News of the Obvious 3

And speaking of Government lacking the competence to do anything right, here's an interesting story about a former government official who managed to climb to lofty heights with a fake PhD.

It turns out Callahan got her precious sheepskin from Hamilton University. Not Hamilton College, the highly competitive school in Clinton, New York, but Hamilton University, the unaccredited fee-for-degree "distance learning" center in Evanston, Wyoming, right on the Utah border. Such diploma mills frequently use names similar to those of accredited schools.

Given my own propensity to make stupid mistakes myself, under normal circumstances I really would feel sympathy for this person. It's a terribly embarassing situation. One brought on totally by her own actions, but nonetheless, people have various failings and I can understand.

But you know what, I'm glad this happened, because this woman was a freakin' dick...

At Labor, Callahan eventually got more power (despite being pushed out of the Clinton White House over the negative Project X publicity) and became less tolerant of those who didn't agree with her. "She had a style where she was right and you were wrong," Wainwright says, "and if you ever questioned her knowledge, if you were a contractor, you were fired, and if you were a fed [employee], you were banished."

Then she got the Ph.D. and threw it in all their faces, Wainwright and others say. "She insisted we call her Dr. Callahan," he says. "And she would belittle people with her technospeak to make them look stupid. In fact, she said most people [at Labor] were basically stupid." They got the last laugh.

I see these people all the time. I mean, how difficult is it to just be f'ing decent to people? Is that hard? Does being a decent person somehow undermine your power and authority?

Bureaucracies are filled with dicks who have power. Which is why it behooves us to fear them. It tickles me that her underlings got the last laugh...