Personally, I'd argue that the fundamental problem is that you can 
NOT treat government like a business, and that a lot of the problem 
we have now is the direct result of attempting to do so.  The 
paradigms are different.

Thus:  I run a business.  (a hypothetical one for purposes of the 
lecture/rant)  I am owner, operator, salesman, chief poobah for 
Escher 3-pronged LeftHanded Widget Manufacturing and Sales, SA.  
Obviously, we make and sell Escher Widgets.  

Okay... customer A comes and wants to buy a $2 widget, for which he 
proposes to pay cash.  He gets a widget, goes to his car, and goes 
home.

Customer B comes to buy a box of 12 widgets.  (Widgets are cheaper by 
the box, standard practice in most wholesale and many retail 
businesses.)   He pays $20 cash, my porter loads his box of 12 
widgets into his trunk, and off he goes. 

Customer C comes in and orders a case (6 boxes, totalling 72) of 
widgets.  His price is $110/case, and because he's a regular 
customer, he gets to use his EscherCharge account.  He signs a slip, 
pays no cash, gets a case of widgets, gets a free green pass to the 
EscherCo. Pro/Am Golf Classic,  and is escorted to his car by my 
executive assistant.

Customer D calls me from his Lear and requests a shipload of widgets 
for delivery Tuesday, but he wants to pay no more than a dollar a 
widget.  He's buying 72,000 widgets (he's using them to build 
machines in his manufacturing plant), so he gets his price.  His A/P 
guy will work out the details with my A/R guy.  He gets a free table 
at the EscherCo post-Pro/Am gala and a foursome with carts at the 
GOlf Classic, is invited to join the board of EscherCo., and rings 
off as his plane is now landing at the new tax-free DCorp. HQ in 
Bermuda.

Customer E comes in.  He needs a widget for his daughter's school 
project, but because he just got laid off by DCorp, (he's been 
replaced by an assembly of 36 EscherCo Widgets.) he has no money and 
no credit.  He's always been honest, but now he's broke.  Since I'm a 
business, I'm in this for the profit of it... no money, no widget, 
sorry, come back when you have some cash.  You can catch a bus just 
outside the gate.

This is how profitable businesses operate in this day and age in this 
society.  None of the above is at all unusual, and aside from me 
leaving out a few of the perks for the high-end customers, all of 
this is straight from any ops management textbook.

See the picture here?  The more money you have, the more service you 
get.  If you have enough money, you might get a voice in how the 
company is run.  If you have no money, we have no time for you.  Good 
business, BAD government.  What we have now, but still... bad 
government.

Governments do NOT exist to turn a profit.  They do not, should not, 
MUST not have the authority to qualify their citizens and determine 
who gets how much justice or preference or voice in the operation of 
the company based on the net worth of the citizen.  One dollar one 
vote is not a democracy, it's a plutocracy, and that's several steps 
off the slippery slope.  

We have 42 million adults without health insurance, far more with 
inadequate care, 1 in 5 children in poverty, in many areas an infant 
mortality rate that would shame the Third World, and on and on and 
on... We're buying weapons systems and weaponry which even the 
MILITARY doesn't want, we're pouring untold trillions into an 
unnecessary Missile Defense system that fails most of the tests EVEN 
WHEN THEY'RE RIGGED, we're destroying wilderness and rainforest and 
the air and water and all the livability of the planet, we're 
building multi-million dollar arenas at taxpayer expense to house 
multimillion dollar athletes and privately owned teams which keep all 
the profit while pricing most of their fans out of the market, and 
not infrequently tearing down lowcost housing and indigent assistance 
centers services in many areas to obtain the land for them... and 
this all happens because governments all up and down the scale are 
run like businesses....services and priorities are determined based 
solely on ability to pay.

 We the People can't take much more of this "government as business" 
swill... the top 1/10% are doing nicely, but the rest of us are being 
anally 
raped at an alarming (and increasing) rate by that top 1/10% and 
their tame politicians... who are  charging extra for the vaseline 
and not using it, 
just skimming the cost into a slush fund to buy judges to reassure 
their reelection.  

How about we give up this "government as business" crap and start 
looking at government as the expression and tool of our common will 
and 
our common weal?  "We the People" "Of, by, and for" 
and all that. 

I should not have to write my letter to my Congressman on the back 
side of a thousand dollar untraceable money order to get the sorry 
sonofabitch to read it, I should not have to deal with industries 
being "regulated" by the combined leadership of the two largest 
companies IN 
those industries, I should not have to deal with a Congress that 
"deregulates" the big boys while passing nice little giveaways to 
them that make 
it impossible for me to stay alive let alone get ahead, I should not 
have to deal with companies which can and do pay people to *take* the 
same 
products I sell in order to drive me and my colleagues out of 
business so they can have a monopoly,  I should not have to deal with 
companies 
that can and do arrange to have passed laws protecting their 
copyrights until God Dies, while systematically stealing my work and 
defying me to 
sue because they own all the lawyers AND the judge and they furnished 
the courthouse... and most importantly, as a guppy thrown into a tank 
against a Great White Shark, I should not have to endure some 
sanctimonious rightwing prick in a suit that cost multiples of my 
annual gross 
telling me that "one on one is a fair contest."

But that's "Government as a Business."

Here's where I am:

I want my country back.  I want my government back.  I want my voice 
as a contributing citizen back. The Big Businessmen and the 
"government as business" con artists stole these things, and I WANT 
THEM BACK.  And I'm damn near past caring what has to be done or with 
which or to whom to get them back -- for me, for you guys, for 
everyone with a net worth less than seven figures... We, the People.


 

Irritable? me?               Albest,

                        Clayton

---
R.Clayton McKee                http://www.rcmckee.com
PhotoJournalist                   rcmckee{at}rcmckee.com   
P O Box 571900                 voice/fax 713/783-3502
Houston, TX 77257-1900        pager 281/510-3588


--- Rachel's Little NET2FIDO Gate v 0.9.9.8 Alpha