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

To: Elroy who wrote (154326)	1/14/2011 11:37:04 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542117

"I suppose it would be nice to pay all of them less that they're getting now until unemployment hits 4% or so" A good number of them are already getting less than the private sector. You want to shut down VA hospitals? I got paid more as a staff respiratory therapist in a 90 bed rural hospital in 10 months in the private sector in '08 (retired in Oct) than I would have made running the dept. at the Palo Alto VA (my previous job, had about 350 acute beds, spinal cord unit, 2 ICUs) in a full year.

To: Elroy who wrote (154326)	1/14/2011 12:59:02 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542117

Welcome to VFC, Elroy. I see you are in favor of a smaller state. Does that mean you wish to cut federal funding from local schools, making them worse; cut the police forces at the local level, which also get some federal funding; and so on? And cut transportation funds so we can have more pot marked highways and weak bridges? Just asking. I am, of course, on the opposite side of this argument. I consider education far more important than lawyering for social reproduction. More dollars for education. Police protections are generally more important than the money made from hedge fund dodges so I would take from the one to provide for the other. And I find it more important that the snow is cleared from the streets, the garbage collected, etc. than that Goldman Sachs gets paid 100% on the dollar for its AIG caper. And in order to get better people to do these things (makes for better services), I would make certain they have good pensions (contribution based rather than benefit based) and good health care. So, what say?