You may have already guessed that these headlines are from Pravda, the Russian news source. I have been quick to criticize our US news media, blaming the demise of our fourth estate for many of America’s ills. We no longer have an informed populace. Much of our nation gets its news from the Comedy Channel, and it’s probably just as well. Yes, the state of our news industry is grim.
But it could be worse.
Every once in a while, just for grins, I pop over to Pravda’s English-version website. I can’t quite figure out what the Russian writers are up to. Their “news” stories are all editorials, without any pretense of impartiality or need to present facts. I’ll bet the journalism classes at Moscow University are a hoot.
This exerpt from a typical Pravda hard-news story is an example of the unbiased and fact-driven reporting Russians enjoy with their morning coffee:
How can the disaster of a genocidal war in Gaza be prevented? In last 4 days they (Israel) have bombed non-military targets in Gaza killing 41 Palestinians, among them 28 civilians including eight children and a pregnant woman, had been killed in Gaza since Israel began operations. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday. The world will have to make a choice. One way to put Israel into its place might be the decision of the UN to support the demand for an independent Palestinian state. This would give the Palestinians security and a standing in the world to speak for themselves. It definitely would contribute to peace in the region and the World.
The funny thing is, Pravda also includes an “Opinion” section.
You know, maybe we should check the college transcripts of the staff over at MSNBC – any U of M (Moscow) grads, do you think?
Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side
I’m living a life of constant change Every day means the turn of a page Yesterdays papers are such bad news Same thing applies to me and you
When any organization gets too big it becomes hard to manage.
That doesn’t mean it can’t be managed. Many huge companies are very well run. Most people would agree that our military sets a high bar for disciplined management. Operationally, at least.
Why is our federal government such a disorganized, inefficient mess? What is lacking in the federal government world that other large organizations seem to have in abundance?
We do have organizational charts for our federal government. There is an interactive one online. Here’s the short version (click to enlarge):
The full version with all of the departments and all 3 million federal employees would probably cover the floor of Cowboys Stadium in a 12-point font. Of course within a nano-second, it would be obsolete.
Most Americans would expect to see our President in the top box. After all, he has been known to say “the buck stops here,” even while pointing fingers in every direction and blaming historical figures for the nation’s problems.
The official federal org chart has “the Constitution” in the top box. It would make more sense to me with “We the People” at the top. We can hire and fire all those below us on the chart. We can hold the President, the Congress, and (through appointments) the Supreme Court accountable. It is up to us, as voters, to make sure that everyone in the federal government is doing what we want them to do.
But we citizens don’t agree on much of anything. Many of us don’t really care how our government operates. And even if we did, the organization is so huge that we have to rely on layers and layers of managers who we don’t know and will never see.
Is there anything we can do? Where do we “citizen managers” start?
I think the first thing we should do is check to see who is at work. Here is my plan, and I would like you to join me.
Go to www.usa.gov and pick out five federal government employees. It’s really easy to follow the links through the website to identify agencies and administrators at every level. You might choose agencies in your hometown, or an office in which you are interested. Or maybe you will just pick names and phone numbers at random.
At 2:30 on any weekday afternoon, or at 1:00 on a Friday, call the people on your list to see who is at work, and who is taking the rest of the day off.
In the unlikely event the federal employee you are calling actually answers the phone, say “Hi, I’m a taxpayer, and I’m just calling to make sure you are on the job. Thank you!”
If not, leave a message of your choice, maybe something like: “Hi, I’m your boss, a taxpayer; it’s 2:30 pm and you should be working. I am going to follow up with your supervisor.”
Here are my random calls at 2:30 this Tuesday afternoon:
Rosanna Goodwill – Acting Director of Civil Rights, Federal Railroad Administration: recording said she is “away from her desk, leave a message.”
Neil Moyer – Acting Director of Office of Policy, Federal Railroad Administration: recording said he is “not available right now, leave a message.”
Don E. Watson – Historically Black College and University Capital Financing Advisory Board: recording said he is “not available to take your call, leave a message.” I wanted to ask him why we need his agency.
I left messages for each, expressing my disappointment that nobody in federal government is at work this afternoon.
I will allow that there are times when someone is legitimately not able to answer a call. But I’ll bet the answer rate is under 10% after 2:00 every afternoon. I have tried this experiment many times, and have never had my call answered. Not once.
I don’t know if our government employees care if we catch them slacking. If nobody ever checks on them, they might start to wonder if it matters whether they are there at all. Anyway, we are the bosses, and we should make at least the minimum effort to supervise our employees. Please make some calls!
Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side
Okay. So no one’s answering.
Well can’t you just let it ring a little longer, longer, longer, ohhhhh!
I’ll just sit tight, through shadows of the night.
