>>21030937
in many cases that phrase made perfect sense.
the 'jobs' were make work, the work done was useless.
the jobs funded a lot of useless overhead, countless managers and overseers who often did nothing. The money was actually spent on something else.
the few who were hired as 'crews' were often contractors doing all the work.
in many cases the stuff they did was useless, for example 'dark fiber': where miles and miles of fiber were hung never to be lighted or used for communications. or other such projects.
so the workers, who were day-job people, knew this all instinctivly. They knew that it was just about billing for work that perhaps was never going to get done, and there would never be an audit, and no one would ever be called to task for it being shoddy and not completed correctly. And no one would be harmed by it not being done 'to spec'.
and in many cases the work never even got done but was billed anyway.
so the term 'good enough for government work' made perfect sense.
why should the contractors who rebilled the work be the only ones to have an easy time?
many contractors would bid as many contracts as they knew how to bid and then, if they won, they'd get the list of all the other bidders and subcontract one of them to do the actual work.
perfect as we can make it?
perfect would be if the contracts were never put out to bid and none of the work was ever billed: like those 'charging stations'.
it's perfect that they don't get built.
inperfect that they are billed anyway, is my guess.