Just another rant
This sentences sums up the one thing I genuinely hate about my state.
"This is not about, you know, cutting so-called fat. This is going to cut muscle, because the scale of the issue requires that. We're going to feel it in services, we're going to see a smaller work force."
The reality is, we all know there's plenty of fat that could be cut. I've known plenty of peole who work (or have worked) for the state of Masschusetts and the message from all of them has been the same: the general approach taken by state employees is "why do in 45 minutes what you could stretch out for the whole day...or the whole week?"
There are plenty of people who don't take this approach. My mother works for the state, she works hard every day and does her job. She's surrounded by people who don't. The state uses the same thought process it's employees do: "why hire 3 hard working people when we could hire 15 people who are friends of state reps and senators."
I briefly interned at the office of one of our state senators when I was in college. He had a staff of 8 or 9 people. Most of what they did consisted of answering phones, skimming over letters from their consituents and social interation among themselves and with members of other senator's staff. If 2 of them were hard working they probably could've gotten all the work done and still had time for social interation. Instead they had a back-log of letters, data entry and phone message that would likely go unanswered.
Here's the bottom line. The tax-payers pay the salaries of government employees. It is typical for state officials and agencies to employee several people to do the work of 1. According to our governor there is no fat to trim, we need to trim muscle and we can't afford to cut taxes.
This was probably not a well organized rant...well, I guess rants are naturally disorganized.
"This is not about, you know, cutting so-called fat. This is going to cut muscle, because the scale of the issue requires that. We're going to feel it in services, we're going to see a smaller work force."
The reality is, we all know there's plenty of fat that could be cut. I've known plenty of peole who work (or have worked) for the state of Masschusetts and the message from all of them has been the same: the general approach taken by state employees is "why do in 45 minutes what you could stretch out for the whole day...or the whole week?"
There are plenty of people who don't take this approach. My mother works for the state, she works hard every day and does her job. She's surrounded by people who don't. The state uses the same thought process it's employees do: "why hire 3 hard working people when we could hire 15 people who are friends of state reps and senators."
I briefly interned at the office of one of our state senators when I was in college. He had a staff of 8 or 9 people. Most of what they did consisted of answering phones, skimming over letters from their consituents and social interation among themselves and with members of other senator's staff. If 2 of them were hard working they probably could've gotten all the work done and still had time for social interation. Instead they had a back-log of letters, data entry and phone message that would likely go unanswered.
Here's the bottom line. The tax-payers pay the salaries of government employees. It is typical for state officials and agencies to employee several people to do the work of 1. According to our governor there is no fat to trim, we need to trim muscle and we can't afford to cut taxes.
This was probably not a well organized rant...well, I guess rants are naturally disorganized.