The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: Maybe the Grass isn't Always Greener

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...

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Maybe the Grass isn't Always Greener

In my browsing this evening I stumbled another one of those rankings from Forbes. This time it was America's Fastest Dying Cities. For those of you that don't want to click the link, here's the spoiler:

Canton, OH
Youngstown, OH
Flint, MI
Scranton, PA
Dayton, OH
Cleveland, OH
Springfield, MA
Buffalo, NY
Detroit, MI
and of course...
Charleston, WV

But whither Pittsburgh? I, and I'm sure many of my 7 readers, are shocked that Pittsburgh isn't included. I mean, we suck, right? Right?

It would seem, to me anyway, that either we're actually not doing as bad as we could be or that the Forbes rating is off.

Of course, saying that we're better than Flint, MI or (God help us) Cleveland is probably not exactly what our civic boosters want to run in trade periodicals.

COME TO PITTSBURGH: WE'RE NOT BUFFALO

2 comments:

Sherry Pasquarello said...: hooray for us!; 8:54 AM
The Honourable Husband said...: I think, ADB, that Pittsburgh troughed too soon. The nadir was about 1988, right?

As always, the 'Burgh is ahead of its time.; 9:41 AM

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The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat

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Thursday, August 07, 2008

Maybe the Grass isn't Always Greener

2 comments:

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