UncleMatt wrote:Your attempts to make out government employees as if they were somehow a different species is entertaining, but a TOTAL fail. Government employees are motivated by the PROFIT MOTIVE, just like people in the private sector. They buy the same products, live the same lives as anyone in the private sector.Diogenes wrote:UncleMatt wrote:By the same token, most companies are "out to take our money", so should we also think of them in a paranoid way? What are they doing with "our money"??? Does it agree with my religion/politics/personal agenda? If not, time to FREAK OUT!
rolls eyes
If you think the government is somehow the ebil debil, you are simply off your nutter. The government is made up of the same people who work in the private sector, with all the subsequent good AND bad qualities. They aren't scaled aliens bent on domination.
I disagree. As a general rule, the government is filled with incompetence; People who would be fired in the private sector. In many cases, the only reason these people can have any sort of job is because government employees are often unaccountable to anyone, least of all taxpayers.
I have personally knowledge of numerous government employees doing really stupid stuff. (County, State, City and Federal.) I would name names and incidents, but I have no desire to be sued or otherwise harassed.
Now governments sometimes manage to find people who are competent, but often they find other jobs and leave. Incompetence seems to be the rule, not the exception. The best way to reduce incompetence in government is to make it smaller.
The CONSTANT attempts to paint people you may disagree with as somehow "different" or "more flawed" than everyone else is simply a good way to lose an argument based on FACTS, not the politics you choose to make your RELIGION.
Government employees are not different in their needs and wants from Private sector employees, they are different in their level of competence and their desire to order other people about.
There are not too many private sector jobs where you can tell someone else to obey you or else.
Government employees tend to be overwhelmed with their own sense of self importance, and it is more important to them that they be obeyed than that they accomplish anything objectively useful.
Let me give you a real world example.
I know a woman who got married at 15 to a 23 year old worthless bastard. He immediately moved her from her home in San Diego to a run down trailer house in a podunk town in Missouri, and had 4 children with her. He would leave her alone with the babies for weeks at a time without food, water or electricity. She had to beg the neighbors and the churches for food and water. She was starving and wasted away to 95 lbs. After 4 years of this, she told him she wanted nothing more to do with him and he was to stay away from her and the children. He waited till she left the house, grabbed all the children and took off for Kansas. He told her that she couldn't have the kids back unless she came back to him.
During this time, he filed for welfare in Kansas (he lived with one of his sisters in Kansas) and claimed that the Woman had Abandoned him and the children. The poor girl didn't know what to do, so she came to Oklahoma where her Mother and Stepfather were Living. In the meantime, the worthless bastard moves to California, where he stayed with another sister. He files for Divorce in California, Demands full custody of the children, and also demands child support from her.
She borrows whatever money she can find, (bus fare) shows up in court on the day of the hearing and is told that her Husband's lawyer postponed the hearing. Having no place to stay, she returns to Oklahoma to stay with her Mother and Step Father. She tries to come up with the money (bus fare) to show up on the NEW court date, but she can't. The Court day comes, The Judge awards the worthless bastard a default judgment and the Unemployed Young high school drop out is saddled with an enormous debt for the rest of her life.
Years later she eventually gets a job at a bingo parlor waitressing tables, and the State of Oklahoma contacts her and informs her that she must pay back child support. She shows up in court, and after hearing her story, the Judge says she got a raw deal from the legal system. The Judge then orders that she only be required to pay $300.00 per month towards child support. She specifically asks if the state will attempt to seize from her any more money than that, and the judge specifically tells her "no."
At this point, I let her and her two other children (Both from worthless bastard fathers who pay HER no child support whatsoever.) move into one of my houses rent free with the understanding that she would save what she formerly paid in rent for a down payment on her own house. After six months of this, she barely saved a thousand dollars, but I locate a small 3 bedroom house that was rent to own, and the owner agreed to accept a $1000.00 down payment and a $250.00 per month mortgage payment. (She couldn't get a bank loan, her credit was hosed.)
The very day before the sale, the State of Oklahoma seizes her bank account and STEALS her $1000.00 down payment. When contacted, they say it was for "back child support." She points out that the judge agreed to limit her responsibility to the $300.00 per month she was paying, and that they were going to wreck her chance of buying a place for herself and her children to live. They responded that they were authorized to use any means necessary to force payment for back child support!
I wrote to the Lieutenant governor Mary Fallin (now Governor) whom I knew personally from attending meetings with her and campaigning for her when she ran for Lieutenant governor, and asked her if the state had no honor? The message was intercepted by her staff, who put me in contact with the Head of DHS who explained to me that the state had every right to seize any money owned by deadbeat parents.
I explained to them that the Judge restricted their taking of her money to only that amount which was ordered, and that the agreement to garnish her wages before she received them, prevented them from garnishing her wages after she received them.
Needless to say, you might as well have been talking to a shoe. They simply could not comprehend that they had done anything wrong. In the meantime, they haven't collected one red cent from those other two bastards that fathered her two children that lived with her.
Letting her stay in my house rent free for 6 months cost me $2,400.00 in lost rent, and I GAVE her the $1,000.00 necessary to make her down payment on her own house. F*ck you very much State Bureaucrats!
In the meantime, the Father of her youngest child just inherited Two cars, a house, and a substantial sum of money after his father recently died. The state, of course, has made no effort to take any of this away from him. He DID lose his drivers license, but he drives anyway. He's a loser pot head who's fathered 4 other children with three different women, and pays none of them anything.
I have left out a lot of details that make the bureaucrats look even more stupid and misguided, but the story is too long already. Furthermore, this is Just ONE example among many that I could cite to demonstrate how utterly brainless and stupid these people are, and how they continue to make the world a worse place to live in.
The four kids she had with her first husband are all grown and have careers and children of their own, and her wages are still being garnished to pay for that worthless bastard who has not worked at a real job his entire life.
The solution to fusion researchers' funding woes was so simple all along...