Amtrak Manager in Chicago Union Station Canned

[Devil's Advocate]

Dishonest Amtrak employees should be terminated but the graft and greed in politics is so deeply entrenched that it will remain until the people have had enough. That might be never.

Even if The People have had enough of the graft and greed they still need an overwhelming super majority to override Gerrymandered districts, the Electoral College, and Voter Rights manipulation. Thanks to private election funding and the Citizens United ruling that's going to be a very difficult outcome to accomplish. Which is why those who are currently in power are busy doing everything they can to expose any rift and drive any wedge they can find between us.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Im pretty sure that for graft to actually disappear, humanity itself would have to change beyond recognition. That being said, we dont need to totally get rid of it; just keep it more manageable.

 

[jis]

Running a company properly and making sure that people with bad things on their record do not get rehired after getting fired is something that can be done without rearranging the voting districts and all sorts of other extraneous nonsense that has been brought up here.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Running a company properly is something that happens too infrequently in the private sector, adding the other schmontses that comes with it being government owned and run in an industry that is a closed circuit sewer of schnorers, thieves, and imbeciles makes it an impossibility.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Running a company properly and making sure that people with bad things on their record do not get rehired after getting fired is something that can be done without rearranging the voting districts and all sorts of other extraneous nonsense that has been brought up here.

Fair enough. Perhaps I misunderstood the meaning and purpose of the post to which I was responding. Nonetheless I'd honestly like to hear your solution for running Amtrak properly without any "extraneous nonsense" to worry about.

 

[jis]

This is a middle management hiring practices problem primarily. That should be fixable without rearranging the country's political system. If not, then we are in real trouble because many countries with much more broken political system appear to quite capable of solving such problems, even in government organizations.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum

 

[Green Maned Lion]

We are in real trouble. Havent you noticed?

 

[Bob Dylan]

We are in real trouble. Havent you noticed?

This!
But in jis's job he doesn't have to deal with the hacks and crooks we have too many of in middle Management,politics and Governmental Agencies.!

 

[Green Maned Lion]

I have always assumed that JIS likes looking adequately on the positive side that he believes change is possible; otherwise why bother trying?

 

[jis]

I have always assumed that JIS likes looking adequately on the positive side that he believes change is possible; otherwise why bother trying?

I guess, my attitude is that even if one is completely convinced that the entire system is all f*ed up, it is still worth trying to create niches of sanity. That is how human society has thrived through millenia. If everyone threw up their hands and said well gee, I cannot fix the window of my living room because it is necessary to first fix the economic system of the country, then no living room windows would ever get fixed. And yet, they do get fixed even in the worst of economic systems.

That is why I surmise that even if the executive level at Amtrak is screwed up to some extent by excessive political interference, if the middle levels cared enough they could operate sensibly. Some of them even do that, while others don't. I like to believe that it should be possible to weed out the few bad apples with a little support from the upper middle level of management. I do know several good people in Amtrak at such levels, but sometimes even their hands are tied, which is unfortunate.

As for the fond belief that in my industry you don't face similar problems, this exhibits a profound lack of knowledge and an unfounded faith in the belief in the "private industry is better than government" myth. We have always faced similar situations and worse and figured out ways to create niches of sanity in spite of complete brainlessness of the Board of Directors, their pointless fiddling based on unfounded theories, which have brought down many a great corporation, and the revolving door of incompetence flowing in and out of the executive suites, each exiting with ever greater golden handshakes doled out by the revolving door of incompetence at the Board level. I don't see much difference between the corporate world and the government world as far as that goes. but I still believe that well meaning people can still do good and make things work the best they can. Otherwise we would have all been dead long back, since there is absolutely no dearth of willful or otherwise, incompetence at all levels irrespective of the sector of the economy.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Given that the company I recall JIS working for has had a comic succession of dumb acquisitions and incompetent managers, and a number of both public and private conversations, I was never assuming jis had such a cockeyed view of private industry.

The fact is, public transit and civil engineering is a total cesspool of people who should be flipping burgers under supervision only. And they all seem to rotate around. Excepting pointedly Ronnie Hakim, who I think is a lot more competent than people give her credit for, I can just list them from NJT: Weinstein, Sarles, Warrington... all of them screwed wildly at NJT and at jobs before and after. The Super Bowl and Sandy should have had Weinstein on the soup line, Sarles fouled up NJT before he was given enough rope to show just how incompetent he can be at WMATA, and Warringtons screw up at Amtrak made NJT not just hire him, but seek him out at outrageous salary. If it wasnt for his input on ARC I think we would have better service now- it wouldnt have been quite so imperative to kill it. The list can go on- Pagano anyone?

 

[neroden]

Tom Downs, whose screwups were on truly epic levels, is another example who just seemed to keep on getting jobs. He's been disaster for every public transportation organization he's touched. Compared to him, Warrington qualifies as quite competent.

But this is *top level* revolving door of incompetence, which is a different political phenomenon than *middle level* revolving door of corruption.