“You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” – old-fashioned proverb
This saying means you cannot make a good, quality product using poor materials. To make chairs that’ll last, you need good, strong pieces of wood. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
The same logic applies to public policies. If a concept is, at its core, wrongheaded, it doesn’t much matter what politicians try to do to amend it, disguise it, rationalize it or explain it. It is still bad public policy.
For example,
Most Americans have now reached the same conclusion about our involvement in
There are a number of public policy decisions that seem to me to qualify for the “sow’s-ear” label. One example is our outdated and illogical policy of not accepting
Then there’s the notion, promoted by Bush and other so-called conservatives, that cutting taxes on the wealthy somehow promotes economic growth. Talk about “snake-oil” logic!
Yet another is our clinging to the private-sector model for health care. Nearly every other developed country in the world has adopted some form of publicly funded universal health care. Most countries have realized how important it is to have a healthy citizenry and workforce. But not the
Local wrongheaded decisions
Bringing the focus locally, I would submit that the sale of
Our local hospital served the 40 percent of the population that does not have health insurance. The private sector purchasers of the hospital agreed to care for the uninsured and the proceeds from the sale provided three-year funding for them to do so. Now that those funds are drying up, I believe you will start to see the results of this horrendous and uncaring policy blunder. Among the results I predict will be longer lines at the emergency room, the hospital finding excuses not to care for indigent patients and people’s lives being put at risk.
This will create a health-care crisis for the working, poor families of this county. Eventually, it will become evident that a major error was made by city and county elected officials. The only thing that might bail us out is if universal health care is finally adopted in the
The current proposal to create Santa Teresa tax increment development districts, which I have written about before, is an example of a “sow’s ear.” The bottom line is a multi-million dollar tax giveaway to a wealthy company for a subdivision project that in time would happen anyway. Some commissioners and citizens are trying to make improvements to the deal, but no matter how you dress up this pig, it’s still going to be an animal that eats up tax dollars.
If the county approves it, future commissions will be faced with providing the same subsidies to other subdivision developers, and the result will be a county treasury that will be unable to pay for the necessary public safety and other services that county residents require.
I cannot help noting that the current county manager, Brian Haines, played a major role in engineering both of these bad deals. Both benefit a chosen few at the expense of the many.
Not all bad
Having said all that negative stuff about wrongheaded policy decisions, let me at least end this little piece by praising public officials for also making many right-headed decisions. As citizens, we take for granted all the good things that government does for us each day, from the time we get up each morning and avail ourselves of public water and sanitation services, to traveling the public roads to work, to sending our kids to the public schools and colleges, to providing some protection to our elderly residents with Social security and Medicare. There is a whole long list of good things that government does for us. Thanks for that.
Kadlecek has lived in