The Bush bureaucracy: Definitely NOT "Government at the Speed of Thought"!

I've just been reading Bill Gates' book, "Business at the Speed of Thought." Gates talks about using computer programs to increase business and industrial efficiency by making knowledge of what is happening both within a business and with its customer and supplier base available to decision-makers so that businesses can make informed choices based on solid input. It's an amazing concept. It's an amazing book.

"Business is going to change more in the next ten years than it has in the last 50," stated Gates.

The new changes are all about "how can tech help you run your business better?" and "how information access will alter the lifestyle of consumers and their expectations of business... " Consumers will come to expect the speed of response they need from a well-run business.

A flow of "quick, tangible knowledge" will allow modern businesses to make positive and effective changes quickly and efficiently, allowing for corrections in failed concepts and practices to happen within hours instead of days, weeks or years.

Innovative changes can be made overnight when everyone in a company has access to knowledge, works as a team and reports errors up and down the line as soon as they happen.

Reading this book almost made me cry.

I thought of the speed and efficiency of Microsoft -- where every employee in the company has access to Bill Gates if they need to tell him when something is going wrong so that it can be fixed IMMEDIATELY.

Then I thought about George Bush, who listens to no one -- except voices in his head purporting to be God -- and who fires anyone who dares to disagree with him. And we mere peon voters are allowed no input at all. Diebold sees to that.

The failures in Iraq go on and on and on. If Gates's "digital nervous system" had been running that fiasco, it would never have gotten off the ground -- let alone trudged from disaster to disaster for over three years.

The prototype would have been scrapped.

And Bush's other failed projects such as the gutting of FEMA, the Katrina disaster response, down-sizing America's economy, the 9-11 incompetencies, the illegal NSA wiretapping, the global warning cover-up and "No Child Left Unexploited" would have been scrapped too.

Gates pays attention to statistics and consumer input. The Bush bureaucracy pays attention to nothing.

Gates is open to new ideas, innovation and change. Bush is stuck back in the Dark Ages, when the lord of the castle ruled the peons by whip and by whim.

Gates hires competent employees. Bush hires brown-nosers.

Gates would never even have considered hiring someone as inefficient and ineffective as Bush. So why are we stuck with him?

I challenge Americans to read Bill Gates's book (if you haven't already), compare the kinds of efficiencies he talks about to what is happening in American government today -- and then make the obvious jump. The Bush bureaucracy is a functional dinosaur that is failing America on a colossal scale. We need to fire everyone in it IMMEDIATELY. There is too much at stake to do otherwise.

We need to start looking at America as a business, not George Bush's personal toy. We need to start considering the very real possibility that America could be run into the ground and fail -- go bankrupt -- if not run right. America needs to be run smoothly and efficiently. We cannot survive Bush's monumental incompetence and secrecy much longer. In these fast-paced modern times, we can't afford a dufus for a CEO. We need to be at the top of our game. We need to encourage insights and input from every citizen. And we need something that we do NOT have now: A well-informed, inovative and flexible "Government at the Speed of Thought".