Hi Roger,

There is perhaps an even worse problem standing in the way of progress than all of the campaign money and influence. And as a former U.S. government employee you should be thoroughly familiar with this one, “Compartmentalization.”

When you work for a government in virtually any capacity you are assigned to an influence cubical that has certain height, width, and depth dimensions. And you are not allowed to do anything outside that cubical.

To get anything accomplished government employees always need to be able to interact with other people outside of their personal space. But, that generally isn’t allowed because it could cause problems that could get your boss criticized by his or her boss. And so you are told to do exactly what you were hired to do and absolutely nothing else. It doesn’t matter if you are working for the U.S. or China or Liechtenstein. That policy is universal.

The result is that government employees who want to keep their jobs learn that this is the universal policy. And they focus their attention straight ahead and rarely try to actually get anything fixed.

One of the reasons that I have been able to accomplish as much as I have over the years is the fact that I know how to get around these government roadblocks and interact with people who can actually get something done. In one case I wanted to get a giant government agency to make a major change in the way they were doing business. Largely as a courtesy I sent them some information explaining what they needed to change. And as expected, they totally ignored the information. In the mean time I began working with some people who could actually get something done. I had some personal discussions with several of the top people in a very powerful union connected with that government agency. They were in the middle of contract negotiations with the agency. And it explained to them that for the contract to be settled they needed to demand that the agency make the change that I was recommending.

Holy Cow! What had been impossible for that government agency suddenly became not only entirely possible, but a fact. And they even started bragging about making the change that had an impact on lives of an incredibly large number of people here in the U.S.

We need to have that nonprofit foundation I have been talking about so that an almost limitless number of problems like that can be fixed. People connected with the foundation will just go around the government agency roadblocks and see that things get done.

These are personal opinions.