Shut 'em Down!

someone get me a still picture from the movie 300 where the slaves are carrying Xerxes around on that giant throne thingy...

its the coupling of every employee in every Office of the EOP. Offices like Homeland Security, White House Military Office, Office of Faith based and Community Initiatives, Office Administration, Office of National Drug Control Policiy.

I don't get what the concern about 1701 personnel is when you cited a figure of 5,915. Last time I checked 454<1701<5915. Progress.

Nobody gets it. That's the problem.
If you had bothered at all to read the thread. It's a celebration.

If you haven't been living with your parents the last five years, life, for your average american, has sucked. Jimmy sings the blues

UNLESS you hit the life lottery and were lucky enough to land a government job. In which case you have spent the last five years wondering what everyone else is complaining about.

FINALLY five years later some of them are getting a tiny taste of what it feels like to be like the rest of us out here in the weeds.

It fills my heart with joy to watch these people suffer.

I don't give a rat's *** about obamacare or the tea party, that's everyone else's two cents.

I want these people to KNOW what feels like to wonder if you are going to get a *** paycheck next week or not.

I KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE!!! It *** sucks!!!

THEN Maybe, just maybe, they will pull there heads out of their *** far enough to make themselves useful.

we should all pause and take this little moment to look at all the money we throw away every stinking day on non essential government employees. If they are not essential, we don't *** need them!!!

We don't need them.

The white house has to have enough qualified people on staff to run the government if congress is wiped out by an angry mob or missile. There are also a ton of government workers serving as liaisons to heads of departments and a lot of people that aren't actually tied to the executive branch that work within the white house for various reasons. The proximity of their desk to the president's is just a function of the system, not necessarily a giant keggar that Obama started.

I definitely agree with the sentiment, though. If so many people are considered non-essential, why do they have a job in the first place? Our government should be doing only what we ask it with the minimum number of resources.

I just wish people would stop lumping social programs into the pork of the director of an agency hiring a personal trainer for his butler in the same category as programs that keep our old people from living on cat food and staying warm with leftover stern-o's that they dig from the dumpster at the Golden Corral down the street.

BENGAZI!!!!

Just for the record. We (old people) don't eat cat food, it's just as expensive as regular food. We just don't eat.

We need germany to come in and run our social programs, so far they have refused... they may still be a little sore about the dresden thing...

sorry, but that is an oxymoron there.

The government never has any qualified people on staff. They are the C class people that private companies wouldn't hire.

Look at IRS as a prime example, they don't even know their own rules and regulations!

could say the same about lower and middle management level employees at some larger companies as well.

Except that, if they are incompetent, they are fired.

Whereas if you are incompetent in the government, you get promoted (see Lois Lerner).

So, your assumption is incorrect.

You obviously haven't experienced the Peter Principle yet.
There are tons of incompetent mid level managers who never get fired.

That's true of MOST of private enterprise as well. It's all about the perception of competency. The difference is that in the government, they're getting paid with tax dollars, so we think it's terrible.

What you view as incompetence, others view as being at the level of competency.

Why else would you promote somebody who can't do better than what they are able to accomplish at??

That isn't incompetence, that is the limit of one's ability.

Also, I love how you refer to a comical book as a reference of company promotion structure. Kindof like how you used a popularity poll to determine the effectiveness of US policy...

See above post.

Ability is rarely as limited as ambition.

I saw it, and you're making assumptions about the way the majority of the government is run and the way the majority of the private sector is run. I see it daily in the private sector, people who give the appearance of competency and are assumed to be by supervisors who are playing the same game. With the exception of one, every large company I've worked with was basically a Jenga tower of smart, ambitious people on top, hard working people on the bottom, and an assload of wasted space in the middle.

I what I refer to is over 10yrs experience working in multinational corporations. The concept might have been coined as a joke but every good joke has a truth to it.

I love how you claim to be a tax man and use Lois Lerner as an example of incompetence when anyone who doesn't have a political bias knows she was scapegoated.

Except I didn't use a popularity poll to determine the effectiveness of US policy. I used a popularity poll from a conservative leaning site to prove that even to unbiased conservatives a specific democratic president was more popular than the 3 republican presidents that preceded him. Then I proceded to give you a proverbial internet skull *** that ended up in every one feeling sorry for your uptight ***.

Talking about two different things there, bub

exactly. Most people reach a ceiling of ambition long before they reach the limit of their ability. It's lunacy to say that someone is promoted to their level of competency/ability.

