Feds Discover 1,000 More Government Data Centers

1sockchuck writes "The US government has 2,094 data centers, nearly 1,000 more than previous estimates, according to an updated inventory by federal agencies. The finding underscores the scope of the challenge facing the Obama administration as it seeks to streamline the government's IT infrastructure in a massive data center consolidation."

Comments

Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[elrous0]

Any Presidential administration that comes into the federal government promising to combat bureaucracy and duplication is either lying (most likely) or is truly epically deluded. No agency in the federal government is going to let some johnny-come-lately President who's going to be gone in 4-8 years come in and fundamentally change the way they've worked for 60 years or more. Oh sure, they'll TELL him they'll do it. They kiss the ass of their new director (aka his political toadie appointee, also to be gone in 4-8 years). But the most they'll *actually* do is stall, make token gestures, lie, and basically find other ways to run out the clock until the next administration comes in (with a whole new set bullshit streamlining promises). There are long-term professionals in these agencies who've been playing out that scenario since the Carter administration (maybe even some old Nixon/Ford guys).

Bill Clinton said it best (and I'm paraphrasing here) "The most shocking thing I discovered about the Presidency is that people don't do what you say."

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[jonescb]

Bill Clinton said it best (and I'm paraphrasing here) "The most shocking thing I discovered about the Presidency is that people don't do what you say."

Isn't that how it's supposed to work? If everybody had to do as he said, we'd call the position Dictator instead of President. The president has very limited power, which is a good thing.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Pojut]

In the case of Obama, I think he truly believed that he would be able to change things once he was in a position of "real" power. Except when he got elected, he found out that the president isn't a position of "real" power after all...you're hands are tied when it comes to MANY things.

I don't think his promises have been broken, so much as had reality injected in them.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Thanshin]

Bill Clinton said it best (and I'm paraphrasing here) "The most shocking thing I discovered about the Presidency is that people don't do what you say."

I don't think he was referring to exactly the same scenario as you are. Your "people" is composed of long term government employees, his is composed of females.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[elrous0]

Yes, but most people assume the President has a lot more power than they actually do. You come in as President, you appoint a new director of agency X, you tell him to do such-and-such at that agency, he says okay, and then he goes off and doesn't do it. Your own cabinet will often lie to you, deceive you, outright ignore you, stall you, etc. And everyone is just waiting around for the day when you'll be gone (which they know will be, at most, 8 years from now). Any given federal employee is way more worried about covering their ass and sticking around for the long-term than with any directive you might issue. No one gives a shit about your campaign promises or legacy except you and maybe a few members of your cabinet. It's like being the captain of a boat on the very of mutiny--for 4-8 years.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[betterunixthanunix]

You give the man a lot of credit, and I do not really understand why. Why would you assume that a Democrat would actually want to change things? If you have not noticed, the Democrats represent the same philosophy on what America should be like as the Republicans do, with a few superficial differences.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Sponge Bath]

stall, make token gestures, lie, and basically find other ways to run out the clock until the next administration comes in...

Or as Sir Humphrey Appleby said:
"Indeed it is, beyond question, at the appropriate juncture, in due course, in the fullness of time."

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[gumbi west]

The President can do a lot, he just has to sick someone else on the topic like a bull dog. He also has to be really picky about his battles.

I can think of many examples from situations I know of.

Exmaples:

• under Bush, the administration did manage to decrease the number of payroll offices substantially and keep (mainly) the the good ones, and decreased the travel authorization/reimbursement IT systems to the less crappy ones (btw private industry guys, is there such a thing as a good travel authorization/reimbursement system?).
• Clinton decreased the number of senior executives (people making about $140,000 in DC) substantially while increasing the number of minority senior executives.
• Clinton, with Gore's help, increased the number of contractors in the civilian services. He did this not by forcing contracting on the government agencies, but by making a process and forcing them to look at some of their employees every year.
• Bush, with Rumsfeld's help, increased the number of contractors in the military. Not sure how this worked, it might have all been from the top.

You have to realize, the US government is too large to control from DC. It works best when there is central minimum requirements that vary with the task at hand and how you meet them is left up to some local manager.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Pojut]

I'm not talking about from a party standpoint, I mean just as an American Citizen standpoint.

From a party standpoint, I recognize that no one really wants things to change. As a person though, I honestly believe that he thought he could really make a difference. Note that this has nothing to do with what he's done since he got elected, nor does it have anything to do with my opinion of him now. I'm strictly referring to what I think made him want to be President in the first place.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[PPH]

Yes. But onne would expect that the career bureaucrats would take some pride in doing the best job that they can. The whole "We've been doing it this way for decades and when you're gone in 4 years, we'll still will be" is pure bullshit. We need some way to motivate them to pursue continuous process improvement. Then, the proper function of the administration is to watch over the operations and make policy decisions. Not nit-pick the data center architecture. On the other hand, when the administration calls the IT folks in to report on why they have 2000 data centers, they should be able to justify their design decision. Or have an ongoing program in place to bring the system into line with that design. Then, all the administration has to do is bless the plan and let them carry on.

Political appointees can't expect to micro-manage their departments. They need to delegate that to the long timers. What they need to do is to keep the fire lit under them. And if the carrot of pride in a job well done isn't motivation enough, then the stick of outsourcing it all to private industry and tossing the whole bunch out on their ass needs to be a valid option.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[tnk1]

And, to be honest, its one reason I didn't vote for him. As soon as I understood that he had no idea how the government actually works, I knew the only thing that was going to happen was that he was going to simply add to the government. Not because he's some sort of big government liberal, but because adding to the government is all that the bureaucracy lets you do without specialized knowledge of how the bureaucracy works.

The Tea Party people really have no chance either. Their only value in my mind is that they will gridlock the addition of more crap to the government. I have more sympathy with their aims, but I know full well that outsiders have no chance at meaningful change unless it is accomplished via tearing down the whole edifice.

The real challenge is not throwing the bums out or creating "Change", its finding knowledgeable insiders who know how to get things done in the bureaucracy. People who can ease out the holdouts from their fiefdoms, who can soothe the Civil Service unions, and who can gain the trust of multiple administrations so that they have the ability to actually do something worth doing. I almost think that as soon as the President wins an election, he or she needs to go and campaign at every federal office building and get those people on his side.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[mr_mischief]

That's how it's supposed to work overall. That's not how it's supposed to work within the Executive Branch, of which the President is the head officer. When your boss gives you a legal order, you're supposed to obey it.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[elrous0]

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Dexter Herbivore]

Ever seen "Yes, Minister"? Bureaucracy outlives the elected politicians, and usually has more entrenched power. If you want to make a real change to government you destroy bureaux first.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[elrous0]

Indeed. I propose that we commission a study.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[DrgnDancer]

*Everybody* isn't supposed to do what he says, then he'd be a dictator. Everyone who works for the executive branch of the government is supposed to to follow his work related policies, just as you are expected to follow the policies of the president of your company. He's the head of the executive branch, he has a reasonable expectation that his employees will do what he tells them too. They don't. At the levels below the political appointees they weasel around doing the minimum possible to appease whoever the current boss is while changing as little as they possibly can.

This is both a blessing and a curse. It means, on the bright side, that when the guy you disagree with is in power (in my case Bush, perhaps in your case Obama, or even both, it doesn't really matter) he can't really do as much damage as he'd like. On the down side, when the guys you agree with is in power, he can't really fix anything either. The President is theoretically the chief of the Executive Branch, in charge of the majority of the federal bureaucracy. In reality, while he certainly wields some power, the bureaucrats rule the bureaucracy... the President is just a figure head. (Note that Presidents do wield tremendous amounts of power, if nothing else the military *does* take their orders quite seriously, just that in this particular instance it's not as much power as it seems at first blush).

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[MadKeithV]

A good thing? That most of the *actual* power lies with a bunch of people who are not only not democratically elected, but they stay right where they are for decades, through all changes at the supposed "top"?
I'm not so sure it's a good thing.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Pteraspidomorphi]

I was precisely thinking of that series while reading this thread! It's a very educational comedy.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[hedwards]

Of course they have no meaningful chance, not with folks like you voting for gridlock. I mean seriously, if people would vote for the candidate that was sincerely interested in good policy and willing to make compromises to get it, there would be change. What President Obama failed to appreciate is all the numb nuts out there that are voting specifically for the candidate that's going to cause the most damage to the federal government.

Which is really the only reason why the tea party movement is even in the press. There's a lot of people out there that are comfortable cutting off the nose to spite the face. Never mind that the original tea party had precisely zip to do with taxation, and everything to do with ditching the competitors product so that they wouldn't have any competition.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

So fire them. Hire someone that will do as you say. CEO's do it in the real world every single day. And if there are laws in your way, get those changed first. Failing that, line-item-veto any spending for their salaries and wait for them to quit. Failing even that, use your executive ability to set their schedules to nil, or require them to report to Alaska, etc.

It really isn't that hard.

People made this same argument towards Ron Paul's campaign promises, and they failed to see the same simplicity of it. There are literally THRONGS of people waiting to get that paycheck the cushy government jobs offer. Use some turnover to get the desired result, but failing that use the powers of scheduling and compensation to achieve the same result. You know, those "executive" powers?

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Kurofuneparry]

Great comment. The President's power is supposed to be limited. Even within his own branches he/she has to be a leader and know how to play the game.

The real problem is this: bureaucracies fail to make changes because our current budgetary system allows their budget to only go upward and they know that their jobs are safe despite incompetence. In fact, the building of bureaucratic duplication and inefficiency helps to guarantee their job security. So is the situation hopeless? NO! There are proven methods that have worked in the past.

I was disappointed (as always) that each party didn't consider their best options in presidential primaries. Romney (R) and Richardson (D) had demonstrated that they knew how to shrink state budgets and trim bureaucracy. Yes, such tools exist: hiring freezes, retrograde budgets (go back to 2008 levels etc.), outsourcing to contractors, shifting responsibilities to less bloated departments (shell game), borrowing effective systems straight from other states (helped my state's education system greatly) , and a host of other methods that work. Hopefully we'll be able to trim the really big problems: pensions, entitlements, and bureaucratic inefficiency but this will require a return to the methods that have worked in the past.

then again, I'm an idiot.......

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[maxwell demon]

At the levels below the political appointees they weasel around doing the minimum possible to appease whoever the current boss is while changing as little as they possibly can.

Is it really that different in private businesses (except that the boss might stay a bit longer)?

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[hedwards]

Precisely, there's a lot of things which genuinely have bipartisan support, and those are the things you focus on first.

That's not to say that you ignore the other ones, we're going to be permanently in debt unless we allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for the high earners, and we're going to have to cut government spending on defense to fund education and jobs programs. We're going to have to force companies that send jobs overseas to book profits before they book deductions like ones that are located and functioning in the US.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[bberens]

No, imho the POTUS is the CEO of the Executive branch. His orders should be followed in the same way as if the CEO of your current employer walked over to your office and told you to do something. Sure, sometimes things don't work out, are technically impossible, etc. But generally you'd better at least begrudgingly attempt to do what he wants. Otherwise what the heck is the point of electing him?

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[elrous0]

Most of the professional level federal employees are protected by laws and union contracts (only the director is an at-will employee that the President can hand his walking papers whenever he feels like it). That means you would have to go through Congress, and maybe even the courts, for the changes needed to just start firing people (or zeroing out their budgets). And good luck with that.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Minwee]

Perhaps he should have done his homework so that he might have more realistic expectations.

He might also be able to use simple civil service phrases like "Unfortunately, although the answer was indeed clear, simple, and straightforward, there is some difficulty in justifiably assigning to it the fourth of the epithets you applied to the statement, inasmuch as the precise correlation between the information you communicated and the facts, insofar as they can be determined and demonstrated, is such as to cause epistemological problems, of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear" in every day conversation.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[jimicus]

Oh, you've seen Yes Minister?

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

I should have saved my earlier post for you, because perhaps you'll be able to explain it to me...

Let's take a concrete example or three. I'll propose some executive solutions to the problems, and you tell me why it won't work:

1) End the wars. President uses Commander-in-Chief authority to redeploy every single unit, or just the desired units, to the United States, effective immediately. Anyone not obeying the order will be brought up for court martial. Failing that, simply veto any spending bills until they run out of money.

2) End "Department of X". Dismiss and/or reassign every appointee, refuse to nominate any new candidates. Failing that, set their home office in ANWAR and refuse to reimburse any mileage, due to the economy, of course.

3) Eliminate the Deficit. Veto, veto, veto. Line-item-veto, even. Signing statements stating that funding starts out at zero dollars this year and increases to the figures on the bill one year after the bill is no longer valid, or one year after the Union no longer exists, which ever comes last. Failing that, refuse to even read any more bills until you get what you want on your desk.

Who would have the power to stop any of this? The next President, maybe, but that's about it. There's nothing in the Constitution that says the commander has to do any of these things, and no one has the power to force any of it to happen either. So long as the President made his intentions entirely clear to the people, and as long as they supported his behavior, I imagine that no one would have the political will to oppose it either.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Anonymous Coward]

The Tea Party people really have no chance either. Their only value in my mind is that they will gridlock the addition of more crap to the government. I have more sympathy with their aims, but I know full well that outsiders have no chance at meaningful change unless it is accomplished via tearing down the whole edifice.

Um, you do realize Tea Partiers are nothing but a rebrand of Neo-Conservatism, right? It's not a grass roots organization or a public sentiment, it's a carefully crafted, bought and paid for marketing bait-and-switch. Bush made Conservatism a bad word because he outspent everyone before him *combined*.

  So what makes you think that the tea partiers will gridlock anything? They will do exactly as they did from 2000 to 2008. They'll spend money like a teenager with their parent's credit card, completely ignore responsibility for their failures, and probably pick more fights with tiny little dustbowl countries just so that they can test out their battle tactics and new expensive toys. The Tea Party people lost (as in misplaced decimal point, bags falling off trucks, etc) more money than most parts of the government spend in an entire decade.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[lennier1]

Bill Clinton said it best (and I'm paraphrasing here) "The most shocking thing I discovered about the Presidency is that people don't do what you say."

