Management

The flood of children from Central America has many political causes, but one thing could have stopped it, and that is a secure border. Government and their selected private corporation botched the job. (Think the “Obamaca” website!)

You don’t remember it, but many government failures ago, back in 2006, the government hired Boeing Corporation(?) to construct a highly technical border electronic system of towers, cameras, sensors, etc. at a cost of $30 Billion. It was called the Secure Border Initiative, and it was a complete failure.

The plan was to monitor 6,000 miles of Canadian and Mexican Borders, and the Boeing component was only a part of the concept, but after the Boeing component, a $30 Billion component failed, the entire concept was scrapped.

There is a common thread arising in governmental failures — management without technical knowledge. Few of my grad students were near geniuses, and none could oversee a major project, but many could be in training to do so given requisite management skills. The problem, as I see it, is that from the top management down many levels, the ” management” can’t read code, and doesn’t understand the documentation of the process.

That being the case, the political and civil service management must take the word of the systems analyst and coders. In highly technical systems, management must be technical. In ANY management system, management can be lied to if they do not have technical oversight.

In this system, managements job is to walk around and ask, how are things going, to which the obvious answer is always, and without exception, “O.K.” — I have written earlier about School Board members who cannot read a budget, so they ask of the very people on the Superintendents staff who developed the budget, “Is that the right number?”

Of course the staff member smiles and says, (smirking) “Yes, Mr. Jones, it is correct.” I believe that school boards should employ a Business grad student who works for the board and can be fired for communicating with the District staff who prepare the budget!

When I took over the Los Angeles TV station, I didn’t tell my staff of my deep computer background, and we had a multi-million dollar computer system whose VP computing, and my IT guy combined almost every day to pull the wool over my eyes, either to get more funding for gold-plating, or to excuse problems.

(In my day, Fast Attack Submarine Commanders must serve as Department Head of EVERY department before assuming Command.)

Problems happen EVERYWHERE that management didn’t come up through the ranks, and is as true in the “Secure(sic) Borders Initiative, in the VA, as it was in Obamacare, as it is in school boards, and, in this case, naturally, of Border security, homeland security and the border.

If you want accountability in a technical sector, let the contract and hire the winning contractor’s nearest competitor to monitor the process!

Management failure is the cause of the many problems we attribute to politics — the border, the VA, Obamacare, and the IRS debacle demonstrate management failure.

Quick Hits

The California Superior Judge who ruled against tenure will have to live a lng time to see tenure die! Tenure was not an option at my private San Diego university. I never heard any full-time or part-time professor complain about not having tenure. Everyone accepted that they were at-will employees, and had to perform at a high level or be replaced. There were always replacements available, and we knew that.

In computer science in San Diego, we had to be retrained every day — particularly when many of our students were working for high-tech companies, often in R&D.

I can understand why K-12 teachers want tenure — actually “permanent employment” — it takes much of the pressure off daily performance, but that is not a good thing…and possibly why our students rank 46th (on average) in the US Department of Education “National Report Card.”

—————————————————————

Governor Brown is pushing the State Legislature to pass a bill that will offer some unspecified quick benefits to get the Tesla Gigafactory to locate in California.

You will recall that Elon Musk has proposed a huge factory ($5 Billion construction and 6,500 jobs) to several states, including Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas. Musk also said California was still in the running but a long-shot.

The question is, what is it about Tesla that is so different from all the other companies that California is losing without a whimper?

I suggest that Tesla is either one too many, or perhaps too visible to lose. I doubt that Brown would go against the environmental movement. Perhaps he is just cherry-picking.

———————————————————-

The border problem in Texas, with floods of children as young as 5 years old crossing unaccompanied, is an unexpected problem that tugs on heart-strings in a way that workers do not.

What do we do now? Many arrive with a note of where their parents are for being joined with those parents — who themselves may be “illegal.”

It’s a mess. A growing mess. It is not easily solved and it is a result of our ambivalent policy. While everyone debates the subject, the very lengthy Texas border is almost unguarded. Yes, the announced policy is that only those children who were here pre-2008, but that nuance has been lost in Central American media.

