Remember when the Joplin Globe endorsed Mitt Romney? Of course you do. How could anyone forget, “Joplin Globe Doubles Down On Dumb And Endorses Romney” or the related, “The Joplin Globe’s Dumbest Editorial Of All Time” ?
And remember during the election when Republicans were openly calling Obama a socialist, and Romney, who didn’t want to directly call him one, suggested instead that the president “takes his political inspiration from Europe, and from the socialist-democrats in Europe” ? 
And remember a Romney campaign ad that The New Republic said linked “Obama with a triumvirate of famous socialists,” including the late Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara?
So, we had Republicans directly saying Obama was a socialist and Romney indirectly saying it and the Joplin Globe siding with Romney and endorsing him. It was enough to make a guy cancel his subscription.
Well, I don’t know exactly what energetic Democratic mole has dug into the hardened ground of the Joplin Globe editorial staff, but I applaud his or her efforts. Believe it or not, via an “Other Views” editorial written by the Scripps Howard News Service, the Globe published this sentence that could have been written by yours truly:
Those figures should give the lie to the charge that Obama is a socialist. If he is, he’s a very bad one.
“Those figures” were these figures:
While the private sector was adding 246,000 jobs in February, the public sector cut 10,000. Newsweek notes that since the spring of 2010, the private sector has created 6.35 million jobs; the public sector has cut 1.5 million jobs.
Let those numbers sink in. Government employment over the last three years has declined by 1.5 million. That’s 1.5 million Americans who could be working and spending and paying taxes and helping to reduce the deficit that has freaked out so many people, including the Joplin Globe editorial board.
Remapping Debate published an article in January (“The incredible shrinking federal workforce“) that examined the ratio of federal employees (federal only, mind you) to population, using the year 1978 as a basis. And get this: The population has grown 40% since 1978 and yet there are 20% fewer federal employees! If the the employment-to-population ratio were the same today as it was in 1978, there would be nearly 350,000 more Americans employed in the federal government. Let that number sink in, too, as you add it to the 1.5 million public sector jobs lost since 2010.
Finally, while you’re thinking about the incredible drag on the economy that a shrinking government workforce represents, keep in mind that it was the Joplin Globe that brought this fact to the attention of its many conservative readers, many of whom believe Barack Obama is a big-government-loving socialist. That is progress, people.
And speaking of the local paper’s progress, the Scripps Howard-Joplin Globe editorial actually made the point that there is “real progress” going on in the economy, even as “lawmakers lurch from one budget crisis to the next.”
Now, if the Globe will go all the way and start to acknowledge that those “lawmakers” responsible for all the lurching are Republican lawmakers, perhaps the paper can regain some of the credibility it lost by that very dumb Romney endorsement.
The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
Juan Don
/ March 11, 2013RDG,
What are the odds the Globe will call out Paul Ryan’s dishonesty regarding Medicare and federal budget cutting?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/11/what-do-you-do-when-one-party-is-this-dishonest/
LikeLike
R. Duane Graham
/ March 12, 2013Jonathan Bernstein got it right, of course. And, of course, the weird neutrality laws governing news reporting these days will mostly ignore the blatant hypocrisy going on with Ryan and the Republicans who support his budget.
It’s all very depressing.
Duane
LikeLike
hlgaskins
/ March 11, 2013“What are the odds the Globe will call out Paul Ryan’s dishonesty regarding Medicare and federal budget cutting? ”
Slim if those odds are first reported on FOX News, “most trusted name in news.” Paul Ryan believes that as long as he keeps hoeing the Tea Party garden, something will eventually sprout. I like to think of it as early campaigning for the opposition by using the “we’re crazy are you crazy” then vote for us or don’t move. It kind of frames the entire party’s perspective on everything, which is nothing, if not stupid first.
LikeLike
Juan Don
/ March 11, 2013The comment was tongue-in-cheek. I’d be happy to read an interview with Billy long where he explains how many cocktails were consumed before tweeting about the late Amy Winehouse.
http://www.christianpost.com/news/congressman-apologizes-for-tweet-comparing-winehouse-to-u-s-debt-52875/
LikeLike
ansonburlingame
/ March 12, 2013Duane,
If or when the Globe supports a Democratic issue or endorses a Democrat for office you praise them to high heaven. But when they choose the other side you condemn it to the pits of hell. Such is partisan politics, consistently. The Obama endorsement in 2008 and Romney endorsement in 2012 are only examples.
However the Globe has been very consistent for at least 5 years, maybe longer but I was not paying attention back then. It supports BEGINING to MOVE the federal government to “live within it means”. You and “yours” challenge such a Globe position every time it arises today. Sure you MAY say that is needed, but only “later”. Today you and “yours” want the lid removed from federal government spending and regulation and condemn anyone or any institution that balks at such nonsense.
The federal government SHOULD have a “core competency”, some basic skills that it MUST perform. Go read the Constitution to see what those MUST HAVES in terms of competency might be and then watch how even those skills are lacking from time to time on the part of the federal government. Read George Will’s column as well in today’s Globe with a view on such matters.
Funding for the federal government must be “adequate” to enable it to fulfill its core competencies for sure. But when Congress and others start piling on other requirements for the federal government, well watch out. At some point that 2 million person bureaucracy gets way beyond its ability to function, adequately or sufficiently and we the people wind up wasting a ton of money, actually TONS of money right down the drain.
Someday I would love to read a “rant” on your part pointing out such failure by a Democrat administration. You do so all the time by a GOP one but hold Democrat ones blameless, it seems to me.
Anson
LikeLike
R. Duane Graham
/ March 12, 2013Anson,
I guess you just ignored the part where government employment is shrinking.
Duane
LikeLiked by 1 person
ansonburlingame
/ March 12, 2013No I did not ignore it. I simply don’t consider it very important right now in the whole scheme of things, at least in terms of the magnitude of the changes in government employment, the numbers if you will.
I don’t believe anyone can say X is the exact number of employees needed for the federal government. But as well anyone can and should insist that each and every one of them, all 2 million or whatever the number is, be competant in how they do their jobs. Every employee should be held to strict standards of responsibility and accountability. No single employee, elected or appointed or simply hired should be incompetant. Yet many of them are just that, incompetant bureaucrats, “managers”, and yes, politicians that can and sometimes actually cause harm to Americans.
Part of that process, to make all employees competant, in any organization, is to focus on hiring people with the needed core competancies and then supervising their performance accordingly.
I saw almost unbelieveable incompetancy in the “bowels” of one, actually two, major Government agencies (DOD and DOE) in my professional experiences over about 35 years. I didn’t like it then, do not like it now and would love to see something constructive done about it.
My knee jerk solution while serving in the Pentagon was to “fire every other employee, uniforned or civilian” walking through the doors each morning, as a starter!!! I have “matured” somewhat today but still think it is a MAJOR problem and making it bigger by creating a bigger government is ……..!!!
Anson
LikeLike
ansonburlingame
/ March 12, 2013But as well, there I go again. The point of this blog, I thought, was the Globe and the positions it takes on various matters. I got lead astray into controlling government employees instead.
But I remain rather firm that the Globe is continuing to hold to some basic principles over the last 5 years, at least, a fundamental principle that you object to, I suppose!!
Anson
LikeLike