Which is why it's a good idea to elect a married man. He should be used to it. ;)

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

Or you just pay out the contract...

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[icebike]

Tell that to the air traffic control union.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[iammani]

I think you meant, Yes Prime Minister (which is more relevant to GP's post)

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Anonymous Coward]

We need some way to motivate them to pursue continuous process improvement.

One word - Gulag.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[maxume]

The other reason the Tea Party folks have no chance is that they are a hilarious minority.

They are loud and entertaining so they get lots of time on the news, but they aren't the mainstream Americans they think they are.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Anonymous Coward]

haha. that's awesome. are we to assume, *you* magically know how the government works then?

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. I propose that we commission a study.

Better make it a "blue ribbon" commission.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[elrous0]

Reagan was only able to do that because the air traffic controllers actually broke a federal law by striking. When they refused his order to return to work, they foolishly made themselves fair game for immediate firing, bypassing all normal federal employee protections.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Registered Coward v2]

No, imho the POTUS is the CEO of the Executive branch. His orders should be followed in the same way as if the CEO of your current employer walked over to your office and told you to do something. Sure, sometimes things don't work out, are technically impossible, etc. But generally you'd better at least begrudgingly attempt to do what he wants. Otherwise what the heck is the point of electing him?

It does. CEO walks in, says do this. You think "Is it a good idea" If yes, do it. If no - what is the penalty for not doing it? Will I outlast the CEO? If teh answer is high and no, what is the minimum I can do until the idea dies or I can kill it? If kill it is chosen, what is the best way to kill it? Form a committee to implement it? require approvals from everyone from the janitor up before we can proceed?

Yup, just like private enterprise.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[timeOday]

The main reason most of those things cannot be done is because voters don't want them to be done.

Voters do not want a sudden, humiliating withdrawl from Afghanistan that would be an admission of defeat. (Others would argue saving face isn't worth sacrificing lives, but I digress...)

Voters do not want to balance the budget. What they want is to pay no taxes when young, and receive full benefits when old. And who they vote for is whoever promises to do that.

It's just human nature. Almost every person thinks THEY are the one doing more than their fair share, and what they want is for everybody else to start bucking up and being more like them. Just like a big marriage among 300,000,000 people.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Anonymous Coward]

Score: 5, Naive.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[jimicus]

True, but arguably they're the exact same show but with a slightly different set and intro. (I've got the lot as a boxed set).

Sir Humphrey is still a devious, outwardly obsequious civil servant and Jim Hacker is still a likeable bumbling politician who spends much of the time blissfully unaware that his purpose in life is essentially to distract attention away from the civil servants who are actually running the country.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[gtall]

Said by someone totally clueless:

1. End the wars. Yep, let the Taliban finish building their Caliphate so they can finally send us those nukes you aren't worried about.

2. End Dept. of X. Okay, let's start with Health and Human Services, we don't need no stinking FDA making sure those nice drug companies are fielding half-tested drugs on the pop. They also house the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because, well, we'll just outlaw flu outbreaks, e-coli outbreaks, etc. The list continues....Medicare and Medicare, let Grandma fend for her old ass herself. How about Social Security Administration, those blue hairs don't need their checks, we'll use them to cut down the deficit.

3. Eliminate the Deficit...well said, let it be gone!! Hear, hear, now how are you going to change the laws that made the social promises that are driving the deficit?

Grow the fuck up.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[kaiser423]

lol, look at this guy, he doesn't think that the same thing happens at corporations. Man has he never worked for a big company.

Let me tell you what, any company of the size that would come to approach the size of a typical government agency is way bigger than any CEO can slash and burn effectively. It has its own set of fiefdoms and territories, and the CEO often times is very stymied in what they can do. In the federal government, running roughshod over someone just kind of sucks, and you get reduced efficiencies; in a big business it can cost that business billions, if not more if everyone with talent jumps ship and starts a competing company.

Sure, in a small to medium sized company, a CEO can slash, burn and make things happen, but at a company large enough to compare it to a branch of the government? Nope. They'll be fighting wars and people whom will ride them out just the same. Sure, a CEO can fire 30,000 employees, but replacing them with 30,000 more? Nope. Those 30,000 fired get picked up in India, not re-hired in the US. I don't think that we should be looking to do that with the US government...

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[jaweekes]

One thing I learned last year is that the government cannot tell you how much it spends on outsourcing, and if it is getting value for money. It is very possible that they are spending way too much money on contractors and outsourcing then it would cost to have it internal to the government. Another problem with outsourcing is the lack of control you have over the system and the data within.

Contracting and outsourcing only works and saves money when it is held accountable for their results, and many times they are not. Just because the job is outsourced, it doesn't mean "better" or "cheaper".

In the end there is no way to efficiently run a government, no matter what the size. Public scrutiny is about the only way to stop the government from wasting money, but that has some problems. 1) It involves opening up the books to the public, and no administration will do that; and 2) It's a European idea, and we can't do anything in the US that works in Europe, as they are a bunch of Socialists! And 3) Britain does this, but it gets out of hand with people arguing over the cost of an expensed lunch.

--
I don't think your an idiot, unless you do rule the world.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Rich0]

Uh, pride in a job well done won't get them anywhere. Trust me - pride in quality is no better in the federal government than in any major corporation. In the company I work for we'd still have data centers in every closet in every building and armies of shadow IT if business leaders didn't know that they'd be shown the door if they didn't comply with corporate directives.

Who wants to depend on some external server group to maintain their servers, when instead they could just have their own group doing the work for a mere $500k/yr or whatever. It isn't like the money comes out of their paycheck - in fact, the larger their budget, the more money they have for bonuses, and the higher their own position to justify the spending allowance.

In corporations this is tempered by the fact that if the company doesn't turn a profit then the investors will clean house. Plus, the salaries of the middle managers interfere with the ability of the senior executives to pay themselves bonuses, since the company can't just go to Congress and ask for more money. If a company wants money they have to earn it - no matter how important it is that they get it.

I don't think that people working in industry are any more or less virtuous than those working in government. However, government offers a different set of perverse incentives. Those tend to lead to massive bureaucracy and organizations that seemingly exist only to serve themselves.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Doc Ruby]

Somehow Bush managed to completely create the "Homeland Security Department" with all of the biggest and most legally/physically powerful agencies restructured inside it. With new layers on top that put him in direct control, both as executive and as political "Unitary Executive".

Democrats have had bigger majorities in each chamber of Congress, and Obama has a bigger election mandate, than Bush had to work with.

Remaking the government is entirely possible. The problem is the Congress that likes it just as wasteful as it is.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[peragrin]

The POTUS has three tools.

The military ,
His diplomats,
His lawyers.

He has no other tools he is limited in how he can use those tools(military has deployed duration limits without approval )

If you don't follow his recommendations(order) the only thing he can do is sue you. (lawyers)

We act like the president has power but years of abuse has crippled it. Vietnam was a presidential action. Sincethen the president can only deploy guerrilla for60 days without congressional approval.

The president can only directly fire people he appoints everything else isprotected againist one party going crazy and firing the other party.

So basically every thing you said can't actually be done

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Anonymous Coward]

This President had more power than most Presidents. He also had a Congress in his majority for about a year's time where he could have rewritten the rules and given himself more power--not to regulate, but simply to ax anyone.

He didn't. Simple solution, ignored.

btw, does the excuse you give the current sitting President also apply to W, or is there a double-standard going on here?

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[interval1066]

"Isn't that how it's supposed to work? If everybody had to do as he said, we'd call the position Dictator instead of President. The president has very limited power, which is a good thing."

That's fine, in the proper scope. For instance; suppose your philosophy towards governance were extended to the military. A completely democratically run military would be at best horribly ineffective in defending the country. The federal bureaucracy, if I understand, is in fact mandated directly under the auspices of the executive branch of the government. Of course the reality is that that power is moderated by layers of bureaucratic red tape, regulations, labor unions (such as the horrendous SEIU), etc. But in fact the president is supposed to be in direct control of certain aspects of governance. There is some power there, he's not exactly a straw man.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[KUHurdler]

He sure seems to think that Bush had a lot of power.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[gnieboer]

Technically the term "order" would only apply to the military branches of the DoD, which are enforceable by military law.

For everyone else, his "orders" are just the same as the direction any CEO gives. Can't send you to jail for not complying, can fire you, but only after all the other executive branch guidance (HR Policy) is followed, to include union agreements as applicable.

Now if Congress gives direction, the Executive Branch agrees, and the Judicial Branch doesn't strike it down, then you can go to jail for not complying, but again, that's no different than any US citizen.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[DrgnDancer]

Brilliant! Fire them! So we fire, say, the FDA and then we hire an entire new set of employees, train them and send them out to inspect our food with no experience and training provided by a bunch of people who have never done the job (since we fired all the ones that have). I love this plan. No... I don't.

OK, so maybe you meant to fire the head of agencies that fail to comply. That's a better idea... Except that if you fire more than one or two of them then a big chunk of the upper management of the government is in the hands of inexperienced people, and the next levels down are now resentful that you fired all of their bosses.... Maybe not such a good idea...

So maybe we'll just have the President of the United States micromanaging the careers of every one of the 3 million or so employees of the federal government? No, that probably won't work either...

You're ignoring a lot of realities of the federal government here:

1) It's *huge*. Really, really huge. Even cut back and reduced to the Ron Paul level it would have to have at least a million or so employees. That's at least 8 to 9 times as large as even the largest international companies.

2) It's the opposite of a business. It doesn't exist to make money, it exists to spend money. No matter how many services you cut, the basic purpose of the government is to spend money on services. You can disagree about which services it should be spending money on, you can make the spending of the money more efficient, but in the end the government is a non-profit service organization.

3) It's internally constrained. The Bureaucracy only has as much or as little power as Congress gives them. There are things they literally *can't* do. If Congress passes a law that says every federal agency must have at least two copies of every computer they buy, then by God the agencies are buying twice as many computers no matter what the Director of the agency or the President want.

Finally, you have to make these jobs something people who can do them want to do. Do new CEOs sometimes come in and "clean house"? Sure. If they fire the upper management, they know that they can get a new, very experienced, upper management in place fairly quickly. Why? Because working for a large company as an upper manager is profitable. Directors of Federal agencies make damn good money, no doubt, but not "Executive Vice President for Overseas Marketing" good money. I think the Federal Salaries top out about 3-4 hundred thousand dollars these days. Way more than I make sure. Not enough to lure away the CFO of a Fortune 500 company to take over the job by any stretch though.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[rednip]

And, to be honest, its one reason I didn't vote for him.

You might not have noticed that every politician runs on a bigger platform than they can deliver, trying to act like Obama is any different is part of the new 'typical'

Their only value in my mind is that they will gridlock the addition of more crap to the government.

One of the problems with having 'conversations' with 'conservatives' is that despite easily accessable fact they often repeat ad nauseum 'facts' hawked on talk radio. For example, the 'fights' between Bill Clinton, and Newt Gingrich famously shut down the government. Conservative pundits have been crowing about this 'victory' for the last decade, but they fail to realize that Bill Clinton won in 1996 in part because the shutdown hurt Americans. Millions of people found that they were 'missing' Social Security checks, Medicare processing, etc. This didn't sit well with voters, but the boomers seemed determined to repeat past mistakes.

I swear that libertarians think that having children starving the streets is the path to riches.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[iluvcapra]

End the wars. President uses Commander-in-Chief authority to redeploy every single unit, or just the desired units, to the United States, effective immediately. Anyone not obeying the order will be brought up for court martial. Failing that, simply veto any spending bills until they run out of money

As we've seen with Obama's attempt to reduce commitments in Afghanistan, against the will of the generals, it's practically impossible for a president to reduce troop deployments without the support of the generals, particularly as long as the party in opposition supports an open-ended commitment. The generals simply leak the content of their meetings to the war party, and leak negative stories about the policy decisions to the press, and work to eliminate and marginalize people who offer solutions that reduce commitments beneath what the generals think "will accomplish the mission." It would be easy for Obama to end the war at the cost of his presidency, of course, but why bother when your replacement will be an ultra-hawk Republican who will simply re-escalate? That's really the issue, there's a lot of competition for people to prove themselves the most belligerent, because there really isn't much of a consensus for ending the war among conservatives or liberals.

2) End "Department of X". Dismiss and/or reassign every appointee, refuse to nominate any new candidates. Failing that, set their home office in ANWAR and refuse to reimburse any mileage, due to the economy, of course.

All cabinet-level departments are created by acts of congress; a president cannot abrogate an act of congress. A failure to appoint a head will cause the civil-service interim appointee to run the department. Congress will attempt the fund the department through omnibus legislation.

3) Eliminate the Deficit. Veto, veto, veto. Line-item-veto, even. Signing statements stating that funding starts out at zero dollars this year and increases to the figures on the bill one year after the bill is no longer valid, or one year after the Union no longer exists, which ever comes last. Failing that, refuse to even read any more bills until you get what you want on your desk.

The President of the US has no line-item veto, because it's unconstitutional. The president has no right to dictate how the US spends its money, this is the responsibility of the House of Representatives. There is no evidence that people really want to eliminate the deficit. The deficit is a fundamentally popular institution and people would never vote someone out of office for increasing it. And deficit reformers, instead of actually trying to win the argument on the merits and win elections, propose ever more dictatorial powers for their great white hope, that one man who will, Cincinnatus-like, ride to the rescue of America, use untrammeled king-like authority to set the nation straight, and then disappear. The requirement that a president either affirm or veto bills in full is a fundamental check on executive power.

You call for dictatorship, if only to deal with the immediate crisis, but that's how it always starts... Congress is the institution in our system that prevents dictatorship. If you take powers away from congress and hand them to the president, you break the system.

The problem is that people don't actually vote for senators and representatives they respect any more, people who can -- they just vote for the person who has the highest propensity for giving them what they ask for.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

Grow the fuck up.

Okay. I'll start by following your example, and will endeavor to make better strawman arguments.

Did you buy that UID on ebay, or did you have something meaningful to say?

