Good Government: Contested Terrain
By Michael Boyajian
Paul Krugman in a recent New York Times column states that we need politicians who believe in good government because there are some jobs only government can do. Of course he is talking about the Gulf oil spill and preventative measures that could have been taken.
Unfortunately, it has been my experience in government that prior to the election of President Obama those who did not believe in government would do everything in their power to see that government failed.
We saw this in the Bush Administration with its response to Katrina. It was not just incompetence that resulted in the near death of a major American city, but a systematic dismantling of good government policies and infrastructure. The prime objective during the Bush years was to act as a lap dog to the corporate world while everyone looted the national treasure.
But it does not end with the federal government. It also shows in the government of New York State prior to Governor Spitzer taking office where government offices were moved away from the constituents they served and phones were left with automated voice mail lacking human interaction. Why some agencies had no public telephone number. This left the public to wonder how their problems were going to be solved.
Now my old agency defied this bad government model and we had real people answering the phones and doing the public’s business. Still there were some workers there running some sort of shadow operation where they would be doing personal business that required locked file drawers and huge paper shredders as if we were the American Embassy in Iran in the 1970s needing to shred top secret papers instantly.
Now everything we did at this agency was open to the public so there was no need for locked drawers or a huge paper shredder but still they existed.
In the past anyone trying to reach Unemployment found it nearly impossible to talk to a live person. So no matter what your concern you would file for unemployment and later you would be found at hearing to have taken money that must now be returned because you made a mistake due to a lack of direction.
So that is the story. It is an everlasting battle for contested terrain between good government forces and bad government practitioners with no clear winner just cycles of change.
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