Making Government Difficult

Just when I thought I was the only one bothered by the hoops elderly folks had to jump through to get a discounted bus pass, finally, someone else noticed. In King County there are only two places where an elderly or disabled person can go to apply for and receive a discounted bus pass. It's ridiculous that they should even have to do that. Hello! Can't a bus driver tell if someone is over 65? Kids who sell tickets at movie theaters can!

And then here is Seattle. Seattle. Some policy wonk at the parks department, yes, the parks department, decided park visitors needed a code of conduct. No fire starters for your barbecue (of course, the park staff uses leaf blowers to removed sand from side walks at beaches, but God forbid if you want to start your barbecue...), no spitting, no sex, no going into a bathroom of the opposite sex...you get the drift. The kicker is if you're caught, the park staff with BANISH you from the park for 24 hours! I feel like the city reverted itself to a pre-school.

Government gone amok!

Group Think

Yesterday there was a short piece in the local paper about a candidate for city council. While he seems like a qualified individual, what concerns me is that he currently works for the City. And this is a disturbing trend. That people whose only or major life experiences have been in government seem to dominate the policy-making side.

Another current Seattle City Councilwoman, Sally Clark, prior to her appointment then subsequent election, had also only worked for the City of Seattle. Several of the candidates for local office are government employees.

And in our state capital, the governor, who has been in government in some form or fashion for a very long time, only appoints Olympia insiders to commissions and other positions. For instance, the Wildlife Commission is now dominated by current employees of the University of Washington, the Washington State Department of Health, and numerous retirees of various governmental positions.

I tend to think that having outsiders, people who come from life experiences other than the government, is vitally important for our democracy.

But what concerns me is it seems people from life experiences other than government are not running for office. Perhaps with all the news pressures, the 24/7 media, the no holes barred bloggers who feel no shame in exposing every little detail about a candidate, perhaps those things are barriers to well qualified people running for office.

However, if we end up with a government run by only insiders, our democracy will continue to whither.

Government and Social Engineering

The City of Seattle has finally fessed up to what many city park users already knew: they are removing garbage cans.  In an attempt to, apparently, save money, the city is removing garbage cans from parks and asking users to "pack it out."

While this "pack it out" system works fairly well for backpackers in wilderness areas, urban picnickers with tubs of chicken, potato salad, and a case of Coca-Cola, along with baby strollers, toys, and other assorted "day in the park" items will have a hard time packing it all out.  Already, neighbors of Seattle Parks are reporting their garbage cans are being filled by park users.  

It seems to me that this is a perfect example of government trying to social engineer behavior in ways that might look good in discussions at the conference rooms but in reality is forgetful of the role of government and the relation with the governed.  

In the Pacific Northwest there is a push to have urban areas like Seattle and Portland increase their densities.  In the past ten years thousands of multi-family units have been built, pushing out single family dwellings and low scale buildings in favor of multi-use multiple story structures.  Both Portland and Seattle have gone from being small urban areas to New York wanna-bes.

The idea of increasing densities is good if it stops the expansion of growth into the lowland forested areas surrounding both Seattle and Portland.  Recent studies, however, are showing that sprawl continues to edge into these vital lands despite urban growth.  

Nonetheless, cities must make themselves attractive to multiple generations if they are to continue to house and employ large numbers of people.  Making amenities like parks difficult to visit, or "work," will not accomplish that goal.  Rather, it will encourage people to get in their cars and find places to picnic where they can conveniently get rid of their trash by throwing it into a garbage and recycling bin.

Sometimes great ideas have rather bad consequences and the social engineering of city staffs usually flop.  Often it is far far better to continue to provide good service and as a result people will enjoy living in the city.  Seems simple, huh.

In This Economy

Ok, this will come off as some sort of advertisement, but...

Several months ago, I had problems with my Internet connection.  I contacted the provider, spending hours on the telephone with someone overseas.  The end result was nothing got fixed and all I got was a run around.  Of course, I was not the only person to have had this problem with this company, so I yanked my account, finagled getting out of the cancellation fees, and ordered up another provider.  

