US Bureaucrats Are 3rd World

I wonder whether Americans realize just how closely the United States is coming to resemble a country of the Third World, not just in its corruption and attributes of a police state, but in the incompetence of governmental bureaucracies. Federal agencies don’t work. They are rotted by affirmative action. The bureaucrats are inattentive, unaccountable,  anonymous, can’t be fired, and get paid whether they do their jobs or not. Congress is not interested.

A few examples, from my experience or that of people I know, mostly involving veterans, but typical.

Nightmare the First: Incompetence at State

A few weeks ago my wife and I, traveling in Colombia, managed to lose our passports, so we went to the US Embassy to get a replacement.  I see very poorly thanks to an ancient federal war to enrich the arms manufacturers and a bungling naval eye surgeon–the feds, to put it mildly, do not get the best people in any field. Consequently Violeta had to fill out the forms for me to apply for an emergency passport.

In three separate places, she printed my name: Frederick Venable Reed. Venable. V-E-N-A-B-L-E.  In my hearing, Vi spelled it out for the woman, letter by letter. And of course my passport records in the State Department’s data base spelled it correctly.To deal with the VA, a vet usually needs his military records. Good freaking luck. They do not exist in electronic form, but only as paper in boxes somewhere. When I needed mine recently I was told that they were in Pittsburgh, no, St. Louis, no, Austin, no, Portland. It took six months and I never would have gotten them without the help of a friend, an aggressive retired attorney and blown-up Explosive Ordnance Demolition guy out of Nam, who threatens litigation when vets are stonewalled.

Which brings us to an important point: A veteran on his own cannot deal with the government. Almost nobody can. The incompetence, stupidity, inattention, lack of incentive, ignorance of their own regulations, and so on make it impossible. For the price of one useless fighter plane VA records could be scanned and keyed to social-security numbers, thus making them available in ten seconds. The government just doesn’t care. If it did, it would scan.

A Comparison

Compare the foregoing with a company in the real world–Amazon, say. It has my fairly complex records instantly available, answers emails usually within a day, and its telephone staff, who answer quickly, actually want to solve problems,  and always do–courteously. If I order something, they calculate the Mexican tax, tell me when it will arrive, and it does.

Do you suppose that if Amazon’s employees threw away $25,000 of the company’s money through sheer stupidity and unconcern, they would long be Amazon’s employees? If the company ignored 60% of calls from customers, or if 95% of shipments failed to reach their destinations, do you suppose the company would survive? This is exactly the federal standard. Bush world.