iPandora

Chicago has enjoyed the dubious distinction of having one of the worst United States Postal Service systems. And you wanna know what the Postmaster General had to say about it?

US Postmaster General Jack Potter, responding in 2007 to findings that Chicago’s USPS had the worst reliability records said…

…that some managers created the problem by cutting costs.

“They obviously had expectations that were beyond what they were able to achieve and as a result we saw a decline in service performance,” Potter said.

Union leaders representing mail clerks and carriers said the cuts have created an environment in which managers put a lot of pressure on them.

This may well be an out of context quote taken by CBS2 to show their preferred view on the story. But I don’t think that is too likely.

The lack of business sense is appalling, though coming from someone who has worked in the money hole that is the USPS since the ’70′s, it’s not that surprising.

The two main points of the article are that cutting costs necessarily hurts efficiency and effectiveness and that unions and unionized employees don’t like an environment where they’re pressured to work.

Successful businesses require profitability. Profit is achieved by cutting costs, raising productivity, and otherwise adjusting the variants you have control of to maximize the return for any investment.

To dismiss, out of hand, one of the primary methods of improving profitability is to have bought into the idea that any problem can be surmounted if you simply throw enough money, real or imagined, at it. An idea all to prevalent in government.

Regarding workers experiencing a pressure to work, yes, there can be inordinate expectation to go beyond what is reasonable. Many businesses have environments that encourage, rather strongly, overtime and weekends and hours beyond the normal and already codified restrictions. But laws already exist that protect workers’ 8-hr day and 5-day work week. Reasonably safe work environments are already required and discrimination is illegal as well. So what’s this kvetching over feeling pressure to work?

Government-union collusion is one of many things that must end in order to starve and shrink the government back to reasonable and helpful levels. Unions know they’ve already extended their requests beyond the reasonable and admirable into the insane and obscene, and they know the best way to ensure their own survival is to give loads of money to people who can legislate their life-support.

Be careful, those who can legislate can also legislate. And what is given can be taken away.

Jack Potter ought to be required to work in the real world, starting with flipping burgers at McDonalds, and then being a middle manager who is required to actually show something for all his effort. Then, and only then, should he be welcome back at the head of the USPS.

And the unions? They should innovate somewhere besides DC.

The wife and son and I attended the Taste of Chicago on Saturday. Beautiful hot day with crowds of people and crappy food.

Yes. The Chicago, for all the great food you serve from the myriad restaurants lining your streets, your Taste was garbage.

Note to the Vendors: The purpose of the Taste-size portions is to attract people to your restaurant. You want people to want more.

I didn’t want any more of anything I tried.

The most interesting thing about the cheeseburger was the bun, it was substantial and could’ve supported quite the filling. Too bad all I got for my trouble was a pitifully thin patty and some american “cheese”. Oh, the pickles were OK too.

The Japanese dumpling’s flavors were bland, thankfully the sauce wasn’t. But it was poorly cooked and the filling was an uninteresting lump of some unrecognizable sludge.

The jerk chick with red beans and rice was watery and the flavor had been lost long ago.

I like rubbing shoulder with hot and sweaty and frustrated and happy and all the other people thronging the streets. And it’s highly unlikely anything will change because you’re making some real money at the Taste. But, if you want me to come back every year and not just the years I have someone new to show the Chicago way of doing things (poorly), I suggest you act like you care about the food you put out.

Real American

Motor Trend magazine held a head-to-head between the V6 and V8 engine versions of the Camaro, Challenger, and Mustang, along with the Hyundai Genesis coupe.

It is odd enough and perhaps a sign of where we’ve come to in globalization that the Genesis coupe even shows up in this list alongside traditional American pony cars. And even odder that the Genesis took a solid second place in the rankings. It did not make first in any individual judge’s rankings, but was second according to 6 of 8, and the other two ranked it third.

My heart beat happy that the new Mustang took top honors. Unanimously.

A big and hearty “Take That!” to the Dodge and (Lying) Government Motors cars.

Now if only Ford would fix it’s website. It takes at least 6 clicks to get to the Mustang page. That’s unacceptable web design.

Real Chicagoan

President Obama is a firm believer in the efficacy of words. Some of his detractors are too. I can’t fault the facts of the following article, but I can sure wish he’d not taken the time to consult a Thesaurus and find the oddest words to convey his meaning.

