Frank, a lot of people think the government can't work as efficiently as the private sector. There are plenty of reasons to support this theory, but most have to do with the ABUSE of the merit system rather than the system itself. It is unfortunate that many government employees, particularly at managerial levels and above, are appointed not solely because of what they can do, but more because of whom they know. That is an abuse of a system which was designed to enable the hiring of the most qualified people. Of course, it won't work well when that principle is compromised, as it is over and over, at all levels of government.
Do you think it would be better to contract out the jobs of government employees overseas to the private sector? It would be cheaper to hire a local, private employee to issue visas at our embassies overseas, rather than go to the trouble of hiring a Foreign Service Officer, shipping the officer, his/her family, personal effects, and the whole nine yards overseas, and perhaps paying additional to make sure the officer can speak the local language. But I'll be damned if I'd want to rely on the judgment of anyone other than a direct hire Foreign Service Officer to do that job. That's one of countless examples.
Bottom line: Certain jobs can ONLY be done well by dedicated government employees. The only people who object to that theory are those who adhere to an all too common belief that the less government we have, the better. That's simply a carryover from the days of the old frontier, where everyone had to fend for himself/herself. The frontier is gone. What's left is the need to do a job well, and this need cannot be filled by an organization that has the ADDITIONAL goal of making sure the job is done as cheap as possible. The two goals don't always coincide, and they surely don't coincide when it comes to airport security.
I do not object to bail outs, especially those caused by a war. But I do strongly object to bailouts that simply compensate for mismanagement, and there's plenty of that in the airline industry. If you look at the details of the proposed bail out (euphemistically called an "economic stimulus package"), you'll see that a lot of the stimuli have nothing to do with war, but have a lot to do with the industries and companies that made large contributions to political campaigns. What a way to run a government--into the ground!
Art
Art |
