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The Nation's Pulse
Those '70s Show
A paternal guide to government at its most incapable.
My Dad turns 79 this weekend, and he is still going strong in a life of scholarship and achievement. He still maintains a small private practice in psychology and the rest of his time is spent in study. No puffing on cigars in leisure for this man.
Although his politics do not line up precisely with mine, a great deal of my attitude towards the capabilities and shortcomings of government was formed through the prism of his experiences. Dad worked for the City of New York for two decades, from 1965 through 1985, first in overseeing remedial education and job training programs, then as an inspector of mental health facilities. He shared with me contemporaneously all the vicissitudes of his tenure. It would be instructive to repeat here a few of the anecdotes from that period, most notably the pre-Reagan '70s.
One mind-boggling story involved the Civil Service examination. In New York City, as in many other local governments, administrative and executive positions were filled from a corps of highly qualified trainees known as the Civil Service. Each year a particular number of positions open within the ranks, usually a few hundred, and thousands of applicants file in to take the exam. If you pass once you are on the list forever, usually guaranteeing you a job within a year or two.
There was an exception whereby a new person could be hired from outside the Civil Service and he could remain on the job for two years pending his certification. If he passed the test during the allotted time, he became a Civil Servant and remained on the job. After a while, this became the preferred method of hiring. Give a person a chance and if their first year is good, have them take the test.
At one point in the mid-'70s it became the liberal orthodoxy to claim that all standardized tests discriminated against minorities, presumably because they made certain cultural assumptions which puzzled all but suburb-dwellers. This contention is arrant nonsense but the courts persisted in giving it credence as a legitimate theory in sociology. So one year, sure enough, the guys who failed the Civil Service test sued to block the city from hiring those who passed.
The case bounced along slowly through the system until the deadline loomed when the previously hired employees had to gain Civil Service status or leave. Since the suit was not resolved in time, the city had to fire all those who passed the test. Having to fill the positions urgently, there was no choice: they hired all the applicants who had failed. The result was truly of a Through-the-Looking-Glass Bizarro-World quality: WHOEVER PASSED WAS FIRED AND WHOEVER FAILED WAS HIRED!
Another episode illustrates the distortion of that time and has implications for the current controversy surround the New Black Panther Party. Because whites were being accused of harboring deep-seated, atavistically recurring, racist impulses, the government sent them to mandatory sensitivity training. Instead of hiring nice universalist types to speak about love for all mankind, they brought it members of the Black Panthers. My father and his colleagues spent entire days in packed auditoriums listening to rants by black-power radicals. In one case the speaker turned around, bent over, and declared that all you whiteys can kiss my black… er, seat. And all these white bureaucrats leaped to their feet and gave him a standing ovation.
One experience my father shared gave me a great deal of insight into the health-care debate that raged prior to the passage of Obamacare. Dad was responsible for conducting site visits at all the mental-health facilities in his territory, which covered part of Queens and Far Rockaway. He practiced an unusually high degree of scrutiny in actual files, seeing how cases were diagnosed and treated. Often he came home crying about individual patients who were being needlessly destroyed by their doctors in his view.
His overall assessment was that the three types of hospital or clinic had significant differences in quality of care. The worst were the government-run facilities where care was distinctly subpar. Then came non-profits, which did a passable job, definitely better than the municipals. Best of all were the private for-profit hospitals which provided a superior standard. Having had that window into reality from the perspective of an inspector who got into the guts of the beast, I could never back a system that eliminates the profit margin in favor of management by bureaucratic fiat.
Happy Birthday, Dad! You have taught me a lot and you are teaching me still, hopefully for many years to come.
About the Author
Jay D. Homnick, commentator and humorist, is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator. He also writes for Human Events. Here he speaks at the Rally for Religious Freedom in Miami on June 8, 2012.
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Deborah D | 7.30.10 @ 7:48AM
Wow! Thanks for this, Mr. Homnick. The story about hiring those who failed is the essence of liberalism, IMHO. It's redistribution on a different scale, and shows just how ridiculous that thinking is, and how societies ultimately fail. Imagine hiring the one who fails the exam for engineering, or surgery for that matter. I guess we'll be learning about that surgery one soon enough though, won't we?
Ken (Old Texican)| 7.30.10 @ 9:49AM
Yeah, Deborah.
