Well, these days the US homeowner could certainly use some good news, with foreclosures soaring to new heights, and apparently little viable remedy in sight. But, CitiMortgage, obviously feeling generous because of a sweetheart deal struck with the IRS, is placing a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions for a thirty day period.
Here is their reasoning:
"We hope that with this suspension we can make the holidays a little less stressful for our customers who are going through a very difficult time," Sanjiv Das, president and CEO of CitiMortgage said in a statement. "And we will continue to look for meaningful ways to assist our customers experiencing hardship."
Citi will halt foreclosure sales and evictions on approximately 2,000 borrowers already in line for foreclosure sales as well as another 2,000 that would have received foreclosure notifications in the next 30 days.
Wow! Thirty days? Are you sure? That certainly takes the long term sting out of a household which has been turned upside down by the 'pit and pendulum' reality experienced daily by folks who may face sleeping in shelters, or perhaps losing their beloved pets as they search for adequate housing. For a growing number, 'tent cities' and shelters are the answer.
But this shouldn't concern the good folks at Citi. After all, they got a sweetheart deal with the government:
The Internal Revenue Service on Friday, December 18th, issued an exception to long-standing tax rules for the benefit of Citigroup and a few other companies partially owned by the government. As a result, Citigroup will be allowed to retain billions of dollars worth of tax breaks that otherwise would decline in value when the government sells its stake to private investors.
Nice investment, if you can get it.
So, as a gesture of goodwill, they are granting people thirty days to relax and enjoy the holidays. Are they serious? Do they have any inkling of the twisted anxiety going on in the bellies of all affected homeowners? Do they really expect families to start singing Christmas carols, and simply forget about the fact that an auction of their home will soon take place on their respective County Courthouse steps?
Get a clue, you feckless moneylenders. Following suit, but demonstrating less generosity, Fannie and Freddie have offered a two week respite from the madness. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, now get out!
Postponing the inevitability of eviction likely worsens the post traumatic stress which will follow these people the rest of their lives. Perhaps Citi ought to do everyone a favor and enact an en mass foreclosure. Get it over with.
Then, the rest of us can yearn for the days of Hooverville and the 'penny auctions,' where neighbors surrounded the foreclosed property, and allowed entrance to the auction to no one but the affected owner. Often the bid was one penny. Something to think about.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Handing Over Spy Resources For Free - What?
CIA resources are being used for WHAT? You have got to be kidding me, the New York Times is trumpeting the reversal of another Bush Administration policy. An order to the CIA that will allow members of the leading intelligentsia access to top secret satellite data, to watch arctic melting?
Let me see if I have this correct. The New York Times (1) is breaking the news that the current administration is reversing the previous administration's treatment of CIA resources by placing CIA intelligence gathering resources in the hands of some sixty academic "smarty pants" to study what else... the failed science of global warming.
"Dr. Untersteiner (Professor from University of Washington ) will be able to take active moving picture views of the Arctic. He said (in recent New York Times article)... that Arctic thaws (emphasis mine) will open new fisheries and sea lanes for shipping..." Did I read that correctly, someone out there is still trying to tell us that the arctic is thawing? What part of the fact that the earth isn't warming and has been cooling for the past ten years, don't they understand?
Let's take a look at recent news stories: Vermont has 33 inches of snow dumped on it in one overnight snow storm, setting an all time record. Iowa temperatures are a solid 30 degrees below normal, temperatures in negative double digits this month. Seoul Korea is buried under the heaviest snowfall (11 inches) since they started measuring this type of weather in 1937. Beijing, China is the coldest it has been in 40 years. the temperature is running at a minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit. And what of Miami, for crying in your fruity cocktails, they are having their coldest weather in a decade.
So in spite of the obvious facts in front of them, the current administration's CIA, wants to reverse the Bush administration's decision to conserve the satellite's use to something actually related to the security of the nation, to making spy data available to Al Gore and his friends.
No matter the weather outside their windows, some folks in Washington are upset that there are actually people willing to be naysayers of the adventure. They are making the usual blanket objections, such as Bush was anti-environment and this really doesn't take away from the search for terrorists. This is really just using the information that is already there... free for the taking... using what no one is looking at... compelling arguments, perhaps.
Dr. Untersteiner added that the federal government had already adopted one of the prior report's "recommendations - to have reconnaissance satellites follow particular ice floes as they drift through the Arctic basin rather than just monitor static sites." Let me say that slowly for those who are upset with any opposition to this redirection of security assets.
Dr. Untersteiner stated that the government has decided to re-task the satellites to follow particular ice floes. The last time I checked the cost to re-task a satellite was a whole lot more than "free."
So much for simply making free "useless" already gathered information available to our "smarty pant" professors. More waste and abuse of my tax dollars for the continuation of studies attempting to prop up a failed science. Can someone get me a sweater, it is really "warming" up out here.
Let me see if I have this correct. The New York Times (1) is breaking the news that the current administration is reversing the previous administration's treatment of CIA resources by placing CIA intelligence gathering resources in the hands of some sixty academic "smarty pants" to study what else... the failed science of global warming.
