Do you have sticky notes on your monitor? Post-It© notes? Of course you do. Here’s a good one for you. Write it on a Post-It and place it on the edge of your screen so you can see it all day. If you work for the federal government, get it tattooed on your forehead.
Insufficient Resources <> Inefficient Use of Resources
I heard for the umpteenth time this morning a representative of my government using the phrase “insufficient resources” to explain why his department was incompetent. In this instance it was the head of INS and he was telling dear NPR listeners that his IT department wasn’t capable of handling the new stresses of post-September 11 security because of “insufficient resources”.
Ahem.
A-f’ing-hem.
Sir. Your department’s incompetence and poor customer service since September 11, 2001 has abso-f’ing-lutely nothing to do with “insufficient resources”. Your department, like so many others in the federal government, is plagued by inefficient utilization of resources. This is not even remotely the same as “insufficient resources”.
What is the budget of the INS? Let’s just pick a number, shall we? Say it’s one tiny little million dollars. I’m going to postulate that the INS has a budget in the many, many millions of dollars. I wouldn’t be surprised even a smidge if the INS had a billion dollar budget. (I could be wrong. It happens often. But in this instance it doesn’t matter.) I could get three pals of mine and a few bloggers I know (and maybe Linda Ronstadt, just because I love her voice) and pay a few hundred data-entry clerks to completely overhaul the INS computer systems for a million dollars. Hell. Most of that would probably have to go to Linda.
So don’t tell me that you have “insufficient resources”. Your resources are legion. You have a ridiculous overabundance of resources. This is the U.S. f’ing A, for crying out loud.
</end rant>