An ode to government incompetence

The New York Times (h/T James Lileks) has an ominous-sounding story (registration required?) about how now only a minority of adult women are now living in marriage. One little problem, though; the Census Bureau, which conducted the study, counted all women over the age of 15 . No, Robert Byrd didn't succeed in moving the Bureau to West Virginia! Just a colossal, money-wasting goof that should have been caught by any employee who saw the study--including the janitor, of course.

Not the only case, sadly. Got a crime problem in Minneapolis? Why not build a new library and put grass on the roof of City Hall? Too many poor people? Let's pay young women to have children out of wedlock. Even better, let's fail to enforce immigration laws and let prevailing wage rates fall to plunge millions of workers into poverty--and then pay for welfare programs to make up the difference between their wages and their needs. The taxpayers won't miss that half trillion dollars! (annually)

Got a terrorism problem? No, don't expel illegal immigrants from the countries that attacked us, silly. Instead, create a monstrous bureaucracy costing tens of billions of dollars, but let's not use any of that money to, say, teach anyone how to translate Arabic. The last I heard, the FBI had only 34 people who were competent in that language.

The ugly reality here is that the main path to promotion in government is not to competently perform one's duty on time and under budget. It is simply to manage an ever-larger bureaucracy, no matter what the consequences.

The 10th Amendment never looks more beautiful than when it's compared to the results of modern bureaucracy.