The federal spending rant...

Bodhisattva

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I'll take solace in the first part of your statement, which shows some level of self-awareness that I applaud. The second half is, of course, an entirely baseless and false strawman, but that's par for course when someone challenges you.
The strawman is yours, since I have never said that anything Man creates is without inefficiency. If you understood anything about how government works, you would know that government is more inefficient by a factor of multitudes. Trying to draw equivalencies is dishonest.
 
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Displaced Bama Fan

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If there's not a d-bag of the year award, there should be:

USAID Contractor Steals Funds from Babies

The former deputy executive director of a South African research institute has been sentenced to seven months in prison for a scheme that defrauded the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) of grant funds meant to be used on a mobile device application to aid safer childbirths.

Eugene Sickle pleaded guilty to stealing grant funds from USAID to personally enrich himself and an associate. Sickle, who administered grant funds, signed a contract with Alzar Consulting Services Ltd. to develop the app. The institute’s chief executive officer, Sickle, and the supposed director of Alzar (“Dr. Carla Das Neves”) signed the contract, and Alzar was paid over $206,000.

However, it was later uncovered that Sickle created Alzar in the British Virgin Islands and was the sole owner of the company. Furthermore, Das Neves did not exist. Sickle created fake email accounts, a fake LinkedIn page, and additional fake employees to conceal the scheme, and signed the app contract as both himself and Das Neves.

Subsequently, no one developed the app or performed any work required under the contract.
I keep waiting for the Clinton Foundation to pop up in these discussions for their full disclosure and immeasurable honesty in their Haiti dealings with US relief funds.
 

Bodhisattva

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Re: The federal spending thread

Well, we have no working printers in the entire building. Seems that maintenance was no part of the contract, and over the last year or so they have been going down one by one. No worries. We can print to another building that's 20 minutes away. Left early today to get my docs off the printer. They are in my car now, and I will take them to my desk when I get back to work in the morning.
We have toner! We have toner! And it only took 28 days. All of the printers that need maintenance are still down, but we have one working printer in the building now. Glory! The acquisition of toner happened with cat-like quickness ... if said cat was a snail.
 

crimsonaudio

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I'll take solace in the first part of your statement, which shows some level of self-awareness that I applaud. The second half is, of course, an entirely baseless and false strawman, but that's par for course when someone challenges you.
I assume your business is not funded by tax dollars, which is all the difference in the world. If a privately held company wishes to be inefficient, that's their prerogative. There's no excuse for the government to be wasteful and / or inefficient with our tax dollars, other than the fact that they can be because we allow it.

Just as the business owner allows (or disallows / addresses) inefficiencies in his own business.
 

CharminTide

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I assume your business is not funded by tax dollars, which is all the difference in the world. If a privately held company wishes to be inefficient, that's their prerogative. There's no excuse for the government to be wasteful and / or inefficient with our tax dollars, other than the fact that they can be because we allow it.

Just as the business owner allows (or disallows / addresses) inefficiencies in his own business.
Eh, when you get into hospital economics, that's a tricky distinction.

I hear you, but my broader point is that enterprise seems to have inherent inefficiency whether it's public or private. And to a degree, that's fine. In the same way that we excuse energy waste in a combustion engine because the sum of its parts is more productive when assembled than not. I'm all for striving for absolute efficiency as a goal -- and to be crystal clear, there are places where the federal government's efficiency blows the private sector out of the water. And obviously many areas where the opposite is true. But since it's more fun to complain about a few unused toner cartridges and intimate that taxation=theft, the successes get ignored. And it's not like the alternative is a fortress of economic efficiency, which seems to be the suggestion.
 

Bodhisattva

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Eh, when you get into hospital economics, that's a tricky distinction.

I hear you, but my broader point is that enterprise seems to have inherent inefficiency whether it's public or private. And to a degree, that's fine. In the same way that we excuse energy waste in a combustion engine because the sum of its parts is more productive when assembled than not. I'm all for striving for absolute efficiency as a goal -- and to be crystal clear, there are places where the federal government's efficiency blows the private sector out of the water. And obviously many areas where the opposite is true. But since it's more fun to complain about a few unused toner cartridges and intimate that taxation=theft, the successes get ignored. And it's not like the alternative is a fortress of economic efficiency, which seems to be the suggestion.
As someone who worked for a Fortune 400 company before going over to the government, equating both inefficiencies is way off the mark. At my current job it took 28 days to get a toner cartridge (and the rest of the printers are going on several months without repair). In the private sector, someone runs out to Office Depot to get supplies within a day. The printer issue is one I have experienced at multiple government offices.

Internet connectivity is spotty at best. Every non-GPC buy I've done for over 10 years contains a fair to and incredible amount of waste. Government regulations encourage overpaying for everything.

In my former job we had a lease on a building in Alexandria. An audit turned up that we were paying more than regulations allowed. So, we moved to Crystal City. But, we still had to pay the lease in Alexandria. Doesn't make much sense does it?

And on and on.
 

TIDE-HSV

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As someone who worked for a Fortune 400 company before going over to the government, equating both inefficiencies is way off the mark. At my current job it took 28 days to get a toner cartridge (and the rest of the printers are going on several months without repair). In the private sector, someone runs out to Office Depot to get supplies within a day. The printer issue is one I have experienced at multiple government offices.

Internet connectivity is spotty at best. Every non-GPC buy I've done for over 10 years contains a fair to and incredible amount of waste. Government regulations encourage overpaying for everything.

