Say it ain't so, Jeff, Joe and Andy!

With the kickoff of the first televised pre-season football game of the season, I turned to my wife and tearfully declared, " Our long national nightmare is over... football has returned."

Now, today I wake to find, to my horror, that MY TEAM, the Philadelphia Eagles have signed Michael Vick. Just kill me now and get it over with.

I grew up around Philly. The Iggles have always been MY TEAM. No matter where I have lived, Chicago, New England, Minnesota... I have bled green (both figuratively and financially) with each loss, each uncovered point spread, each season that failed to live up to expectations, and each choke in a big game. I have been waiting for a super-bowl victory my entire adult life. My dad passed away without ever seeing one. I have smack-talked endlessly with my father-in-law, ( a Giants Fan from northern New Jersey), and ignored my wife (the "sports-whore" who supports whatever team is winning at the time) who keeps telling me "Just pick another team, for God's sake."

As a "dog-person," I'm appalled. I don't care how much remorse a guy can manufacture when millions of dollars are involved. Just look what this has done to my dog Jack... could he be more depressed?

Hopefully, the team will come to their senses soon. T.O. was a mistake but this is beyond my capacity to rationalize on any basis. Boo Eagles!

Unintended Consequences #2

As a management consultant specializing in strategic change management, I long ago learned that a good deal of thought needs to go into anticipating the potential unintended consequences of any change that is being considered.

An article in today's Wall Street Journal (section A, page 4) entitled "Clunkers Plan Deflates Mechanics" is a prime example.

Who are the winners? Automobile Manufacturers and New Car Dealerships. You may include buyers of new cars under the program as well.

Who are the losers? The federal government (really the American Taxpayer) for sure. The CARS program is not an investment from which the government can expect a return. It is a spending program. Used car dealers? Maybe. Apparently the other losers include automobile mechanics. There is a certain logic to the argument. Taking large numbers of older cars (which are more typically serviced by independent repair shops than by dealerships) off the road could be expected to have a negative impact on those shops.

Was this consequence unforeseen? Not according to the article which indicates that the Automotive Service Association sent a letter to members of Congress in May voicing this concern and suggesting that programs that are in place in both Texas and California that provide a "repair" option be considered as part of the CARS program. Apparently, this message fell on deaf ears.

Unintended consequences

An interesting article from "The Times" of London.

NHS staffing crisis as one in 20 posts remains unfilled

"More than one in 20 posts in the NHS are being left unfilled official figures showed today as Trusts are forced to spend up to £150,000 (Approx $250,000) to fill each job with agency [temporary, contract] workers."

Why? The article lists the probable contributing reasons as:

1. Retirements, and
2. The impact of preparing for the European Working Time Directive, which came into force on August 1st.

Number two is fascinating. According to the article, "The directive, which has reduced the maximum working week for junior doctors and other staff by the equivalent of one working day — from 56 hours to 48 — means that a significant number of hospitals are relying on agency staff to plug gaps in their rotas. "

In a comment on the article, Charles Edwards wrote, "Its not just medical staff, its everywhere. Consider that major hospitals employ senior (non-medical) staff to fill positions say in Facilities Management. After interview, they'll be offered the job(provisionally), but subject to clearances. The medical clearance alone could take more than 2 months to get sorted only after which the offer can become fixed, after which the employee-to-be might themselves have to give notice; if they are senior staff for a firm that might be 3 or even 6 months notice required by their contract. I would warn that the problem is widespread and from my short experience only made worse by government policy."

A reason to scrap doing something about healthcare in America? Of course not. A reason to be skeptical about how well governments manage things? Of course.

Like so many well meaning changes... It is the unintended, unforeseen consequences that'll kill you.

Shoutdown Smackdown - Maddow vs. Hannity

Flipping through the channels last night, looking for something worth watching until this weeks episode of Rescue Me, I chanced upon one of those rare moments that come along every so often that made me stop channel surfing and start obsessively hitting the channel return button in order to watch two shows simultaneously.

