Sunday, August 09, 2009

What Does the Government do to Earn a Living?

My friend and I were talking after church today about jobs. She is an unemployed graphical artist and her laptop LCD display went bad. She can only search for jobs at places that have a wifi cloud and now she can't even do that because she has to have an external monitor. She cannot afford cable or Internet connection at home now. Her office will now be the public library for job search pursuits. "Fran" handed me a business card that was made for free by a benevolent friend. There was a huge list of chores she is able to do for hire: graphical artist, cleaning, closet organizing, babysitting, mowing, landscaping, concierge and the list went on. She said I do it all because I am doing it all already to pay bills.

Wow, I said, you are doing whatever it takes that's great! We laughed about the hundreds of silly psyche questions on job applications now- "If you met yourself somewhere would you become best friends?" Things like that. "Do you prefer to work slowly to think things through or do you kick your dog a lot?" That last one I made up but the questions often have a darned if you do darned if you don't answer to them. An HR person, with advice from a psychology major from a public university is responsible for the hour and a half it takes to fill out some job applications. My daughter filled out an application online for Wachovia Bank for Teller, she performed all the algebra problems correctly then after one of the dozens of silly psyche questions the program popped up "We're sorry but you are not qualified for the Teller position." then dumped her out. She can be thankful, I told her.

Fran, I said, you mow, you clean, you do computer graphics what do you think government employees do? What are their choices but to make government more complex and larger. By the end of the day a Pastor has started compiling for a sermon, written memos to staff, visited someone in a hospital or nursing home to give them spiritual encouragement and contacted a football coach to make plans for the upcoming year. By the end of my day I have cleaner carpets, chairs arranged in rows, wasp nests destroyed from the eves of the buildings, investigated an alarm security circuit fault and updated room diagrams and saved the campus money by patrolling thermostats. A roofer stands back with his men thinking about a shower and drinking something cold at home while looking at a brand new roof. A manufacturing engineer turns in a report to a production manager showing that rejections are down on the avionics wiring harness assembly line for Dassault-Falcon. A conveyor belt circuit board repair woman looks at a BNSF train moving off in the distance pulling a 100 cars of coal from the Powder River Basin that SHE helped load. What do the Executive and Legislative Branches in Washington D.C. have at the end of their day?

To show productivity in the government you HAVE to spend more, show larger more complex documents, and increase system complexity. You have NO other choice if you hope to keep your job. Kilobytes to megabytes, to gigabytes to terabytes of system documents over the years is what they have to show. Oh it talks about simpler government but talk is cheap. In the end whatever the government employee does will hurt someone somewhere in some small or large way that is just trying to meet personal life goals. Its getting that tight. Zero moves are available that does not compromise the constitutional rights of a once free people. Its a stalemate endgame; say hello to a goodbye.

If there truly were rewards in making government smaller then the Constitution Party would be in power in more instances than it is not.

Thank you and Good Day!

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