Opinion Forum

Throw the Woodstock Generation off the Stage

September 25th, 2011

By Richard D. Bailey

They famously said, “If it feels good, do it.” Well…here goes.

We need three simple rules to return common sense to the common good.

Here they are:

Never vote for anyone in government who was old enough to drive themselves to Woodstock but too young to fight in Korea. Never vote for anyone who has never had a job in the private sector. Never elect anyone to anything if it means that by winning elective office they get a raise in pay.

Follow these simple rules and we can begin to fix what the Woodstock generation has torn asunder.

That felt good. Now let me explain one by one.

Don’t vote for anyone old enough to drive themselves to Woodstock but too young to fight in Korea. So, if you were born between 1938 and 1952, you’re done. Get a job at Home Depot or as a greeter at a restaurant where they deep fry scallops on Cape Cod or in Florida. As a member of the Woodstock generation you have personal responsibility for screwing up everything your generation has ever touched. Retire now. Please. We’re begging you.
Don’t vote for anyone who has never worked professionally in the private sector. If you have never worked in the private sector then you have no understanding of economics. Even if you taught it at Hahvahd you have no business or experience rationally allocating scarce public resources. You think the economy is some huge unquantifiable hurricane of swirling cash flow that is so big that if you stick out a net to snare some in the name of taxes, it doesn’t hurt anything. But when people are hurt by your actions, you blame the people whose money you took. You think money is free, you think you can always take more and you think you are morally superior because you have never had to measure yourself in terms employing people and producing a profit. If you have never sweated making your company’s payroll then you have no idea how you affect real people’s lives every week.
Don’t vote for anyone to anything if it means that if they win they get a pay raise. Why? Because they will never leave! Why would they? They get a couple thousand people to give them money to get a job that pays them $174,000 a year. If they win they get free health care for life and a pension after 5 years, free office space and a boat load of perks. They also get to spend $1.5 million a year on staff salaries. That’s 30 people at $50G’s per year (or 20 at $75,000) to wait on them hand and foot, drive them around, book their airfare, get their dry cleaning, pick up their lunch, read their mail, answer their mail, answer their phones, plan their schedules, etc. Yeah, they work nights and weekends but in this economic environment so do a lot of us who don’t even make half that and we have to get our own dry cleaning and read our own mail.

If you meet each of these “qualifications” you should be immediately ineligible for elective office.

Look no further than the Massachusetts delegation to the House of Representatives. Eight out of ten remind me of the ossified old men standing on top of Lenin’s Tomb watching a parade of subjects that they will never meet, raising banners to goals they will never achieve and praising the same old men who care only about preserving the privileges their positions of power have afforded them. Those guys never worked in the private sector either and their whole country went broke.

Now, Moscow is home to more billionaires than any other city in the world. Connect the dots.

Bring back the $1 guys and now gals who will donate their salaries to charity and make rational decisions based not on self-interest but on the public good. It used to be that people made their fortunes and then turned to public service as a means of giving back, as a demonstration of thanks. Now, people go into public service to stamp their names on the levers of power and burn a few witches to show that they are tough. Then they sell themselves to the highest bidder to make their fortune. Does that seem right to you?

Throw the bums out. It’ll feel good.

Just do it.

Richard D. Bailey lives outside of Boston, MA. He holds an M.A. in Communications from Fairfield University and a B.A. in Political Science from Providence College. In his spare time he writes the blog The Accidental Humanist. He can be reached at rdb@rdbailey.com

(This article was also posted at The Accidental Humanist.)

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Tags: bums, experience, politicians, qualifications, satire, skills, spending, taxes
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