Rachel Maddow was perched in her seat on on MSNBC rattling on, in that sort of smug, bemusedly incredulous way that she has, about the shout-downs that congress people are being subjected to at town-hall meetings and other events where they are supposed to be explaining their views on health care reform. The gist of her piece was that since Republicans cannot come up with a intelligent basis for opposing health care reform, that they have resorted to mobilizing their cadres of zombies to shout down the opposition, thereby ending any intelligent discussion and reducing the discourse to a level below what one would expect from anyone with half a brain.

Meanwhile, over on Fox, Sean Hannity was holding forth on the same topic, in his own smug, flag-draped fashion, with some political pollster, using the same film clip of the same congressman and chirping about free speech, the will of the people, and all sorts of other wonderful things that the shout downs represented.

From my perspective the whole town meeting roadshow thing is a joke. These congresspeople have not read the whole bill, and therefore cannot talk about it intelligently. The whole point of the meetings is to provide a forum to spout platitudes about reform (like change, it seems reform can never be bad) and provide a media opportunity that shows them being responsible to their constituents in their home districts.

Frankly, I find the whole sad mess distasteful. It is one thing to have a spirited debate.. I'm not even against a bit of shouting given the right circumstances, but the sad fact is that what is going on on both sides of this issue is the uniformed, braying of a herd of asses.

I'm trying to work my way through the 1000 plus pages of the bill... not light reading. I will not feel competent to discuss the bill on its merits until I have done so. As best, what I have right now are serious reservations about any government attempt at social engineering on this scale, and a highly tuned sense of skepticism (and cynicism) about what anyone (particularly those as obviously partisan as Ms. Maddow, and Mr. Hannity) expresses on the topic of reform in America.

What I'd really like to see, I guess, is a Celebrity Tag-Team Death Match where we could get Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and Coulter into a cage with Olberman, Maddow, Ed Schultz and Chris Matthews. If we were lucky, none would survive. Maybe we could do this with congress too. The quicker the "partisanship above all" crowd fades into oblivion, the better.

"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, it to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."
—John Adams

Define "Striking Gains"

When it comes to politicians skepticism is a good thing.. a very good thing. In today's online version of "The State" I came across this Business Wire story. The lead paragraph stated: "The Obama administration appealed to the Senate on Monday to bail out the cash for clunkers rebate program, arguing it has already made striking gains in fuel efficiency and is a "wildly popular" economic boost."

So let's figure: The administration is making this claim based on 80,500 transactions logged into their system and that the new vehicles purchased get nearly 10 more miles to the gallon than the vehicles traded in. Aside from the fact that mileage claims for both the new vehicles and the trade-ins are iffy at best, lets assume they are correct. Therefore, old car mpg= 15.4 and new car mpg as stated in the wire service story is 25.4. If you further assume that the cars are driven an average of 12,000 miles per year, what is the annual savings in numbers of gallons of gasoline? Don't you just love math word problems?

The answer is: 24,695,777 which equals 67,660 gallons per day which equals 1,611 barrels per day.

As $1.0 billion divided by 80,500 is roughly $12,400 which is significantly more than the actual rebate amount, let's further assume that the final number of vehicles will be three times the amount reported or 241,500 and that therefore the total annual savings in barrels per day will be 4,800.

The EIA (Energy Information Administration) gives the 2008 consumption of finished motor gasoline in the US as 8,989,000 barrels per day.

This means that the theoretical savings from the $1 billion appropriated for the "Cash for Clunkers" program is 0.054% of current annual consumption. Neat, but hardly striking.

The "average 12,000 miles per year motorist" would save about $735 per year in fuel costs at $2.40 per gallon which is at the lowest end of the "$700 to $1000 range" quoted in the article.

It also means that in aggregate the $1 billion spent would result in reduced aggregate fuel spending per year of about $177.8 million which will reduce gas tax revenues by some amount.

So is the program stimulative to the economy? Probably yes in the very short term, but it is hardly a long-term stimulus. Are the fuel economy strides "striking?" I don't think so but hyperbole is the name of the game in Washington.

Health Care

I operate under the standing assumption that pretty much anything that the government gets its hands on stands a far greater likelihood of being a giant cluster-fuck than it does of actually producing any long-lasting good. There are exceptions of course, but I really do think they are exceptions.

The current bit of legislation has all the earmarks of a train wreck waiting to happen. The house bill is over 1,000 pages long. This practically guarantees that none of the people who will eventually vote on it will have ever read the bill in its entirety. Without reading it, no one will have asked themselves what is really going to happen if this thing is passed and the so called reforms implemented.

