OP Miner’s sometimes metaphorical rant documenting the obscenity of some of the pay cycles in the current public aristocracy smacks of sincerity. Indeed, you will know obscenity when you see it, and certain job descriptions tickling six figures and up do fail the smell test. Though I have never met Mr. Miner, I think I can safely make the leap that he is not a public servant, or at least not yet. An anger seeps out with his comments, but it is really fear, isn’t it: fear that the whole system is unraveling while those in charge pander to their self interests first, and their employers’ second. Thus, and I believe it was de Tocqueville’s observation, democracy does contain the seeds of its own destruction.

The historical flow seems to point to an almost certain evolution that tyranny follows democracy, or dictatorship the republic, that the freedoms usually enjoyed become inevitably entangled in rights, laws, exemptions, entitlements and, as our lyrical friends might suggest, shite, which really means greed, doesn’t it? Now we are there. Banks are bankrupt, economies on the slippery slope, deficits are norm, budgets are bust, and yet demands persist as if the only logistical problem is the availability of ink to print more money.

And leadership is the issue. Parliaments were formed to control an aristocracy which would spend our gold pieces on their indulgences. When the parliaments, congresses, councils and boards debase to the level of spending first on themselves, they have become the antithesis of their own creation, and there is only one recourse to control them: throw the bums out.

Or be quiet. People, cynically or even typically, deserve the government they have. I said that.

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