Who rang... yes who did!

Is IMF violating US employment laws when they select its leader?

whorang — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 06:33:32 +0000

Is IMF violating US employment laws when they select its leader?

This relates to who is likely to get appointed to lead a public institution.

Why do we with stand public institutions to appoint leaders based on long standing protocol that has historically been on race (European heritage)?
Surely, this is a violation of equal opportunity laws of Washington D.C. Unfortunately the sleuth of journalist do not question this as they rush to project who has the biggest kahunas U.S or Europe. I would like nothing better then to see this sort of practice challenged in the U.S courts, as its clear to me that this job is reserved for Caucasians only! I thought this sort of discrimination had long ago stopped in public institutions in U.S. I understand that IMF as a body has 187 nation states as participating members, how ever

A definition of Kanban: visualized team work practices ……

whorang — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:13:56 +0000

Kanban: Managed & visualized team work practices, flowing to reduce bottlenecks with a sustainable team rhythm to continuously add customer value

Agile Blog: Some Silly Advice – I’ve not

whorang — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:27:01 +0000

Agile Blog: Some Silly Advice – I’ve noticed a piece of advice repeated in many Agile blogs, articles, and books. S… http://ow.ly/16qGmg

Agile Blog Define Kanban in 130 Characte

whorang — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:22:25 +0000

Agile Blog Define Kanban in 130 Characters or Less — Can You Do It? http://ow.ly/16nSrq

Agile Blog Post Scrum Anti-Pattern: NOT

whorang — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:22:25 +0000

Agile Blog Post Scrum Anti-Pattern: NOT Prioritising Stories Within Sprints http://ow.ly/16nSru

Corporate welfare is alive and kicking …..

whorang — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:07:43 +0000

Corporate welfare is alive and kicking – a headline news that you wont hear while we bail out banks and financial institutions that took us for a ride. What is amazing is the fact that these institutions got 0% loans for billions of dollars and they in turn flip the bird by pegging the interest you and I earn on the money deposited to the prime rate yet when it comes to credit card interest rates these are pegged to the sky. All this on money they borrowed from you, me and every other tax payer. This takes the bullet in terms of borrowing money and making money from the prime lender – the tax payer. I am sure even Robert Kiyosaki couldn’t or wouldn’t do this.

So why is it so difficult for government to stand behind 0% loans? to those who have lost their lively hood or those who stand to loose their business and homes etc. The odd thing is that the E.U commissioners have been awfully silent on applying the rules of competition. If my memory serves me right these rules prohibit Governments skewing competition favoring private or state run enterprises. Clearly they are not rocking the boat as they too are doing the same on their patch.

The kicker is that the so called Pay Czar, appointed by the government to ensure companies owned in large part by the Government follow the rules that Civil Servants have to, which is not to enrich themselves because they can!, has been arm twisted to turn a blind eye – check out US bail out executive pay.

I have no doubt we will equally remove pay limits for teachers, nurses, policemen, firemen, and soldiers as clearly if it weren’t for their ingenuity much of what we create wouldn’t be.

Sure there is a revolving door between those who make the rules and those who make the bubbles. I can’t see this going away, as we are just too smitten by all the players as the chess masters pull the wool over our eyes and sing lull-a-bye.

Everyone and their mother is weighing in about what is the strategy in Afghanistan? So How about ……

whorang — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:26:55 +0000

Of course the mass media wants to make this a big mystery and assert that the U.S strategy is confusing. Note they only start questioning this 8 years after the fact.

Why is it confusing?
Is it really that confusing?

Its clear to me that in the safety of Taliban rule Al-Qaeda flourished. In turn in the safety of Army rule in Pakistan Taliban flourished in Afghanistan. So the Army isn’t ruling Pakistan – it doesn’t mean they are not the puppeteer. After all power is difficult to relinquish, especially when without it one looses patronage through which much of life’s privileges are earned in this part of the world. So now we see Taliban is flourishing on both sides of the Afghan and Pakistan border. Lets not forget that the Taliban rule meant life was lived pretty much in the stone ages, remember the beard patrol, burka patrol, girls and women could not access education nor walk the street without male companion and women could not work, unless they were doing the subservient tasks etc. Well, in the face of this recent history here is what I think should be the strategy

Chase down Al-Qaeda, its leadership and influence in both Afghanistan and Pakistan in coordination with the ruling governments
To achieve this there is a requirement that all those who have supported Al-Qaeda are chased down – which means De-Talibanize Afghanistan, similar to De-Ba’athification of Iraq

To achieve this, there needs to be an overwhelming number of Troops from the coalition forces. This means partners to U.S have to step up and if they are not prepared to step up commensurate to there ability then U.S should impose a tax on all their goods and services. This tax can be shared by the coalition forces for taking on additional responsibilities.

