I Like This Hopeless Cause

Jim McGovern is my Congressman. Though I strongly disagree with his leftist orientation, his responses to my constituent inquiries have been courteous and to the point. He is a competent professional politician: I still remember how skillfully he ejected his hapless predecessor, the stupid incumbent Republican Peter Blute. I expect McGovern to survive even if the GOP makes historic gains in November. He is no Martha Coakley.

Nevertheless, I have to salute Mike Stopa's quixotic effort, in particular this:

I am calling for an immediate reduction in the civilian federal workforce of 10 %. While businesses big and small across America have to tighten their belts in order to adjust to hard economic times, the federal government has become more bloated than ever, topping 2 million (including military personel) for the first time in ten years. Upon election, I will propose legislation that will immediately reduce the civilian workforce from 1.25 to 1.1 million and will freeze the workforce at those levels until the unemployment rate overall drops below 6 %.

This is so gloriously anti-political I have to love the guy. I wish the GOP and Tea Partiers would find a way to make this point in an electorally palatable way. Perhaps a federal hiring freeze would fly?

If the government is the employer of last resort in a recession but there's no need to restrain government growth during economic expansion, when exactly do we stop government from growing faster than the economy?

If American voters reduced government workforces during a recession, that would be a major step toward delegitimizing the impacted governments. (I mean delegitimizing government's claim to be public's master and/or nanny rather than creature and servant.)