This whole discussion of public employees vs. private and hiring requirements is just missing the point that for a private enterprise and corporation, it is OK and known that their goal is to ONLY serve shareholders, employees and their customers. They don’t have to do shit for the public and if they want to dump toxic waste or hire criminals, they can certainly try to do that since the public doesn’t pay their salary.

For a public position in the government, ALL tax paying citizens PAY their salaries so the people or their elected representative should have a say in who is hired.

It’s not so much the government has more stringent hiring and employment standards, it’s just that they SERVE A DIFFERENT GOAL/PURPOSE is why they NEED different and not necessary stringent or better/higher standards. This whole discussion of “stringent/higher” is missing the point.

The government could just hire some joe shmo who is an idiot (quite a few politicians are), but if his job requires him to not have embezzled money from public sources, so be it and now (it’s perceived in this discussion that’s he was rated under a more stringent system just because the public doesn’t want someone who was a rapist or a sexual harasser (think Bob Filner). There are plenty of playboy execs who no on cares if they fool around or harass people as long as it’s not compromising the company.

For some wall street types, maybe that’s a benefit and job requirement to know how to screw people over.

Bottom line is that it’s a TOTALLY different environment purely because again, the government worker is PAID and serves the PUBLIC.