Most elected Democrats have usually had only brief periods of private sector employment, if that, before becoming full time politicians.
The Party of Government
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
And, the private sector employment is almost exclusively limited to “non-profit” entities that live off the government. If Caesar was running against Jesus for political office, they’d vote for Caesar
I know a Democrat who had been a submarine Engineering Officer (thank God not an Engineering Officer on my submarine). When he retired, he went to work for US DOE. His employment was by the government for the next 30 years or so except for a brief 2 year stint at a small modular reactor company which went belly-up during the Obama Administration. He never worked at a commercial nuclear reactor in his entire life, but he has a whole lot to say about working at such a facility. Now all that said, when he sticks to nuclear engineering, he’s rather good. But whenever he opines on anything outside that small narrow discipline, he’s a typical godless, pro-abortion, pro-sodomy Democrat. Interestingly, he vacillates like the wind, or maybe like Mitt Romney the Weather Vane. With Obama in power, he described himself as a strong Democrat union supporter (though he’s never been a member of any of the trade unions working at nuclear power plants). With Trump in power, he describes himself as no part affiliation. He is an unprincipled man, saying whatever will give him clicks on Twitter / X. I have since blocked him. Indeed, I don’t need him spouting off his Democrat ideology in my life. One of my friends at a different employer knew him and told me never to get him involved in our reactor project because he is an arrogant uppity self-promoting narcissist. Typical Democrat. But my whole point is this: he could NEVER EVER succeed outside of government employment. Why? Because he IS a Democrat. It’s that simple. And no, I won’t state his name here at TAC because he doesn’t frequent this blog to defend himself. I myself should refrain from being like him. God help me!
Some years ago I scrounged around for biographical information on the Minneapolis City Council. At the time, there were 12 city councillors with one vacancy. Nine of the twelve were childless people whose work history consisted of time with minor NGOx. One was a married man who owned and operated a business. Another was a woman with three children who had worked as a town planner. The outgoing Mayor was a woman named Betsy Hodges. From 1991 to 2013 her employment history consisted of her time on the city council and time working for minor NGOs. She’s been married at least twice; both husbands have children but she’s not the mother of any of those children nor was she a custodial step-mother. She’s currently employed as a circuit rider promoting BLM rubbish.
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Now look at James Talarico. He’s a 36 year old childless bachelor who spent eight years as a registered student at several tertiary institutions, two years in Teach for America, and the rest of the time on the staff of minor NGOs. Katie Wilson, the current Mayor of Seattle, has had the same life-course. So does Zohran Mamdani.
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IMO, for a country with social features like the United States, we might benefit from a public sector accounting for about 14% of the working population. Had we a military of Cold War dimensions, perhaps 16.5%. A DOGE type with granular knowledge and ingenuity could likely whittle it down further.
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There are activities undertaken by public agencies which could readily be assigned to the private sector (the postal service and much of primary and secondary schooling), sectors of the economy which are bloated generally (higher education public and private), and sectors of the economy laboring under government-subsidized inefficiency (medical care). I once worked in a small government office performing a function that was in fact a governmental function. You could have cut the staff by 20% and no-one would have noticed. (My mother found the same during her brief employment by the Census Bureau in 1950). Also, the compensation of government employees is often opaque to the general reader, heavy on fringes and retirement benefits.
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Personally, quondam government employees in public office do not bother me if they are ordinary employees undertaking ordinary work. Speaking impressionistically, the all seem to be or have been lawyers, social workers, or schoolteachers. To these you add the NGO functionaries That wouldn’t bother me if you were talking about an accountant at a hospital. The ones I notice all seem to have been generic staffers at some advocacy group or at some grant-funded make work program.
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An example would be the municipal council of the core city of the small metropolis which I recently vacated (about 60% of the population of the whole settlement is in that municipality). It’s a Republican area generally, but the council had no Republicans on it. A majority of the councillors were black (the municipality is 28% black), the president of the council was a sexual deviant who wore bulbous rainbow bow ties, and nearly all of them had been schoolteachers or social workers at one point.
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If government employees wish to join voluntary mutual aid associations which run credit unions, insurance programs, and pension funds and which have labor lawyers on retainer, that’s fine with me. Collective bargaining in the public sector is never advisable. It’s not advisable in private natural monopolies either.
Compensation and working conditions in such agencies should be a matter of statutory law and administrative regulations issued pursuant to statutory law. Total employee compensation per (FTE) worker in any given region should not differ much from that in the private sector.
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IMO, government employees per se are not the issue. The world’s pesky scolds are the issue. A great many of them live on government salaries and government grants, but the salient thing about them is that they are terminally officious and unpleasant. That is the Democratic Party today.
Just finished watching the round of Sunday political talk shows. It is truly amazing the economic ignorance of democrats who are not in the least embarrassed to display that ignorance for all to see. The electorate who put them in office are little better. When one looks at the national debt, it is clear that a reckoning is closer than many think.
I agree with Art Deco.
BTW, in my own little field of nuclear power, Biden had Christopher Hanson as NRC Chairman. He was a former Senate political staffer and US DOE Advisor. He claim to fame was a degree in religious studies. Typical bureaucrat. Not a bad guy, but still, a technical idiot. Trump temporarily replaced him with David Wright, a politician from South Carolina and former Chairman of the South Carolina Public Service Commission. Wright was on the right side of the political spectrum (no pun intended), but he’s not a scientist, nor an engineer. Shortly afterwards, Trump happened on Ho K. Nieh, a former instructor for the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at Southern Nuclear, Director of Nuclear Safety at the Nuclear Energy Agency, and a graduate of Naval Nuclear Power School (my Alma Mater) with a degree in nuclear engineering from John Hopkins University. All the antinukes pitched a fit with his appointment. You can see why: he’s competent.
BTW, Kristine Svinicki was longest serving Commissioner and very competent. She survived Republican and Democrat Administrations, but only because she was a woman; her sex protected her from the axe. Her private life and apparent choices for consort with the same sex led for interesting gossip, but I give her credit for standing up to former Gregory Jackzo. He was appointed by Obama and was a Democrat antinuke ideologue whose abuse towards women left Obama no choice but to request his resignation. His replacement was anitnuke Alison MacFarlane, a professional US DOE lackey. It’s really hard to find competent, science-oriented regulators in any government agency or commission like US NRC, FAA, FDA, EPA, FERC, etc., but that’s what the country needs. Instead, it’s Democrat bureaucrats who never worked an hour of their lives in a commercial nuclear power plant and who eventually take control and ruin eveything. Only Trump has done anything to fix the US NRC with his executive orders reforming the Commission. Now, thanks to Trump, we’re actually building new nukes because the NRC is finally doing its job.