One and All
Not a windmill after all?
Dad was certainly a visionary, and I have inherited that particular gene, or curse, or blessing, depending on your perspective. At times it’s all three. It’s a wonderful thing because visionaries can see a beauty that isn’t yet, and be driven by that beauty, and try to make it real. It’s a horrible thing because there can be few or no others who can see anything similar, and when others pay any attention at all, it’s likely to scoff or worse.
15Mar2011 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | Continued
Here We GO! VT State Ombudsman on the Horizon…
I’m certain we’re on the cusp of happier political days in Vermont.
10Nov2010 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | ContinuedMore moves toward transparency and accountability
So the news is still full of bad stuff, but I detect a change in people’s reactions to the bad stuff, in that calls for transparency and accountability keep mounting.
15Jun2010 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | Continued“Sunshine is the best disinfectant.”
President Obama’s appearance yesterday in Baltimore with Republican House members was certainly a stunning event, not least in that it seems to have left some Republicans stunned as to why they allowed it to be televised live. Obama seized the opportunity to lay out the biggest problem that accompanies demonizing the opposing party—members of opposing [...]
30Jan2010 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | Continued
Gang of Six and Battered Woman Syndrome
Why, oh, why, has the Gang of Six–the six Senators working on the Senate Finance Committee’s version of a health insurance reform bill–why on earth, why in heaven’s named, would they do anything (as they have) to accommodate him and his wingnuts?!?
Battered Woman Syndrome.
11Sep2009 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | ContinuedOn the short term, maybe an “enforcement monitor?”
ProPublica writes of extreme problems in California regarding professional regulation of nurses. One option for dealing with the problems is that of installing an “enforcement monitor” in the regulating agency to keep things moving along. The article says the California medical board had once done that for a period of time. Perhaps some such person(s) [...]
15Jul2009 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | Continued
We really must have transparency and accountability
Having been clear, I hope, in presenting my progressive/liberal credentials, I’ll say that for some things there simply is no middle road. Transparency and accountability are among those things.
President Obama has so far signaled, if not outright opposition, at least considerable foot-dragging when it comes to undoing some of what can be undone of Bush’s legacy, and pursuing accountability for Bushies who may have committed crimes.
18Feb2009 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | Continued
Kays Gary on Dorothy Counts: Between MLK and Obama
There weren’t many of us who witnessed the Arkansas National Guard facing down school children, to prevent school integration in Little Rock, who would have imagined we would see an African American president in our lifetime.
19Jan2009 | Deborah Alicen | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Innocence Project
If you have not acquainted yourself with the Innocence Project, do so now. And by all means, anytime you start feeling as if your situation is really terrible, just give a few minutes thought to what has been endured by those whom the Innocence Project has helped, and what is being endured by those who continue to be wrongly imprisoned.
14Nov2008 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | Continued
Speaking of Kafka
As I regularly refer to Franz Kafka, this item on some of his unpublished papers got my attention this morning. Part of Kafka’s genius was in seeing, and making the picture accessible to others, the crazy-making, and sometimes downright evil (e.g. Nazi), abuses to which bureaucracies so often are given. In doing so he has [...]
10Jul2008 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | ContinuedChanges and Announcements Coming…
BureaucracyBlog will soon have a new look, and one or more new authors contributing to the flow of information, analysis, and ideas. J.T. Miller, whom I wrote about in a post last month, has sent me an revised version of his op-ed piece and has kindly agreed to post occasional Kentucky updates here. There have [...]
23Jun2008 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | ContinuedA couple of different organizational bureaucracies…
My lack of posting much recently owes to my having had the opportunity to do some work with a couple of different organizations, each with very different cultures, though the leadership of each would describe them in terms very similar to each other. Both are service organizations, and both profess a style of operation that [...]
17Jun2008 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | Continued
Stuck
Stuck is a movie I’d really rather not watch, but I think I’m going to have to see it. I don’t like seeing blood and gore, and Stuck has plenty of it, according to what I’ve read. But the movie juxtaposes a horrific, real life event against a callous bureaucracy, and that’s why I think [...]
9Jun2008 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | Continued
Rudd and bureaucrats again…
Kevin Rudd‘s administration in Australia is going to continue to be of interest here because of his background as a bureaucrat, and his apparent dedication to bureaucracies that well serve the public. The operative word there is “apparent.” Time will tell the story, of course, but there’s a news item today–or technically, tomorrow, given that [...]
28May2008 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | ContinuedSome of those stories I was talking about…
Marian Wright Edelman, president of The Children’s Defense Fund, writes on today’s Huffington Post about the importance of a Congressional bureaucratic remedy to the crisis affecting tens of thousands of the nation’s youth who are locked away in detention centers, where they are suffering extensively from physical and sexual abuse. At issue is the Prison [...]
20May2008 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | ContinuedOn “Transparency and democracy”
There’s a very good op-ed piece in today’s Louisville Courier-Journal by J.T. “Jerry” Miller, commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Parks under Gov. Ernie Fletcher. Miller does a terrific job of articulating the need for transparency that transcends partisanship, as all of us of whatever political stripe are entitled to know what our government does [...]
19May2008 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | ContinuedDumbledore he’s not. (Or, proof of the man’s innocence…)
Albus Dumbledore, and presumably none less than Harry Potter, too, could certainly stir up a real full-sized tempest in a teapot, but I’m not at all sure they could have succeeded better than the Pasco County, Florida, bureaucrats who have sent substitute teacher Jim Piculas packing because he performed an innocuous little magic trick in [...]
18May2008 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | ContinuedPrawfsBlawg asks: What do bureaucrats want?
Stumbled across an entry posted by Rick Hills earlier today on PrawfsBlawg that asks, “What do bureaucrats want?” In brief, he notes that academics—particularly “economically oriented ones”—seem to assume that bureaucrats are primarily after power, and he questions that assumption. I agree with him. I don’t think bureaucrats are always after power, or even that [...]
15May2008 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | Continued
“It takes longer to learn less…” Canadian Conservatives’ Growing Opacity
Today’s Toronto Star features a national affairs column by James Travers that’s all about the growing opacity in Canada’s government, which owes, not surprisingly, to Conservatives who campaigned on promises of openness. Oh, so much of that have we seen this side of the border—calling something the opposite of what it actually is. Here’s Travers’ [...]
13May2008 | Deborah Alicen | 0 comments | ContinuedAnother Textbook Case of Bureaucratic Insanity
Someone saw “KKK” in the title and jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Sampson was a supporter of the KKK, and filed a complaint against him with his university’s Affirmative Action Office, alleging that his reading the book in the break room constituted racial harassment.
12May2008 | Deborah Alicen | 1 comment | Continued
