Patrick Kenneth Gamble.
I"m the commander of Pacific Air Forces in the United States Air Force. My responsibility is essentially half the globe-about three hundred airplanes at nine installations, which we call wings, each with an average of probably about four to five thousand people apiece.
My primary job is to oversee the organization, the training, and the equipage of the resources these people need to do their job in peace and war. That"s by way of a mission statement and my peacetime role. But I also work for a boss, Admiral Dennis Blair, who is the commander in chief of all forces in the Pacific-naval, land, air, and the marines. He"s the war fighter. If something happens in the Pacific-if Korea kicks off, for example-he would tell me what he wants done, I would tell him how I would do it, and then I would plan it and execute it. That"s my wartime role.
It"s a bit like being a part-time mayor, a part-time city manager, and a part-time civil engineer for a bunch of small cities. My plant replacement value is thirty-two billion dollars. We have, at any one time, probably about a billion dollars of construction going on that comes through the office here in Honolulu and another billion under design. My operations and maintenance budgets alone, you know, to pay to keep the lights on and put a coat of paint on the buildings is about one-point-two-five billion dollars a year. [Laughs] I can"t tell you what my payroll is because I don"t pay it. The Treasury does.
It"s fun. I love it. I love community planning. I love to spend money on people, on where they live, where they go to school, where they take care of their kids, the Burger Kings that are coming on the base, fixing the roads and-I mean, I love that stuff. It"s probably some of the most fulfilling work that I do.
I always wanted to be in the air force. My father was a general officer in the air force. A four-star general, like I am, as a matter of fact. He retired in 1975. And his influence on me was profound. I suppose getting up close to him in a big fighter and, you know, watching the afterburner light in the airplane as he went down the runway and took off-I suppose that if he had been in another profession, I might have felt the same way, because I had a lot of respect for him. But I just saw him having fun with it, and it seemed exciting. So I was not one of these that lingered through college trying to figure out the meaning of life and where I needed to fit in. I pretty much had myself all lined up from probably about my soph.o.m.ore year in high school.
I joined the air force right out of college and went to Vietnam. They issued me a Cessna and put me out in a small fishing village at the Cambodian border to go find targets and point "em out to the fighters. Now, a Cessna can"t go much faster than seventy-five miles an hour, and you"re flying very, very low. But as a brand-new lieutenant I was too young and too fearless to ever really be scared. It was a great, great experience. I got more common sense in one year than I could have gotten almost anyplace else in a number of years.
After the war I went to fighter training. And I"ve basically stayed in the fighter business my whole career. I spent plenty of time deployed in an alert barn in those early days, pulling alert, you know, sitting in North Dakota in twenty-five-below-zero temperatures, hanging out with an airplane loaded with live weapons waiting for a horn to blow, which means that you jump in and take off.
I moved around to different squadrons. But I was also not afraid to get out of the c.o.c.kpit and go do other things. I mean, there are so many things you can do in the air force, so many great places to go and things to do. I went to air force schools and took intermediateand senior-level professional education courses. Test pilot school. Management training. I figured it out one time, and I think I have seven and a half years in a cla.s.sroom total. I"ve got more graduation certificates-I must have a stack two inches thick from different courses and training, everything from a master"s degree on down to three-day-quickie courses on technical subjects. You know, I"ve done staff work. I had four tours of the Pentagon. I wrote a book, during the Cold War, about the Soviets, and why they do what they do. And I think that partaking in all those opportunities opened up other opportunities that never would have happened if I"d have just been content to sit in one place. And I think that a lot of luck and just hanging around long enough are how I got to this job I have now.
On a typical day, I get up at five. I go do my health thing. I"ll run or I"ll go to the gym and get on a cross trainer or do weights. You know, mix it up. And then I usually hit work about seven-fifteen. I spend probably the first hour and a half here looking at the operational and situational updates that come in from our bases, our emba.s.sies, from other staffs concerning the political and military situations over the Pacific. There"s some forty-three countries out there, and they"ve all got action of some sort or another going on. Where are the hot spots? What"s going on with Korea? What"s going on with Indonesia? You know, places where we have American citizens that could be in trouble if things got violent, where we could be called upon to help get "em out. And then there"s just a lot of nonintelligence information that comes in, updates on budgets, military construction programs, you know.
I have to oversee all the maintenance of the airplanes as well as make sure we"ve got all the bombs and bullets and beans we"re supposed to have everywhere. Somewhere in the world at any hour of the day or night, the gear is going up or down on an airplane that belongs to me. Doing some sort of exercise, humanitarian airlift, you name it. From just ordinary training to deploying to Singapore or Australia or Diego Garcia, I"m responsible for it and I need to know what"s going on. And it can be at times difficult to stay on top of because of all the time zone differences and everything.
