We're having a genuine snow day in Chicago, finally. We may get 3 inches or more. Temperature in the 20s and will get really low by Monday.
Meanwhile, the pilot light on the boiler went out this morning in our 12-unit building. But it's been fixed now. Very interesting to see certain people take swift action to get the repair people in. One of them had been vociferously complaining over a couple of months that he wasn't getting the perfect level of heat, but he didn't care at all that he was clueless about the amount of work it takes to adjust the system and ensure it's working (not to mention that his radiators seemed to be out of adjustment and most people were too hot). No, he was content to whine and make demands and threats and ignore every effort at explanation, and even break the timer by messing with it, because that's what people who think they're adults do, right? (/sarc) But eventually the board got smart--they showed him how the whole thing actually works and put him in charge of it. Must have been a real learning experience, because now he's all Mr. Responsibility.
Sometimes bellyachers really do want be helpful, but never figured out how to get people to hear offer over the complaining. I raise a glass to the folks that put him on charge!
Surprisingly, he is a psychologist, or at least has the letters after his name. But I'm thinking the board now understands a thing or two about practical psychology. I've been telling them they need to communicate better and encourage people to volunteer. This was a better result than I even hoped for.
I think that when we reach the point of having enough nothing--or maybe too much nothing--the public will decide that's about enough of that, and they're ready for some something. Don't know when the tipping point will come, but it will. I really am leaning toward Jonah's suggestion (in his LA Times column this week) that this is a limited phase we're in now. Gives us a little time to figure out some appropriate moves.
My son is worried about his job. He has been with NASIC for 11 months now, but is on a 2 year probationary period. Had it been one year he'd be fine, but they have enough time to screw up and lay him off. Probationary means purely "at will".
He will get to keep his top secret security clearance, and other contractors out there are sending mass emails to employees asking if they want to leave now or not? I told my son to stay. That clearance easily cost $25k to attain, so contractors salivate at hiring people who already have it.
It would seem that for the immediate future at least, "at will" is the term for most any job on the government's payroll, probationary or not. And whether or not that will change is the question.
Currently 29, high of 39 today, overcast, gloomy in the "Dem near term forecasts" way. Nothing unbearable, but I doubt I'll see people singing and skipping along the street.
Confidence in institutions is low, and will remain low. But people see when things go wrong, and they don't like the excuses. And permanent outrage becomes complacency. To paraphrase Dash from The Incredibles, "when everything is an outrage, nothing is an outrage".
In China, it's Lantern Festival, the official last day of Spring Festival, and the first full moon of the new Lunar New Year. Get together with family, light lanterns, give red envelopes (Hong Bao) full of money to your elders, eat glutinous white rice balls (stand ins for the full moon) and FIREWORKS. It sounds like a small war zone out there.
In about a tenth of a second, at least if it's the kind that go "bang!" right outside your house, with the express purpose of annoying people and scaring pets. The professional shows are OK, because they're about light displays.
Not me. You can buy the real stuff here. 10,000 cracker rolls of firecrackers. Massive aerial cannons that are municipal 4th of July grade explosives. Resounding thumpers that throw 100 M80's 200' into the air and explode with a thump that you feel in your diaphragm.
You even see little kids lighting explosives. It's insane. But, it's a lot of fun.
It is. Portrayed in the States as a repressive society, at street level where I'm at it's wide open crazy. Set off mountains of fireworks in the middle of a 2500 condo unit development? Sure, of course, it's Lantern Festival, no one cares.
This is from a Free Press article about PBS apparently trying to skirt the DEI EO. The concept of DEI sounds great, but the excesses are pretty outrageous.
PBS formally established its DEI department in 2021 with the hiring of Loving and Leow, in order to “look as carefully in the mirror and recognize that there may be areas where we are not doing our best,” PBS CEO Kerger said at the time. Loving earned $396,240 including bonuses in 2022, according to PBS’s most recent financial disclosure forms, which lists the top 16 highest paid people at the network. The salary for Leow was not listed. The webpage for PBS’s DEI department was archived sometime on or after January 15.
During her tenure, Loving introduced weekly “meditation Mondays” and regular “indigenous healing circles” for PBS employees to “resolve conflict” and “create a safe space for courageous conversations,” according to a 2023 internal PBS DEI presentation obtained by The Free Press. The presentation states that “the vulnerability, intimacy, and trust developed through the safe container of circles supports our endorphin system, which in turn stimulates more trust.”
Oh man, if I had my DEI Bingo card, I could have won some money there. All that's missing is the word authentic!
Our current pastor loves all those words. I think he tosses them into a word mixer to create many of his Sunday sermons. The fascinating part are some elderly who use open worship to espouse hatred for that other side... Did you know that other side are full of terrible people?
