The Raven

Monday, October 14, 2002

The Gods Themselves

In case you were wondering what all the sturm und drang regarding Bush and the Federal Unionistas was about in the context of the envisioned Department of Homeland Security, Foxnews pins it down in a story about Democratic protectionism. Since the Dems are in charge of the Senate, they're in a good position to stall Bush's baby because the 170,000-person workforce must, from a Democratic perspective, be fashioned with the same inefficiencies and rife entitlements of all the other Federal agencies.

The administration has noted that it takes 18 months or longer to fire a poorly performing federal worker. The performance enhancing "stick" of firing is almost completely absent from the federal workplace.

If you don't like the people who are fixing your car, you take your car elsewhere. You can complain to management, and you can send the corporate president a harsh letter expressing your pique. You can even file a protest with the Better Business Bureau. But with the Federal Government, there are no mechanisms by which we can grade and evaluate performance. Civil Service sector jobs, once secured, are good for a lackadaisical lifetime of shuffling, pencil-pushing procrastination.

Wouldn't it be nice to have two Federal groups of employees to deal with? Something like the choice between FedEx and UPS. And whoever gets the most business gets the raises at the expense of the loser. But there's no free-market incentive for your friendly neighborhood GS-12 apparatchik to hustle it so your GSA application sits on a desk for 18 months and if you call them too often, it's going to be "lost"—and that's a promise.

Office of Personnel Management figures show that only 434 government employees—or .025 percent of the total federal workforce—were removed for poor performance in 2001.

The above numbers speak for themselves. The article ventures a cautious estimate of private-sector firings that "may be as high as 4 percent annually" but in my experience it's a lot higher. And less than 450 get the axe annually in the Federal government? The rest of them are in charge of helping you, apparently.

Beyond increased flexibility for hiring and firing, a Homeland Security bill must give the president the ability to waive union agreements when national security is at stake.

I don't particularly like Republicans, nor do I have warm fuzzies about a Department of Homeland Security. But if they're going to do this blasted thing, they might as well do it right and not fill the slots with a bunch of sub-IQ morons with no incentive to do anything except "punch-in" and "punch-out." It's time to start cracking the whip on government as hard as the lash is coming down on private industry; and if your job is as tenuous as everybody else's seems to be, then join me in wishing the DHS all the anxiety and fear we feel for our own livelihoods. Don't you want to lean over the counter and tell that clerk, "Hey, don't work harder, work smarter!" I sure do.

Make Mine a "Condo"

Seattle is one of those progressive cities, the kind you'd like to live in and the kind that always seems to be at the top of those "Best Cities in America" lists. I had to pause when I saw this story about their new plan to build subsidized housing for street drunks.

Funny, but the last time we checked, urban dwellers generally spend around 25 to 30 percent of their income on housing. You mean that all we have to do is booze it up big and the state will spring for a pad? Sounds good here.

An estimated 500 chronic drunks haunt downtown Seattle streets and parks every day. Mostly older men, they panhandle on Pine Street, act belligerent in Belltown and pass out in Pioneer Square. They tax police, courts and emergency services.

OK, we'll "act belligerant" too, if that's what it takes. But the story is worth examining a bit further. After all, to qualify for this top-notch housing, they're gonna have to clean up and get sober, right? Nope. They're planning to "allow tenants to drink inside their rooms." And they sure will—you betcha! But alone anyway, right? Nope. They will also "be allowed to invite a limited number of guests to join them." Invite. Guests. You know, somehow I don't think the belligerant street drunks do a lot of "inviting" and I seriously doubt they're used to having "guests" but I do think they're fond of pooling dough and splitting the Mad Dog 20/20. Neighbors of the planned development are, needless to say, furious.

"This takes our property value and puts it in the toilet," says Rob Anderson, co-owner of Northwest Trophy, a business that has been at that location since 1977.

On the other hand, this does get the undesirables off the street, puts limited social services within reach, helps city services target the needy, and similar programs have been shown to work (i.e., not turn out disasterously). Here's something to consider: The estimated cost of putting up 75 of these "gentlemen of the road" will run about $650,000 annually, "a fraction of the amount spent on them currently via police, court, ambulance and emergency-room services." We'll keep on eye on this project and see how it pans out. Prevention is always cheaper than the cure.

