The "great mental ward of the Pacific Northwest"

On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 14:13:20 -0600, AMuzi wrote:


Since the 1976 "improvement" to the budgeting process it's happened some
18 or so times. All the pencil pushers* get their full pay after a few
days of paid vacation. Pay is late but not short.

I found this recent claim in an Op-Ed interesting

"Almost 80% of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck."

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...3/us-economic-
precipice-donald-trump-government-shutdown

What will be the "knock-on effect' this tie?

There's no there there despite the dramatic clutching of pearls.
If there were some serious intent to remove 'nonessential employees' and
sell the vehicles and building I would be excited.

*This only affects 'nonessential employees'. No actual business can
support 'nonessential employees let alone pay them to not work at all.

Different definitions? Get your time frame wrong and the result is
inevitable.

On Mon, 24 Dec 2018 06:33:52 +0700, John B. Slocomb wrote:


In some, perhaps many, of the government workplaces the rank, and thus
the pay, of the manager is dependent, to some extent, on how many people
he supervises. Thus there is a very great desire to inflate the amount
of work being accomplished and the dire need of more people to do it.

YMMV, but I've seen this in private enterprise as well.

When I was assigned at Edwards AFB, the USAF Test Center, which is jam
packed with government employees I was once given the task of making a
small push-pull rod that operated something on a camera. I found a piece
of material chucked it up in the lathe, drilled and tapped a hole in one
end, had a cuppa and chatted with a friend, drilled and tapped the other
end and logged 1/2 hour on the work order. The Shop Chief (a civilian)
admonished me for only logging 1/2 hour when the job had been
"estimated" as a 4 hour job.

This practice of overstating the number of people required seems to
permeate the government workplace.

My 2c is that it depends on the difficulty of obtaining extra labour/
material.

GovCo generally runs under a budget that was laid out anything up to five
years ago, but typically two years ago. If your postion is
administrative, everything is usaully standard and can be almost fully
anticipated, but if your position is to actually produce or develop
something in-house, it can be very hard to know exactly what recources
you are going to need and so "inflating' your needs becomes par for the
course. That way, you can meet your PKI's or whatever management system
they evaluate on no matter what is thrown at you.

You'd think private companies would be different, but they are not. The
big ones are just as bad as Govco and the "owners" of small ones act as
if the money is coming out of their hide. It is very refresing to run
into one who isn't that way.

On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 19:47:03 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 12/23/2018 7:36 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 18:52:32 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 12/23/2018 6:19 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/23/2018 6:33 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 14:13:20 -0600, AMuzi wrote:



Since the 1976 "improvement" to the budgeting process it's
happened some 18 or so times. All the pencil pushers* get
their full pay after a few days of paid vacation. Pay is
late but not short.

There's no there there despite the dramatic clutching of
pearls.
If there were some serious intent to remove 'nonessential
employees' and sell the vehicles and building I would be
excited.

*This only affects 'nonessential employees'. No actual
business can support 'nonessential employees let alone pay
them to not work at all.

In some, perhaps many, of the government workplaces the
rank, and thus
the pay, of the manager is dependent, to some extent, on
how many
people he supervises. Thus there is a very great desire to
inflate the
amount of work being accomplished and the dire need of
more people to
do it.

When I was assigned at Edwards AFB, the USAF Test Center,
which is jam
packed with government employees I was once given the task
of making a
small push-pull rod that operated something on a camera. I
found a
piece of material chucked it up in the lathe, drilled and
tapped a
hole in one end, had a cuppa and chatted with a friend,
drilled and
tapped the other end and logged 1/2 hour on the work
order. The Shop
Chief (a civilian) admonished me for only logging 1/2 hour
when the
job had been "estimated" as a 4 hour job.

I'm sure there are places where fat could be trimmed.

And usually, the first place to look is the fattest.

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qim...bcc4b05526b3d1



An excellent example of numerical manipulation to obscure
the actual facts.

'discretionary spending' is a ridiculous term but the sum
amounts to about 25% of actual spending. When we were young,
Defense was 1/2 the total, now it's roughly 12~14%.

Moreover, the Pentagon clearly wastes half of that.

Trouble is, defense is at some point necessary and all the
other Departments waste virtually all of their budgets,
ranging from inept to pernicious, out there doing evil in my
name all day long but not actually killing any jihadis.

