It was only a matter of time. As our federal government bloated outward under liberal naivete regarding the true source of societal growth, evolution, innovation and progress, it was only a matter of  time. In the silly liberal world view, these attributes of society come from bureaucrats who are supposedly devoid of human foibles, and who are not hampered by endless processes, paperwork, lack of imagination and an environment that resists innovation. It is really a very silly world view to say the least.

Neither does innovation or progress automatically arise from large companies. The world of mammoth corporate America shares many of the same handicaps as bureaucracies. People in both domains spend more time protecting their small turf and tamping out internal competition than innovating and pushing the envelope. Large companies can innovate, but only when they carve out a small, nimble group that is allowed to circumvent the usual process and paper work controls (see the LM Skunkworks for example).

The true source of innovation, progress, evolution and our brightest potential future lies in the individual and small companies. It is in these micro-laboratories of innovation where humans have seen the most dramatic changes. For example, you can find all sorts of ignorant quotes from large corporate America at the dawn of the computer age that claimed the computer would never be a household appliance. It was entrepreneurs in the garages of Steve Jobs, Steve Wosniak and Bill Gates that revolutionized society and made a global, instantaneous social network. Our path forward will arise from the grass roots, not from Central Command.

So it was only a matter of time when the foolishness behind the myth of the all-knowing, all-righteous, all-pure government solution was destroyed.

State and local governments are controlled by politicians and, indirectly, by voters. And for better or worse, those voters have lost faith in the social returns of these jobs and our ability to afford them. The voters have responded by looking to cut expenses, and they’ve chosen state and local government employment as a target.

During the financial crisis, the prices of stocks, homes and other assets all fell, leaving the American public feeling less wealthy. In fact, the Federal Reserve reported last week that the crisis had erased almost two decades of accumulated prosperity for a typical family.

This NY Times piece does all it can to avoid the real conclusion. Government programs have failed miserably and left nothing but a mountain of debt so large it will take generations of Americans to pay it back. The poster child for this nonsense was the Obama-Pelosi-Ried Stimulus bill which was sold on the lie of ‘shovel ready’ jobs. It is not so much a lost faith, but a proven fact – big government sucks.

It takes 2 years to authorize a project and get it past the planning stage because of bureaucratic red tape. And those nuts in Congress should know this better than anyone else – having been the source of all the red tape.  I have witnessed over my 25 years as a Systems Engineer process and paperwork consume technical agencies like NASA and within the DoD, leaving maybe 10% of the money going to actual engineering and building. So the Stimulus bill myth was transparently ridiculous to many of us from the beginning.

This humongous paperwork and review workload was intended to increase quality, lower defects and avoid overruns. Of course, as this mountain of make-busy work has grown, just the opposite has transpired. The systems coming out of the government programs are 10-20 more expensive than needed, yet the product is lower quality and almost always over budget and behind schedule.  That is because programs focus on process and procedure – not innovation.

In fact, innovation is frowned upon. It is considered ‘risky’ to attempt too much change. Which is hilarious as our aging systems fall farther behind the technology curve, and the jump back to current practice becomes wider and wider with each passing year.

In 2010 the epiphany hit: big government is killing our economy and our future. Big Government has allied with Big Business to stymie innovation, hold back the evolution of individuals and small companies. They team together to  protect their turf from change.  And it is this alliance of the bloated behemoths that has become the proper and just target of voters.

Because for all their efforts to consolidate power, all the left (and at times the right) end up doing is alienating the real power in this country, We The People!

This year will be another exclamation point like 2010, where big government liberals are hammered and big government conservatives are culled out. The Tea Party is just beginning.  Because that is the only way to salvage our future and return to our previous glory. As neven and imperfect our past was, it was better than this slow strangulation…