The more that I see and hear about Clinton and the State Department handling of the Libya murders, the more sure I am that our government is all screwed up. This will be a rambling blog, but if you can add it all up, I am sure that you will come away with the same view that I have.
First, the gal who was interviewed by the House Committee and who resigned after the report came out. She must have know what was going to be in the report, so why didn't she resign sooner? I know, she did not think she would get caught. This is a hint into her honesty and commitment to us tax payers. When asked about her decision not to provide adequate security, she responded that it was the decision of the "group" that it was not needed. Oh, it was the "group" who made the decision. What we have here is a typical "manager" type who asked subordinates what they think we should do and then asks for a "show of hands" to determine her decision. What ever happened to people who know what they are doing? If the people who work under them are all smarter than the boss, why is this person the boss?
I asked one of my friends who is a management recruiter if he targets the civil servants who work for our government for key high paying private industry management jobs. You know what he said? No! Why not? Most of the people in the civil service jobs have "self selected" themselves to work for the government rather than the real tax paying jobs in the private sector. Those people are not like us, I can tell you that. A key point about the public sector is that if you ever get one of those jobs, it is almost impossible to ever get fired. In private industry, the original selection process is about 100 time more rigorous than for the public sector, and yet we make mistakes all the time in the private sector that can only be corrected by terminating a large number of the people who we hired. In most businesses, there are ups and downs and every time there is a "down" some of the "dead wood" is let go. This is just one way that private industry corrects its mistakes. Now when it comes to civil service or public employees, there is "no" affective corrective process, and you know what the results are.
Now back to Clinton. What is her record on real management? Zero. She was married to a man who was President and that put her ahead of the pack, not a record of management and good decision making. What was her track record on selection of new hires? What was her record on development of talent? What was her record on motivation? What was her record on correcting her employee selections by having to fire some people? I think she and most of our government workers have a zero record on these points and that is the problem. How about us voters who hired her with our vote? What is our record? How many of us never hired anyone, much less had to correct some of our errors by firing poor performers. We are not talking about hiring someone to mow the lawn. These are the people who determine the future of our country and the country that our children will have to live in and pay off the debit that we have run up. This is serious business and we need competent people helping us run this country. It is not a popularity contest, or isn't it? In a business, most of the employees are clearly better and more aligned with the objectives of the company than are people in our government. Those in government seem to be thinking about their own personal objectives rather than those of the country. Private workers may do the same thing, but they have a boss who will keep their tricks in check. Not so for public workers. They are gaming the system 100% of the time, where as, in the private sector they only do it about 25% of the time. That makes a big difference in the final results.
When I started college as a freshman in Engineering, all the kids in my freshman class who were in Engineering had met the entrance requirements. We were all, in affect, hired. We got the job of freshman Engineering students. Kind of like "getting on" with the government, but there was a big difference. What do you think that was? By the sophomore year, 50% of the kids were gone. Fired! Why were they fired when they met all the entrance requirements? Because the entrance requirements was not a 100% test of whether or not these kids could do the "work" required. The next year we lost another 15% until when it came to graduation, only about 25% of those who were originally hired got a promotion to "graduation". This example is just a simple way of looking at the big difference between business, technical colleges and public sector jobs. I can tell you another thing. In the college of education, it was just the other way around. There were more graduates than there were students in their freshman class. How could that happen? Easy. Rejects from more difficult majors switched to teaching. This same thing happens when people are rejected from private business, they go and get public sector jobs. It never happens the other way around.
I have many more examples, but I am going to wrap it up. I think that we need to go over the cliff so that we can start to fire some of the dead wood that is in everyone of our public sector areas. I think that we need to error on the side of cutting too many public sector jobs because we can always hire some (not the same ones back) and thus upgrade All the government is like the post office and if we keep doing what we are doing, the end of this country as we have known it is in sight. If you can defend what we have been doing in the public sector, I would like to hear it. We are going to have more Libya's. Is anyone listening?