Who the hell does Barack Obama, this morally preening, arrogant hypocrite, think he is? His vacuous, demagogic shtick about helping the “people” fight “the powerful” is getting so old from his lips, and already was so hackneyed even before he expropriated it, that it’s a miracle that even he himself can say it anymore without getting nauseated by his own oleaginous triteness.

Obama spewed the same old effluvia Monday when introducing Elena Kagan as his nominee for the Supreme Court. Let us count the inanities and dishonesties in his introductory remarks:

I know, who am I to talk.

Really, I think I’m just jealous he knew how to use “oleaginous” and “effluvia”.

Coming soon to I, Pandora, new, bigger, better, shinier, longer words that mean the same thing as words you already know!

Still, the article has it’s truth: Why get your hopes up in this guy who hasn’t accomplished anything but being the most trusted untrustworthy person in the US in the last hundred years?

President Obama is interested in power. He’s truly an idealist, so he seeks power for his ideas, and is willing, very willing, to sacrifice personal power if it means the success of his ideas. The problem is that he’s caught hold of all the wrong ideas.

So check out Obama’s Hackneyed Hypocrisy.

"No Wal-Mart in Chicago"

For y’all who don’t know, Chicagoans must deal with, among other things, a city hall in the pocket of labor unions. One of the results of this is that only very few Walmarts are allowed to be built within the city limits.

As noted before, Walmart saves money for people in neighborhoods nearby by creating pressure to lower prices in surrounding stores as well as allows people to choose healthier food options because of the greater strength of their dollars.

Despite Chicago’s efforts, though, Walmart continues to try to build more stores here, and city hall just decided they could get Walmart where it hurts while pretending to be for the “little guy”.

Responding to one of the latest applications, Chicago said Walmart could build their store if they paid an artificially inflated minimum wage higher than the minimum wage for the rest of the employers in Chicago.

Lesson one in hurting people: make it hard for employers to hire people.

Walmart called Chicago on their scheme, and one can’t help but grin at this call:

Rolando Rodriguez, vice president and regional general manager for Wal-Mart, said the company would be willing to swallow a Chicago wage mandate under certain conditions.

“If there is a minimum wage ordinance that applies to everybody, and every business in Chicago is held to that ordinance, then the answer would be yes,” Rodriguez said Thursday. “There’s no need for Wal-Mart to be singled out. Why is it all other retailers are allowed to build in Chicago and we are not?”

Answer that fat cats and charlatan pols in Chicago City Hall.

You raise the wage for all employers in the city and half of them will go out of business. The other half will hate your guts.

Nobody will higher full-time employees because there’s no way they’d agree to pay benefits and full-time taxes on top of that exorbitant wage.

Why so sad, Mr. President?

Dear Mr. President,

Today is probably not your best day. After the rush of the election, the thrill of victory, the surge of support, and the adulation of the petty tyrants at the UN, your poll numbers have begun falling, your policies are gaining little traction, your adoring masses are getting disillusioned with the continuing economic problems and high unemployment, and today you lost the Olympics.

Failed in the first round, no less.

Booted.

Kicked out.

Epic fail.

But buck up, Mr President. Welcome to the club of people not everybody likes.

Most of the rest of us have been here for quite a while. My own tale of arriving in this party is a tale of my growing up. The main differences are that I learned it by getting lost in Italy at the age of 25, and I’m now content to stay with this group.

You’re in your 40′s now and have had little in your past to prepare you for this rejection. You’ve been adored and coddled and had plenty of friends to pad your parties for far longer than I ever did.

Fair weather friends are pretty nice when fair weather has followed you for 40 years. But the clouds blow in, and today you found yourself out on your butt.

Too bad your pal Ahmedinejad wasn’t heading the IOC today.

Except he wouldn’t have been any nicer.

The point is, Mr. President, you must accept the fact that not everybody can and will like you. And you can’t follow the simpleton notion that those who disagree with your or don’t vote for you are evil.

I’m neither evil, racist, nor a pygmy. But we  disagree in more ways than not.

So what is to be done?

Once you accept, as I have, that some people just don’t want to be part of your crowd, you must move on. You find the people who do want to hang out with you, and you hang out with them.

Or you put away the megalomaniac glasses, and you find a group that you want to be a part of, not because they like you, but because they are worthwhile.

If you find a group that likes you, they are most likely fakers and liars.

But when you find a group that, regardless of their feelings for you, are worth being a part of, you’ve joined yourself to something bigger than yourself and found your identity in something outside yourself.

