The Redmond City Council meets on April 22. (City of Redmond) 

 

In his May 18 letter to the editor Redmond’s Doug Jeffries decried government programs that provide beneficiaries with life’s necessities because, Jeffries implies, the programs create and maintain initiative-sapping dependency. Jeffries also asserted that government programs are slow to act and rife with fraud, waste, and incompetence. Fortunately for tax payers, both assertions are false.

At the nation’s founding when yeoman farming enabled relative economic independence, absent or minimal dependency was a common reality for white men and their families working subsistence farms of dozens of acres.  But we no longer live in eighteenth-century rural America.  Americans have long lived in an increasingly complex urbanized society in which dependency is a fundamental necessity for individual and social flourishing rather than an initiative-sapping status to avoid.

Name a life necessity and it’s likely some level of government, if not all levels of government, is the primary provisioner — thank goodness.  I’m dependent upon city, state, and federal resources to construct and maintain the roadways I drive on— thank goodness.  I’m dependent upon the FDA to evaluate and authorize medications I’ve been prescribed — thank goodness.  I’m dependent upon city and county law enforcement departments to protect my life and property — thank goodness. I’m dependent upon federal and state agencies for financial resources upon my retirement — thank goodness. And as a homeowner I’m dependent upon the federal mortgage interest tax deduction for my family’s economic stability — thank goodness.  All these programs and hundreds more distribute public resources to benefit the general public. They were all initially authorized by the people and are overseen by democratically-governed agencies.

But dependency is also cultivated by a private sector largely bereft of democratic oversight.  Half of working America, unfortunately, depend upon an employer and continuing employment for health care insurance. Renters and homeowners, unfortunately, depend upon developers and market forces for their housing. And every American, unfortunately, depends upon grocery retailers and their employer’s need for their skillset to feed themselves.

What all these examples illustrate is the complex and unavoidable network of dependencies in which American households are enmeshed. I’m sure that independence characterizes some facets of my life as does interdependency, but any sort of “on-the-grid” lifestyle requires innumerable dependencies for individual success.  And thank goodness for government dependencies because I don’t know the first thing about medication biochemistry or high-altitude roadway asphalt.

As for Jeffries’ assertion of rampant fraud and incompetence in government, Redmond City Manager Keith Witcosky appears to disagree.  In a November 12, 2024 interview published in Cascade Business News, Witcosky called city staff “phenomenal…prepared, thorough, and informed–at the top of their game.” I’ll hazard that Deschutes County Administrator Nick Lelack would say similar things about County staff. Fraud and incompetence at the municipal level?  Not so much, it seems.

Nor is there evidence of rampant fraud and incompetence amongst federal employees.  Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency would lead you to believe that widespread employee fraud demanded the mass firings of federal employees.  Fortunately for taxpayers and government beneficiaries, there is no evidence for the existence of rampant employee fraud, which explains why the firings were not for cause. Rather, recent reports from the General Accounting Office, Thomson Reuters, plus a recent CBS 60 Minutes episode all highlight fraud perpetrated by criminal gangs, state-supported foreign actors, and government contractors. It’s not dishonest civil servants who are getting rich stealing from government treasuries; rather, it’s foreign entities and unethical contractors who are.

So, instead of fretting about dependency that’s unavoidable, and incompetence and criminality among public employees that’s exceedingly rare, I suggest employing a more helpful set of critical criteria for gauging individual and social health. Solidarity, integrity, capacity-building, human dignity, and reciprocity would be a great set to start with.

Dean Harris lives in Bend.