Probably at some point in our nation's past, this was a true statement: "I'm from the government and I am here to help you." That was when government was much smaller and more focused on a wee set of functions. So limited, in fact, that government was well good at getting some problems solved. However, given the behavior of today's government functions, personnel, and the American political class these past few years, it is probably true that this statement is no longer a fact, it is just a myth. Think the following myth busting behaviors:
1) The Securities replacement Commission (Sec) is responsible for overseeing the integrity of the accounting processes and accuracy of public companies' financials. They were obviously asleep at the wheel when many of Wall Street's largest financial firms, rapidly and without warning, either went bankrupt or dove into deep financial stress at the onset of the greatest financial collapse in this country since the Great Depression. How did this economic and financial fiasco occur with almost no advance warning by the Sec? A possible sass was published in an April 23, 2010 related Press narrative which reported on the findings of an Sec Inspector normal analysis. The pathology found that more than two and half dozen Sec employees were found to have used their government issued computers to quest the Internet for pornography during the time they should have been hard at work protecting the interests of Americans who spend in public companies. As examples of their findings, one Sec attorney spent up to eight hours a day downloading pornography, burning his findings to Cds and Dvd discs once his hard drive filled up with the pornographic material. An Sec accountant was blocked over 16,000 times in one month (or about 800 times a day, 10 times an hour) from visiting pornographic websites yet he was able to eventually acquire a range of pornographic material on his government computer by using a method to bypass the Sec filters. Seventeen of the pornography seekers at the Sec were determined "senior level" employees, earning salaries up to 2,000 a year. These government employees were obviously too busy to help protect the interests of the American investors, population who lost untold billions of dollars as a consequent of the financial crisis that the Sec staff never saw coming.
2) In January of this year, the group of health and Human Services issued a narrative that closed the 0 billion that the Federal government had spent on the Head Start program since 1965 has no long continuing benefits to the children that had been enrolled in the program. Another analysis, this one conducted by the patrimony Foundation found similar results: "Head Start has wee to no consequent on cognitive, socio-emotional, health, and parenting outcomes of children participating in the program." Thus, rather than delivering the benefits that Head Start is supposed to deliver, we are left with an yearly multi billion set of early study government programs that are wee more than a government subsidized baby sitting service.
3) In the April 26, 2010 issue of Newweek magazine, an narrative by Dan Stockman exposed the fact that the Environment protection group (Epa) is not doing a lot of protecting, at least relative to the Clean Air Act. Agreeing to study done by Mr. Stockman, his pathology of the Epa's public database of compulsion records showed that on a national basis, more than 750 companies have been in continuous violation of clean air laws since 2007. Included in these 750 companies were over two hundred companies defined as high priority because of the severity of their offenses. What good is having a law and identifying offenders if there are no consequences or changes in behavior? Not very helpful.
4) In the April 9, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, there was a short narrative about how shoddy the work at the vigor group is relative to classifying products as deserving of a high vigor recovery appliance rating within the EnergyStar program. A enterprise who gets an EnergyStar rating can store the vigor efficiency of their product, as stylish by the government, and theoretically sell more products and/or sell them at a higher price. Consumers look for the EnergyStar designation with the assumption being that these are good deals from a cost of vigor perspective. One qoute though. The narrative reported on a sting performance by Federal regulators that sent bogus designs to the population running the EnergyStar testing program. These bogus products included a gasoline powered alarm clock (certainly not a very efficient way to tell time) and a feather duster attached to a space heater that had been called an "air filter" by the regulators. Unfortunately, both of these bogus products and most of the others were awarded the EnergyStar status by the vigor Department. Obviously, the vigor group is not here to help you distinguish vigor efficient products from those that are not if these somewhat outrageous fake products can pass the current vigor efficiency standards in the inspection process.
5) Most population probably know that Toyota has been having a spate of protection problems with it's cars over the past few months, with accusations that these protection problems have resulted in traffic fatalities. What most population do not know, as reported in the March 1, 2010 issue of Businessweek, the government had opened, and shortly thereafter closed, eight inquiries into the qoute with Toyota products, beginning back in 2003. In all eight cases they found no indispensable problems and closed all probes with no operation taken. It was not until the past year or so that the government ultimately recognized that maybe there is a qoute and Toyota was ultimately forced to take remedial operation on its vehicles. The narrative points out the fact that the two government interface executives at Toyota used to work for the very government group responsible for automobile safety, implying that the government might have gone easy on their previous co-workers. Given that upwards of a hundred Americans may have died as a consequent of faulty Toyota products, it does not look like the government is helping anything here either.
