What is a Government Review Panel (GRP)? What we’re tossing out today is an idea for a Big Picture review of how government performance is going.
- Not by the Legislative brand. Why, when there’s a government shutdown, they can even work through the holidays to patch things up. Lazy bastards and non-performers. Incapable of doing work, would you trust them to conduct a fair review? I doubt it.
- Clearly, the Executive branch can’t do such a review, either. First, because the current president wasn’t accepted as a valid winner by democrats – which is really all it takes to set aside an Executive branch review.
- Could the Courts? Why, of course not. The role of the Courts is not the collection of evidence,
- The Media, then? One of the present era’s most “Popular Delusions” is that the media’s able to be honest. Not the case. They have their hand in the financial cookie jar too deep. What was once upon a time “news” is now a confabulation of infotainment, opinion, and leftist mediajacking that is wholly untrustworthy.
So bad has it become, that one often has to take a single story and average it from right, centrist, and left, in order to come anywhere near a reasonable option.
This is why, morning’s like this, I throw out crazy ideas like a (Citizens) Government Review Panel.
Like any good HR Department, the GRP would be able to issue “notices to correct.” Fail to get things resolved to the satisfaction of the GRP and out you go, regardless of branch. Think of it as a Constitutional-Digital Hybrid which would – over some period of time – transition into Responsive Government. Because, in our considered view, that’s what the Founders really had in mind.
America wasn’t set up to be a (loose-lips Cortez) migration path to socialist tyranny and all-government, all-the-time.. But, neither was it designed to be an exploitive free-trade and profits-only franchise.
The Politics of Division is an ongoing battle between the two above factions to prevail. That’s what’s in the headlines we choke down on a daily basis.
Aren’t we really smarter than ihat? have we learned NOTHING about the generalization of Enterprise Resource Managment (ERP) that could take the division and petty bullshit out of governance and just “move along?”
Pretend – just for an instant – that we were all scientific management adherents. We would be based on data, process, replication, and moving toward specific, measurable goals.
Now, I ask you: Does this remotely resemble this morning’s mixed-scramble of political minutia? Even with a side of bacon?
Quick! Main functions of government are what?
- Provide representative government.
- Provide Law Enforcement and the Courts and, when perps are found guilty, to detain as punishment.
- Ensure critical public services.
- Provide money as a means of exchange.
- Pay for the above with reasonable taxes.
We’re pretty sure this is an incomplete list, but let’s use it as a starting point for this morning’s “Employee Review” of government at all levels. Because, in ERP terms, it;s all part of the same company, same organization and under One management group,
Since Government Works for Us – not the other way around.
1. Provide Representative Government.
Score? Fail.
Not only do government workers have “special” retirement progrems not Social Security. Oh, and the top of the ruling class are exempt from having their incomes halted during the shutdown.
We need to unify all retirements and if Social Security is not enough, oh well…fix it. That’s what ERP competent managements do. Measure and Fix.
Not perpetuate BS division to monetize ongoing waste…following?
2. Provide for Law Enforcement and the Courts.
Fail.
Federal Courts close tomorrow unless the shutdown ends overnight, the odds of which are approximately zero.
2A. The Border is a Law Enforcement Issue.
Fail.
Trump is off to the border here in Texas today. Elsewhere in Texas, grandstanding democrats will make a play for the public, too.
The absolute craziness of the Open Border people is they fail to see that walls and barriers are necessary or we might as well have Open Murders and Open Robbers, as well.
Because the liberals, living in gated compounds, would never countenance “wall free jails” and “open prisons” – yet they expect the ‘Merican people to be dumb enough to swallow such septic tailings.
3. Ensure Critical Public Services
Fail.
I’ve lived in Kalifornia and I have friends who live in the canyons of Burbank and they can’t cut down brush because of environmental concerns.
If you have brush, the LA Fire Department, for example, has rules to follow, as we’d expect.
- Use of metal cutting blades for grass or brush clearance shall be limited to those which are non-ferrous/non-sparking.
- Brush clearance cannot be done on red flag days, when fire weather conditions are at their peak.
- Individuals engaged in brush clearance operations shall not engage in any other activities during their actual clearance of grass or brush.
- An approved fire extinguisher, or a pressurized garden hose with attached nozzle shall be within 10 feet of any grass or brush clearance operation, to quickly extinguish a small fire before it burns out of control.
