Roads Scholar?
Jude at First Draft won’t win any awards for civility, but when you encounter the brain-dead ignorance of someone like Scott Walker, the new Republican governor-elect of Wisconsin, you are stunned.
The basic story is that Governor-elect Walker has announced plans to cancel the Federal rail project that was going to connect Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As the project has already started, it means that the state will be required to re-pay the money that the Federal government has spent, and the state of Wisconsin will lose the entire Federal grant.
Mr. Walker is apparently under the delusion that he can just take the Federal money and use it as he wishes, in his case for roads, not understanding that the money was appropriated for a specific project, and can only be spent on that project.
The money would have provided thousands of jobs, as well as providing a fast and convenient method of travel between Wisconsin’s two largest cities. There were no Wisconsin funds required for the project, so no state money will be saved by canceling it.
You have to wonder what they are putting in the tea…
18 comments
They don’t have to put anything into the tea, you know.
There’s plenty of nonsense already in the DNA of those “tea baggers.”
And they will now prove it on a grand scale.
With full reporting in blogworld.
And none anywhere else.
But I’m just guessing.
Right!
Suzan
Suzan, you couldn’t possibly be doubting the “fair and balanced” coverage of politics by the media. 😉
There will always be some blond white woman in trouble someone who is “obviously” more important than what some crackpot Republican official has done.
The title of the First Draft post sums it up.
Even the shower in Government here isn’t killing a big and very expensive new rail development in London called Crossrail. It’s an East-west line through the city to take the strain off th underground and would mean I could get to Heathrow Airport without changing trains (I live on the eastern edge of London.
The problem is that Britain and Europe understand the necessity of rail and public transportation, while most Americans are tied to cars. One of the things I like most about living in Europe was not having to drive. I went everywhere by rail and used the subways if it was too far to walk.
About the only time I used a taxi was in London to go to Ronnie Scott’s from the Douglas House, and then only if I was taking a young lady with me. Public transport was just too convenient and inexpensive.
People in the US just don’t get it, and can’t exist without a car.
The new governor of Ohio has done the same thing
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/11/06/govs-rail-jobs/
Kasich — who called the high-speed rail project linking Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati “one of the dumbest ideas” he’s ever heard — used his victory speech to announce, “That train is dead“:
I assume it is the same deal, another shovel-ready project funded under the stimulus and the funds are locked in to the specific project, so the state will lose the funding and the jobs, jobs that Ohio really needs. Brain-dead.
Yeah. Really stupid. But what else can be expected? *shrug*
And yeah, it’s the same project. Can’t have the Fed (Obama) Gov be seen to be actually doing anything good for the people you know. 😉
The Rethugs truly are the “Party of NO!!”
No brains
No common sense
No sense of decency
No regard for real people
Well, I commented a few weeks (or so) ago that if the US defaulted on the dept payments, you would be so screwed. Looks like at least some of the Rethugs are considering it. I suspected as much. 😉
Cantor Refuses To Take Government Shutdown Or Default On U.S. Debt Off The Table
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! They may as well blow their collective brains out (I know… They’d have to find them first). 😛
It really is too funny! 😆 Sorry. 😉
Cantor is seeking ideas for cutting spending LOL
http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/YourIdea.htm
If Cantor and the other rethugs *REALLY* wanted to cut spending and save the USA a huge fortune… they should consider cutting their collective throats! That would do it! 😉 😈
How about, let other people pay for their own defense and bring the DoD back to reality, say equal to the combined budget outlays of the rest of NATO and no more.
Hmmm… This is kinda OT, kinda not! 😉 You judge… 😀
I came across this at one of my *other* fave blogs (in Texas, of all places)! 😀
It Doesn’t Take A Zealot…
It’s a good read. I have mentioned that I once worked on a project for a major Pharmaceutical company, and that what I learned there is that they are really no different to Banks, Oil Companies, etc. Their one and only interest is, profits. They have a great many *cures* that will never see the light of day, or at least, not until someone else comes up with a cure that they can’t get discredited, or get the responsible Gov agency (FDA for you) to ban for some bogus or minor reason and keep it tied up for years in the approval/legal processes, or pay off legislators to change the rules, etc. 🙂 I know how it works.
Anyway, It’s something I’ve thought often, and something I’ve been on the receiving end of, and people I’ve loved that have died.
Of course, the average person really doesn’t want to know, much less believe. Me, I don’t trust anyone (until they have proven themselves beyond doubt). 😉 It’s safer that way. 🙂 My mother died because her Doctor was incompetent, and many others have also. Many people have lost everything because their lawyer was incompetent. Most Politicians are incompetent (even the crooked ones!) 😆 But, the system is stacked against you, and is designed to protect them (or more accurately, to protect the *system* and the others who are a part of it).
Ah yes! Welcome to the Great [insert appropriate Nation here] Dream! (what they don’t tell you is… Dreams aren’t *real*, and this dream is just an illusion. But they convince you that with continuing hope and *trust in the system*, you will get your dream. And maybe you will… Then they will take it away from you! 😉 😛
There are dozens of proven treatments that aren’t available because it isn’t “economically feasible” to produce the drugs, and the owners of the patents won’t release the information so that others can make them. Most of the drugs in use were originally discovered in government funded programs, not by drug company research, but the companies have huge mark-ups to recover their “research costs” which are generally related to market research, not medical research.
The entire health care industry is about profit, not cure.
Doctors, lawyers, and a lot of other professions are based on the guild system that acts to restrict membership and protect existing members. IT isn’t immune. The calculus requirement for an IT degree is really about restricting membership.
