Outsourcing Government

I applied for Social Security and Medicare last year, just before leaving the country. My Medicare card was sent to my old address and was not forwarded to my sister’s home in Arizona (perhaps it’s not supposed to be).

No big deal – I couldn’t use Medicare where I was anyway.

So I'm back to the States now and I called SS yesterday to ask about the card. No problem, they say, they will send a replacement card.

I should have it, they tell me, in about thirty days. Thirty freaking days to mail me a card!?! Are they nuts?

I spent a major part of my working life in BPO companies that handled paperwork processing (among other functions) for major manufacturers’ marketing/advertising programs.

We would get invoices from retailers who had advertised or promoted our clients’ products. We would check the invoices and documentation to ensure that the promotion was run in compliance with plan, that the amount charged was reasonable, that the retailer had bought enough of the product to justify the payment, and other factors. If all was in order, we would cut a check and mail it. If all was not in order, we would send out an explanation of why the invoice was not being paid or paid in a lesser amount.

Our promise to our clients was that all this would be done within five working days of the receipt of the invoice. We mostly kept this promise – at peak seasons we would might slip to seven or eight days.

And it takes the government about twenty ‘working’ days to mail out a simple card? What the hell are they doing with their time? (I suspect I don’t want to know the answer to that question). If the government were to outsource this function, it could be done in about one-fourth the time for probably less than half the cost.

But of course that will never happen.

Ho Hum -- Manila Airport Is the World's Worst. So What's New?

I recall reading a commentary that described the Clinton Administration’s technique for dealing with bad news as:

It’s not true
It’s not true
It’s not true
It’s old news

Others have done the same of course, so I’m not trying to pick on the Clintons. I was merely reminded of it by this news story from the Manila Bulletin, which reports that a travel website had rated Manila’s airport as the worst in the world. Again.

But a Malacañang official shrugged off the news as old hat while saying that government is moving to improve the facilities. 

“This is not the first time na may ganoong comment. This is not something new,” said Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda. 

Efforts are already being made since the NAIA terminal 1 was tagged as the worst airport in the world in 2011, Lacierda said. 

“Things are being done to improve the facilities of NAIA 1,” Lacierda said, noting that multi-awarded furniture designer Kenneth Cobonque was among those experts tapped to innovate NAIA 1.

‘NAIA’ refers to the airport’s full name: Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

Of course, attacking the news as old does nothing to address why two years of supposed changes have done nothing to improve the airport’s ratings from customers.

“When selecting an airport to declare as the “worst”, travelers were asked to consider the four C’s: comfort, conveniences, cleanliness and customer service,” the website said. 

NAIA was rated the worst for comfort, amenities, and ‘overall experience’.

Here are what the survey said are the world’s ten worst airports:

• Manila NAIA (Terminal 1)
• Bergamo (Milan)
• Calcutta
• Islamabad
• Paris Beauvais
• Chennai
• Frankfurt Hahn
• Mumbai
• Rome Fiumicino
• Los Angeles

Other than Manila, I’ve also been in Chennai (this is the Indian city once known as Madras, in case you’re having a hard time identifying it; I did, the first time I traveled there: “You want me to go to Chennai? Never heard of it”) and of course LAX. Both are terrible, but I would agree that NAIA is worse than either.

Silly Question

If you were a high-ranking executive of a corporation, and the CEO put you in charge of a major new-product launch, and you screwed it up really, really badly – you’d expect to be canned, right?

So why does Kathleen Sibelius still have a job?

Oh, that’s right – she works for the government, and nobody in government is held accountable for anything.

Back in the USA

I’m in the US (more specifically, in Oak Park, Illinois) for the rest of the year – I’ll be spending time here in the Chicago area and in Phoenix. Early next year, I’ll be heading down to Ecuador for a year or so.

In the meantime:

Why Eat at McDonald’s When Overseas?

I had a Big Mac in Narita (the Tokyo airport) Tuesday, and I eat fairly often when overseas at McDonald’s (or sometimes other US fast-feeders, though McD is by far most prevalent). I think I probably eat at such places more often (proportionally) when overseas than I do at home – though that’s not saying much, since I don’t eat a lot of Big Macs in the States.