"Dr. Untersteiner (Professor from University of Washington ) will be able to take active moving picture views of the Arctic. He said (in recent New York Times article)... that Arctic thaws (emphasis mine) will open new fisheries and sea lanes for shipping..." Did I read that correctly, someone out there is still trying to tell us that the arctic is thawing? What part of the fact that the earth isn't warming and has been cooling for the past ten years, don't they understand?
Let's take a look at recent news stories: Vermont has 33 inches of snow dumped on it in one overnight snow storm, setting an all time record. Iowa temperatures are a solid 30 degrees below normal, temperatures in negative double digits this month. Seoul Korea is buried under the heaviest snowfall (11 inches) since they started measuring this type of weather in 1937. Beijing, China is the coldest it has been in 40 years. the temperature is running at a minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit. And what of Miami, for crying in your fruity cocktails, they are having their coldest weather in a decade.
So in spite of the obvious facts in front of them, the current administration's CIA, wants to reverse the Bush administration's decision to conserve the satellite's use to something actually related to the security of the nation, to making spy data available to Al Gore and his friends.
No matter the weather outside their windows, some folks in Washington are upset that there are actually people willing to be naysayers of the adventure. They are making the usual blanket objections, such as Bush was anti-environment and this really doesn't take away from the search for terrorists. This is really just using the information that is already there... free for the taking... using what no one is looking at... compelling arguments, perhaps.
Dr. Untersteiner added that the federal government had already adopted one of the prior report's "recommendations - to have reconnaissance satellites follow particular ice floes as they drift through the Arctic basin rather than just monitor static sites." Let me say that slowly for those who are upset with any opposition to this redirection of security assets.
Dr. Untersteiner stated that the government has decided to re-task the satellites to follow particular ice floes. The last time I checked the cost to re-task a satellite was a whole lot more than "free."
So much for simply making free "useless" already gathered information available to our "smarty pant" professors. More waste and abuse of my tax dollars for the continuation of studies attempting to prop up a failed science. Can someone get me a sweater, it is really "warming" up out here.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
The US Constitution - John Eidsmoe Falls Short of Proving It's a Christian Document
According to John Eidsmoe, the US Constitution was heavily influenced by Christianity. That is the thesis of his book Christianity and the Constitution. Published in 1987 by Baker House, the book is 415 pages in length.
The book leads off with a survey of various philosophical schools popular in the 18th Century, not least of which was Calvinism. Mr. Eidsmoe states that a majority of Americans were Calvinist, but fails to demonstrate its influence on the Founders.
The book deals briefly with "John Locke's social contract theory," which is said to be the "secular expression" of the covenant. Mr. Eidsmoe equates the two, a usual tactic of Christian Federalists to explain away the obvious secularism of the US Constitution.
For example, he glosses over Locke's humanism with the assertion that he was "a Puritan by background" who "based his political theories on Rutherford's Lex Rex." Thus he excuses Locke's humanism and Latitudinarianism to arrive at an very tenuous conclusion. John Locke was a Puritan prodigal, not a faithful son.
Mr. Eidsmoe's repeated confusion of social contract theory and Bible covenant is his biggest problem. He naively mistakes the preamble of the US Constitution as a commitment to Bible covenantalism, instead of the godless social contract which it is. This confusion is typical of Christian Constitutionalists, who frequently equate the Constitution and the Word of God.
Another chapter looks at aspects of 18th Century Puritanism such as optimistic eschatology and the application of Biblical law to all of life. The author wants his reader to draw the conclusion that these were incorporated into the US Constitution. But this does not follow. The first Great Awakening of 1742 is described as a revival of Puritanism. This tenuous conclusion supports the non sequitor that Puritanism was built into the US Constitution of 1787.
Several aberrant philosophies of the time are also discussed, including Freemasonry and Deism. Freemasonry is introduced and then waved off as an innocent social club, useful for political and business networking. Mr. Eidsmoe simply ignores the anti-Christian oaths integral to Freemasonry.
It is hard to summarize all the problems in the chapter on "Law and Government". For one thing, Mr. Eidsmoe presents Montesquieu as a champion of Biblical law. In reality Montesquieu took the Bible as but one among many authorities, with all subject to natural law.
Likewise Blackstone's Common Law is presented as a compendium of Biblical law par excellence. The fact of the matter was it had morphed into a barnacle- laiden anachronism by the 1750s. For example, some 200 mostly petty crimes carried the death penalty. Most juries refused to enforce it because it was so obviously unjust.
In reality Blackstone rarely even mentioned the Bible in his Commentaries. We assume Mr. Eidsmoe has read Blackstone, so he should be aware of that.
Returning to Locke, Mr. Eidsmoe justifies his humanism and "blank slate" theory of the mind, which denies original sin. Again he draws the faulty conclusion that Locke's "social compact theory is similar to the Calvinist idea of covenant." This is a misleading statement because the two ideas are diametrically opposed. They represent the authority of man versus the authority of God.
