1. Happy New Year (by whichever calendar) to one and all. This list continues
to be a source of enjoyment and education for me and I hope my many friends on
it are safe and happy and have a great year!
2. Brian (whose comments brought to mind Arnold's line from Raw Deal "You
should not drink and post"....) B said:
> G'night and HAPPY NEW YEAR,
The irony of a Canadian commenting on Moronic Leadership goes beyond funny.
I'm a Canadian and I'd gladly trade the corrupt,
self-serving, spineless, public-trust-abusing
rat-weasel we've got for GWB. And I live
right at the edge of Ottawa, so if anyone ought to know....
3. When I worked in E911 stuff, my company (prime system integrator for the
RCMP) had a couple of programmers and some GIS types involved in developing a
car location -> map location and an
incident location -> map location (based of
ANI/ALI information returned by the E911
interfaces from various E911 systems). Myself, I wrote the protocols for our
system to handle feeds for an arbitrary number of E911 protocols (Canada, not
counting Ontario, has at least 11 I know of) in arbitrary combinations. I
wonder if anyone realized that might be patent infringing? The RCMP didn't
seem to find a problem with it, and they should have had
solicitors general/etc. to check it out. Of
course, no one may have thought to. And it may be in Canada vs. in the US.:)
On Fri, 3 Jan 2003 13:28:09 -0500, "Thomas Barclay" <kaladorn@magma.ca>
wrote:
> 1. Happy New Year (by whichever calendar) to
What, you didn't wish everyone a Happy Hogmannay? And you call yourself a
Scots descendent! *L*
> The irony of a Canadian commenting on
Well, as a Canadian transplanted to the US (northeast Louisiana, of all
places) I have to say that I haven't seen _anything_ like the corruption
in Louisiana. However, Louisiana is bad by the standards of any bureaucracy
less corrupt than, say, Colombia. (Just ask a Louisianan!)
Is there an objective source of information about corruption in government?
December's issue of _Wired_ put me on to the "Corruption Perceptions
Index". This can be found at transparency.org. The full URL is here:
http://www.transparency.org/pressreleases_archive/2002/2002.08.28.cpi.en
.html
According to Wired (Bruce Sterling, actually), "Every year, the group
[Transparency International, a German activist group] asks policy wonks
in 100 nations to report on local dirty business. The aim is to assign each
country a number on a scale of malfeasance, from 1 to 10, and rank them from
least to most corrupt." A 1 is bad (expedient) while a 10 is good
(accountable).
102 countries are now rated. The top twenty-six, in order with their
ranking, are:
9.7 Finland 9.5 Denmark 9.5 New Zealand 9.4 Iceland 9.3 Singapore 9.3 Sweden
9.0 Canada 9.0 Luxembourg 9.0 Netherlands 8.7 United Kingdom 8.6 Australia 8.5
Norway 8.5 Switzerland 8.2 Hong Kong 7.8 Austria 7.7 United States 7.5 Chile
7.3 Germany 7.3 Israel 7.1 Belgium 7.1 Japan 7.1 Spain 6.9 Ireland 6.4
Botswana 6.3 France 6.3 Portugal
The reason I post this is that I thought it would make fascinating reading for
anyone creating a Tuffleyverse bureaucracy. I think it's fair to say that the
NAC would be less corrupt than the FSE. The NSL would be close to the NAC
(maybe even a little less corrupt, or more, depending on which nations you
think would have the greatest corruption), with the ESU having more
corruption. This assumes, of course, that corruption doesn't radically change
between the various nations.
If you are curious, the bottom five nations (of the 102 tested) are:
1.7 Angola 1.7 Madagascar 1.7 Paraguay 1.6 Nigeria 1.2 Bangladesh
Notably absent from the list are dictatorial regimes and theocracies,
presumably because they either don't allow their citizens to respond to the
surveys or the bureaucrats simply mimic the "party line". There is no rating
for Iraq, Iran, or North Korea, for instance. Most of the Middle East is
missing, too.