I don't normally feed trolls such as yourself, but god damn it, you've clearly been around long enough to know better.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[michael_cain]

Well, in most agencies there are a number of appointive posts at the top, not just the very head. Eg, various assistant secretaries and under secretaries are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and serve at the pleasure of the President. Then there is the hybrid case of appointive positions that have fixed terms (eg, the members of the FCC).

It's also worth pointing out that the federal civil service, which many regard as a serious problem because it makes it hard to fire people without cause, was imposed as the solution to a worse problem: wholesale firings of the professional staff whenever the Administration changed hands, and replacement with people who might have zero experience but had the right "political" qualifications.

How far down to push appointive positions is a hard question. Should the head of FEMA, within the Dept of Homeland Security, be an appointee or a civil service professional? FEMA used to be considered a joke, poorly run and incapable of executing. Bill Clinton appointed a head who had extensive experience in emergency management at the state level, and who is generally regarded as having turned the agency around. George Bush appointed someone with no prior experience in the field, and the agency quickly returned to joke status.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[gumbi west]

screw that. We need to let the bush tax cuts expire, full stop. When they went into effect I was about a median earner and I didn't even care the cut was so small, but added up over all of us, it is several trillion dollars over the next 10 years. I say balance the budget and let them expire.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[DrgnDancer]

1) He could do that. Afghanistan and Iraq would collapse into civil war. Other regional powers would get involved the end result would almost certainly be worse than what we started with. At best Iraq would be under the control of Iran in fact, if not in name (and it could be in name). At worst it would be a seething pit of warlords and mini-armies vying for control for decades killing tens of thousands and creating the perfect place for terrorist organizations to setup headquarters and camps from which to attack the rest of the world.

Afghanistan's best case is return of rule of by the Taliban. Worst case is exactly like Iraq. We'd be blamed the world over for two horrifying humanitarian crisis's. It would be entirely our collective faults, because we started the process than left before it was even vaguely stable, let alone complete. He would be blamed by everyone both for the embarrassing pullout and resulting humanitarian crisis. People who *were* calling for a complete pullout will conveniently forget it was their idea and will insist that they didn't *really* mean a *complete* pullout *right* now... It should have been handled better.

2) He could do that. Of course there are few agencies that anyone wants to completely destroy. Most of them do *something* useful. They're inefficient perhaps, but useful. People want to cut particular programs or something not destroy agencies. You'd be using a machine gun to kill rats. Sure that rats are dead, but so is everyone else in the immediate area.

3) You're aware that Congress has a number of powers to prevent this right? They can override vetoes for one. It's hard, but I bet you could start seeing some "broad bipartisan support" build up pretty damn fast when whole departments and agencies start losing their funding. As to your clever funding starts when I say it starts... it's pretty easy for Congress to include specific language in bills to dictate *exactly* when funding starts.

Reality is rarely as simple as it looks on paper.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

A few quick points:

A) New people are more likely to do as they're told.

B) There's zero reason the Federal government needs to employ millions of people, and likewise zero expectation for the President to run each and every State and municipality.

1A) - See B

2A) Irrelevant, really. I could be making the same argument in favor of growing departments and making them do more. The Chief can exert a lot of influence.

3A) Congress has no Constitutional authority over how the executive branch is structured. E.g. 'czars'.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Anonymous Coward]

The president does not have to do anything he feels is unconstitutional. It would certainly be tough, but he could do it. Congress writes the laws, but the executive gets it done.

I am sure impeachment would happen, but it would be great to have a national debate on the Constitution and the separation of powers. The whole reason the 3 branches are separate is to make it hard to be tyrannical. All 3 would need to agree. Congress may write a horrible law and the courts could be willing to hear the cases, but the executive could choose to ignore the law and arrest no one.

Congress could write a crap law and the President could eagerly round people up, but the courts could let everyone go home.

Of course, Congress could actually not write a bad law in the first place.

There is a lot of power in the presidency. The most important is the power to say no. However, it may not matter. No one in Washington gives a crap about the Constitution. It just as well be a roll of TP.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[gnieboer]

OK, I'll give you some straight answers as to why that's not going to happen, even if you were president tomorrow:

1- End the Wars. Actually, the wars are ending. But let's say tomorrow is your first day in office. Your order is "Redeploy all the units". The CJCS says "Yes, sir". First they need some time to come up with a plan on how to do what you want. So MINIMUM 60 days. Ever tried to get a family of five in the car for a 5-day road trip?? How many hours did that take? OK, now multiply that by 50,000. Moving a force the size of what we have is not a small feat when it's in a land-locked country halfway around the world and we can't just drive down to the coast and hop on a boat. So to make sure it's done right and we don't give $20B worth of stuff to the Taliban when we leave, a plan is a good thing.
So then they come back with the plan, and say it will be 18 months. You lose your mind and say you want it done NOW (you are the President after all!). The CJCS brings in his Intel guys, who give you an hour long brief on the complexities and fragilities of the Afghan society, and how just leaving out of the blue will destroy all the progress made thus far, result in thousands of Afghan deaths due to the resulting civil war, create a resurgence of the Taliban, etc.. Most presidents at this point realize that these are ACTUAL lives that hang on their personal decision (think the picture of Kennedy in the Oval Office during the Cuban Missile Crisis). No longer an armchair exercise, they realize that there has to be a logical framework for the withdrawal. But like Iraq, it happens, because you are the boss. Just on a timeline tempered with reality and experience. Common Sense Ending...

But for arguments sake, let's say you are fanatical about this (you are the President after all!). You give direct that every available mode of logistics will be used immediately to remove US troops from Afghanistan. OK fine they say, and leave. The CJCS hands in his resignation, as his advice is no longer useful to you. Political mayhem ensues, stuff gets leaked to Congress/the Press, and you spend so much of your time dealing with that you can't keep track of the withdrawal.
You threaten to fire all not obeying your orders, those below you come with briefings showing how they are making progress as best they can, you don't have a clue how logistics works, so you don't know if they are lying or not. So you fire a couple just for good measure... briefings get more and more 'controlled'. Troops end up taking about 24 months to withdraw because of all the mess you made.
So let's say you veto the spending bill. Great idea! Resources are what drives DC. So now there is no funding for the war effort. Pentagon comes to a grinding halt. Problem is that there are still troops in the field (remember land-locked Afghanistan?), who are now dying because of lack of ammunition that you refused to buy them. Pictures of dead GI's come back home. Oh wait, now suddenly your veto gets overridden by Congress.
But you aren't done yet, you use yet more executive power to stop spending any DoD funds. More GI's die. Congress has now had enough, so has the American people, and you are the first to be Impeached/Convicted. And the Brits aren't fond of you either (remember it's a Coalition over there)

(The next 2 are easier)

2- End of Department "X". Which one? Defense? Education? State? Health and Human Services? Yep, you can slay an entire department as President. Problem is that in most areas of government, there is SOME good being done. So it's pretty unlikely you can just kill the whole thing without crippling a vital service people need. OK, no problem... we'll just carve out the fat, right? Trouble is that it's very hard to estimate how many people any department really needs if you aren't in that department (just how many people does it take to keep track of Social Security Numbers, I don't have a clue) And almost no one is coming to come brief you that they need fewer people (a

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

It would be easy for Obama to end the war at the cost of his presidency, of course, but why bother when your replacement will be an ultra-hawk Republican who will simply re-escalate?

Because it is the principled thing to do? Because it would net trillions of dollars in savings? Because it wasn't sunny enough to play basketball that day???

Congress will attempt the fund the department through omnibus legislation.

If the people don't want porkulus, though, that becomes very difficult.

There is no evidence that people really want to eliminate the deficit. The deficit is a fundamentally popular institution and people would never vote someone out of office for increasing it.

Perhaps you've heard of this little group called the 'Tea Party'? Your comment would have be rather true five or so years ago, but to claim that the people don't actually want what they're actually campaigning for is a bit Platonic, is it not?

And deficit reformers, instead of actually trying to win the argument on the merits and win elections, propose ever more dictatorial powers for their great white hope, that one man who will, Cincinnatus-like, ride to the rescue of America, use untrammeled king-like authority to set the nation straight, and then disappear.

That's a bit of an odd set up, isn't it? "We can't reduce the deficit because only Castro could do it"?? Really?

You call for dictatorship, if only to deal with the immediate crisis, but that's how it always starts... Congress is the institution in our system that prevents dictatorship. If you take powers away from congress and hand them to the president, you break the system.

Now this right here is total BS. I'm only illustrating how the Executive has control over his own branch of government. I'm not discussing anything covered by Congressional powers at all.

The problem is that people don't actually vote for senators and representatives they respect any more, people who can -- they just vote for the person who has the highest propensity for giving them what they ask for.

Which is all I'm proposing. Let's elect someone who exhibits the leadership to give us what we want - smaller, less expensive government.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[orgelspieler]

Line item veto? The president doesn't have that authority. Clinton had it for a little while, but Rudy Giuliani took it all the way to the Supreme Court to have it declared unconstitutional.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[DrgnDancer]

And yet despite this major structural change: audit after audit, and inspection after inspection has shown that very little actually changed at the agencies that are now part of the DHS. Instead of reporting to the President or another Secretary the agency directors now report to the Secretary of DHS. They've made a few token gestures toward sharing information. There's another layer of Bureaucracy in place. The bag screeners at the airport work for them. Not much else is different.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

He could do that. Afghanistan and Iraq would collapse into civil war

Or he could not do that, and Afghanistan and Iraq would collapse into civil war. Point?

Until the people of themselves are ready to rebel, we have no business pouring money down that hole.

He could do that. Of course there are few agencies that anyone wants to completely destroy.

My greatest sadness regarding civics today is that everyone forgets about the other civil authorities that could handle these needs if the Federal government would just get the hell out of the way. We're designed to be a UNION of STATES. Look it up. Seriously.

You're aware that Congress has a number of powers to prevent this right?

Obama has demonstrated that he can ram a multi-thousand-page bill that no one has read, no one wants, and no one will be happy about right down the throats of Congress. I think it is you who is unclear about the balance of power up there. At any rate, nothing vetoed passes without monumental agreement, and that doesn't seem to exist. If it did, I suspect that people would be in favor of the reduction, rather than the bureaucracy.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[jeff4747]

1) End the wars.

Legal. Probably ill-advised to just up and leave immediately, but could be done.

2) End "Department of X".

Not legal. "Department of X" was created by an act of Congress. The president can not dissolve said department on his own.

3) Eliminate the Deficit.

Well, he'd probably prefer that the lights remained on in the White House, for example. Congress gets to decide how to spend the money, and the Executive branch needs the money more than the legislative branch. After all, when the government "does something", it's almost always the executive branch that's actually doing it.

I'm also ignoring how monumentally stupid this idea would be. The deficit is not necessarily a bad thing at all times. Right now, the US Government can borrow at about 2%. It's stupid to not borrow money and build infrastructure with it. Large infrastructure projects typically generate a lot of tax revenue in the long haul. For example, Hover Dam has yielded a hell of a lot of tax income from all the income generated by people/businesses using the electricity, as well as tourism to Lake Meade and the irrigation it provides.

Who would have the power to stop any of this?

The judicial branch can forbid the actions in court rulings, since they're illegal. The legislative branch can remove the president from office.

They really should put "civics" classes back into the schools, so people understand the basics of our government.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

1A) Do you have any idea how much was left behind during the evacuation of Vietnam?

2A) Again with the 'some good' argument. If the people want that particular 'good', let them petition their State for it. That's the design, after all.

3A) I already addressed all these points. So long as the people actually want the change, they'll never, ever support the whiners crying in favor of porkulus. But you are correct that this could require an Executive with principles enough not to fear impeachment due to public opinion. I realize this would be rare in Washington, but it could in fact exist.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

Thank you for the clarification. Signing statements would likely still work, though, unless those were likewise removed.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Anonymous Coward]

I love simpleton answers. I bet you think that John Galt's "half hour" speech could have really taken only half an hour (and how dim did you have to be not to have gotten the point by then anyway?). That creative people are more Conservative than Liberal and that the government is made up of individuals.

Bureaucracy was pretty much invented by government employees. It was a problem in the days of Hammurabi, and it's likely to be a problem when the Sun goes cold and Asimov's last psychohistory equation is solved. The only difference is that these days, you can't execute them wholesale. As if that had ever really helped.

So you've just canned the entire Social Security Administration. I'm assuming you're putting the Pentagon off until you figure out how to deal with pencil-pushers who have nukes at their disposal. Now an angry mob of smelly old people has descended on the White House demanding to know what happened to their checks.

What do you do now, Rover?

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[elrous0]

He also had a Congress in his majority for about a year's time where he could have rewritten the rules

This would be true if the Democratic Party weren't so undisciplined. Unlike the Republican Party, the Dems are loaded with blue dogs and hardcore DINO's, making even a Congressional majority pretty useless. And even if they were disciplined, they still represent their own state interests way ahead of the President. So every time the President tries to trim the military or NASA for example, he always catches blowback from Congressmen in states with military bases and NASA contractors/facilities.

And, yes, it applies to Republicans too. The only advantages Bush had were a more disciplined party in Congress and Dick Cheney as a pretty vicious attack dog. But even with that, he couldn't have cleaned house. One of Donald Rumsfeld's early goals was to streamline the military, for example, and that went over like a lead zeppelin.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[mr_mischief]

I think you'll find that open insubordination, while not grounds for a court martial, is grounds for immediate employment termination at nearly any employer in the US. Why should the civilian Executive branch employees not be subject to the same? Short of the Senate confirming or denying judges or certain high-level posts within Cabinet departments, the Executive branch employees theoretically serve at the will of the President.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[slick7]

Isn't that how it's supposed to work? If everybody had to do as he said, we'd call the position Dictator instead of President. The president has very limited power, which is a good thing.