A little discourse on Reducing staff. Some of our friends here may also have been in management. At Sloan, my minor was in Macro, Labor, Organizational Psychology and management. Then at GE, their management school at Crotonville. Where they brought new (then) thought business leaders like Michael Porter, Kotler etc.
But actually managing... was mostly OTJ and your direct manager.
Some of the ways employees leave:
A. Compliance violation. Like regulated documents, testing. Harassment.
B. Reduction In Force - RIF
C. Poor Performance
D. "Not working out"; Not a fit; Going a different direction. Can be no more potential growth in this organization
We had two HR cycles. For companies maybe >100 and higher, but definitely 500+, this worked well.
A. Performance review. Annual. Everyone. Sometimes vs written objectives. Not always. Here pretty much everyone for Performance feedback and raise on a curve. Curve was time at level and 2ndly, your career potential.
B. Career Potential. This is absolutely the greatest management HR tool never used anywhere else. Sad.
1. You have a Standardized form. This career assessment is annual. You put your brief resume achievements and positions. Because usually managers don't know your background. You fill out 2 self assessment sections. A. What you think your strengths and Development needs are. B. What your career desires are in 1-2 years and 5+ years.
Direct manager then gives his career and strength and needs assessment. But he does not review with their employees until, their direct manager and then that manager's manager reviews. Their can be changes as a direct manager has a smaller pool. Then feedback is given.
Objective downsizing. Here, in a parallel to current events, a new leader who has little or no history with the organization is brought in to dispassionately reduce the employee count. Usually some number of managers are preselected to stay on and guide the process. It clears low performance and low potential employees.
This is not going out of business bankruptcy. This is for the entity to survive.
Thanks for that. Quite interesting. I assume that not a single element of it has ever been applied to any government job, but I'm a crank with mild libertarian tendencies, although I think libertarians are generally morons.
Business leaders are within boundaries autocrats. In many product arenas they thrive. Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, some of Gates. Oppenheimer. Mozart. Beethoven. Dylan. Welch. X-Man
There are fewer areas, where organization structure excels at those levels. Sloan at GM, Watson et al at IBM, GE CEOs for a long time. McCartney and Lennon, Rogers and Hammerstein.
The smaller and tighter the power, the more facile it is to pivot. This means the time constant for decision making and taking action is faster
The concern to me, is harming the good while cutting. So far the paradigm seems vindictive and not thoughtful. We shall see.
Most of my career was spent in large corporations. I saw firsthand how unintentional fat and excess takes hold, and painful pruning every few years takes place. A lot of work that was perceived to be important, turned out not to be. My impression, fully recognizing that I’m an outsider, is that this pruning has never happened in most fed agencies, no cost/benefit analysis is ever done, and hiring and increasing budgets just keeps happening. If the new admin has success in addressing and making our govt more lean, then I’ll applaud them. It would be great if it was a thoughtful and analytical approach. That doesn’t appear to be the case. I don’t know what’s worse, the likely chaos we’ll see or ignorantly continuing on the path that has brought us to a $35T debt with no end in sight?
The problem is our rapid-change political cycle. There's a lot to do and not much time. Fertile ground for mistakes, but the deficit is crushing and trust in government almost non-existent.
In my last major job change, I went from the best-managed company I ever worked for to one of the worst. In the former, every employee had clearly defined objectives and an annual review to determine whether those objectives were being met. A great deal of work was done each year to try to ensure that the individual objectives lined up with the divisional objectives which lined up with the overall corporate objectives. Most employees had some level of discretion or authority and were expected to exercise it appropriately (and would be held accountable if they didn't).
By contrast, the company I joined (inadvertantly through a divestiture) was bloated and bureaucratic. I found myself having to sit through meetings with eleven people in them just to get things done that I used to be able to do just with one person's assistance. Over time, however, things got better - mainly because we were losing money. Layoffs happened over time and took out the people who were the obvious underperformers. Not surprisingly, it became much easier to get things done.
I don't doubt that there are many departments in the government that are in the position of my latter employer. However, I also suspect that these departments also contain good people that should be retained and some who should even be rewarded. That said, separating out the two groups takes time (and probably shouldn't be done by 25-year-olds with no organizational experience).
Academia struggles with this. We have four major academic units. Each one had their own study abroad programs. We did 4-6 sites each summer, 20-30 students at each site, and we made money for the university. We had a full time faculty who got some course reductions to run it, and a half time secretary.
Then we centralized it. And it went down, badly. They staffed up (that section now has 10 f/t employees). They outsource all logistics to a 3rd party, who does what our single faculty used to do, which was to rent apartments for a month. But it raises the cost 15-20%. They arrange our field trips. Great, except for our "Business in Rome" study abroad there are no business field trips. I suggested several, they all got nixed, too expensive. But I am allowed to buy everyone a gelato once on the trip.