Waste? If the military buy pickup trucks General Motors and Ford
benefit, if they buy airplanes then Lockeed and Boeing benefit, and,
if they buy bicycles then Muzi benefits.

In 1961 President Eisenhower warned the nation against the potential
influence of the military - industrial complex. But y'all didn't
listen.


By 'waste', I meant waste.

After all we do have excellent warriors and excellent
hardware, two good starting points.

One small example; What has the Education Department done
for America? You could argue that the declines are not
entirely the fault of the Department but they certainly
haven't made anything better either. No one in their right
mind says improvements have been made after 1980 by their
action.

Well, it got two of my distant relatives off the unemployment lists
:-)

But more seriously, the "new law" passed both the Senate and the House
where it was voted on by your legally elected representatives. The
very essence of the democratic system.

cheers,

John B.

On 12/23/2018 7:18 PM, AMuzi wrote:

More currently, Victor Orban's very successful double row razor wire
fencing.

No way that worked! It's not a wall! It's gotta be concrete! And 30 feet
high! And beautiful! And the other guys have to pay for it!


--
- Frank Krygowski

On 12/23/2018 8:47 PM, AMuzi wrote:
On 12/23/2018 7:36 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 18:52:32 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 12/23/2018 6:19 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/23/2018 6:33 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 14:13:20 -0600, AMuzi wrote:



Since the 1976 "improvement" to the budgeting process it's
happened some 18 or so times. All the pencil pushers* get
their full pay after a few days of paid vacation. Pay is
late but not short.

There's no there there despite the dramatic clutching of
pearls.
If there were some serious intent to remove 'nonessential
employees' and sell the vehicles and building I would be
excited.

*This only affects 'nonessential employees'. No actual
business can support 'nonessential employees let alone pay
them to not work at all.

In some, perhaps many, of the government workplaces the
rank, and thus
the pay, of the manager is dependent, to some extent, on
how many
people he supervises. Thus there is a very great desire to
inflate the
amount of work being accomplished and the dire need of
more people to
do it.

When I was assigned at Edwards AFB, the USAF Test Center,
which is jam
packed with government employees I was once given the task
of making a
small push-pull rod that operated something on a camera. I
found a
piece of material chucked it up in the lathe, drilled and
tapped a
hole in one end, had a cuppa and chatted with a friend,
drilled and
tapped the other end and logged 1/2 hour on the work
order. The Shop
Chief (a civilian) admonished me for only logging 1/2 hour
when the
job had been "estimated" as a 4 hour job.

I'm sure there are places where fat could be trimmed.

And usually, the first place to look is the fattest.

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qim...bcc4b05526b3d1



An excellent example of numerical manipulation to obscure
the actual facts.

'discretionary spending' is a ridiculous term but the sum
amounts to about 25% of actual spending. When we were young,
Defense was 1/2 the total, now it's roughly 12~14%.

Moreover, the Pentagon clearly wastes half of that.

Trouble is, defense is at some point necessary and all the
other Departments waste virtually all of their budgets,
ranging from inept to pernicious, out there doing evil in my
name all day long but not actually killing any jihadis.

Waste? If the military buy pickup trucks General Motors and Ford
benefit, if they buy airplanes then Lockeed and Boeing benefit, and,
if they buy bicycles then Muzi benefits.

In 1961 President Eisenhower warned the nation against the potential
influence of the military - industrial complex. But y'all didn't
listen.


By 'waste', I meant waste.

After all we do have excellent warriors and excellent hardware, two good
starting points.

One small example; What has the Education Department done for America?
You could argue that the declines are not entirely the fault of the
Department but they certainly haven't made anything better either. No
one in their right mind says improvements have been made after 1980 by
their action.

That chart shows the Education Department consuming 6%. Military
consumes 54%. And let's remember that our military spending outranks the
combined total of the next dozen countries, at least.

Regarding "warriors": Yes, I'm sure we have some fine ones. But even in
a full-blown shooting war, only a small percentage of those in the
military are in active combat. There's a much larger army of paper
pushers, floor sweepers, caterers, musicians, parade planners, etc.
Heck, I'm very good friends with a guy (in a distant state) who is a
civilian working on an important naval base. He's a carpenter. I can
give you details on the party facilities, gazebos, etc. he's built for
them. They sound impressive.

