Federal Levees along the Missouri River...

I just saw something that would be funny if not so pathetic on the local CBS news in Kansas City.

They ran a story about the federal levees that are along the Missouri river system to prevent flooding. There were two representatives from the Army Corps of Engineers assuring everyone that the levees would hold during the current cresting of the Missouri river.

10 minutes later, they had their news chopper in the air cruising outside of Missouri City, MO. The reporter in the helicopter pointed out a federal levee that had breached and water was pouring from the river into the surrounding farmland. His voice was full of sarcasm as he pronounced the words Federal levee.

Is anyone competent any longer?

I've been working a contract for the past several months, my first public sector contract. The level of incompetence there is astounding. They have to bring in contractors, because they have no talent in house. The government, at this point, has evolved into nothing more than a tax-payer-funded social club, where people can have a steady paycheck w/o having to do much of anything at all.

It's pathetic, and it will (IMO) be the lynch pin in the decline of Empire 'Murika.

...arch-conservatives have been using that exact same point to foment fear and hatred for years. They state it as the basic reason for dismantling the federal programs that make our lives better.

I'm not saying you're in their corner, but please tell me what is it about your position that differentiates you from them? Is it your recommended solutions?

The government is chock full of inept, lazy bureaucrats.

That's a fact...Don't act surprised.

It seems silly.

I'm not saying you're in the wingnut corner, but what is it about the way you deny the obvious and attack the messenger in an personal, uninformed manner to avoid arguing the facts that differentiates you from them?

Just asking.

:hi:

...I'm genuinely curious where they draw the distinction. I thought I was giving the poster the benefit of the doubt and trying to be respectful in seeking clarification.

By the way, the private sector has its share of ineptitude and laziness as well.

Well, for starters, I use my brain to the best of my ability, and I can spell at a collegiate level.

I cherish both fact and fiction, but require that fiction be identified for what it is: a fairy tale, of sorts. Where my news intake is concerned, I'm looking only for facts. Further, I use those facts to draw my own conclusions.

I don't watch FAUX news. In fact, DU provides the vast majority of that content, though not solely. Google news crawler would be number two, with Common Dreams being third, and so on.

I think chimpenfurher is a loathsome narcissist of the worst degree.

Do I need to go on?

As for my ideas, well, I've got lots of those. I don't think government work should be a 'cush' job. It should be community service, something akin to the Peace Corps. It should be something that people do because they're part of the community. Jury duty is another good example. No one likes jury duty, because, well, it sucks. I think it should be the same way for government work. Everyone should pitch in, including the private sector. We need a government to provide for the common need: roads, utilities, schools, hospitals and so on. We don't need government invading our private lives, which appears to be the primary motivator behind our government today. Well, that the and World Domination thing. In any case, I don't think that the legislation of morality has any place whatsoever in government. Zip. Zilch. Nada. I believe morality should be left up to the community, and even then should not be in the form of laws but mores. I'm just old fashioned that way. :-)

And I believe we could have a top-notch, world-class Health and Human Services system that would provide people with assistance when they needed it (but would do so in a manner that maintained human dignity, something sorely lacking in our current system), would provide quality education based on real facts and that encouraged children to think for themselves (again, something absent in our current system), and would provide quality health care to those who needed it without destroying their lives with the aftermath in the form of medical bills.

I think we could do all this and not raise taxes if we could rid ourselves of the bureaucratic nightmare manifest in our current government...and by reducing the military budget by about 90%.

Does that answer your question?

...The first half of your response wasn't necessary so I should have clarified myself further. I meant how do you differentiate on this one topic.

I appreciate your sentiments involving a sense of civic duty however I think the selfishness of our society makes it very, very hard to rely purely on altruism when filling the ranks of civil servants.

I've never understood the popular dislike of jury duty. I've served jury duty because I felt it was my obligation, that it was a small price to pay. After all, if it was my butt in the defendant's chair one day, I would rather know the jury box was filled with more folks like me than those who had nothing better to do with their time. Not to mention I found it fascinating. It's certainly revealing as to the shortcomings of our judicial system and the ways in which it could be better.

And I don't think the private sector ponies up enough considering they reap the most from our federal government. Ironically, the defense industry is the portion of the private sector that benefits the most from the federal government and they certainly seem to have little oversight. I think the defense budget could certainly bear greater scrutiny and accountability.

I am currently benefitting from medical assistance via the federal government and don't feel as if my dignity has been compromised along the way, but I don't know of your experience.

And education won't ever change for the better until our society sees it as a path to greater fulfillment as a human being and not merely a road to greater riches.

I think you make some very valid points that represent major hurdles we, as a society, are going to have to overcome. If I had a wish for our society -- for our species, it would be that we would collectively realize the power behind positive reinforcement and intellectual self-improvement. Our current definition of self-improvement centers primarily around the physical or monetary. I don't see anything wrong with either of these, per se, however it would be nice to have the intellect included in the list, which it is not. Our society actually deplores and discourages intellect. It treats intellect like some kind of birth defect -- something to be hidden away.

I agree with you there. We've got a great deal of ground work to do before we can even begin.

We found out back in '93 that levees compound the flooding problem such that while it allows one area of the river to be bypassed, it comes at the expense of exponetially greater damage downstream. When we rebuilt, we decided to allow the river to rise and spread out naturally. Missouri riverfront land was agricultural, park land, that sort of thing, for the most part, that it really wouldn't matter if it got flooded. No levees however.

US Army Corp of Engineers insisted that we had to have some levees at various points along the river, even though we didn't want them and could prove that they were actually harmful in a flood. No luck, and thus they built more levees.

I hope all the damn things are washed away. You've got to let a river flow naturally, and if you try to pen it in with levees, you're just compounding the problems downstream.

The levees are being topped everywhere - despite the assurances of the Army Corps.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- At least 20 levees have been overtopped as flood waters make their way down Missouri streams and rivers, authorities said.

"It's a major flood," Suzanne Fortin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill, said Wednesday. "It won't be a record breaker, but it will be in the top three."

...Lt. John Hotz of the Missouri State Highway Patrol said troopers were working 24-hour shifts near the village of Big Lake after nine levee breaks inundated the community with water.

...Two levees were overtopped overnight, including one near Levasy in northeastern Jackson County and the other in Norborne.

http://kctv5.com/Global/story.asp?S=6481438