In my former job we had a lease on a building in Alexandria. An audit turned up that we were paying more than regulations allowed. So, we moved to Crystal City. But, we still had to pay the lease in Alexandria. Doesn't make much sense does it?

And on and on.
So you're a government employee now?
 

NationalTitles18

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If a business wastes money I can decide not to pay more for their product. I don't have that choice with government. I don't know how to fix that problem when even when voters change out officeholders the bureaucrats are still there. It's understandable when people don't want to hand government more power/money because of that.
 

TIDE-HSV

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As someone who worked for a Fortune 400 company before going over to the government, equating both inefficiencies is way off the mark. At my current job it took 28 days to get a toner cartridge (and the rest of the printers are going on several months without repair). In the private sector, someone runs out to Office Depot to get supplies within a day. The printer issue is one I have experienced at multiple government offices.

Internet connectivity is spotty at best. Every non-GPC buy I've done for over 10 years contains a fair to and incredible amount of waste. Government regulations encourage overpaying for everything.

In my former job we had a lease on a building in Alexandria. An audit turned up that we were paying more than regulations allowed. So, we moved to Crystal City. But, we still had to pay the lease in Alexandria. Doesn't make much sense does it?

And on and on.
Well, you're certainly in a position to observe the waste. The question is inevitable - if you had the power to march in and clean things up, would you fire yourself?
 

Bodhisattva

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Well, you're certainly in a position to observe the waste. The question is inevitable - if you had the power to march in and clean things up, would you fire yourself?
Oh, yeah. If I could put a stop to the waste at the sacrifice of my job, that's an easy choice. I'd have quit yesterday. (In fact, I did retire for a few months last year. I had always thought about retiring in my 40s, but once I did I quickly became bored with my wife still wanting to work and my daughter only in 6th grade at the time.) I would love to have the power to fire a lot of people I've worked with and force them to be subjected to market forces. They would soon find their skills near-unmarketable, their attitude unacceptable, and their commandable income at fast food wage levels.
 

Bamaro

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Oh, yeah. If I could put a stop to the waste at the sacrifice of my job, that's an easy choice. I'd have quit yesterday. (In fact, I did retire for a few months last year. I had always thought about retiring in my 40s, but once I did I quickly became bored with my wife still wanting to work and my daughter only in 6th grade at the time.) I would love to have the power to fire a lot of people I've worked with and force them to be subjected to market forces. They would soon find their skills near-unmarketable, their attitude unacceptable, and their commandable income at fast food wage levels.
That's the key! Civil Service shouldn't be the closest thing to a guaranteed life time job. There must be accountability.
 
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UAH

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That's the key! Civil Service shouldn't the closest thing to a guaranteed life time job. There must be accountability.
No one realizes the impact of Civil Service to a community as someone who has grown up in the shadow of NASA and the US Army in Huntsville. It is amazing the disparity that has existed for years between Civil Service jobs and the rest of the community. In the 50's Huntsville was a poor cotton farming and mill community with precious few jobs until it was deluged by federal money. From that time forward there was a tremendous disparity between the haves who were fortunate to have lifetime civil service pay and benefits versus all others who had to work for a living. Huntsville has diversified a lot since then but the attitudes of the haves and and the working class still exist today.

Even in the late 70's I recall driving out the west gate of Redstone toward the airport past the Saturn 5 test stands and MSFC and passing share cropper shacks just beyond the gates. Those have all been replaced with urban sprawl now and the decedents of share-croppers tend to the lawns instead of the cotton fields.
It is difficult to say a lot of good things about how the federal government goes about the business of distributing tax dollars.
 

techster79

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They're moving me into a new office at work, and I requested a new desk, since the existing one wouldn't function for my needs. It took 3 months for the required paperwork and approval to switch various hands, another month to get the desk supplier out to actually measure the space, and it'll probably be two more months before the thing is actually delivered and I can finally move in. I'm told there is a large warehouse called the "furniture graveyard" where the existing desk will be sent, and that these items are essentially never moved back into use. I don't work at a government hospital.

Government is hardly the only inefficient creature in our system, and it's a bit amusing that you seem to think private business is the panacea to wasteful spending and inefficiency.
My dad was an officer in the Air Force in the late 80s/early 90s. Every year they would get new furniture at tax payer expense and throw out the old furniture that was perfectly in working order. I spent eight years as an ** contractor with five on base. We were a team of 9 people and spent hundreds of thousands each year of unnecessary spending in September so we'd get the same amount or more next fiscal year. There is nothing resembling government inefficiency, waste, fraud and abuse in the private sector. If a company makes poor decisions, it fails or cheats its customers/shareholders. If the government makes poor decisions, it taxes everyone more to make up the difference or doesn't and prints more money reducing our purchasing power. Entitlements will soon go bankrupt but won't be reformed until its too late.
 
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Tider_in_GA

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Oh, yeah. If I could put a stop to the waste at the sacrifice of my job, that's an easy choice. I'd have quit yesterday. (In fact, I did retire for a few months last year. I had always thought about retiring in my 40s, but once I did I quickly became bored with my wife still wanting to work and my daughter only in 6th grade at the time.) I would love to have the power to fire a lot of people I've worked with and force them to be subjected to market forces. They would soon find their skills near-unmarketable, their attitude unacceptable, and their commandable income at fast food wage levels.
Just a curious question, is Six Sigma practiced at all in any of the places you’ve worked in government? While it’s not perfect and is primarily used for manufacturing, it can be utilized to eliminate inefficiency in any process.
 

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