- A cell phone capable of dialing 9-1-1 shall be charged and readily accessible to the grass or brush clearance operation.
We see an article from a year ago in The American Thinker” under the title “How Regulation Made California’s Fires Worse.” In it, there’s an enlargement that lack of proper forest management is a large part of the problem. And while that may be partially correct, as a tree farm operator (you forgot? Uretopia is a USDA numbers tree farm!) we keep our trees (as much as possible) thinned and limbed up.
Donald Trump is partly right, but California is partly wrong. And we seem to remember it was a power company crew that lit off one of the biggest fires of ’18, and no amount of finger-pointing will gorw back a single tree. Unholy smokes.
4. Provide Money as a Means of Exchange
Massive fail.
The US Congress abdicated by handing over the role of money management to a banker-proxy cabal sold to the public as the Federal Reserve. When Richard Nixon went along with the implementation of “variable value money” (VVM) which was not convertible to a fixed amount of silver or gold) the nation’s financial fate was sealed.
There are some who cast the killing of President kennedy (or a coup by Lyndon Johnson) as the cause. We won’t mention it here, except to say odd things happen around democrats and today’s headline that a “Second man found dead in Democratic donor Edward Buck’s home identified” is a good reason to remain arms-length (or further) from anything political.
Moreover, the recent stock market volatility has likely been fueled by FOREX changes and that means the variable rate dollar’s rep is in decline which explains, we think, why gold, silver, and other fungibles are ascendant.
Oh, and yes, if the value of the dollar goes down, it takes more off them to buy the same goods. Which makes it appear that stocks are going up. But, to us, and looking at gold, it’s just the dollar going down.
5. Pay for the above with reasonable taxes.
Well, no paying for anything non-essential since Trump stormed out of the useless meeting with Schumer and Pelosi Wednesday.
All of which brings us to the precipice I mentioned in mid December that we should about be at around January 10.
That’s today…and we’ll see how much of a roller coaster ride is about to begin.
More than anything today, we’re hoping some cartel hot-head doesn’t have a shoulder-launched anti=aircraft missile somewhere just on the unenforceable side of the border. Because that’s the kind and scale of event that we fear lurks. We love to be wrong.
But to sum up?
Politics has had 243 year to “get it right.” Politicians, like leeches, multiply their own species at the expense of their hosts.
We think it’s time to re-think and stop trying to rebrand losing propositions like extremism on either side, left or right. It isn’t like companies don’t face this every day.
Everyone holding a government job should be required to have actually worked in private industry (and not sucking branches like law firms) before being allowed to seize the throttles of power.
We’d have a much smaller, work product-oriented, congress.
In Other News
CPI data is scheduled for tomorrow. We’re waiting to find out if that is an essential service.
Remember our discussion about Strategic Relocation a couple of weeks back? Well, here you go: New Kind of Oklahoma Land Rush—Anadarko Basin’s Unconventional Reserves Estimated to be 16 Billion Barrels of Oil, 200 TCF Gas,
New meaning for the term “bench warmer?” Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s past comments raise questions about Supreme Court retirement. Anything to spite Trump, huh?
And as we’ve been expecting, New year stocks rally stalls as trade talks and data disappoint with the futures down about 100.
But, ain’t hearing the Fat Lady singing. Few more days?
Moron the ‘morrow…
Thank you, George, for Ure recommendation of the book “The Inner Guide Meditation” by Edwin Steinbrecher (it was a few columns back). Great book, very helpful and so are you!
My location in Tulsa is really strategic if you are concerned about energy prices. I especially like that I am only 60 miles from the national petroleum pipeline hub. Jeez, even Obama came to see it once. There are two really big refineries here with large tank farms. We usually have the lowest gasoline prices in the nation or near it. Electricity is relatively cheap due to the abundance of natural gas (the mile long coal trains from Wyoming are history). And then there is the gas itself for heating and industrial use. State regulation of the utilities is good, too.
Looking forward to seeing what the governor will do to state government. Both he and his lieutenant governor are businessmen from Tulsa metro. They are promising to make big changes. IMO their first brick wall will be the entrenched bureaucracy, followed by the teachers’ union. Vested interests will no doubt be as big a hurdle for them as for Trump at the national level.
Just a minor point. Federal employees hired after 1993 do pay social security and have a lower pension than the older system. Pension is around 1% of the average of highest 3 base salaries times years of service. Example: 30 years of service = pension of around 30% of base average salary. The previous system was far more generous. And military get a much more generous retirement system system than civilian feds.