Voila, Internet service.  In connecting it, I ran into some configuration problems which Comcast determined Apple would be better at helping me (or, really, Comcast hadn't a clue so they passed me to Apple).

On the other end of the phone was a young woman, who was fabulous.  Problem solved.

Today, I had a small issue, but since I was having a bad day, I didn't want to spend the hours it would take for me to figure it out.  I called Apple.  Instantly, problem solved.  I understood the young man, he walked me through it, we laughed, he told me how much time I had left on my warranty, made a cute joke about "planned obsolescence" which I didn't think anyone under the age of 50 knew about, and I was on my way.

Which leads me to this...I wonder why it is we Americans have put up with large corporations that give crap customer service.  The "banks too big to fail" where no human has answered the phone for years, the Internet providers who, being frank, don't care whether they help you or not so you're routed to some other country and frequently disconnected.  I could go on and on.  Our acceptance of cheap products, or professional sports teams that are heavily subsidized with tax breaks and state funded stadiums yet want to charge the public to watch games on TV or an arm and a leg for crappy seats...

Hopefully one result of this depression will be companies that come out of it understanding their success is dependent upon good customer service.  Same thing for our government (don't get me started about the City of Seattle's Public Utility customer service.  Perhaps basic math skills need to be a job requirement?).

In the meantime, thank goodness for Apple.

Expecting a Different Result

It goes almost without saying that one of the roles of government (and some argue the only role of government) is to protect people.  Feudal kings justified taking large shares of peasant crops by providing protection from other warring tribes.  Not much has changed since then except the things we need protecting from are a lot more sophisticated than some club bearing Viking.  Ponzi-scheme investment firms, greed consumed mortgage lenders, nuclear bombs, you get the drift.  What is simply amazing to me are the myriad examples, recently, of how the government protections either have broken down or don't exist, endangering people's lives and welfare.

Today, there are two great examples in the news.  First, peanuts.  In the Washington Post there is an article about how this peanut processor in Georgia had salmonella in it's peanut products, knew about it, and got away with sending it all over the North American continent to be used in products from Little Debbies to dog biscuits.  The federal government, tasked with the job of ensuring food safety, relied upon self inspections done by the company and the state of Georgia to run tests.  And, why we expect a different result than the incidents of mad cow, the spinach, tomatoes, or...I don't know.  I am beginning to believe we are not any different than China when it comes to food safety (or any other safety issues for that matter).  In China, though, they met out penalties when the food issues finally become public.  It seems to me that our food processing system has become all about making more money on the margins than it is about providing a safe product.  In an issue close to my own home this was evident during the dog and cat food recalls during the summer of 2007.  When all of a sudden pet owners became aware that the food they were feeding their dogs, whether it was expensive or bought at Costco, contained gluten that was processed in China without any inspection mechanisms.  Not much has changed since those revelations, only that the same issues are now apparent in human foods.

In another sector, there was an interesting but not surprising article in the Seattle PI this morning that the FBI knew about mortgage fraud for a number of years, but because many of the agents devoted to white-collar crime had been reduced and put on terrorism cases, nothing was done about the problem.  I plan on writing about terrorism in a few days, but it seems to me that ignoring the financial sector is beyond short sighted.  As the federal government knows, one of the key elements to conducting terror is funding.  It pays, I think, to be attentive to what is going on with money.  Additionally, it seems to me that a tremendous amount of "terror" has been unleashed upon the world's economy by men and women in expensive suits, driving nice cars, and eating at swanky restaurants.  Families are losing their homes, tough choices are being made, retirees are wondering whether they can sell their houses, and today, Boeing announced it is laying of 10,000 people.  By any count, that is almost 100,000 jobs lost in less than 3 days.  Where was the government during all of this?

But this really isn't news, is it?  It's been happening for years and years (and yes, my Bush hating friends, it happened before Bush, too, and it happens with state and local governments).  Lax state supervision on mortgage brokers or in reality, no supervision, the state of Georgia never inspected the peanut processing plant, failure by local governments to repair roads and bridges yet building huge new city halls.  We expect a different result?

While we're all yelling for the heads of these huge corporations, I think we also need to look at the heads of governments and ask for the same accountability.  After all, it's our safety.