Two words; Executive orders.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[fast turtle]

1) Candidate Assasinated before Winning Election

2) President Impeached or forced to Resign due to Ilegalities performed by Executive branch (Tricky Dicky - Nixon)

3) Congress Passes emergency Funding by Voice Vote to keep so-called Critical services operational (DEA/FBI/CIA/) - Note that Military Budgets are passed 10 years previously (money is already allocated)

In other Words, it aint gonna happen.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[eugene ts wong]

I almost think that as soon as the President wins an election, he or she needs to go and campaign at every federal office building and get those people on his side.

That would be very interesting. I would definitely support that.

I'd like to take it a step further, just for the sake of experiment, just for 1 election. I'd support the idea where the tax payer doesn't get involved in the next election, at all. Instead, the candidates have to gain the votes of the various government organizations.

That sounds kind of scary, but often times the best solutions are counter intuitive. I suppose that the intuitive outcome is that the government would become corrupt, or would cater to the government organizations.

That being said, my suggested system does not have a different outcome than what we have now. We have taxpayers doing the voting, but the government does not have to keep its campaign promises. The government still caters to government organizations.

Another thing to bear in mind, is that if it is a legitimate government service, then it should not be completely subject to the free market. For example, libraries should not be able to dictate prices, but they should be able to bargain for book purchases like regular customers. For another example, non-coastal states and provinces should not need a navy, but because it is a legitimate government service all states and provinces should contribute to the navy's overall well being.

With my suggestion, we could probably find a way to make it transparent.

The only problem, of course, is that we can never really trust government.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[jahudabudy]

open insubordination

And the career bureaucrats are exactly those folks that can do absolutely nothing while appearing to be doing everything to comply. You can't fire a guy for being a little behind schedule, for "unforeseen circumstances", for interdepartmental lack of cooperation, etc. No bureaucrat with more than a few years service would ever offer open insubordination.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Anonymous Coward]

If the people don't want porkulus, though, that becomes very difficult.

The people WANT "porkulus". They just want to be sure that THEY are the ones getting the handouts. That's why congress in the whole can get to single digit "approval" percentages while everyone polled thinks their rep is so awesome they shit rainbows and cash handouts.

Thats why Republicans can be against pork and spending but the Republicans from Texas will be damned if they let NASA close down Houston. It's all about making sure the money goes to the "right" places. The Tea "keep yer gubmit outta my Medicare!" Party is no different.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[iluvcapra]

Because it is the principled thing to do? Because it would net trillions of dollars in savings? Because it wasn't sunny enough to play basketball that day???

BUT IT WON'T END THE WAR. All of his replacements in the Republican party are pledged to continue it. And spread it to Iran, for that matter.

Now this right here is total BS. I'm only illustrating how the Executive has control over his own branch of government. I'm not discussing anything covered by Congressional powers at all.

Read this slowly: The cabinet departments are created and sustained by Acts of Congress. The president is not a CEO, he cannot recreate his organization; he's bound by law.

Which is all I'm proposing. Let's elect someone who exhibits the leadership to give us what we want - smaller, less expensive government.

Nobody really wants that. They want government smaller, except for every program from which they derive benefit. No political actor in our system, Republican, Democrat, Tea Partier, Green or Religious Rightist has proposed a specific plan for spending reductions that could win majority support. People like their wars and social security and medicare just fine, and when you propose something that reduces the deficit, it's a "death panel" or it "hurts seniors" or it "hurts the troops." The Tea Party campaigns for lower deficits in the abstract, but no Tea Party candidate or group (while they're not dressing like SS officers or gaybashing or lying on their resume) has committed to a budget, and those that have, like Paul Ryan, have been marginalized and their proposals spiked, because the Tea Party is demographically loaded with Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries, and their leadership in the Republican Party is institutionally committed to the security state.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

The judicial branch can forbid the actions in court rulings, since they're illegal.

You haven't demonstrated which laws would be violated in any of the above examples. Further, lots of things are illegal, like sodomy, which by the way occurred in the Oval Office itself, and no one cared.

The legislative branch can remove the president from office.

If, and only if, he commits a crime or otherwise meets the strict qualifications under the Constitution. They could impeach him, but he'd still be in office.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush, with Rumsfeld's help, increased the number of contractors in the military. Not sure how this worked, it might have all been from the top.

Paying back his cronies in the military industrial complex is a good thing?

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

BUT IT WON'T END THE WAR. All of his replacements in the Republican party are pledged to continue it. And spread it to Iran, for that matter.

You ought to look into the Red Team's movements lately. You're thinking of McCains GOP, which is roughly half of what's relevant today.

Read this slowly

Why is you expect me to 'slowly' read your statements , and you're not even pausing for a moment to try and comprehend mine? Isn't that a tad tedious?

People like their wars and social security and medicare just fine, and when you propose something that reduces the deficit, it's a "death panel" or it "hurts seniors" or it "hurts the troops."

I gotcha. Let's not discuss any particular topics here. Let's just bash the Tea Party, because 'easy' is a more fun than 'thinking'! Woo hoooo!!!

Assume you're right and everyone in the Tea Party is a Nazi Closet Lesbian Racist Con-artist. They're changing what the Red Team does and says, permanently. You ought to take small breaks from your 'enlightened' bigotry and contemplate what the political road-map will look like going forward.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

I believe the States can provide the people what they need. Congress has systematically been weakening the States to prevent this, but it doesn't have to remain that way by any natural construction.

If you elected enough people who reject the idea of turtle fences and the like, you'd see it change in a hurry.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason this president has more power is that the last president greatly expanded the powers of the executive branch. Guess who the last president was? So no, not actually a "double standard".

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[jeff4747]

You haven't demonstrated which laws would be violated in any of the above examples.

You really don't know how civics works, do you? Congress created the "Department of X" via a law. You are proposing the president eliminate said department, thus violating that law.

Further, lots of things are illegal, like sodomy, which by the way occurred in the Oval Office itself, and no one cared.

Probably because 1) Anti-sodomy laws were struck down as unconstitutional. 2) Anti-sodomy laws were state laws, the White House is not subject to state laws as it is federal property. And 3) Even if the White House were subject to DC law, DC hasn't had an anti-sodomy law for generations.

If, and only if, he commits a crime or otherwise meets the strict qualifications under the Constitution

Um...no. The Constitution literally says "High Crimes and Misdemeanors", which the Supreme Court has ruled means "anything". Congress can literally impeach the president for any reason whatsoever, and if the Senate convicts, he's out of office.

They could impeach him, but he'd still be in office.

Once again, wrong. Impeachment is only step 1. The House of Representatives can impeach the president. Then the case moves to the Senate, where a trial is held. If 2/3rds of the senators vote to convict, he's out of office and replaced with the vice president.

The fact that you're apparently politically active, yet don't seem to have the faintest idea of how our government works, is very disturbing to me.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[mr_mischief]

Then those streamlining the process should be smart enough to "right size" the department, and select the obstructionists for position elimination for other reasons. It's the same process, but used to get work done rather than to stop work from getting done. It's used in the private sector, although too often the trick is used to get rid of people with long careers with the business and lots of raises and benefits grandfathered in rather than getting rid of the obstructionists.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Chibi]

You might be surprised. I worked for about 2 years in a Federal agency. The person I replaced as a contractor was a federal employee and had been fired for looking at pornography on the job.

Two years later, the managers were still going to court hearings with union reps to discuss the matter. Seemed like a colossal waste of time, but that's the federal government (and their unions) at work. As much as is publicized about government waste, the true story is much, much worse that you could ever imagine, and also a lot more depressing/disheartening.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[sjbe]

A) New people are more likely to do as they're told.

Ha! Have you ever actually managed anyone? I have and what you just said is complete nonsense.

There's zero reason the Federal government needs to employ millions of people

Perhaps but the fact is that they do employ that many people and that isn't likely to change.

Congress has no Constitutional authority over how the executive branch is structured. E.g. 'czars'.

Congress has immense formal and informal power over how the executive branch is structured and how it operates. From the Constitution's Necessary and Proper Clause: "...make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof." Congress has considerable power of oversight over the executive branch. Furthermore, Congress can pass laws to override executive branch decisions, expand or reduce the jurisdiction and regulatory authority of federal agencies, restrict or expand funding, and more.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[iluvcapra]

Why is you expect me to 'slowly' read your statements , and you're not even pausing for a moment to try and comprehend mine? Isn't that a tad tedious?

You do have to respond to the argument here: a President is bound by the law, and the structure of the executive branch is created by law. This is done to improve accountability to Congress... If a President removed departments and reorganized titles, it would quickly become impossible for congressional committees to know who to call to testify and exercise their oversight -- it would become basically impossible to discover how money was being spent and if the executive was enforcing laws. If the President were a CEO, then he'd probably be as accountable as the average corporate CEO is accountable to his stockholders and board of directors. Which is to say, not at all.

I gotcha. Let's not discuss any particular topics here. Let's just bash the Tea Party

Again, you've got to respond to the problem here: the Tea Party is a constituency for reducing the federal deficit, but they have no agenda for doing so, aside from sending people to congress who promise gridlock -- which increases the deficit. Reducing the deficit without raising taxes will require decisions to be made, and most of the people in the Tea Party have a lot to lose from reductions in federal spending. Will the Tea Party support its candidates even if they must cut their benefits? That's the question.

They're changing what the Red Team does and says, permanently.

You can't even bring yourself to say their name. Republicans. The party of Lincoln, classical liberal values, and the modern values voter-libertarian "new-fusionism." I think you need to pay closer attention to who's bankrolling the Tea Party as a movement, corporatists like the Koch brothers, and its candidates, who are to a man ideologues and maladjusted no-accounts who come from nowhere and will tell people whatever they want to hear if it will only buy them the prestige of federal office. All the while in the background, Karl Rove and Ed Gilllespe and the rest of the grownups in the Republican party have successfully reorganized the entire funding apparatus of the GOP behind unaccountable 529 groups like Crossroads, on account of Michael Steele's profound incompetence. The Tea Party will take over the GOP just in time to discover that its entire funding apparatus has been hollowed out.

FWIW, I so zero evidence that any member or cadre of the Republican Party is anti-war, even the Tea Party. When was the last time a Tea Partier spoke up against the war? Go to any Tea Party candidate website and even try to search for the word "Afghanistan." You will find nothing, so cowed are they by the pro-war GOP constituencies. Here's Christine O'Donnell's, here's Carl Paladino's, here's Sharron Angle's tepid pro-war comments against Harry Reid; Rand Paul is happy to tell you he supports the war, would have voted for it, on pages which appear only in cache and can no longer be viewed. What makes you think these people will suddenly grow a spine when they're the low men on the totem pole in DC?

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

You're really heavy on detail, but really light on substance.

Congress created the "Department of X" via a law. You are proposing the president eliminate said department, thus violating that law.

So if none of those employees show up for work, someone goes to jail? I'd be shocked to learn this was true. Besides, a reasonable number of these departments are created by Presidential fiat, without Congressional oversight at all. I have no doubt that laws allowing these positions to exist have been passed, but I see little in them requiring that they exist.

I've already said that I highly doubt the people would support such legislative and/or judicial prevention even if such laws did exist. You're ignoring that, which is your choice.

Once again, wrong. Impeachment is only step 1. The House of Representatives can impeach the president. Then the case moves to the Senate, where a trial is held. If 2/3rds of the senators vote to convict, he's out of office and replaced with the vice president.

Indeed. I said that already. However, the conviction would need to be within the bounds of the law, and I highly doubt that anything I've advocated would meet the definition of a 'crime' nor a 'misdemeanor'.

And again, again, I'm proposing that this happen with the support of the electorate. And I believe that this day is coming. Shortly.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

Ha! Have you ever actually managed anyone? I have and what you just said is complete nonsense.

If so I'm certain you've experienced first hand the 'honeymoon period'. Otherwise, you can always google it.

Perhaps but the fact is that they do employ that many people and that isn't likely to change.

Don't change the subject. We're discussing the mechanisms to make it happen, not necessarily the likelihood of someone utilizing the mechanisms.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[sjbe]

1) End the wars.

Yes the president can do this. He can order an immediate withdrawal of all troops. There are consequences to doing this, many of them seriously bad in the long run. Immediate withdrawal creates a chaotic power vaccum. It can be done but that doesn't make it a good idea. Bear in mind too that I'm someone who strongly opposed any involvement in our current ongoing conflicts.

End "Department of X". Dismiss and/or reassign every appointee, refuse to nominate any new candidates.

And aside from possibly pissing off a lot of voters and perhaps Congress and perhaps causing a lot of hardship depending on what is being eliminated, what will this ridiculous hypothetical accomplish? Sure, with some restrictions the president can reorganize the executive branch, but there needs to be a good reason. Every one of those departments was created for a reason and there are consequences to eliminating any of them. Might be a good idea in some cases but certainly not always.

3) Eliminate the Deficit. Veto, veto, veto. Line-item-veto, even.

The president doesn't have a line item veto. Furthermore, Congress can override a presidential veto.

Who would have the power to stop any of this?

Congress does and in many cases so does the Judiciary. Congress can pass laws without presidential approval provided enough of them vote together. Furthermore Congress does have the power to remove the president from office. The Judiciary has the power to stop the administration from doing things as well. There is a little thing you might have heard about in the first grade called "Checks and Balances". They work and we all benefit because they do.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

If a President removed departments and reorganized titles, it would quickly become impossible for congressional committees to know who to call to testify and exercise their oversight -- it would become basically impossible to discover how money was being spent and if the executive was enforcing laws.

While you're making a logical argument, allow me to point you to the content of the many replies I've received. They're all saying that government is essentially accountable to no one. You're saying they're accountable to Congress, and I say they're accountable to the President. Maybe it's a mix of both, but I'm still entirely confident that the course of action could yield the desired result.

Reducing the deficit without raising taxes will require decisions to be made, and most of the people in the Tea Party have a lot to lose from reductions in federal spending. Will the Tea Party support its candidates even if they must cut their benefits? That's the question.

The question has been raised and answered. The answer, inarguably, is 'yes'. Truly, the only thing the various factions have in common is 'less Federal government'. They aren't progressives, they're conservatives. They are not likely to advocate for special treatment for special circumstances. They're far and away more likely to press for things like a flat tax. Look it up.

You can't even bring yourself to say their name. Republicans.

