Watching Los Angeles burn on live television, dismaying as this is, may be a turning point. What we’re seeing is not just a wildfire, but a century of trust in government going up in smoke.
Most of us grew up with the understanding that our elected officials could be trusted to keep the country and our neighborhood safe and prosperous. My hometown of Chicago billed itself as “The City that Works.” We figured that most of the aldermen and all the building inspectors were on the take but did not object so long as the streets were safe and the garbage was picked up. That was the deal: We paid taxes to make the city a good place to live.
The deal was self-enforcing. In 1979, Chicago was paralyzed by a blizzard when the city failed to plow the streets. The mayor, on vacation in Florida when the blizzard hit, was kicked out of office in the next election. For years thereafter snowplows hit the streets at the first sign of snow. I think I saw a snowplow chasing individual snowflakes once.
Now the taxes-for-safety deal is broken. In then last few years we’ve seen a humiliating retreat from Afghanistan, an open border, unchecked riots, homeless encampments, refusal to prosecute criminals in major cities, unsafe subways, mystery drones and more.
Another deal we made, nearly a century ago, was that we would be better off when the government hired experts and civil servants to run the country under the oversight of elected officials. That no longer applies because the experts, increasingly, are screwing up and screwing us in the process.
The Affordable Care Act doubled the cost of individual health insurance. Public health officials mishandled the Covid pandemic and lied to us about it. The Forest Service started devastating wildfires in New Mexico. Our taxes paid for electric-vehicle charging stations that have not been built and rural internet that has not been connected.
Government at all levels is failing at its basic functions and no one has been held accountable. Civil servants have been immune from accountability for years. Elected officials gave up the power to fire them, or even to get them to show up at the office.
The Los Angeles fires are bringing all this to a head. Yes, record high winds spread the fire and frustrated attempts to contain it. Climate change certainly is a factor. But California knew its fire risks and chose not to put resources in place to mitigate them.
The state has water problems because the state government refused to build reservoirs and infrastructure that the voters authorized in 2014. Environmental regulations did not permit the government to clear vegetation, create firebreaks and use controlled burns to prevent wildfires. The local reservoir was closed for repairs. Fire hydrants ran dry when water ran short. Los Angeles cut the budget for its fire department. Insurance companies pulled out of California, leaving many homeowners uninsured, after the state’s insurance commissioner rejected rate increases based on current risk.
California politicians are blaming climate change and, inexplicably, President Trump. While Los Angeles burned, the state legislature held an emergency session to protect immigrants, abortion rights and environmental rules from the Trump administration. The legacy news media are giving Democratic politicians a pass, as always, but are unlikely to influence public opinion any more than they did during the recent election.
The people who lost everything in the fires are the victims of government malpractice: the failure of their elected officials to perform the basic function of keeping their citizens safe. Common sense would suggest that the voters ought to throw their politicians out in the next election, but Californians have been unusually tolerant of poor governance even though 200,000 of them left the state last year.
Watching Los Angeles burn will further convince the rest of the country that it’s time for accountability in government. Fewer than one-quarter of Americans now trust the government to do what is right all or most of the time. Last November the voters rejected the party of big government and dismissed the arguments of the experts, academics, celebrities and commentators.
President Trump’s rapid moves to reshape the government are overturning the assumption that government employees have the right to block the policies of elected officials. His changes — actually firing people! — are meeting with predictable hysterical opposition from Democrat politicians, advocacy groups and the legacy news media. But most Americans are no longer listening. Few tears are being shed for the hundreds of federal employees who are being dismissed and sidelined by Presidential order.
When Chicagoans kicked out their mayor after a snowstorm, the city improved its performance in using snowplows. If we’re lucky, the same thing will happen to the federal government. And maybe California will learn how to prevent wildfires.
Don’t lay off the mailroom
I’ve been watching the drama over the Trump administration’s layoffs of government employees with mixed feelings. I believe government reform and downsizing is long overdue. As a veteran of multiple corporate downsizings during my career, I’m amused at the manufactured outrage of politicians and the partisan media. But I’m disappointed at the ham-handed way the government reform effort is being implemented and communicated.
Terminating employees is never easy or pleasant. The companies I worked for were pretty good at it but still made missteps.
When I worked at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works during several rounds of layoffs, my secretary came in one morning and said: “There’s no mail today. They laid off the mailroom.” They WHAT?? Turns out that when management cut jobs in the top wage grades, the union contract gave the displaced workers the right to “bump” workers in a lower wage tier. The mailroom kids, at the bottom of the wage scale, were certain to be replaced by employees bumping down. So a manager jumped the gun and laid off the entire mailroom force before replacements arrived.
During my three years at Western Electric, the Hawthorne Works was reduced from 16,000 employees to 11,000. Illinois Bell, where I spent most of my career, made a series of downsizing moves that significantly reduced its management force. This was part of a dramatic reorganization in a telecommunications industry that had seen little change for nearly a century.
We quickly learned that the best way to help employees cope with uncertainty was to step up communication. Illinois Bell held frequent employee town meetings and coached executives to answer questions candidly. Western Electric equipped all supervisors with confidential information and guidance to talk to their people. Employees were not pleased by the downsizing moves but were never surprised.
We’re seeing the same kind of culture shock in the federal workforce that we saw during AT&T’s divestiture of the Bell telephone companies in the 1980s. Both workforces were accustomed to a high degree of certainty and job security. Federal employees in particular were considered virtually fireproof.
Elon Musk is a genius. He’s also a jerk. That makes him the best person to root out government waste and fraud and the worst person to communicate downsizing moves to employees. Now that Trump’s cabinet members are taking office, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency needs to hand off implementation of layoffs to agency heads who actually are effective communicators. That is beginning to happen.
What’s even harder on federal employees is that the Democratic party is celebrating them as martyrs of the Great Resistance. Public officials and anti-Trump media – who rarely shed tears over layoffs in the private sector — are giving us heart-wrenching stories about laid-off employees.
They are not getting much sympathy. The majority of Americans voted to downsize the federal government. Nearly half of Americans have little or no confidence in federal civil servants and Musk’s chainsaw rampage has lots of fans. My state’s two senators and an assortment of Democrat groups have beclowned themselves on Facebook with wild claims that laying off one percent of an agency’s headcount is putting Americans in mortal danger. Their posts have drawn derisive comments.
I confess that I am tempted to mock government employees who are shocked to learn that they are no more secure than ordinary working stiffs. The news media do these people no favors when their coverage plays into the popular caricature of entitled bureaucrats.
If the DOGE layoffs are clumsy and disrespectful, the hysterical Democratic reaction is likely to make ordinary Americans resent government employees even more. Do Democrats seriously think that listening to federal employees sing protest songs on a workday will melt the hearts of Trump voters?
As much as I enjoy the Democrats’ unintended comedy, it’s time for Trump to rein in Musk — who is growing increasingly unpopular — and let his cabinet members manage their agencies’ force reductions in a deliberate, compassionate manner. This means communicating more effectively with federal employees and avoiding dumb missteps. Like laying off the mailroom.