PRIDCO Slim(m)ing

Submitted for your disdain:

--PRIDCO, the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company, a government agency with a track record of waste, ineffectiveness and inanity dating back to the 1970s.

--An agency with the following breakdown: 360 managers, 290 non-management union workers, a ratio of 1.24 "chiefs" for every "Indian." (Let's hear it for PRIDCO's organizational skills!)

--Their ongoing plan: to reduce said "work"force to 150 workers by firing hundreds and offering "early retirement" to a few dozen.

The Jenius is on record as indicating that cutting the size of the local government is not just needed, it's mandatory. And yes, these cuts are disruptive and create a huge perception of ill will. But in PRIDCO's case, the cuts are not enough. The whole agency should be deep-sixed right now.

Extremist positions are popular as "button-pushers." The Jenius isn't pushing buttons. He is merely stating what has become self-evident: PRIDCO is no longer useful to Puerto Rico's interests.

A 75+% cut in personnel is not--clearly not--an "adjustment for effectivity." It is not intended to create a "leaner, more efficient agency," because this implies that 24% of the old group can match or exceed what was once the province of a monolith four times larger. That begs two questions:

1) If 150 can do the work of 650, why were We paying for 650? Answer: Politics and the jobs-buying-votes system so endemic to democracies.

2) If 650 couldn't do enough to justify keeping this bag of crud agency alive, what are 150 people going to do to justify their existence? Answer: Nothing. They are being asked to do nothing and they will, with remarkable success, do exactly that.

The Jenius knows there are good, even great talents in PRIDCO. But they are a mere handful, best served by being released to serve in other areas where their talents can serve Us--and them--better.

The only possible answer to the PRIDCO situation is to simply eliminate the entire agency once and for all. As a bastion of "big box manufacturing," PRIDCO is as in tune with Our times as Victrolas. It seems logical to believe that the 150 remaining drones in the slimmer version of PRIDCO will be 75% of the "managers" and 25% of the "workers," reflecting the "monkeys plucking fleas from each other" social system We see in Our government. That kind of "top heavy" agency will basically be another place where mediocre ideas go into coma and die years later when life support is terminated because of budget cuts.

Is the "PRIDCO Plan" the solution? No. No plan will fit every agency and department in this government, but as a solution, what's happening to PRIDCO should be a first step in a series of similar cutbacks in Our government.

And the next target for massive personnel cuts should be a worthy one, not a backwater. That target is the Department of Education.

The Jenius Has Spoken.