I think what he is trying to get at is that just because someone has a limited ability doesn't mean there ambition is limitless and they still manage to snake their way into positions that they can't handle...

but you're right of course... ambition and ability are two different things...

Edit: or I was completely wrong and he meant what he just said lol...

So you think all military personnel are not qualified?


You cannot say that the government never has any qualified people on staff. It is a blantant untruth.

It goes both ways. But someone's stature in a business sense isn't tied to their ability or competency as much as it's tied to their ambition.

It is a blatant untruth... most people refer to local government and city positions when they make statements like that though... people who work for the city and such... I only have experience on a local or state level with people like that and I will say that on that level the system is rife with patronage... not to say it always fails but many times more qualified people get turned away because they don't know somebody... we have an alderman here in Chicago that went against city rules and hired 17 people from his family to be on his staff and when he was called out on it he told people to pretty much go pound sand... why does no one do anything about it? probably because they all have their own little things they don't want taken away... We've been trying to get the city to make a great deal of changes on the way the handle these little feifdoms and how many there are...

On a federal level I imagine there is some of the same but to say that there are no federally employed persons that do not qualify for their positions is a gross overstatement... they do have people that are educated and qualified...

Edit: and using the military as an example doesn't really fit... and even then many of them aren't really qualified as well and should probably never be put into some of the situations they are... Though personally I only really have second hand experiences, observations and the such to base that off of...

A) Military is military. Not your basic government employee, but an army.

B) Just as there are unqualified people in private business, there are qualified people in the government. However, they are vastly outnumbered by the reverse in either case. You are correct to say that I made a blanket statement, where it is not true, and I do admit that. But, when you have a group of people who don't even know what their job is, or do it so poorly that it warrants incompetency, then those competent individuals tend to fade into the crowd.

C) I was referring to federal level employees. I have dealt with state level employees and I would say that the incompetency rate is a lot lower than federal.

I have dealt with both the state and federal side of government on a regular basis.

I had to explain Internal Revenue Code to more federal agents than I care to shake a stick at. I have only had to explain Texas Tax Code to at least 1 person, but not more than 3, that I can think of. Same for California and Louisiana Tax Codes, but I don't deal with those as often as Texas.

This is using personal experience, and I highly doubt that the federal government agencies are that different when it comes to training people...

You're basing the competency of all federal and state government employees on how many times you've had to explain the internal revenue code to them? and only on personal experience?

Standard operating procedure: project a handful of personal experiences into a blanket sentiment of everyone in the employ of the government.

I had to explain our qualification as an exempt waste generator to a city zoning employee once, so everyone in civil service is grossly unqualified and unnecessary.

Well I understand using personal experiences and such but I expected that because its basically what we all have and can base things on but his example is just focused on what seems to be such a small group with a limited range on the entire government...

It's human nature to apply a small sample of personal experiences to the world.

Yeah but c'mon... where's the rage from waiting at the dmv for four hours or having a postal worker deliver your *** ring to your mother... Or local governement plowing your house over due to a clerical error!

I'll tell you this though my worst experience with the government had to do with them trying to take my parents home away... so somewhere along the line after about 5 years after they bought their house somehow the pin for property taxes got mixed up with outr neighbors and they started paying theirs instead... now we were aware of this and my parents did all they were asked to to fix the problem and thought it was fine then... two years later a sheriffs officer came to our home and told us we had two weeks to vacate the premisis as we were delinquent on three years worth of property taxes and they sold the home to some company for about 5% of its value... Even though we could show that the property taxes were paid and that we had worked to fix the problem previously through no fault of our own mind you... they still fought us on it... after about 6 months and 5 thousand dollars later they finally relented and things got back to normal... so through their own incompetance and error my parents were caused to undergo all that *** and waste a good deal of money just to be able to stay in their home even though they did everything that was required of them...

Not all people in the military are compentant. Not everyone in any industry are all qualified and compentant.


The DoD is federal.

Advisors to the president on security/military matters come from the pentagon which is partially staffed by the military. Part of the president's staff is the security council, which has military or former military personnel.

People in the military are government employees.

I mentioned the military because when people rail about bad government employees they also like to gloss over the fact that people in the military are also government employees, saying it is not the same because they are the military... Which actually does not state why there is such a profound difference. If only incompentant people go to government jobs doesn't that imply only incompentant people join the military? (No, that is not what I am saying).

The military has just as much red tape and bureaucracy as the rest of the government, along with their share of compentant and incompentant people.