I took the liberal media tour this morning. Holy cow! Did you realize we are in END TIMES. Well, that seems to be the vibe I got just reading through the headlines. Goodness, no wonder Rosy O’Donnell moved to Ireland! The world on this side of the Atlantic is about to end, and funny…I feel fine.
Much of the negative news on liberal media outlets centers on government jobs cut by Elon Musk and DOGE. Lest you think I lack compassion, I’ll say I feel sorry for anyone who will lose a government job because I assume most unnecessary government employees believe they serve a legitimate purpose, even those who simply wrote reports that went nowhere and accomplished nothing. Let me provide a context for that statement.
When I was a professor, department report writing was thrown in my lap because, to be truthful, no one wanted the tasks, I write relatively fast, and I like to get things done. My only questions when my chairman said, “We need to write a report on…” were “When’s this due?” and in meeting the due date, “Who’s going to read this?” Most calls for reports originated in Harrisburg. The 14 state universities were, when I became a faculty member, “colleges” with autonomous control and state funding. That condition changed when the schools combined to form a university system with a chancellor. Then the avalanche of managerial jobs rolled over Pennsylvania’s higher ed. In Harrisburg, where the Chancellor kept office, the accumulation began with secretarial staff, vice chancellor with staff, and sundry other bureaucrats all justifying their jobs by accumulating reports: “My job is valuable. See, I have all these reports.” Yeah, courtesy of Don Conte and a bunch of other faculty members burdened by those reports. I think of Frank Norris’s The Octopus, a novel centered on wheat farmers and their struggles with the railroad. The novel’s title conjures up images of the rail lines as tentacles reaching over California’s landscape. For me that cephalopod rested its head in Harrisburg and the office complex specifically built for the university administration, and the tentacles reached out to gather in reports that, for all I knew because there was never any feedback, the “octopus” shredded with its beak. Bureaucracies thrive by self support, that is, by calling for endless reports. And those buildings from which they issued calls for reports? Let me say that structures and furnishings of the Chancellor’s office complex added nothing to the labs and libraries of the sundry state universities. No student gains from many taxpayers’ pains: the bureaucracy spreads like cloned aspen trees.
The Rapture
So, now, descending as though from a SpaceX rocket, Elon Musk is delivering the Day of Judgement, Dies Irae, the Day of Wrath. And all the government employees whose jobs are more a product of an out-of-control bureaucracy than of a necessity for America’s wellness, are running as though there’s a refuge from the inevitable end. Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman” lyrics might echo in your ears:
Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Where you gonna run to?
All on that day
But there’s no where to run to for shelter: The USAID agency virtually wiped out, the Department of Education cut in half, and the Inter-American Foundation reduced to just one person. But consider what this last agency funded:
Hey, I’ve been to Guatemala and I’ve eaten in Guatemalan restaurants. Come to think of it, I don’t remember mushrooms and peas on the menus. That $731,105 was well spent. Next trip I’ll look at the menus more closely. But really, what American benefits from any of those expenditures on the list? Discrimination against recyclers in Bolivia? Helping Brazilians get along with migrant Venezuelans? Well, maybe the wellness crowd loves the artisanal salt. Sodium chloride and possibly a few other elements in the shaker for a mere $483,345!
So, it’s the end of the world as many profiting from America’s largess knew it. The Democrats are in an uproar, railing against efficiency, screaming about cuts to education as though any of the people in the Department of Education actually taught a kid or supported anything other than teacher unions. They’re upset about not funding alphabet activities in foreign countries or transsexual operations in Guatemala.
Maybe it is the end of the world as we know it, but, in the words of R.E.M., “I feel fine.”
I really do feel fine.
Much of the negative news on liberal media outlets centers on government jobs cut by Elon Musk and DOGE. Lest you think I lack compassion, I’ll say I feel sorry for anyone who will lose a government job because I assume most unnecessary government employees believe they serve a legitimate purpose, even those who simply wrote reports that went nowhere and accomplished nothing. Let me provide a context for that statement.
When I was a professor, department report writing was thrown in my lap because, to be truthful, no one wanted the tasks, I write relatively fast, and I like to get things done. My only questions when my chairman said, “We need to write a report on…” were “When’s this due?” and in meeting the due date, “Who’s going to read this?” Most calls for reports originated in Harrisburg. The 14 state universities were, when I became a faculty member, “colleges” with autonomous control and state funding. That condition changed when the schools combined to form a university system with a chancellor. Then the avalanche of managerial jobs rolled over Pennsylvania’s higher ed. In Harrisburg, where the Chancellor kept office, the accumulation began with secretarial staff, vice chancellor with staff, and sundry other bureaucrats all justifying their jobs by accumulating reports: “My job is valuable. See, I have all these reports.” Yeah, courtesy of Don Conte and a bunch of other faculty members burdened by those reports. I think of Frank Norris’s The Octopus, a novel centered on wheat farmers and their struggles with the railroad. The novel’s title conjures up images of the rail lines as tentacles reaching over California’s landscape. For me that cephalopod rested its head in Harrisburg and the office complex specifically built for the university administration, and the tentacles reached out to gather in reports that, for all I knew because there was never any feedback, the “octopus” shredded with its beak. Bureaucracies thrive by self support, that is, by calling for endless reports. And those buildings from which they issued calls for reports? Let me say that structures and furnishings of the Chancellor’s office complex added nothing to the labs and libraries of the sundry state universities. No student gains from many taxpayers’ pains: the bureaucracy spreads like cloned aspen trees.
The Rapture
So, now, descending as though from a SpaceX rocket, Elon Musk is delivering the Day of Judgement, Dies Irae, the Day of Wrath. And all the government employees whose jobs are more a product of an out-of-control bureaucracy than of a necessity for America’s wellness, are running as though there’s a refuge from the inevitable end. Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman” lyrics might echo in your ears:
Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Where you gonna run to?
All on that day
But there’s no where to run to for shelter: The USAID agency virtually wiped out, the Department of Education cut in half, and the Inter-American Foundation reduced to just one person. But consider what this last agency funded:
- $903,811 for alpaca farming in Peru
- $364,500 to reduce social discrimination of recyclers in Bolivia
- $813,210 for vegetable gardens in El Salvador
- $323,633 to promote cultural understanding of Venezuelan migrants in Brazil
- $731,105 to improve marketability of mushrooms and peas in Guatemala
- $677,342 to expand fruit and jam sales in Honduras
- $483,345 to improve artisanal salt production in Ecuador
- $39,250 for beekeeping in Brazil
Hey, I’ve been to Guatemala and I’ve eaten in Guatemalan restaurants. Come to think of it, I don’t remember mushrooms and peas on the menus. That $731,105 was well spent. Next trip I’ll look at the menus more closely. But really, what American benefits from any of those expenditures on the list? Discrimination against recyclers in Bolivia? Helping Brazilians get along with migrant Venezuelans? Well, maybe the wellness crowd loves the artisanal salt. Sodium chloride and possibly a few other elements in the shaker for a mere $483,345!
So, it’s the end of the world as many profiting from America’s largess knew it. The Democrats are in an uproar, railing against efficiency, screaming about cuts to education as though any of the people in the Department of Education actually taught a kid or supported anything other than teacher unions. They’re upset about not funding alphabet activities in foreign countries or transsexual operations in Guatemala.
Maybe it is the end of the world as we know it, but, in the words of R.E.M., “I feel fine.”
I really do feel fine.
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