There"s also a lot of traveling to do. Going out and visiting our installations. Seeing how the commander"s doing, seeing what they"re building, seeing what their problems are, talking to the troops. Listening to them, answering questions, taking their ideas. Meeting with my counterparts in Korea, Okinawa, j.a.pan, Guam, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, talking about training and exercising together. It helps build a lot of trust and confidence in the good old U.S.A. to personally show up and get eyeball contact. Meet people. And then if they need help or if they need a question answered or whatever, now they- we know each other and they don"t hesitate to call me. And that actually parlays sometimes into the beginnings of what turns out to be higher-level connections more along diplomatic lines.
Then there are lots of obligatory trips back to Washington and the Lower Forty-Eight for budget discussions, conferences. It"s a lot of flying. I was just noticing that we"ve logged about four hundred hours airborne in the last eleven months here on the job.
Now maybe all this sounds like a lot, but to me it"s not terribly stressful. I get more stressed in social events and standing up in front of a ceremony than I do at work. It can get intense. But there"s a difference between something being intense and something being stressful. You know? Stressful is dealing with tragedy. We put people in harm"s way. And sometimes we have unfortunate accidents. Those are always tough. They"re very sad. And just because we"re in the military, it doesn"t mean it doesn"t affect us the same as it does anywhere else. It"s difficult. It"s stressful.
And stressful is also when budget time rolls around. [Laughs] I mean, it"s just part of the-you grind your jaws, you get tight-jawed. We go through this budget game which results from the way budgets are pa.s.sed out typically in the military. I don"t think a single corporation in America would ever exist compet.i.tively doing business the way we have to. What happens is that we"re chronically underfunded until very late in the year, so we sort of live hand to mouth, paying only the must-pay bills, then we go through this real intense execution period in the last quarter or even the last month, right down to the last hour, trying to hurry up and spend the money on everything we"ve been planning all year before midnight gongs and ends the fiscal year. And there"s nothing you can do about it so you just do the best you can and-I mean, it works. We get it done. We get funded, and we"re doing fine. But the process is just really frustrating.
I think what you learn in a job like this, really, is that you have a lot more capacity than you thought. I"ve worked very, very hard over my years to learn how to relax and to shut things off when I don"t need to think about them. I will not allow myself to get stressed out because then I can"t maintain my health, my physical fitness, and my ability to keep a clear head.
One of the ways I get my arms around this job is I have a great group of commanders who I"ve picked very carefully. I couldn"t possibly micromanage or look over every shoulder for everything they do, and I don"t need to, because they are delivering. Another way is having a great family life. My wife has really been a partner in this thing. We"ve moved twenty-two times in my thirty-three years in the air force. And quite frankly, I"m sure I wouldn"t be where I am were it not for the fact that she does so well in all of the environments that we find ourselves in. She started out, you know, just one step above the hat and glove stage of my mother-which was my mother"s role- she was an air force wife. All that has changed tremendously in the time that I"ve been in the service. In my mother"s day, people looked down their nose at wives that, you know, didn"t go to all the teas and play bridge and do all those social kinds of things. I mean, that"s just the way the nation was. It"s now much more, I think, practical and less formal. There"s a lot less of an expectation for wives to be athome wives. And so my wife has managed to accomplish a lot in this kind of shifting environment-to get her degree, become a teacher, and teach in the many different a.s.signments I"ve had.
And neither she nor my son has ever complained, or created situations in the homefront where after a long day or a long trip, you know, I came back and was immediately confronted with disaster. Because they knew that they needed to keep that burden off my shoulders. I owe both of "em just worlds of credit for it.
Then, of course, what I can do here if I really need to blow off some steam is I can walk away from my desk periodically and go out and climb in an F-15 and go fly. [Laughs] That helps a lot, too, believe me. That helps an awful lot.
I"m probably just as comfortable and matter of fact about what I do as the next person is about what they do. People use the word "power," and I"m actually very uncomfortable with it. I"ve never liked the word "power" a.s.sociated with military people. It"s out of place. We are public servants. We shouldn"t be thinking about power. We should be thinking about what"s good for the nation, what our civilian masters are telling us needs to be done, trying to meet the intent of the nation"s national strategy, national military strategy, planning correctly and executing the plan. And frankly, any officer concerned with power, in my view, is probably not a good military officer, and probably will not get to the top of their profession.
