spking: Implying that Ted Kennedy didn't fight hard every day of his life in politics is as cruel and stupid as suggesting that a man can't grow up after a reckless youth is as cruel and stupid as a reaction to a man's death being "Good riddance." While I find the bickering on both sides to be tasteless, akd isn't being a douche the same way you are.
The issue I'm talking about isn't whether Ted Kennedy is good or bad. The issue is that he was a man who spent a lifetime doing what he thought was right, and that it takes a fool or a sociopath to look at a lifetime and spit at it. There's a difference between being critical and being destructive. Your attitude is the latter.
If you're going to attempt to put me down, can you at least attempt to be clever with it? The only thing worse than negativity is bluster.
Think of all the ineffective or downright hateful businesses you give your money to because there is no practical alternative: cable and internet providers, health insurers, banks, credit cards, ticketmaster, airlines, big box stores, domain registrars...
Credit cards facilitated online shopping and the internet as we know it. As someone whose taken credit cards, I hate giving up the 2.x%, but it's well worth it. Many businesses wouldn't be possible without credit cards. They're massively convenient. And AMEX totally washes the consumer's hands of fraud and damaged goods.
Business does well. Even the above cross-section of "downright hateful companies" are still pretty good businesses. And the scummiest ones are scummy because they're in bed with government. Cable/internet local monopolies, health insurers with the tax code, and banks with the... well, that's a long discussion and you've probably heard some of it.
Government branches can't go out of business. When they do poorly, they always say it's because they don't have enough money, and they get more. Business has a natural check on it - people have to like it enough to use it. You could skip airlines and take a boat or train or horse, you could use only cash and keep it in your mattress, you could use other alternatives. You don't, because those companies aren't perfect, but they do a pretty good job. I wish I could just "not use" the IRS, I wish I could just "not use" TSA, I wish I could just "pass" on going to the DMV and giving them money for a sticker or laminated piece of plastic.
No private sector company that isn't in bed with the government or run by powerful violent criminals is as nasty as the DMV, IRS, or TSA to its customers. And they don't go out of business.
At the University of Pittsburgh, Sodexho is the exclusive provider of on-campus food. The food and service have since gotten better, but my freshman year, Sodexho had a policy of hiring many ex-convicts for their food service positions. I ate at the sub place on campus a lot because it was close to my dorm and decent enough. The full-time workers there were two men 70+ in age, though maybe the hard living had aged them beyond their years. They had faded ink tattoos visible on their arms and had clearly recently been released from prison after near-lifetime sentences.
I cannot express how much these men hated their jobs. They hated their customers. Every time I ate there and made the mistake of looking them in the eye, I could tell that they wished death upon me and everyone that ever ate a sub made by their hands.
Since then, I have eaten in the private sector, and while every worker is not happy, they are usually at worst indifferent. Never has an employee wished death upon me with malice and hatred like those two sub shop workers.
A Senator going out into the world to work on problems without government behind them would bolster their worldview. Perhaps after two terms in the Senate, a mandatory one or two terms off, then the Senator could run again. But definitely, lifetime politicians are a big potential problem. It certainly seems like they become more brazen and aristocratic over time.