Talking Points

[akirlu]

The firefighter who saved your house works a job created by government.
The carrier who delivers your Christmas cards works a job created by government.
The first responders on 9/11 worked jobs created by government.
The national guardsmen who dig you out after disaster strikes work jobs created by government.
The air traffic controllers who keep your plane in the sky work jobs created by government.
The soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan work jobs created by government.
The engineers who built the highway you commute home on work jobs created by government.
The teacher who taught you to read this worked a job created by government
American government. It creates jobs that matter.

It also created the jobs of the ingrate Congresspeople who tell you that government doesn't create jobs. Maybe it's time to give those jobs to people who will make them matter again.

Comments

[seawasp]

Technically, a lot of us were not taught to read by teachers. I knew how to read long before I went to school. The other points apply, though.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I think "a lot" is probably an exaggeration for the general populace. Fandom is a distorted sample for reading early. I think if you talk to most people, they did not learn to read before kindergarten.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

When and where I was that age (NC, mid-60s), kindergarten was not part of the public school system. I learned to read in first grade. My mother was and is an avid reader, but I don't think it ever crossed her mind to teach me before school. You were *supposed* to learn to read in school, after all.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yep, I started first grade in the late '60s in upstate New York, and because we'd just moved to the US that summer, I missed kindergarten. This meant that everyone else knew the Pledge of Allegiance on the first day, and I didn't, and I was still busily learning English at that time, but I don't remember my classmates being ahead of me on reading. I don't *think* I learned to read before starting first grade, I'm pretty sure it was during.

When my mom parrots

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

r-limdouch rhetoric about government, etc. I repeat these facts. Wanna drive on a dirt road all the time? elminate government.... etc. Until last winter.

I was coming over to Lawrence to make her lunches and extra food because she'd fallen and broken her right arm. Then she started bloviating about the healthcare bill. I politely told her to stop, she didn't, and I sort of yelled at her politely. Because a) if I hadn't gotten insurance in August 2010, the infection in my husband's foot might have cost him his foot or his life. As it is they still want to dock the tip off his second toe, but it would make him be off work for six weeks and we (and his company) can't afford it. b) ALL OF HER CARE IS PAID FOR. She is on Medicare AND Tricare because she was a military dependent. She kind of sputtered and you could see the brain cells overheating, but she finally said, "I think you're right." and shut up about it.

[kaffy-r.livejournal.com]

At the risk of sounding all, you know, Intarwebbish ... this. So. Much. This.

Or, perhaps a little more articulately, I think that government at its best is an agreement among citizens to set up a framework of basic care - personal, environmental, infrastructural - upon which the societal body can thrive. Without that framework, society collapses.

ETA: just realized that my icon should not be taken to mean anything but the fact that, if I don't have a cup of hot, milky black tea at my elbow every single second of every day, I don't actually get anything done. Like breathing. Just thought I'd clarify that.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I don't think I would have had any unclarity on the icon, but thanks for 'splainin' anyway.

[coth.livejournal.com]

And once we've realised that villages and churches have limits, and that Government is a good idea for some things, it does tend to end up as the most reliable organisation around, so then we ultimately give it responsibility for all the things we need to rely on others for. Like teaching the children of people who will not teach their own children, and caring for the people who cannot get care from their own families. Etc.