Reply to DOGE staff admits government was actually well run and not that inefficient

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]After years of right wing smears and attacks on federal government "the bloated bureaucracy" and "the administrative state" and demonization and slander of federal employees "lazy unelected bureaucrats collecting cushy paychecks" and all that - the Silicon Valley DOGE folks are getting a reality check.

[i]“Upon arriving at the massive department that currently employs nearly 500,000 people, Lavignia was met not with bored bureaucrats lazily collecting cushy government paychecks, but with mission-driven workers who "love their jobs."

"In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [the agency's buyout offers], then we wouldn’t have to do much more," the tech founder said. "We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening."

Unsurprisingly, Lavignia found that things work a lot differently in the halls of government agencies than they do in Silicon Valley. "I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions," he remarked. "But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins."[/i]

https://futurism.com/doge-operative-surprise

The majority of federal employees are there because they care about the mission and care about their country.  A much larger percentage of federal employees are military veterans than you will find in the private sector.  Is there the occasional instance of a federal employee who is lazy, abusing the system, wasteful?   Yes.  But they are rare and they are usually dealt with and gotten rid of, and meanwhile there are also plenty of lazy, wasteful employees also in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the private sector.  But what is far rarer in the private sector is that genuine care about the agency mission.  I'm glad this DOGE staffer admitted reality.  This administration and the Republicans as a whole need to embrace a lot more honesty and integrity like that, rather than fabricating one divisive strawman after another, rather than attacking valuable and important institutions and agencies.

[/quote]

You are kind of playing into the stereotype.  The quoted language you highlighted from the DOGE staffer does not match your thread title.

As an aside, I actually think it is a major problem that civilian government bureaucrats love their job and are mission driven. Civil servants should be dispassionate professionals.  That’s why they are supposed to be insulated from the political process.  They should exert their authority without passion or prejudice. Much harder to do when your self-actualization and/or moral meaning are tied up together with the job.

I think a really good reform to the civilian government workforce would be to put in time limits for service. Something like a maximum of twenty years of service or something like that.  [/quote]

You’re saying it’s a problem if someone loves their job and wants to do it well? It’s a big leap to assume that means they’re seeking self actualisation or moral meaning through their job. Really??? I know people who love their jobs but they’re not going to lay their lives down for them.[/quote]

No, I’m saying it is a problem if civilian bureaucrats who are supposed to be insulated from the political process are passionate and mission driven.  I don’t believe they can separate their personal biases from the professional demands of the job.

I’ve dealt with enough of them directly at the highest levels of their agencies to reach my own conclusions. And while the agencies I interface with are slightly lower profile, there are enough high profile examples to bear this out. [/quote]

There is no reason to equate being passionate and mission-driven with partisan or impartial whatsoever. You can refer to nebulous examples you have encountered but that still does not support you broad baseless conclusion. It is wild to suggest passionate mission-driven feds are a “problem” or that institutional knowledge is bad. You can have institutional knowledge AND fresh ideas from newer employees - those are not mutually exclusive.

To the contrary I’d say dispassionate, dissociated cogs that rotate sounds like a terrible way to run a government that is dynamic, responsive, or productive.[/quote]

An FBI lawyer falsified evidence in order to secure a FISA court warrant on a target.

FBI agents were texting each other that they would not allow a major political candidate to become president.   What the hell does that even mean?

An FBI Director(!!!!) was leaking to the press.

Bureaucrats who disagreed with Trump’s Covid response openly admitting to delaying and failing to implement Trump’s directives.

SDNY AUSAs are very publicly resigning implying ethical improprieties over what amounts to policy disagreements when the AG is engaging in clearly permissible behavior that was eventually permitted by the Court (with modification).

Do you need more examples of a serious f-ing problem that we have right now? [/quote]

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