6) any years ago the government belatedly pulled a series of imported toy products from China off of the shelf because the products were made using lead based materials that could seriously hurt a child if the the child put a toy in their mouths and the lead entered their systems. While the good news is the government protection assosication ultimately got the products off of the shelves, it would have been much good if they had never entered the country in the first place, Even worse, Agreeing to a May 20, 2010 related Press article, the overseas producers simply supplanted their lead laced products with cadmium laced products which are just as dangerous. One would have concept the government would have been a wee more alert to these types of products since they had just gone straight through the lead based experience. Alas, they were no good the second time around as the cadmium products came ashore.
7) A May 17, 2010 related Press narrative reported on the many oversights and incompetence of Federal employees of the Minerals administration service (Mms) Federal agency, the group responsible for overseeing the protection of oil rigs in the Gulf Of Mexico. Agreeing to the narrative and an internal report, not as many inspections were done as required, many Mms employees received hunting and fishing vacations along with other gifts from the same companies they were supposed to keep in line from a protection perspective, some Mms employees were considering oil rigs of companies at the same time they were in negotiations for employment by those companies, and some Mms employees admitted being addicted to illegal drugs while being responsible for protection inspections and compliance. These Federal employees were obviously wee help in preventing the devastating Gulf oil spill.
8) The group Of Homeland protection has well not been helpful. This past December, a would be terrorist traveled from Somalia to the skies over Detroit and would have blown up the airliner he was in if his underwear bomb had not malfunctioned. In the spring, Another would be terrorist almost blew up a car bomb on the streets of Time square which failed to explode only because of a defective bomb. Unknown numbers of illegal aliens and drugs, and who knows what else, continue to flood over our southern border with Mexico. Are we feeling acquire yet?
9) In a related non-helpful effort, an narrative in the June 11, 2010 issue of The Week magazine recalled a resolution from the House of Representatives in 1986. At that time, the House demanded that the Pentagon seal our borders within 45 days against illegal drugs. Looks like they missed that deadline.
10) The No Children Left Behind legislation from the Bush administration has proven to be unsuccessful in raising the lower than improbable learning levels of American children relative to the study of children in many other countries. Thus, nothing has changed since the Reagan administration issued its scathing narrative on American public schools in 1982, "A Nation At Risk." Thus, the American political class and its government processes have been unhelpful for at least twenty eight years in raising study standards and production of the country.
11) On the foreign affairs front, government and the political class have not been very helpful either. Two renegade countries, North Korea and Iran, with economies and populations that are just a small fraction the size of the United States, will both soon have the quality and intention of creating and stockpiling nuclear weapons. Unstable leadership in these countries is not a long term method for protection and security.
12) In the face of all of these failures, what have the politicians been working on during the past year that might eventually help all of us live a good life? A California Congresswoman and her staff worked on legislation that would fabricate Federal regulations for the sound volume of television commercials, Another Congressman was working on legislation that would forestall male dysfunction commercials from airing on television, Another Congressman and his staff worked on legislation to give pet owners a tax deduction in these hard economic times, and many Washington politicians were complicated in the consider on how to get a national college football playoff law in place. How many of these items would fall in the top 20 issues facing most Americans today? Probably not many. Politicians spend time on these small, insignificant issues while the big issues of public education, vigor policy, leaky borders, high health care costs, skyrocketing national debt levels, and high unemployment continue to grow unabated.
13) Finally, the biggest and most unabridged non-help in the past sixty years was obviously related to the financial crash and economic downturn of the past few years. Numerous government agencies were well no help in foreseeing and managing the housing and banking crisis that caused the so-called "Great Recession." These Federal government entities consist of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Sec, Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, House of Representatives housing and banking committees, Senate housing and banking committees, the Fdic, the Fha, the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and any estimate of other unhelpful government organizations. If these agencies and politicians could not see this great, historic economic crisis arrival until it was way too late to do anything, what makes us think they have any occasion in successfully managing the smaller, more subtle aspects of the economy?
Did we leave anything out? We need to get over the myth that government is somehow an efficient and efficient ally in our lives. The above examples should be proof of that. Many Americans still think that once a law is passed or a program established that the battle is over and all things will be great: government workers and agencies taking care of things in a super efficient manner at a uncostly cost. Given the above list of incompetencies and the record, sky high national debt levels we have, we are getting the worst of all possible combinations - high cost, low quality.
We need to start a long term, systematic downsizing of government in order to sacrifice our national debt and get government smaller and more focused on just the important, major issues of our times, which does not consist of the sound volume of television commercials. The logic is if the political class and government agencies have less to worry about, they may well get good at a few things rather than being incompetent in a wide range of things. It makes no sense to continue to withhold a government bureaucracy when all we get is the low performance or non-performance described above. Drastically downsize and focus, that is what must be done to get us out of the high cost/low quality zone into the low cost/high quality zone. Then, and only then, might the myth "I'm from the government and I am here to help you" well become a reality again.
Exposing the Myth - "I'm From the Government and I Am Here to Help You"Samsung USB Cables Mail Order Chocolate