Bob Cesca in support of govt workers

Half the time I'm thinking of posts for this blog, I find out that one of my favorite bloggers, Bob Cesca, has already beaten me to the punch.  Case in point, I was thinking of writing a post about the shabby treatment government workers have been getting by Congress (more specifically, Republicans in Congress) and, frankly, the President.  But Bob beat me to it and said some awesome stuff.

Check out the entire post here.

Here are some highlights.

Adding to the syllabus of conservative contradictions this week, both Christie and Scott attacked government employees and proudly announced the firings of tens of thousands of workers even though they themselves are government employees. Given the Republican talent for selling nonsense by the gross, the Republicans have managed to successfully define government workers as nothing more than faceless automatons — robotic parasites without families, mortgages and futures.

At the Reagan Library this week, Christie applauded President Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers. Mitt Romney doesn’t believe that government workers are contributors to the “real economy.” And while the Republicans attack the president for increasing the size of government, 500,000 government workershave lost their jobs since the president’s inauguration.

During his remarks at the CPAC event, Rick Scott said, “In Florida, unemployment rate’s gone from 12 percent down to 10.7. We’re still above the national average, but we’ve generated 87,200 private sector jobs — private sector! And we have 15,000 less government jobs in the state of Florida. [Applause] Government doesn’t create jobs.”

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Rick Scott continued by patting himself on the back for firing 15,000 Floridians. Despite his attempts to dehumanize the people who were fired, those government “jobs” were occupied by real-life human beings: Florida residents who, due to their lost jobs, might not be able to pay their rents and mortgages in an already crippled Florida housing market. Scott was talking about Florida residents who, because of Scott’s policies, have become a drain on the state and national economies as they line up for unemployment checks and watch their credit card balances max out. Good job, governor. Tell me again how the Republicans will fix the economy.
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Government workers precisely encapsulate what the founders had in mind for this nation. A government of the people. We are the government. We’re inseparable. The Republicans don’t want you to think about government like this, even though it’s the centerpiece of the American-style representative democracy. Our ability to personally conduct the business of government is our last and only check on political and corporate power. I wonder why the Republicans would want to break down that wall. Hmm.

If these were government jobs, then government had to have created them at some point, so, yes, government creates jobs. American citizens are paid to work in these jobs. Both of my parents worked for the government, and, as near as I can tell, neither of them are Big Government Decepticons posing as humans.

Damn straight.