Am I just not incompetent enough? I don't think I could sniff enough glue in the world, to lower my IQ enough to fail that hard at life.
The program did what it was designed to do. It is not the machine's fault the human creators lacked the precision to make proper commands.
Not only that, but I'd put money on the programmers not being given the information they needed to do it properly.
This sounds like how they developed software at my previous company. You know, "push to live and if it doesn't work we'll hear people complain soon enough."
It was already a bad idea back then, except if it didn't work the worst that could happen was someone losing a game.
And of course they blame the computer for it. Good idea. I'm sure that blaming it will teach it not to follow orders to the letter the next time.
This kind of action is the only thing that makes me believe the government is not capable of coordinating well enough to conspire...
What do you mean? This is a conspiracy. The shadow government is intentionally releasing criminals to destroy the black community so the ex-military black panthers can't expose the aliens at Area 51.
This kind of action is the only thing that makes me believe the government is not capable of coordinating well enough to conspire...
What do you mean? This is a conspiracy. The shadow government is intentionally releasing criminals to destroy the black community so the ex-military black panthers can't expose the aliens at Area 51.
The aliens who happen to be Soviet Freemasons, get your facts straight!
I love how the response to finding this out is "well... we let them go, we can't go and bring them back until they do something wrong again."
As messed up as it is, I can understand it. I don't like it, but they can't exactly be brought back for something they already technically served their time for. As far as the system is concerned, they paid their debt. And it would cost an assload of money to try to find 'em all to bring 'em back, too. No way they'd wanna do something like spend money to make people safer.
You keep saying you just want investigations, yet you discount any investigation that yields results that you don't like. I'm also assuming that you don't want anyone affiliated with the government to conduct the investigation, yet it seems likely that it would require access to classified information, which would be a problem. Besides, how would an investigation prove anything? How would you know if they showed everything to the investigators?
There are many civilians with top-secret or higher clearance. Vet the people that will do the investigation and give them temporary top-secret clearance and NDAs, then let them investigate freely. Give them some clout and let them do it right. Personally I think we should have a civilian oversight of government 100%... They serve the people not the other way around...
You keep saying you just want investigations, yet you discount any investigation that yields results that you don't like. I'm also assuming that you don't want anyone affiliated with the government to conduct the investigation, yet it seems likely that it would require access to classified information, which would be a problem. Besides, how would an investigation prove anything? How would you know if they showed everything to the investigators?
There are many civilians with top-secret or higher clearance. Vet the people that will do the investigation and give them temporary top-secret clearance and NDAs, then let them investigate freely. Give them some clout and let them do it right. Personally I think we should have a civilian oversight of government 100%... They serve the people not the other way around...
The problem with that plan is that those most interested in investigating inherently have an agenda that will bias their analysis. The world is not black and white, and it is the eye of the beholder that creates the color observed. If the government popped open the door for anyone with clearence to investigate, evaluate and report as they saw fit, a lot of information would be released that WOULD cause a lot of damage. People that work for the benefit of the people of the government would die. Economic failures would happen that would destroy the financial securty of many.
What we need isn't knowledge of the system's inner workings - what we need is faith in the people holding the keys in that system. We need a better system for putting people into place that will give th populace more confidence that the people with power are the best people to have that power.
You keep saying you just want investigations, yet you discount any investigation that yields results that you don't like. I'm also assuming that you don't want anyone affiliated with the government to conduct the investigation, yet it seems likely that it would require access to classified information, which would be a problem. Besides, how would an investigation prove anything? How would you know if they showed everything to the investigators?
There are many civilians with top-secret or higher clearance. Vet the people that will do the investigation and give them temporary top-secret clearance and NDAs, then let them investigate freely. Give them some clout and let them do it right. Personally I think we should have a civilian oversight of government 100%... They serve the people not the other way around...
The problem with that plan is that those most interested in investigating inherently have an agenda that will bias their analysis. The world is not black and white, and it is the eye of the beholder that creates the color observed. If the government popped open the door for anyone with clearence to investigate, evaluate and report as they saw fit, a lot of information would be released that WOULD cause a lot of damage. People that work for the benefit of the people of the government would die. Economic failures would happen that would destroy the financial securty of many.
What we need isn't knowledge of the system's inner workings - what we need is faith in the people holding the keys in that system. We need a better system for putting people into place that will give th populace more confidence that the people with power are the best people to have that power.