So the program costs 30% more than it used to cost, is a week less this year (4+ weeks instead of 5+ weeks). During covid, we cancelled all study abroad. Rather than lay anyone off, we centralized all travel (since 5% of it is overseas) with it. So they hired people to administer it, who outsource it to a 3rd party logistics firm, who charge a fee for it, and well, rinse, lather, and repeat.
What's worse, they don't understand out curriculum. In my site in Rome they are frustrated because only five students signed up for accounting. But, and this but is bigger than Kim Kardashians, 90% of our students go at the end of their sophomore year. And 95% of all business students take that accounting class the fall of their sophomore year. Furthermore, accounting doesn't offer a version for non-business students.
So they are angry at us for not marketing more (My accounting guy is spending ten hours a week marketing his accounting class). I finally asked them if they had ever reviewed our curriculum, and they looked at me oddly. I then explained the sophomore kerfuffle, and how the other two courses, mine is for juniors, and the 3rd class is a senior level history elective. So their target market for that accounting class are freshmen, which is not the target market for study abroad. I think the light bulb may have come one, but who knows?
I warned them that with curricular changes, that half a dozen classes in business will move from junior year to sophomore year, so they need to account for that in their planning.
When organizations are in decline they centralize...Best to cut lose those organizations, and let small sub-units run it themselves.
There were a few great business innovations by Jack. Probably the best was 1-2-3. Be 1 or 2 in your market share. 3 get to 2 quickly. Or be sold. He also had 5% tree trimming rif every few years.
Another was "Work out". Which was employees getting rid of wasteful process steps.
The "5% trim" is a great idea for the first few years, particularly when you're dealing with a bloated organization that has plenty of obvious candidates for that bottom 5%. The problem is that if you do it each and every year and you also have a good hiring process, you ultimately run out of that "easily dispensed with" group and start having to cut people who are still contributing to the organization.
That's pretty funny. I don't think that will make it into the screenplay. This one isn't a rom-com, it might be a drama, and we're' hovering very close to full tilt Greek tragedy.
You’re in good company. Most libertarians feel the same way. (I’ve never seen a party so full of intolerant purists who want to run each other out of the party all the time…)
It would be different if Trump's trade policies were based on any kind of realistic understanding of the situation. Trump's been complaining lately about how the US is "subsidizing Canada by $200B, maybe $300B!!"). The reality is that the US trade deficit with Canada for 2024 was actually $63B, which mainly exists because Canada exports $124B worth of crude oil to the US. If Oil is taken out of the equation, the US would have a substantial surplus in all other product areas.
However, if Canada stopped exporting Oil to the US, it would be undoing fifty years of conscientious effort on the part of the various US governments to ensure that the US had reliable energy supplies. If the Oil shocks of the 70's taught anything, it was the importance of ensuring that OPEC could never again wield that kind of clout over the US economy. Fixing that required the establishment of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, increased domestic production, and the development of Canada's Oil Sands (which holds about 10% of the world's proven reserves).
Now, it appears that Trump is intent on shutting Canadian Oil out of the US market - effectively forcing Canadian producers to find alternative markets in Europe and Asia. This is a good idea because?
While I'm not bothered by the Elon vivisection of government agencies, the tariffs and idiotic trade war stuff is pure stupidity. There's no sense to it.
Sounds about right. Of course, it doesn’t even touch on the biggest problem with Trumps dopey trade and tariff actions: Pissing off perfectly good friends and neighbors by being such a complete and ostentatious jerk about all of it.
Yeah, that kinda sounds like me. I alternate between concern that it's all going to end up in a chaotic mess and passive detached observational interest curiously waiting to see what happens. Regardless, chaos is my forecast, with no clear idea where it's going. I'm curiously calm about all of it. That it is coming through Trump completely disgusts me, but at this point it's one more disgusting thing to move on from.
I've worked in HUD, and had enough contact with the functionaries to not particularly care about people getting kicked out of jobs. Public sector unions need to go away. In China, public sector workers accept being poor in exchange for stability, and they better perform or they're immediately replaced. In America, public sector workers want high pay, mega-benefits, and guaranteed employment for life. I'm for the China model.
"Struggling" is an understatement. Real estate, in general, is an utter freak show. It would take a small essay to describe the problems. The stock market...only a loon would wade in there. Capital controls prevent capital flight, although billions are being illicitly spirited out as we speak. It's fair to say everyone hates the top guy, since it all started going downhill as soon as he got in and began with his Marxist-Leninist crap. Even my FIL with the framed Mao picture on the wall hates the top guy. Graduates can't find jobs; youth unemployment has gotten very, very bad.The lower echelons of society are hurting bad, and "lower echelons" is some hundreds of millions. No one believes the Party crap. Chinese are more hard wired for capitalist entrepreneurial activity than any other people on Earth. It's endlessly fascinating.
