How many members of Congress are too many?
Sometimes, it’s the most obvious observations that lead to the biggest frustrations, don’t ya think? For months now, companies of all sizes have been forced to re-evaluate and perform mass layoffs for the overall good. Not easy. Often close to impossible. But if the client base is turning away, if support for the product is no longer thriving, if you can no longer afford what you once took for granted, well it’s time to rethink things. And usually the thinking is seriously hard, involving tough decisions about very capable people that simply can’t be afforded anymore.
Which, by contrast, brings me to the Speaker of the House miniseries that was on every TV channel recently. The one where highly paid representatives stopped working entirely for days at a time, or left town to handle some “personal” business rather than deal with the nationally important matters at hand (i.e. their jobs), or whined and stamped their feet...a lot...preferably on camera.
And still they kept their jobs. All of them. Even the one who just got elected with a false resumé and a fictional biography.
Something isn’t right. Something isn’t working. And unlike some businesses, not all, but some, who acknowledge what they can and can’t afford and do something about it, we have a large governing body that we, as a nation, acknowledge we can’t afford, financially or in terms of time, but nothing changes.
Instead, this remarkable representation of ineffectual, immature, incompetent behavior, this Speaker of the House miniseries appears to have been automatically renewed for another season – one in which nothing actually gets accomplished, but there’s an ongoing subplot about establishing a healthy salary increase for the entire cast of characters. Oh, the irony.
Where’s Jennifer Coolidge when you need her?
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. – Abraham Lincoln