Where the Teabaggers are right.

[JDPriestly]

The Teabaggers are right about one thing. The government and its cost (and as a consequence, government debt) have grown rapidly since about 1985.

But they are wrong about the reason for the government's growth.

The tremendous increases are not so much due to an increase in the activities of the government as they are to privatization of activities that could be performed more efficiently and cheaply by the government.

For example, in WWII, the U.S. military included cooks who prepared meals for soldiers -- even those on the front lines. Now, the U.S. hires a company like Halliburton to prepare those meals and get them to the soldiers. Of course, the U.S. military still has to have an administration to administer the contracts and oversee the activities of the private company providing the meals. It's double work. It's inefficient, and the U.S. military could handle

[Warpy]

1. Privatization has been a ripoff from day one

taking things held in common by the public and turning them over to businessmen for profit. That it's less efficient is no surprise, sucking profit out of any enterprise degrades both service and product since profit becomes the main focus and everything else is secondary.

The growth in government is tied to the growth in empire, something cherished by the servants of the rich in the Republican Party.

If this country is to survive, it has to abandon its empire.

[calimary]

4. It's not privatization, guys. It's PIRATIZATION!!!

We need to start calling it that, and reframing it in a negative way, so that the very concept itself, at its most fundamental, becomes soiled, and perverted, and thus rendered undesirable and unsavory.

[jtrockville]

8. The only people who benefit from privatization are the profit-takers. nt

[mediaman007]

2. I can't imagine that Haliburton can pay its employees equal to or less than

the military. Then when you add on the administrative costs and the profit for the shareholders, privatization is probably very expensive.

[Egalitariat]

3. An increase in the activities of the government are a big part of the cause

If you look at the growth of non-military, non-security, non-entitlement spending over the last two decades you will find it to be exponential. Of course, the reason that this creates the debt crisis that is coming is that the growth of taxes and revenues did not coincide with all the spending.

[EFerrari]

5. The Teahadists aren't right about what they call "big government".

If anything, the LEFT has been much more active in pushing back against incursions by the Feds on civil rights.

And it was REPUBLICAN presidents like Raygun and the Bush mafia that quarterbacked the redistribution of wealth from the working class up to their cronies.

Seriously, when Bill Clinton and Obama follow on these policies, they are just following in Republican footsteps.

The Teahadists want the government to police women's bodies, our bedrooms, our recreational activities, the internet, what our children read in school -- to name just a few of their obsessions.

They're not really for small government in any way.

[madchick44]

6. Um, stop using facts.

Since when did the truth get you anywhere?
I worked for the government at an organization that "contracted out" over half of its functions at a cost nearly 8 times more than the cost of keeping the workers. Of course, the long-term costs for future healthcare and retirements were eliminated. But the cost overruns, sloppy work, and poor services to the public added those costs up front instead of 10 years later. (most of the terminated staff had at least 10 years to go before retirement).

[JDPriestly]

7. I didn't post my entire, edited post.

So here is what I was supposed to post:

The Teabaggers are right. Government is too big and costs too much. Government (and as a consequence, government debt) has grown rapidly since about 1985.

And, now that the Christian right is out of power, Teabaggers see as we have all along that, as the government has grown bigger, the Teabaggers and the rest of the middle class have grown poorer and more indebted.

But the Teabaggers are wrong about the reason for the government's growth, and about who is getting the money.

I. The reason for the government's growth.

The tremendous growth in the government budget is not so much due to an increase in the activities of the government as to the privatization of governmental functions that could be performed at less cost and more efficiently by the government.

How was it before the growth in the size of government? In WWII, soldiers in the U.S. military cooked meals for their buddies or found food locally -- even at the front. Now, the U.S. hires a huge corporation like Halliburton to prepare meals and feed our soldiers.

Naturally, a company like Halliburton doesn't just step in and provide meals. The government has to hire bureaucrats to administer the contracts and oversee the work of the private companies.

Instead of one bureaucracy to do the job, we now have two. The private company has its bureaucracy, which it calls "management," and the government has its bureaucracy called civil servants or military employees.

Double effort. Double trouble. Costly and inefficient.

II. And where is the money going?

It's going into the pockets of fat cats like Dick Cheney and Ross Perot and a multitude of other bureaucrats who do government work but get paid like entrepreneurs -- at four or five times the wage of a government employee.

We have a new class: Bureaucrats that masquerade as corporate managers. They do not innovate, or at least they do not think up new methods or processes that government bureaucrats couldn't think of. They contract for routine government work, work that takes problem-solving ability, but little if any creativity -- work that is done in the name of the people that is only remotely controlled via duplicate sets of bureaucrats by the people's elected government. And they get paid like Rockefeller.

Obama took a big step in cutting the fat caused by privatization of government functions when he took the middle-men bankers out of the student loan business. Education is the public's business, the government's job. The banks served no purpose other than to add a layer of skimmers to the student loan transaction. Good riddance.

We need more big steps like the one taken on student loans. Put government on a diet: reduce the privatization of government functions.

So, when Teabaggers complain about high taxes and the fat in the government, they are right. But in that they fail to see what is causing the fat and who is getting their money, they are wrong.

[Hamlette]

9. actually, some private employers are cheeper in the field of war

I"ll try to find a link.

A significant problem with the debt is the interest. something like 20% of all tax dollars go to just pay the interest.

Sort of like the mortgage on your house. Only you don't own a house when its paid off.

If we could get on top of the debt, as Clinton was on the way to doing and we would be by now had the court had allowed the votes to be counted instead of appointing Bush, we'd have the money we need to education and health care.