That said, walking around it all looks fairly normal. Chinese tighten belts and persevere. I find a lot to identify with.
All that and how much more do you want me to talk about it?.... :-)
The Chinese miracle happened when the government took their boot off the necks of the citizenry. The place exploded with capitalist entrepreneurial successes.
The problems came with the real estate development model. There's essentially no taxes, and no property tax. Local government's sole income came from selling land to developers to build housing. That worked great for 30 years, and it built to a crescendo that collapsed. I drive by gigantic complexes of 1000-2000+ units that are see through buildings, i.e., they're concrete shells absent windows, curtain walls, or anything, hence you can "see through" them.
There's about 80 million finished, unsold, and unoccupied housing units, another several dozen million of unfinished see through, and several millions of folks are out of lots of money because they paid up front for buildings that didn't get built. Here, you pay first, they build it and you take possession a year or so later. Lotta people got, and are, burnt.
> In China, public sector workers accept being poor in exchange for stability, and they better perform or they're immediately replaced. In America, public sector workers want high pay, mega-benefits, and guaranteed employment for life. I'm for the China model. <
The German bureaucracy is competent and professional, typically slightly underpaid, but enjoys job protection. Unionization has been out of the question—at least so far.
The problem with competent, professional bureaucrats is that when they want to be obstructive, they’ve got you beat. They hold all the cards.
One interesting novelty: German government workers aren’t eligible for “public” health insurance. They’re required to buy private health coverage instead. (All citizens are required to carry health insurance of some sort. Self-employed and business owners are also not eligible for government health insurance.)
My German party, the Free Democrats—an essential party behind the Wirtschaftswunder years—used to have a platform plank in their political manifesto that no one employed by government should have the franchise. If you work for the government, the argument went, your interest was in protecting and growing government by any and all means. Therefore, you should not be permitted to vote in democratic elections. You would essentially function as voter who accepted money to vote on behalf of government expansion.
Good morning. 31 degrees here, rising to the upper 30s and rain later. Southern Ohio got snow last night but it missed us.
The mothership is covering Trump’s (and Musks’s) assault on the National Institutes form Health. One of the FP stores this morning is on a similar assault in the National Endowment for Democracyh.
I am hoping the economy can absorb the unemployed into more productive work. It will be interesting to see how that works out. The fact remains that the government is not a jobs program. We have allowed it to grow fat and unhealthy over many many years.
If the changes end where they are, though, all it will take is another pro-government-minded president to inhabit the White House, and all those positions will be reestablished and inhabited by the next batch of activists from left-wing NGOs. I remain skeptical. Maybe they’ll prove me wrong, but that’s on them, not me.
We're having a genuine snow day in Chicago, finally. We may get 3 inches or more. Temperature in the 20s and will get really low by Monday.
Meanwhile, the pilot light on the boiler went out this morning in our 12-unit building. But it's been fixed now. Very interesting to see certain people take swift action to get the repair people in. One of them had been vociferously complaining over a couple of months that he wasn't getting the perfect level of heat, but he didn't care at all that he was clueless about the amount of work it takes to adjust the system and ensure it's working (not to mention that his radiators seemed to be out of adjustment and most people were too hot). No, he was content to whine and make demands and threats and ignore every effort at explanation, and even break the timer by messing with it, because that's what people who think they're adults do, right? (/sarc) But eventually the board got smart--they showed him how the whole thing actually works and put him in charge of it. Must have been a real learning experience, because now he's all Mr. Responsibility.
Sometimes bellyachers really do want be helpful, but never figured out how to get people to hear offer over the complaining. I raise a glass to the folks that put him on charge!
Surprisingly, he is a psychologist, or at least has the letters after his name. But I'm thinking the board now understands a thing or two about practical psychology. I've been telling them they need to communicate better and encourage people to volunteer. This was a better result than I even hoped for.
I think that when we reach the point of having enough nothing--or maybe too much nothing--the public will decide that's about enough of that, and they're ready for some something. Don't know when the tipping point will come, but it will. I really am leaning toward Jonah's suggestion (in his LA Times column this week) that this is a limited phase we're in now. Gives us a little time to figure out some appropriate moves.
My son is worried about his job. He has been with NASIC for 11 months now, but is on a 2 year probationary period. Had it been one year he'd be fine, but they have enough time to screw up and lay him off. Probationary means purely "at will".
He will get to keep his top secret security clearance, and other contractors out there are sending mass emails to employees asking if they want to leave now or not? I told my son to stay. That clearance easily cost $25k to attain, so contractors salivate at hiring people who already have it.