I read an article the other day about the numbers of students opting out of a career in medicine. Stunning actually, then combined with the numbers of doctors who are quietly planning to retire.....or go on "sabbatical".....whoah!
I guess I better order LOTS of pain pills along with lots of 100 watt long life incandescent bulbs as well.
Deborah D | 7.30.10 @ 4:44PM
Yeah, Ken. I'm at that in between age -- not old enough for Medicare, but just old enough to be screwed by Obamacare. I'm wondering about the recently found arthritis in my knees. I'm sure I'll be hobbling around or in a wheelchair because I'm sure I won't be able to get knee replacements like my Mom did. Better stock up on pain pills myself!!
Oh, and did you know that dimmer switches don't work with those doggone ugly swirl lightbulbs. Dumbest thing ever -- better stock up on hazmat suits too!
RCV| 7.30.10 @ 5:00PM
You should just call Rush Limbaugh - he's been stocking up on those pain pills for decades!
Deborah D | 7.31.10 @ 8:08AM
God bless Rush. An American hero. Phhhhttttt to you, RCV. Have you ever said anything worth posting anywhere? Don't answer that. I already know the answer.
Bydand76| 8.1.10 @ 10:32AM
Better yet RCV why don't you ask your boy-toy Barney Frank what he stocks up on? No pun intended of course.
Pro Libertate!
PolishKnight| 7.30.10 @ 11:41AM
One mistake conservatives, understandably make, is to think that liberalism, or more accurately, leftism, is based upon some type of general paradigm such as giving those who are disadvantaged a chance and going after the "privileged".
Leftists are not so much limited. When a political group that is not voting their way (working class whites), it doesn't matter how non-privileged or unsuccessful they are. The "wise latina" will "compassionately" declare that they are just losers who can go rot. It's ALL about power and winning. That's all they care about: saving face and their egos.
We have a preview for Obamacare based upon Obama's open racist and sexist agenda (which shouldn't surprise any of us.) Consider VAWA act. Violence against women requires billions of dollars in funds going mostly to feminist organizations which encourage women to lie about abuse to get free housing. Violence against men (Tiger Woods?) Hahahaha! Funny! Violence against children (by women?) Build "legal infant abandonment centers" or "safe havens" to "urge" women to not murder babies.
Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives make the fatal mistake that conservativism should be abstract "free market" economics and "democracy" building around the world or social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. While those are useful issues, they are not relevent to the issues facing Americans, and especially the base conservatives, of heterosexual families who are being attacked by outright racism, sexism, and anti-heterosexualism.
Affirmative action is not merely misguided. It's on the same scale as Jim Crow. When a working class white male comes to an Obama hospital needing a bed after getting injured supporting a family of 4, good luck. A white female lesbian, however, will get fasttrack care though.
We've moving from Jim Crow to Stalinist times.
Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 9:20AM
"Because whites were being accused of harboring deep-seated, atavistically recurring, racist impulses, the government sent them to mandatory sensitivity training. Instead of hiring nice universalist types to speak about love for all mankind, they brought it members of the Black Panthers. "
You much prefer the state to aid your families, you want the state to aid their families to a lesser extent or not at all. Now I see why the Panthers want to speak at such meetings, you would call a nice universalist a Kumbaya-type anyway-- so what do blacks have to lose by being themselves in that context?
cyberdove| 7.30.10 @ 11:04AM
Wow! You (Brooks) certainly extracted a lot of imagined information from this article. I suppose that's how bigoted minds work.
Ragnar| 7.30.10 @ 9:37AM
The problem with " liberals" is that most of them are sniveling punks and cowards who do not deserve to live in this great country. They have sown the wind and the reaping is near:
" Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!"
Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 10:20AM
Perhaps we are being punished for slavery in America?
Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 10:41AM
... and isn't it sniveling when you whine about Obama. what would you do if Jimmy Carter hypothetically became POTUS? cry a river?
PolishKnight| 7.30.10 @ 11:48AM
Versus slavery in Africa, practiced by blacks, against blacks, long before whites came along?
White liberals are simply expoiting slavery and racism simply to buy votes from non-whites and, here's the funny part, to get their utopia someday of a country that looks like... SWEDEN! Yeah, check out what Swedish people look like sometime!
They're like Islamic terrorists tearing down western society in an effort to convert everyone to their religion so someday we can live in a paradise like Algeria or Syria.
