In short, one might conclude that all knowledge, wisdom, and wit are confined to those who inhabit New York City, Washington DC, or Hollywood.
As I creep inexorably toward nearly 70 years of life experience - which was gained in many cities in the U.S. and in about 30 foreign countries, I decided to put down some ongoing thoughts in a series I call "The View From the Outback." That experience has included the U.S. Marines, law school, the ATF, the CIA, Fortune 500 executive, writer, public speaker, educator, editor, and publisher - for openers. For over 20 years, I have written articles off and on for various magazines and newspapers. I've had an enormous number of letters published in major national publications. The Outback is the rural area in Northeast Texas where I have lived for the past 10 years. Each Saturday I will attempt to post a new set of musings from the Outback.
Of the hundreds of computer help sites on the Web, I ran across www.pcguide.com the other day. It is a veritable encyclopedia of how computers work and how to configure and troubleshoot them.
"The Weakest Link" debuted on NBC. It would help if there were English subtitles. I speak often with hams in England and hear a variety of British accents but still have trouble understanding many of the questions. I find it refreshing for the host to question the intelligence of a panelist who did not know that Acorns come from Oak trees or the one who said the first dictionary was written by Edison. But ... could we please stop having shows where the losers come on and dump on the other members? This is getting very old. For now, I mute their asinine remarks. But, if they insist on continuing this recitation of whining insults by the "weakest link," the weakest link will be the IR beam between my remote and the TV. Check the Media List for the address of Jeff Zucker at NBC.
Last week, I suggested that the U.S. electronic surveillance aircraft that fly near China be rigged to explode within three minutes after the last crew member left the aircraft. Here we are in an impasse with the Chinese about getting the plane back. Tensions are once again heightened, and many are calling for a cooling of relations with China and sanctions, particularly in trade. Well, if we had blown up the plane, there would be no "return the plane" issue, and many of our secrets that no doubt fell into Chinese hands, would have been safely destroyed.
After our concern for the aircrew held captive in China, my thoughts began to turn to those in the business community who were getting nervous about our relations with China. I could see the president of Radio Shack calling President Bush and pleading with him not to upset the Chinese. "We would be out of business if our sources of Chinese electronics dried up," he might have said. And what about the sneaker guys? They must have been jamming the switchboard at the White House. Where else can they get shoes made for $1 and sell them for $75? We seem to have an ambivalent attitude toward China. Is it our big trading partner or a military threat? Somebody better figure this out, because you know what they says about the Chinese being inscrutable (mysterious: hard to interpret because not expressing anything obviously). Thus, not only the Chinese, but the whole situation is inscrutable.
Three guys in Ft. Worth, Texas, decided to rob a man at gunpoint. I mentioned in an earlier column that there were about 213,000 concealed handgun permits in Texas. The idea for a robber is to guess which victim has a permit. Our would-be-robber guessed wrong. The "victim" pulled his registered handgun and shot the robber twice - sending him to the hospital. One can only assume that the other two bullies did not have a gun - or any guts - and fled once they were confronted by a victim with a gun.
The Internet In China
After I read about Chinese comments in chat rooms about our surveillance plane, et al., I poked around and came up with a Chinese ISP, with a chat room. It is www.sohu.com and has an English section. The Warnings at the site are these:
Please take note that the following issues are prohibited according to Chinese law:
If you are a Chinese national and willingly choose to break these laws, SOHU.com is legally obliged to report you to the Public Security Bureau.
Some of those prohibitions might be a good idea in American chat-rooms. But our First Amendment guarantees you the right to talk about building bombs to blow up your school, or to post a list of those in your school you intend to shoot. Is this a great country, or what?
Mark Cuban Is The Poster Boy For Dotcom Mania
The owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team has been showing up on several TV interview shows. He tells of the start of Broadcast.com and how it was the largest IPO in the history of the stock market. That means that Broadcast.com raised more money from its initial sale of stock to the public than any company in history. This should have been a loud, very loud, warning bell to those who invested so heavily in the dotcom craze. Somebody is out of their mind. Then, when Broadcast.com was sold to Yahoo for $5.7 billion dollars, anybody with any sense had to realize that there was something seriously wrong with people's powers of reasoning. This was, after all, only a Web site that let you listen to radio programs on your computer and eventually let you watch streaming video of a bunch of models in their underwear.
It was a novel idea to broadcast radio stations over the Web, but hardly on par with the many of the great advances of our time. The stock market is not a rational place. It is based too much on emotion. If a company reports earnings slightly less than the "market" had anticipated, institutional traders bail out in droves, driving the stock down. How is it that market analysts know more about how a company should perform than those who run the company? An amazing riddle that I have watched incredulously for 50 years.
The average investor asks how will the company do in the long run, not this week or for the next three months. So, when the Broadcast.com IPO was so huge, based on so little value it offered, someone should have sent up smoke-writing planes to write in the sky "This dotcom thing has no rational basis. Invest at your peril." Oh, a lot of people made a bunch of money, for a while. But, some very large fortunes were lost along the way.
