Wow, Government is so good at what they do!!!

[Buckrub]

Why do we keep dreaming up 'programs' that cost more taxes and do worse than nothing, and then make fun of anyone who joins a group trying to stop taxes from rising???

http://money.msn.com/investing/post--feds-blow-dollar100-billion-a-year-on-incorrect-payments

[BarryBobPosthole]

I wonder, how does one get on the government's accounts payable list?

BKB

[LJ3]

It's called 8A status.

[BarryBobPosthole]

We could provide some sort of consulting service surely. We might get lucky and they slip us a billion by mistake.

Speaking of, isn't there any legal requirement to raise your hand and say 'Ahem, dumbass! You overpaid me!' wouldn't it be fraud to cash the check?

BKB

[Thumper]

When I had my company, I was called and went in to give an estimate on some work on a government job. I checked it out and quoted $1800. The head honcho asked if I'd take $2200. Huh? He told me they already had $2200.00 allocated for the job and it was too much paperwork to try to return it. They paid me $2200! :D

[Buckrub]

I worked for STATE government, which has its own quirks. Jim, that's an example of budgeting across the board. It's how it works. There is not one state government agency or program that EVER shrank or went away. We were Bicarmal, and had to budget our Agency for 2 years. The process took almost a year to prepare. It's what you did 1/2 of the time, in other words. Those that weren't part of the process just sat around and worked every other year (and about 1/10 of the time, then).

It works like this. You have X budget per year for this year and next. That money is A) Budgeted and B) Appropriated. Money has to be BOTH to be there and to be spent.

But once it's budgeted and appropriated, it better be spent. To end up with a surplus made you look bad, got you called on the carpet for being 'incompetent' and can't even figure out what you need! So you spent every dollar and acted all poor-mouthed about how much more you needed.

It is not just for office equipment or cars or capital expenditures. It is for additional personnel, more positions. Each position has to have a job description (I could write them in my sleep), a pay slot/grade, justification for it all. Easy peasy. We were IT/Telecom in state government, no one knew what we did anyway. We made up b/s jobs. They were filled with idiots who sat in private offices and did nothing but talk on the phone and surf the internet all day. I mean Grade 4's and Grade 5's, NOT Grade 20's or 25's. Just menial task people who had no ambition and did nothing. They justified us having more positions, more desks, more office stuff, and the biggest office full of people justified a bigger muckety heading it up.

Then when this 2 years is up, you get X (that's a given, it's assumed that since you had it before, you need at LEAST that now), and then you have to go sit in front of the Legislative Budget Committee to justify your additional budget. They always gave you 1/2 of what you asked for, so you asked for the moon, and got half of it. The Budget Committee (and the entire Legislature) is made up of Bubba Jones, who has an office in Scalding Springs selling "insurance and real estate"......an office from which he has no problem being gone for his entire term in the state Legislature. When he goes home, he spends his days in the coffee shop anyway.

The above is an exact representation of how the system works, is not a fabrication in any way, is a first hand report of same, and is happily paid for by the people you see driving down the street at this moment.

And it will never, ever change.

[Buckrub]

And we are a good example of this, right here. We notice/post such atrocities, and we laugh about it (me too) and snicker, but we don't do anything to stop it. We accept it. We don't expect the government to give us any true service. We expect idiocy and waste. It's a given. It is a symbiotic and intertwined system that is inviolable. And anyone who attempts to stop it is seen as "Shutting Down The Government"..........with the operative word being "The Government", defined as the system above (works same way for feds as it does states). We call them names and make fun of them. They're radicals. They need to go sit down and let "The Government" do its 'work'.

and I'll even be seen as a crackpot for wanting it slowed down and stopped.

Sad stuff, IMHO.