Does anyone other than President Trump like the idea of a U. S. occupation of Gaza? Initially, I attributed the comment to a bad habit the president has: floating trial balloons. Now he appears to be doubling down on it.
Was anyone surprised by Jordan and Egypt refusing to accept the Gazans? Arab states won’t accept them for multiple reasons the most important being a) it would signal surrendering the territory to Israel; and b) the Palestinians are troublemakers.
“Everybody loves it”? Give me a break.
This is hallucinatory. I thought Trump would be a war president, but I voted for him as the lesser evil. But annexing, Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal Zone and Gaza (!!!!)?
Boy, are we in for a wild ride! Go get some iodine pills.
It’s gonna be a new Riviera. I bet Drew is already getting together a group to invest in real estate there.
Slightly OT, but what is with breaking all of the GSA leases? OTOH, they are telling all of the govt workers they cant work from home. OTOH, they are getting rid of office space. If you are working in a small town and they get rid of your office are they just going to require workers to travel an extra 30 miles to another office, or move?
Steve
To a real estate developer every vacant lot or demolished wreck of a building looks like an opportunity.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a wicked problem. There is no solution, at least no humane one. The most that might be expected is an ongoing process of mutual accommodation and that has collapsed over the last 20 years.
“I bet Drew is already getting together a group to invest in real estate there.”
I’d be happy to send you a subscription agreement. Remember, Founders Membership interests come cheaper. I’ll send you my, er, the wire instructions later.
Excess real estate is often a target rich source for cost reduction; government perhaps more so than corporate environments. And one has to decide, is the objective cost reduction or kumbaya? Last time I looked we were broke.
When Mitch Daniels left the governorship of Indiana and became president of Purdue he brough a real estate hot shot as his number 2. They froze many projects, stopped catering to prima donna profs and their Taj Mahal desires, consolidated activities to increase asset utilization rates and sold off excess real estate. Purdue didn’t raise tuitions for years. For all I know they are still holding the line.
Like I said, one has to decide if they are serious about costs or just fooling around.
I think they’re serious about cutting costs but actually achieving the objective they’ve set for themselves will prove much more difficult than they realize. Discretionary spending is a relatively small amount of the total. So are payrolls, what is paid to contractors, and paid out in the form of grants (other than Medicaid).
I think that DOGE is doing a valuable service in pointing out the low-hanging fruit but so much of total U. S. spending is SSRI, Medicare, and interest on the debt that it will be hard to leave those alone and accomplish the objective.
“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a wicked problem.”
I am afraid so. And I think you are correct that Trump floats too many trial ballons. That said, I think those screeching “ethnic cleansing” are hysterical.
“I think that DOGE is doing a valuable service in pointing out the low-hanging fruit but so much of total U. S. spending is SSRI, Medicare, and interest on the debt that it will be hard to leave those alone and accomplish the objective.”
I think that’s correct. I suspect you have been involved in turnarounds over the years. You have to begin an ethic that every dollar counts. No weak “its only small dollars” talk. And you need some wins. Further, I find it hard to imagine that the full costs are just the explicit USAID expenditures, but actually significantly higher due to the costs attendant to such a bastard organization and its actions.
With a background like mine, and realizing how politically difficult the SS and Medicare issues are, I really worry about financing (and with the rollover of low interest debt). We can’t print our way out; we just experienced a 20% price increase. Those interest costs are the stuff train wrecks are made of.
I was part of the advance team involved in taking over 6 hospitals that were losing money and making them profitable again. Making people aware that every dollar matters was important but less so than than replacing the bad managers. I suspect that varies from company to company but I would bet for most companies that holds true.
I think the difference I see and that concerns me is that our team consisted of people who had worked in health care for quite a while and had extensive experience in multiple roles. We also had strong leadership at the CEO level. With DOGE, it sounds like the people coming in and making decisions have no experience in the govt sector. Having dealt with consultants who were brought from outside the health sector with the idea they would help was generally a low yield effort.
I think this shows in so much of what they are doing seems to eliminating all of something or deciding they eliminate X percent of something. That can work in some areas but more often that seems to be the hallmark of stupid or lazy management. Much better to evaluate and decide what to keep and what to let go.
Steve
You will never get me to disagree with you that it all starts with the organization. More than anything, organizational development is what we do. However, good managers and the right organizational ethos and the marketing/operational/metrics/asset utilization practices are not mutually exclusive.
I think the aggressive stance you see the DOGE people taking is an acknowledgement that if they don’t move quickly and aggressively the traditional forces opposing change will win out. Its not like we haven’t seen that before.
I take the level of hysteria to be an accurate indicator that DOGE is over the targets. In my usual morning survey of blogs I see that Taylor over at OTB is citing Putin’s comments on USAID as evidence that Trump is placating the Russians. They have gone absolutely mad over there. But then, Rachel Maddow was still touting Russia, Russia, Russia years after almost everyone else had given up the ghost.
The sad irony is that Hamas and the Palestinian leadership pissed away the future of their people by investing the world’s aid and support into turning Gaza into an armed bunker and seeing human capital not in terms of building a future, but as grist for martyrdom against the Jewish enemy.
If Hamas were smart, they’d play a long game and make Gaza economically powerful, but instead they prefer to siphon billions for the “leadership” living the good life in Qatar and maintain control of Gaza via violence and graft.
Andy
I assume you are the same Andy at OTB. Liked your Putin USAID comment over there.