In response to Ragnar: Much of the problem of the sniveling, cowardly liberal was created by misguided chivalrous conservatives who encouraged their daughters to become spoiled princesses. If conservatives stopped marrying such women, or raising them, that would be the end of this whole mess.
Larry in Iowa| 7.30.10 @ 11:16PM
What an amazingly stupid and uninformed statement. Typical of a leftist though. The idea the US has some special stain because of slavery is not just a lie, it’s a calumny. Perhaps it escaped your notice that the supposedly superior European countries were the ones that started slave colonies in the Americas. That it was just the British, and later the US Navy that chased down slave ships, that prior to the civil war. Slavery was abolished because of the tireless efforts of English speaking Protestants. Very few others bothered to lift a finger in the effort. Arab, African and Asian countries did nothing to outlaw the practice until forced to. In many cases they still practice slavery, try being a black Christian in largely Moslem countries and see what happens. The United States fought a terrible war in large part over the very question, the idea that America has some greater guilt than England, of which the North American slave holding colonies were a part, or France, that owned Haiti and other slave colonies, or Spain or Portugal that oversaw vast slave empires, or the Arabs states that only recently outlawed slavery or the African nations themselves that happily sold each other into slavery, is a damn lie and needs to be challenged every time some white guilt mongering ignoramus tries to peddle it.
Deborah D | 8.1.10 @ 7:07AM
Hear!! Hear!! Thank you, Larry. I get sick and tired of leftists pushing their unearned white guilt onto the rest of us. Like every other liberal lie, they just keep living even when they've been disproved. Thanks!!
Frank Drackman | 7.30.10 @ 9:47AM
still remember my first experience in an intergrated pubic school, well, if you consider an 80% african-american student body "intergrated"
I went to room 441 for what was supposed to be Algebra 2 with trigonometry.
Instead, all we did for the first week was do addition and subtraction, oh, they were BIG numbers we were "cypherin'" like oh, 123,456 + 234,567= 358,023, and I didn't know any better, cause we moved from North Dakota where the only N-words we saw was OJ Simpson on a box of Wheaties.
after a week of adding 7 digit numbers, I happened to go to room 144 by accident(i'm dyslexic) and the white PE coach(thats who taught algebra in Ally-bama) asked where the F I'd been for the last 2 weeks.
Yes, my kids go to Private School, just like the President's Kids (Peace be upon Them)
Frank "i still dont understand fractions" Drackman M.D.
Petronius| 7.30.10 @ 10:12AM
We have finally arrived. The primary goal of liberals is total reversal of fortune. The losers get to win. The winners are forced to lose. =Everybody loses and is equally miserable. Welcome to the anthill.
Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 10:36AM
Funny, in the case of Obama, YOU are the whiner!
Obama is NOT an uneducated, unpolished black, but he is not good enough for you.
Fenestra| 7.30.10 @ 10:54AM
Uneducated; "57 states".
Unpolished; "It was like the Special Olympics".
Yeah a real winner this one.
Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 10:24AM
Did you like it better in the late '70s when Carter was president?
A real conservative is thankful for small favors.
danfromatlanta| 7.30.10 @ 1:31PM
hey genius, Carter didn't dp as much damage in 4 years as the obamanation has in 1.5 years, so yes, I would prefer Carter. At least he didn't hate America like the obamanation does!
John Navratil| 7.31.10 @ 1:08PM
At least he didn't hate America while he was President. Not so sure now.
Claudia Monteverdi| 7.30.10 @ 6:08PM
Dear Jay,
I rush to say, before I drown you with sticky, gooey, oh so very fulsome...(add here) and well deserved praise; (here it comes at long last (one small word brings this sentence bact to a pasing grade) THAT you are a good son. This is the grandest compliment that one might bestow upon anyone. As to your message? Ho HUM, what else is new? I will try not a riposte but an embellishment to your quite accurate conclusion, (mine is more to the point, revolt an kill the bastards).