I was hardly alone at the Narita McDonald’s. It was pretty busy, with probably about half the customers, while I was there, being Americans or perhaps Europeans.

Some people, I know, strongly disapprove of this practice. To which I say, “Stuff it.” OK, OK, I’ll back off on that. Some of those disapproving folks condemn McDonald’s in general and are of the Nanny mentality who think that no one else should be allowed to do anything of which Nanny disapproves. They are the ones who deserve that 'stuff it'.

But others feel that eating a Big Mac detracts from the travel experience. This is a reasonable viewpoint and deserves a more reasonable response than the above.

I can think of three good reasons for eating at McDonald’s in Tokyo (or in Prague or Shanghai or other places where I have done so). Two apply to me:

• It’s comfort food. Yes, I get homesick when I travel and I want a taste of home. McDonald’s may not be great food, but it’s sure as heck American food, and there are times when I need that.
• It’s reliable. I repeat that it may not be great, but you know just exactly how good/bad it’s going to be. If I ate at one of the sushi places in Narita (assuming I liked sushi, which I don’t) or one of their other restaurants, it might be much better than McDonald’s. Then again, it might be much worse. There are times I’m in the mood to experiment, and times I just want a safe (boring, if you prefer) choice.

A third reason for choosing McD instead of sampling local cuisine no longer applies to me:

• You have kids with you. While I was eating my Big Mac, I saw what looked like (based on the haircut, if nothing else) an American serviceman putting in his order; he was travelling with his wife and two small kids. Yes, you want to expose the kids to new things, but not all the time, and there are times (many times, as any parent can tell you) when you don’t need another fight over what’s for dinner. The kids want a Happy Meal? OK, we’ll get ‘em a damn Happy Meal and shut ‘em up.

So I will continue to eat occasional Big Macs as I continue my world tour. And I will continue to ignore Nanny's disapproving looks.

Looking Forward to Some World Cup Fun

It looks like Ecuador will almost certainly be in next year’s World Cup.

It will be exciting to be in a soccer-mad country during the Cup – something I’ve never experienced. Naturally, I will be spending most of my time shouting ‘USA! USA!’ but it will be fun to have a second team to root for, and to join in the festivities, which should be pretty interesting.

I’ll have to be hoping USA and Ecuador don’t get put in the same group during the group stage – things will be much simpler if they don’t face each other. If both make it through the group stage and meet in the quarters or semis -- well, that's a problem I'll have to deal with at the time. But that would be a nice problem to have.

Our Lady of Perpetual Mispronunciation

I recently had a minor medical process done at a clinic connected to a hospital near my home – Perpetual Succor.

I was struck by the use of the word ‘Succor’ – there are many Catholic institutions in the US with basically the same name, but it is always, in my experience, expressed as Perpetual Help (generally some variant of ‘Our Lady of Perpetual Help’).

But that was not the only linguistic oddity, from my viewpoint. The strangest thing for me is the pronunciation of perpetual, because the Filipinos have the strange idea that it should be pronounced as it is spelled.

I (and most Americans I know) generally pronounce the word as three (or maybe three and a half) syllables, with a ‘ch’ sound thrown in. We say per-pet-ch’-wal (sometimes running the last two sounds together: per-pet-chwal).

I was very confused when my doctor told me where the clinic was – he pronounced the word with four quite distinct syllables: per-pet-oo-al. I generally don’t get much into right/wrong arguments over different countries’ pronunciation of English – I’ll leave that to the Brits. But I have to admit that the Filipinos have a strong case that they have this one right.

Bye-bye, Dominick's

Back in Chicago, where I soon will be (good Lord willing and the plane don’t crash), Safeway has decided to sell (or shut down or whatever; anyway, get rid of) their Dominick’s chain. It's not clear whether the name will survive on whatever stores remain.

Dominick’s was once, along with Jewel-Osco, the dominant chain in metro Chicago, but has been in slow-motion shutdown ever since Safeway bought them fifteen years ago. More than a third of the stores have been shut, with the chain shrinking from 116 stores to 72. As part of the announcement, Safeway said they had sold four more of the stores to Jewel-Osco.

