The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Xing]

This sort of argument is something folks don't know to be true, but because folks like to repeat this mantra to others, it feels like the truth.

I am a public employee.  I won't discuss what I do online, but I will tell you that folks crassly disrespect me when they call me and my peers "Bureaucrats".  That term is, in fact, a vicious slur against folks who are public employees.

Folks who chose public employment DO get good pensions.  They get them because (A) they often have had to adhere to a higher standard of personal conduct than those in the "private sector", and (B) they understood that they would not be getting rich on the public dime.  (I've only received two (2) one-thousand dollar a year raises in over 10 years, except for when I was promoted in 2016.)    We traded other opportunities for promised stability, and most public employees perform functions that are necessary for the stability of a middle class society, but cannot be profitably delivered by the private sector  And there are some occupations that, as a matter of morality, should be delivered ONLY by the public sector.  The next time you here of a lobbyist for a Private Prison company urging legislators to pass bills involving longer sentences and more minimum mandatories, upgrading misdemeanors to felonies, remember this post and think about whether this is an issue public safety or private greed.

Much of the folks who attack public employees resent their security (which is not what it used to be; pols are always jerking us around, threatening budget cuts, etc.).  These are the same folks that cry foul when someone here would point out the ratio of a CEO's pay to his employees.  They act as if there is no social contract that is involved here, but I remember my first week on my present job (decades ago, now), my employer sold the job with the explicit promise of long-term stability.  What saddens me about so many of my fellow blue avatars here is that they wish my employer to have greater latitude in dealing with me capriciously and unjustly.  (Fortunately, I do have a union, of which I am a dues-paying member.)

I've called the left out on their Chicken Little cries of "racism" and such.  Now I'll call the right out.  Just exactly what are these egregious examples of "incompetance" that mandate changing the rules on this matter?  Just who are these "bureaucrats" that are incompetant; indeed, what is a "bureaucrat"?  If "bureaucrat" is a job description, and not a slur, just exactly what does the job of "bureaucrat" entail, and how can one be incompetant at it?  I really want to hear answers on this from those here who seem to resent the very ideas of public employees.

[Xing]

Electability is a myth used by the people who run political parties to deny voters what they really want. Political parties are private organizations more interested in promoting "their own" from within than caring what the base/activists want.

Research has shown that there is very little evidence of voters punishing "extremist candidates" in any substantively large or close to statistical significant way in presidential elections.

You take someone like "extremist" Goldwater and give him the nomination in 1968 and he probably wins. You give "ultra liberal extremist" Mondale the nomination in 1976 and he wins.

[Xing]

Okay, so then. As someone who has both a STEM degree and that is presently out of work, I find a fair bit of what you said in your post kind of hilarious in how 'kids these days!' it is. But let me share with you a bit of information that may surprise you. Okay, two things if you count that a number of good STEM programs have tended for some time now to make sure their students are well taken care of if they go to graduate school. Take the loans for undergrad, start paying it off with your stipend during grad school. That sort of thing.

The other thing is: not everybody's a good fit for STEM. And I'd rather have someone designing the building I'm working in, the road I'm driving on, the car I'm driving in, the medicines I'm taking, and the chemicals I encounter out in the world who had a minimal want of their own to study the material so they had a personal motivation to study it and learn it well. I'd rather not have people handling all these things and more who only got their degree to get The Job, but who only go through the motions while their passions are elsewhere. To claim that they are to blame for going for what they believe in, what they find they can best do, is absurdly cruel and unhelpful for society in the long run. And what more... the more we try to force people who have no interest in STEM to do STEM, the more colleges and universities will find themselves trying to dumb down their programs so they can maintain their success rate or what ever. One of my good friends is presently a professor and fled a job at another college that was going that route. Reduction of educational standards because we are making STEM 'the right way' will in the long run hurt the standards for such jobs in society.

And what more... we as a society should be restructuring things so that yes, people can follow their passions and get super good at the things they want to actually be super good at, and then not punished for getting super good at the things they want to be super good at. We are reaching a point where we have the means to do this, and thus should be prepared to push ourselves in that direction. And not just shake our cane and shout at the people who were promised the world if they worked hard, and then didn't get despite their effort.

[Xing]

Electability is a lie, a manipulation built to prevent us from seeing the clear truth of how politics actually works. If it was not something people thought about, people would select the candidate that appeals to them well, and that candidate, via virtue of being appealing like that, would in the end win via the actually being really electable because they could convince people to vote for them the best compared to the alternatives.

But... instead we get this second guessing nonsense and insistences that so and so is best for what ever reasons we want to argue for as defining electability. Instead of, you know, people just letting the appeal of the candidates answer the question via the primary election.

Man... I am so done with the term electability. There's a reason I did a youtube video about how its nonsense. And will do so again before the year is up.