All of these misperceptions color the religious biographies of the founders which comprise most of the book. For example, of John Witherspoon he notes that "He devoted his life to instilling the principles of Holy Scripture into the minds and souls of young men who then used these principles to shape America."
It is difficult to see how anyone who has read Witherspoon's class notes for his moral philosophy class could draw such a conclusion. Moral philosophy was the culminating class of the curriculum that Witherspoon taught personally to all the graduating seniors at the College of New Jersey. They are an exposition of natural law and secular social contract theory, with very little reference to Holy Scripture.
Typical of Christian apologists for the US Constitution Mr. Eidsmoe spends a good deal of time arguing that the Founding Fathers were all solid Christians. The usual assumption is that if we can prove the founders were Christian, the document they gave us must of necessity be Christian. But this is a non-sequitor. Space does not permit us to say all that could be said of these biographies.
At the end, Mr. Eidsmoe lists all of the alleged biblical principles he has found in the US Constitution. But most of what he cites is Enlightenment theory of the natural rights of man, egalitarianism, and natural law. The "consent of the governed" is the source of governing authority rather than God.
Mr. Eismoe is correct in concluding that knowledge of the sinfulness of man prompted the Constitution's limited, delegated powers. This is the one point at which the Founders got it right, and we have Witherspoon to thank for that. But overall the complexities of this book should limit its use to the advanced student who is well-versed in the issues involved.
The book leads off with a survey of various philosophical schools popular in the 18th Century, not least of which was Calvinism. Mr. Eidsmoe states that a majority of Americans were Calvinist, but fails to demonstrate its influence on the Founders.
The book deals briefly with "John Locke's social contract theory," which is said to be the "secular expression" of the covenant. Mr. Eidsmoe equates the two, a usual tactic of Christian Federalists to explain away the obvious secularism of the US Constitution.
For example, he glosses over Locke's humanism with the assertion that he was "a Puritan by background" who "based his political theories on Rutherford's Lex Rex." Thus he excuses Locke's humanism and Latitudinarianism to arrive at an very tenuous conclusion. John Locke was a Puritan prodigal, not a faithful son.
Mr. Eidsmoe's repeated confusion of social contract theory and Bible covenant is his biggest problem. He naively mistakes the preamble of the US Constitution as a commitment to Bible covenantalism, instead of the godless social contract which it is. This confusion is typical of Christian Constitutionalists, who frequently equate the Constitution and the Word of God.
Another chapter looks at aspects of 18th Century Puritanism such as optimistic eschatology and the application of Biblical law to all of life. The author wants his reader to draw the conclusion that these were incorporated into the US Constitution. But this does not follow. The first Great Awakening of 1742 is described as a revival of Puritanism. This tenuous conclusion supports the non sequitor that Puritanism was built into the US Constitution of 1787.
Several aberrant philosophies of the time are also discussed, including Freemasonry and Deism. Freemasonry is introduced and then waved off as an innocent social club, useful for political and business networking. Mr. Eidsmoe simply ignores the anti-Christian oaths integral to Freemasonry.
It is hard to summarize all the problems in the chapter on "Law and Government". For one thing, Mr. Eidsmoe presents Montesquieu as a champion of Biblical law. In reality Montesquieu took the Bible as but one among many authorities, with all subject to natural law.
Likewise Blackstone's Common Law is presented as a compendium of Biblical law par excellence. The fact of the matter was it had morphed into a barnacle- laiden anachronism by the 1750s. For example, some 200 mostly petty crimes carried the death penalty. Most juries refused to enforce it because it was so obviously unjust.
In reality Blackstone rarely even mentioned the Bible in his Commentaries. We assume Mr. Eidsmoe has read Blackstone, so he should be aware of that.
Returning to Locke, Mr. Eidsmoe justifies his humanism and "blank slate" theory of the mind, which denies original sin. Again he draws the faulty conclusion that Locke's "social compact theory is similar to the Calvinist idea of covenant." This is a misleading statement because the two ideas are diametrically opposed. They represent the authority of man versus the authority of God.
All of these misperceptions color the religious biographies of the founders which comprise most of the book. For example, of John Witherspoon he notes that "He devoted his life to instilling the principles of Holy Scripture into the minds and souls of young men who then used these principles to shape America."
It is difficult to see how anyone who has read Witherspoon's class notes for his moral philosophy class could draw such a conclusion. Moral philosophy was the culminating class of the curriculum that Witherspoon taught personally to all the graduating seniors at the College of New Jersey. They are an exposition of natural law and secular social contract theory, with very little reference to Holy Scripture.
Typical of Christian apologists for the US Constitution Mr. Eidsmoe spends a good deal of time arguing that the Founding Fathers were all solid Christians. The usual assumption is that if we can prove the founders were Christian, the document they gave us must of necessity be Christian. But this is a non-sequitor. Space does not permit us to say all that could be said of these biographies.
At the end, Mr. Eidsmoe lists all of the alleged biblical principles he has found in the US Constitution. But most of what he cites is Enlightenment theory of the natural rights of man, egalitarianism, and natural law. The "consent of the governed" is the source of governing authority rather than God.