Half of the stuff that I see advertised on the programs that my Mother watches are drugs to treat conditions I doubt are even real. “Restless leg syndrome”. are you kidding me? Walk around and stop hitting that nerve and it will go away without buying drugs for the rest of your life.
Greed has turned “the developed world” into a very nasty place.
Thing about IT degrees is that you really don’t need one to succeed in the industry. Some of the best engineers I’ve run into over the years have degrees in things entirely unrelated to IT, or even no degree at all in one case. Crap, Bill Gates doesn’t have a degree, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack don’t have degrees, now that I think about it degrees don’t mean squat after a while in the industry. Given that over half of all students graduating from U.S. universities with IT degrees don’t find a job in the field, I think it’s a bit much to call IT a “guild”. More of a secret society where those of us who were there in the old days and know where the skeletons are buried pull them out to terrify the youngsters who think they know how to do our job better than we do :twisted:. (Yes, I do that… I not only tell the youngster, in about 60 seconds, the solution to the problem he’s been trying to solve for the past three weeks, but I also give him the complete history of how that solution was developed and who developed it… his jaw typically drops about that time).
Regarding Republican stupidity… sigh. The U.S. dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. Defaulting on the debt basically means defaulting on the dollar, which renders the piles of dollars that these companies have accumulated in their bank accounts literally worthless. Which will make a number of Republican donors *very* unhappy. If Cantor doesn’t see this he’s the dumbest cluck in a Congress full of fusterclucks. Sadly, that may very well be….
Experience is always better than a degree, but Woz went back to school and got his degree so he could convince his kids that it was important.
When I started, the degree was in data processing, and was really business oriented. Most of the people on the engineering/science side picked it up as they went along. If you went in early enough you understand what is actually going on, and not dependent a particular language implementation to do useful work. I remarked to an HR person who asked me if I could use a 4GL, that if it was necessary I could write one. He obviously had no idea what assembler or C were all about.
The only reason a degree is useful is to get beyond HR to the people who actually know what they want and need. Some corporations are really anal about that and lose their edge as a result. You need people who can get the product out the door, and they don’t teach your product at college.
The Repubs have mantras that they repeat without any understanding of what they mean. I assume that someone will explain to them when they have gone too far, but there are no guarantees. They are operating on the assumption that Obama will blink, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the Democrats will. Those that understand what happened in the election may just decide that they need to start protecting their jobs, not Obama’s. It is going to be a mess, but we knew that before Obama was nominated.
Cantor isn’t the only one, or even the most moronic.
Senator-Elect Lee Calls Possibility Of Government Shutdown A Mere ‘Nuisance’ And ‘Inconvenience’
Yeeee-haw!! The cowboys are in charge… yesireee!
HR people hate me. I make their collective little heads ache! I don’t fit their little profiles and they can’t tick the nice, neat boxes easily. 😆 And I dun it a puposly! 😉 😀
I have two degrees that we call here in Aus “Master’s Equivalents” because we don’t actually have a Master’s program here that matches my qualifications exactly, but I have sufficient certificates, accreditation’s (both academic and industry) and *credits* to have a Master’s, if one existed. 😆 I did earn a Degree in Engineering, and a degree in Proj. M’gment, as well as a couple lower diploma’s and Cirt’s, such as a valuable CoT (Cirtificate of Technology, which was stopped in ’83 because it was very tough and the washout rate very high. During the 80’s, I had a much better chance of getting a job with the CoT than a Master’s!) Now, nobody knows what it is. Many of us were head-hunted in our final year (It’s a 3-year full-time course of 44 modules, a pass was a minimum of 75%) by DEC. I did my *internship* with DEC. I spent most of that year studying! I did 8 Cirt’s with DEC (4 software – Fortran, Pascal, COBOL, C; and 4 hardware/networking). After that, I got several more Cirt’s/Accreditation’s from DG, Apollo, Sun, HP, ICL, IBM, SGI, Apple… and others. I have acred’s for pretty much every CASE Methodology (Yourdon/DeMarco, Gane/Sarson, Ward-Mellor, Booch, SA/SD, Warnier-Orr, IDEF(0/1/1x), UML, etc.) I couldn’t get an IT job now if I wanted to. 😀 You know why, right? 😉 Not current (because you know how everything changes every year and ya just HAVE to have a current cirt, damnit!! I probed that a load of bollocs between 2004-2007 when I sat for 3 Apple accreditation, without doing the courses! I averaged 90% the first year, then 98% the following 3 years. I hadn’t worked for Apple since ’92. 🙂 But… I don’t have an MSCP or some other M$ cirt (I could easily get one… but I refuse to give the M$ crooks $250 to sit the required exam!) So, I must not know anything! LMAO No wonder the industry now is a sh*thole! My *short* summary Resume is 6 pages, the full one is 22. HR People’s eye’s glass over when they read it (especially when they get to the 6 years in MilInt. It just has a contact number and code if they want information, which is usually limited to “Yes. He was a member of the Military and worked for Government Departments during that period and served with with distinction. No, you don’t need to know the details. Goodbye.” (Only one has ever used that number/code). 😉 They don’t even know what most of it means! 😆
HR people… Isn’t it amazing that we give the most useless people the most important job’s? What does that say about us! 😆
Oops! 😉
‘I probed that’ -> ‘I proved that’
and ‘UML’ should really read ‘Use Case and McCabe Complexity Metrics’
Sorry ’bout dat! 😳