A Political Statement

[Jackpine]

Originally Posted by Sburn

Here in CA we've had term limits for a while now. What has happened is that the same career politicians just end up finding a different office to run for when they term out. State Senators term out and run for Assembly, termed-out Senators and Assemblypersons run for State Controller or Insurance Comissioner, termed out whatevers run for Mayor as a way of staying in the public's eye as a prelude for running for Governor or National office....Wash, Rinse, Repeat... Different tree -- same monkeys.

Meanwhile, the non-elected career bureaucrats tend to actually run things, since they get a new boss (elected or appointed) every few years. So you end up with stuff like the CARB (California Air Resources Board i.e., smog police) that have no accountability to the voters.

Yes - excellent point! The new elected official comes in has to take a while being non-productive while he learns things, then, he has to "reinvent the wheel", since he doesn't know why his idea didn't work before and finally, when things don't work out, the career people put everything back the way it was. (And 2 or 4 more years have gone by).

We have some of that problem in the active duty military. And it was recognized as it pertained to units deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. A decision was made to not rotate personnel in and out of units to minimize this effect.

Non-active duty units like the Guard and the Reserve, do better here I think. They have a true "corporate memory" that really makes them more efficient as a unit than active duty units.

- Jack

[ChuckD]

Originally Posted by JackandJanet

Yes - excellent point! The new elected official comes in has to take a while being non-productive while he learns things, then, he has to "reinvent the wheel", since he doesn't know why his idea didn't work before and finally, when things don't work out, the career people put everything back the way it was. (And 2 or 4 more years have gone by).

We have some of that problem in the active duty military. And it was recognized as it pertained to units deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. A decision was made to not rotate personnel in and out of units to minimize this effect.

Non-active duty units like the Guard and the Reserve, do better here I think. They have a true "corporate memory" that really makes them more efficient as a unit than active duty units.

- Jack

Not sure if I would agree with that. When we got deployed they took everybody in the state that hadn't deployed and a list of volunteers and put them in a unit that been disbanded. There was alot of people that had never met each other, much less worked together.

[Jackpine]

Ouch, that's not good! I was thinking more of a Guard unit deploying AS a unit. Not being combined with anyone else.

- Jack

[ChuckD]

For the most part they do. But, there is always a but, when the federal side says you will give me a unit and pretty much all your units have been deployed this is a way to send the ones that hasn't been before. I have seen units made up from people from different states.