I disagree. If we didn't have such secrecy the economy wouldn't be in such a fragile state. The laws wouldn't be counter intuitive, and our rights wouldn't be violated by new laws. In my opinion the only thing that really needs secrecy are things like spy operations and things like that. Stuff that would endanger people lives if well known. Even those things should have an accountability to someone who has oversight and can discipline or fire those involved. The $60 billion dollar black budget shouldn't be $60 billion. It should be $X billion on secret aircraft, $X billion on secret ground vehicles, $X billion on human spy operations, $X billion on mechanical spy operations. It should be known what we are spending our money on. Most of the economic problems we have stemmed from laws pushed into place by lobbying corporations that have nothing but the dollar as a priority. This directly caused the housing bubble which caused the economic meltdown. With complete transparency this would not have happened...
The problem with your idea is that everything the public knows, our enemies know too. There are reasons that we don't just release all our documents to the general public or just hand out temporary clearances for people to look at whatever they want. And how is it that in this case you are suddenly willing to put forth DA or DoD civilians to conduct an investigation (because they are somehow automatically more trustworthy than anyone in the military), yet you point to other government civilians and discount anything they say?
I'm not saying release all of our documents. I'm saying we need to know who contributes to campaign funds. We need the laws read to us (or at least sumarized to us) so we know what they are on public media. We need to be able to look up and see how the government operates. Sure spy operations and things of that nature should be kept secret, but at the same time they need to be reviewed by independent observers. I'm not talking about grabbing some guy off the street and handing him a free pass to look at whatever he wants. I'm talking about people that are U.S. citizens, have no criminal backgrounds and are properly vetted to view Secret or higher documents once trained they would then overview a specific agency or operation. From there they could make an informed decision about whether the cost was worth it. We could even have several on the same investigation so that we get a range of views. They would be given a set criteria to follow. I'm sorry but any toilet seat that costs $1,000,000 better be made of platinum AND wipe for me, if you know what I'm saying. We also need financial people to go through the various programs that are put into place to look for waste in spending. I know the school system alone could be streamlined to save $10 billion a year alone, just by getting rid of pencil pushers (or lowering their pay to a reasonable amount that is lower than $100,000 salary) and getting rid of exclusivity contracts. This kind of stuff needs civilian oversight because the corruption is rampant...
I'm talking about people that are U.S. citizens, have no criminal backgrounds and are properly vetted to view Secret or higher documents once trained they would then overview a specific agency or operation. From there they could make an informed decision about whether the cost was worth it. We could even have several on the same investigation so that we get a range of views. They would be given a set criteria to follow. I'm sorry but any toilet seat that costs $1,000,000 better be made of platinum AND wipe for me, if you know what I'm saying.
This may come as a shock, but we already have people that do this. A lot of people get paid a lot of money to oversea various parts of the government. That doesn't mean the system is perfect, far from it, but until people become perfect it never will be.
We also need financial people to go through the various programs that are put into place to look for waste in spending. I know the school system alone could be streamlined to save $10 billion a year alone, just by getting rid of pencil pushers (or lowering their pay to a reasonable amount that is lower than $100,000 salary) and getting rid of exclusivity contracts. This kind of stuff needs civilian oversight because the corruption is rampant...
Now this I agree with. And actually, one major cause of government waste (from what I've seen) is overregulation. Ironically, it's people like you screaming about corruption and needing more checks and balances that cause an insane beauracracy where everything costs ten times what it should because of all the people and agencies that it has to be run through.
I'm talking about people that are U.S. citizens, have no criminal backgrounds and are properly vetted to view Secret or higher documents once trained they would then overview a specific agency or operation. From there they could make an informed decision about whether the cost was worth it. We could even have several on the same investigation so that we get a range of views. They would be given a set criteria to follow. I'm sorry but any toilet seat that costs $1,000,000 better be made of platinum AND wipe for me, if you know what I'm saying.
This may come as a shock, but we already have people that do this. A lot of people get paid a lot of money to oversea various parts of the government. That doesn't mean the system is perfect, far from it, but until people become perfect it never will be.We also need financial people to go through the various programs that are put into place to look for waste in spending. I know the school system alone could be streamlined to save $10 billion a year alone, just by getting rid of pencil pushers (or lowering their pay to a reasonable amount that is lower than $100,000 salary) and getting rid of exclusivity contracts. This kind of stuff needs civilian oversight because the corruption is rampant...
Now this I agree with. And actually, one major cause of government waste (from what I've seen) is overregulation. Ironically, it's people like you screaming about corruption and needing more checks and balances that cause an insane bureaucracy where everything costs ten times what it should because of all the people and agencies that it has to be run through.
