[quote briansd1]
I do believe that we need to elect leaders who believe that the government works and does positive things for people.
If we elect leaders who believe that government does not work, then they will make sure that it doesn’t work.
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What I have been seeing too much is not that people are being elected who don’t think government works, but people being elected who really don’t care what the electorate wants. They are there to push their personal agenda – or for the freebies. These people will claim that they care, but their behavior changes once in office. The become ensconced and hard to remove.
[quote briansd1]
The financial crisis, BP spill, and ecol i outbreaks happened because regulators where not regulating out of ideology. The government agencies were there, but the regulators did not do their jobs.
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I think it was not ideological, it was more a combination of lazyness and not rocking the boat. Much like how 9/11 occurred – where FBI agents on the ground were reporting that people of Arab nationality were taking flying classes and they didn’t seem to be that interested in learning how to land. The field agents reported it up the chain, and the top said that it wasn’t a problem. The only conspiracy I saw was one of sloth and laziness. Normally, if a division of a company performed in this manner, it would be liquidated, eliminated or the CEO would assign someone new to run it – putting the former head out to pasture. Unfortunately with government structures, it seems to be a little harder to do that (political reasons?). The heads of FBI/CIA should have been put out to pasture as a result of 9/11 – or they should have taken the Japanese way out. If I was in their shoes, I would have been very embarassed(putting it mildly). Instead, these same people were given more authority, and we lose some more rights.
Part of the reason why San Diego is playing around with the ‘strong Mayor’ structure, is to see it the Mayor could reach through the bureaucracy to clean things up. As to whether he has the political will.. ummm…
In terms of gov. accounting, I would love to see it change so that if there is a surplus in a division, it gets to carry over to the next year (normally allocated budget + surplus from last year). The max surplus a division can carry over might be a negotiated point (need to find a way to structure it to prevent gaming the system). The only problem I see it the bureaucrat and politicians attraction to anything that might have money in it (they seem to be parasitic in nature)
