Big government: Pat, Mary and Stan

Listening to that smarmy Bobby Jindal give that sniveling speech the other night after Obama's address, I thought of the man who I always think of when I hear about the evils of big government.

My friend Pat McGuire, who is treasurer of Will County (or as we call it in Chicago, Jolietera, etcetera).

Today he forwarded me an e-mail about a St. Patrick's Day parade that's coming up. The e-mail included his offhand mention to the organizer:

Work is an avalanche. Yesterday's best-laid plans were upset by a senior citizen with an annual income below $19,000 mentioning suicide because her unwise reverse mortgage, credit card debt, and $4,000 of property taxes have her distraught. It's striking how the grayness of bureaucratic work is sometimes sharply pierced by an unforgettable human being.

I wrote him to say I wouldn't be attending the parade—doesn't he know I play football with women on Saturdays?—and to ask what happened to the poor woman:

Brought her into my office. Got her a cup of tea. Called a community service agency in her area with which we've had success. I put her on the phone with the director, and he arranged for her to come in to meet with a financial counselor. We (Mary, one of my staffers) then emphasized that she should get back in touch with us if the community service agency doesn't help her resolve her problem. She was still a little shaky when she left, but her praise of us was sincere.

I felt halfway decent about the above, but the un-decent half had me rattled. I realized at four in the morning why: that woman turned on my messiah gene when she should have turned on my manager gene. That is, Stan Rutherford, who is my staffer who specializes in guiding taxpayers to financial counseling. I should have had Mary bring the woman to Stan, not to me.

A ain't sayin' Pat's a saint and neither is Pat.

But when Bobby Jindal talks about scaling back the government in times like these, it's Mary and Stan he's talking about, and that suicidal senior citizen.

Comments

[Kristen]

There has to be a balance between administering the "big picture" which ultimately goverment officials ARE responsible for, and realizing the "for real" impacts of decisions made in furtherance of that big picture on individual humans.

That caution applies equally when you are communicating to employees, so I thought this was a good "two birds with one stone" post David.

These head honcho-types really need some mechanism to force them to stay in touch with the real impacts of their big picture decisions on actual people.

Perhaps if they were forced to sit in a room with those affected by their sweeping decisions and listen to how they will affect people (kind of like letting the victim's family speak at sentencing hearings) they might retain more of their humanity, and be more diligent in finding solutions that don't blithely and casually destroy people's lives - something which Jindal clearly could take a lesson from!

Heck, even the Republican pundits basically slammed his "whiny" and "childish" speech, and that's saying something.

[David Murray]

Good points, Kristen.

Here's an interesting take on Bobby the Bedwetter, from an actor:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-fine/what-caused-bobby-jindals_b_170179.html