Congrats to Lupe Almaraz & Nance Steffen on making the 1-day CMS X-mas party into a 2-day taxpayer-paid fiesta!

Whenever you hear Lupe babbling about how hard he's trying to make the DLSE better, just cover up your ears and run away; what you're hearing is the similar static you hear from a used car salesman.

The 1-day CMS 'feedback meeting'/X-mas party on December 13th has just been extended to two days: December 12 and 13! In bureaucratic-speak, Lupe made it longer and more expensive to the taxpayer. By making it longer, there's less time for the people to do their real jobs because they gotta waste more time on this sidetrip. By making it more expensive, it helps Lupe justify the legitimacy of this meeting should another agency come sniffing around to ask questions. He totally beat the rap before the ball got rolling! This is a direct result of Lupe's 30+ years in the system. There's no way that anyone could make the accusation (of wasted taxpayer dollars for this meeting) stick: Lupe's going to make sure that this meeting looks legit and that anyone who reviewed the meeting's minutes (what are those?) would mainly see people talking about how great CMS is. In reality, Lupe should issue pom-poms to Nance's cheerleaders.

Within companies that have a general responsibility to either the public or their shareholders, important meetings are memorialized via the "minutes" of the meeting. What that means Lupe, is that someone is writing down the time (hence the term "minutes") and the discussion.

For example, 9:10-meeting starts with Nance giving a general Atta-boy/Atta-girl to CMS staff. 9:15-John Doe/San Bernadino, discusses how bad CMS is with examples A, B, and C. Henry Smith in Los Angeles, and Mike Hunt in Long Beach also with John Doe. 9:30 to 5:00-general CMS discussion (details unknown & couldn't be recorded but it's not a Christmas Party!). The more detailed your meeting's minutes Lupe/Nance/whoever, the less problematic & the more professional it "appears."