Skip to main content

Bureaucrats

 


I am one of those nameless, faceless bureaucrats. Yes, that is my job. Though I actually have a name; I even am rumored to have a face. Bureau is the French word for desk, so you could say bureaucrats are “desk people.” In short, I work for the government. I sometimes have to deliver unpleasant news to a taxpayer. I sometimes have to tell them that the deed they recorded won’t work and they will have to record another one with corrections. Or we can’t process their deed until they pay their taxes. I can understand why some of these things upset people. The thing is, we don’t decide these things. It is not the bureaucrats that make the laws. The legislature writes the laws. We are required to follow the law.  If you are going to get mad at someone, get mad at the legislature. Or maybe get mad at the voters who voted the legislature in (That’s you, by the way).

The same thing happens when the voters vote in a new district, or vote for a bond, or a new operating levy for an existing city or water district, or fire district etc. When the measure is on the ballot it is explained that this is going to raise taxes, and it explains how much it is going to raise taxes. But that kind of gets lost in the recognized need that the fire district needs new engines. Or the school district needs a new high school building to replace the crumbling one. Then when it comes time to pay taxes, some people are mad that their taxes have gone up. It never goes over well to point out, “but, you voted for it.” If we were to say that the response would be, “no, I didn’t.”

Perhaps they didn’t vote for it, but a majority of their community neighbors did. Knowing what you know now, would you take it back? Would you let the fire department make do with a couple of trucks that they can no longer repair? Would you let the old bridge fall down? Let the water system shut down because they can no longer process enough with their old plant?

Things cost money. Part of the contract we have as a society is to mutually take care of society. It is only right that we all pay for schools, even if you personally don’t have any kids in school. You still benefit (all of society benefits) by having an educated workforce, an educated population. Otherwise where would all the doctors, inventors, and engineers come from?

Somebody has to implement all this stuff that makes a government function. That would be the bureaucrats. The Oxford English Dictionary defines Bureaucrat as: “An official in a government department, in particular one perceived as being concerned with procedural correctness at the expense of people's needs.” See, even the OED gives us no love.

Star Liner

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Child of the . . .

  What was it like to grow up as a child in the 90s? How about the 1940’s? Thinking about a child growing up in each different decade, conjures up images in my mind. But that is all they are: images. I was a child in the 1960’s. I can tell you what it felt like to be growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, but what it felt like to me is not what the history books remember. History will tell you the 60’s was about the Viet Nam War, civil rights, and the space race. The 70’s was Disco and Watergate. I remember being aware of all of those things, but to me this era was about finding time to play with my friends, something I probably share with a child of any decade. It was about navigating the social intricacies of school.   It was about the Beatles, Three Dog Night, The Moody Blues, The Animals, Jefferson Airplane. It was Bullwinkle, the Wonderful World of Color, and Ed Sullivan. There are things that a kid pays attention to that the grown-ups don’t. Then there are things the adults ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Telephonicus domesticus

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone from 1877 bears about as much similarity to the modern smart phone as an abacus bears to a PC or Mac. There are just about as many leaps in technology in both cases. It’s funny how a major jump in technology happens (like the actual invention of the phone). Then there are some refinements over a few years or decades until it gets to a useful stable form. Then it stays virtually the same for many years with only minor innovations. The telephone was virtually unchanged from sometime before I was born until I was about forty. Push-buttons were replacing the rotary dial, but that was about it. (Isn’t it interesting though that when we call someone, we still call it “dialing?” I have never seen a dial on a cell phone.) Cell phones were introduced and (once they became cheap enough) they changed the way we phone each other. New advancements followed soon after, texting and then smart phones. Personal computers were also becoming commonplace and wer...
Post a Comment
Read more