Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics Member Submitted Links Faith in our government

We rafted the San Juan a number of years ago from Mexican Hat down to the takeout that's a little way into the Lake Powell upper pool (or was). The sediment carried by the San Juan starts dropping out as the current slackens and it had built up to the point that, because of the broader valley, the river depth was severely reduced. If you couldn't find the slightly deeper water 'channel' in the last several miles, you were at risk of becoming stranded in a wide and unnavigable (and unwalkable) mudflat. They had already moved the takeout up stream and were planning to do it again.

One seldom acknowledged fact is that those giant reservoirs had a known limited lifespan due to becoming filled with sediment. Powell would be the first to age out, of course, as it protects Lake Mead (until it is full). Interesting that the low flows due to drought and over allocation lower the pool level, which has the effect of the sediment being transported closer to the dam sooner - in fact a lot of previously deposited mud is 'eroding' and might improve the San Juan takeout situation!

the WPA and CCC were GREAT government programs. If you go into any old post offices they will have paintings on the walls and that was the wpa/ccc work. They also built highway 20 across the Washington state northern border (which seriously needs work). They, basically, put just about everybody to work! When all this covid stuff started I wrote to my elected suggesting they do it again - the replies were notes begging for money - the thought was ignored.

This time around it seems to me that the solution was to give everybody money and talk a lot about jobs.

I remember hearing references to WPA jobs as being “shovel leaners.” Those jobs were considered by many as money for no real work, much as you’ve described.

On a slightly different tack, the writers’ project- another New Deal program, this one to keep writers at work, resulted in guidebooks for each state. Some states have reprinted them - Iowa and Kansas have, I know, although Nebraska hasn’t. If’s fun to go on day trips in search of the past. Might be worth it, as slow entertainment, to see if your state’s guidebook is still around.

We are a nation of over 330 million people, covering an area of 3.797 million mi², the third largest nation on earth. When something is that big, inefficiencies are inevitable. Frankly, it is amazing it works as well as it does. Look at how poorly many States are run, and the Feds look good by comparison.

One of the problems we have in creating and monitoring "government" is that we do it piecemeal. We want government to do a lot of things. Congress sees a problem, and they create a solution - even if an answer already exists. A lot of people get involved in creating that solution, not all of them with altruism in mind, and certainly not efficiency. The bureaucracy is a creation of accretion, not holistic organization.

Often efforts at reorganization make matters worse. Consider the Department of Homeland Security. Or the disaster that Louis DeJoy has made of the Post Office. It gets particularly bad when incompetents and opponents of the Agency are put in charge - which goes back at least as far as James Watt.

Bannon indicted by Federal Grand Jury!
It's about time, but as previously a country with "rule of law", we shouldn't cut corners in the legal process. Otherwise, we are headed into a country of Banana Republicans!

TAT

Talk about restoring faith in the government.

I had never heard that opinion about the WPA, but I suppose it is in line with what we hear today about “welfare” and government jobs in general. Pretty much everybody with a job considers themselves to be productive and probably worth more than they are paid. I would venture that pretty much everyone has a case of confirmation bias about it, too.
After a lifetime of grappling with being a person who has a job of taking on the responsibility for committing to deliver work products for a fixed price on a predetermined schedule, nobody works hard enough and efficiently enough to do the job properly (including me), and all contractors should be certified as suffering from delusional insanity for assuming such responsibility. Unfortunately, we suffer from a culturally rooted mass delusion that this is how the world works, or should work, when the fact is inefficiency and laziness are normal, natural conditions. (Did I mention that I am still grappling with it?) Private business is not more efficient than government business - that is propaganda.
A quick anecdote to dramatize what I am trying to share, vis-a-vis (did I just type that?) shovel leaning… when I lived in northern Idaho and was primarily a logger and log cabin builder, I became an unofficial partner with another ambitious and hard-working (and delusional) young man (call him Joe) who had similar skills and interests and complementary equipment. As logs are big and awkward things to move about, it pays to have two people who know what they are doing working together. I really appreciated working with Joe, it felt like dancing all day in a lumbering sort of way (that was for Katman) - what we could accomplish was magical.
Our ambitions diverged a bit, however - mine being dominated by the inspiration of the legacy that the WPA left us - Joe’s leaning more to becoming a rich and famous builder. So after building a few cabins together on the shores of Priest Lake, our casual partnership gave way to Joe putting together his own crew, and other circumstances of mine finding me moving to New Mexico. I still had property and unfinished business in Idaho that extended for several years so I frequently returned for lengthy stays, often working on projects that Joe had contracted, for some income. The magic was still there and I could merge with the crew as though I had always been there, and it was a relief to Joe that he didn’t have to ‘manage’ me like the rest of his crew - I would usually take on the difficult tasks that none of Joe’s crew could do, but that he didn’t have time for because of spending most of his time fixing his employees’ mistakes.
Now, I like to joke around all the time on the job, but I don’t stop working to do it. On one high-end lake house (not a log cabin) the task that awaited me was to run a bunch of curved wooden (molded, not plain flat) baseboard, which included making the curved boards onsite. The guy who was trying to do it had spent two weeks and only installed about 12’ (which Joe had to fix) and there was maybe 100’ to go. so there I was, on my knees installing trim and making puns and singing silly songs, when the owner came in. I was aware of him watching me for a little bit, and didn’t know for sure that he was even the client, but I didn’t care, anyway. I was having fun and getting satisfaction from doing some challenging work (stay with me, this story is getting close to where it is going). Owner Guy came back numerous times to watch for a little bit over the next few days, but never talked to me.
At the end of the week (I stayed long enough to finish the base so Joe wouldn’t have to) Joe and I were having a couple of beers before I came back to NM, and he told me two memorable things.
First, he said that Owner Guy was pissed off when he first showed up, at the annoying new clown he had hired to work on his seriously fancy house. But after awhile he realized that the curved baseboards that had been beginning to look like a real problem for the project, were appearing apace in spite of the apparent interference of the clearly unserious Joker. That news was good for my ego.
The second thing he told me was that he had gone through 80 hires in the last two years trying to put together a decent crew of just three or four. At first, his expectation was to get two experienced and competent people and two hard working laborers. But at the time of our beers he confessed that his definition of a good employee had evolved into ‘someone who showed up and wasn’t on drugs’.
A shovel leaner, perhaps?

Here is our guidebook. I don't know if its the one made a long time ago or new. I do know, if its old, that its been seriously updated.

Yep, endicted - now comes the trial. So far the courts have been moving right along. Now we will see how long Bannon can keep this one going. Hopefully it will be quickly. The Dems have less than a year before the midterms and if they continue doing little or nothing, even if the courts are, they will be gone and so will the current investigation. I fully expect the Trumpies to take a page out the Trump plan and stretch any legal stuff out as long as possible. Trump has been doing it for years or until the who thing is just moot.

I posted this elsewhere, but since it applies specifically to my lack of faith in one branch of government, it seems appropriate here. I think what will happen is the DC Circuit will rule quickly, and deny the privilege claim. The Supreme Court's conservative majority will sit on the appeal (leaving a stay in place) until after the 2022 election, with the hope and expectation that Republicans will take control of the House. Then they will rule against the privilege claim assuming the Republicans will kill the Committee and the subpoenas. That way they can do the party's bidding and pretend that they've been neutral in the process. There's a pattern to this.

We're long past pretending that the courts are neutral parties. Just consider the 5th Circuit's recent actions - with a 100% Republican panel. The Supreme Court even more so. But, i have faith in Merrick Garland.