Besides that, I don"t think it"s very fair for people to try to compare jobs or rack "em up in a hierarchy. To each of us, any of us, a problem is a problem. Each of us is just as stymied by whatever we consider a problem, and each of us is just as competent at dealing with those relative problems and just as proud of our competency at what we do. And in a sense that makes us all the same. We are simply doing what we"re asked to do to the best of our ability given our talents, whatever they may be. So rather than try to compare people and talk about who"s got power and who doesn"t, I think we should all sort of just put our arms around each other"s shoulders and drink a beer and say it"s a h.e.l.l of a life, you know?
We"re the chemical police.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY SPECIALIST.
Rivi H.
I work in the Superfund division of the EPA. The Superfund is-it"s a federal program that was set up by Congress in the early eighties to locate and clean up the nation"s worst sites. And the EPA administers it.
So if there"s a heavily polluted site, we send out researchers and investigators who determine how bad the problems are, and whether it needs to be placed on special priority lists, et cetera. If it"s bad enough and it gets listed as a Superfund site, then we coordinate a cleanup effort with the local government, and we try to figure out who the responsible parties are. You know, who polluted the site. Because those parties have to pay all costs, including any money spent by the EPA to clean everything up. If no responsible party can be found, the cleanup is carried out by the EPA and U.S. military engineers and paid for out of a trust fund, which is maintained by taxes on the chemical and petroleum industries.
It"s a complicated job. [Laughs] I actually do a lot of different things, which keeps it interesting, but it"s hard to explain it all. I mean-well-I have a four-year-old daughter. Okay? And we were driving the other day and for some reason she knows what chemicals are. I think it"s because there was a discussion at home about not drinking cleaning agents because they have chemicals in them, so I tell her that where I work, the EPA, that we"re like the "chemical police." So she sort of understands it from that perspective. So we were driving along and there"s a railroad track along the river, and I was explaining to her that railroads often carry large quant.i.ties of chemicals and that if they spilled into the river, who would you call? And she said, "You?" And I said, "Yeah, the EPA." And so that"s a start. [Laughs] We"re the chemical police. If you see a big spill or you think you have something in your ground water, give us a call.
My role is, I a.s.sess sites before they get listed for Superfund. I"m not really involved in the cleanup-that"s the remedial project managers" responsibility. They take over and oversee the cleanup. I just evaluate these sites and see how bad they are and make recommendations as to whether we want to list them. If we don"t list them, they"re handled just by the states.
A lot of times, we"re taking over a site that the state has been cleaning up for a while but has not done a good enough job on, so part of my job is to work with the states and the states" contractors to a.s.sess everything. But the biggest part of my job is just to deal with the public-the people who"re being affected by the contaminants. I"m really on the front lines on this. I"m interacting with people. Somebody in the public may call. Or a concerned citizen writes a letter. They"ll say, "We think we"re drinking a.r.s.enic from our drinking water and we"ve noticed health effects. What can the EPA do to help us figure out what"s happening here? We live down-gradient from this factory that is contaminating the groundwater. Can you come take some samples?" I"ll hear that a lot. And then I coordinate a response.
It"s very challenging. Because you look to the federal government and it"s a bureaucracy. We have the money and the ability to go there and look at the sites, but I don"t have the ability to just do what I think ought to happen. I mean, I have to follow the law, what the law says we can do, and sometimes that only goes so far.
It"s particularly difficult since I"m the one personally handling the front end of it, talking to the people. I feel that we let them down at times. Sometimes I think they"re being taken advantage of-because here"s some deep-pocket company that can do whatever cleanup they want to do and they"re working with the state agency to negotiate the cheapest possible cleanup.
For instance, some of the sites I work on are situations where Native American tribes call up the EPA and say, "We"re not satisfied with the way the state"s cleaning these sites up." So the tribes ask for us to become involved. And then I work with the tribe to try to meet their needs and interact with the state, see what they"re doing, what they could be doing differently. But sometimes, you know, the tribes are saying, "We don"t care about your standards. We"re concerned about any contamination because the river to us is not just water, it"s spirit. We have ceremonies by this river, we fish in it." They"re saying, "To us it means a lot more." And I"m there as the EPA, sticking to the regulation, the strict definitions set forth in the laws.
And the way the laws are written, there"s always a certain amount of contamination that is allowed. A low level of contaminant in our rivers is acceptable. And there"s no way around it. But the tribe is saying they don"t want any contamination. They"re saying whoever caused this problem should be held completely responsible, not responsible up to a certain level set by the state or the federal agency. "Look what they"ve done," they say, "to our sacred water or land!"
On a personal level I agree with that. I don"t think people should be able to contaminate the land that everyone uses and walk away only cleaning up to a certain level, but that"s where it becomes complicated for me, because I do work for a government agency and there"s nothing I can do about the laws. The standards are set. And although, philosophically, I identify much more from where the tribe is coming from than where the state regulators are coming from, in the end what I decide to do, because I represent the EPA, might disappoint them, the tribe. I"ve actually had a situation where a member of a tribe has indicated that I"ve let them down. And going into it, that was the last thing I wanted to do. And that"s upsetting.