Here, on the San Diego area we don’t have that problem, because we have at least two and sometimes three fences, with sand in between.

Texas has the Rio Grande River, which is little more than a mud hole. Their Border Patrol is overwhelmed.

—————————————————————–
This is written Saturday night — I can only hope that by morning a heavy air strike will send the well-mechanized assault on the government of Iraq will be out in the open. Many of their troop transports are seized from the Iraqi troops who have thrown down their weapons and fled.

The ISIS troops coming over the borders from Syria are moving quickly. Only boots on the ground can stop the ISIS but air strikes can slow their progress, and with air cover PERHAPS the Iraqi Army can regroup sufficiently to counterattack.

The loss of Syria, because we didn’t react quickly enough, is coming back to haunt us. Failing to react quickly in many areas is coming back to haunt us.

Incompetence, and incompetence compounded.

The president is enjoying his perks — golf, vacations, flights…lots of flights. He is disengaged.

No one is minding the store!

Europe’s “Tea Party” Wins BIG!

Just so I’ll not step on the lead, let me give it to you — Europe just turned, sharply to the right!

Elections over Europe CRUSHED the left — in France, the Socialist Political party finished THIRD! The French people appear tired of policies that drive the wealthy to buy homes in Britain.

The British/French wars have just moved from canons on sailing ships to business — but the honor of the nations is always at stake, nevertheless.

In Britain as well, the right won going away, and in Britain the rallying cry was to diminish the power of the unelected bureaucrats at the European Union (EU) in Brussels. To a lesser degree this was the message throughout Europe, and it should be noted that the Euro has been falling as well. (Britain, and a few other nations belong to the EU do not use the a Euro as their currency.)

Angela Merkel won in Germany, and she is still the spine of Europe.

Not living in Europe, I can’t say for certain all of the undercurrents of discontent but the dissolution of borders and passport/visas has permitted hundreds of thousands of Muslims from North Africahroughout Europe, once they illegally get to Greece or Italy.

The problems are greater than that, of course — Greece, Spain,Ireland and Portugal have been bailed out multiple times, and like most on welfare they are unappreciative. Germany, at the same time is tired of being the European ATM machine. France’ s 75% tax on the rich has damaged their industry’s ability to hire good managers, and their wealthy are fleeing.

I have long contended that the EU is herding cats, and while you can do it successfully for a short time, in the long run it is just too much.

I am surprised it has lasted so long. Quick reforms from Brussels might save the EU, but the True Believers will resist, making a breakup more likely — led by Britain!

In Britain, the Euroskeptic Independence Party won big — the first time that ANY political party has defeated either the Conservative or the Labour Party, and in this case the Independence Party beat BOTH! The Independence Party now will try to elect a majority to Parliament, to get the promised breakup of the EU by withdrawing Britain.

The only reform the remaining nations could take to continue stumbling along is the re-establish borders, to stop the movement of illegal aliens.

Our “Neighbors” to the South

There is a review of the use of Deadly Force in the Border Patrol, the result of a Border Patrol Agent mortally wounding a rock thrower from across the border. (We are not talking about pebbles here, but rocks the size of a man’ s head!)

 

Local immigration activists, and they are numerous in this border area, are demanding that rock throwing be considered a form of Free Speech.

 

Let’s see…if a San Diego Sheriff is attacked with a deadly weapon by an US Citizen, he is permitted to use deadly force to end deadly source, but if a US Border Patrol Agent is so faced by a resident of Mexico, he is to retreat to safety.

 

Got it!

 

This is all part of a whole, which cumulatively adds to the disrespect our nation gets internationally, and ends with Putin putting his thumb in our eye even though he has probably never heard of the caution sent to the Border Patrol regulations.

The human spirit is indeed indomitable.

It only seems that I read a lot of stories of individual survival, but then I read a lot of WWII history, and that war was amazingly replete with such stories.

