One More Example

Yesterday's USA Today bemoans the passport mess. In case you’ve been too busy to notice, this year (some five and a half years after 9/11/2001) the guvmint began requiring passports for re-entry from Bermuda, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Congress passed this law in 2004, so the guvmint had three years or so to get ready for the expected deluge of passport applications. Well, you guessed it. The guvmint blew it. They are so far behind handling passport applications that people are being forced to cancel long-planned vacations. Those people are complaining mightily to Congress, which is reacting typically—cut the budget and extend the deadline (to as late as 2009 for some travelers). Folks, here is one fiasco you can blame totally on the guvmint. They passed the law. They, according to USA Today, failed to properly inform the public. They failed to get ready for the increase in passport applications. They are backing out with extended deadlines, rather than solving the problem. Can you imagine Wal-Mart not eagerly preparing for an expected surge in the sales of one product? I can’t. But this does happen on a regular basis in the hotel business. A huge hotel will—with the help of the local tourism board—eagerly seek out a major association and sell it hard on having the  convention at said hotel. The hotel will book that convention a year in advance. Then, when a convention attendee complains about slow/poor service, the hotel will say, "I’m so sorry, but you know we have a huge convention here, and a full house," As if that makes bad service okay. When that happens, I am prone to respond in mock astonishment, "Holy cow, didn’t you know they were coming?" They fidget and stammer but have no real answer. There is a difference, though. You can choose to have your convention somewhere else next year. You can’t choose to do business with another guvmint. This law was set up so that air travelers must have passports first, long before land and sea travelers. Seems like we all oughta be irritated about that. Thank goodness my passport doesn’t expire until 2015. Maybe by then the guvmint will give up and put Wal-Mart in charge of passports. We'd love to post your comments. Please click the comment tab at the top.