Delegation, Bloomberg Style

Speaking as the holder of a hard-earned MBA degree, I will note that the process of delegation implicitly entails a trade-off:  When you delegate, you free yourself from the burdens of the task, but, in return, you give up many of your personal choices and preferences as to how the task will be done.  Good managers understand this, and, in delegating, must decide which of the specifications for the task are really, really important, and which specifications are a matter of personal taste or happenstance.

In the Woodside section of the New York City Borough of Queens is Doughboy Park, which features a bronze statue honoring/memorializing those who put on the uniform to serve in World War I.  A fitting and proper memorial in all respects.

But, like all public monuments, Doughboy Park needs periodic maintenance and upkeep.  And, like most governmental units these days, the New York City Parks Department is in a budgetary crunch, and the upkeep of Doughboy Park was assigned a low priority.

The solution:  A group of community volunteers, including some veterans, got approval from the Parks Department to spruce up Doughboy Park.

And now, the Parks Department is complaining that the volunteers painted the park with the wrong shade of green! 

I do agree that it would not be the shade of green I personally would choose for the purpose.  But it is beautiful, the Park is far better off having been painted, and some volunteers were kept off the streets and out of trouble for a few days.  What's there to not like about it?

But what else can be expected of a city whose CEO wants to impose his own choices upon the population?

I hope that the new paint which the Parks Department will procure will not contain too much sugar!

Shavuoth 5773

This blog has been quiescent for a while, but be assured that I have not.  It is end of semester mode at school (and therefore the Final Exams I have had to compose and will soon have to administer and grade), there are family issues, there is a little bit of travel coming up, et cetera.

Amidst all of that, I have been engaged in  some activities behind the scenery and in the wings on certain issues that have garnered national attention and concern.

The Festival of Shavuoth comes in at sunset.  It is a major Jewish holiday (which, unfortunately, has been minimized in importance by some of the less observant and more assimilated sectors of the Jewish community) commemorating the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai.

I will soon sign off of my computer and prepare to celebrate the holiday.

Wishing all a Chag Sameach Shavuoth!

Police Officers as a form of Entertainment

Sometimes even the police need help from the police.

Like Camille San Filippo and Jannet Velez, two of New York's Finest who witnessed a perp in the act, chased  the perp down into the nearby subway station, and were injured in the struggle.

San Filippo and Velez, though in plainclothes at the time, showed their shields to one Corbin, the New York City Transit Authority toll agent on duty at the time, who was safely ensconced in the toll booth.  San Filippo and Velez asked Corbin to call for reinforcements, which Corbin could easily have done by pushing a button and/or depressing a pedal.

But Corbin declined to do so.

When San Filippo and Velez sued the NYCTA and its parent entity, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the trial judge ruled in the defendant's favor and dismissed the lawsuit.  The Appellate Division, to its credit, reversed, and reinstated the lawsuit.

I will note that:

1.  New York City, you will recall, is where, in 1964, 38 people watched and did nothing as Kitty Genovese was beaten, raped and murdered before their eyes.

2.  I attended only one live professional boxing match in my life.  It was then that I realized that at such events, the gentlemen are the guys in the ring.  The wild animals are the people in the audience.  I don't care to be one of them, but I support their right to attend a boxing match for entertainment.  If you get your jollies watching such violence, then by all means go to the boxing match, but don't endanger the on-duty cops and the public by treating a scuffle with a perp as a spectator sport for you to drool over.

3.  As this post is being written, the MTA is actively promoting its "If you see something, say something" public safety campaign.  Query:  How can the MTA expect public cooperation when its own boys and girls don't say something when they see something?

In and Out of Washington

As mentioned on several earlier occasions, I always enjoy my trips to Washington, DC, regardless of how dismal the business is.  This time the trip was too short, and the business not totally dismal.

I arrived at my hotel Tuesday night after dark.  Early Wednesday morning I did my run along the Mall, all the way up to the Lincoln Memorial and back.  It's a good thing that I got that workout in, because the day consisted of an all-day meeting, and there was no time for a lunchtime stroll.

And then, after exiting the building, it was directly to Union Station for the first train back to New York.

After sitting for hours at the meeting, and for a few more hours on the trains, I felt the effect the inactivity had on my body.  Today, I made sure to get my usual workout in.

I don't know how appropriate it would be for me just yet to discuss the particulars of the business meeting.  It can be said, however, that my allies at the meeting were from unlikely segments of the sociopolitical spectrum, and that, at least on this particular set of issues, we may well be working together in the future.   And at least one of them, a very personable young lady, exuded some hint of a suggestion that she was entertaining some second thoughts over having cast her vote for Barack Hussein Obama. 

But it was not an appropriate time for me to get snide with her.  We may have to cooperate productively with one another not too far into the distance.  Besides, at the meeting I did get away with making a few double entendre statements using Obama and his Obamanoids as fodder.

No definite plans yet, but it is entirely plausible that I may get some short notice to revisit our Nation's Capital in the next 3 or 4 months.  If so, I sure hope that I will be able to spend some more time enjoying the sights instead of sitting all day at meetings and then having to leave so soon.

  .

Boston Kabuki Theatrics

Okay, as anyone who is not apoplectic now knows, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston bombing terrorist, has been apprehended.  The lockdown of Boston and vicinity is now lifted, and life can go on substantially as normal (though the victims and their families will surely have quite a challenge in achieving any degree of normalcy).

 

Hindsight is always 20:20.  I shall not dwell upon whether the lockdown needed to be as extensive as it was.

 

I will, however, note that the lockdown may well have served as a training exercise for the authorities, federal, state or local, who now have a better idea of the practical aspects of locking down Boston -- or any other city.

 

And while this particular lockdown was employed in order to achieve a very noble and vital purpose, I cannot help but be concerned that it may well serve as an operations manual for the next citywide lockdown -- which may well be for purposes other than the promotion and extension of the personal freedoms we in America like to believe we cherish.