Champions are quickly forgotten who fight for themselves and their own name and honor. The ones we remember fought for something bigger and more worthwhile.

After all, you’ll be here on this earth probably not much more than 40 more years. At the most. And if you were only fighting for yourself, who will care at that point. We’ll put you 6 feet under just like everybody else.

Now, the important thing is to decide who to join yourself to. I’d submit that the fact that America’s Exceptionalism is a mighty fine thing to champion. I’d cheer you on for that. And hell would probably freeze over.

I labor under no assumptions you’ll change, though I hope God will see fit to direct your heart in such a way.

So welcome to the club, Mr. President. Enjoy your stay.

I hope you’re not planning on leaving soon.

UPDATE: Morgen from Verum Serum quotes BBC News’ Adam Brookes:

(Obama’s) legendary powers of persuasion will be said to have failed him, though in reality it will be Chicago’s bid that failed him.

And VelvetHammer from Ironic Surrealism gets snarky:

The entire planet rejects Obama

Tis a pity, the Obama, his bitter half Michelle and the Oprah shilled, sacrificed and begged for the Chicago Olympics bid to no avail.

From the Mud Monster file:

Roland Burris (yup, that guy) “failed” to disclose a lot of stock options. He plans on amending his mandatory financial disclosure report to the Senate to reflect the fact he was caught. Again.

I believe that all people, regardless of race, are capable of being a moral as any others. Therefore, they are all held to the same moral standard.

Therefore, it is not racism for me to state that Senator Burris is an immoral, lying, cheating, conniving, duplicitous, ne’er-do-well who I wouldn’t trust with my money or my country.

In the Blood-Chilling and the We Told You categories:

Obama says stopping pointless procedures for terminally ill people can help cut costs.

Who decides what’s pointless?

It isn’t cold-hearted Republicans trying to take kill Grandma. It’s the Liberal Ideology and it’s domestic partners, Euthanasia. Their love child, President Obama is their Messiah.

In the It’s None Of Their Business category:

“Consumer protection” groups are encouraging new government bureaucracies to oversee hidden costs and predatory behavior on the part of evil corporations trying to stiff us for out money. The Democrats love it, of course. The Republicans don’t, of course.

The Reuters headline has more truth that it probably realizes itself:

Personal Finance: Don’t wait for Congress, be your own regulator

Concise yet cogent argument to the plain fact that we are responsible for ourselves.

The real question shouldn’t be if the government is going to look out for us in this way, too. It should be, why aren’t you using the tools available to you, the glut of information waiting to be perused, to make yourself as knowledgeable as you need to be regarding your own financial situation?

Forget the government, I’ve got the Internet!

From the Why Can’t We Get This Right file:

Hugh Hewitt posts a letter from an anonymous ad exec regarding the dearth of creativity emanating from the conservative movement.

I agree whole-heartedly with the ad exec.

While I love the witty yet pithy videos on PJTV (yes, watch that video, it’s great), I’ll admit most people I’d like to convince of their accuracy of the philosophy they espouse would be bored by them.

Maybe I should take up video editing? I’d have to revise my vocabulary. A lot.

And finally, from the Here It Goes Again and Will We Ever Learn and It’s Obvious They Just Want The Money files:

Fannie and Freddie (remember them?) are being “encouraged” to offer mortgages to high-risk and low-income borrowers again.

AGAIN!?!?!?

Good night, and keep laughing.

Burris is a crook. Whodathunkit?

And a liar, of the worst kind. Pretentiously hiding behind his squeaky clean image and claiming he’d never talked to Blagojevich about favors that resulted in his appointment to the Senate. Santimoniously sermonizing ad nauseum about how he was about the people’s business and wouldn’t allow sordid speculation sway his resolve.

There’s no sordid speculation here and that sactimonious sermonizing can go right back down the vile gullet it emerged from to add it’s putrid mass to the seething stench that inhabits that man’s soul.

Just a question, an honest one here: knowing the FBI had recorded phone conversations and in all likelihood had him incriminating himself with incontravertible proof, how did Burris walk the halls of Congress with his debonaire smile? Was  his conscience eating him at all? Or is his corruption so complete that he’s quelled all better things within him?

Oh, and now he’s “torn” over helping Blagojevich.

This much is true: as a parent we want our child to feel bad about doing wrong, not about being caught.