And let it ring for evermore. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nothing goes unnoticed by the data miners these days. They know all about you. They know what you like to buy, and when. Every website you see, every search you execute, every TV show you watch is recorded. They know your age, your political persuasion, your address, and a lot of other things you would never suspect.
Did you show your “preferred shopper” card on that last trip to the grocery store? They used it to figure out what you might want to buy next time, and how to encourage you to spend more. (I often express my sticker shock – “Wow, I’m glad I’m a preferred shopper! I’d hate to see what you do to the customers you don’t prefer!)
The Obama campaign took masterful, full advantage of data mining, and some think it is what won the election for them. Instead of relying on traditional political advisers and old-school marketing experts, Obama played the campaign game strictly by the metrics, building a huge data analytics operation two years before the election. They designed their fundraising campaigns and advertisements to appeal to specific voters in narrowly-targeted markets. They knew exactly who could be manipulated and how. Their attacks ads were designed with pin-point scientific and psychological precision.
“. . .a massive data effort that helped Obama raise $1 billion, remade the process of targeting TV ads and created detailed models of swing-state voters that could be used to increase the effectiveness of everything from phone calls and door knocks to direct mailings and social media.”
In this election cycle, policy issues really didn’t matter. The horrendous performance of the Obama administration for four years was not a problem, and the Democrats didn’t even bother to propose any solutions to the country’s many troubles.
The Republicans took the high road – presenting facts and plans, avoiding hyperbole and attacks, assuming the majority of voters were paying attention and actually cared about the economy, the debt, and their childrens’ futures. The GOP didn’t have a chance.
By the way, Rayid Ghani, the mastermind of the Obama data mining operation, cut his teeth in the monster supermarket “preferred customer” data-crunching game.
I can’t fault the Democrats for using such a powerful weapon. They zeroed in on the weakness and vulnerability of American voters. It worked.
I only wish they would put as much technology, effort, and money into finding solutions to the nation’s problems as they did getting elected.
Oh, and by the way – be careful what you say, do, and type. You are being watched.
Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side
Man: I think, I think I am! Therefore I am! I think?
Government: Of course you are my bright little star!
I’ve miles and miles of files,
Pretty files of your forefather’s fruit
And now to suit our great computer,
You’re magnetic ink!
Lately I have been spending a lot of time with teachers. It is encouraging and frustrating at the same time.
Many of them are highly skilled, engaged, and enthusiastic. There is that bunch in the middle – some are learning and improving, some are slacking a bit. And there are teachers who should find a line of work that is not so crucial to our families and our nation.
It’s not surprising. If you look at any group of employees you will find a mix of talent. But here’s something that concerns me: in the business world, where survival depends on real-world results, managers are selected, compensated, promoted and released based on their talent and contributions to the organization’s success. Successful businesses use this natural, competitive human resource development process to improve their performance on an ongoing basis.
Unlike business professionals, teachers are paid based on years of service and college credits, without regard for their teaching skill and success with students. Why? Is success in business more important than success in education? Is it too difficult to evaluate the performance level of teachers, compared to business managers? Do teachers not have the same proven motivations that all other humans do?
It surprises me that good teachers are so willing to have their earnings reduced to the lowest common denominator. I can understand that a hundred guys installing widgets on an assembly line are pretty interchangeable, and the only way to distinguish them is reliability and loyalty. But education is much more complex, and teacher performance is much more variable. It seems wrong that the top performers are held to the earning power of their weakest counterparts, who just happen to have the same tenure and step level. Wrong for those teachers who overachieve, wrong for the professionals who choose a different career where their talent and effort is rewarded, and wrong for our nation at a time when we are searching for ways to leverage our educational results.
If I owned an NFL team and chose to pay my players the same, based on their years on the roster but disregarding individual talent and contributions to the “W” column, how many games would I win? How long would I survive against the competitive teams?
The concept of “fairness” is a top priority of Democrats, the party in power. The teacher’s unions are rigidly supportive of the Democrats, and vice-versa. I can’t think of anything less fair than everyone being paid the same, regardless of their talent and contributions to success.
Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side
Well, I try my best to be just like I am
But everybody wants you to be just like them
They say sing while you slave and I just get bored
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
The 20-something bubbled-headed blonde Democrat jiggled and grinned on my television screen.
“We’re going back to the economics of the Clinton administration,” she cooed. “We want to raise taxes back up to where they were during the wonderful Clinton years!”
“But things are different now,” the seasoned Fox Business analyst replied. “We have a $16 trillion debt. We have 8% unemployment. We have no economic growth.”
“Oh, we will just tax the rich! Like we did under (giggle, giggle – fake eyelashes fluttering) Biiiiill Clinton!”
“Now wait a minute,” the Fox guy shot back. “The economy improved only when the Republicans took over Congress, and Clinton agreed to reform welfare, trim the budget and cut the capital gains tax . . .”
