Phill, you paint with a damnably broad brush. ”

I may use a broad brush, but the wall is even broader and one brush strock will not cover a whole wall.

Pivoting—
Only 17% of the Federal Government is actually ‘closed.’

The experience of a close relative is somewhat different. In his area (Department of Labor), many don’t do a good job, and promotions are awarded for political reasons (i.e., given to Lefties).

commodude: Your experience in government differs significantly from mine at the FAA during the 1970s. My impression then, looking at all my co-workers, was that most government workers were either lazy, incompetent, empire building, or unfocused on their work. One disappeared for the last year before retirement, using his sick leave with a fake illness. Both of my superiors did nothing, sloughing off all the work on me because they saw I would do it. Except for the engineering departments, almost everyone I dealt with seemed mostly proud about how little work they did.

They were also a second generation of workers, very different from the first generation in the 1950s who had built this agency and most of the country’s large airports during the big expansion of commercial air travel. In reviewing the entire files of my office while working there I found that the previous generation had been made up of a tiny handful of people much more dedicated in getting the job done. The change illustrated the typical evolution of a government office.

As always, any generalization carries with it some falsehood. Nonetheless, I think this generalization for most of today’s government workers applies. God knows I have certainly been reporting on the failures of our federal government to get anything accomplished properly, repeatedly, for quite a long enough.

While empire building and other fun endeavors are symptomatic of the bureaucracy, the bulk of government employees just want to come in, do a good job, earn a paycheck, and go home.

While you can find many news stories stating otherwise, they are, in fact, the outliers, and given the size and scope of the government, in any mass of personnel that large you’re going to find bad apples.

Government employees have for too long drifted along without actually doing much for far too long. They have grown fat and are no longer employable in the real world. Been there: Seen that first hand. Far too long they have tried to take control of free enterprise.