Governance Reforms

biochem wrote:Governance reforms I'd like to see in the US (elsewhere too?)

1. Require each member of both houses of congress to read a bill before it is voted on it. This will result in shortened concise pieces of legislation, since the members will at least need to pretend to have read it.

2. Require legislation to be posted online in downloadable format at least 7 days before a vote. This will give the media, interest groups, etc a chance to read it and find all of the hidden items and publicly comment before legislation is passed.

3. Require that all items in the bill be germane to the topic. For example the current Hurricane Sandy bill is loaded with such things as $150 million for fisheries in Alaska.

4. Require that members of both houses of congress be required to live by the same laws they impose on the rest of us. Currently they exempt themselves from multiple laws including many on workers rights.

5. Require that congress spend 3 months a year working on repealing existing legislation. Lets face it, a lot of laws are outdated and no longer necessary. Others seemed like good ideas but didn't work in practice. Given the massive amount of laws passed over the years congress should have no trouble spending a quarter of their time repealing old laws rather than creating new ones.

6. Term limit the senate to 2 six year terms and the house to 6 2 year terms. I.e. you are allowed 12 years in the senate and 12 years in the house. The incumbents stack the deck so much that turnover is non-existant.

7. Pay for performance. 50% of pay to be base salary the other 50% to be performance based with performance being determined by growth in GDP and National debt reduction.

8. Presidential appointments required to be voted upon within 120 days.


None of it will happen as congress would never vote for it but it would be nice....

Excellent thoughts. I think USA would be a better nation if something like these was for real.
As already mentioned though, #7 is a bit problematic because economic growth and debt reduction while generally preferable, isnt automatically or always the best idea.

N.A.A1n1 wrote:I know this seems like a bit of a segue, but quite a bit of that sequester is aimed nearly directly at the Department of Defense. Now, arguably, the DoD could use a bit of reform in how the money gets used in specific, but for a large part, the DoD (as a whole) is probably the most responsible with their budget.

DoD is one of the worst offenders when it comes to wellspent money.

I´ll provide you with my classic example...
My own country developed the STRIX selfguided/programmable mortar munition in the mid 90s.
Same year that it started serial production, USA decided it wanted the same capability.
So what did the DoD do? (and remember that STRIX is 100% compatible with US mortars)

They spent a few years figuring out what they wanted and coming up with fancy names and acronyms, during which time they spent several times the money Sweden spent on the complete development and first serial production run.

10 years later, the project ends up with a result that can be argued to be better than STRIX, maybe, if you stretch things a bit in the right places just to make sure, except during that time, STRIX has been upgraded twice and the current model is considerably better.
Each upgrade for STRIX costing less than what the US DoD spent on it´s own project each and every month.

At this point, the DoD project was cancelled, and then sort of restarted under a new name, except part of it appears to have been revived again separately, overall i´ve since lost track completely, but it seems the US military now has the munitions in some form at least.
At an R&D cost that is frankly just insane. 15+ years after we had it operationally ready here.

Ridiculous amounts of money are simply wasted, with pork chop and corruption being big reasons, while the projects themself have lots of administration but far too few engineers.

And the F-35 looks like it might become an even bigger flop in regards to fiscal efficiency.

Tenshinai wrote:

biochem wrote:Governance reforms I'd like to see in the US (elsewhere too?)

1. Require each member of both houses of congress to read a bill before it is voted on it. This will result in shortened concise pieces of legislation, since the members will at least need to pretend to have read it.

2. Require legislation to be posted online in downloadable format at least 7 days before a vote. This will give the media, interest groups, etc a chance to read it and find all of the hidden items and publicly comment before legislation is passed.

3. Require that all items in the bill be germane to the topic. For example the current Hurricane Sandy bill is loaded with such things as $150 million for fisheries in Alaska.

4. Require that members of both houses of congress be required to live by the same laws they impose on the rest of us. Currently they exempt themselves from multiple laws including many on workers rights.

5. Require that congress spend 3 months a year working on repealing existing legislation. Lets face it, a lot of laws are outdated and no longer necessary. Others seemed like good ideas but didn't work in practice. Given the massive amount of laws passed over the years congress should have no trouble spending a quarter of their time repealing old laws rather than creating new ones.