But it is a stressful time.
RE: Probationary means purely "at will".
It would seem that for the immediate future at least, "at will" is the term for most any job on the government's payroll, probationary or not. And whether or not that will change is the question.
A TS clearance is gold. As a former cleared contractor employee, I would agree that staying is probably the best option.
G'morning all
Currently 29, high of 39 today, overcast, gloomy in the "Dem near term forecasts" way. Nothing unbearable, but I doubt I'll see people singing and skipping along the street.
Confidence in institutions is low, and will remain low. But people see when things go wrong, and they don't like the excuses. And permanent outrage becomes complacency. To paraphrase Dash from The Incredibles, "when everything is an outrage, nothing is an outrage".
Interesting: Mexico's move to deploy 10,000 troops at the U.S. border was President Claudia Sheinbaum's idea, not Trump's.
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/mexico-sheinbaum-trump-tariffs-conversation-b9ce80cd?st=fzy7B3&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Tax appointments cancelled today due to the snow, 6-10” predicted. It’s frigid too, 14 degrees.
BTW how's the baby?
The chaos of 6" -10" of natural snow would be a welcome diversion. It might even have some perspective corrective power.
In China, it's Lantern Festival, the official last day of Spring Festival, and the first full moon of the new Lunar New Year. Get together with family, light lanterns, give red envelopes (Hong Bao) full of money to your elders, eat glutinous white rice balls (stand ins for the full moon) and FIREWORKS. It sounds like a small war zone out there.
Sounds like fun, although eating rice balls after awhile might lose some excitement. As for fireworks, can anyone ever really get tired of them?
In about a tenth of a second, at least if it's the kind that go "bang!" right outside your house, with the express purpose of annoying people and scaring pets. The professional shows are OK, because they're about light displays.
Not me. You can buy the real stuff here. 10,000 cracker rolls of firecrackers. Massive aerial cannons that are municipal 4th of July grade explosives. Resounding thumpers that throw 100 M80's 200' into the air and explode with a thump that you feel in your diaphragm.
You even see little kids lighting explosives. It's insane. But, it's a lot of fun.
Seems fun.
It is. Portrayed in the States as a repressive society, at street level where I'm at it's wide open crazy. Set off mountains of fireworks in the middle of a 2500 condo unit development? Sure, of course, it's Lantern Festival, no one cares.
I for one am not upset we are going to stop sending money to other countries for DEI training, transgender plays and sex change operations.
This is from a Free Press article about PBS apparently trying to skirt the DEI EO. The concept of DEI sounds great, but the excesses are pretty outrageous.
PBS formally established its DEI department in 2021 with the hiring of Loving and Leow, in order to “look as carefully in the mirror and recognize that there may be areas where we are not doing our best,” PBS CEO Kerger said at the time. Loving earned $396,240 including bonuses in 2022, according to PBS’s most recent financial disclosure forms, which lists the top 16 highest paid people at the network. The salary for Leow was not listed. The webpage for PBS’s DEI department was archived sometime on or after January 15.
During her tenure, Loving introduced weekly “meditation Mondays” and regular “indigenous healing circles” for PBS employees to “resolve conflict” and “create a safe space for courageous conversations,” according to a 2023 internal PBS DEI presentation obtained by The Free Press. The presentation states that “the vulnerability, intimacy, and trust developed through the safe container of circles supports our endorphin system, which in turn stimulates more trust.”
choking back the gorge rising in my throat..
Oh man, if I had my DEI Bingo card, I could have won some money there. All that's missing is the word authentic!
Our current pastor loves all those words. I think he tosses them into a word mixer to create many of his Sunday sermons. The fascinating part are some elderly who use open worship to espouse hatred for that other side... Did you know that other side are full of terrible people?
And one's own side never has any terrible people, right?
Agreed. Hard to think of things more ludicrous and—in a lot of countries—counter-productive.
Right. I understand these things are a teeny tiny percentage of the budget, but I don't care. Get rid of them.
A little discourse on Reducing staff. Some of our friends here may also have been in management. At Sloan, my minor was in Macro, Labor, Organizational Psychology and management. Then at GE, their management school at Crotonville. Where they brought new (then) thought business leaders like Michael Porter, Kotler etc.
But actually managing... was mostly OTJ and your direct manager.
Some of the ways employees leave:
A. Compliance violation. Like regulated documents, testing. Harassment.
B. Reduction In Force - RIF
C. Poor Performance
D. "Not working out"; Not a fit; Going a different direction. Can be no more potential growth in this organization
We had two HR cycles. For companies maybe >100 and higher, but definitely 500+, this worked well.
