[Local-Maine-Schools] (Still at it): Appropriations Subcommittee, 4/05

[Dick Atlee]

I wish I'd seen this particular comment in the paper this week.

We are being forced, by the way the proposal has been handled, to go 
into bean counting mode, fighting these people on their own terms. 
There hasn't been enough of the kind of step-back larger-picture 
perspective on the whole situation that you're calling forth so 
directly.  We've all said these things in one way or another, but it 
tends to get lost in the details.  It seems to me this kind of simple 
directness and analogy could reach people who might otherwise be turned 
off by the "complexity of the whole thing."

Anyway, thanks for that, John, and again for your hospitality the other 
night.

Dick

John March wrote:
> This is classic "inside the bubble" social engineering.  These people are
> completely removed from reality.  They have the deluded arrogance of Soviet
> apparatchiks designing a farm collectivization scheme while Comrade Gendron
> looks on approvingly.  What happens to the people thrown out of their homes
> and off their farms?  Doesn't matter.  The central planners have more
> important things to think about.  And anyway, it looks good on paper.
> 
> Among other things this is about divorcing actions from consequences.  I
> always tried to teach my children that actions have consequences and that,
> as actors, they must be prepared to accept responsibility for the
> consequences.  Apparently the people on this subcommittee never learned that
> lesson.
> 
> John March