That's because that label doesn't really mean anything. 'Republicans' as we've seen in the Bush era are essentially just jingoistic Democrats. You cite Lincoln, who was easily the least conservative Republican, well, ever. I'm thinking more like Regan, myself. But even his vision was co-opted by the NeoCons, who took the party in a completely different direction.

There are varying ideologies under that big Red tent, and they typically have all united under a single cause. This is changing. The Republican party is fracturing at it's base, if for no other reason than they simply cannot provide what they offer. Maybe they never intended to do so, but I think 2008 showed us what could have been, and it started something important.

The Tea Party will take over the GOP just in time to discover that its entire funding apparatus has been hollowed out.

'The Tea Party' isn't one group, but many. And the sentiment, as you're well aware if you've followed any of this discussion at all, began FAR before that term was ever coined. It makes a fine label, but there are a great many people who support the ideals of a truly conservative government. Few of them are bound to support Rove in any fashion.

The funding needed for these efforts will be provided by the individual people. Further, the proof will be in the pudding. People are angry, and their anger is getting them involved in a way that flashy commercials simply can't smooth over.

FWIW, I so zero evidence that any member or cadre of the Republican Party is anti-war, even the Tea Party.

Well, perhaps you should open your eyes a bit. There's still a strong NeoCon influence, to be sure, but the ideology that we simply cannot afford to continue in this manner is taking over. They might not be ideologically opposed to using weapons to get what we want, and perhaps this is what you're hoping to see in order to meet your criteria. Likewise, none of the current sentiment includes drenching anyone in pigs blood. However, bankrupting the United States in favor of endless Arab war is also not a position you're likely to see anywhere outside of the old Republican guard.

Things are changing. I'd be surprised you hadn't noticed, except you've apparently bought the media spin about all these people being morons fit to be mocked. Certainly some are. You'll find those in any group. But the undercurrent here is greater than that, and is indeed greater than those who 'started

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

Congress can pass laws without presidential approval provided enough of them vote together. Furthermore Congress does have the power to remove the president from office

You, like many of the other respondents, have illogically created a scenario where the People would elect a President with such an agenda, and would support a Congress that opposed him. Why?

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[jahudabudy]

I've never worked for the Federal gov't, but I have worked for State gov't. I imagine there are similarities. What you are describing would require someone (not the President) to cut funding to that department. It would then be up to the discretion of the department head (or whatever the title is) to decide how to run his department under that budget. It would be practically impossible for anyone else to target positions for elimination. And I'm not sure that would fly, even with the department head on board. Specifically b/c "too often the trick is used to get rid of people with long careers with the" previous administration/political flunky . As such, there are lots of protections put in place to prevent this. Every trick you want to try to improve the efficiency and get rid of dead weight could also be used to get rid of someone whose politics weren't the right flavor this week. As such, most of these tricks are not allowed in the public sector. Cronyism in the public sector is much more highly frowned on than in the private.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[operagost]

Your own cabinet will often lie to you

Well, you appointed them. Whose fault is that?

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[operagost]

What President Obama failed to appreciate is all the numb nuts out there that are voting specifically for the candidate that's going to cause the most damage to the federal government.

What the president failed to appreciate is the Constitution.

Never mind that the original tea party had precisely zip to do with taxation, and everything to do with ditching the competitors product so that they wouldn't have any competition.

Both factions were prominent: those who opposed taxation without representation, and merchants who resented the crown's favoritism of the East India tea company.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[jeff4747]

So if none of those employees show up for work, someone goes to jail?

Assuming they're still paid, yes. It's called fraud.

If everyone just up and quit en masse, the president is required by law to replace them.

Besides, a reasonable number of these departments are created by Presidential fiat, without Congressional oversight at all.

Nope. The only significant post created by executive order is the National Security Advisor and their subordinates. All the "Departments of ____" were created by statute.

I have no doubt that laws allowing these positions to exist have been passed, but I see little in them requiring that they exist.

Yes, clearly recent events like the salmonella outbreak in eggs demonstrate how we don't need an HHS. And your posts don't indicate the desperate need for a much better Department of Education.

However, the conviction would need to be within the bounds of the law

The bounds of the law are literally "any reason". Period. The Supreme Court's interpretation of the language in the Constitution means you can remove the president from office for wearing a blue tie on Thursday.

You have to remember that the founders expected us to remove a president from office every 10-20 years. So they wrote the Constitution to make impeachment and conviction a normal process. After a few generations of no impeachments, many have mistakenly gone to the conclusion that impeachment is reserved only for serious crimes.

and I highly doubt that anything I've advocated would meet the definition of a 'crime' nor a 'misdemeanor'.

Well, so far you've advocated obstruction of justice, fraud, misappropriation of federal funds, and contempt of Congress. And those are the easy ones to rattle off the top of my head. There's probably several more felonies that are a bit tangential but still relevant. And that doesn't even include your unconstitutional line-item veto.

And again, again, I'm proposing that this happen with the support of the electorate

Well, now I've got to Godwin this whole debate and point out Hitler's electorate supported his power grab too.

You don't hand out presidential powers based on presidents you like. Nor on responsible presidents you dislike. You hand out power based on "What if Hitler or Stalin got elected?". Because eventually they will be.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[budgenator]

"It would be easy for Obama to end the war at the cost of his presidency, "
What presidency, He's treated like a lame-duck president before the mid-term elections of his first term. Actually calling him a lame duck is being generous, He's more like a turtle on a post,
You know he didn't get up there by himself,
he doesn't belong up there,
he doesn't know what to do while he's up there,
he's elevated beyond his ability to function, and you just wonder what kind of dumb asses put him up there to begin with.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[BobMcD]

Yes, clearly recent events like the salmonella outbreak in eggs demonstrate how we don't need an HHS. And your posts don't indicate the desperate need for a much better Department of Education.

Even if you could demonstrate a clear, exigent need, that wouldn't put such power within the text of the law.

Oh, and thanks for the insult. Hope you enjoyed it, because we're done.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[operagost]

Isn't that the way we got out of Vietnam? Instead, it was Congress who cut off funding?

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[jeff4747]

that wouldn't put such power within the text of the law.

Except for the one creating the FDA and USDA within HHS and Interior, respectively.

Oh, and thanks for the insult. Hope you enjoyed it, because we're done.

So you seriously missed the previous 5 insults?

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[operagost]

That's not to say that you ignore the other ones, we're going to be permanently in debt unless we allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for the high earners

Please don't repeat administration fibbing points here. I can give you 80 fiscal reasons this is a fallacious statement.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[iluvcapra]

You cite Lincoln, who was easily the least conservative Republican, well, ever. I'm thinking more like Regan, myself

I suppose I don't think I have to remind you that Reagan proved the deficits "don't matter," and that the deficit ballooned from $74 billion to over $2 trillion during his presidency. And that when his successor tried to raise taxes to lower the deficit, he was thrown out of office by the "conservative" Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America grift, and that GHW Bush's 'liberal" successor brought the federal budget into surplus. Reagan's legacy at least as a fiscal conservative is a fraud.

Likewise, none of the current sentiment includes drenching anyone in pigs blood. However, bankrupting the United States in favor of endless Arab war is also not a position you're likely to see anywhere outside of the old Republican guard.

If you can find me a tea partier in a general election that actually speaks against war with Iran, or for immediate cessation of hostilities in Afghanistan, you can put the links here. But these people don't exist: you want them to, and you read your aspirations into others, just as Obama supporters read their aspirations into Obama. Just today, a Republican and frontrunnner in the West Virginia senate general tells us we should spend $20 billion on a space-based "thousand laser" missile defense system. Truly a small government proposal if ever there was one, though Raese was careful to include a "git r done!" in his speech, to let people know that, as much money as he may spend, he's coming from the right sort of people to do the spending.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[gnieboer]

1A- How much was left?? TONS of stuff. Same thing in Desert Storm. And that was -with- a plan. Imagine if the military just was told to leave one day?

2A- No issue with states doing it vs federal, but don't see any inherent reason that 50 state governments doing the same thing would be inherently better than a single federal one. The transition is the problem. You can't just stop giving out SSN's without drastic impact, and to give the states a chance to figure it out will take time, and then there's that painful inertia thing again.

3A- I think the line-item veto is the way to go, especially in the current fiscal state we're in. Then the rest is easy and doesn't require the pain and willpower we described.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the theory of what you are proposing; peace, less waste, balanced budget. I was just trying to show why it's harder than it looks to actually get done.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[dbIII]

Not necessarily, it looks more like an exercise looking for low hanging fruit.
To put things simply, if money is not saved somewhere you are well and truly screwed. A lot needs to be done and the amount that can be gained from tax is shrinking. Obama has the job of making a lot of cuts to face a crisis without completely alienating everyone that voted for him, while still leaving the USA in far worse shape than it was in 2000.
The obvious lesson is if a government is left uncontrolled for nearly a decade while the President acts as a playboy prince it gets up to things that neither side of politics wants.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Idiomatick]

If you like British comedy you'd love this show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNKjShmHw7s

It is a show pretty much mirroring this thread.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Jane Q. Public]

Failure to follow reasonable directions from the boss are just and adequate reasons for termination. Unions don't have any power over that.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Jane Q. Public]

FEMA? "Turned around" since Clinton? It is to laugh. SINCE Clinton have been all of FEMA's most frequent and glaring failures. And remember... not long before that, it was CD, not FEMA, and CD actually had a pretty good reputation. FEMA is still trying to build a reputation after bungling things nearly from the word "go".

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Jane Q. Public]

It IS going to change, because it has to. We can no longer afford to support this outrageous (and unconstitutional) behemoth that the Federal Government has become. Either it does change, or we give up the concept of a real country called United States. It has gone too far for it to be otherwise.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Jane Q. Public]

"Plus, the salaries of the middle managers interfere with the ability of the senior executives to pay themselves bonuses, since the company can't just go to Congress and ask for more money. If a company wants money they have to earn it - no matter how important it is that they get it."

HUH? Have you been living in an underground bomb shelter for the last two years? Hint: our "changed for the better" Government has seen to it that this is no longer true.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[bhiestand]

What President Obama failed to appreciate is all the numb nuts out there that are voting specifically for the candidate that's going to cause the most damage to the federal government.

What the president failed to appreciate is the Constitution.

Never mind that the original tea party had precisely zip to do with taxation, and everything to do with ditching the competitors product so that they wouldn't have any competition.

Both factions were prominent: those who opposed taxation without representation, and merchants who resented the crown's favoritism of the East India tea company.

... except they didn't actually WANT representation. Representation, because of the relatively low population, would've meant an extremely small minority party (or two) without the ability to get anything done in Parliament. They wanted a rallying cry (and revolution), not actual representation.

Probably one of the many reasons Puerto Rico doesn't want to become a state. They'd still have insignificant representation, no real power to affect political outcomes, and they'd have higher costs associated with it.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[HereIAmJH]

screw that. We need to let the bush tax cuts expire, full stop.

I fail to see why you were modded flamebait. Let them expire, balance the budget, and then we can talk about cutting taxes. If you are running a deficit, you want to increase income or decrease spending, not the other way around.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[amplex]

You're deluded if you think the FDA actually 'inspects our food'... The FDA is the biggest waste of taxpayer money I've ever seen. Test drugs for less than a year on humans for clinical trials???? I believe that the chemists of the world are still playing with legos when working with our brains and bodies and that maybe a 20 year study would be safer to study long-term effects of new drugs. We are playing with mother nature and evolution.

As far as inspecting our food, how much of that do you think really happens? Billions of dollars of products move into the bodies of consumers every year and you think that everything can really be inspected? If one in a million products is actually 'inspected' I would be suprised. If there is an outbreak of something or some metal breaks off in a machine that makes ho-hos, that batch is quarantined (or w/e) by the companies QC usually before it makes it out to store shelves, but as far as really protecting us from anything long-term, or keeping us healthy, the FDA does nothing. GMO's with mandatory warning labels? Not yet.. HFCS mandatory warning labels? Not yet.. Among many other things..

But to refute your points..

(1) - Just because its huge, are you arguing that its efficient and not worth looking into streamlining? Maybe it's not feasible to make drastic cuts, but hire a few teams of analysts to see how we can consolidate and it will pay for itself within a couple of years. It's not like we can afford the government waste we are experiencing forever.

(2) - Point made. Still, there is no reason why we shouldn't see what we can do with it. Just because the point of the government is to spend money, doesn't mean that the people paying for it via taxes shouldn't have a say in how the money is spent.

(3) - This argument makes me sick. Bureaucracy will be the downfall of our nation. If the current system doesn't work, FIX IT (the 2 party system is broken). If we can't make changes that are more cost-efficient & work, DON'T MAKE THEM. But at the same time, DON'T just say 'its too hard to fix' and walk away from the problem. Cuts need to be made everywhere to help us balance out. I'm so sick of people being in the mindset that our two century old country is going to be able to sustain its current growth without being dynamic. It's like the longer we stay a major power, the worse it gets. Maybe we need our economy to topple more and another great depression or prohibition to get people really ready for change. All the money in the world is worth nothing with a system that doesn't work. But it really comes back to education, values, and morality, and the number of brainwashed and hypocritical non-thinkers out there who are willing to watch everything go down the tubes for our kids just because a problem (or many) seemed to hard to solve or even think about solving, because we hire actors as politicians who do nothing but follow money. Maybe this is a very communist thought, but I think CEO's of huge corporations (especially ones being bailed out) should have salary caps, along with entertainment & sports stars, and remove salary caps for Teachers and Educators. And raise taxes on the top 5% drastically and lower taxes for the lowest brackets. Fix the flow of the economic pyramid. This is one of the main problems with America imo.. Greed is sending even the educated & well-meaning to the poorhouse!

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[amplex]

You really believe that he believed that he could change things? You don't think he might just be another puppet like all the rest of the politicians become? (Except maybe the far-left and far-far-right.. Libertarian, green party, etc.. And even they are subjected to this!)

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Pojut]

I think he's just another puppet now, but i think before he was elected he wasn't spouting off empty rhetoric...I think he honestly intended to try to do what he said he was going to do.

If you listen to or watch him give a speech now compared to during the election, he seems much less genuine now. I don't just mean how he's presented, I'm talking about intonation, body language, etc.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[Rich0]

Ok, I'll agree with you at some level regarding the bailouts (not something I approve of), though in most cases those senior executives still kept the majority of that money.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[mahadiga]

These people don't want their clout to be diluted.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[operagost]

It's too bad we don't have a house in the legislature in which even representation-- say, two per state-- is given regardless of population.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[bhiestand]

Oh wow! We have a Senate in our bicameral legislature? I didn't even know about that... you're so much smarter than me. Can you read Ayn Rand to me and help me go to sleep?

Snarky reply that completely glosses over my point begets snarky reply.

Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings

[ps2os2]

1. Its close to impossible to fire a civil servant.
2. Believe it or not some civil servants actually do an outstanding job.

The GS people are close to impossible to manage. They have their own set of regulation and rules. I worked with a GS-17 (long long ago and far far away) when I was in the military. My memory isn't great but somewhere in the mists of memory in order to get a GS-17 grade you have to be approved by Congress.

The other GS-12's & 13's I worked with were super sharp. I worked with them while in Germany and most of them came from France when the French kicked the US bases out (now that was a long time ago). They were exempted (if memory serves me) from having to go back to the states. Normally they have 3-4 years(?) limit. Most of the long timers married locals and of course some didn't. In all my dealings with GS types I have only run across a few that were well average. I still keep in touch after 40 years.
I have not worked with any stateside GS's but from my poor memory only the cream got to go overseas with the military.
I was not too surprised about the number of data centers "hidden". The problem with the discussion they did not define what a data center was. So theoretically 1 server could be considered a data center it is impossible to tell. So any numbers that were derived have to be sifted through to figure out what is the true number.

Hmmm

[c0mpliant]

Why do I get the image of an Indiana Jones style character pulling back overgrown bushes and thorns to reveal the long Lost Temple of Data Storage...

Possibly being chased by some legacy system throwing strange errors at him while he trying to escape a rolling ball of ethernet cables

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You know for sys admins that is a reason to be proud, I mean, the machines worked so well, they don't even register at all.

Not like windows where you're aware of every little thing that goes wrong, making it harder to maintain than a pack of neurotic chihuahuas.

Re:Hmmm

[Sponge Bath]

Indy: Ethernet cables. Why'd it have to be ethernet cables?

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean "Thicknet. Why'd it have to be thicknet?

Re:Hmmm

[fahlesr1]

LP0 is on fire? Close your eyes! Don't look at it!

Re:Hmmm

[lennier]

Vampire taps!

Aieee!

Big company

[captaindomon]

Eh, if you've worked in a multi-billion dollar F100 company this isn't surprising at all. Any random department can buy a couple of servers and set up their own "data center", and when you have 100,000 employees, it's hard to keep track of. Now imagine you are a multi-trillion dollar company, which is basically what the federal government is, with three million employees. Things get complicated.

Re:Big company

[nedlohs]

Your "couple of servers" probably doesn't meet the criteria for counting in this case:

"""
The process defined a data center as any room larger than 500 square feet dedicated to data processing that meets the one of the four tier classifications defined by The Uptime Institute.
"""

Now you could put a couple of servers in a 500 square feet room, but that seems pretty unlikely.

Re:Big company

[Archangel Michael]

Not on my network they don't. Nobody plugs anything into my network without IT involvement. And you may ask yourself "why" I would be such a BOFH. Because I need to know what VLAN to put the device in. No port is hot, unless I say it is hot. No device gets access unless I approve it and configure it to the right VLAN.

There would be no rogue servers. Anyone caught putting in a rogue server would be reported up the proper chain. It isn't hard to keep track of anything, if you keep track of everything. If you can't keep track of some things, you can't keep track of anything. Not really.

Re:Big company

[mtmra70]

Your "couple of servers" probably doesn't meet the criteria for counting in this case:

I work at a F100 company and we have two data centers which are larger than 500sq/ft and house at least 100 physical boxes and a couple SANs each, yet the company/IT doesn't count them as part of their normal data center strategy. If you asked global IT if we had data centers at our site, they would say "nope".

Re:Big company

[CastrTroy]

You do realize that 500 sq. feet is just over a 22 foot square room. That's not that big at all. I've often seen small "data centers" of this size in government buildings. Granted, I live in Canada, but I imagine the US is the same. Each little organizational unit wants to manage all their own stuff to increase their importance, and make it look like they are doing something. So they all have their own little data center. It's all to play their little game. If you don't spend your whole budget, then they figure you don't need the money, so the following year they cut it. If you do spend it all, then you can claim that you are underfunded and possibly get your budget raised. There's always a mad rush at the end of the fiscal year to ensure that all the money is spent.

Re:Big company

[iammani]

Unless someone working for you enables the port and configures it to the VLAN, without actually counting it as an additional server.

The point GP was making is that if you are the only person to authorize port enablement and VLAN configuration, your network will be completely under your control. It is when you start authorising other people to start doing this stuff (which will have to happen in a large org (and no a one man IT is not an option)), things dont stay under your control.

Re:Big company

[aaarrrgggh]

Dealing somewhat with classified networks, I can say that a BOFH wouldn't have any clue what servers a given program might be using. You might have a single subnet provided for the room, but that is all. Security is compartmentalized, which means you get exactly the information you need to do your job and nothing else. Each program controls their internal and external links pretty much, and if they can figure out a way to physically get a new rack in the room, and can hook up a breaker and some SO cord it will be up and running in no time.

It isn't the right way to do things, but from the security perspective sometimes it is the only practical solution.

Re:Big company

[aaarrrgggh]

A 500SF room will hold a UPS, CRAC unit, PDU, and 16 racks, if there is no raised floor. If you add in a 12" raised floor, you are down to space for 12 racks. While more than a "couple servers," it is one logical planning block up from a 200SF room, and you will see government organizations justify it for something needing a rack or two of networking equipment plus two racks of servers thinking this is the only time they will ever get money for their pet project.

What would be more telling is the space breakdown, PUE and total kW demand for the data centers; while they likely doubled the quantity the space likely only grew by 15-20% and the demand by 5-10%.

Re:Big company

[GenP]

How do you detect a port that's been "repurposed" to be the head-end of a bunch of NATed machines?

Re:Big company

[captaindomon]

Yeah, you may think you have control. Until the Finance department buys their own servers, and buys their own connection to the .Net in order to purposely bypass your control, and has sign-off from the CFO to do it. It's not always as simple a problem as you think it is.

Re:Big company

[NFN_NLN]

Because I need to know what VLAN to put the device in. No port is hot, unless I say it is hot. No device gets access unless I approve it and configure it to the right VLAN.

There would be no rogue servers.

Meh, just plug one of the "hot" ports with a tagged VLAN into a managed switch as a tagged port... and set the remaining ports on your new switch to untagged. Instant extension that doesn't even need to reside anywhere near the switch you closely monitor.

VLAN doesn't offer security. Or did you mean "port security".... just plug in a router that spoofs the original devices MAC address...

The only people you're stopping are dumb peo... umm.. yeah I guess this would be effective at stopping 99% of the problems.

Re:Big company

[Archangel Michael]

If it is labeled as a workstation, it better be one. If it is labeled a printer, it better be one.

And things can stay under control, if people follow the rules. When people don't follow the rules, then they have a problem as I stated, being reported up the chain.

Re:Big company

[jaweekes]

I've seen the budget rush too many times. It's one of the main reasons for bad spending, and I wish I knew a good way to stop it. If we managed to figure that out, I'm guessing that we would save a huge amount of money.

Re:Big company

[Archangel Michael]

You mentioned a CFO authorizing a whole separate network connection setup that bypasses IT. Great, then the CFO won't mind if I start doing the accounting and budgeting since the CIO authorized me.

You can see the problem with that kind of attitude in a big corporation.

Re:Big company

[guruevi]

Off course, there's always the problem that when you use the centrally managed resources, they're practically worthless. I work in a similar environment and doing everything ourselves is ~10x cheaper and much more flexible. Even outsourcing it to a commercial entity would be cheaper. 1TB of data does not need to cost $10k/year, (paid) e-mail boxes should not be limited to 250MB and you really don't need 8 Exchange admins to manage 8 Exchange servers (maybe you do, I have only worked with Postfix). The downside is off course that you'll need to find a decent sysadmin every time and can't get away with somebody with a 6 month first line support stint.

Re:Big company

[gnieboer]

In the "BIG" company, the problem is your definition of "my network". Just who exactly ones the ENTIRE network? The CIO? Sure. So the CIO personally approves each server and VLAN connection? Not likely.

In the government, it's not one network, it's hundreds of networks. Even within the same department, AD Domains don't trust each other, so there is no 'owner'.

So let's say your network is set up according your described rules. That's fine, no rogue servers on your network. Great work. Let's say you've got 1 big-ass data center, and 2 satellite sites. Big bosses come down and want to do an audit. Their criteria means you list the big-ass center. Great. 2 years later they do another audit. Now the criteria has changed. OK, now you list all 3 three.

Slashdot goes nuts because they think you are an incompetent admin who didn't have a clue about the "rogue servers" on your network that weren't reported last time.

Re:Big company

[DrgnDancer]

But the government isn't one homogeneous organization. It's hundreds or thousands of agencies, field offices, departments, and units. All of them have purchasing authority. Any of them can have its own network. Some of them are so secret that even their inventory is classified. Some of them may be so secret that their very existence is classified. Many of these systems are so old and legacy that they were purchased before such concepts as "IT" department even exited.

This isn't a building, or even a logical LAN where someone gets an alert when someone else plugs into the port in 32B. It's a 3 *million* person operation with "networks" that range from 4 people in an FBI field office with a file server 4 workstations and an Internet connection, to the Army's network of 100's of thousands of computers, to a black ops network that no one outside the immediate chain of command is supposed to know exists.

Re:Big company

[nedlohs]

Yes, it's not surprising they got a higher number. But it isn't counting the two servers in a closet case.

Re:Big company

[Archangel Michael]

But the government isn't one homogeneous organization

Yup, and that is the problem right there. And there is no solution to that problem except another bureaucracy to manage all the other ones that aren't manageable. And another one to manage that one and so on.

If Only ...

[WrongSizeGlass]

If only they had some sort of facility that could house devices that could hold lists of things they could do a better job of keeping track of these types of places. Alas, some day I won't just be a dreamer ...

"hehe"

[phyrexianshaw.ca]

"Oh, HERE they are! silly buggers, I though you ran away!"

seriously though, stuff like this DOES happen. the UK Government just shut down what, hundreds of websites that they didn't even know they had been paying for?

sprawl != organised.

Re:"hehe"

[VJ42]

"Oh, HERE they are! silly buggers, I though you ran away!" seriously though, stuff like this DOES happen. the UK Government just shut down what, hundreds of websites that they didn't even know they had been paying for? sprawl != organised.

Indeed, but at least our government was able to shut them down - if a tenth of what I read about the US government is true (admittedly unlikely since most comes from places like /.), the President would have had a political fight on his hands to do the same. Seriously, the more I read about the alternatives, the more I like the Westminster system. Sure it could do with some tweaks (mostly in the way we vote), but in practice it's one of the best ways to run a representative democracy such as the US or UK.

Re:"hehe"

[flappinbooger]

How many of those "data centers" are so outdated their capacity and performance could be replicated by a handful of flash drives or a Buffalo NAS?

(not really kidding...)

Whats a datacenter?

[vlm]

Whats a datacenter?

As a fedgov employee (US Army) in the early 90s I had two big green unisys btos machines each with three terminals running a database Admittedly no outside world connection except 110V AC but the terminal things did have at least a hundred feet of cable. For the purposes of this report, would by old office be defined as a "datacenter"?

Re:Whats a datacenter?

[betterunixthanunix]

I see the same sort of confusion over the term "server room." At my institution, all sorts of weird things are "server rooms" -- everything from a dedicated room with rows of rackmounts, backup power, HVAC, etc. to a closet with a few switches and a NAS in it. How many server rooms do we have? Who knows? I would not be surprised if many of these "data centers" turned out to be nothing more than a single rack in a field office somewhere.

Re:Whats a datacenter?

[nedlohs]

Why not try reading the article which contains the definition they used.

Re:Whats a datacenter?

[nedlohs]

How big are your damn closets?

Re:Whats a datacenter?

[seigniory]

From TFA: "The process defined a data center as any room larger than 500 square feet dedicated to data processing..."

Re:Whats a datacenter?

[betterunixthanunix]

1. You must be new here, you expected us to RTFA
2. 500 square feet is not a lot, I am pretty sure my high school had a server room about that size (for clarity: this was a "server room" in the sense that it housed all of the old desktops that had been repurposed as servers, and some networking equipment; you wouldn't recognize it as a server room otherwise). The CS department at my current institution has a server room that looks about that size (10'x50'), and that is just for the department itself.

Re:Whats a datacenter?

[Himring]

Yes, and I think that's a ridiculous measure. 500 sf? Our main "data center" is less than that by a bit, and by god, it's a data center, because it gets all the attention and equipment needed to stay up, be cool and be protected. I don't think the size of the company should dictate the size of the room. A far smaller room or space can hold any amount of critical data or infrastructure. Technicians with little oversight, will pile main servers under their desk.

I gamble that if they stopped looking at physical rooms, and focused on nodes, that number would soar well beyond a couple thousand....

Re:Whats a datacenter?

[Rennt]

TFA: "The process defined a data center as any room larger than 500 square feet dedicated to data processing that meets the one of the four tier classifications defined by The Uptime Institute."

A Tier-1 facility is a server room or closet with basic power and cooling. If you have any kind of redundancy or failover that kicks you up to Tier-2.

So really, any lights-out environment over 500 feet qualifies.

Re:Whats a datacenter?