6. Term limit the senate to 2 six year terms and the house to 6 2 year terms. I.e. you are allowed 12 years in the senate and 12 years in the house. The incumbents stack the deck so much that turnover is non-existant.

7. Pay for performance. 50% of pay to be base salary the other 50% to be performance based with performance being determined by growth in GDP and National debt reduction.

8. Presidential appointments required to be voted upon within 120 days.


None of it will happen as congress would never vote for it but it would be nice....

Excellent thoughts. I think USA would be a better nation if something like these was for real.
As already mentioned though, #7 is a bit problematic because economic growth and debt reduction while generally preferable, isnt automatically or always the best idea.

N.A.A1n1 wrote:I know this seems like a bit of a segue, but quite a bit of that sequester is aimed nearly directly at the Department of Defense. Now, arguably, the DoD could use a bit of reform in how the money gets used in specific, but for a large part, the DoD (as a whole) is probably the most responsible with their budget.

DoD is one of the worst offenders when it comes to wellspent money.

I´ll provide you with my classic example...
My own country developed the STRIX selfguided/programmable mortar munition in the mid 90s.
Same year that it started serial production, USA decided it wanted the same capability.
So what did the DoD do? (and remember that STRIX is 100% compatible with US mortars)

They spent a few years figuring out what they wanted and coming up with fancy names and acronyms, during which time they spent several times the money Sweden spent on the complete development and first serial production run.

10 years later, the project ends up with a result that can be argued to be better than STRIX, maybe, if you stretch things a bit in the right places just to make sure, except during that time, STRIX has been upgraded twice and the current model is considerably better.
Each upgrade for STRIX costing less than what the US DoD spent on it´s own project each and every month.

At this point, the DoD project was cancelled, and then sort of restarted under a new name, except part of it appears to have been revived again separately, overall i´ve since lost track completely, but it seems the US military now has the munitions in some form at least.
At an R&D cost that is frankly just insane. 15+ years after we had it operationally ready here.

Ridiculous amounts of money are simply wasted, with pork chop and corruption being big reasons, while the projects themself have lots of administration but far too few engineers.

And the F-35 looks like it might become an even bigger flop in regards to fiscal efficiency.

Jeez. that sounds simply ridiculous. about as ridiculous as the design for our newest ships in fact. Who was the idiot who designed ships for use in the pacific off a strait crossing roll on/roll off ship that was beached in inclement weather? because that person needs an urgent firing. and already the problems have caused at least one death as well from an IRB not disconnecting and flipping. Then we have our LAV's (armored personnel carriers). not very old, not enough armor, and 2/3's never used. now we are trying to hock them off to regain some money off their buying....

The simplist way to reduce that kind of waste is to refuse to allow the military to finance private sector R&D into new weapons. Allow them to only buy weapons that are fully developed, tested and ready for serial production. That is the way a company trying to introduce a product into the civilian market must operate and they do quite well in most cases.

There should also be a clause in the contract that makes the manufacturer responsable for the repair of any flaws found after introduction into widespread use.

I was involved for years in buying significant weapon systems and generally became disgusted by the poor ethics of the arms suppliers (Gun runners). Not to mention stupidity, in that when you'd expect that they'd want repeat business an approach of "Oh did you want wheels/wings on that?" is insane.
The military must take some blame as well as they tend to be extremely conservative and wedded to what worked a generation ago. I remember speaking at a Navy conference and departing from my script made a few enemies by pointing out that the 32 pounder versus 24 pounder debate had been settled a couple of centuries ago. They still went ahead and bought a long outmoded weapon system. In the public domain try Googling Australian Navy Seasprite purchase.

KNick wrote:The simplist way to reduce that kind of waste is to refuse to allow the military to finance private sector R&D into new weapons. Allow them to only buy weapons that are fully developed, tested and ready for serial production. That is the way a company trying to introduce a product into the civilian market must operate and they do quite well in most cases.

There should also be a clause in the contract that makes the manufacturer responsable for the repair of any flaws found after introduction into widespread use.

KNick wrote:The simplist way to reduce that kind of waste is to refuse to allow the military to finance private sector R&D into new weapons. Allow them to only buy weapons that are fully developed, tested and ready for serial production. That is the way a company trying to introduce a product into the civilian market must operate and they do quite well in most cases.