“Biiiiiill Cliiiiinton! MMMmmmm!” purred the little blonde Demo-kitten. I mentally pictured her voting for the first time, dreaming of her new boyfriend Barack, and . . .
My wife muttered on her way to the kitchen. “I’d go for the tax rates from the Clinton years – if we had the same SPENDING as the Clinton years!”
I guess I’m not quite ready to give up on women yet. Just the ones who want more, more, more.
Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side
Baby you know my love for you is real
So take me where you want to
Me and my heart you steal
More, more, more!
How do you like it? How do you like it?
More, more, more!
How do you like it? How do you like your love?
Ah, the digital age. From the middle of nowhere, with a few strokes of my keyboard, I can reach and influence people from . . . well, another middle of nowhere.
Today I glanced at the hit statistics for my blog site. As always, most of my hits are from the United States. A few from Canada, Australia, and the UK. And the usual smattering of others from assorted spots around the globe.
Today, I got a hit from the nation of Guernsey!
What, you never heard of Guernsey? Well I have. There was a little news item about Guernsey a month or so back, and somehow I saw it, and it registered about 18k of information in a deep, dark crevice of my ever-shrinking grey matter.
I remembered reading that there is this little island off the coast of England, where the main industry is selling business and shipping licenses to people who don’t want to be under the thumb of any other recognized government. They have a radio station, some cows, a few pubs of course, and I remembered they have a really neat sovereign gold coin. They act like Brits, but are really an independent nation.
That’s about all the info you can fit in 18k.
So when I saw that I actually got a hit from Guernsey, I did a web search and discovered their really cool little website. I found that their government is mainly by committees of the states, and they choose a Chief Executive of the States.
Now I think I have about 21k of knowledge in there.
Anyway, if – after the election – you have had it with the United States, and can’t think of any place you want to move to, give some thought to Guernsey.
Or, alternatively, if we Montanans decide to secede from the United States, maybe we could go to Guernsey and take notes.
Anybody know how to milk a cow?
Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side
We gotta get out of this place
If it’s the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
Girl, there’s a better life for me and you
We hear so much talk about gay marriage. It was a major election issue. Three more states approved it and others are working on it. Many votes were based solely on a candidate’s position on gay marriage.
Before I go any further, let me go on the record. My official position on gay marriage is: I don’t care. If two men or two women want to commit to each other, I think it’s great. Is a law required? I don’t know. I do worry about kids without fathers, but that’s a separate issue.
With all the airtime, bandwidth, and hand-wringing over gay marriage, one would think it must be something important to the future of our nation. Is it? How many gay couples are clamoring to get married, anyway? A thousand? Ten thousand? What impact does gay marriage have on our floundering economy, our national security, or our crushing debt?
Here’s an issue that has a HUGE impact on our floundering economy, our national security, and our crushing debt. Heterosexual marriage.
It is statistically undeniable that married couples and their children enjoy many advantages over singles. And it is no accident that as the proportion of Americans who are married continues to decline, so does our economy. As our economy declines, so does our national security. And as individual economic performance declines due to the missing support structure of marriage, personal debt and dependence on government increase – resulting in seemingly unstoppable national deficits and debt. Not to mention the other ills of poverty: substance abuse, violence, undereducated and poorly-raised children.
Most married people are wealthier, healthier, happier and more productive than single people, especially single moms. Most children from married families have a better life and future than single-parent kids. I don’t even have to bore you with the statistics because it’s common sense and you know it’s true.
Our political leaders and entertainers either avoid or deny the importance of marriage. In fact, our society has decided that cohabitation and single motherhood and the absence of commitment is just fine for heterosexuals. But it is critically important that gays are married.
Enough already about gay marriage – why don’t we ever talk about the importance of MARRIAGE?
Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side (thanks and hugs to my bride of 39 years)
Going to the chapel, and we’re gonna get married
Going to the chapel, and we’re gonna get married
Gee I really love you, and we’re gonna get married
Going to the chapel of love
Back in the day we watched action adventure movies about Americans traveling in exotic far-flung countries. It was so very foreign to our small-town Montana sensibilities – the drugs, the shady intrigue, the beautiful women. There was poverty and danger around every corner, and it seemed that nothing could be accomplished in these mysterious places without paying off some government official.
We called them “banana republics” – countries where life was tough, the government was corrupt, and only those with connections, wit, and maybe weapons avoided an unhappy fate.
We were enthralled with tense scenes from places where the government was all about secrets and raw, cold power; where ordinary citizens hid behind gray walls and doors, afraid of making some political “hit” list. Everyone was poor – except those who worked for the government or had connections. Personal success was just a distant dream, as winners and losers were chosen by the powerful.
