It must be great to work for the federal government.

The pay is outstanding – the CBO says wages and benefits for almost all federal workers are much higher than for the same jobs in the private sector.  Federal employees  get extra paid days off, like extra holidays, personal leave time, snow days, sick days, etc.  They get full pay for not working whenever the President chooses to shut the government down rather than live within a budget.  They can take early retirement from their federal jobs after 20 years if they are 50 years old.

Heck, while private sector managers work 45 – 55 hours per week, the upper-half of the federal food chain works only about half-time.  I have offered a standing challenge for many years (and done the exercise myself many times):  pick any manager-level federal employee, at random, from the government phone directory and call his or her office after 2:00 pm on Monday through Thursday, or after 12:00 pm on any Friday.  You will never, never, never reach that person.  Never.  Try it!

But the best thing of all about working for the federal government is: nobody ever gets fired.  Once you land a federal job, you will get your full paycheck, pay raises, ever-growing benefits, and bonuses for the rest of your life, no matter how poorly you perform.  Turnover is virtually non-existent.  Even the guy who was written up for farting at employees 61 times in 17 days was not reprimanded.

Jeff Neely, the GSA executive who helped put together the million-dollar conference in Las Vegas for his 300 hard-working office jockeys, is a rare exception – he actually got fired.  But he was reinstated eleven months later with full back pay.

My Congressman, Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), at one of his outstanding recent town hall meetings, told us, “The Veteran’s Administration has 330,000 employees and only about 500 have been fired in the last ten years.”  Meanwhile executives in the VA received bonuses based on fictitious reports about their pristine performance while soldiers died waiting for health care.  Director Eric Shinseki was powerless to fire anybody, and committed political hara-kiri by resigning.

Congressman Mulvaney told another stunning story about a meeting he had with an upper-level HUD executive.  He was grilling her about some problem in her agency, and she was having none of it.  “Don’t give me a hard time,” she said.  “I don’t make that much money and it doesn’t matter whether I do a good job or not.”   She had absolutely no fear of discipline from a United States Congressman.  Is that job security, or what?

And it’s not just the mid-level federal employees who are totally unaccountable.  When pressed for evidence that she knew would implicate her in a world-class corruption scandal, IRS director Lois Lerner made up a story about seven simultaneous hard-drive failures that ate her e-mails.  The odds of that happening are one in 79 billion.  Nobody has been held accountable.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is made of Teflon, too.  She never has recanted the lame excuse that terrorists murdered our Libyan ambassador and his brave defenders because they were upset about a Hollywood video.  One of the terrorists admitted planning and executing the Benghazi attack, but knew nothing about any video, and the CIA was listening in on terrorist phone activity during the attack, which never mentioned any video.   She still deflects questions about her failure to provide adequate protection after it was requested, saying “what does it matter?”   And nobody has even asked yet why the ambassador was in Benghazi in the first place.  Not only is she not accountable for the fiasco, Clinton is the current leader in the 2016 presidential race.

President Obama carries a long list of excuses for the many failures of his administration.  Most of them blame his predecessor.  The latest failure is the border crisis that resulted from his open invitation to illegal immigrant children to enter our country and enjoy the amenities.  When he finally did go to Texas to meet with Governor Perry, who is trying to deal with the situation, he spent most of his time shifting the blame.

I seldom agree with John Boehner any more, but I jumped up and cheered when, in utter exasperation with the Obama administration, he cried, “He’s been president for five and a half years.  When is he going to take responsibility for SOMETHING!”

But hey, it’s the government.  No one ever is to blame.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Doctor says you’re cured but you still feel the pain
Aspirations in the clouds but your hopes go down the drain
No one ever is to blame.

Howard Jones – No One Is to Blame

I want to thank all the many great songwriters and performers who inspire and enrich my blog topics.  This is one of the best “fits” – music to message – yet, I think!  Here’s a great live performance by Howard Jones, very much enjoyed by his audience.