Also fed employees are supposed to get cost of living raises, but in the past decade pay has been frozen for about half the years. When a COL raise is given it is always 1% to 3% below ‘official’ inflation. End result is fed salaries haven’t kept up with inflation. I made more money as a contractor but got tired of having to switch companies every few years.
All human institutions tend to become more corrupt as they concentrate power. Not just government, but corporations, organized religions, charitable foundations, “clubs”, even Boy Scouts. The Federalist Papers were primarily concerned with corruption, though they are usually associated with advancing human liberty – which is an essential component of combatting corruption.
So any discussion of fixing the mess needs to begin with taking power away from the institutions, including private ones, decentralizing them and advancing individuals’ opportunies. Trouble is, almost nobody understands the problem, as they were educated not to do so, by a system which feeds on them.
One avenue would be to reduce the absurd immunity corporate officers and employees have from personal liability for actions taken in their capacity as agents of the corporation, while corporations are given equal or even superior legal rights to those of individuals. And hey, why should government agents be left out of the reforms?
As one bumper sticker put it, “I’ll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.”
The almost complete impunity which prosecutors, executives, bureaucrats, military commanders, religious leaders, congressmenn and their respective lackies have needs to be eliminated. Good luck with that, until there are riots in the streets.
Puerto Rico, of all places, has a citizens review process for picking judges. Literally hundreds of citizens sit on a panel, along with a large number of lawyers, to decide who should be a judge. I am told that the result is that most judges are thus senior, respected attornies, with long careers, who close out thir careers as judges. This, in turn, seems to increase the skill level of the judiciary.
Reminds me of William Buckley’s comment that he’d rather be governed by the first few hundred names in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty. Perhaps government review boards should be chosen like juries, but handsomely paid, to keep the winners on board. Then replaced, often, with new people?
I agree.. pick our legislators like we do Juries…. don’t let them stay.. every four years we pick new the four year is up the middle of the residing presidency. all money and gifts donated to a legislator goes to the state to be decided on where it goes..all gifts should be treated the way a company I worked for does it.. they collect all the gifts the premiums etc.. the displays.. that are intended to go to management then at the christmas party they have all of them up on display..( like a new car or cruise etc.) and they draw from the employee’s including management.. to see who gets what.. best dang christmas party you will ever go to.. I will never forget the kid that won the new car one year.. he had been taking the bus.. all taxes were paid to.. and the family that got a vacation they had never had .. I got tickets to a cowboys game and a game jacket.( before they fired the coach when they were at the highest) I loved that coat to nice and warm..what i wanted was the Totino pizza surrey.. dam .. anyway give all these gifts the private jet rides the vacations etc meals out.. and they go to the state to be given away as a raffle.. everyone has a chance at it..
I think you would see corruption come to a halt.. because which company really cares is joey or sandra get a cruise or car or a plane trip to the islands.. or dinner out at a thousand dollar a plate restaurant.. new lap tops etc..
its the same way with doctors.. I use to go to the lectures.. wow.. they have it extravagant all paid for by the drug companies.. want a new lap top.. head on down and listen for a few hours.. want a great meal.. same thing.. free drinks to..
maybe the dems should include a military parade option in the border wall negotiations! lol
George, “open border people?” Really? You’re talking about well less than 1% of Americans.
Just covering up for the R’s inept failure to solve the problem (remember my 3 points?!?) when they still had control of all.
And how about some more asylum judges before the R’s lose the Senate in 2 years? It takes like 3 years for an asylum hearing now. (How many kids can someone have in 3+ years? All US citizens.) That’s where you need to put your $5 billion instead of into an ineffective wall. Simply incompetent.
Stop being angry and wake up.
But at least you’ve stopped openly cheerleading for Trump. Real progress. Best, Mike.
Trump requested more judges, Pelosi refused.
I keep saying and writing it wherever I to: This is a war between the business models!
About the Border. This is nothing but a misinformation campaign to make sure Trump pleases his base and his outlandish promises of a big beautiful Concrete wall..which is now a steel wall or whatever the polls say he should say.
There is no evidence that terrorists are sneaking through our “open” borders. There is no evidence drug runners are either. If they have that intel…why aren’t they being stopped? It’s a quick helicopter ride to stop them. I have an inconspicuous Ring video on my doorbell. Not a wall…a technology. If I get a notification that someone suspicious is at my door I immediately see that person and ask him what he wants. I have prevented a few porch pirates from taking an Amazon package this way.
