The government that governs least, governs best.

In response to the new film Sicko from Michael Moore. Yes our health care system has major issues, but the Canadian and European government-run systems are not the panacea that Moore seems to think. They also have their good points, but it has been my experience that the government does next to nothing well, and judging how backed up they are on every single thing they do, I really don't think they can handle anything else at the moment.

When dealing with my wife's visa last year I got to see the true depths of their ineptitude. If I recall she didn't get the information in the mail about when her embassy appointment time was until after it had already passed. Even those who haven't had to deal with bringing somebody into the country, I'm sure at the very least you have had to wait hours for driver's licenses, had questions completely ignored by govt agencies and had your rights trodden on by those who are supposed to protect them.

It isn't just the feds either, state governments seem to be the breeding ground for the folks who eventually head to DC, last year in California the Governator signed a bill saying that teachers coming from out of state would have many other options instead of the stupid CBEST general skills test. If they had already taken the ACT, GRE or SAT reasoning exams they were good to go. The superintendent of public instruction had a generous seven months to determine what the passing scores would be. Well the seven months were up today, and suprise suprise, there is a new bulletin on their site which states they still haven't come up with passing scores. There is no explanation as to why they didn't meet the deadline and no prediction as to when they will. Just imagine how well a business that ran this way would do.

Regular readers will recall, I predicted something like this would happen and I took and passed the CBEST last month despite having good scores on the GRE. Not that it has really done me a whole lot of good, as every district down here also wants you to pass something called the CTEL, which I took in June as well and still don't have the results from. I wonder what the next hoop the government will throw up will be.