Think There Might Be A Connection?

Between this and this?

In the first link, two experienced pollsters point out how completely and totally disconnected Democratic politicians are from what the American people want, that they are, in fact, delusional in thinking that Americans want the kind of health care reforms that the Democrats are trying to make into law.

First, the battle for public opinion has been lost. Comprehensive health care has been lost. If it fails, as appears possible, Democrats will face the brunt of the electorate's reaction. If it passes, however, Democrats will face a far greater calamitous reaction at the polls. Wishing, praying or pretending will not change these outcomes.

Nothing has been more disconcerting than to watch Democratic politicians and their media supporters deceive themselves into believing that the public favors the Democrats' current health-care plan....

...a solid majority of Americans opposes the massive health-reform plan. Four-fifths of those who oppose the plan strongly oppose it, according to Rasmussen polling this week, while only half of those who support the plan do so strongly. Many more Americans believe the legislation will worsen their health care, cost them more personally and add significantly to the national deficit. Never in our experience as pollsters can we recall such self-deluding misconstruction of survey data....

The notion that once enactment is forced, the public will suddenly embrace health-care reform could not be further from the truth -- and is likely to become a rallying cry for disaffected Republicans, independents and, yes, Democrats.

The "self-deluding misconstruction of survey data refers to the Obama Administration's delusion that their health-care plans are what the public wants.

Health care is no longer a debate about the merits of specific initiatives. Since the spectacle of Christmas dealmaking to ensure passage of the Senate bill, the issue, in voters' minds, has become less about health care than about the government and a political majority that will neither hear nor heed the will of the people.

Voters are hardly enthralled with the GOP, but the Democrats are pursuing policies that are out of step with the way ordinary Americans think and feel about politics and government....

Unless the Democrats fundamentally change their approach, they will produce not just a march of folly but also run the risk of unmitigated disaster in November.

Bingo. What these two pollsters haven't yet realized - they were pollsters to Carter and Clinton - is that the Democratic Party is proving that they are incapable of leadership, incapable of governing and incapable of understanding basic economics.

I'll repeat this: I know I sound like a broken record, but we simply need to demand a higher quality of work from our government.

The second link is tied in with the first, underscoring the fact that the Federal Government has lost much credibility: government workers, long under-paid, but with secure jobs, have now become the better-paid group of workers.

Private-industry employers spent an average of $27.42 per hour worked for total employee compensation in December, while total compensation costs for state and local government workers averaged $39.60 per hour.

That's a difference of no less than 44.4% higher wages. That's total compensation, including benefits:

The average government wage and salary per hour of $26.11 was 35 percent higher than the average wage and salary of $19.41 per hour in the private sector. But the percentage difference in benefits was much higher. Benefits for state and local workers averaged $13.49 per hour, nearly 70 percent higher than the $8 per hour in benefits paid by private businesses.

Hence government workers are earning 35% more cash in hand than the private sector, and 70% more for benefits.

Now, the AFSCME say this is because the low-level government jobs have been farmed out to private companies and that this reflects this change, as higher-qualified workers earn more.

But that is exactly the problem: a country where government jobs are better paid (along with that government job security!) means that the government will be considered an increasingly attractive alternative to private-sector jobs.  This might seem okay, even positive if it means that government workers will indeed become more competent, but with one small but critical caveat: per definition, government jobs do not add value to the economy.

Zilch, nada: government jobs are fundamentally administrative jobs, with the usual exceptions for research and design work done by government workers (and I am deliberately including the military: keeping the peace and implementing US foreign policy is, at the end of the day, an administrative task in the greater economic scheme of things).

Hence we are moving to a country where things are administered and implemented, rather than a country where things are built and where jobs get done.

Look at any large company and you can see a drag on the bottom line: administrative costs. In Germany, in a famous example of sheer insanity, the German Office of Work (Arbeitsamt) employs no less than 40% of its employees to administer...the other 60%. Not to administer the unemployed and try to find them a job, but 40% of the workers manage the other 60%, who do the actual work. The inefficiency and incompetence of this institution in Germany is legendary.

This is not the direction to go: if you want a thriving and profitable company, you have to keep the lawyers and accountants under firm and constant control. If you want a thriving economy, you have to keep the role of government in the economy as small as possible and as large as necessary.

I'll repeat this: I know I sound like a broken record, but we simply need to demand a higher quality of work from our government.