There are a lot of people frustrated with our government.
Maybe it’s party bickering, maybe it’s a lack of transparency, maybe it’s our huge debt. And the deficit.
But I think we can all get behind being mad at government workers who watch porn all day.
One senior-level employee at the Environmental Protection Agency was reportedly caught looking at porn for six hours a day, according to the Washington Post.
Apart from the impressive stamina that that particular task takes, it’s an incredible waste of time and resources.
It kept the employee on and continued paying them.
Alright, so maybe it doesn’t make sense to the Average Joe, but this is politics we’re talking about, and somehow this was justifiable.
The employee is currently on leave but still getting paid.
It’s not just porn. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., according to the Post, said many workers across the government waste hours of time.
This is a systemic problem. Meadows is trying to pass a law to stop government workers from ?looking at porn on the job.
The lack of that precedent is a little disturbing.
Our government is an annoying paradox. It allows incidents like this to happen, partly because it’s supposed to be slow and ineffective.
Government checks and balances keep things from going too fast. No one can pass a law quickly and destroy people’s rights without them being able to stop it.
Of course, when you can’t pass a law at all, that’s also a problem.
Alexis de Tocqueville observed the United States and its political system just as it was starting, and his insights still ring true today. He saw that the U.S. wasn’t the country with the greatest government.
It would never rise to the speed and ability of a strongly led authoritarian regime. But it did allow for the greatest number of people to benefit the greatest amount.
Our big, lumbering democracy might do us more good than we think.
Of course, just because our government moves slowly to protect our freedoms doesn’t mean we should stand for these time abuses.
Our government should always be moving forward. When we can’t pass any laws to make progress, we’re not any better off.
And when our taxpayer money is wasted so obviously, something needs to change.
Still, the solution isn’t totally clear. We should obviously try to reduce these inefficient uses of time and computer RAM.
But whether we should try to make our government faster and less cautious is a more difficult value judgment.
Our government needs to do better. It has a responsibility to stop these kinds of waste.
But at the end of the day, we’re going to need to keep an eye out, because who knows what they’ll do when no one is looking.
sckroll@indiana.edu