My latest was “As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me,” by Josef Martin Bauer, the amazing story of a German Prisoner of War who escaped from a Russian lead mine in Siberia, and made his way home. We are talking more than a thousand miles, over more than three years, without “papers” — but amazingly with the fortuitous help of some who were anti-Soviet, or just anti-authority.

Escaping from Siberian forced-labor mines was nearly impossible because the prisoners were just so weak, and kept near starvation. More than half the prisoners died during the train, truck, horse-sled and dog-sled transit to the mines, and for those who served in the lead mines the advancing slow death of lead poisoning made a journey in Winter across Siberia impossible.

Few made it, perhaps only one: Clemens Forell.

No mortal man would have made it, but other books of enormous personal bravery and survival that I have read include “Unbroken” which will soon be a movie directed by Angelina Jolie, and “We Die Alone, by David Howarth.”

The human spirit is indeed indomitable.

So, Honey, What Did You Do Today?

The answer in the Senate is  —  NOTHING!

The Senate passed a 1,200 page exercise In futility today. Except as political cover, it is meaningless. Senators could just as easily, more easily passed a 1,200 blank page bill and done so months ago without the expelling of so much CO2.

The bill may give Senators something to run on, but I suspect that as it sits and is dissected in the House (and the press), it is going to be more representative of expediency than statesmanship.

 For example, we already know that the Senate bill makes it FAR more economically sensible to hire the newly legalized immigrants (and they will all be legalized on day one), than to hire American citizens. That is because the newly legalized immigrants are not susceptible to employer required healthcare at several thousand dollars a month, while US citizen new hires are required to be covered under Obamacare. As of today, if the bill were law, a business could save tens of thousands of dollars a year for EACH newly legalized immigrant it hires rather than a US citizen. You can hide a lot of “oops” in a 1,200 page, quickly voted-upon bill. (Also, see Obamacare)

The Weekly Standard interviewed five Senators about this inequity, and I Listened to those interviews on KFI — only one said he knew of the problem, and he hoped it would be fixed in the House version. As more and more of these stink bombs are uncovered, and while the Senate passed the bill without reading it there is now time for reflection, the House has zero incentive to quickly act.

It is far more likely that the provisions of the Immigration Bill will be divided into individual bills addressing specific issues, almost none of which will vaguely resemble the specifics of the Senate bill

Why did the Senate bother? Partly it was to get the issue off the table so they can have “done something” and get onto other issues. Partly it was to have a defense in the next election. Partly it was to let the House try to solve the issue and take the heat.

The takeaway is that the Senate bill is dead, wasted a lot of time, and was produced to get the item off the table regardless of the content.

Wonderful!

Immigration Reform

I have said before that I was the “Mexican Connection” for two decades. I housed, fed, and washed illegal Mexicans for free while I arranged for their work, also for free. I was known by the State Assistant Attorney General, the Border Patrol, the Highway Patrol — all of whom looked the other way.

That was back when illegals did not have family going to local schools, or using ER, or driving without license and insurance. The workers walked everywhere, some lived in fields, and had no food stamps — they depended upon “the kindness of others” and I was glad to be an “other.”

The modern illegal is a different breed, because the (REAL) threat of bandits, and the tightening but not tight border, illegal workers brought their families north once rather than risk the border twice a year by themselves. The North rewarded that move by giving and unavailable education to the children, and medical help undreamed of in the South. As the new arrivals sent mail of the land of milk and honey, along with “remittances” as the money was called (billions of dollars a year), more family and friends came North.

And we are where we are. Partially sealing the border was a huge mistake — I believed in the 1986 Amnesty, and took two Amigos through the system with the promise that the border would be sealed. Instead it was partially sealed, causing the current problem.

I want the border sealed so that we don’t go through this drill every 25 years.

The. current situation is unsustainable. Can this border be sealed, absolutely, but planning and passing legislation is useless. The Congress passed, and the president signed a multi-billion border security bill in 2006 and hardly a mile of fence has actually been built. The money is there, the plan is there, but nothing happens.

