The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze.
Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.
In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom.
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
The Government are very keen on amassing statistics; they collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But what you must never forget is that every one of those figures comes in the first instance from the village watchman, who just puts down what he damn pleases.
My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
the Vice Presidency, under George Washington
Our earliest evidence of government, in the ruins of Babylon and Egypt, shows nothing but ziggurats and pyramids of wasted taxpayer money, the TARP funds and shovel-ready stimulus programs of their day.
To safeguard the people's money what we call red tape is tied around all government activity until the really efficient honest public servant has a somewhat difficult time, but we are still laboring under the theory that the majority of the world is dishonest.
In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.[Pournelle's law of Bureaucracy]
When I was director of the CIA, I knew that we had been - and I'm choosing my words very carefully here - effective in our expansion. We really had - expansion of government agencies and expansion of use of contractors. Effective, we were; efficient, we weren't. And so, as director of the CIA, I went after the inefficiencies part.
The CIA is an incompetent bureaucracy, generally.
Everything government touches turns to crap.
It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.
The constant need for special waivers is symptomatic of poorly written public policy. It's a signal that the cost of compliance is unreasonably high; the benefits are hard to measure; and either legislators or regulators have failed to do their homework.
'Duty' is a refreshingly honest memoir and a moving one. Mr. Gates scrupulously identifies his flaws and mistakes: He waited too long, for example, for the military bureaucracy to fix critical supply issues like the drones needed in Iraq and took three years to replace a dysfunctional command structure in Afghanistan.
If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates.
The bureaucracy is what we all suffer from..
Our government has become incompetent, unresponsive, corrupt. And that incompetence, ineptitude, lack of accountability is now dangerous.
Some civil servants are neither servants nor civil.
Some faces may change in the top-heavy, bloated bureaucracy of Washington and all the state governments, but the bureaucracy will remain intact.
The Grammar Curmudgeon
The first EDSer to see a snake kills it. At GM, first thing you do is organize a committee on snakes. Then you bring in a consultant who knows a lot about snakes. Third thing you do is talk about it for a year.
The government is so out of control. It is so bloated and infested with fraud and deceit and corruption and abuse of power.
