Putting the cat back in the bag may never happen.

I’m not a fan of “the smartest kids in the room” either. I never claimed that Geithner or Summer were the persons to get us out of the fix.

And how were the Dems supposed to stop no-bid contracts issued by the CPA and the BushCo crowds?

And for the record, I would still take someone with a combination of actual real life experience (which would preclude the Beck and Limbaughs as well as most of the MOTU) who have educations over the folks who create the problems.

I just think you are condemning and painting with way too broad a brush. We obviously disagree with this and you are not going to convince me nor I you so we’ll just let it go.

Edit: And I am someone who watched jobs come into my hometown in the 60s because the firms bringing the jobs were doing so to break the unions in a lot of northern states. Which is why I’ve been ambivalent about all the crying about lost jobs in textiles and such, since most of those jobs in the south came from unionized places in the north before they decamped further to the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and China (amongst other places).

No, I’m suggesting that your cure would be worse than the supposed affliction.

Are there incompetents working in government service?

The affliction is that unions are not delivering their end of the bargain for working Americans and working Americans do not see unions as capable of delivering their end of the bargain.

Defend that dissonance all you want, how you do so and how it doesn’t work anymore is instrumental in understanding why labor is where it is, and what the best path forward is for American workers.

And sorry but there is probably more abuse of the system by the Republicans than the Dems can ever hope to compete with. Or do you forget that the bailout of the banksters started under the Republicans? And that it was the Republicans giving no-bid contracts to their cronies at Haliburton, KBR, Blackwater, etc.

These giveaways all got past the Democrats in the Senate who could have stopped it if they chose to and passed with Democrat votes, the same Democrat congress that has problems “adding to the deficit” when it comes to health care. I’d note that labor bargained away single payer early on in this contest, echoing their negotiating posture which has delivered American workers from where we were in 1980 to this wonderful spot. Why might that be?

Patronage corruption is the lifeblood of both parties, labor sucks up to patronage on the Democrat side, and the differences are so blurry you might expect one day for the Democrats to toss reproductive health coverage under the bus in order to get one GOP vote.

I’d look to people from most any good college, not just Harvard and Yale. Who do you think should be providing leadership? Beck or Limbaugh? Or just anyone who isn’t currently a union leader today?

Did you learn how to offer up the false choice at Princeton or Stanford? Summers and Geithner or Beck and Limbaugh? It is this kind of sub-Alinsky thinking that goes a long way to illustrate why unions are held in such low regard amongst American workers.

Last time I checked, it was the “smartest” kids in the room who got us into this mess. Why would you expect for the “smartest” kids in the room to get us out of it?

Self government, democracy is not rocket science, whether in the parties, in the unions or in the government. Those with existing privileges related to control over those institutions are the ones who keep on telling us that we need to defer to the properly educated because these problems are just too complex to understand. Wonder why that might be?

Are there incompetents working in government service? Of course. Just as there are incompetents working in for profit businesses. Or have you never run across the incompetents that are connected to management and make other folks life’s miserable because they know somebody? If you haven’t, then you’ve lived a fortunate life.

And sorry but there is probably more abuse of the system by the Republicans than the Dems can ever hope to compete with. Or do you forget that the bailout of the banksters started under the Republicans? And that it was the Republicans giving no-bid contracts to their cronies at Haliburton, KBR, Blackwater, etc.

I’d look to people from most any good college, not just Harvard and Yale. Who do you think should be providing leadership? Beck or Limbaugh? Or just anyone who isn’t currently a union leader today?

Edit: and for the record, I am quite aware that there are non public service union jobs in most every state. At least at the Federal level, those are mostly appointee positions and sometimes appointees are actually competent.

Patronage is not a problem when there are strong public sector unions that take their responsibilities seriously.

Not all public jobs are organized, and the patronage tends to occur there.

Amongst organized public workers, there is so much job security that deadwood stays on yet management has the ability to ease out “troublemakers” that don’t play with the program. This would just be curious if the working stiffs paying taxes to fund the public sector can only dream of such a working arrangement.

But you are correct that patronage is a problem these days. I’m thinking especially about all the Cheney moles embedded throughout the Federal roster and all the Regent grads brought into DoJ because they weren’t graduates of those dastardly liberal hot beds such as Harvard and Yale.

I’m more concerned about Democrats who sidle up to the public works feeding trough and siphon off public dollars to their preferred contractors.

Are you suggesting that working people should look to Harvard and Yale for leadership?