It"s very hard to win. Some people, you can never do enough for them. And some are upset with the EPA for even getting involved. One community we worked with, we found contaminants in the drinking water supply, so we helped to make the decision that they couldn"t drink out of their domestic wells anymore, that they needed to be hooked up to the city water supply, and they"re mad. They want their wells. So you just can"t antic.i.p.ate how the public is going to react. What you may think is for their own good, they don"t care.
And whatever happens, I need to keep seeing them, because it"s an ongoing relationship. I can"t walk away if one situation doesn"t work out. I have to come back-talk to the same tribes, the same people, about the next situation. And hopefully, that one will work out better, but there are no guarantees.
That"s just part of the job. It"s all political. And it is also all about economics. So it"s sad sometimes, and it"s kind of scary too because- well, what"s scary is that the more research is done, the more we"re realizing that some of the health-based standards aren"t necessarily accurate, like the a.r.s.enic standard. Most of what they call MCL- maximum contaminant level-is based on a one-in-a-million cancer risk. Meaning, after a normal lifetime of drinking water in a certain place, you"d have a one-in-a-million added chance of developing cancer from the exposure of whatever contaminant it is. But what we"re now seeing with certain contaminants is that the added cancer risk is not one in a million, but something less-it could be two hundred and fifty thousand in some cases.
And this is where economics come into play. Because if the EPA were to change the standard, that would make munic.i.p.alities responsible for treating the water to a much lower level for a.r.s.enic-which would cost a lot of money. So it"s very complex and there is some debate, but I would say some of the health standards are not protective enough. Which is really frustrating.
Most people at the EPA are very serious environmentalists. But you know what"s interesting? Someone pointed out the other day, and we were laughing about this, that some people start out at the agency and have the feeling that we"re out to save the world, so they"ll send out an e-mail to everyone in the section about something, "Hey, what are we doing about this and this?" And they quickly find out that people here are not activists. That"s why they"re working at the EPA. We"re not activists, we"re nine-to-five employees. We"re working hard but most people here are not also members of Earth First or whatever. You choose one path or the other.
Activists end up leaving the EPA. They do. They end up getting totally disappointed that not enough happens quickly enough. I think that"s part of being an activist-impatience. Which can be great, but it doesn"t usually go over well here. So for example, I had a very good friend here whom I actually got this job through-she"s more an activist at heart-so she stopped working here. She went to a kind of program in urban farming-they help people grow organic gardens in the cities, and they reach out to lower-income communities. So she"s working more like an activist, more on the community level. Because she couldn"t stand it here.
But I think, well, I really believe in the EPA. I feel, based on working and seeing what"s out there, that it"s so important that the EPA exists, and that we don"t leave it up to states and responsible parties to a.s.sess and clean up these sites. I mean, we frequently come upon sites that the state has been dealing with for ten years and people are still drinking contaminated water. It happens too much. People are drinking contaminated water. But if the EPA is involved, as soon as we find out, they"re on alternative water supplies. Right away. We have money. So even though it is a bureaucracy, a federal government agency, we can do things.
And with what we"re discovering-the contaminants, and the problems we discover-even though I do think we have cleaner air than we had in the sixties and seventies and we have made improvements in water quality, I think that more and more research is being done about carcinogens and low levels of contaminants, and as we understand that, the more we find that it"s a bigger problem than we ever thought it was. There are just so many tricky things. I mean, even the legal application of pesticides on crops-we"re finding now that some of the pesticides used are extremely toxic and persistent. There"s a study being done in a community I"ve worked with that has complained about a lot of health-related problems-they"re experiencing autoimmune problems, lupus, respiratory problems, higher incidents of asthma. And there"s a law firm that"s going to represent the community and has a suit against one of the largest food companies in America. And these are legal chemicals I"m talking about.
So I feel like it"s absolutely necessary to have the EPA and I feel good about the work that I do, even though all the things I say-that at times it does feel bureaucratic, that we can"t meet all the needs, and I can"t make the decisions I would make on a personal level, still I feel good about what I do. And I work hard. Right now, I"m juggling-I have nine sites going on where I"m trying to keep track of their money situation, their grants and other issues. I"m working very hard.
