A local person came up with what we think has fabulous potential. This person suggested that all officialdom have no better health insurance than their constituents. Obvious incentive for them to make it much better for the common masses when it’s directly related to themselves.
Since the current officials in office from here to there do not have the compassion or self-discipline to deprive themselves of benefits, it will take a law to make them do it. Of course, they make the laws. You get the picture. A selfish, greedy government remains ensconced for a very long time. Until they fail in some way and move along.

Speaking of moving along, another of our listeners sent along a laugh out loud bureaucratic story from Pennsylvania. Seems the Department of Environmental Quality there sent a letter with self-righteous complaints about failure to get a permit for a debris dam built across the outlet streams of a pond. They cited all the violations and demanded removal of the dams. They sent the letter to a Mr. Ryan DeVries who shot back a reply to the bureaucrats that they would have to demand a permit from, you guessed it, beavers.

DeVries wrote, “My first dam concern is, aren’t the beavers entitled to legal protection?” He went on to write, “If you want the damed stream restored to a dam free-flow condition, please contact the beavers, but if you are going to arrest them, they obviously did not pay any attention to your dam letter, they being unable to read English.” Bureaucrats caught between their own astounding lack of observation and Mr. DeVries fine sense of irony.

We hear locally that bureaucrats sometimes fail to truly study nature around the Eastern Sierra and understand the subtle relationships among animals, birds, weeds and grass as they conjure up bad regulations.

Another bad Verizon story today. Yet another listener called in to report that he decided to closely examine his Verizon bill. It’s a scarey thing, people. The result? High blood pressure. Seems the bill said that when his long distance calls add up to less than $30, he still has to pay the difference between that amount and $30. This man used $1.76 in long distance calls, and Verizon charged him $28.24. What???!!!!

We in the Bureaucrat Beat Newsroom put our heads together and came up with a word to explain what has happened in our world today – racketeering. Apply it all the way around. Here’s the dictionary definition: “Racketeering – The activity of a person who commits crimes such as extortion, loansharking, bribery and obstruction of justice in furtherance of illegal business activities.”

They still call these despicable acts by socially acceptable names – credit card interest rates, bank fees, phone bills, gas prices. Oh, and let’s not forget the biggest racket of all – Congress, where bribery and extortion have become Government 101.

And, to those who commented about the case of an Alameda man who drove to Mammoth to ski, broke his leg and spent eight days in a motel room as he struggled to get Mammoth Hospital to take care of him, we feel that in a country as rich as America it’s citizens should at the very least have emergency care. This man had no health insurance and that’s when the trouble began, apparently. We as a nation need to decide – do we want the pain of our people addressed or not? Or do we want to say that only the rich and terrrrrrrribly intelligent deserve that consideration?

With that, this is Benett Kessler signing off for Bureaucrat Beat where we await your word on our lives in the Eastern Sierra and beyond.