So, a new wave of people who will not be a part of the "Washington DC system", yeah right.
Actually they've already got their hands out and big money is lining up to fill them.
Just because the piggy doesn't sound like the other piggies doesn't mean it's not a piggy or that it won't line up at the feed trough.
I think the only way you might get competent people that weren't looking for hand outs into public office would be to draft people that hold qualification the fit the job spec. You would need to be sure that they're better off in the private sector than they could ever be by serving in government. Set it up so that they can't use any connections made in public office for 10 years after they leave public service.
Yeah, that will happen and I'll sprout wings.
Monday, December 06, 2010
Saturday, November 06, 2010
Glad and sad...
Well, the Republicans have majority control of the House of Representatives and are finally stating just what their agendas will be.. the same agendas that they had before, less taxes, less service, less regulation.
Wait a minute, less regulation? Isn't that how the Banking Industry and Wall Street nearly wiped out the United States and World economies? Are they freaking nuts? They say less regulation will boost the economy. In the same way giving tax breaks to the ultra rich has made this a better country for the average working person.
One thing that needs to go is the E.P.A. they say. According to their theory it's regulating the waste from industry that's making corporations send jobs to China. Oh, but wait.. China has gone and discovered that their lack of regulation of industrial waste nearly wiped out millions of the people that made their economy the giant it is and are now putting in place stronger environmental laws.
Looks like our out sourcing corporations may have to look for some other desperate country that doesn't care if their people die from the effects of industrial pollution.
I'm glad I'm old enough that I probably won't see the effects this has on our current crop of children, I'm sad they'll have to put up with the result of short sighted greed.
These people have forgotten about communities like Love Canal. Where mother weren't mothers because of the incredible rate of stillbirths in that community, or the amazing number of people that developed cancer and leukemia .. or the fact that the town had to be evacuated and was declared unsafe for human residence due to the immense concentrations of pollutants that had been dumped there then buried.
Yeah, get rid of the E.P.A. you can trust industry to not take short cuts to make bigger profits.
In the same way you can trust Wall Street to not gamble with your pension funds.
Probably I'm whistling into the dark and no one's reading this little missive, but if you are.. think about dioxins, lead and mercury in your water supply.. it won't kill you fast, it'll take 10 to 15 years to cause noticeable effects, your children will be drinking that same water.
Ahh, but wait.. big industry sells bottled water so you can have a safe water supply. That shows they have your back, right? Just don't let the kids play in the back yard, or touch the soil. They'll be fine.
Ask the coal miners how much corporations care about them. You can bet your bottom dollar that if they weren't dependent on the industry to feed their kids 99.9% of the guys that work down in the coal mines would rather do anything but mine coal.
How many kids grow up saying I want to go work where I can get Black Lung, or killed in a cave in or methane explosion because the corporation that owns the mine can't be bothered making sure that the mine is adhering to the safety regulations because that want another fifteen cents a ton*.
They'd rather pay lawyers millions to go to court and fight the regulations than spend that money on fixing the problems in the mine or threaten to shut down the mine and put those miners out of work. Yeah, regulations are bad for Joe the Coal Miner.
Hey, why don't the Republicans get rid of the F.A.A. too? Let everyone decide how to they fly, and what's safe to fly passenger jet.
Oh and then the Republicans could get rid of the F.D.A., after all a little e coli in your beef or samonella in your chicken is ok, right? And then the big drug companies would be able ship more drugs with less tests to make sure they don't kill you.. or make you even sicker than the disease they were created to treat.
We need more deregulation like we need more thieves and murderers**.
I'd had hoped that the Republicans would have learned a lesson about deregulation when they saw how badly things went when Wall Street had it's melt down. They kept on saying the market could regulate itself. Could and would are not the same thing. I could jump off a bridge, but I don't think I would unless you forced me to do it.
Even Mr. Greenspan who had preached that the market would regulate itself eventually said he was wrong.
(* Not the actual amount they save by putting their workers at risk, but you can find that information if you really want to know.)
(** We already have enough trouble, we don't need more!)
Wait a minute, less regulation? Isn't that how the Banking Industry and Wall Street nearly wiped out the United States and World economies? Are they freaking nuts? They say less regulation will boost the economy. In the same way giving tax breaks to the ultra rich has made this a better country for the average working person.
One thing that needs to go is the E.P.A. they say. According to their theory it's regulating the waste from industry that's making corporations send jobs to China. Oh, but wait.. China has gone and discovered that their lack of regulation of industrial waste nearly wiped out millions of the people that made their economy the giant it is and are now putting in place stronger environmental laws.
Looks like our out sourcing corporations may have to look for some other desperate country that doesn't care if their people die from the effects of industrial pollution.
I'm glad I'm old enough that I probably won't see the effects this has on our current crop of children, I'm sad they'll have to put up with the result of short sighted greed.
These people have forgotten about communities like Love Canal. Where mother weren't mothers because of the incredible rate of stillbirths in that community, or the amazing number of people that developed cancer and leukemia .. or the fact that the town had to be evacuated and was declared unsafe for human residence due to the immense concentrations of pollutants that had been dumped there then buried.
Yeah, get rid of the E.P.A. you can trust industry to not take short cuts to make bigger profits.
In the same way you can trust Wall Street to not gamble with your pension funds.