Mr. Eismoe is correct in concluding that knowledge of the sinfulness of man prompted the Constitution's limited, delegated powers. This is the one point at which the Founders got it right, and we have Witherspoon to thank for that. But overall the complexities of this book should limit its use to the advanced student who is well-versed in the issues involved.
Have We Gone Pet Crazy?
Although I've always had pets myself, it seems that we've gone pet crazy today. It is difficult to differentiate the love and compassion that some people have for their pets vs. that for their own children. We spend billions on our pets, including health care, pet insurance, and even auto-injury insurance. Some pets even received the H1N1 vaccination when many high-risk humans hadn't yet received it.
Animal activists are concerned about the methods of animal euthanasia, when a dog pound become over-crowded. On one episode of "Grey's Anatomy," surgeons used body parts from pigs in order to correct ailments in humans, then the story centered on a heart-broken doctor who had to kill the pigs after they had served their purpose.
People were outraged with Michael Vick, and rightly so. However, when he was convicted, most of their concern was about his cruelty to animals instead of his involvement in an illegal interstate dog fighting ring. Even after he had paid his debt to society by serving 18 months in prison, people wanted him banned from professional sports.
A recent news story in Dallas reported on an intruder who had burglarized a house and stole the family dog. The reporter ended the report by commenting that the dog was "...the only thing they really valued." That statement seems a bit extreme.
Genesis 1 tells us that we are to fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over the animal kingdom. Does this give us the right to be cruel to animals? Of course not. This is obvious from the many other Bible verses that command us to be compassionate and good stewards of all that God has given us. Of course it's wrong to abuse animals. However, our priorities have become unbalanced. There's a certain television commercial by a humane society that shows abused animals, and asks for donations to help stop animal abuse. Aren't there more pressing (human) issues where these millions of dollars could be spent?
Another television news report told about animal abuse' at a pig farm. Pregnant pigs were being housed in small pens. Well, farmers have always kept pigs in small pens. This simply an economic choice so that we Americans can continue buying pork at reasonable prices, and this does not not constitute animal abuse.
We just need to keep things in perspective. We have to be reasonable, especially since our pets don't have the intelligence to do so. We should first be more concerned about human abuse before animal abuse. After all, what is worse: to keep pregnant pigs in a small pen, or to torture and kill human children by aborting them from a pregnant human mother?
Animal activists are concerned about the methods of animal euthanasia, when a dog pound become over-crowded. On one episode of "Grey's Anatomy," surgeons used body parts from pigs in order to correct ailments in humans, then the story centered on a heart-broken doctor who had to kill the pigs after they had served their purpose.
People were outraged with Michael Vick, and rightly so. However, when he was convicted, most of their concern was about his cruelty to animals instead of his involvement in an illegal interstate dog fighting ring. Even after he had paid his debt to society by serving 18 months in prison, people wanted him banned from professional sports.
A recent news story in Dallas reported on an intruder who had burglarized a house and stole the family dog. The reporter ended the report by commenting that the dog was "...the only thing they really valued." That statement seems a bit extreme.
Genesis 1 tells us that we are to fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over the animal kingdom. Does this give us the right to be cruel to animals? Of course not. This is obvious from the many other Bible verses that command us to be compassionate and good stewards of all that God has given us. Of course it's wrong to abuse animals. However, our priorities have become unbalanced. There's a certain television commercial by a humane society that shows abused animals, and asks for donations to help stop animal abuse. Aren't there more pressing (human) issues where these millions of dollars could be spent?
Another television news report told about animal abuse' at a pig farm. Pregnant pigs were being housed in small pens. Well, farmers have always kept pigs in small pens. This simply an economic choice so that we Americans can continue buying pork at reasonable prices, and this does not not constitute animal abuse.
We just need to keep things in perspective. We have to be reasonable, especially since our pets don't have the intelligence to do so. We should first be more concerned about human abuse before animal abuse. After all, what is worse: to keep pregnant pigs in a small pen, or to torture and kill human children by aborting them from a pregnant human mother?
Public Spending - They Haven't a Cutting Clue
The "C" Word
Suddenly the 'c' word has become the most popular word in British politics, with Cameron, Brown and even the pointless Nick Clegg vying with each other to see who can use it most convincingly and most often. As Britain sinks rapidly towards bankruptcy, our politicians are rushing round like headless chickens trying to find something to cut. But one thing is obvious, as almost none of them has ever had a proper job, they haven't a clue about what needs to be done.
Having actually had a real job and having worked on over 100 efficiency programmes in the public and private sectors in 15 countries, I'd like to suggest to our current and would-be leaders how they could give us much better public services at a much lower cost.
New Labour's management madness
The first step in effective cost reduction is to understand why our public sector has become so bloated, inefficient and expensive. It's not because we have too many nurses, doctors, carers, police officers, binpersons or teachers. In fact, while public spending has more than doubled under New Labour from £322bn to about £700bn, the number of frontline workers in the NHS, policing, local government and education has only gone up by about 10 per cent.
