Conservatives claim to be in favor of smaller government (cough, cough)...

When elected, however, they actually greatly extend the power and reach of the government...not by hiring more civil servants...not by increasing social services...uh-uh! They do it by using government money to hire a vast array of their surrogates in the private sector, people who ARE working for the government in truth (or is the goverment working for THEM?), but they are doing it AS the private sector. Mercenaries like Blackwater, for instance. Contractors like Haliburton. Those surrogates are all in private industry, and they are the personal friends and financial backers of the Neocon movement and the architects of a Neocon administration.

It becomes what is truly a shadow government, an extra-legal government paid off with government money (through the awarding of contracts), which then of course pays its own employees out of the private sector. The goverment money changes hands, that's all.

Being a private sector shadow government it is untouchable by the public, and a law unto itself.

Meanwhile, the Neocons usually DO enlarge government in the specific areas of military personnel and various security and technical personnel, who ARE government employees.

So what they do, according to the mantra of "smaller government" is they cut back on things that actually serve the public, and they increase things that serve their rich friends in private industry and the military and the huge financial organizations.

"Smaller government", my eye!!! Neocons turn the government into an ever-enlarging monster by using private industry as the principle arm OF the government...and their CEO pals get richer while ordinary people lose their social services.