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"“I used to chase people for months — literally — for one signature on one piece of paper. You want to talk about an egregious waste of taxpayer money?” recalle
by al2o3cr 13y ago
"“I used to chase people for months — literally — for one signature on one piece of paper. You want to talk about an egregious waste of taxpayer money?” recalled one worker who left the mine recently and declined to be named because of fears of retribution."
And of course if they didn't chase down every signature, we'd be reading an otherwise identical article from WaPo whining about "wastefraudandabuse".
- rodgerd 13y agoExactly. I work in a government town (although not for the government), and the fear of "gotcha" is the single biggest inhibiting factor for getting things done. There are hordes of politically-motivated eyes waiting for the smallest chink in your armour, so they can blow it into a huge story. It literally doesn't matter what people try to do - if there are checks and balances it's "waste"; if they try to do something innovative and interesting it's "recklessness" and so on. The people have the government departments they deserve.
- bdunbar 13y ago> The people have the government departments they deserve. Yeah - and they inflict it on the rest of us.
- Aloha 13y agoYeah, I second this, I've learned to phrase questions in such a way when dealing with government employees, where they can give approval, without having to either say yes or no - in other words phrase it in such a way that they dont have to say no - No with the government is the default answer.