Thought for Today

"The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency."

~~~~~ Eugene McCarthy

Thought for Today

"Bureaucracies are inherently antidemocratic. Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve. The people are not masters of the bureaucracy, but its clients."

~~~~~ Alan Keyes

Thought for Today

"Bureaucracies are inherently antidemocratic. Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve. The people are not masters of the bureaucracy, but its clients."

~~~~ Alan Keyes

Thought for Today

"We will have bigger bureaucracies, bigger labor unions, and bigger state-run corporations. It will be harder to be an entrepreneur because of punitive taxes and regulations. The rewards of success will be expropriated for the sake of attaining greater income equality."

~~~~~ Arthur C. Brooks

Thought for Today

"I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of 'Admin.' The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps.In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."

~~~~~~ C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Census Humor: "Come and Be My POSSLQ"

For the 1980 census, the bureaucrats of the U.S. Census Bureau came up with an acronym to describe the increasingly frequent arrangement of unmarried males and females living together. The acronym was "POSSLQ," which stood for "Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters."

CBS's irrepressible Charles Osgood managed to find the humor in this bit of seemingly unpronounceable government gobbledygook. He decided that it could be pronounced in three syllables – as "POSS-ul-kyoo," then wrote this whimsical bit of verse around it:

Come and Be My POSSLQ

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands and crystal brooks
With silken lines, and silver hooks.
There's nothing that I wouldn't do
If you would be my POSSLQ.

You live with me, and I with you,
And you will be my POSSLQ.
I'll be your friend and so much more;
That's what a POSSLQ is for.

And everything we will confess;
Yes, even to the IRS.
Some day on what we both may earn,
Perhaps we'll file a joint return.

You'll share my pad, my taxes, joint;
You'll share my life – up to a point!
And that you'll be so glad to do,
Because you'll be my POSSLQ.

Needless to add, since 1980, the phenomenon of unmarried males and females living together has become so ubiquitous that the Census Bureau discarded the POSSLQ acronym years ago. Apparently, they're now using the plain vanilla term "unmarried partners." It's difficult to find any humor in that.

Thought for Today

"Any serious discussion of government-run medical care would have to look at other countries where there is government-run medical care. As someone who has done some research on this for my book 'Applied Economics,' I can tell you that the actual consequences of government-controlled medical care is not a pretty picture, however inspiring the rhetoric that accompanies it. Thirty thousand Canadians are passing up free medical care at home to go to some other country where they have to pay for it. People don't do that without a reason. But Canadians are better off than people in some other countries with government-controlled medical care, because they have the United States right next door, in case their medical problems get too serious to rely on their own system. But where are Americans to turn if we become like Canada? Where are we to go when we need better medical treatment than Washington bureaucrats will let us have? Mexico? The Caribbean?"

~~~~~ Thomas Sowell

Thought for Today

Imhoff's Law:

The organization of any bureaucracy is very much like a septic tank ... The really big chunks always rise to the top.