But in the wonderful world of public-sector management, it's a quite different story. In the NHS, for example, the number of managers has doubled under Chancellor and then Prime Minister Brown at the same time as the number of hospital beds has been slashed. In 1997 we used to have over twelve beds per manager, now it's about four. Even in 2008, the first full year of recession, we got 2% more medical staff and over 10% more managers. The situation is similar in services like education, the probation service and policing - ever less being achieved by ever more managers. In local government, the figures are even more worrying - under Brown, the number of people in councils earning over £50,000 a year has shot up by a factor of eleven from 3,300 to 38,000, while in the economy as a whole it only went up by a factor of three. As for our mostly useless quangos and regulators - the figures are astounding. The bungling Environment Agency now spends more than £1.1bn compared to £590m in 1997; the ineffective Ofcom has more than doubled its budget from £57m to £125m; and the hopeless Financial Services Authority's budget has rocketed up from £21m to almost £400m.
Dealing with the real disease
Once any organisation has built up layer upon layer of unnecessary and wasteful bureaucracy, it's difficult to cut costs without severely reducing vital services. Normally the many levels of management cannot see that it is actually they who are superfluous. So the only way they can think of reducing costs is by cutting away at usually lower-paid, frontline staff - the people who do real work. We're already seeing this in the police where the numbers of frontline officers is being reduced at the same time as middle and senior managers are giving themselves bonuses for political correctness above and beyond the call of duty. Over fifty years ago, Cyril Northcote Parkinson taught us that bureaucracies expand by 5% to 7% a year irrespective of the amount of work (if any) to be done. Under New Labour, our bureaucracies have grown even faster than Parkinson could have foreseen. Unless we attack the real problem with public spending, the relentless rise of self-serving bureaucrats, the politicians' cuts are going to devastate our essential services while preserving all the costly and wasteful bureaucratic empires that have caused the massive and unproductive explosion in public spending in the first place.
Of course, there are many worthless spending progammes like the NHS computer system, ID cards which should be scrapped and others like the 2012 Olympics which should have their budgets slashed. But unless we deal with the underlying cause of overspending - the massive, arrogant, overpaid, self-serving New Labour new bureaucracy - we will never bring public spending under control.
Step 1 - The 4-day week
A few of us might remember Edward Heath's 3-day week, brought in at a time of national emergency - a lack of power. Now we have a new national emergency - a lack of money. The government should immediately implement a 4-day week for all public-sector managerial and administrative staff who are not directly delivering services to the public. This would include all council executives and managers; all executives and managers in the NHS; all executives, managers and most administrative staff in the main government departments like Health, Education, Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (or whatever it's called this week), Environment and many others; and almost staff working for regulators and quangos like the Equalities Commission. Administrative staff processing things like driving licences, passports, benefits, pensions and so on should be exempted, but their managers should be put on the 4-day week. Probably the least disruptive solution would be to make them take every Friday off.
Moving to a 4-day week should immediately bring real cash savings of £100m a week, worth about £5bn a year without any redundancy packages or any early retirement payments. We will probably find that frontline workers actually succeed in continuing to deliver the same if not better services with the army of policy advisors, executives, managers, communications professionals, diversity officers, community relations specialists, involvement officers and others of their ilk. After three months, at least half these people should be put on a 3-day week.
Step 2 - Liberate frontline workers to help
The people who know how to deliver much better public services for less money are, of course, frontline workers. But they are prevented from making any changes or from even suggesting any improvements by layer upon layer upon layer of managers all keen to protect their often badly-run empires from prying eyes. We must unblock this logjam.
One option is to split the lumbering, politically-subservient National Audit Office (NAO) into two parts. Responsibility for auditing the accounts of government departments should stay with a greatly slimmed-down NAO. However, a separate group focusing on value for money (VfM) should be formed working directly for the Chancellor. Frontline workers should be encouraged to report opportunities to improve services or save money in confidence to VfM unit. Any frontline workers reporting opportunities should be entitled to taxfree payments of say five per cent of any savings achieved up to a maximum of perhaps £100,000. These payments should not be available to managers, as it is their job to identify and make continuous improvements. An almost trivial 2% saving in direct spending would give another £10bn a year.
Step 3 - Pass a False Claims Act
It is common practice for companies selling to the public sector to push up their prices by ten to twenty per cent because, as one supplier said to guffaws of knowing laughter during a recent conference, public-sector buyers are 'inexperienced and incompetent'. Since the American Civil War the USA has had a law rejuvenated by Congress in 1986 called the False Claims Act. This allows ordinary citizens with evidence of fraud or corruption against government contracts or programmes to sue, on the government's behalf, in order to recover any money taken illegally. As a reward, whistleblowers are given somewhere between fifteen and twenty five per cent of the money recovered or saved. Just one partner in a US consultancy, which works extensively throughout Britain's public sector, stood to gain $10m for revealing how his employer had been cheating various US government departments over travel expenses.