As usual the media pundits have chosen up sides and have gone out looking for subsidiary talking heads that can come on their shows and spout-off about this or that particular point. Congress people are busily taking the pulses of their constituencies trying to figure out which position will cause them the least political damage and how to spin their support or opposition.

From my personal perspective, health care in America is a serious issue. It is ostensibly the most costly in the developed world without being the best in terms of outcomes based on the dollars spent. People without health insurance seek primary care through the most expensive venue available (the emergency room) or do without to their personal detriment. It is a huge, complex hydra of an issue that potentially could bankrupt the nation in the not-to-distant future if nothing is done. The fear-mongering on both sides of the issue is unrelenting and cacophonous and there seems to be an imperative to "just get something, anything" done, as to not do something will cause the initiative to be lost as it was when "Hillary Care" was the great reform hope.

Having lived and worked overseas, I have some familiarity with "nationalized" health care. Quite frankly, I don't see what all the fuss is about. When I lived in the UK, if I became ill with the sort of everyday stuff that is the meat and potatoes of primary care, I went to my village GP (general practitioner), waited in his waiting room with all the other patients, saw the doctor who examined me and provided care and went on my way. Not a shilling changed hands. If something more serious came along, I had private medical insurance (BUPA) that would allow me to go outside of the national health system, and chose whichever specialist I wanted. Yes, I know that not everyone could afford the supplemental private insurance and that this was "not fair." Neither is life... get over it. At least everyone in the UK could get quality care in a manner that was more cost effective than taking your child to the ER because he has an ear infection.

Unfortunately, I do not foresee a good outcome to whole health care issue in this country. The system is simply too large and complex, with too many self-interested parties to permit what, in my opinion, would be the best way to tackle the issue, which is to tear the whole thing down and build it from scratch. At some point, cobbled together solutions unravel and you just cannot keep patching them together again. Universal health care is a worthy goal, but we are almost certainly going to screw the pooch on this one folks.

Welcome to Despair America

I was born in the middle of the 1950s. The first US President I can recall having a memory of is JFK. I've been around long enough to have seen many changes; some good, some not so good, and some downright crappy. This blog is my forum for railing against the storm (or pissing into the wind, if you prefer) of those changes that I see as being either "not so good" or "downright crappy." It is an OPINION blog. I make no pretense to being a NEWS site. The best I can say is that I hope my opinions are at least minimally informed and not just mindless blathering, and that I seek to maintain, what at least approximates, an open mind.

From my perspective we, as a people, have become, in many ways, ignorant zealots... unthinking ideologues on both sides of the political (or pretty much any other) spectrum. It has occurred not-so-slowly over the years and we have become this, because we have allowed it to happen. It seems to me as if we have lost the ability to think for ourselves; to assimilate information, digest it, and draw our own conclusions. Ask most people what they think about a particular topic and they either will not know what you are talking about or they will spit back the latest bit of wisdom from whatever "news" outlet they happen to have watched that day. Our first reactions often seem to be nothing more than knee-jerk responses that allow no room for reason, let alone reasoned debate. Perhaps it is because reasoned thought is hard work and we are lazy, preferring to let others do our thinking for us. Perhaps it is because we are so self-absorbed that we just don't give a damn. Maybe we are just stupid. How else can you reconcile the overwhelmingly negative opinion we have of our politicians (think congress here folks) with the fact that we keep electing these same people year after year after year. Do you really suppose that "they all suck, except for my congressman and senators?" Never underestimate the power of stupidity.

If anyone ever actually reads these posts, please feel free to offer your own opinions. All I ask is that you keep it civil and refrain from regurgitating whatever you have heard your favorite cable "news" talking head spouting off about.

Speaking of which.. We are a country where what passes for news reporting seems to become more like what you see in supermarket tabloids with every passing day. For the most part, I remember the tabloids as being objects of ridicule, something that was made fun of by anyone that had half a brain. No longer. Case in point... Michael Jackson. Terrific talent, seriously troubled human being. No longer with us. Unless something more lurid comes along, this one will be jamming the airwaves for quite a while. Why?

Let's move on...