Patterico's Pontifications

2/14/2016

The Glories of the Bureaucratic State

Filed under: General — JVW @ 1:29 pm



[guest post by JVW]

I would almost guess this is a phony story designed to make us small-government type conservatives look bad by spreading it, but it comes from the hyper-leftist UK newspaper The Guardian, not from Brietbart or The Blaze:

Only when Joaquín García, a Spanish civil servant, was due to collect an award for two decades of loyal and dedicated service did anyone realise that he had not, in fact, shown up to work for at least six years – and possibly as many as 14.

García, a 69-year-old engineer, began working for the local authority in the south-western city of Cádiz in 1990, according to el Mundo, and in 1996 was posted to the municipal water board, Agua de Cadiz, where his job was to supervise a waste water treatment plant.

Boy are the authorities steamed about this. So steamed in fact that they have brought down the whole weight of Spanish law on Garcia and fined him severely:

A court this week fined Garcia €27,000 (£21,000), the equivalent after tax of one year of his annual salary, having earlier found that the engineer did not appear to have occupied his office for “at least six years” and had done “absolutely no work” between 2007 and 2010, the year before he retired. [emphasis added]

Proving that we truly do live in the epoch of the shameless, Garcia has a handy 21st century excuse for why he didn’t show up for work for six — or fourteen — years:

García told the court that he had turned up to the office, although he admitted he may not have kept regular business hours. He said he was the victim of workplace bullying because of his family’s socialist politics and had been deliberately sidelined at the water board.

His friends told El Mundo that the engineer had been unwilling to report his allegations of harassment because he “had a family to support” and was worried that he would not find another job at his age. He had been so depressed by his situation that he had seen a psychiatrist, they said.

Yeah, I too was struck by the fact that this guy has socialist politics. Who would have guessed it? But don’t worry, he put all of his taxpayer-paid free time to good use:

The engineer made the most of the confusion, becoming an avid reader of philosophy and an expert on the works of Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher credited with laying the foundations of the Enlightenment.

Baruch Spinoza’s most important work was of course his great treatise, Ethics.

– JVW

24 Responses to “The Glories of the Bureaucratic State”

  1. He’s the envy of every single Bernard Sanders voter, and 75% of the Hillary Clinton ones too.

    JVW (9e3c77)

  2. government workers are different than real workers

    happyfeet (831175)

  3. Hilarious, especially the last line.

    DRJ (15874d)

  4. Thanks DRJ. In truth, the purpose of the post was mostly to set up the last line.

    JVW (9e3c77)

  5. The left has reframed the word ethic from the ubiquitous “work ethic” (which of course was a vicious tool of the right against the worker) to the new “social ethic” which means you have to behave yourself according to how the elites prescribe, and take take take whenever you see an opportunity

    Clearly Mr. Joaquin Garcia viewed ethics on a sliding scale and his fine of one years pay says his scale of ethics was 5/6 right… maybe he should try to moonlight at another government job where he won’t show up either so he can afford the fine

    steveg (fed1c9)

  6. 4.Thanks DRJ. In truth, the purpose of the post was mostly to set up the last line.

    I did that. There are few things more satisfying in blogging than that!

    DRJ (15874d)

  7. This is really funny! And it’s so not at all surprising that the socialist would rather stay home than actually, you know, do something about his supposed dilemma so he could get back to earning an honest day’s wage.

    Money for Free! – the very mantra of Bernie Sanders.

    Dana (86e864)

  8. Wow, didn’t he feel any guilt or remorse….. society is made up of greed and entitlement

    envy and greed are rampant

    JRT for CRUZ (bc7456)

  9. can you imagine what God will send him back to do in his next life… maybe he’ll be a rat in that sewer plant.

    JRT for CRUZ (bc7456)

  10. encouraging that this made it to a news story….

    JRT for CRUZ (bc7456)

  11. It must be discouraging to have a job that is so pointless that no one will even notice if you stop doing it for 6 years. I suppose he should have kept showing up but failing to do so doesn’t seem like the biggest sin in the world.

    James B. Shearer (0f56fb)

  12. 7 … so he could get back to earning an honest day’s wage.

    It doesn’t appear that was an option. If there had been real work to do someone would have noticed when he stopped doing it.

    James B. Shearer (0f56fb)

  13. Happens all the time in Italy. Why stress?

    f1guyus (9cbd15)

  14. Speaking of not showing up for work…
    there is a rumor that there is an NBA all-star game on tonight,
    and it was advertised as coverage starting at 7 pm…
    we’ve seen acrobats, recording artists, lots of admiring of one another, women in scanty clothes doing more physical exertion than anyone else so far…

    If there was anything else on, we would have changed the channel by now,
    and we still might if they don’t actually play soon…

    Yes, in some ways a trivial 1st world problem, but still…

    MD in Philly (still not in Philly, etc.) (deca84)

  15. Hmmm,
    another 1st world problem,
    it wasn’t worth waiting for…
    now I remember why I don’t like pro basketball

    MD in Philly (still not in Philly, etc.) (deca84)

  16. It must be discouraging to have a job that is so pointless that no one will even notice if you stop doing it for 6 years. I suppose he should have kept showing up but failing to do so doesn’t seem like the biggest sin in the world.

    I believe that here in America if you have a do-nothing government job you are supposed to spend your days watching porn or working a private-sector job while clocked in to your government job.

    JVW (9e3c77)

  17. MD, the score is something like 125-118 halfway through the third quarter. I don’t know why you don’t want to watch this scintillating display of defense by both teams.

    JVW (9e3c77)

  18. I’m watching Taras Bulba, the 2009 Russian production. I saw the 1936 version when I was a kid (the less said about the 1962 Tony Curtis version the better) and this is how I remember it except in color. Great soundtrack too.

    nk (dbc370)

  19. The Cossacks would not have even deigned to drag your short-pants boys behind their horses. They would have whipped them into the Dnieper.

    nk (dbc370)

  20. WTF… a pillow over Scalia’s face?

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  21. somebody murdered that boy Mr. Colonel

    murdered him in his sleep

    we can’t be having this – it’s a really dark road for this pitiful little country to go down

    happyfeet (831175)

  22. Sleeping with a pillow over his head? Hey Vince, how you doin?

    mg (31009b)


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