It has been documented dozens of times by border patrol senior officials that 99% of all drugs and contraband as well as suspected terrorists, human trafficking etc. come through our legal points of entry. Schumer made that very clear as has many GOP politicians. It’s a fact! Congress would like nothing more than to increase our security at our ports and install better technologies. I have emails from our democratic Representatives from both the house and Senate that say these exact words. They are on the news saying these words. Words you will not see on Fox.
We have pinpointed where the issues are…why spend money on where the issues aren’t?
On California fires. No preventative measures could have stopped the PGE mishapsthat started the first two wildfires of 2018. California does take huge preventative measures though…it’s not legislative restrictions that slow it down at all. It’s a fight between interest groups. The fishing, agricultural and the environmental groups are at each other’s throats. In this case the environmentalists are the low men on the totem pole. Interestingly, they want to create more water sheds to provide water to protect our forests…but…Water rights are a constant fight between the Salmon/trout industry and the farmers. Two very important industries to our world leading food businesses. They want the water all to themselves.
So, we clear cut as much as we can to create fire breaks, but this is not only one big state…but one with hundreds of billions of trees that unfortunately is very expensive to manage. Sometimes, for the sake of running a state with 40 million people, you have to cut your losses. It sucks to do that…but either way…it’s expensive…With a fire, you get federal help…with maintenance, it’s all on the state.
But for Trump to cut out FEMA to innocent victims is cruel and just a political and partisan statement meant to punish a state that won’t bow down and kiss his keester.
“It has been documented dozens of times by border patrol senior officials that 99% of all drugs and contraband as well as suspected terrorists, human trafficking etc. come through our legal points of entry.”
Wrong. It has been documented that a majority of all drugs and contraband that have been recovered, ex-tunnels, and the majority of terrorists who’ve been caught, have come through POEs. U.S. Border Patrol estimates for 2016 placed the number of terrorists who entered the U.S. illegally, across the Mexican border, AND WERE NOT CAUGHT, at 18,000.
Ask your favorite Democrat pols for specifics, as to how they would apply “technology” to invasion issues…
On second thought, don’t bother. You’ll hear no actionable plan whatsoever, which has any possibility of successfully patrolling the border, merely obfuscation and technobabble.
Walls work.
Even when they can be broached, or tunneled under, walls work, because they create a solid obstacle which is an effective choke-point.
ON the California fires..
My father was probably one of the best woodsmen I ever seen.. he could read a tree.. he cut trees as his hobby and had all his toys..
There is one thing he preached all the time..
PROPER WOODLOT MANAGEMENT..He never cut a tree without planting a new one ever maybe he didn’t plant it in the same place but he planted a new tree and only cut down the dead wood or trees that were ready to go…
instead most of the people because of greedy wood cutters clear cutting the forest decided to take the stand of our forests to have the lets let nature take care of the dead wood and brush.. Now you get a spark and a little wind and it is gone people always build in prime area’s to…
Now I agree there are greedy woodcutters that would clear cut their grandma if they thought they could make a buck but hey.. lets be real here.. proper woodlot management clear out the dead wood..give the new growth some room to grow..
“I have emails from our democratic Representatives from both the house and Senate that say these exact words.”
I bet they did.. Mark… Its even been a campaign issue for over thirty years.Why haven’t they acted on this issue up till now. You know I never did understand why congress tables these dead horse issues six months after being sworn in to office.. They’ve been using this and many many more.. Abortion issue anyone..
They tabled all the big issues before they were even sworn in this last time.My wife tells me stop dragging that dead horse around its dead. Now DJT is saying if you want something from me shizt or get off the pot your going to do something for a change. …if they were serious then they would have acted long long ago. Patriot act argument anyone we need to protect our country from those that want to do us harm..
It reminds me of a guy wanting to get laid from a young lady he just met.. He will tell her anything he thinks she would like to hear to get in her pants so they can do the wild monkey..
Politicians go into office to represent the people. Once in the bubble they loose most of their connections to those they should be working for.