The False Claims Act protects taxpayers' money in two ways. Firstly, it encourages whistleblowers to take action. Secondly, and perhaps much more importantly, it has a strong deterrent effect - it discourages individuals and companies from overcharging or defrauding government departments because they will always know that they run a serious and real risk of being sued by any concerned or even disgruntled employee who knows what they are up to. Just a 2% reduction in purchasing costs from a False Claims Act would net another £3.4bn a year.
It's not a tough decision
As the politicians survey the disastrous state of our public finances, we're beginning to hear the expressions 'tough decisions' and 'difficult choices'. Over the coming months, these will be repeated many times as our leaders try to make us understand how hard it will be to reverse their uncontained, managerially-inept profligacy of the last twelve years or so. Yet most of the actions I'm proposing won't be tough at all. In fact, they will make our lives better by bringing this country back from the brink of insolvency.
Suddenly the 'c' word has become the most popular word in British politics, with Cameron, Brown and even the pointless Nick Clegg vying with each other to see who can use it most convincingly and most often. As Britain sinks rapidly towards bankruptcy, our politicians are rushing round like headless chickens trying to find something to cut. But one thing is obvious, as almost none of them has ever had a proper job, they haven't a clue about what needs to be done.
Having actually had a real job and having worked on over 100 efficiency programmes in the public and private sectors in 15 countries, I'd like to suggest to our current and would-be leaders how they could give us much better public services at a much lower cost.
New Labour's management madness
The first step in effective cost reduction is to understand why our public sector has become so bloated, inefficient and expensive. It's not because we have too many nurses, doctors, carers, police officers, binpersons or teachers. In fact, while public spending has more than doubled under New Labour from £322bn to about £700bn, the number of frontline workers in the NHS, policing, local government and education has only gone up by about 10 per cent.
But in the wonderful world of public-sector management, it's a quite different story. In the NHS, for example, the number of managers has doubled under Chancellor and then Prime Minister Brown at the same time as the number of hospital beds has been slashed. In 1997 we used to have over twelve beds per manager, now it's about four. Even in 2008, the first full year of recession, we got 2% more medical staff and over 10% more managers. The situation is similar in services like education, the probation service and policing - ever less being achieved by ever more managers. In local government, the figures are even more worrying - under Brown, the number of people in councils earning over £50,000 a year has shot up by a factor of eleven from 3,300 to 38,000, while in the economy as a whole it only went up by a factor of three. As for our mostly useless quangos and regulators - the figures are astounding. The bungling Environment Agency now spends more than £1.1bn compared to £590m in 1997; the ineffective Ofcom has more than doubled its budget from £57m to £125m; and the hopeless Financial Services Authority's budget has rocketed up from £21m to almost £400m.
Dealing with the real disease
Once any organisation has built up layer upon layer of unnecessary and wasteful bureaucracy, it's difficult to cut costs without severely reducing vital services. Normally the many levels of management cannot see that it is actually they who are superfluous. So the only way they can think of reducing costs is by cutting away at usually lower-paid, frontline staff - the people who do real work. We're already seeing this in the police where the numbers of frontline officers is being reduced at the same time as middle and senior managers are giving themselves bonuses for political correctness above and beyond the call of duty. Over fifty years ago, Cyril Northcote Parkinson taught us that bureaucracies expand by 5% to 7% a year irrespective of the amount of work (if any) to be done. Under New Labour, our bureaucracies have grown even faster than Parkinson could have foreseen. Unless we attack the real problem with public spending, the relentless rise of self-serving bureaucrats, the politicians' cuts are going to devastate our essential services while preserving all the costly and wasteful bureaucratic empires that have caused the massive and unproductive explosion in public spending in the first place.
Of course, there are many worthless spending progammes like the NHS computer system, ID cards which should be scrapped and others like the 2012 Olympics which should have their budgets slashed. But unless we deal with the underlying cause of overspending - the massive, arrogant, overpaid, self-serving New Labour new bureaucracy - we will never bring public spending under control.
Step 1 - The 4-day week
A few of us might remember Edward Heath's 3-day week, brought in at a time of national emergency - a lack of power. Now we have a new national emergency - a lack of money. The government should immediately implement a 4-day week for all public-sector managerial and administrative staff who are not directly delivering services to the public. This would include all council executives and managers; all executives and managers in the NHS; all executives, managers and most administrative staff in the main government departments like Health, Education, Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (or whatever it's called this week), Environment and many others; and almost staff working for regulators and quangos like the Equalities Commission. Administrative staff processing things like driving licences, passports, benefits, pensions and so on should be exempted, but their managers should be put on the 4-day week. Probably the least disruptive solution would be to make them take every Friday off.
Moving to a 4-day week should immediately bring real cash savings of £100m a week, worth about £5bn a year without any redundancy packages or any early retirement payments. We will probably find that frontline workers actually succeed in continuing to deliver the same if not better services with the army of policy advisors, executives, managers, communications professionals, diversity officers, community relations specialists, involvement officers and others of their ilk. After three months, at least half these people should be put on a 3-day week.
Step 2 - Liberate frontline workers to help
The people who know how to deliver much better public services for less money are, of course, frontline workers. But they are prevented from making any changes or from even suggesting any improvements by layer upon layer upon layer of managers all keen to protect their often badly-run empires from prying eyes. We must unblock this logjam.
