August 17, 2008
Does anyone care about actually running the government?
I've been guest blogging for Ezra Klein over at American Prospect this week. I came across something right in the sweetspot of the RBC community: The dearth of questions over many, many debates on any manner related to actually managing the government. If one regards the debates as a job interview for the management of a $3 trillion enterprise with...
July 29, 2008
Cleaning Out the Stables
The DOJ IG's report demonstrating the politicization of the Department implies the not-unreasonable suspicion that the Administration has done this throughout the government. They have had eight years to overlook the most qualified applicants, and put unqualified hacks from the "right" backgrounds into the civil service. Remember how Regent University Law School boasted that more than 150 of its graduates...
July 03, 2008
Yes, it's presumptuous to worry about our insane presidential transition process. But still....
I know it's presumptuous to speak of the presidential transition. Still, does America really have to decapitate its government jat the precise moment a new president will need it most?
May 18, 2008
Everything old is new again
Reading this story about heading off expensive litigation by just saying you're sorry, I had a flashback to a meeting twenty-five-odd years ago from which I learned important management lessons. For really mysterious reasons, I had been appointed to a state commission to deal with what then felt like a malpractice insurance crisis, and called Charles A. Sanders, then general...
April 20, 2008
April 04, 2008
March 20, 2008
September 17, 2007
Chemerinsky Reinstated
Apparently, UCI Chancellor Drake has backed off and has reinstated Erwin Chemerinsky's appointment as the Dean of UCI's new law school. Good news for the political independence of universities and for southern California; bad news for us here at UCLA Law School, since we now have a new competitor. Drake can't seem to keep his foot out of his mouth,...
September 04, 2007
"No more cutting insult"
Where was Condi Rice when Bremer and Rumsfeld decided to disband the Iraqi Army?
June 25, 2007
Misdirection
No, says the CIA, we're not going to let you see our internal review of how we managed to miss the 9/11 plot despite numerous red flags. But ... look over there! Ancient abuses!
June 12, 2007
To repairing used planet: $99,928
Why the price of solar panels hasn't fallen, and strange public research priorities.
May 29, 2007
A short story of two cities (Trans-Sib 4)
Over-investment in a metro in Kazan and under-investment in Beijing.
April 10, 2007
April 01, 2007
SACPA: a case study in mismanagement
Anyone looking for a case study in how the national drug control effort achieves much less than it might at much higher costs in money and suffering than it needs to can stop looking.
March 28, 2007
Hiring Kooks?
Over at TNR's Open University bog, my friend Sandy Levinson has a posting taking note of the fact that Monica Goodling, DOJ's White House Liason, had a completely conservative evangelical education, starting at Messiah College in PA and ending at Pat Robertson's Regent University Law School. He finds this observation troubling, and believes it is likely to be characteristic of...
March 05, 2007
Do government-haters govern worse?
Yes. And if you can't tell the difference between the Army and the Veterans Administration, you probably shouldn't be opining on the topic of health care for veterans.
February 25, 2007
Firing teachers: the evidence
In most of the anti-union South, it's easy to fire teachers. That must be why Southern students outperform Northern students. Oh, wait ...
February 23, 2007
Firing teachers, and hiring them
Yes, it ought to be easier to fire bad teachers. But that won't do much good unless there are better teachers to replace them. That's going to cost money.
February 18, 2007
Prison rape and libertarian theorizing
If you want to stop prison rape, ending the drug laws and privatizing prisons isn't the way to do it.
February 16, 2007
More support for the troops ...
The Pentagon just discovered someone hadn't signed the right forms, and stopped giving the VA access to the medical records of badly wounded soldiers.
February 04, 2007
Another word on Stimson
I disagree with Mark's "Good" on the occasion of the departure of the odious Cully Stimson from the Defense Department, because as the AP noted, "he ... made his own decision to resign and was not asked to leave by Defense Secretary Robert Gates." This is not about Stimson leaving; people leave all the time. This is about Gates allowing...
January 25, 2007
January 07, 2007
Politics of the absurd?
The State Department refuses to give a U.N. team access to prisoners at Guantanamo, then dismisses their critical report as "without merit" because it isn't based on first-hand evidence.
October 17, 2006
August 04, 2006
Two underappreciated principles of innovation
Some time ago I got to watch a great public-sector innovator in action. He told me one important principle, and showed me another. What he showed me might be described as "polite stubbornness." When someone whose cooperation he needed said "No," he'd nod amiably and say something like, "Right. I see you can't do this now." He would then continue...
June 03, 2006
Overstaffed federal agencies
Doesn't a shrinking workload demand layoffs under sound Republican businesslike principles? I would expect these to occur by reverse seniority, newest hires first, of course. Or maybe good old racist/ethnic discrimination (blacks and Italians first) should apply, just this once......
June 02, 2006
Missing the point about atrocities
The president is "troubled" about the Haditha story, and reassures us, lapsing into his usual passive-voice departure from scenes he doesn't enjoy, that "if laws were broken, there will be punishment." This is a certainty, maybe even up to the E-8 level this time. But that's not what this story is about, or it shouldn't be. The three elephants in...
May 19, 2006
Discretion in Public Administration
Anatole France said "the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to steal bread, and to beg in the streets." If anyone is wondering why it's important for bureaucrats to have discretion and scope for judgment, and why trying to constrain them as completely as possible with mechanistic, detailed rules...
May 05, 2006
Chinese bishops
Among the most difficult parts of leadership for ordinary people, even for distinguished ones, is to protect your access to things you don't want to hear. Because your lieutenants and inside team know bad news will make you angry or upset, they will not pass it on unless you seek that most priceless information out proactively. FDR used to set...
April 09, 2006
True believers vs. foreign policy experts—the view from outside
From the latest Nouveau Parisien, a thorough and depressing account of how far the ideologues' takeover of the U.S. foreign policy establishment has gone.
December 25, 2005
Progressivism and public sector unions
There's a little fight brewing between Kevin Drum and Atrios: yesterday, Drum observed that members of the New York City Transit Union can retire with half pay at age 55, an arrangement that he dubbed "indefensible" even though he thinks Americans work too much and supports unions. This led to a three different posts (with the usual sarcasm) from Atrios,...
November 30, 2005
Republicans on the job
Is there anything this administration of hard-headed practical business people can actually do?...
October 05, 2005
Another fine theory slain by an ugly fact
A reader reports, on the basis of personal observation, that my guess about the likely nature of UCLA's mandatory "sexual harrassment prevention training" sessions was wrong: I read your thoughts on the new UC sex harassment seminars and generally agreed. When I attended the training a few weeks ago I was expecting it to be the sort of Maoist self-criticism...
October 03, 2005
Training and Sexual Harassment
I'm not on Mark's side on this one, even if the training in question is as ham-handed and badly implemented as he expects, and even if our common employer (same university, different campuses) is cynically viewing it merely as pre-emptive of future litigation risk. Briefly: inadequate on-the-job continuous education is one of the main management deficiencies in nearly all...
September 24, 2005
The Bad Apple Metaphor
Mark's post about prisoner abuse provides a peg on which to hang some remarks on the "...few bad apples" metaphor, which is commonly misused. The complete expression is "even a few bad apples will quickly ruin the whole barrel", because the decay quickly spreads to the good ones. The implication is that bad apples must be removed immediately, because...
December 18, 2003
Promoting innovation in the public sector
How can we make more public-sector organizations innovators, and fast followers of innovations made elsewhere? That turns out to be a hard and interesting question, or so I learned when my old friend (and former boss) Jerry Mechling had a layover in LA on his way from the Kennedy School, where he runs a program on information technology, to Seoul,...
