So the Senate finally gets around to appointing a permanent ATF director after seven years. Oftentimes when agencies seem inept and ill-managed, the fault lies with wizards in the legislature willing to play such games for political ends both specific and global. Here, the specifics are an ATF the NRA would rather see dead and the global is a Republican Senate Super-Minority willing to hobble government administration at any turn so as to better run against “the beast” in future elections and show loyalty to Godfather Grover Norquist, the anti-tax crusader who has decreed a starvation diet for the federal government.
Category Archives: Governmental Triage
Bad Management at CIA–Still
Forget the specifics–the point is the agency doesn’t, or can’t, do much to change what is reportedly a chronic problem. Entrenched cultures tend to do this–downside be damned.
Detroit Files for Bankruptcy
Detroit’s critical fiscal condition represents a structural cancer growing in a number of U.S. jurisdictions, including states such as Illinois. The bankruptcy court may well sign off on radical surgery that will fracture existing notions of what’s due bondholders, civil service pensioners and current employees. So it is not surprising that Detroit’s story will be closely watched by those involved, both directly and, in other jurisdictions, by proxy.
FBI–Perfect in Every Way
School test cheating scandals are often uncovered when investigators follow-up on statistically implausible results. Well, the FBI is apparently batting a thousand, by its own calculation, in the justifiability of agent-involved shootings. And, consistent with the self-protective institutionalization the FBI has so often demonstrated (see FBI Labs, Ruby Ridge, Sentinel), the agency offers several self-congratulatory reasons for its perfect batting average. We’ll see but methinks warts are hidden in that perfect profile. .
10 Cents on the Dollar
Municipal and county money pits are becoming a theme. Detroit’s fiscal hole is so deep–as much as 17 billion and counting–that the state-appointed emergency manager proposes a 90% haircut for bondholders and other investors. If they demur, bankruptcy court looms, a likely seismic event for municipal bond markets.
Shell Games All Around
More on the flirtation with bankruptcy by Jefferson County, Alabama (which includes the state capital, Birmingham). Officials there had bedazzled bond-buying investors for years with rosy financial projections of the county’s water/sewer operations; Wall Street firms, in turn, bedazzled county officials with prospects of lower interest rates achieved though interconnected financial instruments of almost unfathomable complexity, instead of the straightforward long term bonds the county had been issuing. Knowingly or not, everyone dove right in to what appeared to be fine water, now turned into a sludge-filled money pit.
Reverse Esprit de Corps!
Goodness. Much of the command staff of the Boston Fire Department threatening litigation–against each other! Read: Boston fire chief threatens to sue command staff if they continue “defamatory” attacks. And, for an update, look:http://bcove.me/ei86h0uu
Ably Disabled? Thanks, Doc!
Retiring as a public employee? You’ll usually get a better deal, and earlier, if disability is the reason. The Long Island Railroad (LIRR) in metropolitan New York has had extraordinarily high disability retirement rates–in some years over 90%–among employees who worked in an alternative universe where relatively low-intensity jobs occupationally incapacitated just about everybody. Not surprisingly, retirement-enabling diagnoses were easy to get from doctors like Peter Ajemian, whose fraudulent work-ups just earned him forced retirement to federal prison.
Charity Begins at Home
The politician/non-profit nexus–again. Theft, alleges the federal prosecutor; sloppy bookkeeping regarding pay well-deserved, says the defense attorney. Whatever! Cases, alleged and proven, of politicians pillaging non-profits just keep on coming.
Law-Abiding Murderers
The New Orleans homicide rate leads the country, but the city does much better, relative to its big city peers, with other felony crimes. Some think this doesn’t compute.