What I've noticed moving down here to the US from Canada isn't so much a
"better/worse" situation, but a matter of differences. For the most
part, the people I've had to deal with in bureaucracy are hard working
(overworked, really), sincere folk who happen to like helping people. Of
course, I may be biased as my fiancee works for Louisiana's Medicaid office.
> --- Allan Goodall <agoodall@hyperbear.com> wrote:
> The reason I post this is that I thought it would
Heheh...
No one can rate the NRE on corruption because no one but a Greek lawyer can
figure out how their
beauracracy is _supposed_ to work. . . [1]
:P
On Fri, 3 Jan 2003 21:19:40 -0800 (PST) John Atkinson <snip>
> [1]I jest. NRE, being founded originally by merchant
And this differs from REALPOLITIK (spelling?) in what way?
Grin.
No, I don't need an answer... just jesting, too.
<VBG>
Gracias,
[quoted original message omitted]
> --- "K.H.Ranitzsch" <KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de> wrote:
> Actually, I couldn't make much sense of your mail.
Let's say instead, trade unfettered by beauracracy.
Minimal governmental regulation--hence few
opportunities for corruption.
> --- John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com> wrote:
John, why do you think you need a governmental regulation before there can be
corruption? There was no real regulation in the...
lessee, 1950s / 1960s I think it was, when Lockheed execs were
bribing foreign procurement officials to buy their fighter planes over the
competitions, but that didn't prevent an outcry
against them (and the enactment of the anti-corruption "Lockheed
Law" in the US, which we have tried to push onto other nations with limited
success) when it was discovered.
I suppose you can make the arguement that if there's no rule against it, the
person in charge of buying your equipment can
simply go with whoever pays him or her the most -- but that's
not all that likely to get you the best equipment, is it?
Hey, and we Louisianians are PROUD of our corruption, too, don't forget about
that!
(Currently residing in Virginia) Nicholas Caldwell clcaldwell@kreative.net
[quoted original message omitted]
> --- Aaron Teske <mithramuse@yahoo.com> wrote:
> John, why do you think you need a governmental
If there's no rules, you can't bribe people to look the other way when you
violate 'em.
> I suppose you can make the arguement that if there's
Ah, now military procurement (and the handful of other governmental
procurement programs, most of which don't come near military expenditures)
have a rigorous testing and evaluation phase which make it very difficult to
foist bad equipment on troops. Like I said, practically the only regulated
sector of the economy. You'd have to bribe lots and lots of people and do so
without the media getting wind of it.
Bribing people is always easy--keeping the secret
police (very efficient) AND the newsies (not so efficient, but enthusiastic)
both ignorant is never easy.
> --- John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com> wrote:
Well, sure, but rules hardly require a government to make 'em.
Every company has their own procurement/purchasing procedures,
whether written or not, to protect their own interests if nothing else (e.g.,
not paying too much for
equipment/components/whatever while their procurement decision
maker gets rich quick).
> > I suppose you can make the arguement that if there's
I don't think military was ever specified, though I suppose it may be somewhat
implied by the list. <shrug>
> have a rigorous
Not *bad* equipment. But maybe the equipment that isn't the best bang for the
buck, so to speak... even if it has more bang,
maybe it is actually more than you want/need?
But regardless of military or not, there is going to be some kind of rule,
even if it is as simple as "lowest price that meets spec wins", even if
something that is somewhat better than spec and slightly more expensive is
actually more cost effective. Of course, the problem would be if something
*isn't* more cost effective and costs more... possibly in the long run, i.e.
spares or expendables. In such imponderables are the fuzzy
math of procurement, and why rules can be a very good thing --
though, tying in with the corruption thing again, such rules are not
(obviously) always followed.
As for secret police/enthusiastic newsies, it's your background,
you can certainly run it as you'd like. ^_^ I've just had a bit
more experience recently with corruption in real world procurement than I
would like....
'Til later,
> If there's no rules, you can't bribe people to look
True, but what you're talking about is natural law where life is poor, brutal,
and short...