A. Performance review. Annual. Everyone. Sometimes vs written objectives. Not always. Here pretty much everyone for Performance feedback and raise on a curve. Curve was time at level and 2ndly, your career potential.
B. Career Potential. This is absolutely the greatest management HR tool never used anywhere else. Sad.
1. You have a Standardized form. This career assessment is annual. You put your brief resume achievements and positions. Because usually managers don't know your background. You fill out 2 self assessment sections. A. What you think your strengths and Development needs are. B. What your career desires are in 1-2 years and 5+ years.
Direct manager then gives his career and strength and needs assessment. But he does not review with their employees until, their direct manager and then that manager's manager reviews. Their can be changes as a direct manager has a smaller pool. Then feedback is given.
Objective downsizing. Here, in a parallel to current events, a new leader who has little or no history with the organization is brought in to dispassionately reduce the employee count. Usually some number of managers are preselected to stay on and guide the process. It clears low performance and low potential employees.
This is not going out of business bankruptcy. This is for the entity to survive.
I sometimes use the phrase greenfield and brownfield sites. Sometimes the only way to fix it is to close it, and open anew elsewhere.
Academia struggles with this.
ALL complex groups struggle with this.
Yes that is right. GE did that with small and medium maybe large GAS Turbines moving to non Union South Carolina instead of unionized Schenectady.
Thanks for that. Quite interesting. I assume that not a single element of it has ever been applied to any government job, but I'm a crank with mild libertarian tendencies, although I think libertarians are generally morons.
Business leaders are within boundaries autocrats. In many product arenas they thrive. Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, some of Gates. Oppenheimer. Mozart. Beethoven. Dylan. Welch. X-Man
There are fewer areas, where organization structure excels at those levels. Sloan at GM, Watson et al at IBM, GE CEOs for a long time. McCartney and Lennon, Rogers and Hammerstein.
The smaller and tighter the power, the more facile it is to pivot. This means the time constant for decision making and taking action is faster
The concern to me, is harming the good while cutting. So far the paradigm seems vindictive and not thoughtful. We shall see.
Excellent comment, Doug.
Kind thanks Ann.
Most of my career was spent in large corporations. I saw firsthand how unintentional fat and excess takes hold, and painful pruning every few years takes place. A lot of work that was perceived to be important, turned out not to be. My impression, fully recognizing that I’m an outsider, is that this pruning has never happened in most fed agencies, no cost/benefit analysis is ever done, and hiring and increasing budgets just keeps happening. If the new admin has success in addressing and making our govt more lean, then I’ll applaud them. It would be great if it was a thoughtful and analytical approach. That doesn’t appear to be the case. I don’t know what’s worse, the likely chaos we’ll see or ignorantly continuing on the path that has brought us to a $35T debt with no end in sight?
The problem is our rapid-change political cycle. There's a lot to do and not much time. Fertile ground for mistakes, but the deficit is crushing and trust in government almost non-existent.
In my last major job change, I went from the best-managed company I ever worked for to one of the worst. In the former, every employee had clearly defined objectives and an annual review to determine whether those objectives were being met. A great deal of work was done each year to try to ensure that the individual objectives lined up with the divisional objectives which lined up with the overall corporate objectives. Most employees had some level of discretion or authority and were expected to exercise it appropriately (and would be held accountable if they didn't).
By contrast, the company I joined (inadvertantly through a divestiture) was bloated and bureaucratic. I found myself having to sit through meetings with eleven people in them just to get things done that I used to be able to do just with one person's assistance. Over time, however, things got better - mainly because we were losing money. Layoffs happened over time and took out the people who were the obvious underperformers. Not surprisingly, it became much easier to get things done.
I don't doubt that there are many departments in the government that are in the position of my latter employer. However, I also suspect that these departments also contain good people that should be retained and some who should even be rewarded. That said, separating out the two groups takes time (and probably shouldn't be done by 25-year-olds with no organizational experience).
Wait, did I miss a day here? Is your expanded handle a message to me?
What have you done?! Repent!
The sense of losing money hasn't hit Congress yet.
Academia struggles with this. We have four major academic units. Each one had their own study abroad programs. We did 4-6 sites each summer, 20-30 students at each site, and we made money for the university. We had a full time faculty who got some course reductions to run it, and a half time secretary.
Then we centralized it. And it went down, badly. They staffed up (that section now has 10 f/t employees). They outsource all logistics to a 3rd party, who does what our single faculty used to do, which was to rent apartments for a month. But it raises the cost 15-20%. They arrange our field trips. Great, except for our "Business in Rome" study abroad there are no business field trips. I suggested several, they all got nixed, too expensive. But I am allowed to buy everyone a gelato once on the trip.