That's mainly because they create an office that is supposed to oversee an area and then the people that want to abuse the system get into that office and take money or 'favors' to sign off on wasteful spending. Its kind of the same with our government...
If it was a rotating post that people were randomly chosen (kind of like jury duty). It would be more honest. Having two or more people from different parts of the country work together to oversee an program would make it even harder to corrupt.
If you don't believe in corruption do a little research on the revolving door at the FDA. The top people there are either 'retired' people from the industry who approve that industries chemicals, or they are clean until they suddenly start passing chemicals and then when they 'retire' from the FDA they get a job as a 'consultant' at one of the companies they were regulation for obscene amounts of money...
The other issue is that it's hard to randomly select people that are supposed to oversea anything involving classified material, especially on a rotating basis. Security investigations are not cheap. That and the fact that classified material is supposed to be restricted on a need to know basis. The reason being that the more people who know about something, the more difficult it is to keep it a secret. So pulling random people to look at this stuff, even if they have been investigated, means a much greater chance of classified information being leaked out.
And you don't have to tell me about the revolving door. I'm very familiar with it. Now sometimes it is just a person with legitimately good qualifications getting hired for an appropriate position, but I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just saying that it is harder to fix than just adding another cog in the giant machine of beauracracy.
I'm not certain that using random people for short terms would make corruption less likely. In fact, not only can that person still be bought, but they have no real incentive to actually do their job well because no matter if they do good or bad, there's no longevity. Actually, I think that is the real issue. It is so damn difficult to fire people from a government position that there is no incentive for people to do their best. Once they are in they are set. They might get shuffled from one position to another (this also happens quite a bit in the military) but since no one actually wants to deal with the paperwork hassle, they never actually get fired.
The other issue is that it's hard to randomly select people that are supposed to oversea anything involving classified material, especially on a rotating basis. Security investigations are not cheap. That and the fact that classified material is supposed to be restricted on a need to know basis. The reason being that the more people who know about something, the more difficult it is to keep it a secret. So pulling random people to look at this stuff, even if they have been investigated, means a much greater chance of classified information being leaked out.
And you don't have to tell me about the revolving door. I'm very familiar with it. Now sometimes it is just a person with legitimately good qualifications getting hired for an appropriate position, but I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just saying that it is harder to fix than just adding another cog in the giant machine of beauracracy.
I can see where your coming from. I agree too. About the only thing left then is to hold government people accountable, but how do we do that? Sure we can vote some of them out, but others are appointed or have life postings (judges), others are hired on and as you said they are difficult to remove. Maybe set up a permanent review board that evaluates performance and adjusts income based on productivity? I really don't know...
My walls not very stable, lets add more wall to it! No wait, that makes sense...
Nice example, actually. See, if your wall isn't very stable, or broken, and your solution is to just add another wall next to it, then you're just wasting your time. Yeah, it might fix the problem in the short term, but now you have two walls where you only needed one, not to mention that you've added unnecessary bulk and weight to the structure overall which might further burden your foundation or other supporting levels. A better solution is to tear the entire section out and build it right.
My walls not very stable, lets add more wall to it! No wait, that makes sense...
Nice example, actually. See, if your wall isn't very stable, or broken, and your solution is to just add another wall next to it, then you're just wasting your time. Yeah, it might fix the problem in the short term, but now you have two walls where you only needed one, not to mention that you've added unnecessary bulk and weight to the structure overall which might further burden your foundation or other supporting levels. A better solution is to tear the entire section out and build it right.
Too bad noone knows how to build it right. Making it thicker is a reasonable solution.
I'm still trying to get past the "the beauracracy is broken! Let's add more beauracracy to fix it!" line of thinking.
No kidding. Big government tends to be poisonous and the answers that are given to remedy this is either poison or more poison.
I'm still trying to get past the "the beauracracy is broken! Let's add more beauracracy to fix it!" line of thinking.
No kidding. Big government tends to be poisonous and the answers that are given to remedy this is either poison or more poison.
I got it! we can slim the government down. Then enact laws that make corruption and inefficiency punishable by caning. How many politicians you think would take a caning more than once?
I can see where your coming from. I agree too. About the only thing left then is to hold government people accountable, but how do we do that? Sure we can vote some of them out, but others are appointed or have life postings (judges), others are hired on and as you said they are difficult to remove. Maybe set up a permanent review board that evaluates performance and adjusts income based on productivity? I really don't know...
Well part of it should be getting rid of unions for federal employees. DA civilians at Ft Carson threatened to strike because their computers were switched to Windows Vista (granted that was another terrible idea and a waste of government money since they decided to do the switch right as Windows 7 was being released, but suck it up and move on).
