Bald Eagle: I tend to agree with you. I only spent two years as an employee with a federal agency in Washington, D. C., but it didn't take me long to realize that the federal bureaucracy was not for me. Power building was a common occurance among department heads as each program director vied to hire more people and introduce new programs. If the agency's success had been measured the same way as even a small business is, "profit", it would have failed miserably. When I joined the agency there were 45 employees. When I left two years later there were well over three hundred.

I have never worked for a very large employer (G.E., IBM, etc.) and I imagine that the bureaucracy exist there too, but because the company must show a profit in order to continue doing business, I would bet that they are operated much more efficiently than government is (at any level). Just my opinion, of course. DougR