Job Rant.

I've been a manager at this company for more years than I want to admit anymore.  Ok, here goes... of the 32+ years in this company, 3.5 years in the late 80's to early 90's and then the last 16.48 years since August of 1996.  I've never liked being a manager,  that is why I got out of it the first time.  Fortunately I have been able to do technical work and lead a technical team so it wasn't all bad.  I do that part pretty well apparently.
Rant:

• The customer is warning us that they expect a 10% cut in our budget this year.  Just a warning and we won't know for sure until half way through the year.
• The director wants to cut now and avoid having to make a 20% cut later.
• We identified people we could cut by position that would least impact our operations and work.
• Two of those people said they would take the layoff without bumping someone if that is what it came to.
• This plan was submitted to Human Resources.  HR for short.  Heartless Rats.  Human Refuse.
• HR said we have to try to find these people jobs, even if that meant bumping our own people below them in the ranking order.  The outdated ranking order that is over a year old and has no relationship to today's rankings.
• As if I give a shit about rankings.  I need specific people.  The people we decided to release were releasable because we don't need them as much.  If everyone could do anyone's job, we wouldn't have made a selection.  That isn't the real world.  It appears to be the HR world.  A Level 5 System Engineer Sr Stf should be able to step into the shoes of another Level 5 System Engineer Sr Stf of lower ranking without too much training or trouble.
• And what is this bullshit that an employee can't say "I don't want to bump anyone."and we have to try to place him somewhere anyway?  I guess they want to avoid severance pay at all costs since it is 2 weeks pay plus 1 week per year served up to 26 weeks.  But if they bump someone who has the same salary and severance, no gain there!

I am so pissed off I can spit.  Several people are going to get an unnecessary layoff notice because some lawyers tells HR to toe the line and follow process exactly.  I am spending hours of my life writing up justifications for why the other people shouldn't be bumped by this guy ranked higher than them.  Obviously they don't trust my judgement, nor the judgement of the senior manager and director above me.  I am tired of it.  Why do we have managers at all?  Just hire a bunch of HR types to do this shit and let the engineer leads run the real work, until HR runs the company into bankruptcy.

MORAL Majority?

Right there, in black and white, the Republicans admit publicly how the House seats they retained in 2012 was achieved despite having over a million fewer actual votes. Intentionally, planned, with premeditation. Now WHO is corrupting American values? WHO is un-American? From WHO do we need to take our country back from? These are the people who are supposed to be MORAL and RIGHTEOUS?

Republicans enjoy a 33-seat margin in the U.S. House seated yesterday in the 113th Congress, having endured Democratic successes atop the ticket and over one million more votes cast for Democratic House candidates than Republicans.

Rachel Maddow: The GOP Plan To Take Presidency, Keep House In Four Easy Steps

1. Win under-the-radar local elections:

2. Use new majorities to gerrymander state legislature and congressional districts in their favor:

3. Use redistricting to ‘win’ seats in the US House of Representatives in 2010 and 2012:

4. Change state-level electoral college rules so Democratic candidates can’t win the presidency:

And just to ratchet up the slime factor, the Virginia Senate waited until Democratic Senator Henry Marsh left to attend the president’s inauguration before voting on the bill. “Virginia senators had to wait until he was gone because the Senate is equally divided in Virginia, with 20 Republicans and 20 Democrats,” exclaimed an appalled Maddow. Because of the even split, Virginia’s Lt. Governor, Bill Bolling typically casts the tie-breaking vote in situations like this. But even the state’s number two Republican thought this was a dirty trick and refused to support it. That left the GOP lawmakers with no option but to wait until a Democrat left town and they could skew the numbers in their favor without having to rely on Bolling. As it so happened, they waited until one of Virginia’s most preeminent civil rights icons (and the first black mayor of Richmond, the capitol of the Confederacy) was at the second inauguration of the nation’s first black president to launch their attack. Throwing up yet?
Yet Virginia’s law — the first of its kind — still stands, and other states are poised to follow suit. Already, Pennsylvanian Republicans have a similar bill in committee.

It's Not the Deficit Stupid!

I feel like slapping someone... wake up! The problem with today's economy is not current budget deficits and national debt! It is not! Our problem is lack of jobs, and the markets the employed make for more job creation. The only reason an employer creates a job is when they need someone to work. Taxes, health care, national debt don't matter. They want to sell something and they need buyers. They only create jobs if demand for what they sell requires it. All deficit reduction does right now is kill jobs. Period. Yes, the budget needs to get better balanced but not now, especially since more than half of the current deficit is caused by the recession. Recover from that and half the problem is solved! Get out of the stupid wars and more is saved. Get the economy booming with education and infrastructure now while money is cheap! Austerity fails! It failed Japan's stagnation for 20 years and now Europe is dying with its failed austerity efforts. WTFU!

http://harpers.org/blog/2013/01/america-is-having-the-wrong-fiscal-argument/

"Deficit-cutting under the current circumstances is bad economics, according both to theory and to historical precedent. Austerity economics are palpably and tragically failing in Europe, yet the same types who urge austerity on Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and even France — not to mention the non-Eurozone giant, Britain — are also urging it in broad consensus in America. And they are succeeding. Dedicated to their polite even-handedness, meanwhile, the media have tended to blame both sides and to assume unquestioningly that deficit reduction is required, rather than identifying the clear culprits responsible for sustaining our economic mess. These culprits are not evenly distributed across the political spectrum. In order of importance, they are:"

1. The Tea Party Republicans who have been working for an economic policy driven by ideology and a hatred of most social policies.
2. self-appointed “common sense” centrists like the powerful Campaign to Fix the Debt
3. Third is the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO’s economics are utterly neoclassical, which means it is conservative, in that it almost always favors less government spending. Its projections generally assume that high budget deficits will crowd out private investment and slow economic growth.