Sure the Afghan government has a bunch of problems, what did we expect that somehow a people who have never thought about the common good for their citizens are one day going to behave as if this was life long virtue of theirs. Yes, even though those in the ruling classes have been educated abroad they are not blind to the limited resources that Afghanistan has and the rule of supply and demand.

So lets stop pretending and being naive that Democracy in Afghanistan necessarily means free of corruption. I am not sure it means this even in so called bastions of democracy. At the end of the day its just how much can we as outsiders tolerate this so as to achieve the strategic goals. Don’t get me wrong, we should have a parallel track to ensure there is continuous learning and improvement within the Afghan government by monitoring its governance and helping it mature. This may have a different time line in comparison to the urgency and the need to crush Al-Qaeda and De-Talibanization of Afghanistan.

Really, it is naive to believe that Taliban once in power will not take Afghanistan back to the stone ages and then all this will have been in vain.

No doubt there will be casualties with the escalation, it is a price for the war and the need, not just a want, to bring those who perpetrated the criminal act of 9/11 to justice.

Hey, what do I really know, I am a lay person. Mind you in my defense, while I am for the war against Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan I can clearly say I was against the war in Iraq for these very reasons. They had nothing to do with the atrocities of 9/11, which has been proven by a number of investigations and U.S government committee reports.

So what of Healthcare Reform!

whorang — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 23:38:55 +0000

Everyone is in a tizzy about this subject. Those who stir the pot are making sure that we remain focused on the trees so that we can remain lost in the Forest. On Friday I met a friend, who works for the Navy and really is a Professor at a University in one of our poor states. He informs me if it were not for the DoD and Federal dollars they surely would be worse off then they are today. Anyways, he was out west on a conference and we caught up over dinner. He had brought along a colleague of his, who similarly worked for the University and the Army. I will refer to this duo as FC (Friend & colleague, or Football Club given the ball kicking we were doing) . Anyways, our discussion went something like this …..

me: So what do you make of the Healthcare reform?

FC: Look we can’t have Government run Healthcare, its a sure way to having socialism. Government will add a layer of bureaucracy and inefficiency that only government knows how. They will limit what treatments you can have. Really its the thin end of the wedge – people want free health, we already have free schools and then they want government to get you job and then free money, hand outs etc. Also how are we going to pay for it? You just have to see countries like Canada and U.K, where they have wait lists for various procedures.

me: Wow – I say, and what basis do you have for this. I thought you guys were engineers and would actually see the forest for the trees and then base an opinion. Instead it appears that you guy’s have been watching too much of the Fox, Hannity & his side kick – you know Dumb and Dumber. Lets back up a little with some facts, that you guys should know from first hand.

Who funds and runs the Army, Navy, Airforce ? – You know our Armed forces. Have you ever heard anyone say our Armed forces are anything but No 1 in the world? Sure Government runs this great organization. By the way do we call it Socialist Army. In fact name me one country where the Armed forces are run by private companies – show me one and I will show you a failed state!.

Apart from the Armed forces, lets see what else Government delivers – you know that Freeway system or water & power infrastructure you make use of, well how do you think it came about? Also seeing that you are in the heart of Silicon valley, a stone throw from the likes of Google, Yahoo!, Cisco, NASA Ames Research Center, and oh yes things you may care more about such as Lockheed Martin. So who? was it that first had the vision to spend money on infrastructure that we now call the Internet, or the Space Program or the Satellite program etc.

Do you seriously believe, if you were to wind the clock back, that private industry could take on high risk endeavors such as these from the outset?. Sure all these private companies flourish today for taking on risks, but rarely do they ever take risks, if ever, that only Government and in some cases only U.S Government is willing and able to take.

So lets get back on point about Healthcare Reform. Lets fundamentally agree that much like the Army, Freeway, water & power infrastructure, the same rules of need apply to Healthcare.
Everyone has a need for healthcare, and the risk is often far too great for anyone to take on. So you see, lets not just agree that everyone needs healthcare, but agree that there ought to be universal healthcare.

