here is a recent back and forth from the swamp:
[quote="howard in nyc"]steve, i am sure of nothing. except that my confidence in the government is zero. currently, governments suck at most things, other than meeting the needs of their corporate benefactors. i guess they are good at lying, but not to me.

and not knowing what the fuck they are doing does not stop them. it speeds them up. the bigger they get, the less competent they get.

counting the number of sick people is the first thing you do faced with a public health emergency. there are lots of ways to count. easy ways, hard ways.



the constant lies from all corners, public and private, commercial, governmental and personal, is making me a bit mental lately. maybe it is me, that i have reached an overload point. maybe it is the environment, the shear mass of lies, bullshit and propaganda has perhaps increased recently. but i don't want to just say fuck it and join them. as tempting as it is, as profitable as it would be. sorry for ranting.[/quote]


[quote="steve"]It might just be time to step away from the computer for a bit.

(Except for the Swamp, of course.)

So far my government-provided roads and bridges haven't collapsed on me, my government-provided schools seem to be teaching my kids to read, write, and do 'rithmetic, my government-provided safety regulations seem to keep my food reasonably poison-free. The government-provided University Hospital and the government-licensed doctors and nurses seem to have done a reasonable job putting my bones back together. And my government-provided army, navy, air force, marines, and coast guard seem to be keeping the Russians at bay.[/quote]

(me:)
i was just monitoring google for news on a court decision yesterday regarding a hospital closure. and stumbled on what i find an extraordinary statement. i'm trying to stick to the swamp.

every single function of government you listed, i have seen significant decline in quality of performance over the past 20-30 years. as government grows, performance declines. and i see no indication of that long, strong trend reversing anytime soon.

education--please. roads and bridges--ibid. poison in food? they call it high-fructose corn syrup nowdays. we have come a long ways from sinclair's 'the jungle', but we are on the downhill side of that slope. i'd say our food supply was healthier a couple of decades ago than today. government provided hospitals and health care? a university makes a huge difference, but i go to nyu hospital for my care, not to bellevue. trust.

except the military. they can still blow shit up real good. oh, wait, the military is a lot smaller than it was when i was a kid. and, the military is the largest single means of transfer of public wealth to the private sector (military contractors) until hank paulson came onto the public scene.

(shit, and i am in favor of a public option health insurance, and of government health care.)

fuck it, since steve brought it up, and it is a recurring theme of bill c.

i am not anti-government. i am not anti-regulation. but things are different now, than in the relatively recent past. and not better different.

i think there are three huge reasons, non-exclusively. 1) the entire political system has been captured by big money corporate interests; 2) the people are fat, dumb and uninterested, and this condition of the people has been partially created by the above; 3) size and mission creep dooms the functionality of big public institutions and organizations (and corporations as well).

i will add a fourth; the changed nature of the corporation (possibly an inevitable development, maybe not, that is another issue) to shift responsiveness to the needs of many individual shareholders, instead to the needs of top executive management and concentrated wall street and banking interests.

these major factors have not always been. i've seen the changes with my own eyes, and i read the shifting trends in histories.

i'm not satisfied with the face value, with the myths, with the lies. but shit, i may be wrong; that things will hold together until i pass on (i don't even have my own children to worry about).

wth. here's to interesting times. glad there is a game tonight.