I have found, what works for me-I try to keep a positive att.i.tude. I don"t let issues get me down. I try to stay detached from that and just try to focus on the personal level and get to a one-on-one level with people. To really listen to what people are asking and respond on a human level, so people don"t feel like they"re dealing with a bureaucracy. [Laughs] I won a site a.s.sessment manager of the year award last year and when they were describing what I had done, one of the senior managers described me as, "One of the nicest people whom you"ll ever meet at the EPA." [Laughs] I thought that was funny, but flattering. It was nice.
I like what I do. I like interacting with the people, developing a relationship with them, and I feel they"re putting a lot of trust in what I"m doing. That"s very satisfying.
I"ve been interested in the environment my whole life. I mean, in seventh grade, I won the science fair in my town. [Laughs] And my project was, "How Valid is a PERC Test?" Which is-PERC is percolation, how well the water percolates beneath where you"re planning on building a house. You"re required to dig just one hole to test that and my project showed you could dig a hole-I think I dug ten holes only two feet away-and showed that the results varied dramatically. And then I tried to talk about the health implications, that you build uphill and someone could be down there and your septic tank or whatever could flow into their drinking supply or whatever. [Laughs] It"s actually very applicable to what I do right now. So that was me at age twelve. And then, you know, I went to college and majored in environmental studies. And I had about five years of various jobs before I started working for the EPA. And they were all related to this kind of work I"m doing now-investigation, going into the field, collecting the samples, site a.s.sessment, waste management.
It"s just-I"ve always felt a personal obligation to be doing something that is for the betterment of everyone. And the environment is like, well, what could be more important than that? So even though it"s frustrating sometimes, I couldn"t just stop and follow something that might be extremely interesting to me but didn"t help the world. Like my husband"s a furniture maker-he makes beautiful, really beautiful wooden furniture-chairs and beds and things that people just love. They"re works of art, really. And I feel so fortunate to be exposed to an artist and to all these ideas about how to make things so beautiful. My life is rounded out for me that way. At the same time, I know I could never do what he does because I have this deeprooted need to feel that my job is of public service. [Laughs] Sometimes I wish I was doing what he does, but I couldn"t. I just couldn"t. So I"ve done what I feel obligated to do. And, you know, I"m not always ecstatically happy, but I feel good about my job. And I think that"s the most important thing.
I network like a dog.
LOBBYIST.
Clarke R. Cooper.
I went to college at Florida State University and majored in history. My plan was to work in Washington, D.C., after graduation to get a cursory education on the legislative process and then return to Tallaha.s.see, which is where I grew up, and run for office there.
My interests have always been directed toward politics and volunteering, and without risking sounding cheesy or canned, I"d have to mainly credit my parents for that. I mean, I don"t want to start giving a Republican platform speech, but a lot of how people turn out is a product of their environment, and your immediate environment is your family. And both my parents, in their youth and as adults, have had some kind of commitment to public service. Neither of them have run for public office, but there was always a high level of volunteerism and activism in my house. For example, my brother and I are both Eagle Scouts. We weren"t forced to do it, but it was encouraged by example. You could also cite church. We"re Episcopalians, and while the Episcopal church is not known as the most enthusiastic of missionaries, it does instill in you the desire to do public service So growing up, I was quite active in the community, and then in college I was my senior cla.s.s president and very active in my fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi. I also rowed crew. And as a result of all that, I was involved in a lot of development work for the university-raising money, having a clock put in on campus, and as senior cla.s.s president I sat in on the University Athletic Board.
Then, during spring break of my senior year, I interviewed for jobs in Washington. I"d spent that winter calling names of people I got from the alumni office who were working on or off Capitol Hill, and through those contacts, I had a place to stay for the week and a list of people to meet with. I got several offers, and a month after my graduation in April 1994, I started an internship with Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from Miami. She"s a Republican. I only interviewed with Republicans because I plan to go into politics, and you have to pick a team and stick with it.
In college, I"d worked part-time in a men"s clothing store and built my wardrobe. So I came to Washington with suits. That was a calculated move [laughs], but it was also kind of fortuitous because I started out as an unpaid full-time intern and I had to work a part-time job as an a.s.sistant manager at Macy"s to get by. That meant I worked in the Congresswoman"s office from nine to five and at Macy"s from six to eleven at night. It was pretty grueling, but that September there was a staff opening and I became the Congresswoman"s Legislative Correspondent-a full-time, paid position. I wrote letters to const.i.tuents, peers, and cabinet officials on a series of issues: immigration, fine arts, the postal system, senior citizens. Those are issues that are usually given to junior staff, issues that n.o.body else wants.
A lot of people come into Washington at an entry-level position and work their way up the chain or leave and go into the private sector. I"d planned on working up a bit more, but in January of 1995, I was offered the job I have now as a lobbyist with the Miccosukee tribe. It was one of those right time, right place things. The Congresswoman"s husband was a former U.S. attorney under Bush and has his own firm, private practice, and his main client, the Miccosukee, was looking to establish a permanent presence in Washington, and the Congresswoman recommended me for that because she knew my interest in history and my interest in Florida.
