The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: Economic Duhvelopment

The Rules of Bureaucracy

Rule #O: "The Rules of Bureaucracy are mutable, non-canonical, non-ordinal, and contradictory, except in the cases where they are not."
Rule #1: "Document everything you do; if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen."
Rule #2 [The Sixty Minutes Rule]: "Never do anything that would cause Ed Bradley, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Steve Croft, Leslie Stahl, or even Andy Rooney to persue you down a hallway with a camera crew."
Rule #3: "Nothing Simple is Ever Easy"
Rule #4: "It's about the money; follow the money."
Rule #5: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Rule #6: "Politics is the enemy of good government."
Rule #7: "The biggest detriment to public service is the public."
Rule #8: "The second biggest detriment to public service is the service."
Rule #9: "There's a reason; there's ALWAYS a reason."
Rule #10: "The Law is a harsh mistress: The rigorous and exacting application of which can benefit of society when used correctly to advance good policy and block bad, and be the bane of society when used incorrectly to advance bad policy and block good."
Rule #11: "Public service often involves waking up in the morning, opening up the newspaper, and discovering that someone, somewhere out there thinks that you're a dickhead."
Rule #12: "No one really knows what you do."
Rule #13 [Luke's Rule]: "No one ever acts like the bastard they really are."
Rule #14: "Bureaucracy endures."
Rule #15: "The longer you work in bureaucracy, the more Catch-22 resembles non-fiction."
Rule #16: "Politicians are not smarter than you."
Rule #18: "Money is not created equal."
Rule #19: "Mediocrity is normalcy."
Rule #17: "Within any bureaucratic structure, resources (e.g. people, money, knowledge, etc.) are not distributed uniformly."
Rule #20: "Don't assume a fiduciary liability without a committed resource allocation."
Rule #21: "If you do your job and obey the law, they can't reasonably fire you."
Rule #22: "The Budget will always be wrong."
Rule #23: "Always sign in blue."
Rule #24: "A Bureaucrat must be able to explain and justify his/her actions to laymen without resorting to the phrase 'because the Rules say so.'"
Rule #25: "Never voluntarily relinquish control of an original document."
Rule #26: "Sometimes you just have to say 'Screw the rules'"
Rule #27: "Change sucks."
Rule #28: "Sometimes the answer is 'No.'"
Rule #29: "It is very easy to make difficult decisions when no one has a clue what's going on."
Rule #30: "If you hang around long enough, eventually you will become an expert in something."
Rule #31: "Data, technology, and automatic processes can never completely supplant human interaction."
Rule #32: "Cover thine own ass."
Rule #33: "It's not real until it has its own acronym."
Rule #34:There is nothing more dangerous than an elected, resourceful idiot.
Rule #35: It will always take longer than expected.
Rule #36: Coming Soon...

Monday, January 31, 2005

Economic Duhvelopment

OK, for you Economic Development yinzers "aht" there, the big announcement previously anticipated here by Fast Eddie Rendell was a big Turkey.

From the Post-Gazette:

Citizens Bank and Gov. Ed Rendell announced today the bank will be adding 500 new jobs at its call centers across the state, 250 of them at its Pittsburgh headquarters on William Penn Place, Downtown.

Ralph J. Papa, president of Citizens Bank's western region, said the bank expects to fill more than 200 of the local positions by August. The jobs will range from supervisory to entry level positions and will have mostly evening hours, he said.

The bank also expects to provide additional training to 1,525 current employees. Rendell said the Governor's Action Team that oversees business expansion projects has agreed to provide Citizens with $400,000 in an Opportunity Grant and $475,000 in Job Creation Tax Credits to support the new jobs.

Yawn.

Jobs: GOOD! Call Centers: Bad!

Call Centers are low value added jobs for the region. Take a few dozen people out of their MickeyD's uniforms, place them in front of phones in a giant warehouse and BOOM!, insta-Call Center. Sure, they produce jobs, but they don't produce wealth generating jobs. Additionally, there's nothing intrinsic about the Pittsburgh region that would stop Citizens from outsourcing these jobs to India.

This is not smart Economic Development; this is ass-backwards smokestack chasing. [Try to shake THAT imagery out of your head.]

The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat

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Monday, January 31, 2005

Economic Duhvelopment

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