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It's one thing when Democrats win elections (New Jersey, Virginia), that's part of the political process. But when an entire state stands up and votes to continue the tyranny of the public trough workers, then we have to say: They voted for liberalism. Sad. But true.

Allowing public trough workers to run the state is bad enough; the result, spending beyond the state's means into infinity is not something that will remain unnoticed indefinitely.
Expect taxes to explode, reach critical mass and trigger a new round of more draconian corrective initiatives.

Liberal policies can exist only so long as there is an endless supply of slaves or idiots...

Allowing public trough workers to run the state is bad enough; the result, spending beyond the state's means into infinity is not something that will remain unnoticed indefinitely.

Tonalities are important. The problem with railing about "public trough workers" is that government does a lot of good and needful things. It also does a lot of superfluous things that We The Peeps demand come election time (or that some congressional subcommittee chairman thinks should be done), which is not the employees' fault. Simply denouncing government leads us into one political dead end after another. I have learned this lesson the hard way. I have given up thinking we should lose elections over it.

That said, I do agree that federal and, in many places, state and local government pay and benefits are excessive. That's largely because the whole government sector operates on automatic COLAs and never faces a readjustment; 3%-plus creep year after year, decade after decade takes a toll. The federal comparability formula is a joke, and the union bargaining process at the state and local level has slipped the leash.

My magic bullet solution would be an across-the-board rule that government pay and benefits, on average, could not exceed the average for full-time employed persons in the private sector, with an automatic freeze until that level is reached. I could stand up in any town hall meeting in America and defend that, while I couldn't defend a generic attack on "government."

The other thing we need to do is make it possible to fire people. The issue here is not so much incompetence or misbehavior -- I'll grant the occasional exceptions -- as it is the need to delayer, downsize, and streamline. My limited exposure to federal agencies suggests that most folks are working hard enough, but they're working in antiquated structures. A clerk from the 1930's could walk into most agencies today and, once he learned the rudiments of Word and Excel, would feel right at home.

Don't misunderstand me: if you and I got down to specifics, we would probably be in substantial agreement. I personally would have no trouble getting rid of three-quarters or more of the federal non-defense budget. That's after shifting Medicare and Medicaid to a means tested voucher approach, a 40 year transition to put Social Security on a fully funded investment account basis, and the devolution of many other functions to state and local governments (which means, of course that "government" would still be in the picture). At the local level, voucher the public schools and we're almost done.