If one example is good, let’s add another!

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified."

-President Barack Obama, inauguration, 1/20/09

In the same vein of my previous post of Government using taxpayer money to bribe Government employees to return Government office equipment, John Stossel reports on another case of Government not doing the right thing (emphasis mine):

The ruling class blithely assumes that government can fix America’s problems. They say they will “solve” global warming, spend away the recession, educate the kids, reduce foreclosures, take over health insurance, student lending, etc.

But government repeatedly fails in its most basic tasks. The Miami Herald reports that child abuse hot-line workers now ignore thousands of abuse calls:

A Broward sheriff’s deputy calls the Florida child-abuse hot line to report that a 4-year-old had been molested by a babysitter as the sitter’s boyfriend videotaped the assault. A hot-line counselor declines to forward the report to an investigator…

A school guidance counselor reports a mother who had repeatedly missed doctor’s appointments for her daughter, whose sickle-cell disease is so severe she is losing her hearing and needs a new liver. The report is rejected…

A father is attempting to break into his estranged wife’s home. He says he will kill his children. That call, too, is not accepted.

Why would bureaucrats reject such calls?

(T)o reduce workload — and the system-wide stress that high case loads generate.

Oh that. I knew there must be a good reason.