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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (24509)	8/15/2012 12:50:21 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Plenty of Republicans do stay in government. And for those that don't, wouldn't an ex president, governor, member of congress, big city mayor, etc. who is now in the private sector, still have all sorts of contacts and influence in most cases?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (24509)	8/16/2012 12:31:28 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Occam's razor requires one to recognise that liberals nest in government while conservatives leave to pursue more profitable interests. I don't know whether that is true or not. I have certainly seen plenty of each "burrow in." Lots of people of all political persuasions like interesting, steady work with good benefits. Conservative does not equate to entrepreneur. You can't tell the burrowed-in bureaucrats from bureaucrats who entered through the competitive process unless you personally know their background. And, when the other party is in office, they suck up to the opposition political appointees just like everyone else. Some get comfortable and others bide their time until their party is running the show and they can lobby for a juicier job as a special assistant to a politico. Sometimes the return of their own party lands them in a line management job but, after the next election, they find themselves somewhere else. Ordinary bureaucrats, civil service bureaucrats, have very limited ability to instigate their politics into their jobs. First of all, they are not given positions where policy is made. You won't find them in rule-making or in public affairs. If you're land in a contracting officer job, for instance, you follow the same rules as the ordinary civil service guy in the next cubicle. Most recently I worked with a woman who landed in labor relations, a Republican. Had I not known her from her previous role, I would never have known her politics let alone her political affiliation. It's only political appointees that shape policy and even then only at the margins because they have to stay within the confines of the law and their delegations of authority. And everything is vetted and vetted with something from here and from there getting included to keep everyone happy. If you want a job with control, run your own business. You don't get any in the bureaucracy (unless you are in a highly specialized technical field where you can snow the generalists, political or otherwise, (been there)). My point, in conclusion, that there may or may not be more liberals but it doesn't matter much. You need look no further than the ridiculous new regulations that the OBama administration had promulgated in just a few years. Bureaucrats may staff the process but the thrust of them is what the politicos want them to be. You can slip something in here and there but the stuff that gets the attention is the voice of the politicos. The closest I can see to burrowed-in liberals having greater influence is the penchant the bureaucracy has for following the latest expert thinking, which tends to come from the ivory towers of academia, which is populated by liberals. Liberal bureaucrats with political roots are not skeptical so they don't challenge that thinking as much as someone with conservative political roots. But the bias toward the expert thinking would be there nonetheless, perhaps just less so with more conservative bureaucrats.