The Miccosukee are a federally recognized tribe, located only in the Florida Everglades. They have about five hundred members living on a reservation of around three hundred thousand acres, most of which is underwater. The reservation is spread over two counties and the tribe has its own police force, fire department, housing and education systems, and they operate a museum and a casino outside of Miami. I answer to the Miccosukees" governing council. I"m their only representative in Washington.
I was initially tasked with just establishing a presence here. I did everything from leasing an office s.p.a.ce and getting phones installed to registering myself and the tribe as ent.i.ties with the House and the Senate for lobbying purposes. Since then, my focus has been lobbying Congress, specifically the Florida delegation, on issues that concern Miccosukee-like environmental issues, resources, housing, gaming, and any issues pertaining to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I also do some coalition work with umbrella groups like the National Congress of American Indians, the National Indian Gaming a.s.sociation, and the Everglades Coalition.
A lot of lobbying is education, letting congressmen know about legislative things coming up, and then also just informing people about who the modern-day Indians are, what they"re all about. There are a lot of basic misconceptions. For example, the term "Native American"-that came from the Kennedy school of government, and most Indians think it"s an apologetic, wimpy, politically correct term. As many of them have said to me, "If you"re born on the continent, you"re a Native American." Or another example might be taxes-lots of non-Indians think Indians don"t have to pay any U.S. taxes, which is totally false.
This education is very important. There"s been a lot of recent anti-Indian sentiment because more tribes are becoming self-sufficient, and not just because of gaming, but with convenience stores or gas stations or light manufacturing like pencils or notebooks. These things bring in money, and the Indians are doing things with that money like building better school systems on the reservations than the county they"re in has. And for whatever reason-out of prejudice or racism or whatever-they are encountering a lot of negative backlash at the munic.i.p.al and state level. So you have to educate people to battle that.
I sometimes encounter some initial resistance from people within the tribe. They"ll hear what I do and ask me if I"m with a law firm and they"re occasionally somewhat hostile about it. You see, there"s a perception-and it"s not totally unfounded-that there are these slick lawyers/lobbyists who represent multiple tribes and aren"t out for the best interests of the Indians. But when I explain that although I don"t look like an Indian-nor am I one-but I am an employee of the tribal government, then their att.i.tude changes. They understand and appreciate that I am a full-time representative for their interests. And done right, my job is very necessary. There"s so much compet.i.tion for time and attention from congressmen, you need lobbyists to sit down and explain to them what"s going on if you want to have a voice in government.
To use a very eighties term, a lot of what I do is called networking. I network like a dog. I mean, if I just went to the office and went to my appointments and did my job and did not incorporate extracurricular activities, I know for a fact that I wouldn"t be as successful in achieving the goals I have achieved for the tribe-or, for that matter, my own personal and political goals. Outside-of-work activities are definitely important in getting ahead. I"ve served as a national committee man for Young Republicans, which is an auxiliary of the Republican National Committee; I served on the board of directors for the Florida State Society and now I"m the incoming president-it"s a social/professional group here, which is a boon because it gives me direct access to the political and business leaders in the state; also, the Masons, which is where I do all of my volunteer work; and I"m president of the Toys for Tots Benefit Gala-not the president of the organization, just the benefits; as well as other social stuff, like I"m on the bachelor committee for the National Debutante Cotillion. And all of these things have helped me with my job. They"ve brought me myriad contacts and I can"t imagine not doing them.
When I came to Washington, I had no intentions of going into the private sector, but now that I"m in it, I"m really glad. I"ve been able to do so much more in the private sector than I ever thought. I"m still planning on coming back and eventually running for Congress for District Two in Tallaha.s.see, but I"m going to stay with lobbying for a while longer. The job has been very beneficial in many respects as far as expanding future career opportunities and it"s been very fulfilling, actually, as far as what I"ve achieved for the tribe. I mean, I"ve seen housing being built on the reservation as the result of contacts I"ve made and negotiating I"ve been involved in. That"s very tangible and exciting-very few of my peers are able to say that about their jobs. Of course, it doesn"t happen overnight. I mean, it takes a process, but when a certain member decides to co-sponsor a bill, or especially when a bill becomes a law and there are positive results of that for the tribe, then I can say, "I worked on that." And that"s just thrilling.
The first thing you learn is no creative
thinking.
PUBLIC UTILITIES SPECIALIST.
James X.
