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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (5950)	12/1/2005 10:33:42 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Respond to of 542125

But the way to get rid of patronage -- we still have a long way to go. I think we need to extend the civil service higher than our ancestors did. That will be difficult to do in more ways than one. In genereal I agree. Patronage does a lot more harm than good. At its worst, people are getting paid for little or no useful work. In some ways, it would be far more efficient and cost a lot less money if they were just handed a bag full of money. But employing people that are incompetent or placing them in jobs that is not appropriate for them can be very, very expensive. Michael (FEMA) Brown is a good example. If they had just given Michael Brown a suitcase filled with $10 million dollars in it and gave that job to someone competent, that would have saved a lot of money. On the other hand, if you were a high minded politician and elected to national office, you would certainly want to fill a lot of jobs with people that you think are also high minded and competent. Otherwise you are not going to make that much difference. But, I agree with you. This patronage business has gotten out of hand.

To: Ilaine who wrote (5950)	12/1/2005 6:00:08 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542125

Changes in civil service may be a good idea. But that isn't really my point. If there wasn't a single corrupt politician or civil servant in the entire government and if the people in the government were uniformly wise, intelligent, professional, benevolent, honest ect. government would still be funded by extortion. Its kind of hard to finance even the best and smallest of governments through voluntary contributions. Tim