There were review boards for some employees to adjust income based on work performance, and that program ended up being suspended due to extreme problems with it (evaluations, both for military and civilians, are extremely subjective and sometimes just come down to how well you get along with your boss rather than how good you are at your job). One possibility that I've heard from the military side that sounds like an improvement (not perfect but better) was to include feedback from your subordinates and your peers as well. That way if one person says something bad and everyone else says you are awesome, you probably just didn't kiss that person's ass. On the other hand, if everyone around thinks you're a great big bag of douche, there's probably some truth to it.
In the end, though, I don't think you'll find a universal answer. I think each agency and organization will have to be addressed separately. And ideally you should be able to do it while reducing beauracracy, not adding another level of it.
I can see where your coming from. I agree too. About the only thing left then is to hold government people accountable, but how do we do that? Sure we can vote some of them out, but others are appointed or have life postings (judges), others are hired on and as you said they are difficult to remove. Maybe set up a permanent review board that evaluates performance and adjusts income based on productivity? I really don't know...
Well part of it should be getting rid of unions for federal employees. DA civilians at Ft Carson threatened to strike because their computers were switched to Windows Vista (granted that was another terrible idea and a waste of government money since they decided to do the switch right as Windows 7 was being released, but suck it up and move on).
There were review boards for some employees to adjust income based on work performance, and that program ended up being suspended due to extreme problems with it (evaluations, both for military and civilians, are extremely subjective and sometimes just come down to how well you get along with your boss rather than how good you are at your job). One possibility that I've heard from the military side that sounds like an improvement (not perfect but better) was to include feedback from your subordinates and your peers as well. That way if one person says something bad and everyone else says you are awesome, you probably just didn't kiss that person's ass. On the other hand, if everyone around thinks you're a great big bag of douche, there's probably some truth to it.
In the end, though, I don't think you'll find a universal answer. I think each agency and organization will have to be addressed separately. And ideally you should be able to do it while reducing beauracracy, not adding another level of it.
How about if the reviews weren't done by your boss? What if someone reviewed your work records, followed you around for a month every year, got input from your co-workers and your boss, but the largest part of the review would come directly from your statistics? Might work...
Also, having someone whose sole purpose was to follow another person around for a month is a really inefficient way to do business. That means for every 11 workers you need to hire another employee (I know there are twelve months in a year but you have to account for sick days and paid vacation, thus some overlap is needed). And that month may or may not be indicative of normal performance. If most of his work is outdoors and it's the dead of winter, it may be really slow during that time. Or someone could play really nice and kiss a lot of ass for one month and then **** off afterwards.
Believe me, a lot of people complain about the evaluation system, myself being one of them, but it's hard to come up with a solution that is more fair, easy to implement, and doesn't cost the government more money.
Back a couple-three weeks ago, when the SCOTUS reached their (5-4) decision, the four conservatives on the court said that they disagreed because they were afraid something like this would happen. However, we were assured by the liberals (and the swing voter) and the media that something like this could NEVER HAPPEN!! No wonder none of this is on the news...
Wait...what are we talking about here?
Back a couple-three weeks ago, when the SCOTUS reached their (5-4) decision, the four conservatives on the court said that they disagreed because they were afraid something like this would happen. However, we were assured by the liberals (and the swing voter) and the media that something like this could NEVER HAPPEN!! No wonder none of this is on the news...
Wait...what are we talking about here?
He's actually talking bout the OP. Unlike everyone else.
Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall being assured by anyone that something like this could "NEVER HAPPEN". As for it not being on the news, what do you call the article linked to in the first post if not news?
Back a couple-three weeks ago, when the SCOTUS reached their (5-4) decision, the four conservatives on the court said that they disagreed because they were afraid something like this would happen. However, we were assured by the liberals (and the swing voter) and the media that something like this could NEVER HAPPEN!! No wonder none of this is on the news...
Wait...what are we talking about here?
He's actually talking bout the OP. Unlike everyone else.
Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall being assured by anyone that something like this could "NEVER HAPPEN". As for it not being on the news, what do you call the article linked to in the first post if not news?
He's talking about the 'mainstream' media which is just about completely owned by the five major commercial companies...
[The story on Fox]. Or is that not mainstream enough?
Well Fox isn't very legit as far as news companies go :-p
And this would be my point. Conservatives get the Washington Post, talk radio, the internet, and Fox News. Liberals control pretty much every other major form of news dissemination. And it hasn't been on CBS News. But they did have a nice little special on Rep. Giffords' reunion with her husband...
