Here We Go Again

by Bryan

The Pensacola News Journal reports that Sneads’ job losses could benefit Santa Rosa:

TALLAHASSEE — Fighting to save the industry that has sustained them for generations, protesters in the tiny North Florida town of Sneads will gather today to rail against a Senate proposal to save $20 million by closing at least one state prison and privatizing others.

Before the state privatizes anything else, I want some proof that it saves money. I want the state to show that it has actually saved tax dollars on anything that has been privatized over a period of five years. They keep doing this and get a small savings the first year or two, but then the costs go up and the quality goes down.

Private companies need to make a profit and the government doesn’t, so I want to see proof that it is cheaper to outsource government functions. I’m getting really tired of hearing that “private industry is more efficient” without any proof to back up the statement.

9 comments

1 hipparchia { 04.04.10 at 11:01 pm }: from your link:

In Santa Rosa County, economic development boosters are also watching the budget negotiations closely. At stake for them are hundreds of new jobs and a $23.6 million payroll.

“This is exactly the kind of thing a community wants to establish,” said Ildi Hosman, a spokeswoman for TEAM Santa Rosa. “This has been one of our very top priorities.”

ugh. more of the same…
2 Kryten42 { 04.05.10 at 1:01 am }: OT: hipparchia (and anyone else0… Here’s a blog you may (or may not) find interesting. 🙂 He’s a UK Scientist that blogs about music, art, science & technology (though, he’s pretty busy now). Still… He seems sane. 😉

Example:

The media loves to grab onto any new technology or experiment that has even the tiniest whiff of controversy about it and whip up some fanciful scare stories about how it will (not if, will) end the world and we all have to sign a petition and protest. Fair enough, with big experiments there is always going to be a small risk involved. The potential benefits to science and progress always far outweigh the potential risks, however, as if they didn’t the experiment just wouldn’t be feasible.

A recent example is the LHC. Everyone got into a huge panic shortly before the first beam last September when the idea came to light that a micro black hole might be formed. People immediately hear the words ‘black hole’ and ‘new experiment’ and ‘expensive’ and immediately assume a group of geurilla scientists are trying to take over the world. These people should not be allowed to leave the house.

The purpose of this post is not to address these trivial issues though. It is infact to address a much more serious and much more likely issue. That a nearby supernova will wipe out all life on Earth.

Yup! 😉 😛

http://onehundredmiles.co.uk/blog/2009/09/05/a-bit-of-shameless-scaremongering/

Anyway… It’s called OneHundredMiles

Enjoy! 😀
3 Kryten42 { 04.05.10 at 1:25 am }: Hmmmm. I should have said he was a PHD Student, rather than a *Scientist* (well… he is… but he has training wheels) 😛 😆 Also, he’s pretty busy and doesn’t blog much right now as he’s involved in a UK Collaboration project (ATLAS) with the CERN LHC 7 TeV series proton collision experiments that have started. 🙂 I actually discovered the blog last year searching for a particular subject that we have in common (unrelated to Science, at least in the strictest sense). 😉 There was a plan (before they almost destroyed the LHC and rebuilt it) to go to 14 TeV collisions around the end of 2012, which had the tinfoil hat brigade going on about them destroying the World per the Mayan calendar. Heh. 😉 Well… that won’t happen now until after 2013 and they build (or rather, upgrade the LHC to) the new DLHC (assuming we are still here after 2012. My money’s on a sudden pole shift or nearby supernova, both of which have happened in the past few million years as evidence has been discovered for.) 😉 😛
4 hipparchia { 04.05.10 at 1:40 am }: thanks, k! love this one.

the first thing my browser window showed me was this part of your comment:

The purpose of this post is not to address these trivial issues though. It is infact to address a much more serious and much more likely issue. That a nearby supernova will wipe out all life on Earth.

right after i switched over here from reading this post.

i wonder if the lhc could be programmed to make a very tiny micro black hole that would then target just some select politicians. it would only need to happen to a few of them before the rest of them decided to straighten up and fly right for a generation or so. i should probably take up writing sci-fi novels…
.-= last blog ..Curmudgeon cat, inspiring cats everywhere … =-.
5 Kryten42 { 04.05.10 at 3:41 am }: 😀 NP h! Glad to do it. 🙂

and LOL at that Ian Welsh post! The comments were especially… interesting(?) 😉 🙄

Here’s a (better) example of the LHA scare: LARGE HADRON COLLIDER EXPOSED: The stargate of Shiva

Heh… At least it’s one of the more… thoughtful(?) examples than the usual “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE (because I don’t have a clue about Science and anything more complicated than a grocery receipt makes my head ache!)” type stupid panics. 😉 I guess we’ll all find out Dec. 2012. 😉 Watch this space… and time… 😉

Enjoy! 😆
6 Kryten42 { 04.05.10 at 5:10 am }: I should clarify… 🙂 I wasn’t laughing at Ian’s post, but some of the typical comments from people in complete denial. Ian really just said what many people (generally outside the USA) have been saying for a long time. It was a good summary really, especially the bottom line:

America elected Barack Obama. He’ll have, essentially, two chances to fix things. He’s failing the first one already, with his botched stimulus bill and that’s going to be disastrous. If he fails the second one, that’ll be catastrophe.

Yeah, really. Personally, if I were living in the USA right now, I’d be seriously considering emigrating almost anywhere.
7 hipparchia { 04.05.10 at 10:59 am }: ian is a canadian, which explains his clarity of vision, and yeah, i knew you were laughing at the comments and not at ian’s post.

stargate of shiva, eh? i always thought it was teh kittehs engineering things for their own evil purposes…
.-= last blog ..Curmudgeon cat, inspiring cats everywhere … =-.
8 Kryten42 { 04.06.10 at 4:33 pm }: LOL I’m pretty certain that any disaster will have something ta do wit teh kittehs! They can’t fool me! 😈

PS: Love that pic on your Curmudgeon post! 😀 (There was probably someone standing next to the camera with a cheezeburger with catnip garnish! A cat would go through flames for that! Besides, most of the properly self-respecting cat’s think dogs are amazingly stupid and slow.) 😉 😆
9 hipparchia { 04.06.10 at 7:50 pm }: Besides, most of the properly self-respecting cat’s think dogs are amazingly stupid and slow.

🙂 curmudgeon cat thinks they are all slow, that’s for sure… slow enough to catch! in our old neighborhood, when i first moved there, i used to let him out in the front yard — with supervision — until he started attacking the neighborhood dogs when they walked by.
.-= last blog ..Curmudgeon cat, inspiring cats everywhere … =-.