Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Clown Show? I think we're moving onto the Gong or Bong show

The bureaucratic agencies and organizations of the Federal Government are unwilling to really cooperate because of the insatiable appetite each has to expand its respective turf and budget. To hope for such cooperation with a resulting increase in agency effeciency and effectivess is futile.

bncthor - I'm curious as to how you'd solve this security problem. Based on what is now known about the 9/11 attacks it's clear that cooperation might have stopped them. If the respective agencies can't work cooperatively, then it seems as if we're inviting more attacks on our soil.

More news from the gang that couldn't shoot straight. *sigh*

Jon..."I am curious....

I don't know how to solve the security problem. My point is that if a solution to the problem depends on bureaucratic federal agencies cooperating and working efficiently together, it will likely go unsolved. By their very nature, they are unable to act in such a fashion. History seem to suggest that as long as nations interact, a security problem of some degree will exist. It is my opinion, that by relying on competing agencies, and sub-groups within agencies, to identify threats to our security we worsen rather that reduce the problem. On the other hand, a single agency does not seem to be the answer either. And, being a good neighbor, does not always prevent "rocks" from being thrown through one's windows. But, I believe that the United States must once again establish that it is a good neighbor to provide the foundation for any security organization that may evolve or be established to be effective.

Overlapping responsibilities and confused duties are the essence of the American system of government. The constitution, written in a time when the main concern was to keep slavery legal, not to combat international terrorism or contain the pension deficit or to deal with abortion, is very vague, or simply silent on many issues contained in most constitutions designed today. And it is essentially impossible to amend on any controversial topic.

The division of powers, whether between the states, the federal government and the localities or between Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidency, is also thoroughly confused, with the courts deciding what are in most countries issues for the legislature (how late abortions should be, etc.), and Congress limiting the power of the President, which the latter refuses to acknowledge (War Powers Act).

Within the federal bureaucracy, Keynes perhaps said it best in his famous comments on Washington at work: "There is no clear hierarchy of authority. The different departments of the government criticise one another in public and produce rival programmes. There is perpetual internecine warfare between prominent personalities. Individuals rise and fall in general esteem with bewildering rapidity. New groupings of administrative power and influence spring up every day. Members of the so-called Cabinet make public speeches containing urgent proposals which are not agreed as part of the Government policy... Nothing is ever settled in principle. There is just endless debate and sitting around ... Suddenly some drastic clear-cut decision is reached, by what process one cannot understand, and all the talk seems to have gone for nothing, being the fifth wheel to the coach ..." I've worked in Washington with the federal bureaucracy, and can see what he meant. The contrast with the professionalism and efficiency of the US private sector could hardly be greater.

George Bush is out jogging one day and in passing a grocery store, sees a little girl trying to give away some newly-born kittens.

"What kind of kittens are they?" he asks the child.

She smiles demurely and in a little voice answers, "They're Republican."

Well, this pleases the Emperor no end, and as soon as he returns to the White House from his run, he convenes Condi Rice, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. "Have I got a photo-op for you! Round up the Press Corps!"

Next morning the white vans roll towards the grocery store. Sure enough, there's the little girl with her Free Kittens sign.

Bush alights with his posse, and the cameras roll. "Tell me little girl, what kind of kittens are these?" he mugs for the assembled media.

The little girl responds primly, "Well, they're Democrat."

Bush stutters and stammers, blustering back, "You told me these were Republicans yesterday!"

The little girl smiles, "Yes, but now their eyes are opened."

Ha,ha,ha,ha,ha.

PJ, the problem with bureaucracy, and US Federal bureaucracy in particular, is they have no real allegiance to their clients. Yet in private practice, and like you, I've worked both sides, the client is supreme, even more so in today's management style de jeur, post Enron/Parmalat.

In government, the only goal is to spend more tax money and self-aggrandize budget towards you, whether you do any of the actual work or not. So there's a lot of s&*t-stream push-down management, and not much accountability. Why? The more f&*ked up you make things, the better for your process. "We need more money." Ahhh...

In private side, the only goal is to *make* more money by *lowering* the client's expenses while *forcing* labor to work harder, better organized or more efficiently. So you find SOTA more often in private-side, and higher-quality staff talent willing to take the risks for a potential reward.

In government, the talent staff are always facing upward into a s&*t-stream of largely irreconcilable middle-management conundrums.
"Do this, do that, me first, no me!" Study it to death, and it all pays the same. They're just waiting to make their twenty-and-out pension.
Some are even paid to stay at home and not work!

In private side, you sneeze or fall behind, you're out. You displease middle management, you're out. You fail to compete against the other profit-centers, you're out. You're just running as fast as you can, head down, hoping to jump to another ladder at a higher rung before the bottom drops out. It's not a pleasant life.

Kind of Rip Van Winkle meets Donkey Kong.

The wheel on the coach is *broken*, and "all the talk seems to have gone for nothing" because there's nobody at middle management level has the slightest clue how to fix it, public or private. Talent and experience is retiring, or going solo, so you're seeing a sea-change in private side towards outsourcing to ASEAN, and in government, only rapidly growing incompetence and skyrocketing budgets, achieving nothing.

What was that "player" line from Shakespeare?
"(Fed is) a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

We are doomed by Fed to a gulag existence in our own time, a White Army vers Red Army delusion, as the roads crack, the bridges fail, the people fall by the roadside, starved and impoverished.
Bush ... Kerry ... White Army ... Red Army. So?

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