I"m a rate a.n.a.lyst at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission-FERC-which is part of the federal government in Washington. What we do is FERC regulates the sale and transmission of wholesale energy between utilities. I think we have about nine hundred employees total. And my role here is to make sure that our policies are being followed, that the power companies aren"t ripping off the consumer. So I look at the rates and the contracts to see if they"re reasonable, not restrictive. Things of that nature. Then I file memos to the Commission. Each memo is different. They all concern different companies. But I"ll say, like, you might penalize a company, say, if they didn"t deliver on a contract, something of that nature.
I"ve been here nine years. When I started, it was more of a numberscrunching job. I would actually calculate the utility companies" rates by hand to see if they were cost-justified. But about four years ago, the government deregulated the utilities and FERC switched to a more market-oriented, light-handed type of supervision. So there"s no more rate calculating. Instead, mostly, I read filings that the power companies submit, research some things to see if their rates are marketbased and, you know, compet.i.tive, and then I type up my memos.
The work itself isn"t that hard. If I didn"t have all the distractions of the office-all the chitchat and politics and things of that nature-I could probably do what I do in six hours a day. And probably if I was a faster typer I could do it in five. Once you acquire the knowledge of all the Commission"s orders and precedents it"s really quite easy.
But I"m under a lot of pressure. I mean, if you send something to the Commission that"s wrong, then it"s going to come back to haunt you. Definitely. And if you offer a bold opinion or suggest doing something differently-if you don"t just fill in the blanks-well, then you"ve got one, two, three levels of decision-making that that has to go through. And lawyers have to look at everything. You know? And before they do anything, those people want to see an example of whatever they"re doing in a prior memo or something like that.
So the first thing you learn is no creative thinking. [Laughs] You can"t really interpret the Commission"s work per se. You know, they don"t like for you to speculate "what if?" And maybe that"s the right way to do things. But I think that it also causes this att.i.tude where there"s no intellectual discussions. Where what we have is people who just want to, you know, do the job and that"s it. Get the memos out. And, you know, I like to discuss what"s going to be the effect of our new policies-why isn"t the consumer benefiting from all this deregulation, you know? Getting these low rates that they should be getting. Because, by and large, they aren"t. I mean, this whole deregulation thing was created by Wall Street types. They saw a chance to do all these mergers, offer these new financial products, so they put pressure on the politicians to make deregulation happen. They"re the ones who wanted the change. Even the utilities themselves didn"t necessarily want these changes.
I mean, when I look at the situation, in weighing everything, I would say that this was probably the right way to go. Four years ago, the power companies were kind of an old-fashioned monopoly and now they aren"t. But if you look closely at the numbers like I do, the little guy hasn"t benefited at all at this point. Consumer prices have not gone down. And I thought we had promised that once the marketplace was open, the price would go down. But most people haven"t read about that. Even here at work, most people don"t know the larger picture. So I dominate the discussions because they haven"t really thought about it, or read about it. They don"t even care about it, really. I think they just want to do their work as it pertains to each particular memo. And then that"s that. I guess because, I mean, what can you do anyway? We only enforce FERC policy. We"re not helping set the policy. So maybe that"s it.
But I feel like, if this is your job you should be showing some interest. That"s just my nature. So I do a lot of reading, various magazines like Fortnightly, which, they tackle issues in the electricity field. And they go over everything like EMF-electromagnetic fields-the effect that might have on people. You know, they have various topics. It"s not exactly related to the work here but I might like to discuss something like that. But not in our office. I"m like the only guy that cares about this stuff here. But let me bring up the Washington Redskins and people can talk all day long.
It"s frustrating at times. I don"t take it personally if they change one of my memos. I know that they"re just trying to get the work through. I know these problems are endemic to any large organization. You know, it"s a bureaucracy. But still, I do feel like, some of the people I"m working with, they don"t seem to want to think anymore. They just want to-I don"t know-just get along and retire.
And it"s sad because people think that, oh, the government worker is lazy, he"s inflexible, he doesn"t want to work, won"t show up on time, won"t follow through, can"t change, is slow, can"t compete in the real world. And in some cases, that may be true. But it"s not true for everybody here. I want people to know that they"ve got people in Washington who are really working hard-some people are even working overtime and not getting paid for it. Just to say they"ve done a good job. So I want people to know that.
I"m not saying there"s not a problem with the bureaucracy. There is, in some cases, a definite problem. Because-at least part of it is there"s this hierarchy-the different levels. See, I"m a GS-12. I"ve been here about nine years. I just turned forty-four. And the way I got here was, I studied finance in grad school, then I worked in private industry for a few years in basically an accounting capacity, then I switched over to nonprofit, and then I came here. So I"m a GS-12, which is just a couple of steps down from a supervisor. See, the government, they have various levels based on your experience. With each upgrade you get a pay raise and stuff like that. If you came here right out of college, you"d probably be a GS-7. If you had a graduate degree, you might start as a GS-9. Now, if you had experience in the field plus the education they could start you off at anywhere from GS-11 even through 14. Fourteen is the highest you can go without being like a supervisor. Then you become what they call the executive service. Which goes all the way up to commissioners and beyond.
