We all work for the government, even Republicans

New Republican National Committee head Michael Steele declares, "Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job."

This is from a guy whose job now is to help get as many Republicans as he can government jobs.

He wants to send them to work in a building, the United States Capital Building, in which virtually everybody working there has a government job.

Once Steele gets them their government jobs it will be part of their job to get other people government jobs by hiring staff and using their patronage to place friends, cronies, contributors, and family members of same in various agencies and departments around Washington, D.C., a company town, where a huge percentage of the population holds government jobs.

They will get lots of other people back home in their districts and states government jobs, or at least jobs that are funded by government money, by seeing to it that the government gives contracts to companies back home and allocates money to build roads and schools and post offices back home---all of the people working for those companies and building those roads and schools and post offices work, indirectly, for the government.  They have government (subsidized) jobs.

All these people with government jobs travel to work on roads built and maintained by people with government jobs.  If they ride buses and trains to work they driven there by people with government jobs in machines maintained by other people with government jobs.

When the people Michael Steele has helped get government jobs with the titles U.S. Representative to Congress and U.S. Senator fly home their planes take off and land safely thanks to people with government jobs with the title air traffic controller.  The people actually flying their planes most likely got their training while holding a government job called United States Air Force (or Navy or Marine or Army) pilot.

Once home, if they find a pothole on their street they call up someone with a government job who dispatches a bunch of other people with government jobs to fix it.

They want a shower after their long flight home, they turn on the faucet and out comes water from pipes laid and maintained by people with government jobs.  The water's relatively clean because it went through a filtration plant operated and built by people with government jobs.

If these people Michael Steele helped get their government jobs live out in the Southwest, the reason there is any water for those people with government jobs to treat and pipe to their homes is that other people with government jobs built dams designed and engineered by yet more people with government jobs.

If the houses of these people Michael Steele helped get their government jobs catch fire, they dial 911 and someone with a government job sends out trucks full of people with government jobs to put the fire out.  If their houses are robbed, they call 911 again and someone with a government job comes out to investigate the crime.

All these people with government jobs---you know, jobs the government created---have to go to the grocery store.   They have to buy clothes and shoes.   Millions of them buy cars and houses too.  They go to the movies and eat out in restaurants and they take vacations and all along the way they spend money that the government pays them and that money creates jobs for the people who grow the food and truck it to the market and sell the clothes and the shoes and build the houses and the cars and cook and wait on tables in the restaurants and serve the popcorn in the movie theaters and rent the beach umbrellas and run the rides at Disney World.  So in a way, all these people work for the government too.  Their jobs are government subsidized.

When you look at it that point of view, Michael Steele's job is government subsidized too.  He has a job only because there are so many Republicans who want a government job.

In a way, then, Michael Steele works for the government.

But then, one way or another, most of us do.

Via Avedon.

Comments

[minstrel hussain boy]

a lot of the furor surrounding the pained cries of socialism coming from the right remind me of the old russian joke:

capitalism is the exploitation of the masses for the benefit of the rich.
socialism is the exploitation of the masses for the benefit of the party.

as we would say in vietnam "thing same same."

[Linkmeister]

Lance, Lance. You're still trying to use rationality and logic in an argument where those two things mean nothing to your principal opponent and even less to the Dittoheads who support his kind.

Find a bloody shirt, man!

[actor212]

Cuz the WPA did nothing for America.

[Deschanel]

Clear as day, so very many people "work for the government". Keeping our world going- that's a lot of jobs created.

How was this guy not at all called out for not only being wrong, but for being such a ferociously bad liar about it?

Oh yes- "bipartisanship". Republicans are never held to the same standards as Democrats.

[Saffi]

All those jobs require electricity, and 20% of the electricity in this country is generated by nuclear plants. The people operating those nuclear plants? Very likely got their training in a government job called the US Navy Submarine Service.