One option is to split the lumbering, politically-subservient National Audit Office (NAO) into two parts. Responsibility for auditing the accounts of government departments should stay with a greatly slimmed-down NAO. However, a separate group focusing on value for money (VfM) should be formed working directly for the Chancellor. Frontline workers should be encouraged to report opportunities to improve services or save money in confidence to VfM unit. Any frontline workers reporting opportunities should be entitled to taxfree payments of say five per cent of any savings achieved up to a maximum of perhaps £100,000. These payments should not be available to managers, as it is their job to identify and make continuous improvements. An almost trivial 2% saving in direct spending would give another £10bn a year.
Step 3 - Pass a False Claims Act
It is common practice for companies selling to the public sector to push up their prices by ten to twenty per cent because, as one supplier said to guffaws of knowing laughter during a recent conference, public-sector buyers are 'inexperienced and incompetent'. Since the American Civil War the USA has had a law rejuvenated by Congress in 1986 called the False Claims Act. This allows ordinary citizens with evidence of fraud or corruption against government contracts or programmes to sue, on the government's behalf, in order to recover any money taken illegally. As a reward, whistleblowers are given somewhere between fifteen and twenty five per cent of the money recovered or saved. Just one partner in a US consultancy, which works extensively throughout Britain's public sector, stood to gain $10m for revealing how his employer had been cheating various US government departments over travel expenses.
The False Claims Act protects taxpayers' money in two ways. Firstly, it encourages whistleblowers to take action. Secondly, and perhaps much more importantly, it has a strong deterrent effect - it discourages individuals and companies from overcharging or defrauding government departments because they will always know that they run a serious and real risk of being sued by any concerned or even disgruntled employee who knows what they are up to. Just a 2% reduction in purchasing costs from a False Claims Act would net another £3.4bn a year.
It's not a tough decision
As the politicians survey the disastrous state of our public finances, we're beginning to hear the expressions 'tough decisions' and 'difficult choices'. Over the coming months, these will be repeated many times as our leaders try to make us understand how hard it will be to reverse their uncontained, managerially-inept profligacy of the last twelve years or so. Yet most of the actions I'm proposing won't be tough at all. In fact, they will make our lives better by bringing this country back from the brink of insolvency.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Do Our Politicians Really Think We Are That Stupid?
Our elected officials on both sides of the political aisle must really think we, their constitutes, are dumber than dirt. That is how we are being treated. The congressional political process seems to be filled with more and more "corruption" in each new session - regardless if Republicans or Democrats are in the majority. The Health Care Reform Act (HCRA) is just the latest program to highlight the self-serving, narcissistic practices of our Senators and Congressmen - doing the American public a gross disservice.
First, I do not believe anyone can legitimately argue against the fact that our health care system needs to be reformed. Too many people are left without coverage, astronomical cost increases are passed along to consumers who can ill afford it each year by insurance companies, and malpractice insurance premiums are driving doctors out of business.
Senator Harry Reid's vote bribe to win Senator Ben Nelson's support of the HCRA is a travesty of the political process. To think that citizens of other states are not going to object to Reid's little $100,000,000 gimme to Nebraska, another $100,000,000 for Louisiana, other gifts and a hospital to Connecticut, Montana, and Texas. And for North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah - retaining higher payments to rural doctors because they know small towns will lose doctors when medicare payments are cut. Lose doctors serving medicare patients?
It is interesting that supposedly one of the big savings that is going to pay for the HCRA is a $270,000,000 reduction in payments to doctors of medicare patients contained in the bill. Tell us Congress and Mr. President, to our dumber than dirt faces, that doctors in ultra expensive markets like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. are going to keep medicare recipients as patients when they are forced to take a large reduction in their payments. This will never happen. So once again, what the government is proposing is a massive entitlement program - that the country has NO money to pay for. Shall we just ask Beijing for a check right now rather than waiting a year of two? That is the only way we will be funding it, with foreign government/citizen loans. And the sad part, loans to the US are looking more and more like a suckers bet than sound investments.
One of doctor's largest (and escalating) costs-of-doing-business is malpractice insurance because of frivolous malpractice lawsuits and huge jury awards. The HCRA contains a generic statement, with no teeth in it, to give states additional funding if they bring parties together to form a review panel administered by the HHS Secretary. The review panel is structured to ensure that trial lawyers are amply represented, with seats specifically reserved for "patient advocates," "attorneys with expertise in representing patients," and "patient safety experts." Again, most interested parties believe no saving will be attained - only escalating costs as we have seen for decades.
Another example, of the fraud perpetrated on us, is the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. This was to create 3.5 million jobs in the first year but we actually lost 2.6 million jobs. Now Congress and Mr. President are going to follow up on this success (sic) with throwing more good money (which we do not have) at this lackluster program. Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that we had new-found money available from unspent TARP funds, just like she found money at the end of the rainbow - when in fact that money is borrowed from foreign investors as well. Just what was she thinking (or not). Just how stupid does she think we are?