In a country so far away. A noble land with noble people populated by a strong, sane, highly endowed both mentally and physically, quite well educated, well fed (perhaps the best in the world), overly beautiful and skilled, overly cultured--do I go on or do you get the point?.........in this land, which I dearly love, has reigned a series of horrific governments which has kept the people at once subjugated and constantly indebted to and thoroughly dependant upon it for every sustenance in every stage of life: healthcare, food, lodging, employment, education, information, etcetera. (I did my best to make history with the world's longest sentence, I fear I have failed..the world's longest sentence id 4 years of your Obama)... Ok, glad yoiu asked, this Nation which I adore is Argentina, basking in the new found glow of now being only the second worst government in the "civililised world". Most recently we lost the World Cup, won the World Polo Cup, instituted national gay marraige, lavished a state reception upon the fiend Hassad, cuddled up with Chavez, Castro and Obama, the new Holy Triumvirate...so back to your Civil Service story... This nation has the highest paid beaurocracy anywhere, a bloated civil service and scools, universiities, graduate schools, and snooty academies filled with their spoiled progeny.. It is drowning in food, beef, lamb, pork, wheat, beans etc, and filthy with pretty fish jumping ouf the 1,500 mile coastline into the frying pan..it swims in oil and gold and iron and copper and it is dead broke..the population an adjuct of the goverment...soooooh, how does one one aquire an eagle upon one's shoulder or a taj mahal office building and a staff of 1,000 do nothings? Aha, glad you asked. The highly competitve, exhaustive system which had pitted the population against each other for coveted posts or much sought after positions; a batttery of highly professional and well-constructed written exams..a suiicidal venture for many who failed, has been replaced witha "progressive" bit of patronage methodiology...it was so easy for these monsters to gain control of this system...nothing to it..Now, since they grabbed control of the erstwhile powerful examining boards, the results of these tests are only worth 50% in determining the victors..henceforth (gimme a break, anyone who can say "henceforth" should be forgivenher other grievous errors)..Henceforth, they proclaimed the other 50% of the evaluation shall be based upon personal interview with the aforestated peronista hacks......thus now conrolling completely all appointments, university admissions, promotioons in the Army and Navy, pensions, grants and professional employment....Both Obamamamama and Hillary praised the reigning pashas and deemed them just swell whilst digging into Argentine porterhouse wshed down with exquisite regional wines and being tangoed and boleroed and cajoled by this pair of punks----OK, Jay, only for you would I have devoted so much time to a letter, but when one is in love, one's mind wanders 'though ones grammar and spelling does not improve..be kind folks..English is my third or fourth language...as ever, with my love for you Andes high in it's sheer scope, I remain,
Yours enraptured,
Claudia Monteverdi
PS--Your article was accurate and poignant and sadly true.
Ken (Old Texican)| 7.30.10 @ 8:12PM
Claudia,
Welcome to our conversations here!
I do cry for Argentina. .....and we have our own "Peron" here now.
Fortunately,
We have 234 years of constitutional "under God" tradition.
I hope that is enough to sustain us in our moment of terrible consequences.
Let us pray for one another.
Claudia Monteverdi| 7.31.10 @ 12:30AM
Dear Ken,
AMEN
Regarding The Lord:
We await His pleasure in dealing with these scoundrels.
Regards,
Claudia
Ken (Old Texican)| 7.31.10 @ 11:04AM
Claudia,
What you folks call "peronistas" we call "faceless bureaucrats".
They are the same in every country. Our first step in cleaning up our mess, is a majority in Congress "DE-funding" a bigger and bigger piece of the galloping bureaucracies...across the board.
See, under our laws, every single penny spent by the Federal government is decided by our House of Representatives.
Bureaucrats won't go to work on Monday doing their "stuff" if they are not going to be paid.
They will hve to go out and find a real productive job.
Occam's Tool| 7.31.10 @ 6:29PM
The only problem with the comment about for-profits being better than not-for profits is that nowadays hospitals get MORE profit by doing LESS, since their compensation tends to be fixed by per diem payments. This incentivizes private hospitals to minimize care. This was NOT TRUE in the 1970s and 1980s. Managed Care came in in the 1990s.
If we went back to a pure fee-for-service option in private practice instead of all this "Managed Care," private practice care would again trump public hospitals solidly. I do better work as a State Physician than I did as a Private Hospital physician. But that's because my state hospital more closely resembles the private hospital system of the 1980s in terms of physician autonomy than today's private hospitals do.
If we return autonomy to the physicians and their patients, and pay for services rendered (monitoring for fraud, of course), quality will improve and things will be well.Excessive federal intrusion has been the death of modern medicine.
My teachers had a lot more fun practicing medicine than I do. It's no fun practicing medicine under a Federal regime that assumes MDs are crooks and Chicago machine Politicians are White Knights.