White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

Things That You Won’t Like in 2015

by 2 Comments

The new year demands predictions. As those demands must be satisfied, here are mine:

1. President Barack Obama will be blamed for everything, from pet obesity to sunspots.

2. Jim DeMint, president of The Heritage Foundation, will continue to solicit me for money and will write me ingratiating letters as one conservative to supposedly another. Things are terrible because of Obama, he will say. But if I send him five bucks, the day can be saved for America.

3. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) will ask me for money, five bucks, to save America from the likes of DeMint.

4. Amtrak – whose high-speed train between Washington, D.C. and Boston, Acela Express, is so expensive only rich business people can afford to ride it — will seek a larger federal subsidy. At present, it stands at $1.3 billion. Ordinary people, who Congress had in mind as riders, can’t afford the Acela's astronomical and predatory fares. So it has become a service for business executives and corporate lawyers — you can tell from the overheard cell phone conversations. A billable hour is a terrible thing to waste.

5. The airlines will find new ways to discomfort you; watch out for toilets that big and tall people can't sit on, seats that recline a 16th of an inch, and bad food that you'll buy only if you're off your medicine. Don't change your ticket, bring a suitcase or seek a seat with legroom. There are fees for that kind of convenience and comfort. Don't ask for logic in routing: How about Providence to Washington, D.C. with two stops and travel time of 10 hours and 20 minutes? An air travel Web site tried to tempt me with that “super-saver” fare. I reckon you could hitchhike it in about the same time.

6. If you thought it was difficult to reach any large company in 2014, it will be much worse in 2015. There are consultants out and about America, teaching corporations how to avoid their customers. Gone are the days when you could expect customer service of some sort, albeit from Rajiv in Bangladesh. Amazon, always a pioneer, has produced the consumer go-have-sex-with-yourself masterpiece. If you have a question about your Kindle, you have to give them your credit card if you want it answered. It's the no-pay-no-help line.

7. Talking of the perils of being a customer, Bank of America refused to give me the phone number of the local branch where I have an account. When I finally got through to the manager, she said they didn't give out the number because “the phone would be ringing off the hook.” I didn’t know people called the bank just to chat. No thought that those callers might be customers. Just remember new the mantra of big business: “The customer is always wrong, a nuisance, and fitted for nothing better than hanging an hour on the phone with a simple inquiry.”

8. Next year the save-a-buck Congress will decimate the Post Office. Sad because it's the one place that still works, and where you can get a question answered promptly. That will not do. The Social Security Administration is efficient and polite, too. So Congress has its hatchet out.

9. Now that the Republicans have control of government, they'll be out to prove that government doesn’t work. I’m sure they will pull it off. The Democrats will be complaining – having snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the midterms.

How can you lose an election when the economy is turning around? Ask Sen. Franken when you send him your five bucks. Bet he won’t tell you. So I will. You turn your back on your president. That makes you look really bad, and looking really bad is a bad election strategy.
 

Happy New Year! — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

 

Government Isn’t as Bad as We Think

by Leave a Comment

Here’s a dirty little secret: The Post Office isn’t so bad.

Although it’s the rhetorical emblem of all that’s wrong with government, the postal service is surprisingly dependable and efficient. Letters get delivered by the millions and very few are lost.

Where the Post Office fails, as most government enterprises fail, is that its dynamic is antithetical to creativity, invention and risk-taking. Government enterprises seldom innovate, except those in the defense arena and collateral endeavors like space exploration. The Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency, does its job well enough, as does the FAA in controlling aircraft. It just wasn’t in the Post Office to create FedEx.

In Washington, and across the nation, politicians repeat often and loudly that the worst outcome of any new endeavor would be for the government to run it. To hear Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, tell it, the government is a vast anti-American conspiracy. Recently, he took to the House floor to protest against a government role in health care and claimed that anything government-run means socialism to him. And socialism, according to Gohmert, is the slippery slope to totalitarianism.

In Washington, there’s a more ambivalent attitude toward the bureaucracy. It’s not an abstraction to Washingtonians; government workers are neighbors, commuting companions, friends and family.

But that doesn’t mean that Washingtonians are taken in by it, or that they believe the government should grow more.

If you know enough government workers, you know that they’re not created equal; neither are their departments and agencies.

The Department of Defense is an archipelago of islands of success in a sea of contradiction and confusion. But the agencies, like Housing and Urban Development and Labor, are resigned to a level of ineffectiveness, often doubtful of the virtue of their own missions.

The challenge is to know what is best left to government or to the private sector.

Attempts to privatize support sectors of the U.S. military (base maintenance, security, fuel, etc.) have led to scandals at every level for companies like Blackwater (now known as Xe Services) and KBR, denounced in Congress and the media. Privatizing war is a questionable undertaking.

As often as not, government is lumbered with failing or failed businesses for political or social reasons. Amtrak is front-and-center among these and General Motors may join the group of government orphans — too important to fail and too rickety to succeed.

Finally, there is no political will to tackle the thorny issue of productivity in the bureaucracy. Politicians complain of government in the abstract and praise “hard-working men and women” in specific agencies.

Sadly, it boils down to hiring and firing. It’s hard to get hired in the government because of rules and rigidities and even harder to get fired.

The reverse applies in the private sector. Business operates on incentives, but also on fear. Fear is missing in government employment and it shows.

Government is not as inept as conservative politicians like to say, any more than CitiBank and AIG were models of corporate governance.

Some things organically belong in the government’s sphere and others far from it. Today’s question is: Where does health care fit?  –For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate