From owner-china-nt@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Thu Sep 29 10:09:36 1994 Date: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 20:53:51 PDT Reply-To: ccf-editor@ifcss.org Sender: China-Net From: ccf-editor@ifcss.org Subject: Chinese Community Forum (#9450) Comments: To: china-nt@uga.cc.uga.edu To: Multiple recipients of list CHINA-NT ==+==+==+== C h i n e s e C o m m u n i t y F o r u m ==+==+==+=== Wednesday, September 28, 1994 (Issue No. 9450) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Chinese Community Forum (CCF) is an e-journal published on China-Net. CCF is dedicated to the discussion on the issues related to the Chinese community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Editorial Board of CCF. Contributions to the discussions and suggestions of new topics are very much appreciated. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= # of Table of Contents Author | Lines ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 1. Commercials .............................................. Liao Kan 134 2. China's Pig of a Problem ............................ The Economist 97 3. How Washington Really Works AN INSIDER'S VIEW (part 2/2) .................... Charles Peters 327 ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== -*- From the Editor -*- In this issue of CCF, we finish the article "How Washington Really Works". This article is interesting in that it tells us some inside stories. We often regard American system to be perfect. And whenever we think of democratization, we look at the American system as a model. But do we really know how this system works here? Or broadly speaking, do we really understand how democracy works the way it is supposed to? In other words, what are the pre-conditions for democracy to work? As to modelling, is USA a model we look for with regard to China's democratization? These are the very questions that need to be seriously pondered on before we try to introduce Mr. Democracy. And surely each of us have our own thought on these questions. As an open forum, we hope CCF can provide everyone in the community an opportunity to voice their opinions. If you have any thoughts on any issues related to China, please share your thought with some 3000 readers on the China-Net. As always, we continue to improve the quality of CCF, to make it more interesting, thought stimulating....and after all, to make CCF a strong voice for our community. To do so, we need more contributions. If you feel like to say something, CCF is the best place to have your say. That's how CCF serves our community. (written by Tang Huang) ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 1. Commercials ............................................. Liao Kan 134 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Commercials are arguably the single most influential or damaging effect in our life (depends on which way you look at it). It reaches into our life far deeper than say politics. As you know, we all like to talk about politics more than commercials, and argue about some concepts which no one knows what the hell they come from. I personally like to talk about politics too as your readers out there have already known. We talk about politics because we want to be known as smart people who can tell other people what is good for them, or just do not have enough talent to talk about the other things. I belong to both of them, thus particularly dangerous and unstable. These qualities make me the most suitable candidate for any politician except that position which needs to be born in this country. Once I am elected, I will crank out more laws, which makes the lawyers' office looks more impressive, who in turn can charge you more money. This means I am more secure. So essentially, the more you watch C-span, the less money you have for QVC. Even the politicians are aware of this factor. If they really want to put the sound wave which carries the politics into your ears, they use the commercials. For examples, commercial No.1: "United states is getting weaker by each and every passing day. Our economy is shambling; our unemployed rate is skyrocketing; our trade deficit is alarming. If we continue on the current administration, the Haitians (note it is Haitians not Martians) will run over us like ants." Commercial No.2: "United States is the leader of the world. It is the ONLY superpower. We have created millions of new jobs as you are reading this. Our economy is more competitive than ever. We can kick the Martians' rear end (note it is Martians not Haitians) at will." Can you tell me which of the followings is correct? A) commercials No.1 and 2 both by Bush. B) commercials No.1 and 2 both by Clinton. C) commercial No.1 by Clinton and 2 by Bush. D) reverse of C. E) commercials No.1 and 2 both by republican. F) commercials No.1 and 2 both by democrat. G) commercial No.1 by republican and 2 by democrat. H) reverse of G. I) commercial No. 1 by Cuba and No. by U.S. The correct answer is all except I). Generally, candidates use commercial 1, and elected politicians use commercial 2. So pick you choice, it is free of charge. (TV, radio, newspaper etc. extra.) If you