While Trump is right to be proceeding with reforms, in doing so he and his administration are going a tad too fast. This is causing a lot of own-goals and public embarrassments, not to mention unnecessary disruption and collateral damage, which serves to reduce the enthusiasm and support for the reforms.
For example it has caused some major and completely unnecessary turmoil at the National Institute of Health : The Transmitter: U.S. health agency purge includes 10 lab heads at National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
This firing included one of the world's top researches on Parkinson's disease.
This firing led a lot of people to calmly ask: "WTF?".
Well, turns out the firing was apparently a mistake caused by a "coding error" that mislabeled employees -- once people started making noise about it they were rehired.
The Transmitter: Coding error caused layoffs at National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke this week, source says
Thirty employees—including 11 lab heads—at the institute should “immediately return to work,” according to an email the institute’s Office of Human Resources sent to top administration at the institute Wednesday evening.
Reform is a good thing, doing it stupidly and making the reformers look incompetent in doing so is not helpful to actual reform of the many, many, real problems in government agencies.
The blanket reductions and stoppages in research funding is having a major effect on good solid research in addition to the wasteful stuff that should be defunded.
"Hasten Slowly" is good advice.
Chesterton's Fence, while usually applied to progressives tearing down institutions, also applies to the Right when they tear down stuff without understanding the direct and indirect effects and implications of what they are doing.
Getting rid of fraud and waste and ridiculous programs that are little more than grants to progressive organizations along with associated graft is a good thing, burning down the entire research "village" in order to do so is quite another.
Do it smartly, and quickly if need be, but make sure above all that you do it competently and show positive results.
4 comments:
One wonders if that was a clerical error or a deliberate keystroke error on someone’s part to embarrass the process, knowing that that person would be rehired. Don’t say that both are not feasible in today’s political climate.
juvat
There is no "going slowly" when using an axe.
And an axe is what is needed. Will there be some limbs chopped that might be better saved? Prehaps.
But Trump had a limited time before the DNC/RNC machine ends his "Reforms"...so he has to work quickly.
If the management of the NIH folks at the top were not part of the issue, then there would have been no need for the axe to begin with.
At the end of it, going slowly will fail, He tried that last term and was hobbled at every step.
juvat: Quite likely there are those holdovers from the prior administrations gumming up the works - they should know this and be on guard for it, and not let this kind of embarrassments occur.
B: You can't declare an operation a success when the patient dies.
Going fast is fine if you do it smartly. Doing it stupidly causes more harm than good and not only harms efficiency and effectiveness, but gives the opposition support in their claim that the administration is being reckless and stupid rather than being smart and solving the real problems - and that means they will get back into power and undo any reform efforts that were actually achieved and we'll be back to the same fraud waste and graft under the claim of fixing what this administration did and using these stupidities as examples rather than having to answer for the waste and fraud that they have done.
Spot on comments to both of these points. Trump seems to me that he is more of a big picture guy who needs someone else to reign in his bravado. For many presidents it has been their wives. Unfortunately with Trump, I think Melania has neither the interest nor the ability to keep his ego in check.
I think that we all know that much must be fixed in America if we as a nation are to remain both strong and relevant in the world. The way to do it needs to be tempered with wisdom and an eye to the political repercussions if it is to fly with the citizens of this country. I think that this might be the last chance we have to right the ship, otherwise the people will go back to the way things were.
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