And now, a few more minutes with CAPTAIN OBVIOUS, the superhero whose amazing power is the ability to point out what everyone else already knows!

Dr. Seuss once wrote a story about a town where a bee lived, producing honey for the townspeople to eat. Unfortunately, there wasn't quite enough honey for everyone, so the town fathers (and possibly the town mothers, though Dr. Seuss doesn't say so) met and decided the bee wasn't working hard enough. The bee was a goof-off. So they hired a townsman to watch the bee to be sure it was fulfilling its potential for honey. But there was no more honey with a watcher than before he was hired, so the town government wisely decided the bee-watcher wasn't doing much of a job and needed supervision. Another townsman was hired to watch the bee-watcher. Still, the honey production level remained flat, so. . . . Well by now you undoubtedly have the idea. Soon everyone in town was lined up, each person looking over the shoulder of someone else to be sure that person was watching to the very best of that person's ability. The whole system collapsed eventually. No productive work was being done and the town fell apart entirely.

Dr. Seuss must have been reading his Max Weber, the early twentieth century sociologist who studied bureaucracy and wrote that within any organization a minority soon takes control and runs the shop for its own benefit, not for its original purpose. John Kenneth Galbraith, the liberal economist, made much the same point about private enterprises when he said companies come to be run by managers who are much less interested in providing dividends for stockholders than they are in their own salaries and bonuses. The last few years make that point so clear that even CAPTAIN OBVIOUS doesn't need to underline it.

Last year's election makes it plain to the CAPTAIN and to all right-thinking people that we remember Dr. Seuss' point and forget Mr. Galbraith's. So now CAPTAIN OBVIOUS will tell you another story. Some years ago the CAPTAIN'S sister waited tables at a steakhouse where the employees worked very hard cooking, cleaning, serving customers, busing tables and so forth, while the nephew of the owner sat at a desk in an office with his feet up, holding conferences with the other employees at which he urged them to work even harder. This nephew drew a very hefty salary. The steakhouse is no longer in business.

All organizations have their drones, unlike our busy little bee, people who spend their workdays sipping coffee, finding ways to avoid helping anyone and yearn for five o'clock when they can begin taking their overly generous holidays, vacations, or slip away into a cushy retirement. If that's your view of government employees, there's a place in the Republican Party for you! But the CAPTAIN will close by saying he saw less waste and less venality in government service than he ever expected.

Next time, CAPTAIN OBVIOUS confronts his arch-nemesis, the evil and maniacal GOVERNMENT SECRECY!

It's easier to rhyme

Father than Mother -

Or something or other.