The best laid schemes….
o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley…
Any opportunity to quote and link to one of my favorite poems, “Of Mice and Men” by Robert Burns, can’t be all bad (I’m in a hurry and couldn’t find an annotated version that explains all those strange and archaic Scottish words, so that one will have to do for now).
I’m in NY, having driving down yesterday—pedal to the metal—to attend a friend’s surprise birthday party last evening. The get-together was exceedingly enjoyable and well worth the trip—both the food and the company of people I grew up with, most of whom I haven’t seen for decades. And no, we don’t look a bit older. No way.
So, what’s my beef? Today as I was writing my post and planning a visit to my mother this afternoon, and a visit with more friends this evening, I was pressed into service to help the NY-dwelling college-attending daughter of another good friend of mine deal with the convoluted bureaucratic maze of passport expediting. This involves several trips to various Byzantine offices, and must be accomplished before 3 PM, so I’m off to do it. My presence is necessary as an adult who can vouch that she is indeed who she says she is.
The post must wait for now; perhaps I’ll finish it towards this evening.
But one thing to be grateful for—at least I’m not dealing with the Motor Vehicle Bureau.
LOL – To bad some folks think that this is what the health care system should look like….
I have had similar problem dealing with private sector firms. The airline lost my luggage, never found. A private delivery business lost a Christmas present sent to my mother in Florida last year. I went with Fed-Ex because I was concerned that the US Postal Service would either lose it or break it. The private sector did it as good of job as the post office. I had to argue with a car rental company in July for over a month who billed me not once, not twice but three times for the same car I rented while visiting parent in Florida for two days.
I am starting to have doubts about the entire public-private arguement and am now more concerned with the mentality of Americans of delivering a quality service of any kind. It is as if people are working just to collect a pay check with no concern for a job well done!
Danny L. McDaniel
Lafayette, Indiana
Let us know if you feel the same after you’ve finished all the red tape. Good luck!
I am starting to have doubts about the entire public-private arguement
Snap out of it–Nothing, and I mean nothing with the word “Public”, “People” or “People’s” in its name is worth a damned:
‘public school’ vs ‘private school’
‘public club’ vs ‘private club’
‘public park’ vs ‘private park’
and don’t forget:
‘public restroom’ vs ‘private restroom’
Not that it will help you this time, but it is one of the things you can get from your Congress Critter.
Instead of going around, you can call your congress person and ask them to expedite the process. They will fax over a special request to the passport office that will move you to the front of a special line. I think I submitted the request one day and picked up the passport the next.
It is the only thing I ever got from my congressman.
Help the 3rd world 1 micro-loan at a time- http://www.kiva.org
Byzantine offices can be a pain. Especially having to deal with officials using medieval Greek.
“The private sector did it as good of job as the post office.”
The post office is not really a govt agency, it would be what is referred to as a “quasi-government agency”.
They are effectively regulated by the govt but ran as a private company. They have to make a profit and be self sufficient as any other private entity – they just are under the regulation of a presidentially appointed position and their employees qualify for many govt benefits. However, they are wholly different from something like the DMV and what Govt Healthcare has so far been proposed as.
In fact, it is generally thought that the move towards privatization is why you no longer worry so much about packages being lost or damaged.
One may be able to get some form of govt health insurance passed and have it work if they followed something fairly close to the post office model. If you want to hold the US postal service up as an example of how govt agencies should work you are supporting a strong move towards privatization.
“now more concerned with the mentality of Americans of delivering a quality service of any kind.”
Service has never really been that good, in fact we tend to be MUCH more consistent and have a MUCH smaller amount of complaints in our current services sector than before. If you look around you can find all sorts of very nice people that in 50 years will be the ones everyone acts like that was all there was now (and many of us older folks will roll our eyes younger ones saying that our time wasn’t all suger, spice, and everything nice). We just interact more than ever and depend on those services more than ever – not to mention when “Joe” screwed up and cost you a week, well old Joe was a nice guy. Now it’s that sorry **** at the counter causing you a **** three days (and everyone is willing to quickly and rudely inform him of that).
‘public school’ vs ‘private school’
‘public club’ vs ‘private club’
‘public park’ vs ‘private park’
Of course, in all three of these examples the issue is exclusivity based on wealth.
The public school system is designed to educate all children in a community, doing the best job they can with the resources they are given. Private schools are designed to make a profit through hefty tuitions being charged to students (well, the parents of students) screened and selected from a pool of applicants with many applicants rejected to assure high rates of success.
And so it is with private clubs, places that typically are limited to those who can both afford the high membership fees and have friends who are already members to support their application. I’m not sure what public clubs are being referenced, the only ones I can think of immediately are public golf courses with amenities open to anyone. They are certainly less posh and more likely to have a foursome of plumbers than of CEOs on the back nine. Is that really so bad?
Private parks limit those who enjoy them to those who can afford membership; public parks are there for everyone, including the young, the poor and all those other “undesirable” types whose personal wealth is not well above the median.
In short, you seem to be arguing for the superiority of systems that have elite privilege based on personal wealth. I thought a huge part of what makes America great is that it is egalitarian rather than elitist. Silly me. Hooray for the upper class.
Chris:
Some straw fell out of your man; maybe you’d better stuff it back in.
Private clubs, private parks, and private schools are all privileges of elite wealth, eh?
Disney World is a private park. Millions of people, few of them rich, enjoy themselves there every year.
The Elks Lodge is a private club. Not exactly a bastion of the upper class.
Every Catholic school is a “private” school, and give poor kids a better education than state-funded ones.
In other words, you are entirely and comprehensively mistaken.
The quality of government workers has fallen through the floor into the cellar. Government is unable to hire competent workers due to current hiring practises.
In fact, when hiring government workers, you must disregard competence altogether. You must hire them for their genitals, their skin colour, the spoken language of their ancestors. Your hiring action must be affirmative and final.
No one of diversity, once hired, can be fired–regardless of incompetence or lack of preparation or suitability.
We are building a diverse workforce, but not necessarily one that is capable of serving.
In short, you seem to be arguing for the superiority of systems that have elite privilege based on personal wealth. I thought a huge part of what makes America great is that it is egalitarian rather than elitist.
Yep, and anyone can buy their way in regardless of race, creed or color.
America’s promise is that no matter where you came from, it you work hard, build a better mousetrap or can play a sport well you can get filthy rich and buy your way out of the public crap.
There is no caste system, there is no ceiling. The middle class is not some static lumpen proletariat!
Now that is egalitarianism!
Quit whining and go make some money.
Quit whining and go make some money.
Spoken like someone who already has a silver spoon up their ….
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