Whoever equated public service with government should have a
whistle blown on his account.  There are the INS and OUTS in government:
those who are in power and those who would dearly love that power.  It is
the job of the INS to be in service to the public or, at least, that is what
I learned in kindergarten.

Paul Krugman in today's NY Times noted that Elliot Spitzer is a
fine example of public servant as well as the California electricity
regulators who tried to do their jobs.

The usual script for the recurring nightmare of running an
honest and productive government includes shooting the messenger and
rewarding the top nominees on a list prepared by the INS who do not want to
hear about dishonesty, book cooking and belated waking up to the fact they
were asleep at the switch.  Job descriptions are really lacking for the CEO'
s and middle management appointed by our elected leaders.  The main job of
all the lower echelon is make the upper echelon look good and be prepared to
take the bullets fired by the OUTS.

I like it that TIME magazine picked three "whistle blowers" as
persons of the year.  Here are three low level workers who, being women,
were NOT paid attention, NOT considered seriously and were NOT heeded but
were threatened and were either fired for pointing their fingers and were
themselves, at first given the finger. Krugman pointed out that there are
public servants who go against the tide.

Professionals who work on behalf of neighbors and the general
welfare are the ideal public servants.  Some in public service serve their
friends and to hell with the general welfare.  Selfishness runs deep for "me
first" and "friends second", a segment of our community. The history of the
United States taught in the last century was steeped in the notion that
cronyism and pork barrel politics was bad and we had corrected this by
creating a "CIVIL SERVICE" system.  The present wave of acts to unravel this
system by those in charge of cronyism and pork barrel politics would turn
over the running of governmental agencies to Faith Based Charities (who are
crying poverty) and the private sector that is run by CEOs with little
public service background other than a practiced use of "me first and
"friends second".

The challenge is to wake up to the sounds whistles make.  We
hear so much frantic hucksterism to buy and enjoy and indulge ourselves that
the pain of neighbors escapes notice. Hooray for the whistle blowers among
us and let us wring service from government employees, middle management AND
their bosses.