After speaking at a health care rally in Westwood last Saturday (still waiting to find out who “planted” me there, btw) I ended up in a conversation with three younger, left-leaning, pro Obamacare types who were videotaping the event. They seemed sincere enough, although I haven’t checked to see if I’ve been subjected to some creative editing somewhere on YouTube yet.

On the rare occasions that I can have an actual dialogue with anyone on the subject, we can begin to explore the underlying personal philosophies that drive people on both sides of the debate over President Obama’s vision of health care reform. While they’re are still plenty of hypnotized sycophants who would be on board with this president if he told them to get naked, head outside and profess their undying love for a strawberry smoothie, most of those on the left have their hearts in the right place.

Unfortunately, when dealing with complex, far reaching policy it’s best to lead with one’s head and not the heart.

Based on what I’ve observed with my head all these years here’s what my heart tells me: anyone who posits that the creation of a new layer of federal bureaucracy will make things more efficient and reduce costs hasn’t spent much time paying attention to the federal government. You might as well say you can staff the new level with minimum wage Oompa-Loompa men because you are now operating in a world of pure imagination.

The federal government is a bloated, inefficient beast by nature and exists primarily to find new ways to bloat itself.

As for efficiency, that’s a concept the seems to be surgically removed from every bureaucrat’s vocabulary.

Some examples:

Remember the bailout panic? The government panicked and through money at companies without bothering to find out how the money would be spent.

This really wasn’t a singular mistake. In the mind of an entrenched bureaucrat, the mere spending of taxpayer money is a benevolent, functional act in and of itself. How they spend the money is often a joke when scrutinized.

Have you been hearing a lot about how wildly successful the “Cash for Clunkers” program is. Then you haven’t been talking to too many auto dealers.

When the government is making frightening clerical errors, it’s making dangerous economic predictions.

These kinds of governmental screw-ups aren’t unique to this administration. This isn’t an anti-Obama thing with me, it’s an anti-federal bureaucracy thing and I’ve been on record about this for a long time now so file your weak-assed race cards away.

For every one example of the feds getting something right, five minutes of research will come up with dozens of it doing things in the most ridiculously inefficient manner possible.

I really don’t need to look much beyond the stimulus to back this up. After hearing from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle that taxpayers ABSOLUTELY HAD TO COUGH UP a staggering amount of money to save the economy, much of it remains undistributed more than half a year later.

When it spends the money quickly, it’s horrible misspent (exec bonuses), while projects that could use the money don’t get it in a timely fashion.

Still think that a public option or single payer health care will make things less expensive and more efficient?

Then hand me a Fizzy-Lifting drink and let’s hurry over to the Hsaw Aknow (that’s “Wonka Wash” spelled backwards).