Mike Bandler, famous person
It isn’t enough that he plays good bridge, has a beautiful wife and a hockey team of grandkids (6 boys). While we were playing tonight, Mike had to go make a call right in the middle of the 2nd match, and came back grinning.
It turns out that he has been appointed to the California State Senate Commission on Cost Control. This is a group tasked with finding ways to cut the insane costs of our government, and reports directly to the State Senate.
If he is as good at cost cutting as he is at being my partner, we’ll have a cash surplus in no time. Congratulation, Mike.
Totally Unauthorized 
He’s not only famous, he knows other famous people. For ‘xample, he knows the new chairman d’Board, CEO of PGECorp, and President of PG&E, the utility, Lee Cox (who used to run stuff at PacBell, before he went to run stuff at AirTouch). Mebbee he can ask Lee why it’s so hard to hit that space key when typing out the name of his company. Or why it’s OK to run both the regulated utility while also running the unregulated holding company. Just like Peter Darby used to. Yep, I’m sure old Pete never let those affiliates know any of the proprietary info he learned from the utility. Nosiree.
I hope poor Lee, who has his hands full, can return PG&E to its glory days when we all trusted the fine managers there, with their fancy new suits they got from Mom when they came out of their MBA programs, to make decisions in the public interest and follow both the letter and the spirit of the Public Utilities Code. We just have some of the highest utility rates in the country because, uh, we don’t have any of that cheap coal out here. Yep, solar might be 4 times the cost of coal (or nat gas), but, damn it, we’re turning green! Must be sumptin’ we ate.
Almost forgot the reason I wanted to reply to this story in the first place, which was to say congrats to Mike. As an old budget analyst for the Navy, I know how hard it is to identify which costs are necessary, and which aren’t. You can always say that labor is the big expense, which it is. But anyone who has seen some function created, usually because some manager feels like making a statement until he moves on, and see how hard it is to kill the beast even though it’s no longer needed, would have to say it’s more than just labor. Corporate cultures and the concomitant empire-building seem to just keep on justifying the unjustifiable – I’ve seen it in government, and I’m sure Mike has seen it during his time answering phones at Ma Bell.