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The Gargantuan Task Ahead

Twice in my life, I’ve briefly worked for the government. The first time was a part-time job in Internal Audit at a state university (UW-Whitewater). My main duty was doing the monthly bank reconciliations, verifying thousands of checks. When I started, there was a thick book of procedures I was expected to follow. Not only did it make the task so much more complicated than it needed to be, it still used archaic steps that including summing columns of checks with adding machines and stapling tapes to handwritten lists. I took it upon myself to modernize the process using Excel and some fancy macros. It allowed me to complete the bank rec in a quarter of the time, with far less potential for error due to the elimination of manual steps. After several months of using the new process, my boss started to wonder why I had so much time to help in other areas. Instead of an attaboy, I got yelled at for not following proper procedures, and she ordered me to use the old process. I ignored her since I don’t follow stupid-ass commands, but it didn’t matter, as I left the role soon after.

In addition to the inefficiency, the other thing that struck me about the bank rec job was the massive uptick in checks every June. This made no sense to me since it was the month of the year with the least staff, students, and university activity. However, the fiscal year ended June 30th, so every department frantically spent whatever dollars it had left in its budget, buying sticky notes, computers, color printers, and whatever else they could think of. Departments were not only concerned with spending the remaining “free money” in their budgets, they wanted to ensure their budgets stayed at least as much in future years.

The 2nd job I had was a consulting gig with the State of Wisconsin. I was part of a team building a new regulatory system. As a fresh college grad, I was given the shit job of re-programming hundreds of reports for the new system. I talked to some of the report users, and they described how they would regularly print huge reports, sometimes hundreds of pages. Then, they’d review a few numbers on the last page and toss the thick stacks in a graveyard storage room of past reports. An obvious, common sense solution said why not just produce a new report with just the necessary numbers? Or even better, allow the users themselves to search and customize exactly what information they wanted? So, I created a type of query wizard (call it A.I.) that allowed users to do just that. What was the boss’s reaction? Fury, of course. I was called lazy with complaints sent to my contracting firm. As you might have guessed, the users loved it, and they ceased using all the old reports to the point that the part of the project to re-create the hundreds of reports was scrapped.

Inefficiency wasn’t the only reason I looked for new solutions, though. Since I was low man on the totem pole, I was given the worst computer. In addition to being woefully inadequate in memory and processor speed, for security reasons, I had to download the entire Windows operating system with every reboot, meaning it took 15 minutes to boot my machine. Windows was far less stable back then, especially with inadequate resources, so the machine crashed at least 5 times per day. So, not only did I have to wait out each of those reboots, I had to restart all my apps and figure out where I was at in my work. At least a quarter of every day was lost to this kind of bullshit. But that’s not the worst of it. I remember walking by an office on the same floor filled with stacks of brand new, unopened, state-of-the-art computers. When I asked about them, I was told they belonged to a different department that received federal funding, and you guessed it, they had to use up their fiscal year budget. There were more new computers in that room than people working on the floor, so I’m guessing they never did get used. And no, I never was allowed to use one since it was a different department.

I mention these stories because cutting government spending goes WAAAAAAY beyond just finding fraud and useless projects. The whole budgetary sytem incentivizes spending every cent available, no matter how wasteful. There’s no reward for efficiency, and government workers cling to outdated methods as part of their cover-their-ass mentalities. I was a wide-eyed college student/grad when I worked these jobs, so I hadn’t fallen into the jaded mindset of the government bureaucrat. I’m sure many long-term employees started out being outstanding workers, but a system that doesn’t reward good performance and never punishes poor performance creates a type of bored cynicism. You can see it in their eyes whenever you meet up with a public-facing agency such as the DMV. They just want to work the minimum hours, then get to their weekends and 40 annual paid days off.

Maybe it’s time to think outside the box in redesiging everything about government agencies, or even better, eliminate them altogether. Take another lesson from business: do the benefits outweigh the costs? If not, then don’t spend the money. Can you think of ANY part of government where benefits exceed the costs? 🤔

Blog Link: https://educationdojo.com/study-break/2025/02/02-12-education-dojo-daily/#random_thoughts

ConSTiTuTional CrISis 🙄

MSM and leftist politicians didn’t say a peep about a “Constitutional Crisis” after their selected puppet set the presidential record for unconstitutional executive orders, starting with Covid actions that destroyed businesses, crushed free speech, devastated the education system, and cost who knows how many lives. Nor was it a problem when Biden’s orders pounded the U.S. energy industry, ground supply lines to a standstill, and attacked every kind of border enforcement. His DOJ went after political enemies and targeted local governments enforcing border laws and citizenship proof for voting. Even when the Supreme Court told him point blank that his student loan cancellations were unconstitutional, he ignored the decision and bragged about it. Note: this was a court decision that even liberals Jackson and Sotomayor joined!

So, to all the leftists screaming about constitutionality now that Trump has a staff cutting waste & fraud from the Executive Branch, I cannot say emphatically enough, GFY!!!!!!

Blog Link: https://educationdojo.com/study-break/2025/02/02-12-education-dojo-daily/#constitutional_crisis

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