Comments on: Pawlenty emergency order on cops, firefighters mum on LGA cuts

By: majii

majii — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 21:52:37 +0000

One point for the poster who says consolidating and sharing services isn’t efficient and doesn’t work: Doctors offices and law offices would have to be socialist based on your understanding of the concept. The major reason doctors, lawyers, accountants, insurance salesmen, etc. form partnerships is to share resources and reduce costs since it is extremely expensive for any one of them to have the same high quality practice/business/office if each one had to set it up him/herself. It’s called a partnership and is a recognized form of entrepreneurship. If it wasn’t a good business model, surely there’d not be so many of them.

Socialism is defined as a form of government in which the government owns all of the factors of production. Neither the U.S. nor any state government is purely socialist, although Alaska is the most socialist state in the U.S.

A true description of America’s economic system is that it is a mixed economy. We have some aspects of command, traditional, free market, and socialist economies in our federal and state governments.

If a government should be condemned and abolished because it contains some elements of socialism, we’d have to do both to our government, and our government would have ceased to exist over 60 years ago.

The problem with socialism is not the term itself or the way it works. The problem is that members of our own Congress who benefit immensely from socialism have somehow convinced their supporters that it is an evil thing. McCain, Grassley, Burr, Foxx, McConnell, all get socialist Medicare, and we see none of them turnning it down. Not one.

By: Lazercat

Lazercat — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:59:20 +0000

I get so tired of these people spouting right wing crazy comments like having fire protection is socialism. Eight years of these leaders has left our infrastructure in tatters, our schools behind in the world, our Co2 levels dangerously high our water quality tainted and our bank accounts dry.

Why don’t we give these people Alaska and they can all live in caves.

By: Mill

Mill — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:20:54 +0000

A vacuous, duck-the-issue move on an important and pressing policy issue. Hard to juggle public finance with the raise-revenue hand tied behind your back, while the unallotment hand freely wields it’s blunt axe

By: Dennis Holman

Dennis Holman — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:31:17 +0000

Inspite of his misguided “green” tendencies and what appears to be some grandios aspirations, I commend the Governor on his offer of thoughtful assistance to local governments that, much like most of our representative in the Legislature, have failed to understand what it means to operate within a realistic budget.

By: Paul Schmelzer

Paul Schmelzer — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:23:31 +0000

“More Socialism”: I see you’ve been commenting under various names. Please stick to one, per our comment policy. http://minnesotaindependent.com/policies
Next one under a new name gets deleted.

Also, if combining public services is socialism, how isn’t it socialism to have taxpayer-funded public services in the first place?

By: More Socialism

More Socialism — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:10:10 +0000

This combining of public services is more socialist garbage.
They combine forces and suddenly two cost-ineffective agencies are MIRACULOUSLY made into a leaner, meaner, cost-effective agency???! You cannot do that without trimming the fat; -something that is able to be done without communities giving up their sovereignty and allowing larger, less community-focused pubic service “arrangements” to strip local input in government even further. If one community in one of these “arrangements” sees an increase in crime or population, and another does not, everyone will still have the grand “privilege” of PAYING for it. This is socialist CRAP. Please, people, do not fall for this.

By: Tripp Babbitt

Tripp Babbitt — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:36:18 +0000

All:

Folks in government need to understand that sharing services almost always increases costs . . . it is a paradox. The uninformed fall into this trap sharing front and back offices and IT believing that money is saved, it is not. Without an understanding of the nature of demand we lock in waste. The biggest lever for improvement is the design and management of work.

Please read:
http://blog.newsystemsthinking.com/blog/shared-services-strategy/0/0/dos-and-donts-of-a-shared-services-strategy

Regards, Tripp Babbitt
http://www.newsystemsthinking.com
http://www.thesystemsthinkingreview.com (Government)

By: Ray Marshall

Ray Marshall — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:44:34 +0000

I still have never seen a report on how many cuts have been made to the Governor’s staff and the staffs of the other constitutional offers, the legislature and the administrative departments in St. Paul.

I still have never seen a report on how much money is spent ever year on “paid vacations”, otherwise known as “administrative leave with pay” on those state and local official suspected of wrongdoing?

Chief Bonnie got a whole year’s vacation, I believe and now she still has her job as a Captain but is not allowed to supervise anybody. One of her victims got another $150 thousand out of Minneapolis.

By: Randy

Randy — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:24:13 +0000

The “whereas” language sounds like he is just exploring new ideas in government administration, not frantically trying to patch some of the more serious holes he created in the state’s finances. It’s tailor-made for a presidential candidate who wants to point to his “record of achievement.”

By: John Zanmiller

John Zanmiller — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:12:22 +0000

The Cities of West Saint Paul and South Saint Paul merged their fire departments a few years ago. There have been substantial savings from streamlining management and reducing redundancy in equipment. The savings has not been astronomical, but it has been signficant. The annual cost increases are a fraction of the increases when we operated separately.

Our experience is somewhat unique. Both cities (populations around 20,000 people) had a full time fire department. We are one of a handfull of full time (no volunteers) departments in Minnesota. Most cities spend a fraction of what our cities spend on fire protection because they have volunteer or hybrid (some full time fire fighters and volunteers) department.

If the Governor would like to see how we did it, and hear about additional suggestions on making it work for every city, West Saint Paul is more than willing to head up Robert Street to show everyone how we did it.