Melvin remembers Floyd too

Over at American Spectator there's an article on the pay of government workers--it's established that government workers earn twice that of the public sector, and even when all variables are crunched--skills, education--it's 10-20% more. (But they will be out in force October 2 demonstrating in Washington, DC.)

Here's a comment from Melvin at that story that I noticed because he mentioned a hurricane in North Carolina, which I also mentioned today.

"Shortly after a hurricane struck NC a number of years ago, a section of a secondary gravel road had corner washed out. I still being active duty Marine Corps and had a background in construction, was asked for a recommendation by Major Zimmerman in how we could repair the small section of road that was washed out relatively quickly because since the damage was on a blind corner a military vehicle could fall into the hole without seeing it. My recommendation was a tandem load of medium aggregate rock and a backhoe could have it repaired in about 4 hours.

"OK, Ssgt. how long would it take if we ask the civilian government employees to fix it?" I replied " About a year." Flabbergasted the Major said, "Marines could get killed or hurt if their vehicles drove into the hole."

The problem with government employees is, that the bureaucracy is so large and immovable that it will take 50 government bureaucrats in all their safety regalia of hardhats, safety vests, personal GPS locating devices, holographic government ID cards, and the ever present handled communicating device in where they can communicate with fellow bureaucrats all over the world, to come out to that small washed out section of gravel road to say, "Yep, yep, there's a hole their alright," get into the caravan of pickup trucks and leave.

It actually took 11 months and change for the government civilian employees, to come out with a dump truck and a backhoe to fill in the hole. The very same thing I told Major Zimmerman that I could have fixed with Marine Engineers in a matter of hours. And the part that really annoyed the hell out of me is that they had to send out a environmentalist that had a honest to goodness Doctorate degree to come out and inspect the hole to make sure there wasn't any endangered species that had taken up residence there. For crying out loud how much did the government waste by having a doctor come out and inspect a hole in the ground? I don't know about you, but asking a lowly E-6 in the Marine Corps to see if a bunch of critters are living in a hole is much, much cheaper than sending a doctor out to do the same thing.

Oh by the way, I had the displeasure of sneaking a peak at the civilian government payroll roster one day, let me tell you everything you hear about government employees living large is absolutely true, but if you saw what I saw on that roster in terms what they were pulling in, would cause an instant revolution.

Just drive by one day and see what type of vehicles that are parked in a government parking lot (local school board), you won't find any Yugo's parked there, thats for sure."