Am I just not incompetent enough? I don't think I could sniff enough glue in the world, to lower my IQ enough to fail that hard at life.
The program did what it was designed to do. It is not the machine's fault the human creators lacked the precision to make proper commands.
Not only that, but I'd put money on the programmers not being given the information they needed to do it properly.
This sounds like how they developed software at my previous company. You know, "push to live and if it doesn't work we'll hear people complain soon enough."
It was already a bad idea back then, except if it didn't work the worst that could happen was someone losing a game.
And of course they blame the computer for it. Good idea. I'm sure that blaming it will teach it not to follow orders to the letter the next time.
This kind of action is the only thing that makes me believe the government is not capable of coordinating well enough to conspire...
What do you mean? This is a conspiracy. The shadow government is intentionally releasing criminals to destroy the black community so the ex-military black panthers can't expose the aliens at Area 51.
This kind of action is the only thing that makes me believe the government is not capable of coordinating well enough to conspire...
What do you mean? This is a conspiracy. The shadow government is intentionally releasing criminals to destroy the black community so the ex-military black panthers can't expose the aliens at Area 51.
The aliens who happen to be Soviet Freemasons, get your facts straight!
I love how the response to finding this out is "well... we let them go, we can't go and bring them back until they do something wrong again."
As messed up as it is, I can understand it. I don't like it, but they can't exactly be brought back for something they already technically served their time for. As far as the system is concerned, they paid their debt. And it would cost an assload of money to try to find 'em all to bring 'em back, too. No way they'd wanna do something like spend money to make people safer.
You keep saying you just want investigations, yet you discount any investigation that yields results that you don't like. I'm also assuming that you don't want anyone affiliated with the government to conduct the investigation, yet it seems likely that it would require access to classified information, which would be a problem. Besides, how would an investigation prove anything? How would you know if they showed everything to the investigators?
There are many civilians with top-secret or higher clearance. Vet the people that will do the investigation and give them temporary top-secret clearance and NDAs, then let them investigate freely. Give them some clout and let them do it right. Personally I think we should have a civilian oversight of government 100%... They serve the people not the other way around...
You keep saying you just want investigations, yet you discount any investigation that yields results that you don't like. I'm also assuming that you don't want anyone affiliated with the government to conduct the investigation, yet it seems likely that it would require access to classified information, which would be a problem. Besides, how would an investigation prove anything? How would you know if they showed everything to the investigators?
There are many civilians with top-secret or higher clearance. Vet the people that will do the investigation and give them temporary top-secret clearance and NDAs, then let them investigate freely. Give them some clout and let them do it right. Personally I think we should have a civilian oversight of government 100%... They serve the people not the other way around...
The problem with that plan is that those most interested in investigating inherently have an agenda that will bias their analysis. The world is not black and white, and it is the eye of the beholder that creates the color observed. If the government popped open the door for anyone with clearence to investigate, evaluate and report as they saw fit, a lot of information would be released that WOULD cause a lot of damage. People that work for the benefit of the people of the government would die. Economic failures would happen that would destroy the financial securty of many.
What we need isn't knowledge of the system's inner workings - what we need is faith in the people holding the keys in that system. We need a better system for putting people into place that will give th populace more confidence that the people with power are the best people to have that power.
You keep saying you just want investigations, yet you discount any investigation that yields results that you don't like. I'm also assuming that you don't want anyone affiliated with the government to conduct the investigation, yet it seems likely that it would require access to classified information, which would be a problem. Besides, how would an investigation prove anything? How would you know if they showed everything to the investigators?
There are many civilians with top-secret or higher clearance. Vet the people that will do the investigation and give them temporary top-secret clearance and NDAs, then let them investigate freely. Give them some clout and let them do it right. Personally I think we should have a civilian oversight of government 100%... They serve the people not the other way around...
The problem with that plan is that those most interested in investigating inherently have an agenda that will bias their analysis. The world is not black and white, and it is the eye of the beholder that creates the color observed. If the government popped open the door for anyone with clearence to investigate, evaluate and report as they saw fit, a lot of information would be released that WOULD cause a lot of damage. People that work for the benefit of the people of the government would die. Economic failures would happen that would destroy the financial securty of many.
What we need isn't knowledge of the system's inner workings - what we need is faith in the people holding the keys in that system. We need a better system for putting people into place that will give th populace more confidence that the people with power are the best people to have that power.