6:43:59 PM

The Truth Squad

Every now and then you discover that the press can actually be acutely aware of its collective failings, especially in the political sector. Here's a cautionary note from the team at ABC, who promise to write this on the blackboard "1,000 times each":

Don't let polls—particularly suspect ones, but even perfectly good ones—become the way to frame every bit of coverage each day.
Don't cover debates as if you were a theater critic or a sports writer—debates shouldn't be just about gaffes and fights.
Don't play up "video press releases"—campaign and interest group TV ads that are produced and then barely aired, but given to the press as "real" ads so they will get earned media—on the air EVER.
Don't leave insufficient reportorial resources available for truth-squadding ads, phone calls, etc., right up through election day.

There's a lot more here, and also a superb run-down on the November follies with key races and projections. A real playbook for political junkies. But what caught the Raven's eye was the reference to "truth-squadding." Google only turns up a handful of cites for the term, but I think we can grasp its sense through context. Here's a typical usage, running under the b-head "ABCNEWS announces an unprecedented effort to truth-squad political communication in 2002":

The ABCNEWS Political Unit Election Watchdog is on guard from now until election day, relying on campaigns, party committees, and citizens to tell us about suspect political communication that could otherwise fly below the radar, reaching voters without any "truth-squadding" if allowed to go unexposed.
To submit material to our little truth corps, just e-mail us: politicalunit@abcnews.com

Ah, it's a synonym for "fact-checking," a practice so moribund by the late '90s that they had to reinvent the concept. Better late than never, guys.

Homer Nods

The Raven has remarked on several political blogs of late that the day of "in-the-street" activism and protests with placards is largely over. Makes sense if you can get a news crew to film your ruckus but otherwise you're better off just staying home and letting your modem do the talking. In a story this morning, the Boston Globe agrees:

This year, for the first time since the advent of the Internet, Americans are engaging in public debate about whether to go to war, and a great deal of the opposition has coalesced online.

They didn't cite blogging per se, focusing instead on e-mail campaigns and petitions, but that's definitely the direction things are going. Hit them in the info-stream, hit them with the buzz, hit them in the pocketbook, and hit them at the polls. But you doesn't have to get yerself blasted with firehoses and pepper-sprayed anymore. Which is a kind of progress.

Twister, Millenium Edition

Which in this case seems to be Yoga. Those "Power Yoga" tapes, featuring Hollywood guru Bryan Kest (aka: Mr. Yummypants) are really taking off these days, as a new generation of Americans discover that a straight spine leads to all sorts of good things. Well, Kest has got himself some serious competition in the form of Bikram Choudhury, who is promoting something he calls "Hot Yoga"—so-named because you practice it in a room heated to "at least 105 degrees." His stretch-'n'-sweat workouts have proven so popular, in fact, that he's expanded his operation to "more than 600 studios." Think about that for a minute. With the fee to become an instructor currently running at $5,000, you can see Choudhury has found the mystical path to financial well-being right here. His current empire is valued around $7 million.

The very concept of "selling" a spiritual practice has offended some traditionalists. Yoga is based on five principles, including one that discourages greed.

No, it appears that Choudhury has elevated himself above and beyond that pesky "greed" hang-up. And he isn't bothered by that irritating bit about a Yogi being "humble" and "modest," either. As he puts it:

"I am bulletproof, waterproof, fireproof, windproof, money-proof, sex-proof, emotion-proof. Nothing in the world can take my peace away from me."

Wait 'til you meet the Internal Revenue Service, pal.

The Dark Side Beckons

Steve Jobs, a boyhood hero of mine, is allegedly heeding the siren-like summons of the negative energy that permeates so much of our universe. According to Nando this morning, Apple is contemplating a move away from Motorola chips toward a 64-bit IBM CPU dubbed the IBM PowerPC 970. This has to do with the "Clock-Speed Wars," which from this desk has been a battle waged on the advertising front, not on the desktop. RISC architecture and CPU/OS integration make a Mac running at a slower speed outperform its hopped-up PC counterpart. Who's in charge of R&D at Apple these days? A bunch of 10-year-olds arguing in back of the bus over whose computer is "faster"?

11:00:22 AM