Morning Fog

The Delivery Meltdown Shows How Spoiled We Are!

This year a lot of people didn't get their Christmas deliveries from UPS and Fedex in time.  Packages they were told would reach their destinations by December 25 ... DIDN'T.

So what?

It's amazing to me how this has become such a big deal.  Part of it is just media hype at a time of year when there is a paucity of real news; this is something we've come to expect in the age of instantaneity. 

But it goes beyond that, evidently, because people are grumbling, and both the delivery services and the companies that use them are offering more than just a kiss to make up.

For the retailers, I would say:  Stop with the freebies, gift coupons, and so on.  You sell goods; unless you also run your own in-house nationwide delivery service too, you have absolutely nothing to be sorry for.  Once you release that shiny new dustbuster, or that fancy new tablet, to UPS, you're absolved.  The "guaranteed" delivery is Fedex's claim, not yours.  Only an idiot would hold you responsible.  Unfortunately you, there are many, many idiots out there; and many more who won't say "no" when you offer them an unnecessary freebie.  So maybe you believe it's better to offer bennies - which you can pay for out of the refunds you should get from shippers -- than take the risk.  Sad, but contemporary.

For the delivery companies, I offer the following thought:  I don't really think it's your "fault" either.  Weather is unpredictable.  But maybe you should stop overhyping the last-minute delivery.  It's evident to me, if not to you, that the more you push volume into the last day or two, the more likely it is that you'll be unable to handle it, even without a major storm.  Can you get more planes and hire more workers on a day's notice?  I doubt it.  Delivery in general is usually an estimate, but for those who paid extra for a "guaranteed" delivery, you should provide refunds of that shipping.  I feel certain that you've factored the odds of a huge weather disaster into the stiff prices you charge for the service.

For people who are grumbling as if it's the end of the world, I offer this advice:  Get over it!  No, that's really wrong, it should be:  Don't get into a tizzy in the first place. Mother Nature doesn't give guarantees, and neither does life.  If you took the "free shipping" a week ago and didn't get your delivery, remember that you get what you pay for.  If you paid extra for those guaranteed fast delivery, I commiserate and believe you should get your money back.  In either case, though, I have two suggestions:  (1) Order earlier!  And (2) relax, get a sense of perspective, and consider how spoiled we've become, if this is all we have to complain about.   

Give 'Em The Old Razzle-Dazzle

I'm sure we all remember the adage, "charity begins at home."  I suppose this explains the ease with which money can be raised for extravagant, emotionally based special causes, especially in the internet era.  A recent case was the kid on whose behalf thousands of dollars were contributed (105,000 of them, to be exact), and the downtown of a major city brought to a standstill, to create a tableau in which "Batkid" could play out his fantasy (assuming he's into self-deception). 

But I have to say I was nonplussed (is that the same as subtracted?) to read this tale of gooey excess.  Sure, I can see this and think it's a very nice thing to do, and yet I can also look at it and think, why this kid, and not some other?  There are a lot of children (hey, and even adults) suffering from life-threatening diseases who don't have a snowball's chance in hell of having any such thing done for them. 

While the founders of "Make a Wish" are no doubt well-intentioned, the whole thing seems rather elitist to me. (Make your own decision: visit their website; but also check out the Wikipedia page on them, which is prefaced by the warning that the article "reads like an advertisement." And, the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance says MAW meets its standards and that its admin costs are only 12% of funds raised - a pretty good ratio.) 

So - leaving aside how we assess the MAW Foundation -- I have to agree with Peter Singer, Princeton University professor of bioethics (whatever that is), when he says in a recent article that giving of this sort may be very heartwarming, but it's a relatively inefficient use of money.  The money spent on Batkid could easily have saved 42 children's lives, if spent on malaria suppression. 

I suppose we shouldn't be concerned.  People will donate to what moves them and what strikes them as familiar ("charity begins at home"); and many people spend sums like this not just on kids with special wishes, but on their dogs.  But I'll prefer the cost-effective approach ... assuming of course that we believe lives saved is better than lives made happy; or that the more lives saved the better.  (These are not necessarily valid assumptions.)

The Entitled Military

When stories came out a couple of days ago about the budget agreement, I checked some of the reader comments on the Washington Post website.

Prominent among the early ones were a number of comments from (presumably) service members or veterans.  They were not positive.  One memorable one opined that those who voted for the legislation imposing very minor cuts on military pensions were guilty of treason.  Mere civilians daring to cut a few bucks from our bloated military pension system?  How dare they!

There is no better evidence of the danger to democracy that arises from dependence on a "professional" military.  Professional they may be, and there's no question that they perform their duties with dedicated effectiveness.  For now. 