did not came up with the correct answer, we are concerned for you. It means you have not watched enough TV lately. You may spend your times on something probably good for you, but watching TV commercials, especially the political ones, is absolutely essential for you. Although this is free country and you have right to make your own choice, we strongly urge you to watch TV commercials. If you still choose to spend you time on the things good for you than to watch TV commercials, we will NOT compel you to watch TV commercials by threatening to microwave your kid's pet dog. If you are bone head enough to ignore our NOT threat, we will NOT lobby for new laws and at the same time NOT microwave your kid. Hey, this is a free country, we can do whatever we want. How come I am getting into politics? I really really want to talk about commercials. No one really really really knows exactly when commercials were started. No one in normal mind really really really cares about it. The popularity of the commercials is closely linked with the development of television, in short TV, just in case some of you might not have known before hand. Although radios, newspapers, magazines, books, etc. are all subsidized by the commercials, none can rivals the TV commercials. The date from Bureau of Very Accurate Statistic have shown average people, when reaching 5-month old, have already watched 5000 hours of TVs. (the set or program? presumably both.) That is equivalent of 4.95 months. As we all know, 99.95% of the TV programs in ABC, DEF and GHI three network stations are commercials. So the influence of those commercials on our daily thinkings is simply over your head. By the way, I am exercising my right of free speech. Thus, the laws of mathematics can not restrain my constitutional freedom. I love commercials, because from commercials you can see how those rich and name everywhere people do their daily chores in a very artistic way. Commercial about a rich and beautiful couple's evening outing No.1: It is on Valentine day setting in an elegant restaurant with deep slow cello music in the background. The tables are set with laced white table cover and candle lights. Close up, a beautiful couple are sitting on one of the tables (not on top of the table, on the chairs beside the table.) and sipping wine with that affectionate and amorous looking in each other's eyes. Slowly the gorgeous woman turns her head to look at you, (I mean the TV camera.) and start to talk about yeast infection. Then the man jumps in with his hemorrhoid problem. They blab on for a while and both exclaim suddenly: "I can not believe it is not butter!" At this time, a stuffed rabbit or hare crosses your TV screen. You are supposed to know this is a battery commercial. I find it is very effective, because I do buy the bunny brand batteries. See, the power! Sometimes, the markers of some products use some tricky scam to lure you to watch TV commercials. I am sure you all remember the other day, or maybe the other month, anyway the time is not important, that a white bronco trotting on that famous city's highways and televised live on all ABCDEFGHI networks. The story you were told by those reporters was that a famous ex-athlete, who is famous for banging his head on other people's whatever body parts, spilled some fruit juice in his ex-wife's house and his ex-wife stepped on it, slipped and killed herself. So he was very disturbed and ride that white bronco into car's highway which led to massive traffic jam. (Maybe he did not spill the fruit juice someone else did, or it was not fruit juice at all. Anyway I just constantly hear some kind of fruit juice.) This scene lasted for more than three uninterrupted hours on all the major networks. Now you ask yourself a question: what is the longest time of a TV program in networks without the commercial breaks? In my experience, it is about 19.95 nanoseconds. So, obviously, the whole thing of the bronco trotting and juice spilling is a scam. The whole program of 3 plus hours is a commercial by the white bronco breeders. See, you were fooled by that. Luckily, you have ME to point out that for you. The mustang breeders are deeply alarmed by this bronco breeders' stunt. According to the Inside Edition, a joint detective service by FBI and CIA, the mustang breeders are pulling their own stunt which will be featuring that ex-figure-skater-turned-knee-cap- surgeon and that ex-marine-turned-bodypart-reattachment-specialist. I am sure that the mustang breeders are a group of highly civilized people. They certainly will not go that low to show the actual surgery process. I have heard that the commercial time is very valuable, at the range about $1 zillion trillion billion and million for 9.95 light years, which is about 3 flashes on TV screen. So I have an idea for the commercial agencies that they can use those high speed cameras for those 24-frame per second commercials. They can really make a lot more money and we will also have a short time to watch the bronco trotting. I don't know if I can patent on the idea. I am not afraid someone to steal my idea, because I have not revealed any technical detail yet. OK, I will just give you a little peep (relax, not those stripping joints because no quarters are charged here) about the technical detail. I am sure it will blow you head away. Do you still remember the Sure and Unsure commercial about personal hygiene product in which the people with Sure on all raise their arms like crazy and the Unsure people not? Well, in my commercial, I will use the Statue of Liberty. The arm which lifts the torch is with Sure on, and the arm which holds the book will be the Unsure. There will be some closed-ups and flashes between Sure and Unsure. But that is the camera man's function. Smart huh. Ho boy, I will be filthy rich. (LIAOK@FCRFV1.NCIFCRF.GOV) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. China's Pig of a Problem ............................ The Economist 97 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SINCE China started economic reforms in 1978, the economy seemed to have established a pattern. Growth would start, accelerate, generate inflation and, once every five years, the authorities would slam on the brakes. Accordingly, in the summer of 1993, China's economics tsar, Zhu Rongji, called for an end to the latest boom, and the brakes were applied. Since then, however, the brakes have been released twice and are now being applied for the third time. The problem is that they are only half-working: growth has slowed, but inflation has not. The general view among outside observers, and the official view of the Chinese leadership, is that China's economy is still headed for the "soft landing" that has been predicted since the beginning of the year. That would mean GDP growth slowing from last year's l4% to something around 9%, and inflation falling from last year's 13% to 10% or so. If there has been a change in the consensus it is that the landing will now come next year, not this. Several of the government's austerity measures, even if fitfully applied, seem to have hit their target. Last year, fixed-asset investment grew by 53%, because of a combination of building and property speculation by the private sector and investment by state-sector enterprises trying to justify their existence by producing more. The government blamed this trend for inflation; and to counter it, launched a drive a year ago to recover loans improperly granted by state banks. This year it raised official interest rates. But with so many new, unofficial ways of raising money, official interest rates have only a limited effect on the supply of capital. Moreover, Beijing's control over the provinces has weakened, so although central government did not approve a single new investment project in the first four months of 1994, unruly provincial governments approved 94,000. Over this period, locally sanctioned investments (including previously approved ones) were worth 1.8 trillion yuan ($207 billion), dwarfing centrally sanctioned investments of 81 billion yuan. Given the constraints, the central authorities have done well to get fixed-asset investment growth down to 37% in the first half of this year. There are other signs that austerity has worked. The producer-price index in China takes in a small handful of raw materials like steel and cement, and therefore gives a clue about construction activity. The index surged last year, reaching, at its peak, an annual rate of increase of 50%. Producer prices are now actually falling, and the authorities are even beginning to worry about gluts, in particular of steel. Consumers, whose insatiable desire for goods brought on the inflation and social unrest of 1988-89, are no longer driving inflation in this cycle. The growth of retail sales has steadily slowed. This has also helped to slow import growth and boost exports, so improving a trade balance which last year lurched into the red. In view of these promising signals, July's inflation rate of 24.4% was an unpleasant surprise. Something more like 20% was expected. Early predictions are that the August inflation figure too will be poor. And while inflation continues to rage, the leadership will not push ahead with the structural reforms that the economy needs. In several areas, reforms are being rolled back, as the leaders attempt to reimpose a grip on prices. Agricultural products are the first target. The prices of cooking oil, grain, cotton and pork have recently leapt. Since so much of Chinese consumer spending goes on food stuffs, these have a big impact on the index of inflation. The weather is probably in part to blame--there has been a drought in the north and floods in the south--but every body, inside the government or out, is at a loss to explain why pigs are dearer. In Beijing, old suspicions are reviving that since the market has been allowed to let rip, those who control distribution or retail monopolies are dictating prices. Scouring the country for pork cartels is unlikely to point to the source of China's stubborn inflation. An admission on September 13th by a central bank official that China's money-supply growth has got out of control just might. Money-supply growth had been slowing for the first part of the year, but has now leapt. It suggests, says this official worriedly, that China may have entered