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Once More … Government Officials’ Entitlement Syndrome
I’m a little late to the controversies associated with the multi-day trip by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in a fleet of electric cars, and particularly the squabble with a family of the general public over use of a particular space at an electric charge station.
Most of the commentaries have focused on the detail that it was a car with an internal combustion engine that a staff person used to prevent other electric car users (members of the general public) from using the electric car charger until Secretary Granholm and her entourage arrived.
I was bothered not so much that an internal combustion engine car was used to block the charger. But I was incensed by the entitled attitude of Secretary Granholm that led to the charger being blocked at all. A variant of “Do you know who I am?” that government officials frequently use to demonstrate that they think they are better than “the public,” and that they are entitled to demote the wants and needs of members of “the public” so that the wants of the government officials take priority. Why can’t Secretary Granholm wait in line just as the others do?
In this case, Secretary Granholm told everyone waiting to use that electric car charger that their wants and needs had to wait so that Secretary Granholm could operate with maximum convenience for herself.
The entitled attitude is not unique to Secretary Granholm.
Senators and Members of Congress have demanded that people move seats or even be kicked off airplanes so the Senator or Member of Congress can occupy a preferred seat.
Officials have their own private parking area at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., making the public travel farther to park so Senators and Members of Congress can have more convenient parking.
Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg considers himself entitled to charter entire airplanes because he can’t or won’t figure out how to get to a destination using the existing scheduled transportation everyone else uses.
Government officials prevent members of the public from using streets and highways so they can enjoy unimpeded travel.
I think a few years ago, a U.S. President prevented commercial airliners carrying the general public from taking off or landing at an airport so the President could get a haircut while sitting in Air Force One.
Senators and Members of Congress have asserted that laws Congress passes to apply to the public at large should not apply to them because such applications would be inconvenient. And that court orders that prevent a service provider from providing service to the public should not prevent the service provider from providing identical services to Senators and members of Congress (a Blackberry patent dispute several years ago) because terminating the service would be too disruptive to the convenient operation of Congress.
These are just a few of many examples of the entitled attitudes exhibited by government officials, attitudes that they are entitled to inconvenience the public for the convenience or comfort of the government official.
I’m sure there are ways to push back against the entitlement syndrome exhibited by government officials, but I am doubtful that any of them can realistically be implemented. The government bureaucracy includes hundreds or thousands of personnel whose primary jobs are to make life comfortable for the senior government officials. The Imperial Government in action.
Published in Domestic Policy
Not exactly.
In many cases there are valid separation of powers arguments for why the Executive branch can’t have controlling jurisdiction over the Legislative branch. It’s got nothing to do with “convenience” or “because we’re above the law”.
I loved it when the guy with the family called the police on Granholm and her entourage. When the police showed up, Granholm quickly backed down. I believe this is the only thing that works with these people; publicly embarrass them.
Clearly this won’t work with all of them. In the case of Buttigieg (private planes) and Sheila Jackson Lee (demands that she always be seated in First Class), some people are incapable of being embarrassed. They will always have a justification for their superior status.
Add to this Covid-19 restrictions for the little people that didn’t have to be obeyed by the various governors who ordered those restrictions.
Well, I have several times heard Congresscritters justify exempting themselves with almost literally the “it would be very inconvenient for us to be subjected to the laws we impose on everyone else” excuse, so that is apparently what the Congresscritters are thinking about.
I’d like to see those quotes. I think the “almost” in “almost literally” is doing a lot of work there.
I wonder what would have happened if the family with the EV had just parked their car in front of the vehicle blocking the charging station and refused to leave. “We don’t have enough power to go anywhere and we were here first. You can wait.”
I’ve always wondered why congressmen are exempt from insider trading laws.
The good news is that as a demonstration about how wonderful electric vehicles are, the demonstration thoroughly backfired.
If anyone still needed more evidence. There’s been examples on YouTube and elsewhere for quite a while. Including a family who tried to go on a camping vacation with an electric truck and a travel trailer.
So since I haven’t been paying close attention to the news, has anyone associated with the Secretary of Energy offered any explanation for why the Secretary wouldn’t wait in line to use the charger, like everyone else had to?
In New York there are folks who will stand in line for the rich and famous in return for a handsome fee. Perhaps the original rational was that Secretary’s staffers were just holding her place in line.
I believe she knows the answer to your question, but good luck getting her to talk.
Subjects of the US Imperium suffer under the joug of a system of control of their every thought and deed of such scope and ambition as to make Louis the Sun King gasp at its presumption, and Stalin and Kim Il Sung wonder what they did with their lives.
Every federal representative – representatives to an organ of government of deliberately limited scope, if one is to take the Constitution seriously – is showered with vast resources, the excuse for which is that they must respond to the numerous petitions of their constituents for assistance in navigating the federal bureaucracy. The incentives this produces are as obvious as they are perverse.
And yet, by all evidence, the ‘sovereign’ people accept that their ‘elected’ ‘representatives’ will end their periods of ‘public service’ having enriched themselves and their families beyond the dreams of the vast majority of their electorate. But, hey, voting for Tweedle Dum over Tweedle Dee will change everything…
When somebody pulls the “do you know who I am” stunt, you really DO know who they are. We know who you are, Granholm. Lauren Boebert is the latest, apparently, who wants the little people to know how important she is.
Nonsense. It proves instead that we need more charging stations since that poor woman with the family had to wait in line.
I would suggest that the ‘sovereign’ people haven’t accepted it as such but that they system precludes preventing it. Everyone who goes into the House or Senate can vote themselves money and they also require money to keep their positions.
Too bad about the moral and religious people thing.