Mary was the tiniest, most frightening woman I ever knew. I spent a few summers in my teens working for my grandfather, and Mary was the receptionist and office manager. That woman could squeeze $20 bills out of a turnip. If you needed a new Bic pen, she'd say, "Show me your empty," and you'd dutifully hand over your old Bic pen — you'd better have one to turn in — and Mary would glare at it until it wrote again. Then she'd hand your "empty" Bic back to you with an expression that was half-disappointment/half-scowl.
That's the attitide re-President-elect Donald Trump's new government efficiency expert, Elon Musk, must bring to Washington — and he has one great new idea that got lost among all the election kerfuffle this week.
On a Right Angle segment that will come out sometime in the next few days, Bill Whittle made the point that before you tear down a house, you've got to give the current residents a place to stay. That's the thinking behind Musk's idea for clearing the deadwood out of Washington.
Pay them to leave, he says.
“We will reduce a lot of government headcount, but we're going to give very long severances. Like two years, or something like that," Musk told an audience in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago.
"Look, just go do something else is what we're going to say. And you'll get paid for two years. So, you've got a lot of time to go and figure out something else to do. The point is not to be cruel or to have people not be able to pay their mortgage or anything. We just have too many people in the government sector, and they could be more productive elsewhere."
It rankles, doesn't it, the idea of giving a two-year severance to government stiffs?
But let's think about this a moment.
VodkaPundit True Story: One time, I attacked an almost-empty Bic with my Zippo lighter. Then pen was charred and bubbled and bent by the time I was done with it. So I went to Mary at her desk and told her I needed a new pen. "Show me your empty," she said, and with an evil grin I pulled out my burnt-out Bic and handed it to her. Mary didn't say a word. She scowled at the twisted mass of a former pen and made it write again. I had to make do with that thing for another week.
Want to prevent the Deep State scoundrels from digging in and sabotaging and delaying the MAGA agenda, like they did during Trump's first term? Then induce good behavior. And following Musks' engineering dictum — "the best part is no part" — the best bureaucrat is no bureaucrat.
Musk's thinking is right in line with Milton Friedman when he said, "The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing."
Or in the case of Musk's plan, personally profitable.
My other Right Angle colleague, Scott Ott, refined Musk's idea. Offer Musk's buyout to all the deadwood in the first year, Scott suggested, followed by mandatory buyouts in the second year. Third-year prize: you're fired.
In most cases, you'll find there's no reason to hire a replacement. Yeah, two years' severance is a massive expense, but it's a one-time expense. And it clears out the deadwood that chokes a forest that ought to be healthy.
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