Posted on 09/20/2009 5:15:59 AM PDT by reaganaut1
...
Often in our daily interactions with government, the occasional absurdities that confound or dehumanize us — the spiteful clerk at the Department of Motor Vehicles, the I.R.S. form that might as well be written in Swahili — overshadow the larger successes we take for granted. Perhaps that’s because they remind us that there is little accountability in the system, no recourse for the wronged. No doubt 30 years of conservative attacks have also conditioned us to seize on any hint of bureaucratic failure in government, even as we let slide the similar ordeals suffered at the hands of banks and airlines whose Bangalore-based customer-service representatives are no less infuriating than any D.M.V. clerk.
Whatever the reason, our faith in the public sector is frail, and this may well be the underlying problem confronting Democrats as they enter this last, critical phase in the health care debate. At bottom, President Obama is asking us to believe once again that government can do big things really well, and in doing so he is running up against both our shared experience and the accepted wisdom of the age. Asked in a CBS poll last month whether government would do a better or worse job providing coverage than private insurers, only 29 percent of independent voters said they trusted government more.
Democrats should have anticipated this psychological hurdle. Last year’s election, a referendum on incompetence and arrogance, indicated not some sudden urge among the electorate to revive what Bill Clinton eulogized as “the era of big government” so much as a desire to have a government that embodied, as Obama himself seemed to, a sense of renewal and sobriety.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Louisiana got a ton of money. The problem is that it went to politicians who doled it out to bureaucrats so they could create committees to hire experts to write studies to submit to a panel who created guidelines, requirements, rules, and procedures for people who lost everything to abide by in order to protect the state from being cheated out of money by people by people pretending to have lost everything when in fact they did not. (breath) Then, they hired a bunch of appraisers who low-balled the value of a home so the homeowners would appeal the amount to another panel and the state then had to hire more appraisers, accountants, actuaries, and attorneys to testify that the state’s amount was correct only to have said panel agree with the homeowner’s appraisal. (breath) THEN, the state created another bureaucracy for the homeowners to submit their paperwork to, only to refuse to give the homeowner a check because the owner had lost some piece of paper along the way and didn’t have sufficient information for the bureaucrat to determine the accuracy of the homeowner’s file (sadly, the bureaucrat did not have ANY of the homeowner’s paperwork in his files because that information is stored in a different department). When the homeowner returns after finding the paper, a new “public servant” has been assigned to his file and is unaware of conversations with the previous bureaucrat because no notes were taken and again denies the homeowner because of a different piece of missing paper. When the homeowner finally gets everything he needs together, the billions of dollars given to the state has amazingly disappeared. (Whoda thunk?) Meanwhile, the state was cheated out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by people pretending to have lost everything, but did not.
My sister-in-law took the government route. She got back into her house LAST MONTH. (Katrina was in '05). We took the private route. We had a new house four months after the storm. You tell me what works better.
“....even as we let slide the similar ordeals suffered at the hands of banks...”
Used to be we could just change banks.
The Obamaloon is addressing that right now.
I’m constantly amazed that the libs love all the idiotic forms of govt, but hate the one part that has the most respect (the military).
“Whatever the reason, our faith in the public sector is frail, and this may well be the underlying problem confronting Democrats as they enter this last, critical phase in the health care debate.”
Because people, of all political persuasions understand that job #1 of a bureaucracy is to perpetuate itself. Assisting citizens, or any other task is merely superfluous to achieving it’s next funding goal.
That's RACIST. The NYT is RACIST.
I read the whole article and could not find any truth about bureaucracy in it.
The truth about bureaucracy was the reason behind the creation of Rule 30(b)(6) and (5) of the Fed. R. Civ. P., not that courts impose it when they can please a big insurance company at the expense of the individual or, say, the Chicago gang in the White House when the judge thinks he may be appoionted ot a higher bench. BTW, the only benefit of Katrina was the breaking of the power, at least for a while, of the Ninth Ward Gang.
I love the way the article blames it on 30 years of conservative complaints about the situation.