There should also be a clause in the contract that makes the manufacturer responsable for the repair of any flaws found after introduction into widespread use.

I have some experience related to this, and I'm not sure if that's possible. Even without corruption, military systems are extremely expensive to bring to a fully developed state; most companies can't fund it out of their own reserves. Bear in mind also that with civilian products, you can expect to multiple customers; with military systems, you're often very limited into who you can sell to.

Well, it's not just the big ticket items, either. Sure, weapons systems and new ship designs and all of that garner a lot of attention, but what about just pure laziness? The army was recently caught out paying 117+ dollars for a .90 cent part that they already had in stock!
Larger abuses lead to smaller ones, as well. If the leadership chooses to not see a problem funding dead end projects and choosing to spend heedless amounts of money on the upper echelons of the officer corps, why shouldn't an enlisted game the system?

A few years ago we were continuing on our cost cutting when we checked the price of a pitot tube for a US helicopter. A pitot tube is a precisely machined hollow tube about the size of a large biro that is part of the airspeed measuring system. We had been told it was $800, and checked it by getting a master turner to make a $5 copy and asked the company to tell us which was which. They pointed out that the difference was in the certification, and explained that if we didn't use their certified part and a helo crashed they'd make sure that we personally would end up being blamed. Our response was to find out the original manufacturer of the pitot tube and order a number of certified ones direct for about $40 each. This plus many other similar issues was part of the decision that led to our next multi $B fleet purchase being from a European manufacturer. My theory was that executives in US military aerospace firms were drawn from the same pool as the tobacco and oil companies used.

N.A.A1n1 wrote:Well, it's not just the big ticket items, either. Sure, weapons systems and new ship designs and all of that garner a lot of attention, but what about just pure laziness? The army was recently caught out paying 117+ dollars for a .90 cent part that they already had in stock!
Larger abuses lead to smaller ones, as well. If the leadership chooses to not see a problem funding dead end projects and choosing to spend heedless amounts of money on the upper echelons of the officer corps, why shouldn't an enlisted game the system?

Hi Daryl

US President Eisenhower left office warning of the danger of the Military-Industrial complex, his predecessor Truman had chaired the Senate committee investigating just such things, A republican and a democrat respectively. Note no one recently has investigated graft. Why? The hogs of all political stripes are getting too fat to move from swilling at the trough here. Does the same thing happen in your country?

Poker

Daryl wrote:A few years ago we were continuing on our cost cutting when we checked the price of a pitot tube for a US helicopter. A pitot tube is a precisely machined hollow tube about the size of a large biro that is part of the airspeed measuring system. We had been told it was $800, and checked it by getting a master turner to make a $5 copy and asked the company to tell us which was which. They pointed out that the difference was in the certification, and explained that if we didn't use their certified part and a helo crashed they'd make sure that we personally would end up being blamed. Our response was to find out the original manufacturer of the pitot tube and order a number of certified ones direct for about $40 each. This plus many other similar issues was part of the decision that led to our next multi $B fleet purchase being from a European manufacturer. My theory was that executives in US military aerospace firms were drawn from the same pool as the tobacco and oil companies used.

N.A.A1n1 wrote:Well, it's not just the big ticket items, either. Sure, weapons systems and new ship designs and all of that garner a lot of attention, but what about just pure laziness? The army was recently caught out paying 117+ dollars for a .90 cent part that they already had in stock!
Larger abuses lead to smaller ones, as well. If the leadership chooses to not see a problem funding dead end projects and choosing to spend heedless amounts of money on the upper echelons of the officer corps, why shouldn't an enlisted game the system?

I would like to see a requirement that any bill proposed be required to list all other existing laws it would affect and what changes it would make to those laws. Also included in each bill should be a clause that specifies where the money to implement it will come from.

In general I agree with you.

There is always the story of the development of the B-17. Which at the time was the most advanced complex weapon system in history. If I am remembering things right. Every rule must have its exception.

Enjoy,
T2M

Eyal wrote:I have some experience related to this, and I'm not sure if that's possible. Even without corruption, military systems are extremely expensive to bring to a fully developed state; most companies can't fund it out of their own reserves. Bear in mind also that with civilian products, you can expect to multiple customers; with military systems, you're often very limited into who you can sell to.