The Republicans are really no better in the "pork barrel" department - voting for anything and everything to get themselves re-elected - looking out after the good of the country only as an afterthought. Their obstructionist tactics have not helped the health care debate nor have they presented a viable plan of their own.
This insanity must come to a halt. We are technically a bankrupt country, if any of our major creditors decided to call in their notes. We have already caused irrefutable damage to our nation's well-being that our children and grandchildren will be paying for for decades. To use a phrase from "Chicago politics" throw da bums out!
First, I do not believe anyone can legitimately argue against the fact that our health care system needs to be reformed. Too many people are left without coverage, astronomical cost increases are passed along to consumers who can ill afford it each year by insurance companies, and malpractice insurance premiums are driving doctors out of business.
Senator Harry Reid's vote bribe to win Senator Ben Nelson's support of the HCRA is a travesty of the political process. To think that citizens of other states are not going to object to Reid's little $100,000,000 gimme to Nebraska, another $100,000,000 for Louisiana, other gifts and a hospital to Connecticut, Montana, and Texas. And for North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah - retaining higher payments to rural doctors because they know small towns will lose doctors when medicare payments are cut. Lose doctors serving medicare patients?
It is interesting that supposedly one of the big savings that is going to pay for the HCRA is a $270,000,000 reduction in payments to doctors of medicare patients contained in the bill. Tell us Congress and Mr. President, to our dumber than dirt faces, that doctors in ultra expensive markets like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. are going to keep medicare recipients as patients when they are forced to take a large reduction in their payments. This will never happen. So once again, what the government is proposing is a massive entitlement program - that the country has NO money to pay for. Shall we just ask Beijing for a check right now rather than waiting a year of two? That is the only way we will be funding it, with foreign government/citizen loans. And the sad part, loans to the US are looking more and more like a suckers bet than sound investments.
One of doctor's largest (and escalating) costs-of-doing-business is malpractice insurance because of frivolous malpractice lawsuits and huge jury awards. The HCRA contains a generic statement, with no teeth in it, to give states additional funding if they bring parties together to form a review panel administered by the HHS Secretary. The review panel is structured to ensure that trial lawyers are amply represented, with seats specifically reserved for "patient advocates," "attorneys with expertise in representing patients," and "patient safety experts." Again, most interested parties believe no saving will be attained - only escalating costs as we have seen for decades.
Another example, of the fraud perpetrated on us, is the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. This was to create 3.5 million jobs in the first year but we actually lost 2.6 million jobs. Now Congress and Mr. President are going to follow up on this success (sic) with throwing more good money (which we do not have) at this lackluster program. Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that we had new-found money available from unspent TARP funds, just like she found money at the end of the rainbow - when in fact that money is borrowed from foreign investors as well. Just what was she thinking (or not). Just how stupid does she think we are?
The Republicans are really no better in the "pork barrel" department - voting for anything and everything to get themselves re-elected - looking out after the good of the country only as an afterthought. Their obstructionist tactics have not helped the health care debate nor have they presented a viable plan of their own.
This insanity must come to a halt. We are technically a bankrupt country, if any of our major creditors decided to call in their notes. We have already caused irrefutable damage to our nation's well-being that our children and grandchildren will be paying for for decades. To use a phrase from "Chicago politics" throw da bums out!
Will Meteorologists Ever Be Able to Get it Right?
In my opinion, the best job on the planet to have is a meteorologist. It's the only job that I know of where you make a lot of money and your wrong 80% of the time and you still have job security.
Where I live we have three local channels where I will watch the news and all three weather people give you three different forecasts, and they're generally wrong. They can barely look out the window and tell you what's going on, and if that's not bad enough at the end of there forecast, they give us the 7 day forecast. They have the nerve to tell us what the weather is going to be like in the next 7 days when they can't tell us what is going to happen later in that day.
And not once have I heard any of them when they do the weather the next day say to us, "sorry for getting the forecast wrong". I know that predicting the weather is a hard thing to do and it's always changing but, if you can't tell us with any kind of accuracy what the weather is going to be like the next day, then why would they attempt to show us what the weather is going to be like in the next 7 days.
And every station claims that they have the most powerful radar around. Ours is bigger and better than yours. Bottom line is, no matter how big and strong they claim there radars are, they can't get the forecasts right.
Where I live we have three local channels where I will watch the news and all three weather people give you three different forecasts, and they're generally wrong. They can barely look out the window and tell you what's going on, and if that's not bad enough at the end of there forecast, they give us the 7 day forecast. They have the nerve to tell us what the weather is going to be like in the next 7 days when they can't tell us what is going to happen later in that day.
And not once have I heard any of them when they do the weather the next day say to us, "sorry for getting the forecast wrong". I know that predicting the weather is a hard thing to do and it's always changing but, if you can't tell us with any kind of accuracy what the weather is going to be like the next day, then why would they attempt to show us what the weather is going to be like in the next 7 days.
And every station claims that they have the most powerful radar around. Ours is bigger and better than yours. Bottom line is, no matter how big and strong they claim there radars are, they can't get the forecasts right.
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