Yet the sense of entitlement is clear -- and just as clearly unwarranted.  Many people may not realize that the military's generous pension - which they can collect after only 20 years of service -- is paid fully by U.S. taxpayers with NO contribution from the beneficiaries themselves.  [They do pay into, and collect, social security.]  Contrast to the civilian government (I paid 7% of my salary throughout my working life for a less generous pension than the military had at the time) and you see what a "sense of entitlement" really is. 

These protests merely demonstrate unequivocally how necessary entitlement reform in the military is -- not to mention the crying need for a system that, if not relying entirely on conscription, can still produce a military force that involves both "professional" servicepeople AND the "old-fashioned" citizen soldier -- both in positions of authority.

The Ottoman Empire, the Roman Empire - both succumbed to the pressures of trying to pay increasingly demanding military forces for their increasingly costly defense, often receiving less and less actual defense as time went on.  The U.S. is not an "empire," but is fairly comparable to these equivalent world powers.  Let's not follow their example. 

One Small Step For Bipartisanship

It appears the compromise agreement hammered out by Reps. Paul Ryan and Patti Murray a while back will effectively be passed by both houses of Congress.  It's only a small step - perhaps could be passed only because it was so small - and as news reports are pointing out, it doesn't eliminate the possibility of a coming fight over the budget, nor another government shutdown -- not yet.

Still, it suggests that extremists are backing away from their "ideal" positions toward a slightly more realistic willingness to compromise.  There are other signs, too:  in Virginia, last month's election for Attorney-General had produced a historically close outcome between the Republican Obenshain and the Democrat Herring (the latter leading by just 162 votes).  A recount began this week, which began to produce a clearer lead for Herring; Obenshain now has conceded the race, although under a rather weird Virginia law he might have sought to pickle Herring by having the outcome decided in the Republican-dominated state Assembly.  That he chose not to try also reflects a bit of reason returning to government.

  

It's Fate

Political commentator Chris Cilizza's feature article on who had the worst year in Washington seems about on target - Obama "wins" the mantle of worst year, with the  Republican Party having had just a very bad year, and John Kerry and Chris Christie very good ones. 

Now, for me, the very concept of "worst year" or having a bad year hinges on those occurrences that are accidents or things we can't avoid.  In other words, fate.  This is something we also know from our own lives. Curiously, though, in his exposition, Cilizza several times suggests that Obama (and certain of the others) engineered their own bad year.  In different places, for example, he writes that Obama "wasted," squandered," or "torpedoed" what should have been the best year to establish his legacy.

I can't see that.  In fact, most of the factors mentioned (IRS scandal, the Snowden leaks, disarray in the Republican Party) were hardly matters that Obama could have controlled.  Only in the instance of the Affordable Care Act, where the President could have avoided a disaster by paying more attention to what his minions were doing, was the wound at least partly self-inflicted.  

So truly, for Obama, and for the others (the GOP, Virginia Governor McDonnell, Redskins QB Robert Griffin, Kerry, or Christie) it was the turn of circumstance that did them in. 

Coincidentally (or not), in the same newspaper, within a few pages of Cilizza's article, is a review of the new book Strategy, by Lawrence Freedman.  The juxtaposition is instructive.  The reviewer, University of St. Andrews prof Gerard deGroot, suggests that the chief lesson of Freedman's history of great strategists is that "the most careful arrangements often run aground on the shoals of circumstance."   Too true!

Will Traditional Republican Pols Finally See The Light?

The Washington Post reports today, surely to no one's particular surprise, that many of the more "traditional" sitting Republican Senators, some of whom have been in office for decades, face the very real possibility of being unseated by more-conservative tea party challengers.  Further, and again no shock, the same article suggests that this trend might cause the Republican Party some difficulty in its quest to take control of the Senate.

All very true, I'm sure.  And if it's currently supposed that most of the more extreme challengers will be defeated, that may also be true, yet odds are that at least some of them will win their primaries, and possibly go on to defeat a Democratic opponent and take a seat in the Senate.  Is it conceivable we long-suffering bipartisan voters may have to look "forward" to not just one Ted Cruz, but several more of them?  Surely that would be one too many a Cruz to bear.

If a number of the tea party challengers are successful, the one positive outcome from that might be that more traditional Republican pols, who (like their Democratic counterparts, make no mistake) have busied themselves for years in using political majorities, when they had them, to gerrymander their districts right down to the last voter, will recognize as political analysts have, that such "safe" districts have increased polarization of our political system. 

So perhaps they will recognize the error of their ways.   Unfortunately for them and us, it will be too late; extremists are even less likely to want to make the districting process equitable.

 

A postscript for regular readers:  No, you haven't mysteriously missed any posts over the past couple of weeks.  Due to lack of appropriate temperature gradients, there hasn't been any Morning Fog since Thanksgiving.  But I'm confident that climatic conditions will now bring Fog more often.