Friday, December 19, 2008

Morning Radio

Michael Gram had a great comment from a listener today on the radio. . .

How to cut state spending. Due to the snow all non-essential personnel have been told to stay home. Now that we know who they are we need to lay them off the state payroll as they are not needed. . . now lets see how much we can cut the budget.

If only. Will never happen. The ranks of the "non-essential" have actually grown under our dear ruler Deval. . .

It was a nice ride in today. It feels very weird to do the speed limit on 128 at rush hour. . .

2 comments:

TOTWTYTR said...

Apparently the meaning of "non essential" is lost on Mr. Graham and others.

Essential does not mean important or useful. It means vital to continuity of operations of an entity, be it government or private sector. For example, police officers are essential personnel in an emergency situation such as a big snow storm. The nice lady who does the payroll for the police department is important, but if the payroll department closes for one day, the police department will still function. However, if there is no payroll department at all, the police officers will eventually get quite grumpy because they haven't been paid.

Same thing in my job. The EMTs and paramedics have to show up no matter what. The guy who processes our purchase orders and buys supplies for us can stay home for a day or two and we'll keep operating. However, if we don't have a guy to process purchase orders and buy supplies, we'll be out of business in a few weeks.

It's a simple concept, but apparently beyond the intellect of Mr. Graham and Mr. Carr. Neither of which are essential or important. Or entertaining for that matter.

JD said...

While I agree that we can not run government if we fired everyone that got the day off as Non Essential yesterday I think that people think that way here in MA due to the corruption all over. We are constantly hearing about folks like the Mass Pike toll takers getting $60K or more a year for a job that should be minimum wage unskilled labor. We pay top dollar for state cops to do highway flagman jobs.

This state has folks it could cut at all levels and won't because they are related to someone in government. Our towns all have their own insurance and won't join the states even though it would save them money. . .

MASS is sick, we waist money we don't have and folks put up with it for now. I think we are going to have to cut as the economy fails, folks will leave the state even faster due to the high taxes. Fixing this state is going to hurt a lot, and folks are frustrated. I think that drives most of the comments.

I would like to see government cut back big time. I think the state level has lots of hack on the pay roll we can cut and not cause any problem with service or important stuff like cops, fire and ems. . .