In response to John Beebe's letter about how wonderful the federal government is ("Government can't do anything right," March 31, 2010, Gazette), he is misinformed about a few things.

Local power, water, roads, state and local building codes and transportation, public schools, fire and police are not the federal government in action. The Federal Communications Commission recently made all analog battery-operated TVs useless, unless you get a converter box, which is often not battery-powered and does not work in case of severe weather emergency when you lose power.

With all of their sophistication, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration can still only guess about what weather is going to take place, my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved Toyota is under recall, we have several cases of Food and Drug Administration-approved food contaminated each year, and the U.S. Post Office lost $3 billion last year, while FedEx made a significant profit in the same timeframe.

I do agree that federal timekeeping is accurate, so we can have a totally accurate accounting of when billions are lost to inefficiency and waste, and we know exactly to the fraction of a second when the federal debt doubles.

"Glenn Bloom
Oklahoma City

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