That can happen again. Governments have a way to move quickly when the leaders want that, and do nothing when the government wants that.

And governments have “ways.” They can do things without direct orders, and not do things with direct orders. I recently heard that there is not a single document tying Hitler to the Holocaust.  Leaders do not have to issue orders when they are surrounded by like-minded individuals who wish to please the King.

Sigh! Back to the “Student Protests” Everything Old Is New Again…

Thomas Sowell, a man of great intellectual insight recently wrote of a modern day college student takeover of a university, in this case Pennsylvania’s  Swarthmore College, where students recently demanded,  well all sorts of things.

http://www.thespectrum.com/article/20130526/OPINION/305260002/Don-t-let-barbarians-take-over-colleges?nclick_check=1

Let’s see if I can categorize the, I am tempted to call them “nut-jobs,” but it is more complicated than that: The protesting students have a vastly exaggerated impression that the world gives a damn about what they think. In some ways they are like the old-time Symbionese Liberation Army of the mid-70s, who believed they were the Point Men leading a massive uprising that would overthrow the national political establishment.

It was literally a mouse with rape on its mind, approaching an elephant.  There is something devoutly annoying about people who have learned little, traveled less, and theorize about belonging to People For a Perfect World.

Anyway, the Swarthmore students, were led by something called the Mountain Justice movement – Google them – who oppose not just open mine coal extraction, but natural gas alternatives, and, oh yes, lest I forget, the support of indigenous people. The Swarthmore students had not just that agenda (the world is not sufficiently large to hold their “ideas”), but more gay and lesbian professors, academic support for people of color who are not performing sufficiently well to graduate in four years, disinvestment in fossil fuel portfolios, rape counseling, more scholarships for illegal immigrants…

Have I forgotten anything?

Probably.

Aside from the lunacy of listening to people who have lived their entire lives in familial socialism on Daddy’s dime, have produced absolutely nothing of value to anyone, and will get their degrees in Women’s Studies and live in their parents’ basements, there is not much reason to even entertain thinking about them and their various “causes”, except that I once witnessed the proper way to handle “student protests.”

I was in the dining room of the University of Notre Dame in 1969, having lunch with Father Hessburgh — president of Notre Dame, when there a “student riot” or what was a Notre Dame version.

(I was there with Cdr. “Pete” Bucher, Commanding Officer of the USS Pueblo, who had delivered the first speech after his return from capture, imprisonment and torture by the North Koreans. Pete had spoken to the Chicago chapter of the Notre Dame Alumni Association, and delivered a speech I had written for him. I traveled with him to many places thereafter as his speechwriter and bodyguard, but the dining room of Notre Dame University was the first stop.)

We were on a slightly raised Dias in the dining room when a student approached and announced that the students had a set of ‘demands.”

Father Hessburgh put down his fork and said, “Young man, as you can see, I am having lunch with guests. Go away, and take your “demands” to my office.”

The student said (sheepishly), “Thank you, Father. I will do so.”

And the student withdrew.

This was at a time of massive campus riots and sit-ins that occupied college president’s offices. The episode demonstrated “respect” (for the student, for the president, and for the institution) — and impressed the hell out of this non-religious person. Notre Dame, like Swarthmore, has more applicants than spots on their roster, and can well afford to replace those who bring chaos to the campus.

However, it takes a brand of leadership that is in short supply in academic circles.

I Passed Skeptical in 1986

I have no idea what is in the minds of those doing “talk story” about illegal immigration but I don’t think they have a clue about the facts on the ground.

You can see “on the ground’ by driving through Escondido at 2 pm – hundreds of Latino children being chaperoned home by Latino mothers pushing perambulators.

The political class speaks of “illegal aliens” as bright young Latino overachievers who graduated at the top of their high school class and want to be Pediatricians, and that is what the media focuses on – but here in Escondido, on the ground, it is a bit different.

For each overachiever who graduates at the top of his class, 100 will join a gang, 500 will engage in a hit and run, thousands will get in a wreck while driving without a license or having insurance. And tens of thousands will use the Emergency Room on the taxpayers’ dime. This does not even count all of them will get AT LEAST their entire K-12 education on the taxpayer’s dime.