So the program costs 30% more than it used to cost, is a week less this year (4+ weeks instead of 5+ weeks). During covid, we cancelled all study abroad. Rather than lay anyone off, we centralized all travel (since 5% of it is overseas) with it. So they hired people to administer it, who outsource it to a 3rd party logistics firm, who charge a fee for it, and well, rinse, lather, and repeat.
What's worse, they don't understand out curriculum. In my site in Rome they are frustrated because only five students signed up for accounting. But, and this but is bigger than Kim Kardashians, 90% of our students go at the end of their sophomore year. And 95% of all business students take that accounting class the fall of their sophomore year. Furthermore, accounting doesn't offer a version for non-business students.
So they are angry at us for not marketing more (My accounting guy is spending ten hours a week marketing his accounting class). I finally asked them if they had ever reviewed our curriculum, and they looked at me oddly. I then explained the sophomore kerfuffle, and how the other two courses, mine is for juniors, and the 3rd class is a senior level history elective. So their target market for that accounting class are freshmen, which is not the target market for study abroad. I think the light bulb may have come one, but who knows?
I warned them that with curricular changes, that half a dozen classes in business will move from junior year to sophomore year, so they need to account for that in their planning.
When organizations are in decline they centralize...Best to cut lose those organizations, and let small sub-units run it themselves.
So many good parallels in government.
There were a few great business innovations by Jack. Probably the best was 1-2-3. Be 1 or 2 in your market share. 3 get to 2 quickly. Or be sold. He also had 5% tree trimming rif every few years.
Another was "Work out". Which was employees getting rid of wasteful process steps.
The "5% trim" is a great idea for the first few years, particularly when you're dealing with a bloated organization that has plenty of obvious candidates for that bottom 5%. The problem is that if you do it each and every year and you also have a good hiring process, you ultimately run out of that "easily dispensed with" group and start having to cut people who are still contributing to the organization.
"But, and this but is bigger than Kim Kardashians..."
Consider this stolen.
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
Toqueville
"And they lived happily ever after"?
That's pretty funny. I don't think that will make it into the screenplay. This one isn't a rom-com, it might be a drama, and we're' hovering very close to full tilt Greek tragedy.
You’re in good company. Most libertarians feel the same way. (I’ve never seen a party so full of intolerant purists who want to run each other out of the party all the time…)
I've occasionally thought of myself as increasingly liberal bounded by my conservative brain. I'm a saddle curve skipping Libertarians!!
Snowed about an inch last night. Zero Degrees with a windchill of -15. Let's ski!
The Unmemorable JohnF is invited, if he'd like to come!
Hey, I remember him!
🥶
You know, I haven't seen an ad for gold for quite some time, months.
Hah!
George Bush II will be greatly remembered for PEPFAR and 25 million lives, including 8 million babies saved. Free article
As Fellow Pro-Lifers, We Are Begging Marco Rubio to Save Foreign Aid
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/opinion/pro-life-foreign-aid-pepfar.html?unlocked_article_code=1.wU4.7-lt.FFzdUlI76tLK
Trade doesn't happen in a vacuum. Europeans generally, and the Swiss specifically, are thinking about the future of Trump's policies.
https://www.nzz.ch/english/trumps-trade-war-five-facts-on-us-foreign-trade-ld.1870371?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2025-02-12&utm_campaign=2025-02-12%20Limited%20Version%20Resend%20Tuesday%20&utm_content=%20Trump%20s%20trade%20war%20Syria%20s%20Kurds%20China%20s%20military%20strategy%20and%20more
It would be different if Trump's trade policies were based on any kind of realistic understanding of the situation. Trump's been complaining lately about how the US is "subsidizing Canada by $200B, maybe $300B!!"). The reality is that the US trade deficit with Canada for 2024 was actually $63B, which mainly exists because Canada exports $124B worth of crude oil to the US. If Oil is taken out of the equation, the US would have a substantial surplus in all other product areas.
However, if Canada stopped exporting Oil to the US, it would be undoing fifty years of conscientious effort on the part of the various US governments to ensure that the US had reliable energy supplies. If the Oil shocks of the 70's taught anything, it was the importance of ensuring that OPEC could never again wield that kind of clout over the US economy. Fixing that required the establishment of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, increased domestic production, and the development of Canada's Oil Sands (which holds about 10% of the world's proven reserves).
Now, it appears that Trump is intent on shutting Canadian Oil out of the US market - effectively forcing Canadian producers to find alternative markets in Europe and Asia. This is a good idea because?
While I'm not bothered by the Elon vivisection of government agencies, the tariffs and idiotic trade war stuff is pure stupidity. There's no sense to it.
Sounds about right. Of course, it doesn’t even touch on the biggest problem with Trumps dopey trade and tariff actions: Pissing off perfectly good friends and neighbors by being such a complete and ostentatious jerk about all of it.