But you don"t just move up based on merit. There"s-you know- there"s things based on your supervisor, how much money they have, politics, all of that. Just like anywhere else. It"s kind of strange. I"m also a member of the union and so I know about some problems that we have had. Some people have had excellent reviews, but just because you have an excellent review doesn"t mean you get promoted. I myself, I"ve gotten promotions, but I"m starting to look at other opportunities outside of this place, outside the government.
To get promoted here, you basically have to establish a nice relationship with your supervisor. And we joke that you"ve got to wear a necktie. And you got to shave. [Laughs] Because you want to improve your image or do whatever seems to give a better image. So those people who don"t wear beards, come with a necktie on, act like a soldier, they"ve actually been doing pretty well.
The younger people have really picked up on this. As a matter of fact, one guy, you know, he"s just mimicking his boss. His boss is- he wears ties and, you know, little gla.s.ses even though I don"t think he even needs gla.s.ses, he wears "em. [Laughs] Little tie and stuff. Just like his boss.
It"s kind of interesting. People come in choking themselves with neckties-and we really don"t see anybody. You know? We"re not dealing with the public except on the telephone. So you only have this on just for your office mates or, I don"t know, it makes you feel better. And that"s fine. But I still say that objectively speaking, promotions and all that should be based on actually how much you know and how much you"re contributing to the organization.
Personally, I get along with my supervisor. And it"s not just like everything she says I just say yes, and I"m bringing her coffee and all this stuff-I"m not really doing that. Actually she likes me because I have a different opinion. She"s a secure person, and she wants all the information. And she knows I read a lot. And she knows that I usually have something to contribute.
But still, I feel like I"ll probably be able to maybe be a supervisor if I want to and that"s it. That"s as high as I"ll be able to go. Because- well, in part because I"m black, and because that goes against the old boys network that they have here. In terms of equality, with women and with other minorities, at the lower level, I would say FERC is actually probably doing an excellent job. There"s a lot of us here. But as you get higher, like who"s working for the commissioner and who"s the branch chief-that"s all white males. They haven"t been able to break the old boys system. I"ve seen pictures of people who have been there since the seventies and they all were good friends, and they all promote each other, and they"re all in the same car pools and you just can"t break that up. They"ve tried. They"ve been trying and trying and trying. But it"s still intact.
And that"s partly why I think I want to leave and go somewhere else. But there"s another thing that I notice at work that makes me want to leave-and I don"t know if this speaks to the bureaucracy problem or not-but people here just don"t seem to be happy with their lives. I mean, it"s not so much the work as their overall life. And people won"t admit that like-they just won"t say, "I"m lonely, I have nothing to do. I want to do this or that but I have n.o.body to do it with"-or something like that. They just won"t admit that. I say, especially the women, I ask them, "Well, what did you do this weekend?" And eighty percent just say they cleaned their house or something of that nature.
There"s something lacking. I don"t think people know how to make lasting friendships or to put the work in, you know, to follow up or see how people are doing, to keep the friendship going and things of that nature. And it"s probably society-wide, because there"s no excuse for it where we work at. You know, a lot of us live in the very same area. And yet we won"t get together at all. I guess we don"t want to be friends with each other. I don"t know. It"s just all strange to me. The way we have it, people just chitchat at the office and then they go their separate ways. I think there"s some misunderstanding, some just-people just don"t know about other people, what they do in their spare time and things of that nature. I mean, they try to have happy hours. But generally what happens, a generation gap shows up. The happy hour is usually for people who are like, I don"t know, thirty and down. Or otherwise cool and uncool, I guess. I don"t know. [Laughs] "In" groups, cliques, right? I don"t know which one I"m in because you never know what you"re not invited to. I mean, you"ll get invited to-I mean, I"ll get invited to most of the happy hours, some parties, weekend parties. But then you never know what you didn"t get invited to until much later and then somebody will let it slip. And you wonder, well, why wasn"t I invited? And stuff like that.
But, you know, you just can"t let your work be who you are. You really can"t let that happen. [Laughs] Especially if you work for the federal government. Because-I mean, every time I go to a party and they ask me what I do and I say, "Public utilities specialist," the women always have to-they talk about two minutes more, and then they always go freshen their drinks and then they don"t come back. [Laughs]