In April, we heard the some IRS employees, who had "tax issues" themselves, still got incentive bonuses paid to employees who do well at their job. [http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/23/irs-employees-with-tax-and-conduct-issues-still-got-awards-watchdog-report/ ]
I suppose we could say that this is a small mistake that could happen to any organization. This week, we find the same thing in hospitals rewarded for doing a good job moving vets through their doors, and presumably, through treatment too. That would be the Veterans Administration, where waiting lists were made for dying vets. Those who were in charge got bonuses.
During my government career, I saw hundreds of people get bonuses, even when they had not been behaving. In contractor land, the same kind of thing happened, and employees even complained when they didn't get one. They had the mistaken belief that they got a bonus if they showed up for work, and didn't screw up too badly.
I started a new trend in my section at EDS. I gave bonuses to the people who performed best and made the group the most money. Most of them were surprised by getting a bigger check than they were used to. There was little whining from the ones who got nothing. Even they knew it was fair. This should tell you a little about bonuses. People who should not get them, are surprised when they don't, and people who worked their butts off all year were surprised to be rewarded for it. Something is wrong with our business culture when those are the expectations.
Have we become so "correct" in our thinking that bonuses are an egalitarian right? No. Managers have no backbone in business or government let these kinds of things happen. It isn't management; it is abandoning management in the mistaken belief that it is important to be popular with the team, even where that means taking money away from the best and most productive in our workforce, and giving it to people who don't deserve it. That isn't management, justice, or equality. People in charge of these organizations need to be retired or demoted.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Snowden as Spy
There is a good video on the issue of whether Edward Snowden was a spy or not, taking up one side of a convoluted story. It is an interview with Former CIA officer Lindsay Moran at the Wall Street Journal Live http://live.wsj.com/video/former-cia-officer-snowden-was-no-spy/D2BAC276-2EB2-47D7-96D6-E655218EB5A5.html?mod=trending_now_video_1#!D2BAC276-2EB2-47D7-96D6-E655218EB5A5
Moran is describing why she thinks Snowden was not a spy for the U.S., was never trained for the job, and was not in a position where he would have been employed that way. He makes that claim in an interview with NBC, to be aired tonight. He is a "spy want-a-be", a sad, but interesting characterization.
What is confusing about this is that Snowden likely was a spy, just not a spy for the U.S. Mike Rogers, from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, confirmed that Snowden was a spy, after all, and probably had help from the FSB. The KGB, predecessor to the FSB, was Putin's home before he came to office. The news media calls this a "revelation", which only means they hadn't even thought about it before theses two stated the obvious. We have the unusual twist of having each side in this, the Russians and the U.S. claiming Snowden was a spy, without either one making a statement about it.
Snowden is not making his claims without his Russian handlers being close by. He has a crudely crafted story of why he ended up in Russia (the State Department took my passport) that is inconsistent with history where spies have fled the country without a passport and were taken in by the Russians who helped them out. I can just imagine the Russians saying to him, "Gee, we're sorry, but we can't let you and your stash of classified documents in the country because you don't have a passport." It doesn't even pass the laugh test, but it is the kind of crude lie the Russians tell. They aren't very subtle. Look at Crimea for the evidence.
Snowden makes a great foil for the FSB, and we have to give them credit for the way they have used him. They hold him up as the Spy Who Came In From the NSA, and he repeats his incredible stories with a youthful style that sounds sincere. He may have practiced them often enough to believe them. The longer he is around, the more elaborate these stories will be. He has some of the characteristics that make a good spy, and the technical savy to go with it. Just not the spy he makes himself out to be. Amazon books:
Moran is describing why she thinks Snowden was not a spy for the U.S., was never trained for the job, and was not in a position where he would have been employed that way. He makes that claim in an interview with NBC, to be aired tonight. He is a "spy want-a-be", a sad, but interesting characterization.
What is confusing about this is that Snowden likely was a spy, just not a spy for the U.S. Mike Rogers, from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, confirmed that Snowden was a spy, after all, and probably had help from the FSB. The KGB, predecessor to the FSB, was Putin's home before he came to office. The news media calls this a "revelation", which only means they hadn't even thought about it before theses two stated the obvious. We have the unusual twist of having each side in this, the Russians and the U.S. claiming Snowden was a spy, without either one making a statement about it.