The linked report says that Safeway paid about $1.8bil for the chain in 1998, and was offered an embarrassing $325mil in 2005. One presumes that they will get even less now. This is bad news for stockholders, of course, though it’s safe to say that anyone buying or selling Safeway stock in the past several years has taken the Dominick’s debacle into account. If not … caveat emptor.

I thought this part of the article was interesting, since it describes a common problem:

One hiccup with selling Dominick's in the past was the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, which represents the chain's workers. It has been long rumored in the past that former Safeway CEO Steve Burd has had buyers interested in the chain — presumably under more favorable terms — but none could ever work out a deal with the UFCW.

Safeway unloading the chain can be counted as another example of the perils of being involved with unions. Safeway probably should have recognized when buying the chain that they might be dealing with a troublesome union. But beyond that (I have little sympathy for Safeway in any of this), one feels for the workers. Because their union leadership shoot down earlier buyout offers, the chain has suffered through several tough years, stores have closed, and now they’re looking at what will probably be a much worse deal than they could have had before.  

That Will Help a Bunch, I'm Sure

Lately, the Republican candidate for the Senate in New Jersey, who was expected to be totally destroyed, has shown signs of life. But just when things are looking up for him, he gets this:

Sarah Palin is the latest conservative star heading to New Jersey to support Republican Steve Lonegan in his uphill fight for the Senate against Newark Mayor Cory Booker. On Saturday, Palin will appear with Lonegan at a speedway rally and training session for campaign workers in New Egypt, N.J.

Couldn't Lonegan find something else to do that day?

The Alibis of Bob

I haven't posted anything for a couple days and the next few days will probably be quiet as well. I'm in Manila at present, visiting with folks one last time, and on Monday I'm flying home to the US.

I know the spambots will be disappointed that there's nothing new here, but I'll try to make it up to them when I get home.

A Lesson on Writing Clear Directions

How cool is this?

This test paper was turned in by an autistic second grader -- did he get it right?

Prices on Pharmaceuticals

We are often told that medicines are ridiculously expensive in the US, and that Americans are being gouged by Big Pharma. There may be truth to that, but it is not universally true.

While prices for medical and dental procedures and office visits are remarkably low here, pharmaceuticals are not low-priced at all.

An example – I have an enlarged prostate (benign prostate hyperplasia or BPH) and recently switched medications to treat it. My doctor prescribed Hytrin (2mg). He recommended that I buy only a short-term supply to see how I do with the side effects, so I bought fifteen tabs. I visited a couple pharmacies here and was quoted the same price at both – 1335 pesos ($31.07 at today’s rate, or a bit over $2/tab).

Before I bought more, I asked family in the US to check prices there. Here are the per tablet prices at Walgreens and Costco in Phoenix, compared to the Philippine prices (Philippine pharmacies do not give quantity discounts):

Naturally, I’m most interested in the Costco prices, but the Philippine price is 2.5x even the highest Walgreens price (and more than 20x the lowest Costco price). My guess (only a guess) is that the huge difference is the result of import taxes and (as with just about everything here) lack of competition.

Obama Tries the Big Bird Approach

President Obama seems to have stolen a page from the PBS playbook as his approach to selling his position on the government shutdown.

Everyone, of course, is familiar to the way PBS reacts any time there is any mention of cutting their subsidies – they immediately scream “You want to kill Big Bird!” The logic seems to be that Sesame Street would have to be the first program cut. Right – that’s definitely what would happen. But it’s a strategy that works – PBS still gets their handouts every year.

Local governments often use the same approach. “If you don’t vote for the new bond issue,” city hall warns in ominous tones, “here’s the list of fire stations we’ll be closing …” Funny that it’s never “We’ll have to lay off half a dozen of the nasty, arrogant clerks who take such pleasure in ignoring you when you visit city hall”, isn’t it?

Obama’s variant on the Big Bird strategy is that he is closing the monuments on the Capitol Mall, threatening to cut out the service academies sports events (even though the academy athletic programs are privately funded), shutting down TV broadcasts to overseas troops, shutting private businesses located in national parks, and lots of other petty, vindictive acts. The obvious intent of his actions is to maximize rather than minimize the pain of the shutdown for American citizens.