The problem with government is that they always have a monopoly on what they’re doing, so there’s no choice but to suffer the fools. On the rare occasion when government, or an arm of it, and private organizations offer similar services it’s not difficult to see the vast differences. Like the USPS vs. FedEx or UPS.
Ping
VAST differences, like how the post office delivers to every home that FedEx and UPS won't go to? Why they back up to our dock and unload piles of parcels? The Post Office does a way better job than the typical cliche kneejerk reactionary portrays.
I think it’s apples and oranges.
The USPS does a good job of daily mail delivery. FedEx and UPS do ground delivery.
You have to love this from the article: “Last year’s election, a referendum on incompetence and arrogance...” and incompetence and arrogance won!
Efficient bureaucrats performing unconstitutional tasks doesn’t justify the bureaucracy or bureaucrat. But the NYT wants to defend a mythical beast despite its illegitimacy.
Since when does complaining about a bureaucracy make it more inefficient? The article implies that Conservatives complaining causes inefficiency.
The bureaucrats all seem to have those little “you are the customer” signs in their offices these days. It’s pure public relations with no truth to it because we are nothing at all like customers, and they know it too. We aren’t in line because we want to be there buying something we want and there is no alternative of taking our business elsewhere.
I disagree. We got rid of every City Council member, shook people up about the state of public schools and replaced all but two with charter schools, and have attracted a lot of young people with entrepreneurial spirits. If you've got a bit of frontiersman in you, it's not a bad place to be.
You are right and I agree. I had a special feeling about the Ninth Ward Gang, only because they once tried to have me killed. It was for not letting them do the “hiring and firing” in a project I was in charge of.
“...the larger SUCCESSES we take for granted.” Of course, for the NY Times those successes translate into the confiscation of tax dollars and their use to purchase votes; the trampling of our Constitutional rights; the assault on our liberty and culture, etc.
And Fed Ex has the contract with USPS to fly all their mail. There are no USPS planes or pilots.
Right. So does the USPS. THat's what I"m saying when I mention the piles of parcels unloaded at the post office dock. We go places UPS and FedEx WILL NOT GO.
apples and oranges indeed. How much would it cost to ship privately if they had to deliver to every house every day?
What the postal system is doing to distorting the market.
How much would it cost? That then should be the free market cost!
It **should** cost a **lot** more to deliver a letter or package to Tundra, Alaska, than it does to Levitown, Pennsylvania. One of the costs of choosing to live, work, or set up business in Tundra, Alaska, is that mail delivery **will** be far less frequent and a **lot** more expensive.
In a way, ( government schools do this as well) the USPS is making it easier and less costly to destroy the environment by encouraging people to settle in and build businesses in ecologically fragile and remote areas.
Your points are well taken, but even in the areas where they all work there is a difference in service. I’m afraid I gave the impression I was giving the USPS bad marks, that was absolutely NOT my intention. I know very well they serve EVERY place, not just the ones they choose to serve. And I also know they handle a whole more material than the others.
My apologies for not making my post clear. Damn, I hate it when I do that!
Years ago, I had occasion to do some work which took me to the roof of the new Corps of Engineers office on the levee. As a Nebraska Navy hopeful, I was impressed by looking up and watching the ocean going ships going going by on the Mississippi. The above ground cemeteries were also of interest.
We had occasion to visit my sister in law in Baton Rouge last spring. On the way over, we toured the flood district. A lot of reconstruction had been done, but there was a lot left to do. While there, we drove over to the lake end of the canals and I was quite surprised to see the large flood gate structures in place. The signs claim that these are temporaries and seem to have been built within six months of the storm. The cost for each seems to be about the equivalent of that of a city block of houses. Had they been in place and closed at the time of Katrina, much of the flooding would not have occurred.
The Bush administration bypassed the normal 4-5 year federal construction period from congressional authorization to completion by calling them temporary. As far as I know they have not been mentioned in the national news once.
Just a question. Which home does UPS not go to?
We had occasion to drive through the Nebraska Sandhills this summer and could almost say that we saw more UPS trucks than cars on the road. The Sandhills are the dark spot in northwest Nebraska north of I-80 on the night time pictures of the USA.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.