Bernie Sanders: “If I were to run for president, do you know how much money the Kochs would spend?

[JDPriestly]

143. Actuallly, there are reasons why government needs to do all those things, education,

snow-plowing, etc

The reasons are 1) these jobs affect all of us in the public sphere of our lives. For example, if the snow is plowed well on our street by people who answer to us, by people we can fire because they are government employees, by people who are paid decently and whose pay is not reduced because part of what we pay them goes to the CEO of some country, we all benefit. This is particularly true in the area of education. While some private schools are excellent, especially when it comes to on-line schools, many of them are scams.

2) when the job is done by public employees, the voters can vote out the government officials who hire incompetent employees. The quality of work is more apparent and more subject to public information disclosure laws. Note that the hospital in Texas in which ebola was spread was a private hospital. Private ownership insures that the owners will cut corners when it comes to the quality of the work. Public employees answer to the public. That is one reason that people have the false impression that government employees do not do good work. Government employees' work is scrutinized, easily scrutinized by newspapers and media because, with the exception of the work records of police officers, the information about work performance may be, not directly, but indirectly obtained through public records requests about the performance of the department doing and managing the work.

3) the civil service system -- public employment -- was developed at a time of great corruption in our government. Tammany Hall is the key word to Google on this. We developed a public servant system that placed certain public employees above politics. We protected their jobs and made the appointments merit-based. Prior to that time, they were simply political -- rewards for political favors in some cases. Private contractors can get their jobs through a bidding process. Some awards are made with no bidding process at all. (That is shameful in my opinion.) Some requests for proposals or bids are tailored to elicit a bid from a company so that no other company or non-profit can qualify for the contract. That is corruption in my opinion.

I could go on. It is very popular to say nasty things about public employees. But much of the criticism is just people repeating right-wing propaganda. Stupid people who are simply not very aware of the history of public employment versus private contracting in our country.

I am not saying that all government work should be done by public servants. Building a highway is one-time thing. That should be contracted out. But shoveling snow could best be done by a government agency.