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In a long and thoughtful reflection on David Brooks’ bleat about public pensions, Jon admits that there is a public pension problem and maybe even a public employee salary issue. Here’s some more along those lines, too long for a comment. My main point is that the problem is structural: political arrangements, intentional and other, [...]
Archive for the ‘Public management’ Category
October 12th, 2010
October 12th, 2010
Category: City of Angels, Liberalism, Prisons and penal policy, Public management, Unions and organizing, Watching Conservatives
Perhaps despite himself, David Brooks raises some good points about public sector sustainability in an otherwise-wretched column.
October 7th, 2010
Category: Public management, Science and its methods
There are so many ways to like this story! Especially for a Californian. First, bees are a really big deal. Like apples? Nuts? No pollinators, no crop, and fruits, nuts and vegetables are half the value of US agriculture, not to mention good for you and yummy. Bee colony collapse, along with varroa mites and [...]
September 6th, 2010
Lately I have been talking to a number of policy makers in the U.S. and in other countries who are facing public sector cuts. Many of them utter words to the effect of “Even if we know a new initiative will work we can’t launch anything during a period of fiscal retrenchment”. A related sentiment [...]
August 28th, 2010
Category: Public management
If rude clerks at the DMV “undermine democracy,” then aren’t the cable companies an argument for socialism?
August 27th, 2010
“She was a fat, resentful woman. The kind who is always behind the counter at the DMV when you need to renew your registration” –P.J. O’Rourke, A Parliament of Whores “There are days when we don’t let the line move at all” –Patty and Selma, The Simpsons I generally ignored the protestors with the “Obama-is-a-Radical-Muslim-with-a-crazy-Baptist-preacher-in-Chicago” [...]
August 18th, 2010
Category: Education policy, Public management
The Los Angeles Unified School District has kicked the hornet’s nest of teaching quality assurance by proposing to publish a list of six thousand teachers’ students’ gains and losses on a statewide test in English and math. The exercise is considerable because it turns out performance is not random but for many teachers, strongly correlated [...]
July 17th, 2010
Category: Affordable Care Act, Public management
The National HIV/AIDS strategy was released on Tuesday. The plan deserved greater appreciation and scrutiny than it got.
July 6th, 2010
The Berwick recess appointment will be evaluated through a partisan lens. It’s deeper than that. Too many obviously qualified people are caught in the confirmation process. I hope Democratic and Republican presidents do recess appointments more often.
