Hi! I'm from the government and

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When the solution is worse than the problem, it's government in action

"Hi! I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

OK. Leave. Now. Go away and never come back and take everything you brought with you. Leave nothing and take nothing.

Yanno this ain't a government ad.

I have just returned from a meeting regional education leaders, a few state leaders and three, count 'em precisely 3 people directly involved in employing people. The meeting was to discuss a Georgia state initiative on education and why it makes sense for businesses to participate in this program.

Anyone see the problem?

In a room full of paper pushers there to promote a program to help private business, three people were in a position to actually hire someone in a private business.

The main speaker, a government man, spoke for more than 20 minutes. The only think I can  tell you about his speech is: A number of businesses in Georgia have signed on to the program and now insist potential employees use the program. Only success stories were mentioned.

No surprise there. But I would like to hear from business and industry which tried the program and it didn't work. I bet you there are plenty out there.

Government flood control.

I shan't bore you with the details. I will tell you it is being handled like a typical government program. You wade through hours of hype to find out what good it can do for your company, if it can do any good at all.

Some of the people involved are really trying to make it work and really believe in it.

Some of the people involved are trying to make sure everyone knows "HEY! Look at me and what I'm doing!"

Typical.

I have spoken to the state director for the program and in my usual softspoken manner told him what needs to be done.

To explain: The big problem mentioned at the meeting is how to sell the idea to industry and business. The program is supposed to help business cut down employee turnover.

Male on left. Female on right. ooooooo. I said it...

To sell it, the promoters rely on a HUGE package of brightly colored brochures that say nothing in giant letters, what we in the newspaper industry call premiums (pens, pencils, cups, flash drives, etc) and face to face meeting with CEOs and Human Resource Departments and people who make hiring decisions, meetings I am sure which take plenty of time and the person being met with probably resents.

One lady who is pushing the program in this region said the flash drive contains plenty of information. She said "You can weed" and I stopped listening. I can weed. I brought home a flash drive. I'm gonna reformat it and use it to store MP3 files.

The main speaker kept talking about the bottom line, but never got to a bottom line as far as I could tell.I spent a LOT of his speech mentally disagreeing with him.

Nuf said.

So, being a simple person, I got simple with it.

I said, if this state program is really going to cut my employee turnover, "then give me 5 percent off my unemployment insurance if I sign up. You tell me that, give me a dotted line and I'm signing up."

This being a state program and unemployment insurance being a state program, this is how you get business and industry to sign on to the program.

That works.

Dead trees, mountains of plastic and erasable media like flash drives don't.

You may ask why I was there. I was there because one of three living people on the planet who can get me to wear a suit in 100+ temperatures asked me to go.