Gov. Snyder, I am not your "customer"

[gnome]

Anyone want to read President Obama's Executive Order 13571?

it is titled "Streamling Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service"
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/defa...al_mem_rel.pdf

[Detroitnerd]

Anyone want to read President Obama's Executive Order 13571?

it is titled "Streamling Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service"
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/defa...al_mem_rel.pdf

I'm hardly surprised. I'm not an Obama booster either, Gnome. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, though. Now I have one more reason to distrust Obama.

[rb336]

Anyone want to read President Obama's Executive Order 13571?

it is titled "Streamling Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service"
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/defa...al_mem_rel.pdf

As has been shown many times, Obama ain't a liberal. he's another corporatist, as this "customer" crap shows.

Anyone know who started calling citizens customers in the first place?

[Detroitnerd]

B-b-b-b-but ... if you don't like REPUBLICANS, then you must be a LIBURULL and since Obama is a LIBURULL, then ... *head explodes*

[Gistok]

Geeze.... 80 posts all about 1 word... aren't there more important issues than semantics...

But you all have valid points... because [[drum roll)....

The customer is always right!!! [[ducking for cover)....

[Mark Smiles]

A perfect example of how government workers treat their customers with contempt is the way some traffic lights are timed to be 180 degrees out of time, with each other.

The customers are the ones paying for the lights to be properly timed, and the only reason they are not properly timed is that those setting the timing really do not care if they do their job right or not.

It really does not mater if there are a million dollars worth of “fast-track” type cameras and all the latest equipment.

The government workers really don’t care and laugh at the customers paying for all the equipment.

If they actually cared about doing a good job, things would be better.

Perfect example? Say take Van Dyke and the lights at 19 Mile, Utica and Riverland. Nothing but contempt for the customers.

[Hermod]

A perfect example of how government workers treat their customers with contempt is the way some traffic lights are timed to be 180 degrees out of time, with each other.

The customers are the ones paying for the lights to be properly timed, and the only reason they are not properly timed is that those setting the timing really do not care if they do their job right or not.

It really does not mater if there are a million dollars worth of “fast-track” type cameras and all the latest equipment.

The government workers really don’t care and laugh at the customers paying for all the equipment.

If they actually cared about doing a good job, things would be better.

Perfect example? Say take Van Dyke and the lights at 19 Mile, Utica and Riverland. Nothing but contempt for the customers.

This is why "screw the gummint workers and their unions" and "let's drown the gummint in a bathtub" resonate so well with so many.

People's degree of devotion to the gummint last only as long as their last "meaningful interaction" with the gummint. If they got stuck in a long line with one or two clerks serving the lines while they see half a dozen others cooling their coffee and shooting the breeze in the back offices, the Tea party just gets more support.

[Cincinnati_Kid]

Wouldn't that be the point?

Making it more expensive to drive and having exurban sprawl dwellers actually feel the pinch on what it costs to maintain those redundant roads is an effective way to engender support for something resembling mass transit and sane urban planning. In most of Europe it's FAR more expensive to drive than here....hence a totally built out public transit system and thriving central cities.

If we're going to use silly jargon terms, we need disincentives to change the sprawled out/drive everywhere paradigm here in SeM.

Who used a silly jargon term? Mass Transit isn't coming here, we're too dependent on cars, so what's your point.

[Wesley Mouch]

I think when self-interested bodies are in power, they do what benefits their own self-interest, and shade the news carefully so that it doesn't seem that way.

We should remember too that MDOT has been on a building spree when it can't even afford to maintain what it has. [[MDOT is even proposing wilder projects, such as spending $3 billion and 20 years to widen a 7-mile stretch of I-94. Yech.) To many who are suspicious of roadbuilders, this is called stake-driving. You overbuild the things you can't pay for, then you need to raise the money to pay for it all. Bob Moses used to do this in New York back in the bad old days.

If MDOT is like a business, it's like the stupidest business I've ever heard of. It's like: You're going to have to pay more for this one product. We're going to sell it to you retail, even though you don't have a choice on whether to buy it. For others who could afford different modes, such as rail, well, fuck it, we're going to give them wholesale rates. And if you don't like it, if you want a choice, if you want some magic choo-choo train, you can move to another state.

For those of us who are tired of watching our young people, which we paid to educate and nourish and care for, leave the state for the things MDOT will never offer, it's a damn shame.

And this idea that all the state highway groups and road builders have studies showing that heavier trucks don't do more damage to roads reminds me of studies sponsored by tobacco companies that cigarettes don't harm your health, or studies supported by the Drug Czar that marijuana kills brain cells.

See, now, if I'm a customer, I just have two choices: Look through the marketplace of what's available here or take my business somewhere else [[Chicago, New York, San Francisco, etc.). But if I'm a citizen, I can join other citizens in working together to change what's on that menu.

You hit it on the head. This is why government should be as small as possible. The bigger it gets, the bigger it wants to be. Seeks to be the solution to everyone's problem. In fact, bring me more problems, and I get more employees and more raises! Yea!

We're 100% together except for your conclusion. I think Pan Am and Blackberry prove that customers can change what's on the menu.

[aj3647]

Who do the Democrats have that can challenge Snyder? The Democratic Party in this state has a pretty thin bench. Snyder is vulnerable, but then again, the Michigan Democratic Party once gave us crazy ambulance-chasing Geoffery Fieger as a nominee in 1998 so I don't really trust their ability to come up with top-notch candidates.

[bailey]

Who used a silly jargon term? Mass Transit isn't coming here, we're too dependent on cars, so what's your point.

Who used jargon? The entire point of this thread is Dnerd's objection to the governor using silly jargon like calling taxpayers "customers".

Mass transit isn't coming here because the "customers" in SE Michigan's market don't want to buy it because they have never paid the full price for the product they are using today.