Pat Sajak is now the second quote-unquote pundit to suggest the dumb idea of disenfranchising public sector employees because of their obvious "conflicts of interest". To be fair, he's a higher class of commentator (game show host) writing for a higher level of magazine (National Review) than Robert Ringer (WingNutWorldNetDaily), but this is still an idea that would come from a guy whose job is to make small talk with people playing a televised form of Hangman.
The criticisms remain the same. Who would be barred from voting? Law enforcement professions. (Cops are government employees). Soldiers, too.
Anyway, if we really want to take this thought to its logical conclusion, what about the many people who nominally work in the private sector as government contractors? There are sums of money transacted there that are by far larger than public employees get individually or in aggragate. What of people and industries subsudized by the government? Corn growers get lots of federal dollars -- heck -- farmers in general. What of people getting Medicare, Medicade or Social Security? They should not be allowed to discuss health care funding or reform? And what of broadcasters? They get funding direct from campaigns and use of airwaves allocated by the government. There are many potential conflicts of interest, there.
But it seems he forgets the precept that this is our government -- every citizen's government. We all vote because we all have a stake in it. It's not a conflict of interest, it's how we go about expressing our interest!
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