One good thing has come from the debacle of the dotcoms. We no longer have to listen to a parade of 20 somethings on TV saying they are getting into the dotcom biz to "change the world." The invention of electricity, the radio and TV, the airplane, atomic power, and even the Internet changed the world. But, just because you could listen to radio stations on your computer did not change the world. Nor, did having a web-based e-mail program. Yet, Microsoft paid an enormous amount of money to the guy who put Hotmail together. Go figure. Hide you money in a mattress. If you have any left after investing in the dotcoms.
Environmentalism For Dummies - Part II
One way that environmental myths and hysteria get spread are by the recitation of anecdotal evidence (a story, or hearsay, here and there) and then for that story to get picked up in the media and passed off as gospel. One of the opponents of the proposed drilling in the wildlife refuge in Alaska said that Alaska had its warmest winter on record. That is a twofer. It adds to the myth of global warming and it says that the new proposed drilling site could not depend upon the frozen roads they need in winter to service the site.
At the same time, we had the coldest daytime temperature for this time of year ever recorded in the Dallas area. And my friends in Omsk, Siberia, suffering through the coldest winter in memory, tell me that heating radiators in apartments all over Omsk were blowing apart this winter. The hot-water boilers and radiators simply could not stand the load placed on them by the record cold. So, if you are an environmentalist, you do your best to get into the media only those happenings that support your argument. Never mind that it may be only an isolated incident. Getting the Big Lie out is what counts.
In order to discredit the idea that drilling in Alaska is safe, much is being made that a check of valves at Prudhoe Bay drilling site revealed that many did not shut off automatically - in case of a potential leak. The Wall Street Journal, which is normally favorable to business interests, ran a huge, rambling story about all the problems with the valves. The good news is that the problem can no doubt be solved at the proposed site in ANWR with more modern valves and systems and better maintenance.
World-renowned Biochemists like Jay Leno of "The Tonight Show" were quick to condemn President Bush as a barbarian for rescinding the Clinton order that Arsenic levels in drinking water be lowered. They failed to mention that for 7 years, 11 months, and about 20 days, Clinton apparently thought that the levels of Arsenic in the water were safe. But, in one of many ludicrous last-minute executive orders, Clinton suddenly dramatically lowered the "acceptable" level of Arsenic in drinking water by 80 percent! Politically savvy people knew that many of these Clinton orders were so outlandish that Bush would attempt to rescind them, and then everybody could dump on Bush as being a barbarian. Another star in the Clinton legacy.
Under the Clinton administration, Arsenic levels were set at 50ppb (parts-per-billion). His leaving-town-in-a-hurry standard lowered the rate to 10bbp. Bush made a political blunder by rescinding the order and not telling what he planned to do about the Arsenic problem. Now, the EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman has asked the National Academy of Science to study Arsenic concentrations from 3ppb to 20ppb to determine if there is somewhere in that range a safe range for human drinking water.
Every tightening up of environmental regulations brings with it increased costs, sometimes enormous costs. The American Water Works Association estimates the national cost of meeting even a 10ppb standard could cost $4.5 billion for treatment facilities plus $500 million or so a year in increased extraction costs. These costs could well put small rural systems out of business. What then do these rural residents drink?
As always, much of the environmental pressures come from groups in California. What do most of them drink? Bottled water! Here in he Outback, the water system has a generally high rating. One neighbor of mine nearly died from drinking water when a water main burst and was not cleaned properly before it was repaired. I have not drunk a glass of tap water in about 15 years. I have no faith in the standards, no matter what they are, and don't trust the suppliers to always meet the standards.
And for you bottled water drinkers, a lot of what you buy, especially in gallons at the supermarket, is from a city water supply in one or another city. It says so right on the label. If you live a city with an A rating for water, why would you buy water in a bottle from some other city water supply? Because you are not thinking. Look for water that bears the NSF (National Sanitation Foundation) label. They are a not-for-profit organization that gives their seal only to those waters that meet strict standards. (www.nsf.org)
The Bush Budget - Fighting over 4% Growth Versus 8% Growth Is Nonsense
President Bush's budget allows for an overall growth in Federal spending of 4%. The big spenders in Congress want that level to be 8%, so they can fund many of their pet programs - many of which have never done any good and never will.
Here is the big joke about this 4% versus 8% argument. The government wastes probably 20- 30% of the money it collects from taxpayers. I had three chances to see the government in action from the inside, once as a U.S. Marine, once as a ATF agent, and once as a CIA agent. If the White House and Congress would declare a sincere "war on waste," the budget could decrease by 10-20% and all the useful programs could be funded. Attack fraud, inefficiency, and incompetency in the Federal government and you would all be able to get huge tax cuts.