Personally, I'm pretty sure that even in WW2 we could have trimmed 10%
of the military budget if we had to. During Viet Nam we could have
easily trimmed more. Present day? The savings could make the Education
Department look like peanuts.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Friday, December 21, 2018 at 7:10:14 PM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:
On 12/21/2018 8:46 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, December 21, 2018 at 5:57:25 PM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
From a reporter who was actually the
"The kettle-corn girl is but one of many madcap escapees from the great mental ward of the Pacific Northwest out here making strange noises on the mean streets of downtown Portland on Election Night 2018, and her ecstatic om mani padme hum devotional to kettle corn is soon drowned out as her thuggish black-masked comrades begin their more straightforward and politically meaningful and considerably more comprehensible chant:"

Read the rest of Williamson's report at
https://www.nationalreview.com/magaz...treets-indeed/

All the commentators from far-flung cities or countries claiming to know about PDX can just f*** off and die. Really. Patriot Pride and Antifa are sideshow acts and entirely incidental to the lives of real Portlanders. They are, however, poster-children for the dopes enthralled by the far-right news media. I'm sure will get the neo-con tour bus here soon enough to admire the lunatic fauna. We'll have to get actors or animatronic Antifa protesters to keep them entertained -- just like the mechanical hippos at the Disney jungle tour. The tourists can yell "commie" of "faggot" from the trolley. https://www.dreamstime.com/editorial...-image55204553 We can make a few bucks off the rubes. We need idiots to buy the bad beer and fast food.

Meanwhile, in the DPR PDX, I got a really nice seat-pack for $5 today. Bike Gallery is holding daily sales leading up to Christmas -- $1 tubes a few days back, less than TK pays for bell peppers in Oakland. $2 bar tape, etc., etc. Sweet! And it was dry and unseasonably warm. https://www.thorindustries.com/wp-co...on-Feature.jpg Skiing tomorrow at Mt. Hood Meadows!
https://www.skihood.com/-/media/skih...200b.jpg?la=en It's a total party of beautiful white people up here. The neo-cons should love us!


That National Review item was literary fantasy like the
recent der Spiegel pieces?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...=.9b640a94f868



--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Somewhere there was this really funny video of some people standing out in the street in Germany. One guy goes up to another and says, "Where are all the Germans?" The other guy says, "They're all working." They interviewed person after person and they were all from the moddle east and none of them had jobs and none of them needed on because the German government paid them so well as welfare recipients.

On Mon, 24 Dec 2018 10:52:55 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 12/23/2018 7:18 PM, AMuzi wrote:

More currently, Victor Orban's very successful double row razor wire
fencing.

No way that worked! It's not a wall! It's gotta be concrete! And 30 feet
high! And beautiful! And the other guys have to pay for it!

Maybe they should get the Chinese to build it. After all they built
the only wall that is visible from space and it has lasted for 2,000
years, or more, so obviously they must be the best wall builders
available.

And, they might even get the Chinese to finance it thus avoiding
closing the government.

cheers,

John B.

On Mon, 24 Dec 2018 11:13:29 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 12/23/2018 8:47 PM, AMuzi wrote:
On 12/23/2018 7:36 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 18:52:32 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 12/23/2018 6:19 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/23/2018 6:33 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 14:13:20 -0600, AMuzi wrote:



Since the 1976 "improvement" to the budgeting process it's
happened some 18 or so times. All the pencil pushers* get
their full pay after a few days of paid vacation. Pay is
late but not short.

There's no there there despite the dramatic clutching of
pearls.
If there were some serious intent to remove 'nonessential
employees' and sell the vehicles and building I would be
excited.

*This only affects 'nonessential employees'. No actual
business can support 'nonessential employees let alone pay
them to not work at all.

In some, perhaps many, of the government workplaces the
rank, and thus
the pay, of the manager is dependent, to some extent, on
how many
people he supervises. Thus there is a very great desire to
inflate the
amount of work being accomplished and the dire need of
more people to
do it.

When I was assigned at Edwards AFB, the USAF Test Center,
which is jam
packed with government employees I was once given the task
of making a
small push-pull rod that operated something on a camera. I
found a
piece of material chucked it up in the lathe, drilled and
tapped a
hole in one end, had a cuppa and chatted with a friend,
drilled and
tapped the other end and logged 1/2 hour on the work
order. The Shop
Chief (a civilian) admonished me for only logging 1/2 hour
when the
job had been "estimated" as a 4 hour job.

