Government Employees for Dummies

Trump Proposed Budget Cuts per CNN

Every once in a while someone says something stupid on social media. OK, stop laughing – we know that the ratio of stupidity to common sense on Facebook is about 15:1, and on Twitter it's even worse (especially when @ Real Donald Trump is out there tweeting). But we did see something recently that we found just plain moronic, a statement by a FOAF (that's an initialism from Snopes.com for "Friend Of A Friend") by the name of Michael Leslie. Mike's obviously been drinking too much Kool-Aid...

The occasion was the publication of the CNN chart shown above, which depicts the budget cuts by cabinet department as proposed by the Trump Administration (Bannon, et al.). Leslie's comment on Facebook is here reproduced in its entirety:

"You DO realize who pays their salaries, don't you? You and I and everyone else in the country who works for a living. Our TAX MONEY. The government has no motivation to be efficient. They don't have to worry about being productive so as to compete with other businesses. Anything needing to be done in their absence can be bid upon by businesses that demand employee competency. GREAT MOVE! This information makes my day. "

We won't argue that government employees are paid with tax money, even an imbecile knows that. What we will argue is Leslie's implication that government employees "have no motivation" and lack "competency [sic]." Clearly, Michael listens to way too much AM talk radio; and worse, has confused inefficiency with laziness and incompetence.

Inefficiency, Mr. Leslie, does not mean "laziness and incompetence" as you imply; not to mention that the very government employees you decry also pay taxes... Government inefficiency means duplication of effort; such as offices in both the Interior and Agriculture performing the same function or even a rare case of functions that are conflict with each other. Even government-haters like Trump and Bannon don't suggest that government employees are lazy, just superfluous. Government inefficiency also means that employees are often saddled with substandard and poorly-maintained equipment when budgeting enough to upgrade their computers and databases, for instance, could well make them more efficient.

But to people like our Dumbass of the Day, paying so much in taxes that he can't buy a new boat this year is anathema. This is a guy who thinks the aphorism, "Stop thinking so much: it's alright [sic] not to know all the answers" is something worth repeating... the idiot.

copyright © 2017-2023 scmrak

DD - POLITICS