an inflationary phase that has little to do with the supply of or demand for goods. State-owned enterprises seem to be at the root of the money-supply growth. Too many lose money, yet the government does not dare to close or privatise them, for fear this would lead to social unrest. Believing that inflation had been licked by early summer, the authorities seem to have ordered more money to be printed to keep failing state enterprises afloat. China therefore seems to be experiencing a combination of slowing economic growth and rising inflation--as if it might be heading for the stagflation once familiar in the West. The culprit seems to be the inefficient state sector and its demands upon the central bank for money. That suggests an obvious solution: reform the financial system and privatise state industry. China's leaders, instead, are moving in the opposite direction. Reforms are being shelved until the old communist tricks of centralised decision-making and administrative controls can be seen to work their magic again. [From The Economist, Sept. 17,1994. Forwarded by cqyang@chemistry.umass.edu] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. How Washington Really Works AN INSIDER'S VIEW (part 2/2) .................... Charles Peters 327 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- INNER MASSES When people like Anne Wexler put their clients in touch with the "right" person, quite often that someone turns out not to be a high profile secretary of this or that but a civil servant. The largest part of the permanent government, the bureaucracy, has about 3 million federal civilian employees. Six times that number are funded by taxpayers as employees of state, county, and municipal government or as members of the military. Some bureaucrats, of course, do essential work. But there is an equal number whose contribution to the public interest is less clear. Consider, for example, the 5,000 personnel managers and 1,500 public information and public relations specialists who work for the Pentagon or employees with such titles (all of them real) as Planning analyst, Schemes Routing Specialist, Manager of Creative Services, Social Priorities Specialists, Suggestions Awards Administrator, Fringe Benefit Specialist, and Confidential Assistant to the Confidential Assistant. But even if these people are less than essential, they have little need to fear for their jobs. About the only way a civil servant can lose his job is through a budget cut that affects his program. Therefore, since his survival depends on avoiding such cuts, the most important part of his job is to hide unhappy truths about his agency's performance from potential troublemakers such as the Office of Management and Budget and Congress. Justifying and protecting the agency's budget (as opposed to fulfilling the mission of the agency) soon becomes top priority. And that, of course, affects the way an agency does the job it was created to do. One year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began to single out middle-income tax-payers, who historically have the best record of paying their taxes honestly, for a disproportionately large share of audits. Why? Congress had granted the IRS more auditors on the condition that they be used to increase the number of audits. The IRS chose to perform middle-income audits because such audits are quicker to do than, say, a full-dress study of Mobil Oil. One of the most notorious results of the fear of budget cuts is the end-of-the-year spending spree. As the midnight hour of the last day of September approaches, each agency desperately tries to use up all its appropriated funds for the year so it won't appear to have been overbudgeted. Agencies have become so sophisticated in budget building techniques that it's not uncommon for bureaucrats to underestimate their funding needs when creating the budgets. They do so, however, only for popular programs which require fixed payments to qualified recipients. If the program runs short of money during the fiscal year, Congress must pass what is called a supplemental appropriation to take care of the shortfall, or face a lot of angry constituents. A variation of this ploy is so clever that it often works even with the OMB recognizes it. I call it the Firemen First Principle. The basic idea is that when faced with a budget cut, the bureaucrat translates it into bad news fro members of Congress who are powerful enough to restore the amount eliminated. In other words, he chops where it will hurt constituents the most, not the least. Amtrak provided on example on how to play the game. Once, when it was threatened with a budget cut, it immediately announced that it would have to stop the following routs: *San Francisco-Bakersfield, running through Stockton, the hometown of the chairman of the House Appropriations Transportation Subcommittee; *St. Louis-Laredo, running through Little Rock, Arkansas, the hometowns of the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee; and *Chicago-Seattle, running through the hometowns of the Senate majority leader and of the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. Memoranda and meetings are where the survival and make-believe principles merge. Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy. They attend meetings for the same reason. Indeed, most bureaucrats make a big production of rushing off to meetings; meaningful action is seldom taken but the appearance of action is satisfied by the fact that the meeting was held. Naturally, the most favored meetings involve travel. Here's an example from the travel record of the District of Columbia's Department of Human Resources and Education for one fiscal year. The Department of Human Resources sent 15 employees to San Francisco for the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association and nine employees to Honolulu to attend a convention of the American Psychiatric Association. It also sent one administrator to Aspen, Colorado, for 39 days to attend a session entitled "Effective Strategies for Change." But his record was eclipsed by another official, the administrator for the Mental Health Administration, who managed to stay on the road for 51 days. The bureaucrat's yearning to see the world is so powerful that even officials of agencies with exclusively domestic responsibilities manage to find conferences and meeting to attend abroad at taxpayers' expense. Thus Daniel Oliver of the Federal Trade Commission managed to spend 95 days abroad in the period 1986-88, visiting such cities as Nassau, Geneva, Berlin, Tokyo, and that hotbed of anti-trust activity, Acapulco. GRADE EXPECTATIONS What would happen if we called the bureaucrat's bluff and cut his budget? Unless he thinks we know about the real fat, about those trips to Acapulco, he may -- to preserve his credibility -- actually fire essential employees. We could end up with a government run by planning analysts and friends of senators. To cut fat and not muscle out of the federal budget, four interrelated inflations need to be looked at: inflated pay, inflated job descriptions, inflated grades, and inflated slots. The last is easiest to explain. Suppose the country were being overrun by Albanian moths. The Department of Agriculture would ask the Civil Service Commission for authority to establish positions for, say, 200 Albanian Moth Control Officers. Because of the emergency, the authority would be granted and Agriculture would have 200 new slots. Suppose the Albanian moth were then brought under control. Would the slots be abolished? Certainly not. Then there is grade inflation, sometimes called grade creep. On one study, the Civil Service Commission -- hardly the system's most severe critic -- found that 150,000 workers had overgraded, meaning their rank was higher than the level required by their actual work. In 1985, 8.2 percent of federal workers were in the upper middle class of the civil service, grades GS-12 through GS-15. Today the figure is 28.9 percent. Grade creep means too many chiefs and too few Indians, too many supervisors and too few people to do the work. Related to grade inflation is payroll inflation. Although some technical and professional employees are underpaid -- how can we ever adequately compensate the air traffic controller who skillfully handles nerve-racking rush hours at New York's Kennedy Airport? -- many civil servants are paid too much for the jobs they do. In 1992, the average civil servant earned $6,000 more than the average American. GS-15s, many of whom have responsibilities comparable to those of supermarket managers, make as much as 86,589 per year, and they are only at the top of the middle grades. Above them are the cream of the career bureaucrats, the members of the Senior Executive Service, whose salaries range from $92,900 to $115,700. If government jobs paid as poorly as bureaucrats say they do, wouldn't there be a shortage of applicants and wouldn't bureaucrats be resigning in droves to accept better-paying jobs in private industry? Neither, of course, is happening. In Washington, an average of 300,000 people a year seek government jobs. There are few positions to fill, however. Only 1 percent of those applicants ever find an administrative job -- and I mean any administrative job. Behind the inflated grades and pay lies the fourth kind of inflation: the inflated job description, the document by which the civil service system determines rank and salary. In even the smallest bureaucratic unit you will find at least one person skilled in writing descriptions, who can turn typists into "word processors" and elevator operators into "vertical vehicle controllers." Those ten-dollar words produce thousand-dollar raises. Reducing this inflation is not easy. Government employees can be fired by a process called RIF (reduction in force) if their agency's budget has been cut. But a RIF endangers the government's efficiency because employees are retained or dismissed on the basis of seniority, not ability. The idiotic result of this policy was illustrated in 1991 when Cathy Nelson, who had just been named Minnesota's Teacher of the Year, was laid off because of lack of seniority. The Reagan administration struck a demoralizing blow to the morale of the best civil servants when it used RIF to dismiss several thousand young workers without regard to how capable they