I disagree. If we didn't have such secrecy the economy wouldn't be in such a fragile state. The laws wouldn't be counter intuitive, and our rights wouldn't be violated by new laws. In my opinion the only thing that really needs secrecy are things like spy operations and things like that. Stuff that would endanger people lives if well known. Even those things should have an accountability to someone who has oversight and can discipline or fire those involved. The $60 billion dollar black budget shouldn't be $60 billion. It should be $X billion on secret aircraft, $X billion on secret ground vehicles, $X billion on human spy operations, $X billion on mechanical spy operations. It should be known what we are spending our money on. Most of the economic problems we have stemmed from laws pushed into place by lobbying corporations that have nothing but the dollar as a priority. This directly caused the housing bubble which caused the economic meltdown. With complete transparency this would not have happened...
The problem with your idea is that everything the public knows, our enemies know too. There are reasons that we don't just release all our documents to the general public or just hand out temporary clearances for people to look at whatever they want. And how is it that in this case you are suddenly willing to put forth DA or DoD civilians to conduct an investigation (because they are somehow automatically more trustworthy than anyone in the military), yet you point to other government civilians and discount anything they say?
I'm not saying release all of our documents. I'm saying we need to know who contributes to campaign funds. We need the laws read to us (or at least sumarized to us) so we know what they are on public media. We need to be able to look up and see how the government operates. Sure spy operations and things of that nature should be kept secret, but at the same time they need to be reviewed by independent observers. I'm not talking about grabbing some guy off the street and handing him a free pass to look at whatever he wants. I'm talking about people that are U.S. citizens, have no criminal backgrounds and are properly vetted to view Secret or higher documents once trained they would then overview a specific agency or operation. From there they could make an informed decision about whether the cost was worth it. We could even have several on the same investigation so that we get a range of views. They would be given a set criteria to follow. I'm sorry but any toilet seat that costs $1,000,000 better be made of platinum AND wipe for me, if you know what I'm saying. We also need financial people to go through the various programs that are put into place to look for waste in spending. I know the school system alone could be streamlined to save $10 billion a year alone, just by getting rid of pencil pushers (or lowering their pay to a reasonable amount that is lower than $100,000 salary) and getting rid of exclusivity contracts. This kind of stuff needs civilian oversight because the corruption is rampant...
I'm talking about people that are U.S. citizens, have no criminal backgrounds and are properly vetted to view Secret or higher documents once trained they would then overview a specific agency or operation. From there they could make an informed decision about whether the cost was worth it. We could even have several on the same investigation so that we get a range of views. They would be given a set criteria to follow. I'm sorry but any toilet seat that costs $1,000,000 better be made of platinum AND wipe for me, if you know what I'm saying.
This may come as a shock, but we already have people that do this. A lot of people get paid a lot of money to oversea various parts of the government. That doesn't mean the system is perfect, far from it, but until people become perfect it never will be.
We also need financial people to go through the various programs that are put into place to look for waste in spending. I know the school system alone could be streamlined to save $10 billion a year alone, just by getting rid of pencil pushers (or lowering their pay to a reasonable amount that is lower than $100,000 salary) and getting rid of exclusivity contracts. This kind of stuff needs civilian oversight because the corruption is rampant...
Now this I agree with. And actually, one major cause of government waste (from what I've seen) is overregulation. Ironically, it's people like you screaming about corruption and needing more checks and balances that cause an insane beauracracy where everything costs ten times what it should because of all the people and agencies that it has to be run through.
I'm talking about people that are U.S. citizens, have no criminal backgrounds and are properly vetted to view Secret or higher documents once trained they would then overview a specific agency or operation. From there they could make an informed decision about whether the cost was worth it. We could even have several on the same investigation so that we get a range of views. They would be given a set criteria to follow. I'm sorry but any toilet seat that costs $1,000,000 better be made of platinum AND wipe for me, if you know what I'm saying.
This may come as a shock, but we already have people that do this. A lot of people get paid a lot of money to oversea various parts of the government. That doesn't mean the system is perfect, far from it, but until people become perfect it never will be.We also need financial people to go through the various programs that are put into place to look for waste in spending. I know the school system alone could be streamlined to save $10 billion a year alone, just by getting rid of pencil pushers (or lowering their pay to a reasonable amount that is lower than $100,000 salary) and getting rid of exclusivity contracts. This kind of stuff needs civilian oversight because the corruption is rampant...
Now this I agree with. And actually, one major cause of government waste (from what I've seen) is overregulation. Ironically, it's people like you screaming about corruption and needing more checks and balances that cause an insane bureaucracy where everything costs ten times what it should because of all the people and agencies that it has to be run through.