Snowden is not making his claims without his Russian handlers being close by. He has a crudely crafted story of why he ended up in Russia (the State Department took my passport) that is inconsistent with history where spies have fled the country without a passport and were taken in by the Russians who helped them out. I can just imagine the Russians saying to him, "Gee, we're sorry, but we can't let you and your stash of classified documents in the country because you don't have a passport." It doesn't even pass the laugh test, but it is the kind of crude lie the Russians tell. They aren't very subtle. Look at Crimea for the evidence.
Snowden makes a great foil for the FSB, and we have to give them credit for the way they have used him. They hold him up as the Spy Who Came In From the NSA, and he repeats his incredible stories with a youthful style that sounds sincere. He may have practiced them often enough to believe them. The longer he is around, the more elaborate these stories will be. He has some of the characteristics that make a good spy, and the technical savy to go with it. Just not the spy he makes himself out to be. Amazon books:
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Bombing China
Try to imagine two cars driving into shoppers, then 5 or 6 bombs going off in quick succession. Police and private security at the stores run everywhere. Local news channels are on the scene in a few minutes; CNN shows up in the next hour and we start to see live reports, every hour for the next two months. We get to see families of the 31 who were killed and many more injured. Relatives parade by to say what nice people they were.
At the Boston Marathon two bombs killed 3 and injured 264. We got news of it for a year afterwards. At Boston sporting events, people actually sing the National Anthem. Nobody forgets, at least for now.
If we had an event like this, every other month or so, there would be Congressional hearings and senior government leaders firing questions and moving people around to get them out of the line of fire. There would be police everywhere, television and radio stories about how to survive a random attack, and legislation would set new standards for collecting information about everyone in the country. It would make 9/11 seem like a short review of counter-terrorism operations.
This is what is happening in XinJiang, China. The random killing of children and adults with knives was not sufficient to kill enough people to get the leaders to pay attention, so bombs and automobiles have picked up the pace. What they get from this kind of thing escapes most of us. Seeing a child cut to pieces is hardly the image terrorists want to show to their audience. If their was tension with Muslims in that region before, there will only be more after seeing them. The latest was in a market, a normal looking suburb, with normal looking middle-class people who shop there. [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
Terror isn't a good word for this. It doesn't strike terror unless we have a clear danger, over a period of time. I remember the feeling when people in our area started being shot in public places by a couple of whakos who were eventually caught. We were never sure what these idiots were really trying to say to us when they were arrested and went to jail. All we could think of was "look at me" which is in that 15 minutes of fame that we are all supposed to get. I sympathize with the Chinese on this one. My wife was in the corridor of the Pentagon that the airplane hit on 9/11. I remember that feeling. It was hate. It was long-term hate, that meant devoting my life to finding these folks so they could be killed by our government. I had the feeling that no matter what I did, it was not enough. They make an enemy every time they do something like this, and I hope they find justice somewhere other than a court.
At the Boston Marathon two bombs killed 3 and injured 264. We got news of it for a year afterwards. At Boston sporting events, people actually sing the National Anthem. Nobody forgets, at least for now.
If we had an event like this, every other month or so, there would be Congressional hearings and senior government leaders firing questions and moving people around to get them out of the line of fire. There would be police everywhere, television and radio stories about how to survive a random attack, and legislation would set new standards for collecting information about everyone in the country. It would make 9/11 seem like a short review of counter-terrorism operations.
This is what is happening in XinJiang, China. The random killing of children and adults with knives was not sufficient to kill enough people to get the leaders to pay attention, so bombs and automobiles have picked up the pace. What they get from this kind of thing escapes most of us. Seeing a child cut to pieces is hardly the image terrorists want to show to their audience. If their was tension with Muslims in that region before, there will only be more after seeing them. The latest was in a market, a normal looking suburb, with normal looking middle-class people who shop there. [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
Terror isn't a good word for this. It doesn't strike terror unless we have a clear danger, over a period of time. I remember the feeling when people in our area started being shot in public places by a couple of whakos who were eventually caught. We were never sure what these idiots were really trying to say to us when they were arrested and went to jail. All we could think of was "look at me" which is in that 15 minutes of fame that we are all supposed to get. I sympathize with the Chinese on this one. My wife was in the corridor of the Pentagon that the airplane hit on 9/11. I remember that feeling. It was hate. It was long-term hate, that meant devoting my life to finding these folks so they could be killed by our government. I had the feeling that no matter what I did, it was not enough. They make an enemy every time they do something like this, and I hope they find justice somewhere other than a court.
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