You have seen examples of government waste on network news in "The Fleecing of America." But those are only penny-ante teasers. We learn, for example, that the Education Department in the last three years of the Clinton Administration could not account for $450 million in its budget. Nobody knows where the money went. This is but one of hundreds of such stories. A "real" audit of the Pentagon would uncover billions over the years that were either wasted, unaccounted for, or even sucked out by fraud. A "real" audit of HUD (Housing and Urban Development) would reveal sickening waste, mismanagement, and probably fraud. And on and on, agency by agency.
Then there is the question that NO politician is really willing to face. There are too many government employees for the amount of work needed to be done. Jimmy Carter talked a good game about getting rid of the bloat in government. I wrote him that in my experience, you could fire about 20% of Federal employees and never miss a beat in keeping the government running. He found that presidents come and go but bureaucrats are there forever.
There are a large number of hard-working, dedicated, intelligent, and efficient workers in the Federal system. I was one for many years, thank you. But there also a goodly number of dolts and goof offs who in any private enterprise company would have been fired long ago. Why is that? It is called Civil Service. The idea behind Civil Service was to protect government employees from being ousted by political hacks and friends of those who come into positions of power in government. But, like so many good ideas, it got out of hand.
I worked in one Civil Service job as an ATF agent in the Treasury Department (then called A&TTD). Pathetic is the only way I can describe the influence of Civil Service on the agency. Promotions were nearly always based on seniority. Some very dumb people became bosses and some very bright people just had to get in line. I remember a secretary in our Philadelphia office throwing a heavy ashtray at our boss. When I asked her if she was worried about her job, she replied, " Naw, every woman is sitting on a million dollars." Oh, how I miss the wisdom of the women of Philly. She kept her job.
Many nights I would stake out Mafia guys in the wee hours and when I would write my report, my senior partner, who had been home watching TV, would sign the report as though both of us had conducted surveillance that night. And on and on.
The U.S. Marine Corps is not Civil Service. In boot camp, if you looked cross-eyed at the drill instructor, you would be on the next bus home. And so it went as you progressed. You were basically "on probation" every day you served as a U.S. Marine. The results speak for themselves.
The CIA is not Civil Service (at least when I was there). Good people got promoted over people who might have been there much longer. It did not take a Congressional hearing to fire someone. Whatever you may think of the CIA, it was the most efficient agency I saw in government, and it was staffed with the most highly-motivated and intelligent people I have ever been around.
So, if the Federal Government is ever to become more "lean and mean," the Civil Service system will have to be reformed. It is fine to protect workers from being replaced by political appointees. But, there needs to be a complete overhaul of the promotion system and the procedure for firing someone. It is nearly impossible to fire a Civil Servant today.
If you go to DC on vacation, after you have seen the Lincoln Memorial and the Smithsonian, go to some government offices. HUD and Agriculture would be two good places to start. If you can get by the guards, go into an office, any office, and tap someone on the shoulder and say, "Tell me what you do?" After several of those inquiries, you will begin to get the picture. The answer might be "Not very much, and that guy over there does basically the same job." I will never forget passing down the hall at Agriculture one day decades ago on the way to the lunchroom. We passed by office after office marked "Peanut Subsidy Program." There would be a good place to start the housecleaning. Two people with a laptop could run that program, if in fact we need the program at all. Then wander over to the Tobacco Subsidy area. The government pays people to grow a crop that kills millions? Such a deal.
You will probably be struck by the relaxed atmosphere and the laid-back pace in most government offices. If you had a lifetime job, no matter how hard you worked, or how smart you were, would you bust your ass? It is against human nature. Then, drop by the FBI, which is not under Civil Service. Although you will not get much but the public tour, you will probably notice a sense of urgency even among those who show you around. And they will no doubt seem bright and articulate. If you head out to the CIA in Langley, you won't get much past the lobby. Just sit there a while and watch the people going and coming. They all will seem to have a sense of purpose about them and will be moving fast. Trust me, inside the buildings they are busting their butts for America.
So, until somebody faces up to the waste, fraud, and inefficiency in the Federal government, the Congress will beg for new taxes and invent new programs that we do not need. As an old investigator and intelligence agent, I think the best money the government could spend would be to hire thousands of investigators to investigate Medicare/Medicaid fraud, Food Stamp fraud, Welfare fraud, and waste and fraud in general. It would add Millions a year to the budget. But, in very short order, it would save Billions. Many Billions!
Dear President Bush:
Please undertake at once a review of the Civil Service system. It is the 1000 pound weight around the neck of government. And insist that all your cabinet heads do what your Secretary of Education is doing - promising to get control of the money allocated to his department. And while you are at it, tell each one to reduce their budget by 15% by being more efficient and accountable. No, as Bill Clinton lied to us once again, the day of big government is not over. It is alive and well because there are too many vested interests in Washington to make it smaller.
Mr. Bush, even if it means that you are a one-term president, take a whack at reducing the size of government and making it more efficient. A miracle might happen. People would actually be impressed that after all the B.S. we have heard from presidents about reducing the size and scope of government, you actually did it. And you would be a two-term president. Hands down.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Richard C. Rhodes
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Richard C. Rhodes
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