[betterunixthanunix]

I take the opposite view, to be honest -- I think they might be overcounting a bit, or at least misusing the term "data center." A field office with a couple dozen servers in a back room is not a "data center," and I am not certain that there is much to be gained by consolidating such an office into a large data center elsewhere. I think the consolidation plan should focus more on creating a uniform infrastructure, so that employees of a given department can log in and get their work done regardless of which office they happen to be in. Servers in a local office could be useful to keep things running in the event of a failure (uplink to a WAN goes down, central data center has an outage, etc.), or to reduce latency for commonly accessed databases.

Re:Whats a datacenter?

[vlm]

From TFA: "The process defined a data center as any room larger than 500 square feet dedicated to data processing..."

Yeah but thats just an article. I mean, what really is a data center, the article can't possibly be correct.

I believe by the article definition we had two psuedo-datacenters, the btos machines and their terminals fit in a room with about eight desks (hmm, 8 keyboards and 8 crts, I sense a pattern here) plus the usual storage cabinets for backup tapes, a couple printer stands and stuff. And a "station" for barcode readers and printers. Well over 25x25 feet. But lets face it, it was just an office that happened to have computers.

The other "data center" was basically a govt issue mobile home with slide outs. Painted army green of course. Probably 500 sq feet, that's only 50 ft long (sounds about right) by 10 wide (easily with the slideouts). The desks, as I recall (almost 20 years ago) went lengthwise up against each wall with a narrow walkway in the middle. In fact if the slideouts were not slid out, it was almost impossible to walk the length of the trailer / home / RV / whatever you call it. The air conditioning was nice when we were in the field in the summer, making it an annoyingly popular place for the officers to hang out (otherwise we never saw them).

Re:Whats a datacenter?

[Himring]

There is power in distribution, and there can be common-mode failure when all is consolidated....

Re:Whats a datacenter?

[Anonymous Coward]

The definition we received from the OMB was any room with 3 or more servers constitutes a data center. This has a lot to do with the large number jump.

I lost a datacenter

[Dancindan84]

...literally _lost_. The servers respond to ping, work completely. I just can't figure out where in the country it is.

Re:I lost a datacenter

[Securityemo]

I've never been involved in data center-ing, but call whomever owns the last jump to it (and presumably has records of the cables running to it) and ask?

Re:I lost a datacenter

[Dancindan84]

Not sure if you're serious, but my comment was just a reference to http://bash.org/?5273

Re:I lost a datacenter

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never been involved in data center-ing, but call whomever owns the last jump to it (and presumably has records of the cables running to it) and ask?

He's not serious. It is a quote from bash.org:

  hm. I've lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my apartment it is.

Re:I lost a datacenter

[Keruo]

That wouldn't work with project blackbox datacenters. You could just load the thing on a flatbed and drive off.
Network would fallback to 3G or satellite uplink and your servers would be happily crunching onboard while your truck heads down the open road..

Re:I lost a datacenter

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you checked behind the dry wall?

Re:I lost a datacenter

[Anonymous Coward]

tracert is your friend

Re:I lost a datacenter

[Securityemo]

To be fair, I read that quote, and thought about it while posting. Why it didn't "click" that you where kidding, I don't know.

Re:I lost a datacenter

[autocracy]

That's why we keep Bruce Willis on retainer.

Re:I lost a datacenter

[Anonymous Coward]

The most embarrassing thing about this thread: you apparently read bash.org

Re:I lost a datacenter

[BobMcD]

tracert is your friend

Last hop is through some ISP called 'Wild Blue'.

Now what?

Re:I lost a datacenter

[ChapterS]

can you get the serial numbers?... ask the supporting vendor where they went to do the last fix?

Re:I lost a datacenter

[gblackwo]

Anyone remember the Novell server that was lost behind drywall for four years after a remodeling job? Noone noticed it was gone until it needed a reboot. http://slashdot.org/articles/01/04/10/1846258.shtml

what a horrible idea

[Surt]

Why don't we provide a small number of locations, the destruction of any of which would significantly cripple our government. I can't imagine who would find such a consolidation helpful to their goals.

Re:what a horrible idea

[cptdondo]

Just because you have a lot of them, doesn't mean they're redundant or in any way coordinated.

Most are probably just a local chief/commander/boss saying "we need XYZ, get us some computers".

I can see some serious redundancy in DOD computers; basically you want each field unit to have some data center capability in case the grid goes down. They need to be able to run their own affairs at the very least.

But entities like the VA and the Education folks? They don't really need redundancy to any great extent; a few mirrored datacenters around the country should work fine.

Re:what a horrible idea

[hedwards]

Not really, they could coordinate it so that there's a small number of them, perhaps 1 per region of the US. Say broken up into the same regions that the federal government uses for district courts. Most of the servers could reasonably be combined using virtual hosts, since most of them really don't need to be separated. Somethings like Social Security and the IRS have a reason to be separated, but most of them don't need to be.

But, the point is that since you have them consolidated to a small number of areas, you can keep track of them. You can make sure they're patched, backed up and secured. You can reallocated capacity as needed.

Which is something which isn't happening now. I don't know that for a fact, I just know that if you've suddenly discovered that much capacity that at least some of them aren't properly cared for and definitely not being monitored.

Re:what a horrible idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and while we're at it, lets consolidate them all onto Microsoft cluster (ha, that term always makes me laugh, as they are not true clusters - marketing what a phenomena) systems. Oh, and to do that you will have to triple the number of server devices for supporting existing infrastructure.. And, if you really want to get any work done, beef up those same systems with more drives and memory, and increase your Administration team because you can no longer do with five techs per 1000 systems, its more like 5 to every 20.

Yes, wise cost cutting...

Dogbert will be proud. (or is the architect of this fiasco)

Re:what a horrible idea

[H3xx]

Why don't we provide a small number of locations, the destruction of any of which would significantly cripple our government. I can't imagine who would find such a consolidation helpful to their goals.

Unless that goal is building SkyNet. Then it's really useful.

good luck and Godspeed

[alen]

i did a 1 year contracting stint at a US Army Corps of Engineers office 10 years ago. the DC was less than 10 servers in a closet for 140 people. the local offices had more people and more servers. in a few cases the local IT people refused to go with the mandated domain plan and kept separate domains. word was that the managers couldn't make them do it either. this was back in the NT4 days. with Windows 2003 and 2008 it's a lot easier to consolidate the domains and data centers but in the end they will have to force the local IT people to give up passwords so they can consolidate things. think the idiot from SF type problems

Were they lost?

[iONiUM]

I don't understand how you can "find" data centers? Can someone explain that to me.

Re:Were they lost?

[east coast]

It's kind of like in Civ... Obama sent out some explorers and a friendly tribe of Inupiats gave them a data center.

Re:Were they lost?

[betterunixthanunix]

Have you ever seen IT infrastructure in an organization where departments can make independent purchasing decisions? It is very easy for a department to purchase some servers for themselves, put them in a closet, and suddenly you have a server room that nobody is aware of. I saw it all the time when I was an undergrad, and I see it all the time now as a grad student.

It was not that these systems were "lost," but rather that they were not accounted for. I am not surprised -- various departments, subdepartments, field offices, and so forth probably bought computers at various points in time over the past 30 years, and nobody bothered to keep track of where those computers were being installed (they were probably only required to report what they purchased and what the price was). The report was probably corrected because they missed a bunch of smaller data centers the first time around, or perhaps because there was confusion over what should be called a "data center" (does any server room count? what if it is just a closet with a handful of computers in it?).

Re:Were they lost?

[cptdondo]

I've got a small home network. It has a handful of IP cameras, a few access points, some wifi gadgets, a couple of laptops, and 3 "regular" computers.

As everything works, it's not unusual for me to lose track of some gadget after a year or two, or to notice a "new" gadget that's actually been there.

Now imagine that you have a 10,000 of these sorts of setups, but each has 1,000 nodes. And each has an admin or a group of admins that do what they need to to make their management happy. And now move the admins around every 2-4 years like the military does.

Get the idea?

Re:Were they lost?

[teridon]

It's easy -- you ask people you've never asked before: "Hey, do you have any data centers?". In other words, no one was keeping track before. Missions/projects setup data centers as-needed, but were not required to report them as a new "data center" to anyone.

I don't think it's surprising to find that the estimate was wrong. I know that where I work, funding plays a huge part in the creation of "islands" of IT resources. Every project pays for their own resources, and no one wants to share. Until this data center consolidation effort, there was no real impetus for creating pooled data centers.

Re:Were they lost?

[hedwards]

Indeed. I used to be a security officer, and one time I was sent to unlock a server room for an audit that the tenant authorized. It turned out to be a closet with a couple servers in it, and right at the top of the closet was a big ole sprinkler head.

Needless to say the auditor that I let into the closet was less than enthused by the situation.

Re:Were they lost?

[hedwards]

Which is why organizations have to have a much more formal setting. I remember interviewing for a job quite a while ago, where they had a twiki page, specifically too keep track of that stuff. It was a rather large campus, but there was enough going on, that it would be impossible to keep track of things were it not for the twiki page and fastidious updates whenever something was added or changed.

Re:Were they lost?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this was 2 days ago I'd be completely with you, but I just got assigned a project to do an audit on our applications. I quickly found out there is no documentation on what machines the applications are actually on, I've been sending out a lot of emails to a lot of people. So I can see this happening, it's not that no one knows where they are it just isn't documented.

Oblig Bash.org quote

[Anonymous Coward]

hm. I've lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my apartment it is.

http://bash.org/?5273

How to save money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Federal government salary and compensation levels have systematically crept up over the last 20 years to to point that they are now 30% to 100% of comparable public sector jobs. How about freezing salaries for 10 years or so until inflation brings them more inline. It is crazy that Federal employees got a 1% raise this year in an environment of near zero inflation and high unemployment.

Re:How to save money.

[compro01]

More like private sector salary and compensation levels have systematically crept down over the last 20 years.

Also, available figures place annual inflation for this year at about 1.8%, so they're currently losing money.

Your taxes at work

[hessian]

In a normal business, you serve a client.

In government, the client is yourself, and you must "justify" that position with lots of public activity.

That activity does not need to be effective, it only needs to look effective. By definition, there's less risk in ineffective activity.

This is why government is often ineffective, and why both left and right wing parties want to streamline it.

Re:Your taxes at work

[BobMcD]

This is why government is often ineffective, and why both left and right wing parties want to streamline it.

You had me up until that last part. Unless you mean "steamline" as in, give the contracts to their friends and campaign contributers instead of whoever has it now.

Re:Your taxes at work

[hedwards]

And if left and right wing politicians could agree on priorities, it might happen.

Re:Your taxes at work

[rednip]

This is why government is often ineffective, and why both left and right wing parties want to streamline it.

So, what you're saying is it's those darn moderates who really muck things up!

Re:Your taxes at work

[Anonymous Coward]

if both sides agreed, your life would belong to the federal government.

Re:Your taxes at work

[Trepidity]

You must never have worked for a large corporation. Exactly this kind of stuff goes on. And there, too, the activity does not need to be effective, it only needs to look effective--- clients, like voters, aren't very smart.

geez

[tscheez]

From the way the headline reads, you'd think they went on some sort of archeological exploration or something.

Re:geez

[hedwards]

No, but some of them were running Fedora.

Re:geez

[compro01]

Might not be far from truth. If your government is anything like mine, you might be finding VAXen and System/370s still in active use.

Don't know who you work for

[Shivetya]

but if it appears on our network without previous authorization all hell breaks loose. Whether from internal or external auditors to just the network people freaking out. SOX reporting pretty much insures anything for us that can store information, even in transition, is documented, accounted for, and has its approvals all in order.

No, government is in a league of its own, there number of redundant programs and such is probably worthy of three to five years worth of investigation. They don't answer to anyone because no one bothers. A bunch of little kingdoms with no accountability because their budget entry is buried

Really a good idea

[DoofusOfDeath]

My impression is that in most cases, consolidation can reduce apparent IT costs, but produces a not just centralized computers but a centralized bureaucracy.

And when you have a centralized bureaucracy, the individual agencies will be subject to data centers that act on their "requests" more slowly if at all. (Note that when you lose control over your data center, what used to be an order now becomes a request.)

In general, it seems like centralizing things can help with some issues, but creates a boatload of other issues.

The other 1000 Datacenters were found...

[digitaldc]

...underneath the Carribbean Sea built amongst the lost City of Atlantis.

Seriously, how could the US Government NOT know about or keep track of their own infrastructure and resources??? ;-)

"let's just use one datacenter for everything"

[NYMeatball]

This is what would happen if my "boss" was in charge of this initiative.

(Superceding other hits as: "Let's just use one database", "Let's just make that field bigger", and "just guess")

Redundancy

[gmuslera]

Congratulations, you found the backup datacenters.

They should've asked the Chinese straight away

[G3ckoG33k]

They should've asked the Chinese straight away. They would have known.

Re:They should've asked the Chinese straight away

[digitaldc]

That's right, they practically run them!

Terrorists

[DarthVain]

Sure makes it hard for terrorists to target key data centers if the government doesn't even know how many they have or where they are.

Obama is just playing right into the hands of the terrorists...

Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Moreover, it's a lot easier to exploit your cash flow for personal gain when accountability doesn't get in the way. Every year the US government fails to properly account for billions of dollars in cash flow. Gee, I wonder where that money ended up -- it certainly wasn't used to fix the roads I'm driving on.

MAP PARENT UP

[BenEnglishAtHome]

According to the article, linked memo, and linked data center tier definition, the meanest little closet holding a box with blinking lights is a "data center". The survey referenced does limit them to over 500 square feet but even that number can be kinda meaningless.

At this moment, I'm sitting on the other side of the wall from a "data center" for a major TLA. It was once a monstrosity with dozens of Pyramids the size of refrigerators, racks of Windows-based servers for files and email, and a few dozen Unix servers that I administered.

Through consolidation and virtualization to larger data centers, it's lost nearly everything. Two file servers sit in a rack in the middle of a gigantic room with a raised floor, cooling, and excellent redundant power. There's also one tower-format file server. Technically, it's a data center. In real life, it's three servers sitting in the middle of thousands of empty square feet. At least it was until a couple of weeks ago; we've chained off the area into separate rooms for other uses and other departments, so the server rack now sits in about 500 square feet.

