Continuing the discussion from here:
Lemme tell you a little story: My bro-in-law is a temporary employee for the USPS. Nice kid. He's waiting to get into the CPD academy, which is like waiting for the great unknown. He took a job as mail carrier that fills in on routes when there are gaps in coverage. He's freezing his ass off in the winter and keeping trim in the summer time. Simple enough.

With this, I've been given a brief insight into the USPS and the BS that goes with the federally guaranteed employment. Here's a few one-hitters:

1. The route he is given on any given day needs to be completed prior to the end of his hours. Zero exceptions. Well, as a temp. he gets different routes all the time. He is a college grad. but even that doesn't ensure that he can keep pace with a carrier that has been at the beat for several years. His supervisor told him that the mail cannot come back to the post office undelivered. "Make sure every piece gets into a box." Really, as long as he doesn't come back with it they don't care where it goes.

2. As a temp. he earns time off. It's not paid, but at least he can get a break from the six-day weeks. As it turns out, he's been instructed again by superiors that he should not request time off because it will most likely be denied. In which case, an absence on a day that was requested but denied will be a red flag. So, he should just call in sick on days he need off.

Now, I don't mean to suggest that this kind of delinquent crap does not happen in the private sector. The riders here have been employed by and worked with enough fuck-sticks to confirm otherwise. The difference is that the private sector has a method of removing the schmucks. Not that the private sector is void of useless dolts, I'm just saying that if you encounter a complete jackass that has been in the same field for decades - that person is most likely: a union member, a gov't employee, or both.

Yeah, I know. I'm a complete dick for saying that.

That is the crux of my beef with Big Gub'mint. It's not that I don't understand the desire to have the Fed make things better. Government can make a great deal of improvements and legislate changes that are beneficial and that would not necessarily happen if the private sector had free reign. Top-down beats bottom-up in certain situations. I'm thinking national parks, 40-hour work weeks, SEC regulations, FDIC, health codes, etc. It's worth pointing out that unions were an aid in those types of things.

The issue is that now, after a large portion of the heavy lifting has taken place (for the most part), big Gub'mint continues to fuck with things. We get foie gras bans, labor strikes for pay and benefits that exceed what can be had for equal qualifications in the private sector, gov't sanctioning of marriages, smoking bans, exaggerated taxation of successful companies, and on and on.

This leads me to a post that Savage made a while back [I won't dig for it because I'm lazy, and not in the mood for self-gratification.] regarding Scalia and his views on originalism. My take out of that [On second thought: here] piece and applied to this discussion is that government can only get bigger. Sure, there are bubbles that burst; see also: France. The outward expanse will not stop. For example, teacher's unions have been around for the better part of the last century. Take a guess when its ranks tripled in size. You got it, the 1960's. Since then the Fed Education system is one of the largest expenditures of cash and public schools are avoided like the plague - not everywhere, mind you. But try mentioning to people that you are planning on raising your kids and live in Downtown Chicago. Hilarity ensues. There's no way to thin the ranks at the public trough. Meanwhile, consensus is that more cash is the best way to fix the system. Does anybody see a third of the people employed by the public system packing up shop and heading to the private sector? When it's clear to anybody that looks at the data that the best way to fund a public edu system is to funnel the cash to schools through parents that are involved. Instead you get DC.

To get back to Savage's subject, I don't see a problem with the Fed stepping in after 9/11 and creating the TSA to standardize security at airports. Fine. What should happen is that those standards should be applied to a privatization of the system. Let the Fed set-up the system and then have it get the fuck out of the way. Instead, you get your airport security handled by the same type of people that work at the USPS.

The bloat is on.