It could never happen here. We have checks and balances, and a president couldn’t just make laws, seize property and control businesses without the consent of the legislature. This is America. There’s no corruption here. Our government leaders would never lie to us, or hide the truth. Besides, our news people will always tell us what’s really going on, right? And we have fair elections, where legal citizens get to choose how the government will affect their lives.
Drugs are illegal here. Aren’t they? I mean, I think they used to be.
And we don’t have to worry about people here being dirt poor, relying on scraps and handouts from the government. Most of our people have jobs, and own their own homes, right? We still manufacture stuff, and have plenty of our own cheap energy for our cars and houses, and everybody has a bright future here. We still go to church on Sunday and take care of our neighbors and families. Don’t we?
I’m sure glad we live in America, and not in one of those banana republics. We have nothing to worry about here, let’s just party on. Let’s have another joint. Wanna dance?
Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side
They’re pickin’ up the prisoners
And puttin em in a pen
And all she wants to do is dance, dance
Rebels been rebels
Since I don’t know when
And all she wants to do is dance
On election night, I worked at the vote tabulator machine in our county courthouse for ten hours. The machine was a total disaster.
I was supposed to be an election “watcher”, keeping an eye on how things were working as part of our voter integrity project. But our county’s ES&S 650 tabulator machine was so dysfunctional that I, and two other election “judges” (one Democrat, one Republican), ended up manhandling the machine and the ballots until 2 am just to get the vote count for our county done.
Our tabulator machine jammed and rejected ballots continually. Our election official had to mark hundreds of ballots with a sharpie just to get the machine to recognize them as ballots. For a while we had bipartisan remediation teams who negotiated and fixed ballots that were poorly marked or had overvotes. When they left, we had to fix them at the machine on the fly. I personally marked dozens of ballots to make them acceptable to our tabulating machine – darkening circles, fixing cross-outs, whiting-out overvotes, etc.
Phones were ringing – our secretary of state and news media wanted final counts. Pressure mounted. Ballots flew all over. Scans and re-scans and more re-scans. By the time we finished at 2 am, we were exhausted.
We unpaid volunteers worked our butts off, and without us the count would never have been completed. Did I see any corruption? Absolutely not. Was there opportunity for corruption? Hell yes! Do I have confidence in the quality of the count? Not much. Who knows how many ballots were not counted, or were duplicate counted?
Earlier in the week, we ran a test batch of ballots through our tabulator in which nearly half the candidates and issues on the ballots were miscounted by the machine, according to triple-checked manual audits.
This year there was much attention paid to voter integrity before the election, and competing claims about whether or how much chicanery was happening at the polls. What many of us learned is that the problems are not in the front of the house. They are in the back, where the ballots are counted.
While I did not see any evidence of intentional fraud at our county, in our small town, where friends and neighbors treat each other with respect and honesty, I can’t vouch for the many other counties nationwide using the same dysfunctional ES&S 650 tabulator system. And with or without intentional vote fraud, the integrity of the process and count results is not good.
Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side
If you need someone to count on, count me in
Someone you can rely on through thick and thin
When you start to count the ones that you might ever doubt
If you think of counting me, count me out
No fracking, drilling, or pipelines – guess what that does to our Montana and US economies – and our future?
No coal plants in the US – if we are allowed to mine coal at all, we will probably not be allowed to ship it to the coast by train to meet the huge demand for Asian coal. Coal dust blows off the train cars, you see.
Government employee unions will rule with impugnity.
Inflation will skyrocket as national debt soars and the Fed continues to print funny money.
Conservative talk radio, free speech, free internet, and Fox News are toast. The first amendment fades in our memories, like most Constitutional freedoms.
Obama and his administration will make life hell for everyone who opposed them. Listen to Valerie Jarrett:
…Valerie Jarrett is letting it be known that if Barack Obama secures election victory next week, there may be, quite literally, hell to pay for those who opposed him…
…Jarrett told (staff members) ‘After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time.
Everyone not with us is against us and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded, the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve.
There is going to be hell to pay. Congress won’t be a problem for us this time. No election to worry about after this is over and we have two judges ready to go.’
She was talking directly to about three of them. Sr. staff. And she wasn’t trying to be quiet about it at all. And they were all listening and shaking their heads and smiling while she said it…
I could go on, but it’s more than I can bear on the night before the most important, and the closest, political race of the modern political era. There is so much at stake. We can only pray for God’s mercy at this point. It may be our last chance before prayer is outlawed.
Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side
So let’s bow our heads and pray –
with the unbelievable ZZ TOP
Have Mercy – and – Jesus Has Left Chicago
Tom Balek - Rockin' On The Right Side
Conservative common sense with the volume set at 9!
Today’s headlines:
Tom Balek - Rockin' On The Right Side 