(03-13-2009 10:10 AM)S.A. Owl Wrote:  69/70/75, I've been a contractor for a regulatory agency for 15 years. Maybe that agency is an exception, but I work with a lot of serious, professional people who are dedicated to doing what is right.

Glad to hear from someone with a different experience. It's nice to know that there are some of those people drawing government paychecks. To be fair, my original statement was probably a bit hyperbolic, I have found the odd good one here and there. But on the whole, I've found both quality and integrity to be much lower in government bureaucracies than in private enterprise.

And I've worked with federal, state, and local agencies, many of them at each level. The two areas where I've found probably the most dedicated people are the military and small town governments. The worst have generally been in large cities and federal welfare programs. I would actually make San Antonio an exception to the large cities; the city employees that I've worked with there have generally been better than most. Of course, many of them were retired military.