Burris is feeling bad about being caught. His emotional development is very likely so incredibly stunted it would take a redemptive work in his life to make him feel grief over his actual wrong.

So throw the Senator out already.

Judge Sotomayor has lots of things going for her: Obama likes her, and… Obama thinks she’ll do a good job.

Why?

A significant number of her decisions have been reversed, and of those upheld, her arguments have been faulted by superior judges. This indicates a consistency only in fallacy and not in skilled jurisprudence.

Reading through a list of Sotomayor decisions, one finds very quickly she is anti-business, pro-union,  and pro-regulation.

She believes business is out to hurt people.

She believes unions are completely good and no bad thing can come from them.

She believes generally that government knows best, especially when the right kind of people run government.

One thing conspicuously absent from her beliefs is a belief in the rule of law and the supremacy of law over all men equally.

It’s no unfair fear tactic to quote her (from the NY Times):

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life

Would a white male judge saying a version of that phrase last any longer than a water drop on a hot iron skillet? Of course not, and for good reason. There’s no place for preference or opinion in the law.

Justice is supposed to be blind.

Sotomayor, in her arrogance and conceit, proudly claims her judgement issued with her eyes of justice wide open and uncovered is best.

It may indeed her best judgement, but it’s not the judgement we require of those occupying the highest chairs of justice in our land.

When the most powerful man in the world says something, anything, it carries a significantly greater weight than if Joe Schmoe on the corner says even exactly the same thing.

An account executive or a cable repair man can joke about their kids schools closing when a little ice accumulates and it’s just that, a joke.

The President of the United States makes a joke about the weak populents of Washington DC relative to the hardy Chicago stock, and it means something far greater.

You can imagine the calls that went out when the heads of the exclusive private school the Obama girls attend heard our President’s words:

“My children’s school was canceled today, because of what? Some ice. As my children pointed out, in Chicago school is never canceled.”

That’s the way to win friends and influence people, for sure.

I’m sure there was no malice aforethought in the Presidents jab, but even the lightest of touches from the big stick of the President of the United States of America will floor many, many people.

I’m afraid what will occur when he makes an off-hand comment regarding a foreign country or head of state.

Besides, Chicagoans herd their kids off to school every day regardless of the weather to give the kids plausible deniability when the parents are hauled into court on racketeering and corruption charges.

At first blush, the Arne guy is rather interesting.

Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of Education seems, by all counts, to be willing to make hard choices and push hard policies for the strengthening of the education system.

Pushing past all the arguments (which I tend to agree with) that education is not mandated by the Constitution as a responsibility of the Federal Government, we have what we have, and we must work with it at the same time we work to change it.

The newspapers seemed to be a little less rosy about Arne than for some of the other Obama appointees. And now they’re complaining.

What first perked my ears was when I read in the Chicago Sun-Times yesterday:

(Obama) praised Duncan’s shutdown of failing schools, charter school expansions, push for better teachers and pay-for-performance experiment that rewards teachers and principals for student test gains.

And this further down:

Chicago Teachers Union President Marilyn Stewart conceded Tuesday that she has not had a “love fest” with Duncan, who drew union ire by closing failing schools, leaving teachers scrambling to find new jobs. But Stewart said she also has been able to work with him.

Anyone whose credits include shutting down schools and drawing the ire of a Union President is probably a real reformer.

The Globe and Mail this morning hit the nail on the head:

The former head of the Chicago Teachers Union has condemned Barack Obama’s choice of Arne Duncan as education secretary – proof positive that the president-elect chose wisely.

And then this morning the gloves came off.

The Sun-Times this morning says teachers at the Chicago Public Schools board meeting were less than enthused about Arne:

With the school closing hit list due next month, teachers charged that CPS charter schools — which have replaced some closed schools — are “destroying” neighborhood schools by luring away high-scoring kids. Meanwhile, they said, neighborhood schools are being forced to absorb low-scoring kids.

This is a false argument. It’s like the kid blaming his mom when he drops his cake on the floor.

There are not rules precluding, preventing, any school from using the resources available to it to do a better job than it is doing.

It is a poor manager, superintendent, or principle who thinks because they can’t get more money they can’t improve.

In the real world, one has to improve in order to get more money. “In order” is a phrase of relative position, the process or action before the “in order” generally has to occur earlier in time than the result afterwards.

