do what they’re told by the political class.
The president, whose closest brush with the private sector was funneling other people’s money to his cronies in community organizing associations, apparently thinks that wailing away at the banks for their fiscal irresponsibility is a good idea. Only a man so out of touch with reality could fail to see the colossal irony: the titular head of the most fiscally irresponsible entity in the history of man, aka the federal government, lecturing others about their shortcomings.
Only a man–like so many of his fellow Democrats–completely oblivious to the workings of the private sector could imagine a bank tax will “stimulate” the economy. Only economically-challenged aristocrats are incapable of understanding that such a tax would get passed on to the consumers, and that money paid out in taxes is money that doesn’t get used for loans, start-ups, or anything else that creates jobs.
This is one American who’d be thrilled to see the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama and all their fellow “wealth re-distributionists”–in both parties–spend two years slopping hogs, painting houses, moving furniture or doing anything else that would give them an ounce of real world perspective.
And as long as I’m making the rules, I’d also make them live on the money they’ve earned, not a penny more. No “supplemental income” from a trust fund or a stock portfolio. We have far too many people in government who “talk the talk,” but have never “walked the walk” for a single moment of their self-aggrandizing lives.
And let me make one thing crystal clear: working as a lawyer doesn’t count for beans.
The people of this country would be far better served if the folks who ostensibly serve at our pleasure spent a couple of years “slumming” with the masses. The same masses who get taxed up to their eyeballs by those who consider such funds monopoly money. There was a time in American history when government was made up of ordinary folks from all walks of life–not the slick-meister elitists for whom the only definition of “getting one’s hands dirty” means taking a bribe.
Right now I’m picturing Barney Frank in a haz-mat suit lugging a hose towards a septic tank. If that image makes you smile, you’re part of the solution.
If it gets you upset, you’re part of the problem.
atahlert@comcast.net
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