were, while retaining senior employees' services without regard to how incompetent they were. But the administration had no choice of method of firing because over the years civil servants have managed to get regulations passed and win court rulings that make it next to impossible to fire them any other way. As one observed, "We're all like headless nails down here -- once you get us in, you can't get us out." The difficulty of removing a bureaucrat is illustrated by the case of Clarence Ferguson, an employee of the National Marine Fisheries Services in St. Petersburg, Florida. Ferguson, according to the St. Petersburg Times, drank a pint of gin a day. During the years 1980-83, he missed 389 days of work. Finally, he was fired. Now a federal judge has given him the right to get his job back and has awarded him $150,000 back pay. The judge reasoned that all federal agencies should make reasonable accommodation for their "handicapped" workers, including alcohol and drug addicts. An alcoholic who misses 389 days of work deserves our sympathy and help in overcoming his addiction, but he does not deserve a government job. The only standard that should govern the retention of employees is performance. One high-level bureaucrat claims that showing cause for firing, as the law requires, can take up to 50 percent of the bureaucrat's working time for a period that may run from six to eighteen months. The executive must keep a diary of the employee's indiscretion (tardiness, mistakes, goofing off, flubbed assignments) before filing a complaint. Protected by a maze of regulations and limitations and often defended by lawyers from government employee's unions, a civil servant threatened with firing can drag a hearing out for months or even years. The result is a bureaucracy that is overstaffed with unproductive employees, employees who know that the government's rate of discharge for inefficiency is only one seventh of 1 percent. What would happen if there were dramatic reductions in the number of government employees -- cutting it, say, in half? There is no conclusive evidence on this point, but scattered return are suggestive. Have you noticed any difference in the service you get from Washington bureaucrats during the last two weeks of December? Probably not, but did you know that in recent years absenteeism among Washington federal employees during that time has run as high as 60 percent? The greatest obstacle to bureaucratic reform is that most people think it is better to have a system based on merit hiring than on political patronage. But the fact is that getting a government job has only the most modest relation to merit. Veterans get five free points added to their civil service exam score; disable veterans get an extra ten. For nonveterans the trick is to know someone inside the agency. People already in the system are the first to know about a job opening, and knowing both the applicant and the job, they can tailor the job description to fit the person they want to hire. Insiders call it "the buddy system." Even at the height of Watergate, Gordon Freeman, formerly of the House Manpower and Civil Service Subcommittee, contended that the real saboteur of the civil service concept are the civil servants themselves. "Sure, some politicians get jobs for their friends," he said, but you could put all the Nixon-referred people on the Sequoia [a small yacht used by Nixon] and it would still float. But if you put all the people involved in the buddy system on the carrier Enterprise, it would sink." A decade later, in 1982, a similar conclusion was reached in a study conducted by the Merit System Protection Board which found that the most common form of political abuse was the buddy system. And, another decade later, in 1991, a former director of the Office of Personnel management (OPM) wrote:"Unfortunately the old merit examination for government is dead. What replaced the merit system? The buddy system. With no examination -- or what amounted to the same thing, the widely used credentials exams which do not differentiate very well -- why not pick friends or relatives?" The result, the former director says, is that more than "90 percent of the mid-to-upper level positions are filled by one employee requesting another by name." The merit system is thus one of Washington's purest forms of make-believe. As a result of these practices and the indifference of political leaders, the civil service underwent a dramatic decline in quality during the seventies and eighties. Pat Ingraham, a professor of government who worked for the commission, said:"I've talked with hundreds of line managers and administrators from practically every federal agency. And what I hear is the quality of new hires is just getting worse and worse." A major reason for this decline was the hostility to government of the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush administrations and the neglect of recruiting for the civil service that was the natural result of their attitude. Donald Devine, Reagan's director of OPM, halted all recruiting by his agency. Terry Cutler, one of Devine's assistants, wrote in an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal: "The Government does not need top graduates, administrative offices staffed with MBAs from Wharton, or policy shops full of the best and brightest whatevers. Government's goal should be not employee excellence but employee sufficiency." With sights set so low, it's little wonder that the administrations have left us with a lot of government employees who are insufficient. If we are going to revitalize that government we must hire and keep people who are both talented and committed. FEDERAL RESERVE BORED The key to democratic politics is accountability. If you don't deliver the goods, the voters can throw you out. Remember that when the Postal Service was political it worked. We got our mail promptly. It was delivered twice a day, packages arrived intact, and a stamp cost three cents. Today it costs 10 times as much, but the service has gotten so bad that federal Express has become rich filling the vacuum. This patten of declining service and rising prices did not keep the Postal Service from awarding nearly $20 million in bonuses to its top executives between 1988 and 1990, when the Postal Service actually lost more than 1.4 billion. The rigorous standards used in evaluating the performance of these executives is suggested by the fact that, of all those who could have gotten bonuses, 97 percent received them. And during 1989, while they were eliminating Sunday collections at thousands of mailboxes, postal officials spent more than $6 million on conferences for themselves in such places as Scottsdale, Arizona; Naples, Florida; Marina del Rey, California; and Maui, Hawaii. At Scottsdale, $13,000 was spent on three pre-dinner drinking parties and $99 a person for just one dinner. The reason the Post Office stopped functioning efficiently was that it became nonpolitical. When it worked, congressmen knew that if the postmasters they appointed didn't deliver the mail, the congressmen would be blamed by the voters. Now the congressman can say that it's out of their hands. Congress has surrendered vast powers to independent federal agencies over which it and the president have little real authority. Bureaucrats in such agencies feel beyond public control. Even when Congress or the president gives them an order, they find ways to subvert it. The Library of Congress recently studied federal agencies' compliance with the Sunshine Act of 1976, which was supposed to open government to the public. The study found that of a group of 1,003 government meetings listed in the Federal Register, 627 were either partially or completely closed to the public. One closed meeting was held by the Federal Reserve Board to consider the design of its furniture; it was closed on the grounds that "matters of a sensitive financial nature were being considered by the Board." The military is a master of this kind of subversion. When the navy was ordered to conserve fuel during the energy crisis of the early seventies, it reported that it had reduced its ships sailing time by 20 percent. What it actually did was redefine sailing time to exclude a ship's journey from the port to the fleet at sea. What is this if not make-believe? Laws are passed, orders are given, compliance seems to occur, but nothing changes. Bureaucrats don't like real change, only the appearance of change. That is why they are so fond of reorganization. Reorganization gives them something to do -- redrawing charts, knocking down office walls -- but nothing outside the agency, such as poverty or hunger or disease, is affected in the slightest. What does happen is that new jobs are created, almost always with higher grade classifications, which of course means higher salaries for the reorganizes. The reason bureaucrats like internal reorganization better than external action is easy to understand. Suppose you work in an anti-poverty agency and you do your job so well that poverty is eradicated. Or suppose you work in the Department of Energy and the energy problem disappears. What will happen to you? The bureaucrat can figure that out. If he takes real action, if he's truly effective, he'll be out of work -- he won't survive. If, on the other hand, his action is make-believe, poverty will not disappear, the energy problem will not be solved, and his job will be safe -- he will survive. Now you can understand the fundamental Washington equation: Make-believe = Survival. (from The Washington Monthly, Jan./Feb. 1993, page 43-51, forwarded by zfliu@leea.cchem.berkeley.edu. Part 1/2 was posted in the last issue of CCF.) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++ + Executive Editor: Dave Sheng + + Executive Moderator: Huang Tang + +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + For subscription: mail "SUB CHINA-NT Your-First-Name Your-Last-Name" + + to LISTSERV@UGA (bitnet) or listserv@uga.cc.uga.edu (internet) + + For unsubscription: mail "UNSUB CHINA-NT" to the above e-address + + For back issues of CCF: + + anonymous ftp to: cnd.org[132.249.229.100]: pub/community/CCF + + gopher to cnd.org: 2. English Menu --> 14. Community --> 1. ccf + + For contribution and inquiry: mail to ccf-editor@ifcss.org + +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++