When the hardware in the rack fails, it won't be replaced; it'll be virtualized elsewhere. At that point, the one server that must remain can be put into a glorified closet with a good lock on the door and we'll no longer have a "data center". All this is a result of consolidation efforts that have been going on for years at my agency.

I wonder how many of the data centers in the fine article are equally as far from what most people think of when you say "data center"?

Rogue IT is not must for big companies

[dcavanaugh]

Anywhere you have IT governance that delivers more policies than solutions, rogue IT fills the gap.

In the case of the Federal government, I can imagine this getting out of hand. I wonder how many virtual machines are sitting there in the Amazon cloud quietly doing the government's business?

Obligatory quote...

[Dexter Herbivore]

Let one datacenter rule them all?

Re:Obligatory quote...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if they're still using that outdated network standard 802.5, you know...Tolkien-Ring.

1000 more datacenters?

[Lookin4Trouble]

Yes, OMB changed what they consider a "datacenter" - previous Datacall regarded anywhere that had 5 servers, a switch, and a router as a datacenter. Now they've lowered the bar to (3 Servers) -or- (1 server + 1 switch) -or- (1 switch + 1 router) -or- (1 server + 1 router). Frankly, I'm surprised the number only roughly doubled, I would've thought there were a LOT more sites with a server, switch, router setup...

Re:1000 more datacenters?

[UtucXul]

Wow, if that's the criteria, I think I had a datacenter in my office when I was at NASA just based on the machines we used for builds and tests of our software.

Re:1000 more datacenters?

[Anonymous Coward]

wow. with that definition my house is a datacenter. awesome.

Welcome to Virginia!

[Anonymous Coward]

Massive Data Center Consolidation = VITA = awful mess

"data center"

[plcurechax]

Remember that their definition of "data center" is more than a little self-serving, it can include any re-purposed office closet or "server room" in any of the tens of thousands of government offices in the thousands of government buildings.

Re:"data center"

[MadKeithV]

You mean any excel sheet in a shared folder on the network.

Want to get rid of data centers? Add walls.

[oneiros27]

The requirement for "data center" is 500 sq. feet. So all they need to do is cut them into smaller blocks (eg, shipping containers, or just moving the walls), and suddenly, although it's now more "data centers" each one won't qualify, and so will reduce the count.

Or, we change the usage of the rooms -- that stack of cases of paper in the corner? That room's no longer 'devoted to data processing', and therefore, not a 'data center'. We already store spare parts in our 'not a data center' (also, my boss's office, but when we move, he won't be co-located, so I don't know if it'll be added to the count), but someone might argue those parts are indirectly for 'data processing'.

And poof ... data centers magically disapear, for loss money than it'd cost to consolidate, without all of the headaches. (okay, the walls could create dust, which the machines might not like ... the cases of paper is potentially a less risky option).

Not so impressive.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be more impressed if they found the two back-up Federal Governments, and the President-Alternate.

"What is a datacenter?"

[AMuse]

Before everyone gets all spun up on government waste, inefficiency, etc - I'd like to point out that numbers like these are never accurate. (For the record, I work for the feds, in the IT field).

The problem with "The feds have X datacenters" as a metric is that various audits occur at different times and by different auditors. These auditors almost always have differing definitions for what a datacenter actually is.

In one audit, a group can come through and define "Datacenter" as a big room where servers are co-located and services run on behalf of others. They'll find 2 at my center. Then a year later, a different group comes in and defines "Datacenter" as anywhere that more than 5 computers are running and left on all night. They'll find 200 at my center. Yes, this actually happened! The auditors came through dozens of science labs, found project servers sitting in the labs, and labeled each lab a datacenter.

Now here is the trick to why the statistics are complete mush. A normal IT guy would walk through the lab and say "Hey, that server should be in a datacenter!" -- but the auditors make the reverse conclusion. "Hey, this lab is a datacenter".

Yes, there is waste in the federal sphere and we absolutely need to take action to be more efficient at all levels. However, this article is basically pushing a number that came from someones' imagination, and pretending it's meaningful.

Re:"What is a datacenter?"

[SecurityGuy]

A normal IT guy would walk through the lab and say "Hey, that server should be in a datacenter!" -- but the auditors make the reverse conclusion. "Hey, this lab is a datacenter".

And they'd both be wrong.

A good IT guy should walk through and ask "Why isn't this server in a data center?" Often people just want to run their own systems, which is a cultural problem. People don't generally insist on waxing their own floors or doing their own wiring, after all. Often there are poor accounting systems that layer unreasonable costs on putting something in a data center, which obviously is an accounting problem. Often the solution (put everything in a datacenter) causes other problems that the IT segment of the company won't deal with. Host your system in your lab and you get everything done when you want it. Host it in the data center and you get it done next month.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have servers in data centers. Quite the opposite. However we seem to start by saying we'll consolidate to save money on hardware, software, and staff, improve efficiency, and deliver better service. Then we keep saving money by delivering worse service than the self service model did to begin with. THEN we wonder why everybody's lab is a data center.

Re:"What is a datacenter?"

[AMuse]

You're quite right, actually. I didn't really want to go into all that detail with my post though, and knowing the "average" IT guy I think I'm still safe saying that they'd say "Hey, that should be in a datacenter!". ;)

Re:"What is a datacenter?"

[Nethead]

...they'd say "Hey, that should be in a datacenter!"

Which translates to "Hey, I should have control of, and the budget, for that!" or worse, "Hey, that should be running Windows!"

Re:"What is a datacenter?"

[petermgreen]

People don't generally insist on waxing their own floors or doing their own wiring, after all.
Because by and large the central cleaning do a good job and keep out of everyones way.

Often there are poor accounting systems that layer unreasonable costs on putting something in a data center, which obviously is an accounting problem.
Even if false costs and unnessacery beuracracy were eliminated there are a lot of costs to moving a server from a lab to a datacenter, a few that spring to mind.

1: Backed up datacenter power costs more than regular grid power and datacenter space also costs more than space under someones desk that wouldn't be used for anything else if the server was moved.
2: Lack of physical access means that unless you are very confident in your abilities and/or have very easy physical access you need to spend extra to get some form of remote admin. You also need reliable hardware.
3: You probablly need the machine rackmountable
2+3: The above points pretty much imply use of a new machine rather than the repurposed desktop that serves fine in the corner of the lab.

MAP?????

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Apparently, I can't spell "MOD". Or maybe I've been doing so many drive mappings this morning that I've just got "map" on the mind.

Sheesh...

Due to construction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they happen to find a data center that was mistakenly sealed inside a wall?

Not datacenters, or server rooms, but "labs"

[whitroth]

There's a real problem with this analysis, esp. when you start defining what I'd call server rooms, things at 500'sq, as datacenters. We've got two large rooms, one probably bordering on that 500 ft, and no, you *cannot* "consolidate" that into a large one, for a number of reasons... like purpose and usage. If you're doing ordinary services, yeah (assuming you can trust them to keep them working, as opposed to the Department-wide login that just went down two days in a row - test boxes? h/a failover fallback? Huh?), but for special purposes - high performance computing, doing research, or some things I'm sure the military uses - there's no way to consolidate. You'd get long lines waiting for time on the systems, when the users are doing something so intensive that on small clusters they take *days* to run.

You just can't lump it all with dumb, large boxes.

              mark

ObDisclaimer: I work for a federal contractor, on site.

Just don't let HP/EDS do it

[rickb928]

Trust me on this.

If Only There Were Some Model...

[severoon]

If only there was an already existing model for dealing with large amounts of different kinds of data, some of it sensitive, spread across a geographically diverse area. Alas, there are no existing examples of how to do this, so we might as well give up. -sigh-

This is why engineers become terrorists:

[hortonelectric]

The government doesn't even care about their data centers enough to count them. I bet you they missed 10 and those sys admins are building a bomb out of paperclips and data exception printouts right now. Seems to me like the number of data centers in potentially threatening countries might be a better number to guess at, but I guess when you're an ex-ACORN employee weighing in at 340 you're not exactly going to Iran any time soon, so this is all they could find for you to do. Thanks MGMT

Jobs

[reitton]

With of course many overlapping positions being consolidated too. Aren't they trying to create jobs? Just saying....

Terrible Idea Anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like having one power plant that serves all the federal agencies across the US. What happens when it goes down? Oh sure, fail-over to a remote site that is slower. Still too vulnerable to attacks (physical or cyber) and the whole country suffers when there's a problem.

You know, with all this talk and desire of centralization and begging of the federal government to do everything for us, why do we even have states?

That is crazy

[cfulton]

How can you possibly have to estimate how many data centers you have. I'll bet google knows how many they have.

resentful that you fired all of their bosses?

[HornWumpus]

Perhaps you have had better luck with bosses then me.

Generally speaking and in my experience there is great rejoicing when management is fired.

The higher the rank of manager fired the more rejoicing there is.

This is less true in small business.

I expect government follows the big business model of PHB's galore.

Re:resentful that you fired all of their bosses?

[eudaemon]

Yeah, that's true -- senior managers get fired and everyone rejoices. There is a serious disconnect between the skills required to do the technical work and the skills required to manage and run a large corporation. Unfortunately for everyone the best senior managers are often really, really good at managing up and *maybe* across and not so great and managing anything else. In fact there seems to be a natural barrier between those who are good technically, good at managing people and relationships and those who excel at the latter two. At some point your ability to "win friends and influence enemies" becomes more important than your understanding what the hell a RAID level is and why someone's complaining that engineering has dictated all storage be on RAID-5 partitions and they want their database on RAID 10*. You're much more concerned about whether your division is going to make their budget numbers and the what next quarter's are going to be. When a manger says to me "that has to be easy" it's a classic case of management myopia - anything I don't understand must be easy. Similarly technical people often have trouble with the concept that some detail that's really, really easy for them is nearly impossible for a manager to grasp. So both view the other with a bit of contempt because they don't understand each other's world view. It's an interesting conundrum; those who understand the technology rarely make good leaders, and the senior managers often do not understand the details well enough to make an informed decision.

*Ignoring the fact that supposedly hardware acceleration has made RAID 5 write penalties moot.

Did you look on the Hall Table?

[cbass377]

Under that stack of unsolicited credit card offers, coupons, and bills that arrived yesterday? Last time I saw your data center, it was right there next to your car keys. No, I didn't move it.

If ruling were so simple...

[sjbe]

So fire them. Hire someone that will do as you say.

Not always possible. Lots of federal employees are unionized. Lots more of them don't actually report to the president, even indirectly. Even those that do are much harder to hire/fire than you suppose and most really important jobs actually require Congressional approval. We limit the President's power for very good reasons and while this has some undesirable side effects, I'm not about to vote to give anyone unlimited power over staffing in the federal government.

CEO's do it in the real world every single day.

The president isn't a CEO and the two jobs bear little resemblance to one another. Seriously, the two jobs are nothing alike.

And if there are laws in your way, get those changed first.

Only Congress can change laws. The president can influence, suggest, cajole and threaten but it's up to Congress to actually change the laws.

Failing that, line-item-veto any spending for their salaries and wait for them to quit.

The President of the US does not have a line item veto. President Clinton briefly held that power but it was declared unconstitutional in 1998 for violating the Presentment Clause.

Failing even that, use your executive ability to set their schedules to nil, or require them to report to Alaska, etc.

Again, lots of people don't report to the president and his ability to hire/fire is far more limited than you seem to suppose. Even if he fires someone, many jobs require approval from Congress to fill and that is not something any president wants to try to get more than necessary. Sometimes the president does direct those who report to him to de-fund programs and use his executive authority to circumvent the law and the federal bureaucracy but the president is just one man and has some (thank $diety) severe limits on his power and is badly outnumbered.

It really isn't that hard.

Bullshit. If it was easy it would have already been done. People in power will use any powers they have. If it were so easy to fire people and otherwise shape the federal bureaucracy it would be done.

People made this same argument towards Ron Paul's campaign promises, and they failed to see the same simplicity of it.

No they didn't. The world is a more complex place than Ron Paul makes it out to be and most people dismissed his rhetoric as populist nonsense. Perhaps he appeals to you but most people think of him as a fringe weirdo, myself included.

Re:If ruling were so simple...

[BobMcD]

Bullshit. If it was easy it would have already been done. People in power will use any powers they have. If it were so easy to fire people and otherwise shape the federal bureaucracy it would be done.

You're ignoring the single-party system that has been ruling every body of our government for the last several decades. Why?

lol wtfpwnt

[Anonymous Coward]

Id imagine this datacenter would be the aim of pretty much 100% of all the hackers in the world and as soon as it gets lol wtfpwnt wftpwnt lol we're all fucked.

I think the numbers are low

[aklinux]

Has anyone looked at the definitions of Data Center Tiers? http://www.dntp.com/news/pdfs/Data%20Center%20Tier_Classification.pdf You could put your desktop computer in a 2 car garage w/ an Internet connection and it would qualify as a 500 sq/ft Tier 1. Jim G

Big Brother Doesn't Know How Big He Is

[sterlingda]

This Orwellian government that is taking every opportunity it can to pry into our private lives, increase its control over us, destroy liberty, and ruin our free republic is so out of control. When are people going to wake up and kick the Orwellians out? Let's get back to the Constitutionally-mandated government -- which is what govt. officials are sworn to uphold, but which most ignore, making them liars and traitors. 9/11, which is what spurred their "mandate" to increase Big Brother snooping, was an inside job, designed to do just what they have been doing -- destroying liberty from the inside, having been given their "excuse" to do so. What thinking person can really believe that those three World Trade Center towers could have come down at near free-fall speed (actual free-fall speed in the case of Building 7 that wasn't hit by a plane) without the help of pre-placed demolition charges. It was a conspiracy, and if you keep buying into that lie (that it was just an act by foreign terrorists), you're helping them keep their control over you and us. Big Brother is the terrorist. The ones calling for the war on terror are the terrorists. Get them out. And the government insiders are just puppets for the real criminals calling the shots here, which include the huge banks.