Bureaucracy ALWAYS Comes First.

by
Skip

Even in LA right now, where over 10,000 structures have burnt to the ground, rendering people destitute because those former homeowners couldn’t afford the premiums – thanks to the State and its policies on insurance. The Biblical admonition of “Ashes to ashes” has a new meaning for those poor souls.

Two Bloglines have arisen from this terrifying example of Government incompetence over so many years and proving, once again, that a decades-long one-party majority state (in this case, Democrats completely running California) should be considered anathema to society at large and to public safety.

First, the Fire Department version of the Washington Monument Syndrome:

If you are unfamiliar with WMS, even as I have written about it being used before, here’s a refresher (reformatted, emphasis mine):

The Washington Monument syndrome,[1] also known as the Mount Rushmore syndrome[2] or the firemen first principle,[3][4] is a term used to describe the phenomenon of government agencies in the United States cutting the most visible or appreciated service [to the public] provided by the government when faced with budget cuts.

It has been used in reference to cuts in popular services such as national parks and libraries[2] or to valued public employees such as teachers and firefighters,[3] with the Washington Monument and Mount Rushmore being two of the most visible landmarks maintained by the National Park Service.[1] This is done to put pressure on the public and lawmakers to rescind budget cuts. The term can also refer to claims by lawmakers that a proposed budget cut would hinder “essential” government services (firefighters, police, education, etc.).

Remember, one of the first things to be closed to the public during a Federal Govt shutdown is the Washington Monument – something that will affect school kids and families that may be making a once-in-a-lifetime visit to their nation’s capital.

And, as pointed out, the “Fireman First” principle is an offshoot of MWS. In this case, communist (really! self-avowed!) LA Mayor Bass cut a whole 2% of the firemen budget, with Mickey Kaus pointing out why it hurts:

$17.6 million doesn’t seem a huge cut ( $837 million remained). Surely there’s that much flab. But a second prong of the Fireman First principle, IIRC, is that the people at the bottom who do the real work (not the people at HQ) are the ones who’ll actually get cut if it comes to that.

And not the “people at HQ”. It is always the directly people/consumer-facing folks that will get nailed, not those miserables at the top that will get shafted. Thus, the first Blogline of the Day arises from a comment to the above:

The first constituency of any bureaucracy is the bureaucracy.

Except in the smallest of smallest bureaucracies in small towns, this exists. However, try to cut a school budget in that small town (and we are seeing just that here in NH as skyrocketing educational budgets are being examined by serious citizens, but the “Schoolies” will protect their turf at any cost to anyone else.

I find it highly amusing, though, that any significant cuts to a Department of Public Works budget, including that concerning road maintenance,e especially here in the snow & ice Northeast, will fly by with nary a second glance even as it is the most important department, IMHO, in town. Smart people will understand why this is “a bad idea.”

And that rolls into the second Blogline of the Day. From the great Professor Thomas Sowell:

“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.”

Process over result. There’s another aphorism that describes this, in part: “Entrepreneurs do the right things; bureaucrats do things right”. I hope you see the huge difference between those two mind sets and, again, we see “the process” take precedence over doing the right thing (reformatted, emphasis mine:

Oregon sending crews to help battle Los Angeles-area wildfires

A total of 300 Oregon firefighters and 75 engines are being sent to help protect communities threatened by the Southern California wildfires…Oregon is sending a total of 300 firefighters and 75 engines to help protect California communities threatened by the fire. Oregon State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple said the crews come from Clackamas, Clatsop, Lane, Lincoln, Linn, Polk, Marion, Multnomah, Washington, and Yamhill counties, as well as from Central Oregon and the Rogue Valley.

In Lane County, 19 firefighters across several agencies are heading south to help with fire suppression.

So one would think that as soon as these desperately needed resources hit CA, they’d be waved right through to the fire lines, right? Remember “process over results”. Or in this case, needs. From talk show host Lars Larsen (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Those 60 engines sent yesterday to the Cali fires are not on the fire lines…yet. They’ve been ordered to submit to a DOT inspection in Sacramento that’s scheduled for 4:30 pm today.

If they clear the inspection, they’ll THEN be able to drive 400 miles to Pacific Palisades. Talk about “looking a gift horse in the mouth.”

Then, on the way home, they get inspected again, and if they get red tagged, it’s “fix it before you can return.”

Does liberal stupidity know no bounds?

Process must be served. This is CLASSIC example of what the two DOGE Boys, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, will be doing at the Federal level – finding stupid stuff like this and streamlining it away. A CLASSIC example where bureaucracy can’t see the Bigger Picture Than Themselves, do the right thing and just wave those firemen through. After all, LA sent 60 engines to Ukraine in a senseless pique of virtue-signaling when the people of LA need those resources NOW.

In this case “doing things right” is the absolute wrong thing – it’s not inspecting those vehicles. The right thing would be to give them a police escort to where they need to be!

But as pointed out in the first Blogline, the bureaucracy must serve itself first – even at the expense of other bureaucracies

Sigh…

Author

  • Skip

    Co-founder of GraniteGrok, my concern is around Individual Liberty and Freedom and how the Government is taking that away. As an evangelical Christian and Conservative with small "L" libertarian leanings, my fight is with Progressives forcing a collectivized, secular humanistic future upon us. As a TEA Party activist, citizen journalist, and pundit!, my goal is to use the New Media to advance the radical notions of America's Founders back into our culture.

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