The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: From the "What are you preparing?! You're always preparing! Just go!" Department

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, March 04, 2010

From the "What are you preparing?! You're always preparing! Just go!" Department

This headlinein the Trib struck me:

Pittsburgh prepares to warn residents about possible flooding

But I don't think it's nearly as bad as the Mayor Luke quote in the P-G article:

"A flood's not coming anytime soon, but you need to be prepared, to start preparing today..."

Remember: both Custer and Von Schlieffen had "plans"; perhaps they should have planned their planning a little better.

Personally, I sit on the Committee for the Planning of Recommendations to Plan Recommendations on Planning. We've decided that we can't meet on Thursdays.

5 comments:

MH said...: If Moltke wouldn't have played around with things, the Schlieffen Plan probably would have worked.; 7:32 PM
Anonymous said...: Moltke did tinker with Count Schleiffen's plans. But we still aren't sure if the Count's plan, properly executed, would have prevailed. Except that Patton used a portion of that Plan to get to the Saar, when he pivoted around the bottom of France and the German left flank. So that part worked. Depending on Russia to mobilize at a slumberly rate is the same mistake Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler all made within a century and a half. This much is true: Never bet against Russian winter, especially during the "Little Ice Age"; 11:20 AM
MH said...: Patton was going in the opposite direction.

The Kaiser failed because France was too hard to beat. Moltke's original plan was the one that relied most on Russia being slow to mobilize. And the Kaiser did actually beat Russia.; 8:43 AM
Ms. Monongahela, Ms. Chief Editor said...: 安...辛苦了！祝福你在各個方面都愈來愈好, too!; 7:51 PM
Bram Reichbaum said...: I think I can speak for all of us when I say we're all awaiting seeing your "list".; 10:42 PM

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Thursday, March 04, 2010

From the "What are you preparing?! You're always preparing! Just go!" Department

5 comments:

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