Being a business owner or corporate CEO is exactly the WRONG preparation for Government.

(6:15:06 PM)
What the hell makes businessmen, and this cycle, businesswomen, think that running a business is any qualification for working in government? And notice I said 'working in'. The idea that no 'ONE' is running the government seems to escape a good many people these days. Even progressives who think Obama was elected Good Witch of the North, complete with magic wand. But especially business people and (usually) the Republicans who are buying that 'run government like a business' load.

Look, it's called a democracy, a republican democracy, for a reason. We all get to vote. We all get to choose who represents us in doing the various functions of government that we find necessary but, usually, realize we have either no time to do, or don't know much about. Or both. Example: what do you know about shale field frakking? Yea, yea, you just got to get the baby's bottle made, what do you care about shale field frakking...Aren't you glad someone is trying to prevent it from releasing crude oil by-products into the water-tables of northeastern North America...oh, yea, you're in California. Who cares about eastern North America?

But here in California, two business women are trying to approach government like a business. First, by buying a major interest in the company, err, in government. And much to their surprise, there's more to it than putting money on the table. The buyer has to actually like you, like what else you bring to the table. And being good at business, which neither of them really were, ain't much of a qualification anyway.

See, you can't just fire the ones who disagree with you. I'm talking to you, Meg. The others get their positions the same way you're trying to. We voted for them. And if they disagree with you, well, tough. This was the great frustration of the Republicans in the nineties. They wanted to fire Clinton, and but they actually needed a cause. Electeds can't just fire other electeds in government because they don't like them. Especially when they've been, oh yes, elected.

Also, government's not there just for a financial profit. Certainly not your own. Truman said you could tell an honest politician by whether he was poorer when he left than he was when he entered the office. You especially don't get to arrange for $40Million golden parachutes. Ya hear that, Carly, ya tone-deaf dirty Q-tip? Did listening to all those HP board members you wiretapped make you tone-deaf?

In fact, government's not in it for the next quarter's returns. So you're in it for the long haul, over a horizon that's way past the end of your term in office. Kennedy spoke of reaching the moon by 'the end of the decade.' Jerry Brown looked thirty years down the road from his tenure in office. Guess what? We're there.

And a big piece of why we can see the horizon at all is because California politicians, especially Brown, saw clean air and clean water as important, and energy efficiencies and pollution reduction as the way to get there. So instead of the smog, and effluent, and multiple nuclear and coal-fire plants business people told us we had to have, Californians use less energy, and less manufacturing materials, than they did thirty years ago. And we can see the mountains from the coast, even with more than twice the cars that were here then. All with the same living standards as the rest of Americans.

Who are suffering, along with us, from the national disaster of letting people run the country like a business, people who claimed to be qualified because they had "run a business, and made payroll."

Frankly, compared to working in government, especially a democratic republic, that ain't shit.

More later, including 'comparing sociopaths.'
(6:37:29 PM) (6:46:51 PM)