Originally Posted by tortue

I don't understand how the congress/senate is exempt from drug testing, something all other federal employees have to do.

I bet if there was an attempt to place recording devices in the cabs of locomotive engineers, it would never happen.

Originally Posted by DeadHead

Wow, that's a great idea.
I don't ever see it happening though, mainly because it would probably find over half of our current elected officials in violation. Secondly, the people who write the rules will never write rules against themselves. I believe it is that sort of arrogance in our current political system that has so many hardworking American outraged. Essentially the American Government is infallible, while every other citizen is open to blame and criminalization.

Just look at pay and compensation, can you think of any other occupation where the employees vote and decide on their own pay raises with nothing but their own discretion? The people who set the rules of the game will always win, while the rest of the players lag in the distance.

Maybe every four years when we vote in new officials, we should also vote in on compensation rates for said officials. If we, as a pilot union, must gain approval from the people who sign our checks (management), then politicians should have to gain approval from the people who sign their checks (the American People). A performance-based salary system would also be a good way to have our government thinking about the well being of this nation, as opposed to eternally concentrating on re-election.

Rant over.

Originally Posted by Justdoinmyjob

Better yet, how about have them bid to do the job. Lowest bidder gets the job. It's not like we'd see a slip in quality of work coming out of Congress over what we have today.