Why should a great country be served by a "small" government?

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

Great countries deserve superior governance that manifests itself in:

great education
great healthcare
great living standards
great transportation
great environment
great security

Accept no less.

Why do the Repubs want to farm out the the power and resources of our country to disconnected, non-regulated, self-serving entities under the guise of "privatization"?

[shraby]

1. A couple of reasons:

1. because they are stupid.
2. because they might be able to get a piece of the money pie as a kickback for sending the business in certain directions.

Probably more number 2 than number 1.

[Lib Grrrrl]

2. Why??

The one and only thing I think Rush Limbaugh is right about:
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY PEOPLE DO THE THINGS THEY DO...FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL.
'nuff said.

Incidentally, just so I am not misunderstood here...
I agree fully with you:

Great countries deserve superior governance that manifests itself in:

great education
great healthcare
great living standards
great transportation
great environment
great security

Accept no less.

But...you asked why REPUKES want a small, "privatized" government. To which I respond...
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY PEOPLE DO THE THINGS THEY DO...FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL.

[Old and In the Way]

4. Rush gets paid $24MM a year for his show.

Do you think he gets paid to tell the truth? Neither do I.

[Lib Grrrrl]

8. Nope

Hell, no he doesn't get paid to tell the truth...he gets paid to advance an agenda advantageous to those who support that salary!

But that one thing...I do agree with, that Rush says is...
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY PEOPLE DO THE THINGS THEY DO, FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL.

[Old and In the Way]

9. Good point...too bad his dittoheads don't use their god-given critical

thinking skills. If they did, they'd be ex-dittoheads.

[Lib Grrrrl]

13. Too Scary A Thought For Them

They would rather someone else did their thinkin' for them!!

Besides...their God is the God-Almighty Buck!
They long since stopped believing in the God of compassion, mercy, tolerance, forgiveness, love, peace and joy. All you need to do is look to their actions to know that is true.

And before any damned Freeper starts nailing me with "oh....but you guys are supposed to be all tolerant and non-judgemental..." may I remind you that your own damned Bible even says, "By their fruits, ye shall know them."

WE know you, Freepers.

[Old and In the Way]

3. Exactly...only a dumb Republican-idiot would buy into that.

They want to live in the US like it was the 1830's. The Republican Syndicate is only top happy to feed them that nonsense.

[Lib Grrrrl]

5. Not Quite

They want the U.S. to be like it was in the 1890's...in The Gilded Age.

Where men of privilege owned everything, and worked the rest of us into early graves, and paid shit wages to men to do dangerous jobs, and they gave a shit care less.

After all, they weren't REAL PEOPLE that were being sent to their deaths in dangerous, exhausting, back-breaking, low-paid jobs...they were not real people, they were just serfs...to be used by the privileged, and then discarded when they no longer had any value. (i.e. they could no longer produce enough to make them worth keeping)

Bastards!!

P.S. A lot of those bastards died on The Titanic...and a more deserving bunch of assholes, I can't begin to imagine. They ended up shark shit - which was a vast improvement over what they were when they were alive.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

6. We have gone back to the Gilded Age!

There are so many overwhelming comparisons which you did a great job of summarizing. We are in a new Age of the Robber Baron. we need someone to assume the Teddy Roosevelt trust-buster mold. I'm thinking Elliot Spitzer.

[Old and In the Way]

7. There are the Robber Barons and the Frontierspersons.

The leadership of the Republican Party are Robber Barons, no question. The rank-and-file of the Republican Party dream of a wild-west and themselves as pioneers. The Robber Barons are more than happy to sell their voters this delusion.

[dusmcj]

10. government is one of the core human pursuits along with sex and death

what do humans occupy themselves with consistently across millenia ? What products of ancient civilizations survive to reach us across the aeons ? Philosophies about sex, death and social organization. The idiocy to denigrate it as some lowly pursuit to be moved on from is either true ignorance or self-serving deceit. The commentary about the Gilded Age is spot-on (when is a mass labor movement for the postindustrial service economy going to gain unopposable momentum ? Sooner than the holders of capital might like...) so I suspect the latter is unfortunately the correct choice.

[AngelFactor]

11. Republicans bow to profits

The republicans put profits before people. If you farm out production to underdeveloped areas with low regulatory levels, profits increase... sometimes ppl die, too.
***

American Justice? Sure, so why is an attorney getting away with tampering with court documents even though three pages of emails detailing what was done were inadvertently filed with the court.

See for yourself: http://www.maximumadvocacy.com/Court_records.html look on pages 25-27 of document 64. It's quite obvious.

Unbelievable. Priceless. Hilarious, if it wasn’t so sad but true.

How’s your faith in the justice system?

Pray you never need it.

[Solo_in_MD]

12. I think you have that backwards

Small government means just enough government to achieve necessary functions. That should be the goal of all of us. The real fight is not over the size government, but what functions/goals should be set for the government. No one wants a government with waste/fraud/underemployment or one that meddles where it should not be, such as with reproductive freedoms. Argue for what government should be doing, not its size/budget.

[Lib Grrrrl]

14. Good Point

Size don't matter. It is what it accomplishes...and what it's goals are...that really matter.

Let's just try and make OUR GOALS the government's goals, too.

[last1standing]

15. Whether the goverment is "small" or "big" isn't even the right question.

The right question is "is it effective". The size of government doesn't matter one damned bit. There have been small effective governments and large ineffective ones. You're right about the services it should provide but they're in themselves not necessarily only the province of big government. Really when you look at it, if you remove defence from our budget, the US already has a very small budget compared with the GDP. We spend less on most of the things you listed (once again, other than defence) than most other countries. What's worse is that most of the money that is spent in our budget is spirited away in the name of "privatization" and not spent where it can actually help.

I guess that's why we keep slipping down the rankings of top nations for quality of life. I truly believe we're in the process of becoming a third world country. It won't be long before we have lost all the benefits of government and are enslaved by it.

[leftofthedial]

16. because stupid people have fallen for the propaganda

and disinformation foisted on us by the ruling oligarchs and their corporations

[madville]

17. Small government is good

The small government thing doesn't apply to either party on a National level in this day and age.

All they care about is getting elected and what they can say that will trick people into voting for them. It doesn't matter if it is a Dem or Rep, it's all the same old thing these days.I voted for Clinton twice, Gore once, Kerry once, and I think we should have a smaller government. The IRS should be trimmed down along with a few other agencies in Washington. Smaller government is a good thing, people should make their own way and not have to lean on the government crutch.