In fact, principles who complain when Arne encourage and facilitated the firing of poor performers are the worst sort of ingrates around. Our children are at stake, not your favorite pet teacher.

If the schools are so bad that people prefer to take their children out and find alternative and superior methods of instruction, shouldn’t that encourage those failing schools to reexamine their methods and seek to do better? Apparently not to some.

The Union mindset of entitlement has become ingrained so deeply in the public school system in America that someone with the guts to buck the protectionism and croneyism so common in the union is a breath of fresh air indeed.

Kudos to Obama for this selection.

And they were singing: Bye, bye miss American pie…

Yesterday the US automakers, the UAW, and the US government failed to reach an agreement that could have secured a bailout for the “Big 3″. GM is consulting with bankruptcy lawyers. Chrysler is considering selling itself. Ford is apparently mostly OK and will survive with little change.

Senate Republicans and several Democrats followed their constituents calls and stood up to another free money day for American business.

I don’t believe Darwinian Biological Evolution is likely have occurred but there is scant proof indeed than anything besides a Darwinian approach to business is dangerous to liberty and allows for bloat and growth of government both in the breadth of responsibility and the expectations of the populace. The dying ought to be allowed to die to make room for new and fresh ideas.

It is not a closely held secret, the fact the UAW does more harm to GM than it does good for its members.

The entitlement mentality of many die-hard union members I know of is something to behold. I make an honest wage for a job I truly enjoy. I’m expected to contribute to my insurance costs and my employer does as well. I’m given the choice which benefits I wish to make use of, and I have a marginal cost for each one. But for each additional cost, my employer also contributes amounts and so while I’m paying more (or taking home less in each paycheck) I’m actually earning more. The benefits are delayed but there nonetheless.

The union workers I know are decent people, no worse nor better than many others I know. However, they have become used to two paradigms at least which are either wrong or detrimental. They are used to a conflicting relationship between themselves and the management and they are used to a level of coddling by their employers at the behest of the Union.

The relationship of the employer to the employee ought to be one of shared and communicated goals and observed ability and process communication and refinement and achievement recognition. This is admittedly an optimal goal, but it is not unattainable and for it’s optimal nature it ought not be dismissed.

The Union infrastructure destroys both directions of communication necessary to the successful and profitable enterprise. By setting up a default adversarial relationship between the average workers and the management, with the workers via their Union trying to get more and more of the company ‘pie’ for themselves with deeper and longer guarantees of remuneration and the managers trying to get concessions and extra work from the increasingly insulated employees.

When you have cases where GM has shut down a factory and is still paying full wages and benefits to thousands of people there is something obviously wrong.

You may say that GM owes it’s employees something: I would get severance if I was fired, but the idea is to make me WANT to get a new job. Paying me as much as I made previously as part of some inactive workforce is sound business sense only to those without sense or with an incredibly skewed set of priorities.

Now that, directly because of the UAW’s actions, GM is in free-fall and will likely file bankruptcy, they will be firing a lot of people. There will be thousands fewer jobs. People will be in REAL hurt. Good union people too. And the UAW will be unable to to anything about it.

GM will be restructured and without the UAW in their shops.

Congressmen were quoted saying that if the UAW had only agreed to wage cuts they would have been able to salvage the bailout. Thank God they did not.

Greed and avarice are light labels for the UAW.

I will rise again…

But look out.

Barack Obama will be president soon, and the unions are virtually guaranteed that federal law will be changed to allow “card check” which will set the bar for unionizing agonizingly low. With public votes, strong arming and union thug pressure will thrive and the UAW will be able to unionize the Toyota and Honda factories.

So they’re not dead. They know their payday is coming soon.

If you don’t know Chicago politics you don’t know that corruption is the norm, and the appearance of honesty is a closely honed art. Unions run Chicago arm in arm with the Democrat political machine. They’ve delivered Obama to the White House and they are expecting a high return on investment.

My union friends have a problem, they refuse to see the forest for the trees. They are used to the safety and coddling in benefits they receive because of the Unions work, but they refuse to acknowledge their accepting the benefits of the Unions come at such a price.

Unions served their purpose, and in some cases they may still have  a valid place. Federal law for the most part has codified the reasonable purposes of the Union. But Unions are about power, and their continued presence in America is without merit.

The internet and the vast web of information and advocacy outside of the Union are quite capable of keeping accountability within the workplace without the need for the stultifying and parasitic presence of the Union.

Until the UAW dies, American industry will fail.