Federal Government Services - Overpaying For Underperformance

Lets quickly review some points listed in yesterday's post:

• many of the Federal employees responsible for the overseeing and regulation of offshore oil drilling were busy accepting and taking free fishing and hunting trips from the very companies they were supposed to be overseeing, were actively inspecting those companies' operations at the same time they were negotiating their employment contracts with those same companies, and some were actively involved in downloading pornography onto their government issued computers. Result: by far the biggest ecological disaster ever as a result of a faulty oil platform malfunction.
• many of the Federal employees responsible for overseeing and controlling the goings on in the financial market at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including some earning over $200,000 a year in salary, have been identified as prolific Internet searchers of pornography and downloading that pornography onto their government issued computers and other media once they had filled their hard drives to capacity with smut. Result: the biggest financial collapse and economic disaster since the Great Depression which was totally unforeseen by the SEC, whose job is to foresee this kind of financial market trouble.
• although they opened more than one investigation into faulty Toyota products, the Federal safety agencies that were responsible for such safety never went deeply into the problem until it got out of hand years later. Result: latest reports indicate that 89 Americans have died in Toyota vehicles that no government agency found unsafe until recently although there were safety issue red flags many, many years ago.
• although responsible for safeguarding Americans from faulty products, Federal safety agencies failed to flag imported children's products containing dangerous levels of lead until the market was awash with such products. Result: those lead based products were eventually pulled form the market but the same safety agencies failed to detect the fact that foreign manufacturers had replaced the lead with equally bad cadmium, again endangering those that might ingest the latest heavy metal from the products.

Not a pretty picture, certainly one of under performance relative to expectations of the American taxpayer. And to add insult to injury, consider the following facts from a short article in the June issue of Reason magazine, written by Katherine Mangu-Ward, that reviewed a March report in USA Today:

• Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyers, cooks, clerks and janitors that work for the Federal government get paid substantially more than those that do the same jobs in the private sector.
• On average, the Federal worker earns $7,600 a year more than the private sector worker doing the same function. This comes out to about $145 per week.
• As examples of some of the more outrageous discrepancies: Federal broadcast technicians earn about $90,000 while private sector broadcast technicians earn about $49,000, Federal graphic designers earn about $71,000 while private sector designers earn about $47,000, and Federal dry cleaning workers earn about $33,000 while private sector workers earn about $20,000.
• According to the article, the average Federal worker in 2008 also got almost $41,000 worth of benefits compared to the $10,000 or so value of benefits that the private sector worker received.

I do not want to disparage all Federal workers. I am sure that most of them, at least those not searching the web for pornography, are trying to put in an honest day's work. However, you can see the discrepancy outlined in the title of this post. We, the American taxpayer, which includes all Federal employees, pay a very large sum of money to the government and the political class that operates the government and get very little back in return. Ecological disasters, financial disasters, safety disasters, etc. seem to be the normal mode of operation of the political class. We are taxed more and more for less and less in terms of value for our dollar.

That is why dumping all incumbents in the November elections becomes critical. The current set of politicians in Washington are not going to improve this high cost, low performance equation anytime soon. Otherwise, they would have addressed the issue already. After we dump the incumbents in November, the next step has to be the implementation of Step 39 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" a priority and implement term limits so that those elected to office can spend their ENTIRE term looking to add value to our lives rather than spending the majority of their time making sure they get re-elected and not addressing the fundamental issue of high costs and low performance.

Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.