Now, having said that, I do not support the deportation of 11 million illegal aliens – I just want to note that there is no way that those who remain will ever pay a sufficient fine to offset the amount that they have taken from the system. I still believe that the best way to handle the problem is to base the offer of a Green Card on having their FAMILY go back to the “Country of Origin.”

It is the family of the workers that join gangs, use the schools and the Emergency Rooms.

Nevertheless, no one wants to use the lure of a long-term Green Card to get the benefits of workers without some of the major costs.

The best we can hope for is to PARTIALLY staunch the CONTINUING flood of still more people flooding over the border. The 1986 Amnesty promised to seal the border, but that has been a MASSIVE failure that we apparently intend to repeat – you can bet that the Democrats do not intend to end the flow of low-information voters now that they have identified them.

The 11 million here will want to bring their “immediate family” which is NOT, as you might expect, limited to the previous generation and siblings – no, it includes Aunts, Uncles, Nephews, etc.

We are NOT going to solve this problem. We will NOT stop the flow across the Border because it does not suit the voting future of the Democratic Party. We will not assimilate the 11 million already here, because some – perhaps most – will NEVER attain Citizenship.

I respect Marco Rubio. I believe he really wants to solve the problem – but even his position that he will not vote for anything that does not seal the border is dependent upon the administration appointed board ruling that the Border is sealed. Heck, it could rule that today, because crossings have been so low as a result of our puny economy.

Let’s just say I am cynical – I passed skeptical back in 1986.

A Flawed Process

Let me put this in the beginning, so I don’t step on the lead as they say in journalism — I like illegal aliens, but I hate illegal immigration. (I was bi-lingual and bi-cultural — a Spanish Interpreter in the Navy.)

I view the people separately from the process — I know the illegal workers to be mostly hard-working folks looking to feed their children, and taking advantage of a flawed process as I would in their shoes. Life is different when you have hungry children begging for food.

It will not come is in a surprise to those of you who have been reading this blog for some time, that I was involved in the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens. At that time I employed illegal aliens and I sponsored two of those illegal aliens when the time came for the Ronald Reagan amnesty period.

Unfortunately that particular amnesty which was supposed to be “the amnesty to end all amnesties” but it was a flawed process. Although my people who went through the amnesty process were supposed to get citizenship classes, English classes, and background checks, what actually happened was that they were sprinkled with Holy Water and made citizens without any further activity on the part of the federal government.

This was because instead of the 2 million people who were supposed to apply, actually there were 4 million people who applied and they overwhelmed the federal system.

What ever system is passed, it is my opinion that the 11 million people who could apply will overwhelm any federal system they design.

As it happens I don’t think 11 million people will even apply for the final citizenship.

Many of the people who are here are illiterate. On average the border-crossers have a Third Grade education by our standards. They have no intention of being US citizens.

Yes they want to get their children educated in US school. Yes they would love to get medical care here they cannot get in Mexico. But they do not want to be United States citizens. They are Mexicans, they are proud of being Mexicans, and they don’t intend to become US citizens, so I’m not sure that is eventually going to help.

The House and Senate committee are proposing that there be a green card system, and with the green card system there will be further checks enforced by having the green cardholders held to a higher standard through verification of jobholders.

This is a really good idea except that what I suspect is going to happen is the most of these people will go through the Green Card system, right up to the point where it comes time for them to pay back taxes/penalties and have some sort of citizenship classes in English classes. At that point they will stop.

What will happen next is that they will use their children that Have been born in the United States as Anchor babies, and instead of getting their US citizenship they will simply use their children as pawns to get to apply for and get still more opportunity to remain within the United States by claiming that we should not break up families.

That way they get to remain first to work, and then to be retired on government assistance if possible, or just supported by their Anchor Babies because they are heavily family oriented – and, after all the Anchor Babies will owe their families a LOT!.

You can make book on it.