61/JMH
Extremely well said, JMH, and absolutely correct. I once worked for the U.S. Government at a pretty high GS rating. I was there for a decade. The amount of incompetence and featherbedding I saw was incredible. I learned from that experience two things: 1)government does very little well, and 2)it does NOTHING efficiently. Anyone who ever suggests that government take charge of an issue or provide a solution to a problem is undoubtedly someone who has never worked in the government.
Government action always has two major flaws that make anything it accomplishes tainted at best. First, government almost never has a single aim. It tries to accomplish too many goals at once and consequently does none of them well. Example: trying to get a ship fixed at a “small business” shipyard which simply does not have the experience or infrastructure necessary to properly perform the work. Result: money almost completely wasted and poorly performed work had to be done again elsewhere at a greater cost.
Second, the people who spend government money very seldom consider where it comes from. There is all but no consideration that they have any responsibility to be proper stewards of the people’s tax dollars. As a general rule, U.S. Government personnel have the opinion that “We’re the Government. We have money we haven’t even printed yet!” Prudent and judicious fiscal management is an all but alien concept to most government managers. Their rule is, “spend the money until the budget is completely gone so we won’t get a cut next year.” Most government workers look at taxes as a “kickback” necessary to keep their jobs.
Simple answer: government IS the problem, and the entitlement mentality is a cancer that will kill our country unless we cut the beast back down to size. Make no mistake, it’s us or them and if WE don’t yet know that, I guarantee you that THEY do. The cynicism and selfishness of the average government worker are incredible to behold. Most of them hate their jobs but are afraid to leave and face the real world, so they’ll do whatever is necessary to make sure things continue on as they are.
One last thing: the U.S. Government is increasingly staffed by incompetent minorities who dislike whites and feel entitled to special treatment. When I worked for the U.S.G., firing an incompetent minority was all but impossible and so difficult most managers simply wouldn’t bother trying. They would try to get the person transferred if they could, and ignore their poor performance if they couldn’t. Fighting the inevitable charge of racism was harder than simply reallocating the necessary work to the competent people. Of course, this didn’t make the competent workers very happy and oftentimes drove them to leave, thus worsening an already underperforming workforce. I could get started on how much damage affirmative action has caused in the U.S.G. but that’s far too long a topic to address here. The bottom line is that the machine is too broken to fix. All that can be done is to make it smaller, and our country’s future depends on us doing that.
