Artist's rendering of Apple's new Pentagon-sized headquarters, currently under construction in California, not Mississippi.
The government has screwed up Healthcare.gov. That is indisputable. While much of that is frustrating, conservatives are offering comedy relief by saying stuff like
this:
I get that progressive techies didn’t set things up that way, and left to their own devices, can produce pretty good results (see the 2012 Obama campaign). But the governing philosophy they support is at odds with the startup mentality they also embrace.
The argument seems to be that startups are swift and nimble and innovating and risk-taking, while government is the opposite of all that.
It's kinda rich seeing conservatives try to ding government for not being innovative, since this is the same crowd still screaming about Solyandra. But there's a reason that the nation's top innovation hub is nestled in one of the nation's highest-taxed regions, in California's Silicon Valley. And it's no accident that the second biggest tech hub is in New York's Silicon Alley, another high-tax region.
Technological innovation needs certain things to operate smoothly: world class educational institutions, modern infrastructure, cultural amenities, a regulatory framework that allows for venture capital to flow smoothly (both financial regulations to protect investors and entrepreneurs, and a legal system to litigate disputes), and a culture of tolerance, creativity, and collaboration antithetical to selfish conservatism. Isn't that what progressivism is all about? Changing the rules of the game to improve our society? Conservatism, by its inherent nature, abhors change and disruption. I mean, why else would they fight to the death to protect the fossil fuel energy industry?
And that's why the Apples, Facebooks, Instagrams and pretty much anything else that's cool flows out of California and not Mississippi.
Now if conservatives want to argue that the government procurement process is broken and in desperate need of reform, then I'm all ears. Liberals want, as a matter of course, government to work as efficiently and effectively as possible. Gutting the system of the CGIs who feed off the public trough and fleece taxpayers for non-working products (like the $500 million Healthcare.gov) would be tops on my to-do list.
Heck, perhaps House conservatives could hit "pause" on one of their many Benghazi hearings to work on something along these lines. Maybe delay their next Obamacare-defunding bill to tackle this more pressing item. I bet there would be huge bipartisan grassroots support for such reforms. (And that would also reduce the deficit, not that anyone really cares.)
But conservatives aren't really interested in efficient government contracting. Just look at the Military Industrial Complex and their trillion-dollar planes. They are interested in scoring cheap points off a botched rollout.