Why gov't shouldn't be run like a business - Alec Baldwin on why Calif should elect Brown

[housewolf]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alec-baldwin/you-would-think-that-cali_b_739771.html

...

In their websites and in their official statements, both Whitman and Brown say the usual things about jobs, taxes and education. But it is in the area of jobs from clean energy technologies and in pension reform that Brown holds the clearest edge. California has, through necessity, been a leader in environmental policy-making. Spend any time in California and see how many hybrid cars are on the road. How many wind turbines are in operation. How much photo-voltaic equipment is already in place. Brown knows that this is just the beginning. Where Whitman and other business types believe that markets themselves will lead us where we need to go, Brown knows that government must lead. The push to bring as much of the American power grid into the renewable market must come from government. The money we spent on Iraq alone might well have begun to solve this problem once and for all.

Whitman the businesswoman lacks the political skill to bring the pension issue into the 21st century. Unions and pensioners must be brought to the table for talks that recognize them as entitled on one hand yet partners with taxpayers on the other. Brown will do that. And he must before the pension problem in California crushes the government into insolvency.

All governments need to be run in a more business-like manner and now more than ever. But government should never literally be run like a business. Business is about cold numbers, strict adherence to bottom lines and the ascent of those with the greatest skills and advantages. Governing requires a humanism that we find largely absent in the business world of today. It calls for skills that the business world often overlooks or shuns. Governing requires the ability not to follow spreadsheets and marketing advice but to weigh all of the relevant information and decide what is best for all of California in both the long and short term.

There is no one better for that job than Jerry Brown.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Absolutely right.

Recommended.

[LiberalFighter]

2. I would have to disagree about the government should be run in a more business-like manner.

How many small businesses fail early?
How many companies go bankrupt and reorganize or don't reorganize?

Government services should be provided should be provided at the least cost possible while still providing appropriate services.

If business is about cold numbers then why do they pay outrageous salaries to incompetent or of questionable ability? Why do they employ management with the purpose to violate laws?

[pinboy3niner]

3. K&R

Alec makes waaaay more sense than the other politically-active brother!