LETTERS: Website troubles totally predictable
To the editor:
As I read and hear about the problems with the startup of the Affordable Care Act, I can’t help but smile. My career was in computer programming, system design and database administration. What we have now is all normal, except it’s worse because it’s a government job. It’s run by lawyers and politicians, not business people who would know better. Here are a few of the laws of executive management that these guys don’t know about and can’t handle:
1. No major job is ever finished on time within budget, or with the same people who started it. So yours will not be the first.
2. Projects make quick progress until they are 90 percent complete. They then remain at the 90 percent complete level forever.
3. When things are going well, look out. Something is about to go wrong.
4. If the content of the project or job is allowed to change frequently, the rate of change is sure to exceed the rate of progress.
5. No system is ever completely debugged. Any attempt to debug a system inevitably introduces new bugs that are even harder to find.
6. A carelessly planned job will take three times longer to complete than originally thought, while a carefully planned job will only take twice as long.
7. Project managers hate progress reports, because they so vividly show their lack of progress.
Notice particularly law No. 4. Changes were being made just a few months before the target completion date.
Of course, if this job were handled properly (No. 6), the planned startup would be well beyond President Barack Obama’s term of office. He couldn’t accept that because he knew once his successor got into office, the whole job might get scuttled.
ART HAMBACHER
NORTH LAS VEGAS
No bacon from Reid
To the editor:
Sen. Harry Reid barely beat a virtually unknown opponent in his last election, based on his promise as the powerful majority leader of the Senate to “bring home the bacon” for Nevada. Since then, he has aligned himself with the most liberal Democratic politicians in Washington, who continually work toward a notion of “fairness,” which is a Democratic dog-whistle code word for income redistribution. Let’s take a look at Sen. Reid’s track record in regard to vitally important issues facing Southern Nevada that are patently unfair, and his efforts on our behalf.
Nevada’s meager distribution of water from the Colorado River system is indescribably unfair. Nevada’s water pittance is only 2 percent, compared with the 17 percent allotted to Arizona or the 11 percent allotted to Utah. When the original agreement was signed in 1922, this might have made some sense, as Las Vegas was only an outpost. Now we are a major metropolis and fairly deserve a much larger share.
Nevada is unfairly a financial donor state. We pay more of our tax dollars into the federal system than we get back. For every dollar Washington confiscates from Nevadans, we get back 73 cents. Arizona gets back $1.30 for every dollar it sends in.
So the question is not what Sen. Reid has done for us lately, it is what has he done for us at all? When was the last time Sen. Reid had a town hall meeting the public was allowed to attend in an off election year? When was the last time anyone heard Sen. Reid advocate fairness in regard to vital local issues? He is too busy aligning himself with ultraliberals and supporting President Barack Obama’s agenda to take the time to work for Nevadans. Sen. Reid is not fairly representing or working for the people who sent him to Washington, and we are all poorer for it.
BRIAN COVEY
LAS VEGAS
