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Federal News Radio
Is everybody
happy? Is anybody happy?
By Mike Causey
February 5, 2016
The last time most major American newspapers literally stopped the
presses was Nov. 22, 1963, when they got reports that President John F.
Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.
It was midday on the East Coast (Dallas is on Central time) and there
were confused reports that others — including Vice President Lyndon B.
Johnson — had been hit too. At 1:48 p.m. EST, CBS broke into the
popular soap opera “As The World Turns” so news anchor Walter Cronkite
could announce that JFK had been seriously wounded. It was one of the
few times that the wire services (United Press International and the
Associated Press) put out bulletins labeled “FLASH”, which were
generally reserved for the “gravest news,” like Pearl Harbor.
Newspapers don’t operate — or print — the way they did in 1963. Even if
they did, there are so many events in our 24/7 news cycle that
executives and editors would be hard-pressed to decide when, if ever,
to give the stop-the-presses order. What would merit such a drastic
move: Russia invading the Crimea? Nah! A birth, marriage or divorce
among the Kardashian clan? Hardly. So what would it take in the form of
world-stopping news to stop the presses?
How about the discovery of a federal civil servant who is happy in his
or her job? An interview with a live career government employee who
feels working conditions are good, job security is great, the 401k plan
is to die for and the retirement package is swell. Someone who wouldn’t
trade jobs with a friend or relative who just received the corporate
version of a Dear John letter from the oil company-dot-com.
The only thing that would top the discovery of a happy civil servant,
willing to go on record, would be a study showing that the majority of
American taxpayers like the services the government provides them. Like
maybe 74 percent of those surveyed think the the Postal Service does a
dynamite job. Or appreciates that Congress (not the IRS) makes tax laws
and that IRS workers do the best they can with what they’ve been given,
and ordered to do.
When is the last time you saw, read or heard a report that said most
people appreciate what the government does? Maybe, uh, never!
Year after year, good-government groups run satisfaction surveys. Year
after year the results are the same. Feds (according to their numbers)
are both unhappy and nervous-in-the-civil-service. And people, the
public, taxpayers, are sour on government services. As recently as
yesterday:
One of the top stories Thursday on Federal News Radio dealt with Uncle
Sam’s poor public perception.
The story said “Public satisfaction with federal government services
fell to another all-time low in 2015.” Guess what? It was lower last
year than the year before when it was also lower than the year before
that. So how low can it go? I guess the answer is we must wait until
next year to find out how unhappy people are, both in and with the
government, compared to this year before that.
It is also interesting that while survey after survey shows people are
unhappy with Congress, we keep reelecting the same people to the House
and Senate. And while people complain about the mail service in
general, lots of us like the clerk in our post office. Or leave
presents for their letter carrier. That people can hate the tax system
but be grateful to the IRS employee who helped them out of a potential
tax nightmare. Institutions vs. real people.
Maybe somebody should do a survey to see if public unhappiness with the
government as an institution and a servant has anything to do with
creating all those unhappy government workers. A new version of the
chicken vs. egg puzzler.
Read this and other articles at Federal News Radio
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