| Guest |
04-28-2012 05:27 PM |
Quote:
Posted by Guest
(Post 485430)
I had thought of putting this on as a Private Message at first.
I worked for 36 years with the Dept. of Veterans benefits and truly am put off by Richie's post. I did PM him about it, too.
The benefits provided are the profits. It is said that the VA benefits about50% of the citizens in the US. The VA is divided into 3 parts: The Veterans Health Administration, the Veterans Benefits Administration, and the National Cemetery System.
1. The health administration takes in all the VA hospitals and clinics nationwide. They care for veterans from the remaining WWII vets to the recent Afghanistan vets with the most modern techniques and well trained medical staff. I am sure l lots of the readers have used VA benefits at the VA hospitals or clinics either in Florida or wherever you came from.
2. The benefits administration takes in VA guaranteed home loans, educational benefits for veterans, their widows, and children, monthly pensions for disabled veterans as well as for their widows and children, insurance, and job training when needed. How many of us used VA benefits for college after we got out of the military or for buying our first home? I know I did. Does it work perfectly? Not all the time but improvements are constantly being made.
3. The cemetery system took over all the military cemeteries in the US back in the 1980's. With the exception of Arlington and a few others, all are under the care and administration of the VA. Any veteran is eligible for free burial at a national cemetery as well as their spouse. This is a growing administration as the WWII vets are dying at a rate of about 1,000 per day.
I was in the staffing part of HR for a lot of my career. I cannot estimate how many Vietnam-era veterans that I placed into a job or a career. Not all were success stories but many, many were. I am proud to say that I worked for the VA and that I was able to help veterans find a job when they needed it after they served their country.
Do not bash the federal government as a whole. Sure, there are areas of it that are not needed. Do not say that the federal government employee is sucking at the public trough. Most are hard workers and take their jobs seriously. I am sure some might point out federal workers who are slugs - but there are many of those in private industry. One of my co-workers claimed to have relatives "who were connected" and were phantom employees of the New York Post. Just had to show up on payday. Look at some of the "customer service representatives" we have all had to deal with before coming to The Villages. Slugs!
Anyhow, off my soapbox. This really does not need any replies but I was steamed at the posting about federal workers who get their salaries fort not being in jobs that have to show a profit. The profit is not in dollars but in the betterment or service to people.
Thanks for taking the time to read this rant. I do feel better now having written it. Richie is still my friend and I know his viewpoints, too.
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I would have left this alone as you seemed to want in your PM, but since you decided to go public, I guess I will also.
Benefits provided are “profits”? All benefits provided by the government was provided from money extracted from taxpayers and then divied up amongst “benficiaries”, after government employees skim their salary and perks off the top. How am I wrong?
I never said there weren’t government employees who do good work, but it’s also all strictly overhead. There is no product manfactured and sold, or no service provided for value, that translates into definable money earned. There is no value added to measure profit aquired by a government employee in relation to the work he does. That’s just a fact, and that’s all I’m referring to.
So what I’m saying is because of this, the work of government employees is not evaluated with the measure of producing profit as are their contemporaries in the market economy.
In the market economy if an employee is not pulling his weight or is a drag on profits instead of an asset, he is terminated. This does not happen in the public sector, and there’s no system to even measure such a scenario. If a government employee is deemed incompetent in his duties, or maybe just superfluous to the situation (Just for the sake of argument. We know this almost never happens) he will be transferred and most likely even promoted out of his department in order to maintain peace in his department. The salary and perks of said employee is never considered in this equation as it would in the private sector.
Public employees do no live in the real world of economics in terms of their employment. There is an entitlement atmosphere in the public sector that is wholly foreign to the world of the private sector employee.
You can regale us with all the good you’ve done in your many years of government service, and those of your contemporaries, and I would not argue even one of those points with you. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I’m saying here, though. |