That's mainly because they create an office that is supposed to oversee an area and then the people that want to abuse the system get into that office and take money or 'favors' to sign off on wasteful spending. Its kind of the same with our government...
If it was a rotating post that people were randomly chosen (kind of like jury duty). It would be more honest. Having two or more people from different parts of the country work together to oversee an program would make it even harder to corrupt.
If you don't believe in corruption do a little research on the revolving door at the FDA. The top people there are either 'retired' people from the industry who approve that industries chemicals, or they are clean until they suddenly start passing chemicals and then when they 'retire' from the FDA they get a job as a 'consultant' at one of the companies they were regulation for obscene amounts of money...
The other issue is that it's hard to randomly select people that are supposed to oversea anything involving classified material, especially on a rotating basis. Security investigations are not cheap. That and the fact that classified material is supposed to be restricted on a need to know basis. The reason being that the more people who know about something, the more difficult it is to keep it a secret. So pulling random people to look at this stuff, even if they have been investigated, means a much greater chance of classified information being leaked out.
And you don't have to tell me about the revolving door. I'm very familiar with it. Now sometimes it is just a person with legitimately good qualifications getting hired for an appropriate position, but I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just saying that it is harder to fix than just adding another cog in the giant machine of beauracracy.
I'm not certain that using random people for short terms would make corruption less likely. In fact, not only can that person still be bought, but they have no real incentive to actually do their job well because no matter if they do good or bad, there's no longevity. Actually, I think that is the real issue. It is so damn difficult to fire people from a government position that there is no incentive for people to do their best. Once they are in they are set. They might get shuffled from one position to another (this also happens quite a bit in the military) but since no one actually wants to deal with the paperwork hassle, they never actually get fired.
The other issue is that it's hard to randomly select people that are supposed to oversea anything involving classified material, especially on a rotating basis. Security investigations are not cheap. That and the fact that classified material is supposed to be restricted on a need to know basis. The reason being that the more people who know about something, the more difficult it is to keep it a secret. So pulling random people to look at this stuff, even if they have been investigated, means a much greater chance of classified information being leaked out.
And you don't have to tell me about the revolving door. I'm very familiar with it. Now sometimes it is just a person with legitimately good qualifications getting hired for an appropriate position, but I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just saying that it is harder to fix than just adding another cog in the giant machine of beauracracy.
I can see where your coming from. I agree too. About the only thing left then is to hold government people accountable, but how do we do that? Sure we can vote some of them out, but others are appointed or have life postings (judges), others are hired on and as you said they are difficult to remove. Maybe set up a permanent review board that evaluates performance and adjusts income based on productivity? I really don't know...
My walls not very stable, lets add more wall to it! No wait, that makes sense...
Nice example, actually. See, if your wall isn't very stable, or broken, and your solution is to just add another wall next to it, then you're just wasting your time. Yeah, it might fix the problem in the short term, but now you have two walls where you only needed one, not to mention that you've added unnecessary bulk and weight to the structure overall which might further burden your foundation or other supporting levels. A better solution is to tear the entire section out and build it right.
My walls not very stable, lets add more wall to it! No wait, that makes sense...
Nice example, actually. See, if your wall isn't very stable, or broken, and your solution is to just add another wall next to it, then you're just wasting your time. Yeah, it might fix the problem in the short term, but now you have two walls where you only needed one, not to mention that you've added unnecessary bulk and weight to the structure overall which might further burden your foundation or other supporting levels. A better solution is to tear the entire section out and build it right.
Too bad noone knows how to build it right. Making it thicker is a reasonable solution.
I'm still trying to get past the "the beauracracy is broken! Let's add more beauracracy to fix it!" line of thinking.
No kidding. Big government tends to be poisonous and the answers that are given to remedy this is either poison or more poison.
I'm still trying to get past the "the beauracracy is broken! Let's add more beauracracy to fix it!" line of thinking.
No kidding. Big government tends to be poisonous and the answers that are given to remedy this is either poison or more poison.
I got it! we can slim the government down. Then enact laws that make corruption and inefficiency punishable by caning. How many politicians you think would take a caning more than once?
I can see where your coming from. I agree too. About the only thing left then is to hold government people accountable, but how do we do that? Sure we can vote some of them out, but others are appointed or have life postings (judges), others are hired on and as you said they are difficult to remove. Maybe set up a permanent review board that evaluates performance and adjusts income based on productivity? I really don't know...
Well part of it should be getting rid of unions for federal employees. DA civilians at Ft Carson threatened to strike because their computers were switched to Windows Vista (granted that was another terrible idea and a waste of government money since they decided to do the switch right as Windows 7 was being released, but suck it up and move on).
