Shut Down Essential Services!

The First Cry of the Worthless

To hate politicians comes naturally to me. I can vividly recall being a young man watching the local news, and seeing a local politician standing in front of a fire station at a podium. Saying that if the citizens voted against her proposals for raising taxes that this particular valuable fire station would have to close, and many others.

Huh.

If they don’t get the tax increases they want the first casualty is the fire station? In neighborhoods where they need a fire station?

I was a very young man, a boy really, but even then it struck me that there must be other budget cuts less impactful than closing the local fire stations.

And it hit me then.

Fear.

Politicians love to sell fear.

Do what I want or you’ll be the first to suffer. Homes will burn as alternative fire stations miles away will take on new responsibilities in your area.

The same was always true for cutting police and safety.

Why were the first casualties of budget cuts always the essential services according to these politicians?

From an early age on I’d watch as politicians claimed “the other guy” was going to give all the tax breaks to someone else, was going to increase my taxes, was going to cut all my essential services, and do nothing to fix the potholes in the roads surrounding our home.

And God forbid we citizens attempt to reign in the spending. If the politicians in charge were forced to make serious budget decisions the very first cuts were going to be to the departments and expenses where we, “Joe Average Citizen”, would feel the burden the most.

Isn’t that something?

I remember, and trust me I was a very, very young man, I recall yelling at the TV set, “why not cut your own staff budget, why not cut your pay, why do the lowly fireman have to lose jobs”?

And then and there they made me a “hater”.

Right there, watching that idiot in front of a fire station, I began to loathe all politicians. With a hatred beyond comprehension.

My hatred for government grew later.

That seed was planted the first time I had to go to the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles, or DMV, in Glen Burnie, Maryland.

Holy God what a shit hole.

I’ve never seen people, working people, move so slowly. I’d never seen people with such dead eyes, soul-less, vacant eyed worthless workers, who didn’t give a crap about their job, the public they were supposed to be serving, not a single individual in the entire building gave a damn. The slow shuffle, the look of disdain they had for me as a customer, a short one hour visit to the DMV to register a car and get plates was perhaps the worst customer service experience ever, certainly of my short, sixteen year life. If this was government in action we needed to fire everyone and start over.

My hatred was only reinforced when the local television station decided to follow around a few crews from the Department of Public Works. Doing real investigative reporting, something no longer done in America.

They showed crews leaving the station late, heading right to the breakfast spot for coffee and sandwiches. The crews then drove around aimlessly. For hours. Eventually they stopped, did maybe forty minutes actual work. Then went to a long lunch break of about two hours. After lunch the truck drove around again aimlessly, stopping at a worker’s home to drop something off, tools from the work shed. Then another stop for drinks, and back to the shop an hour early. Every worker exiting the workplace ahead of the clock out time, except for one worker, who apparently was clocking all the cards out at once for the entire crew.

I realized watching that report that the average government employee was completely worthless.

Just after high school, and in between college, a distant relative got me a “summer work internship” at the great and behemoth Social Security Administration in West Baltimore.

Oh my God.

A six or seven story building where no one did any actual work. A sea of desks, populated by the same dead-eyed worthless individuals I’d seen at the DMV.

I still have yet to see that shuffle, that slow, the legs are barely moving but somehow the body appears in motion walk that the government employees had, out in the private sector. The upper body appears to be moving at normal speed, but the legs are barely moving and the feet shuffling something awful. It takes five minutes to walk down a thirty second hallway.

Watching literally hundreds and hundreds of people work at not working, going through the motions, and all with that same vacant hopeless appearance, getting that job made me want to trim government by eighty percent, and this was in the early 1970’s mind you.

From the DMV, to Public Works, and on through a three month stint at the Social Security Administration, I realized that government is a wasteland of nothing. Populated with the unmotivated who could care less, except for the direct deposit check they are selling off hours of their life to obtain.

So my own hatred of all things politician, and all things government comes naturally through personal experience.

I do not understand a soul that looks at government and feels that it is there “to do good”. And who wants even “more government”.

I believe in my heart that we could indeed gut the Federal government workforce by fifty percent, eliminate entire Cabinet Level vertical institutions such as the Education Department, and we’d not skip a beat in services provided to the people.

We could strip the politicians of seventy percent of their staff, and still function.

“More Government” has never, ever, in the history of our nation been the right answer to our problems. Ever. Not once.

This is the kind of crap you get from politicians, ready?

Kamala Harris, current VP, wants to “turn the page” on what is, and “move forward” with a new generation in charge, and she has a bunch of wonderful things she’d do if elected.

Except she is in the current administration. She could do those things now. Right now. And if she is in the administration that is currently in charge, don’t we already have a new generation in office?

Make it make sense. Please.

Fear.

All I see Kamala and the Democrats selling is Fear.

Trump will take away this, take away that. Trump will give the Billionaires everything. He had four years to do that and didn’t from 2016-2020, but this time he will.

And even if true how would giving the billionaires everything change anything anyway? I’ve documented here how the top one percent has seen the greatest increase in wealth and asset accumulation in the history of our nation over the last 30 years. And Democrats have dominated control over those years. They don’t seem to be stopping the complete destruction of the middle class.

Every Democrat I see on television today mirrors the woman standing at that fire station way, way, way back in the 1960’s.

Vote the wrong way and you will have to suffer, the first cut will be to the essential services you need, and count on.

I hate politicians.

I loathe them.

I’m not MAGA, but they are the people who seem to understand.

We need to vote in people who aren’t career politicians, who will cut everything but essential services when things get tight, starting with their own salary and staff.

I don’t know what the DMV is like in your town. But man, if you ever pass by Glen Burnie, Maryland, and by the way I pray you never have to, the place is a literal shit hole, but if you do, try walking through the DMV. Look around. Take a seat with all the people holding numbers, and watch the “assembly line of production”.

You’ll be amazed. You’ll wonder how anyone ever gets a license, license plates, or anything done regarding owning and operating a motor vehicle in Maryland. For every nineteen worthless hires there must be one that actually tries. That tries to do the job they were hired to do.

From this seat we don’t hate politicians enough, we don’t hate government enough. It is a bloated mess crying out for reform and reduction.

Sad we no longer have any real local television stations. No more investigative reporters.

It was great when they showed the head of the Public Works department the film of crew, after crew “goldbricking” on company time, and stealing tools. For a day or two they’d promise “reform”, and that “heads will roll”.

It’s ten-thirty AM as I type this, I wonder if they are enjoying their extended breakfast time and sandwich on the local truck in my area right now. They can drive around and look busy for another hour and then it’ll be lunch time.

How do I know this is happening now, again?

The same pot holes on Blue Heron that were there last season, are still here this season. Same place, only slightly larger.

Oh wait, there is an ad on the television, a local politician, look, she is standing in front of a fire station. Let me turn the sound up to hear what she is saying…