I'm sure there are places where fat could be trimmed.

And usually, the first place to look is the fattest.

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qim...bcc4b05526b3d1



An excellent example of numerical manipulation to obscure
the actual facts.

'discretionary spending' is a ridiculous term but the sum
amounts to about 25% of actual spending. When we were young,
Defense was 1/2 the total, now it's roughly 12~14%.

Moreover, the Pentagon clearly wastes half of that.

Trouble is, defense is at some point necessary and all the
other Departments waste virtually all of their budgets,
ranging from inept to pernicious, out there doing evil in my
name all day long but not actually killing any jihadis.

Waste? If the military buy pickup trucks General Motors and Ford
benefit, if they buy airplanes then Lockeed and Boeing benefit, and,
if they buy bicycles then Muzi benefits.

In 1961 President Eisenhower warned the nation against the potential
influence of the military - industrial complex. But y'all didn't
listen.


By 'waste', I meant waste.

After all we do have excellent warriors and excellent hardware, two good
starting points.

One small example; What has the Education Department done for America?
You could argue that the declines are not entirely the fault of the
Department but they certainly haven't made anything better either. No
one in their right mind says improvements have been made after 1980 by
their action.

That chart shows the Education Department consuming 6%. Military
consumes 54%. And let's remember that our military spending outranks the
combined total of the next dozen countries, at least.

Regarding "warriors": Yes, I'm sure we have some fine ones. But even in
a full-blown shooting war, only a small percentage of those in the
military are in active combat. There's a much larger army of paper
pushers, floor sweepers, caterers, musicians, parade planners, etc.
Heck, I'm very good friends with a guy (in a distant state) who is a
civilian working on an important naval base. He's a carpenter. I can
give you details on the party facilities, gazebos, etc. he's built for
them. They sound impressive.

The official figures for the Vietnam war were, of the ~2.6 million who
served in Vietnam between 1-1.6 million (40-60%) either fought in
combat, provided close support or were at least fairly regularly
exposed to enemy attack.

Personally, I'm pretty sure that even in WW2 we could have trimmed 10%
of the military budget if we had to. During Viet Nam we could have
easily trimmed more. Present day? The savings could make the Education
Department look like peanuts.

The conflict in Vietnam (it wasn't legally a war) could easily have
been avoided. In fact The Geneva Conference (April 26 - 20, 1954) had
provided that a general election be held by July 1956 to create a
unified Vietnamese state. Unfortunately the U.S. declined to agree
with this. Just think of the money and lives that could have been
saved had the U.S. agreed to thus essentially democratic action.

But saving money during a war is easy... just don't send those guys so
many bullets. They'll just shoot them off.

cheers,

John B.

On 12/26/2018 2:42 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, December 26, 2018 at 10:25:46 AM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:

Don't you get the Schwab magazine? Read that. Global equity markets have been struggling for a year or more -- and before the Fed started raising rates. Volatility has been increased recently by the trade wars and existing or threatened tariffs. Fed rate changes drive down the domestic market which always affects foreign markets. Also, fed rate changes are only one of the factors driving the market crash. A large factor is uncertainty caused by the Tweeter in Chief, e.g. "I'm the tariff man." The WSJ had a nice article this morning, too, about the affect of robot trading. Read that. You're retired and have nothing but time. Really, there is this thing called Google. Use it.


-- Jay Beattie.

Then you should take your money out of the market and invest it in real estate or government bonds with a return of less than 1%.

FWIW, for quite a while I bought and held some tax-free municipal bonds.
The yields were just OK, but the complete lack of taxes made them
perform pretty well. My financial advisor eventually moved me out of
them, but later admitted that I'd have been ahead if I had rejected that
advice.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Wed, 26 Dec 2018 14:03:42 -0800, Andre Jute wrote:

I'd rater not be in Chuck Schumer's
shoes right now, because the pressure to settle must be tremendous. My
betting is he will settle, if not for the full 5b or whatever Mr Trump
is demanding, then for something substantial over 1.6b.

Err, change your news sources. trumpy has already blinked.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4791994/d...ey-for-border-
wall/