Governmental Corporations
I think one of the problems of having businesspeople (wasn’t that PC?) in public office is that they start treating the government like a corporation–and not just any corporation, but one in which the fat cats at the top get fatter, and those at the bottom get leaner and scragglier.
Take fingerprinting visitors to the U.S., which started today. It reminds me of when you go to a company, need to sign in and out, are given a badge and are urged to give information like your vehicle plate number (which I usually leave blank, simply because I have no idea what it is).
Brazil has started fingerprinting U.S. visitors in retaliation, comparing this new American policy to those of the Nazis. That seems just a little over-the-top to me, but I can’t blame them for being pissed. I’d be pissed, and I’m willing to bet that Americans visiting Brazil are going to ranting and raving. Hmmm, a little bit of a double standard, methinks. Also, probably not terribly good for foreign policy, but hey, it’s the security of the corporation that matters, right?
Another example of the government-to-business model can be found in Bush’s budget for 2005, in which he plans to “control the rising cost of housing vouchers for the poor, require some veterans to pay more for health care, slow the growth in spending on biomedical research and merge or eliminate some job training and employment programs.” (Bush’s Budget for 2005, The New York Times, January 4, 2003) Sound like corporate downsizing, anyone?
At the same time, more money will be allocated to recruit nurses to teach kids abstinence-based sex ed, recruit volunteers in homeland security–and continues to spend ridiculous amounts of money on defense and security against terrorism.
This is not democracy.
This is the tightfisted reign of a CEO who watches “unnecessary” company expenditures like a hawk, incorporates his business in a right-to-work state to avoid paying or treating workers fairly, and foists his right-wing values on a country utterly cowed by his rhetoric of terrorism.
In short, keep your mouth shut, else be fired.