Yeah, that kinda sounds like me. I alternate between concern that it's all going to end up in a chaotic mess and passive detached observational interest curiously waiting to see what happens. Regardless, chaos is my forecast, with no clear idea where it's going. I'm curiously calm about all of it. That it is coming through Trump completely disgusts me, but at this point it's one more disgusting thing to move on from.
I've worked in HUD, and had enough contact with the functionaries to not particularly care about people getting kicked out of jobs. Public sector unions need to go away. In China, public sector workers accept being poor in exchange for stability, and they better perform or they're immediately replaced. In America, public sector workers want high pay, mega-benefits, and guaranteed employment for life. I'm for the China model.
The guy from Rebel Capitalist podcast says China is struggling economically due to commercial real estate values tanking. What say you?
"Struggling" is an understatement. Real estate, in general, is an utter freak show. It would take a small essay to describe the problems. The stock market...only a loon would wade in there. Capital controls prevent capital flight, although billions are being illicitly spirited out as we speak. It's fair to say everyone hates the top guy, since it all started going downhill as soon as he got in and began with his Marxist-Leninist crap. Even my FIL with the framed Mao picture on the wall hates the top guy. Graduates can't find jobs; youth unemployment has gotten very, very bad.The lower echelons of society are hurting bad, and "lower echelons" is some hundreds of millions. No one believes the Party crap. Chinese are more hard wired for capitalist entrepreneurial activity than any other people on Earth. It's endlessly fascinating.
That said, walking around it all looks fairly normal. Chinese tighten belts and persevere. I find a lot to identify with.
All that and how much more do you want me to talk about it?.... :-)
That’s gives me a flavor of what’s going on. Sad the people’s capitalistic tendencies can’t be unleashed.
The Chinese miracle happened when the government took their boot off the necks of the citizenry. The place exploded with capitalist entrepreneurial successes.
The problems came with the real estate development model. There's essentially no taxes, and no property tax. Local government's sole income came from selling land to developers to build housing. That worked great for 30 years, and it built to a crescendo that collapsed. I drive by gigantic complexes of 1000-2000+ units that are see through buildings, i.e., they're concrete shells absent windows, curtain walls, or anything, hence you can "see through" them.
There's about 80 million finished, unsold, and unoccupied housing units, another several dozen million of unfinished see through, and several millions of folks are out of lots of money because they paid up front for buildings that didn't get built. Here, you pay first, they build it and you take possession a year or so later. Lotta people got, and are, burnt.
The place is nuts.
Scott Walker was my hero when he decimated the public sector unions in WI.
#MeToo
> In China, public sector workers accept being poor in exchange for stability, and they better perform or they're immediately replaced. In America, public sector workers want high pay, mega-benefits, and guaranteed employment for life. I'm for the China model. <
The German bureaucracy is competent and professional, typically slightly underpaid, but enjoys job protection. Unionization has been out of the question—at least so far.
The problem with competent, professional bureaucrats is that when they want to be obstructive, they’ve got you beat. They hold all the cards.
One interesting novelty: German government workers aren’t eligible for “public” health insurance. They’re required to buy private health coverage instead. (All citizens are required to carry health insurance of some sort. Self-employed and business owners are also not eligible for government health insurance.)
My German party, the Free Democrats—an essential party behind the Wirtschaftswunder years—used to have a platform plank in their political manifesto that no one employed by government should have the franchise. If you work for the government, the argument went, your interest was in protecting and growing government by any and all means. Therefore, you should not be permitted to vote in democratic elections. You would essentially function as voter who accepted money to vote on behalf of government expansion.
There's some common sensical stuff in there.
Good morning. 31 degrees here, rising to the upper 30s and rain later. Southern Ohio got snow last night but it missed us.
The mothership is covering Trump’s (and Musks’s) assault on the National Institutes form Health. One of the FP stores this morning is on a similar assault in the National Endowment for Democracyh.
I spoke too soon. After I posted the above weather report, we got a light dusting of snow (enough to show some white but not enough to stick).
Eli Lake is one of my favorite national security reporters. I saw his byline on the NED article at The Front Page.
I am hoping the economy can absorb the unemployed into more productive work. It will be interesting to see how that works out. The fact remains that the government is not a jobs program. We have allowed it to grow fat and unhealthy over many many years.
If the changes end where they are, though, all it will take is another pro-government-minded president to inhabit the White House, and all those positions will be reestablished and inhabited by the next batch of activists from left-wing NGOs. I remain skeptical. Maybe they’ll prove me wrong, but that’s on them, not me.
I've had that thought. The regime change model for government is awful.
Yes. A 2 year window for deep change doesn,t allow for caution.