There were review boards for some employees to adjust income based on work performance, and that program ended up being suspended due to extreme problems with it (evaluations, both for military and civilians, are extremely subjective and sometimes just come down to how well you get along with your boss rather than how good you are at your job). One possibility that I've heard from the military side that sounds like an improvement (not perfect but better) was to include feedback from your subordinates and your peers as well. That way if one person says something bad and everyone else says you are awesome, you probably just didn't kiss that person's ass. On the other hand, if everyone around thinks you're a great big bag of douche, there's probably some truth to it.
In the end, though, I don't think you'll find a universal answer. I think each agency and organization will have to be addressed separately. And ideally you should be able to do it while reducing beauracracy, not adding another level of it.
I can see where your coming from. I agree too. About the only thing left then is to hold government people accountable, but how do we do that? Sure we can vote some of them out, but others are appointed or have life postings (judges), others are hired on and as you said they are difficult to remove. Maybe set up a permanent review board that evaluates performance and adjusts income based on productivity? I really don't know...
Well part of it should be getting rid of unions for federal employees. DA civilians at Ft Carson threatened to strike because their computers were switched to Windows Vista (granted that was another terrible idea and a waste of government money since they decided to do the switch right as Windows 7 was being released, but suck it up and move on).
There were review boards for some employees to adjust income based on work performance, and that program ended up being suspended due to extreme problems with it (evaluations, both for military and civilians, are extremely subjective and sometimes just come down to how well you get along with your boss rather than how good you are at your job). One possibility that I've heard from the military side that sounds like an improvement (not perfect but better) was to include feedback from your subordinates and your peers as well. That way if one person says something bad and everyone else says you are awesome, you probably just didn't kiss that person's ass. On the other hand, if everyone around thinks you're a great big bag of douche, there's probably some truth to it.
In the end, though, I don't think you'll find a universal answer. I think each agency and organization will have to be addressed separately. And ideally you should be able to do it while reducing beauracracy, not adding another level of it.
How about if the reviews weren't done by your boss? What if someone reviewed your work records, followed you around for a month every year, got input from your co-workers and your boss, but the largest part of the review would come directly from your statistics? Might work...
Also, having someone whose sole purpose was to follow another person around for a month is a really inefficient way to do business. That means for every 11 workers you need to hire another employee (I know there are twelve months in a year but you have to account for sick days and paid vacation, thus some overlap is needed). And that month may or may not be indicative of normal performance. If most of his work is outdoors and it's the dead of winter, it may be really slow during that time. Or someone could play really nice and kiss a lot of ass for one month and then **** off afterwards.
Believe me, a lot of people complain about the evaluation system, myself being one of them, but it's hard to come up with a solution that is more fair, easy to implement, and doesn't cost the government more money.
Back a couple-three weeks ago, when the SCOTUS reached their (5-4) decision, the four conservatives on the court said that they disagreed because they were afraid something like this would happen. However, we were assured by the liberals (and the swing voter) and the media that something like this could NEVER HAPPEN!! No wonder none of this is on the news...
Wait...what are we talking about here?
Back a couple-three weeks ago, when the SCOTUS reached their (5-4) decision, the four conservatives on the court said that they disagreed because they were afraid something like this would happen. However, we were assured by the liberals (and the swing voter) and the media that something like this could NEVER HAPPEN!! No wonder none of this is on the news...
Wait...what are we talking about here?
He's actually talking bout the OP. Unlike everyone else.
Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall being assured by anyone that something like this could "NEVER HAPPEN". As for it not being on the news, what do you call the article linked to in the first post if not news?
Back a couple-three weeks ago, when the SCOTUS reached their (5-4) decision, the four conservatives on the court said that they disagreed because they were afraid something like this would happen. However, we were assured by the liberals (and the swing voter) and the media that something like this could NEVER HAPPEN!! No wonder none of this is on the news...
Wait...what are we talking about here?
He's actually talking bout the OP. Unlike everyone else.
Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall being assured by anyone that something like this could "NEVER HAPPEN". As for it not being on the news, what do you call the article linked to in the first post if not news?
He's talking about the 'mainstream' media which is just about completely owned by the five major commercial companies...
[The story on Fox]. Or is that not mainstream enough?
Well Fox isn't very legit as far as news companies go :-p
And this would be my point. Conservatives get the Washington Post, talk radio, the internet, and Fox News. Liberals control pretty much every other major form of news dissemination. And it hasn't been on CBS News. But they did have a nice little special on Rep. Giffords' reunion with her husband...