This is not what one would hope for from the nation’s leaders, but it’s not all that surprising from this one.

Some of the Best Case Studies Are Failures

Prediction: In a few years, Obamacare will be a biz school case study in what happens when a flawed product is rushed into production with insufficient planning and forethought, resulting in a flawed plan for the flawed product, and then the bad plan is badly executed.

From the beginning, there was little thought given the plan – in Nancy Pelosi’s immortal phrase, “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.” Nothing could better sum up the way the government approached what even they must have realized was a huge undertaking.

And now the lack of planning, the whole idea of just blundering ahead, is having its inevitable result. Even sources closely allied with President Obama are forced to admit that the program is bombing, and bombing because it’s badly planned. Here’s the Washington Post, interviewing an IT specialist (emphasis added):

SK: The Obama administration has said that all these problems are happening because of overwhelming traffic. How good of an explanation is that?JB: That seems like not a very good excuse to me. In sites like these there’s a very standard approach to capacity planning. You start with some basic math. Like, in this case, you look at all the federal states and how many uninsured people they have. Out of those you think, maybe 10 percent would log in in the first day. But you model for the worst case, and that’s how you come up with your peak of how many people could try to do the same thing at the same time. 

Before you launch you run a lot of load testing with twice the load of the peak, so you can go through and remove glitches. I’m a very very big supporter of the health-care act, but I don’t buy the argument that the load was too unexpected.

Or here’s another pro-Obama source, Slate, describing a would-be insurance purchaser’s frustrations:

I have been in regular conversation with a person in Pennsylvania trying to get information about coverage under the Affordable Care Act. She is optimistic about the coverage she might get, but also wonders why her existing plan, which is far from perfect, is being canceled on Jan. 1. (The president said if you like your plan you will be able to keep it.) She started trying at 8 a.m. on Oct. 1, the minute the website went live, and has tried about 10 times over the week. Mostly she has been shut out entirely. Recently she has been able to at least enter in some of her information, but the site doesn't record the information correctly and doesn't let her change it.

So we are told that seven million people tried to sign up in the first few days (not really all that many, compared to traffic at many major private-sector sites), but strangely, we can’t get any numbers on how many have actually managed to buy insurance:

Jay Carney told reporters that the White House still doesn’t know the number of enrollees in the Obamacare marketplace exchanges after going live almost a week ago, and that they shouldn’t expect the information for about a month. 

“When it comes to enrollment data — I want to be clear about this — we will release data on regular monthly intervals,” Carney said, which is the frequency in which Massachusetts and Medicare Part D release information. “This is an aggregation process, and we’re not going to release data on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis.” 

When pressed by reporters about how the administration could know the number of online visitors to the websites but not the number of those who have enrolled, Carney said the administration used the former to explain [ … ] the Healthcare.gov’s many glitches in the wake of last week’s rollout.

You can be certain that if the numbers were good, Carney would be crowing about them. That he is covering up is a pretty good indicator that the number of enrollees is small.

Another Reason for Employers to Leave Illinois

Not that they need more, given the state's high taxes and its impending collapse from pension overload. But Governor Pat Quinn has just imposed another absurd  rule:

Governor Bars Employers From Asking Applicants About Felony Records

One More Week

168 hours from now, I will be finishing my packing and getting ready to go find a taxi to take me to Mactan (the airport). And then on to the plane, to Seoul, to Tokyo, and then Chicago. I've had good times here, although overall I'm disappointed in the Philippines, and there are many things I'll miss, but I'm very excited to be close enough to start the countdown for going home.

N. Jacob Praff, DDS

Update: I changed the title of this post by deleting the words " ... is a spammer."

I received a message (see below) from Dr. Praff in which he says that a firm he hired to promote his website was sending out spam without his knowledge, and that he has discontinued their service., Well done, Dr. Praff.

The following is the original post:

About a month ago, I posted a recommendation of a good dentist, Dr. Redulla-Salupan, whom I had visited recently. 

