I need a lobotomy

[Athena]

Have you ever thought your boss is an idiot and you should have his/her job? In the past I have been fired a few times because I don't keep my mouth shut when I think things can be done a better way. I don't want to be fired this time, but to hang in long enough to make serious changes.

As some of you know, I have college education in gernotology (study of aging) and public policy and adminstration. When I learned about bureaucracies, it was the most depressing period of my life, and I decided to be a rebell rather than a bureaucrat. On top of this, the head of the gernotology department, knew nothing about Social Security. This is the guy who is suppose to teach us how to help seniors and he doesn't know how Social Security works. Okay, moving along----

The top case worker to who is responsble for helping seniors at risk, can not determine when a senior is needs help. I swear, she judged my neighbor is doing just fine when her daughter called for help, and she did nothing to help my easily confused neighbor. I pushed to become the nieghbor's Senior Companion because it is obvious she is cognitively impaired. Within a week, I report such severe cognitive problems, the case worker swings from doing nothing for this woman, to telling her daughter to get an attorney, which would mean institutionalizing the woman.

Why should you care? Because for $36 dollars a week, I can help this woman stay in her home, and if she goes into a nursing home, it will cost thousands of dollars every month. Multiply this by a few thousand people can you see why medicare is in trouble. But go back to the bureacrat's college education. She was not taught, when a senior can't pay bills, a son or daughter needs to communicate with Social Security and become the payee. It is easy and free. It does not require a very expensive attorney and trail that is emotional wrenching for everyone. She, as many bureaucrats have two extreme choices, do nothing or do way too much.

Milton and Osborn have an excellent argument about what is wrong with our country, but they just don't seem to have a good understanding of the governmental structure that is the cause of the problem. Civilized people can not abandon their old people, but neither should everything be done by extremely expensive attroneys and most expensive care, especially not when bureaucrats are paid to keep people in their homes. The justification for my job is keeping people out of nursing homes, and the case worker doesn't know how to work the system from a practical angle. Months ago she should have told the daughter to become her mother's Social Security payee, and she should have given the daughter a few Internet links so she has the information she needs to make good decisions for her mother. God, I hate bureaucrats! And we should all be hating the education and attitude that is ruining out democracy! rant, rant, rant.

[Athena]

Well, I got told not to cross boundaries when I asked my supervisor why the case worker didn't recommend the woman's daughter become her Social Security payee when she first turned to her for help about the bill paying problem. Don't question, don't ignitate action. Mine is not to question why, but mine is to do or die.

And we wonder what has gone wrong with this country, and blame the citizens for nanny state. NO IT IS NOT THE CITIZENS CAUSING A NANNY STATE BUT THE BUREAUCRATS!!!!

[Osborn F Enready]

Athena said: Milton and Osborn have an excellent argument about what is wrong with our country, but they just don't seem to have a good understanding of the governmental structure that is the cause of the problem.

How can you say that?

How do I not understand the current systems governmental structure, compared to how it WAS INTENDED and to be HELD by the Constitution and BOR?

You blame the bureaucrats, I blame the sheeple who don't take the time to understand that difference between a bureaucrat and a REPRESENTATIVE.

I clearly have pointed out time and time again that it is this UNCONSTITUTIONAL growth of government that IS the problem, as has Milton, Keith, Brien, and several others.

You, and many others assume we want to abolish many good things, yet many of the accusers of this notion don't take the time to understand what we mean, what we said, or look into the facts of the statements made.

You want social security? You want it to be sound and stable? MAKE IT VOLUNTARY, MAKE IT LOCAL, MAKE IT REAL so that people can AFFECT the outcome of their future at the local level.

People want to eat cake, yet they don't understand you first have to purchase the material to bake it, have an oven to cook it in, and a person who KNOWS how to bake.

When people expect miracles, they are bound to be let down when they see that reality permits no miracles.

Athena said: Civilized people can not abandon their old people,

WHO has argued for abandoning old people?!?

Ron Paul speaks clearly about ENSURING that those who have paid their whole life into S.S. are taken care of, while those still young enough to make their own choice of their retirement plans should be able to. THIS CAN BE DONE, WITHOUT NEW TAXES, AND while removing the income tax.

Athena said: but neither should everything be done by extremely expensive attroneys and most expensive care, especially not when bureaucrats are paid to keep people in their homes.

That is what happens when nanny state ideals rule the day.

A couple quotes that ring true as ever about what it means to be an American, what many have simply forgotten or chosen not to aspire to anymore due to ignorance of past lessons in history.

"Just as I support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but by my own effort, so I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or the favor of others, but earn it by my own achievement. Just as I do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I do not consider my pleasure as the goal of the lives of others. Just as there are no contradictions in my values and no conflicts among my desires—so there are no victims and no conflicts of interest among rational men, men who do not desire the unearned and do not view one another with a cannibal's lust, men who neither make sacrifice nor accept them.

"If you hold the irrational as your standard of value and the impossible as your concept of the good, if you long for rewards you have not earned, for a fortune, or a love you don't deserve, for a loophole in the law of causality, for an A that becomes non-A at your whim, if you desire the opposite of existence—you will reach it. Do not cry, when you reach it, that life is frustration and that happiness is impossible to man; check your fuel: it brought you where you wanted to go.

Athena said: The justification for my job is keeping people out of nursing homes, and the case worker doesn't know how to work the system from a practical angle.

The point is it NO LONGER PAYS TO BE PRACTICAL. Corruption breeds higher payment and reward in the system of corruption we have created and left unchecked.

Athena said: Months ago she should have told the daughter to become her mother's Social Security payee, and she should have given the daughter a few Internet links so she has the information she needs to make good decisions for her mother. God, I hate bureaucrats! And we should all be hating the education and attitude that is ruining out democracy! rant, rant,

You have a right to rant Athena, as well as a right to demand change. I support both of those rights.

[Chancellor]

Quote by: Athena Well, I got told not to cross boundaries when I asked my supervisor why the case worker didn't recommend the woman's daughter become her Social Security payee when she first turned to her for help about the bill paying problem. Don't question, don't ignitate action. Mine is not to question why, but mine is to do or die. And we wonder what has gone wrong with this country, and blame the citizens for nanny state. NO IT IS NOT THE CITIZENS CAUSING A NANNY STATE BUT THE BUREAUCRATS!!!!

Find a job with another agency and/or obtain the kind of training/licensure required to qualify for these postions you're railing against. Thoroughly tick them off by doing your job better than they do theirs.

[Athena]

Quote by: Chancellor Find a job with another agency and/or obtain the kind of training/licensure required to qualify for these postions you're railing against. Thoroughly tick them off by doing your job better than they do theirs.

Thanks to you and Osborn for the agreement change is necessary. But I don't see myself doing it through a bureaucracy. If our arguments were more comprehensive and productive, I could perhaps bring about change with a book.

I have said that we adopted applying Prussian MilitaryBureaucracy to citizens, and that is not getting the point across. I don't know how to explain the problem and I am not satisfied with the volconvo explanations I have seen so far. Expecting the people to be aware of the problem is like expecting them to take a space craft to the moon and land it. Why should they be aware it, when they don't experience it? Older people who worked in bureaucracies, know a drastic change occurred but young one's don't. It is kind of like alcocholism, it sneaks up on people and starts controlling everything, but the change isn't really noticed. And people who have never been bureuacrats, nor studied policy making, how are they suppose to know more about this than they know of flying a spaceship to the moon?