I’ve always accepted that the only two real functions of government are:
1. To protect the borders.
2. To provide a framework for commerce.
Number one is an outright fail, since we’re making a mockery of such a thing. IMHO, this is and should be a military operation ON the border, with CBP handling the ports of entry and law enforcement within their scope for X number of miles inland. If done right, this could be reduced from the current 100 to maybe 40 miles. The primary purpose of the military is to protect the borders. We extend this to protecting shipping lanes, and then to foreign adventures with dubious purposes. We’re succeeding in making foreign and domestic enemies while failing to achieve the most basic level of national security. Obviously, there’s something wrong at the core.
Number 2 includes 1,2,3 and 4 of Ure’s.
The definition of money always used to be “A store of value and a medium of exchange.” Yes, it’s still a medium of exchange, but it’s a highly perishable store of value. That needs fixing.
The rest of the “framework of commerce” includes few and relatively invariant laws that are enforced quickly and evenly, with the prescribed consequences(not punishments) imposed without rancor or harsh emotion. Even the death penalty where necessary, should be imposed with compassion and done quickly and painlessly, without morbid viewing options. We have the technology and it’s not being used. The point of “justice” is not to flay the perpetrators; it’s to eliminate a problem that’s beyond society’s sustained ability to contain. We can be both firm and compassionate, and those are two goals that are barely mentioned in either the current “noise media” or the halls of government.
A Citizens Government Control Panel, more woo woo. First they will want to be paid, so they will become government employees. Second, when has a committee of citizens ever agreed on anything. Each will vote on how it benefits them. They will form clicks to overrule & intimidate dissenters. If they are all rich & don’t need a paycheck (like Oparah & Bezos), they will serve their interests & their friends interest. They will be a Congress of Citizens. Basically worthless.
Damn, your hot today. You of course realize that a comment like this would only come from a member of the choir.
Amen Jay.. Right with ya
Only two comments? Sorry George, I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate and disagree with many of your premises…
Provide representative government
This is not the government’s job, it is OURS. The Constitution establishes a framework for a capitalistic, representative republic. Adam Smith was a contemporary of the Founding Fathers, and his writings were of significant influence to them. (Karl Marx didn’t come along for another hundred years or so, but Marx and Ingalls exhibited very little originality. Marx didn’t create communist theory, he compiled and edited existing theory into a single work. The precepts of what we call “communism” and “socialism” also existed in the 1780s, and were discussed and debated by the Founders.)
Provide Law Enforcement and the Courts and, when perps are found guilty, to detain as punishment.
The Courts are mandated, and certain Federal crimes and punishments, codified. However, “law enforcement” is not. Aside from the few enumerated Federal criminal statutes, the creation and enforcement of Law, and the establishment and enforcement of punishment, are the purview of the Several States, and the Several Jurisdictions within each.
Ensure critical public services.
Um, no. The only “public service” charges of the Federal Government are to provide and maintain roads, and provide for the Common Defense of the States and Territories.
Provide money as a means of exchange.
Actually, provide “coin” as a standardized means of exchange. This doesn’t authorize Congress to offload its responsibility or authority to a 3rd party or suborn an exchange medium of unstable value.
Pay for the above with reasonable taxes.
My grandfather was born into a United States in which there were no taxes: No income tax, no sales tax, no excise tax, no use tax, no property tax (outside a few townships in which cities had sprung up), no corporate tax, etc. The United States funded itself, in its entirety, via tariffs and asset sales.
So, where does Donald Trump get off trying to cut off FEMA funding until the State changes up its brush management game?
Until a fire burns up into Oregon, or crosses the desert into AridZona or Nevada, it is not the FEDERAL government’s problem. It is the problem of the California: DGS, ORIM, CalOES, CEMA, CESA, and CalFIRE (Dept of Forestry.) ISTM if the Californicators can’t solve their wildfire issues with SIX FRICKIN’ AGENCIES, they shouldn’t expect the assistance of an additional agency from the Federal Government…
The one thing that the American system fails to have that’s common to all parliamentary systems is the vote of confidence! While Great Britain, Canada and Australia have lots of problems, they can at least toss their government in a day. We’re stuck with a congress full of slimy critters that keep voting themselves favors and cannot easily be removed. They have absolutely no reason to listen to their constituents.
We also have a system where these critters have access to deep information on each registered voter. They have no right to that information. It’s one of the reasons that every biped is encouraged to register to vote, even if they have only a couple of brain cells. We obviously need an open, transparent voting system(while maintaining legitimate secrecy of each ballot) where the system has a real paper trail(both in the voting area and given printed in encoded format for each voter). Cleartext receipts could encourage coercive vote shaping operations.