lol “donations” for a virtual inauguration
https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1339264210325413890?s=21
https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1339361105563496451?s=21
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Election 2020: The battle between racist shambly incompetent klep/corporatocracy vs tenuously less racist more efficient klep/corporatocracy.
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Speaking personally, I think my metrics would be things like:
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Ratio of support for public transit vs. just “build moar roads.”
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A budget that allows for really building useful next generation infrastructure not just keeping our existing bridges from falling down.
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Trying to push back on some of the regulatory capture at sub agencies like the FAA (where, for, example, from my outsiders eye, it seems like Boeing got to drive way too much of the 737-Max approval process and investigation)
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Being a good spokesperson for the idea that infrastructure is an investment, not a line item (an area where I think Pete will be genuinely good).
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A willingness to study best practices from other countries and disseminate them here. As others have pointed out, DOT has little control over day to day operations in local areas, but they often provide investment in long term capital projects. Why is it so much more expensive to build a mile of subway in New York than in Paris or Rome? Maybe the reasons are all locally contingent, but, to the extent there are federal issues involved, maybe DOT can help out and remove some roadblocks.
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And, try, as best as possible, to incorporate notions of sustainability into investment decisions. Can we help convert bus fleets to greener technology? Encourage projects that lead to in fill development instead of encouraging sprawl?
[Some of this is probably too technocratic, but I’m a wonky technocrat at heart…]
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The difference between managing 5,000 and 50,000 people is marginal. It’s nothing like the difference between 500 and 5,000 for example.
He didn’t manage 5000 people as Mayor of SB but carry on.
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Unions seem to like the pick.
https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/530437-industry-unions-hail-buttigieg
Pretty much all of those were in his infrastructure plan during the primary. Funny you mention the foreign best practices thing, I just listened to Pete’s podcast with Hillary (he got the news from Joe as they were recording) and she was talking about that as well.
Question for you because I genuinely don’t know…which department would be concerned with expanding rural broadband access? Commerce?
edited: FCC duh. Why did I forget they existed?
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I don’t think this is true. Organizational complexities tend to exponentiate so a 50k vs 5k org might tend to be 100 times more complex, not 10 times more complex. With each step up in order of magnitude the leadership job is dramatically different, IMO.
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For the record I think Pete is better than roughly 85% of Democrats. That isn’t saying much but he is far from the biggest problem. I’m also tired of talking about him so going to leave it at that.
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I would guess it’s a couple thousand. I tried googling but couldn’t find an answer.
The FCC was responsible for Obama phones.
The entire city appears to have around 3,000 employees.
Why do you act like it would matter if he did? We get it, you don’t like him. Can we move on or move all this Pete shit into its own shit on Pete thread?
I think it clearly would matter if he did and more importantly people should be accurate. South Bend is a tiny town. I agree with you re:Pete and literally just posted that I was quitting.
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In my experience at a certain level organizations have the infrastructure in place so adding more employees becomes nominal. There are certain size thresholds that represent real changes in complexity because existing systems can’t handle the bureaucracy. Those jumps are at small sizes.
Subject change! Jen Granholm as DoE. This one is meh to me. I wish it had been someone more face-forward on renewables…or someone with some experience in nuclear energy/weapons.
South Bend is not a tiny town, lol. Oxford, OH is a tiny town. Ramona, CA is a tiny town.
It would mainly be the FCC, an independent agency not under a specific Cabinet department, but some, like Agriculture, may have minor spending on rural broadband.
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Yeah that has been my experience as well. My current employer has 50,000 employees world wide and the management dynamics are that its a constant struggle to keep the org from imploding in on itself. As you say, its the bureaucracy.
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Compared to Rick Parry a nice bobble head doll would be a massive improvement.
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I don’t think it is knowing “how Washington works”, but knowing how bureaucracy in general work and how specific agencies work. While “deep state” conspiracy theories are silly, these agencies composed of mostly civil servants who get their jobs apolitically do have some sort of inertia.
Ways that Cabinet secretaries can be bad include being corrupt and spending a lot of time fighting with the people beneath them. Biden probably wants people who won’t choose to pick these fights, especially for ideological reasons.