Valet Parking for Your Brain

Apparently, when one goes to work for the government (don't worry, we're here to help), the lobotomy is free. Indeed, sometime between the civil service exam (or election) and when your name is added to the payroll, your brain is parked in some secret underground lot near Langley never to be heard from again.

As though ample evidence is not provided on a daily basis that government and its officials are utterly inept and cannot wipe themselves without a 400-page technical manual with an 800-page addenda, we learn today that they've discovered that it costs more to make pennies and nickels than the coins are worth.

Copper prices continue to skyrocket such that the metal has become a hot commodity among thieves. Epiphany Alert: No wonder the government is so fond of it! At any rate, pennies are made of zinc with a copper plating at a cost $.017 per unit. Nickels are made of a copper/nickel alloy at a cost of $.10 each. In the private sector, a company that discovered its end product manufacturing cost was 1.7 to two times the value of the finished product would quickly re-evaluate the manufacturing process - especially if the value of the finished product was fixed. But not the government. It literally requires a Congressional review to initiate any form of action. But since it's not their money being wasted, the sense of urgency is non-existent.

Ironically, this is but one example of how your government works for . . . well, I'm not so sure they work, much less do so for you. So forget that . . . Well, it's one more example of how government can take a mole-hill, make it into a mountain, then charge you to see it despite the fact that it was made with your money.

So now I'm not sure whose smarter. Them or those of us who elected them.

In WWII, there was a quick solution to the copper issue: make pennies out of steel. And it didn't take until the Korean War to enact it. So if they could figure it out 60 years ago, it stands to reason that they can do it again. Ahh, but reason, like common sense, is extinct. Were it not, I'd have no need for this blog.