Since then, I have at least twice (I think three times) had the following spam posted in the comments of that article:

N. Jacob Praff, DDS is a dentist located in Spring Valley, NY. Dr Praff offers general and cosmetic dentistry for adults and children. Some of the services offered Bonding, Root Canals, Zoom! Whitening, Veneers, Scaling, Root Planning, Cleaning, Dentures. more information then visit : http://url-deleted   

Give us a call on +1 845.deleted 

cosmetic dentist (link deleted)

I presume N. Jacob Praff has hired some spam service to post his garbage on any blog entries that it finds dealing in any way with dentistry. Perhaps that isn't true and maybe Zeniya Opi (the name used by the purported poster) is acting on her/his own, for whatever reason. 

I will send a copy of this to him and see if he has a good explanation (or if I get a response at all). In the past, I've deleted N. Jacob Praff's spam (as I do with the rest), but I think I'll leave it there (with the links removed) 

In the meantime, if you are in the Spring Valley, NY area and are looking for a dentist with high professional and ethical standards ... I'm afraid I have no recommendations.  

FIFA Takes a Big Swing ... and Whiffs

FIFA blew it, as expected. They had an opportunity to show they really want to clean up the game, by taking strong action against Joel Campbell, the Costa Rican player who so egregiously flopped in the World Cup qualifying game against the US last month.

I posted this at the time, which includes video of his flop.

FIFA talks big about wanting to put a stop to flopping, which gives soccer such a bad name. But Campbell is a star player for Costa Rica and also is with Arsenal in the EPL. While we know that most sports have a different set of rules for stars, Campbell isn't that big (Arsenal has loaned him out this season), and giving a serious penalty to a name player would have sent a clear message. So what happened?

They reprimanded him.

Q: If such an obvious flop draws no penalty, what message are they sending?
A: Flop all you want, guys.

The Patron Saint of GAD?

There is a movement afoot to seek canonization for G. K. Chesterton, a popular writer of (among many other things) mystery stories. His most famous stories featured a modest and seemingly insignificant Catholic priest named Father Brown.

A note about the title of this entry: Those of us who are fans of mystery stories of the twenties and thirties refer to that era as the Golden Age of Detection, or GAD. As is usual with such designations, there are disputes about the exact time limits of GAD – the strict definition is expressed as ‘the interwar years’. I often think of books in the forties, fifties, and even later as GAD, but I am viewed as a liberal on this point.

In any case, Chesterton is an imperfect fit, since many of his stories were written before World War One; the first Father Brown collection, The Innocence of Father Brown, was published in 1911.

Nonetheless, he is generally thought of as being a GAD writer and was a major influence on others. My favorite mystery writer, John Dickson Carr, who began writing late in Chesterton's career, was such a big fan that he modeled his best-known detective, Gideon Fell, on Chesterton.

The Father Brown stories have been frequently adapted, most recently into a series that recently ran (and may still be running) on British television. I haven’t seen these, but I have been reliably informed that I should not consider this a deprivation – they are described by those who enjoy the original stories as (to use a phrase that seems apposite) god-awful. If you wish to explore Chesterton, I recommend instead that you read the books.

However good a writer he was, though, there appears to be a fair amount of controversy over the proposal, since Chesterton has sometimes been accused of anti-Semitism. Certainly some of his writings sound bad to modern ears.

If you wish to give some thought to the issue, here is a statement in support of Chesterton by the Chesterton Institute at Seton Hall University; here is an opinion article, strongly opposed, from a British Jewish publication, and here are two pieces that look at both sides from the BBC and Religion News Service.

I will not pretend to be an expert on Chesterton. I’ve read little beyond the Father Brown stories, I am not a Catholic (though I was raised in that church and maintain a cultural affinity and fondness for it), and thus I’m in no position to take a stand on whether he should or should not be considered for sainthood.

If his anti-Semitism was of a nature that it could be characterized as merely an acceptance and reflection of attitudes that prevailed in middle- and upper-class English society at the time (see Agatha Christie’s early books, written during Chesterton’s lifetime, for some nasty examples), then it would be deplorable, but not necessarily a stopper, in my opinion. No rule says that saints must have achieve perfection on earth, it being Catholic doctrine, shared by other Christian faiths, that perfection is an impossibility in an imperfect world. If he wrote, said, or did things that went much further, that could well be another matter.

Marketing Humor

Poor execution of a good idea.