Let set that as a national priority and thus the forest. Now we know what the forest looks like, where it is we can try to drive towards that. By this I mean figure out what kind of trees are in the forest, how densely populated it should be, how we get water to it so the forest doesn’t dry out or for that matter a fire won’t end up destroying it. In a nut shell how we pay for it, how we provide the right kinds of incentives for people to take better care at all ages. Lets not make the same mistake as most government incentives that end up being some form of tax deduction, as you only have to look at the mortgage and gain deduction (subsidy) as one of the root causes for housing failure.

Our current health system has pot holes and sometimes these are craters. For instance when you loose a job or become seriously ill and run out the $ limits on your health insurance. You complain about Government being bureaucratic and inefficient, as if by any stretch insurance companies and hospitals don’t have their flaws with bureaucracy and being inefficient. We agree that all large organizations have a degree of bureaucracy and built in inefficiencies, and we should do our best to minimize these, this is an on going battle for not just Federal government, but also Walmart, Google, Cisco, 3M, state government etc.

As for How do we pay for it?. Lets not be so naive and say Freeway is free, it costs and these costs are picked up from taxes – the most efficient way of collecting taxes is directly, as all the indirect methods of collecting introduce inefficiencies that require a sleuth of people employed just to make sure no one is cheating the system. Here is something you guys will appreciate – if you go to the CIA web site you will be able to compare how we stack up in spending on things like Education and Defense with other countries, especially countries like Japan, Germany, France, China, India, Brazil and U.K. I won’t bore you with the details, but if you get a chance to see the Fareed Zakaria interview of our Defense Seceratry Bob Gates you will see he openly states that as a nation U.S spends more on Defense then all other nations combined

[Q] Is this sustainable? or even wise, we just have to look at recent history with the likes of Russia, what happens to a nation that spends so much on defense, in fact beyond any rational basis. So clearly, even without adding new taxes we can, if the priority is set right and if only our representatives have the balls or tits (accounting for both genders) we could reduce Defense budgets and that saving could help establish not Universal Healthcare but seal all the Pot Holes that we have allowed to be created by not paying attention to what we want as a people as opposed to what CNBC and other corporate voices want.

I am always puzzled as to the American culture that probably became a norm from the 60′s, post civil rights and all that. The puzzle to me is as follows:

[Q] Why does Joe/Jane average American bat against their self interest and bat for the corporate interest?

FC: Hmmm, never thought of like that.

What the F… its morning after V.Tech shooting, would sworn it was some White dude ….

whorang — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 04:21:34 +0000

or as we say it “kaukasian chokro“. Man how wrong could I have been, well at least for the “kauk” bit. Anyways there I was on my daily commute train S.F and some geezer at the end of the journey at the top of his voice is discussing this with the train conductor. They were back and forth on “the guy was from Korea, probably trained in the army – what the heck must be from North Korea, look at the number of victims. How did he get so many rounds off? Why didn’t someone tackle him? He must have practised given the number killed and by the way what guns did he have? Oh, it was 9 mm and a 0.22 caliber” – suddenly the dick who started the conversation by reading off headlines from his Blackberry becomes an expert on 9mm. The conductor comments that had the fellow been in Arizona or Texas he would have been dropped well before his 3 or 4 round, given that everyone carries a gun – yeh right I say to myself. He adds, without basis of course, how there is little or no personal crime in Arizona. The young dumb blond chimes in, she is from farming community in central coast Kalifornia and sure we all have guns there too and no crime.

I also recall the dumb schmuck who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, had a press conference the evening of the shooting and did his bit of PR without ever considering that he has had ample opportunity to do right by having semi-automatic weapons banned, alas dumb is dumb does!. I was also struck by the CNN ticker tape of the morning announcing how “Queen Elizabeth was appalled and shocked by the incident” so there was a Buckingham Palace press release to say so. Ahhh!, my mother is appalled and shocked and in fact I doubt if there is anyone who doesn’t feel the same or even shame that we let it happen by not holding the feet to fire for our elected officials. Hey, may be Queen laments on what could have been her reign over this great nation of ours instead we have to put up with schmuck of a king – claims to follow democratic principles but has setup a fiefdom of sorts.

To date I have not heard anyone say, “well gosh we should really ban these things”. In fact getting a weapon should be as difficult as getting a driver license these days period. Of course then we will have to make a special clause for the illegal aliens needing a means of acquiring the same …. just don’t get me started on the clowns who come up with such half baked ideas from their half baked brains.