Probably I'm whistling into the dark and no one's reading this little missive, but if you are.. think about dioxins, lead and mercury in your water supply.. it won't kill you fast, it'll take 10 to 15 years to cause noticeable effects, your children will be drinking that same water.
Ahh, but wait.. big industry sells bottled water so you can have a safe water supply. That shows they have your back, right? Just don't let the kids play in the back yard, or touch the soil. They'll be fine.
Ask the coal miners how much corporations care about them. You can bet your bottom dollar that if they weren't dependent on the industry to feed their kids 99.9% of the guys that work down in the coal mines would rather do anything but mine coal.
How many kids grow up saying I want to go work where I can get Black Lung, or killed in a cave in or methane explosion because the corporation that owns the mine can't be bothered making sure that the mine is adhering to the safety regulations because that want another fifteen cents a ton*.
They'd rather pay lawyers millions to go to court and fight the regulations than spend that money on fixing the problems in the mine or threaten to shut down the mine and put those miners out of work. Yeah, regulations are bad for Joe the Coal Miner.
Hey, why don't the Republicans get rid of the F.A.A. too? Let everyone decide how to they fly, and what's safe to fly passenger jet.
Oh and then the Republicans could get rid of the F.D.A., after all a little e coli in your beef or samonella in your chicken is ok, right? And then the big drug companies would be able ship more drugs with less tests to make sure they don't kill you.. or make you even sicker than the disease they were created to treat.
We need more deregulation like we need more thieves and murderers**.
I'd had hoped that the Republicans would have learned a lesson about deregulation when they saw how badly things went when Wall Street had it's melt down. They kept on saying the market could regulate itself. Could and would are not the same thing. I could jump off a bridge, but I don't think I would unless you forced me to do it.
Even Mr. Greenspan who had preached that the market would regulate itself eventually said he was wrong.
(* Not the actual amount they save by putting their workers at risk, but you can find that information if you really want to know.)
(** We already have enough trouble, we don't need more!)
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
The Real Nexus One Challenge
Isn't what most people make it out to be. Many insist on comparing it to the iPhone which misses a salient issue.
The Network.
The thing is the iPhone is locked into ATt&T so there's no direct competition between the two phones. The heart of the issue is the network reliability the devices work on.
The iPhone was a revolution in it's time but by tying itself to a single carrier it tied it's user base to that carriers ability to provide service where and when the user needs it. Customer surveys repeatedly show that while they love their iPhone they are much less pleased with AT&T when it comes to area coverage and reliability.
A recent survey has Verizon ranked number one T-Mobile below that and AT&T dead last in terms of customer satisfaction. No amount of advertising singing their own praises will change the fact that AT&T needs to improve their network*.
Along comes HTC offering Android OS based smart phones to T-Mobile and then Verizon.
Suddenly people who had been interested in the iPhone but stayed away due to the carrier they'd have to go with here in the U.S. had a reason to get excited. Maybe the initial offering weren't as slick as the iPhone but they beat most of the other choices available on those carriers at the time.
Enter the Nexus One. It's sleek, the hardware is a step up from almost any smart phone around now and Google has polished the interface a bit. Still not quite an iPhone when it comes to user interaction but. it's not locked into AT&T. Initially it's going to be supported by T-Mobile and then in the spring available to Verizon customers, (at least that's Google's plan).
So, the phones it will directly compete with are.. other HTC phones and Rim's Blackberry phones.
I believe that no one familiar with AT&T's actual network coverage will buy an iPhone if both T-Mobile and Verizon have near equivalent phones available at a decent rate for data/talk time.
When you come down to it.. up until recently the only real other choice for a smart phone was the Blackberry but Droid launched last month and then the Droid Eris was released soon after for people that didn't want to spend over $100.00. Suddenly there's a strong surge of interest in Android based phones.
That puts the ball in AT&T's and to a degree Apple's court if they want to maintain market share in the smart phone realm.
Now, if Verizon would come up with a family plan that could add an 'affordable' data plan come spring I'd likely buy a Nexus One, (if it's not over 200.00 for the phone itself). Especially if Google/HTC tweaks the few issues tech reviewers have noted. (I'm not crazy about the nickel and diming that Verizon does with their 'additional features'.)
* As an ex AT&T customer and current Verizon customer and I can speak to the issue of dropped calls and areas where coverage just vanishes. In my current home town AT&T would at best register three bars usually at home it was two bars, and if you moved just a foot in either direction you could lose a call. On the other hand the only time I've lost a call on Verizon was when I ran out of 'juice' in the phone's battery.
The Network.
The thing is the iPhone is locked into ATt&T so there's no direct competition between the two phones. The heart of the issue is the network reliability the devices work on.
The iPhone was a revolution in it's time but by tying itself to a single carrier it tied it's user base to that carriers ability to provide service where and when the user needs it. Customer surveys repeatedly show that while they love their iPhone they are much less pleased with AT&T when it comes to area coverage and reliability.
A recent survey has Verizon ranked number one T-Mobile below that and AT&T dead last in terms of customer satisfaction. No amount of advertising singing their own praises will change the fact that AT&T needs to improve their network*.
Along comes HTC offering Android OS based smart phones to T-Mobile and then Verizon.
Suddenly people who had been interested in the iPhone but stayed away due to the carrier they'd have to go with here in the U.S. had a reason to get excited. Maybe the initial offering weren't as slick as the iPhone but they beat most of the other choices available on those carriers at the time.
Enter the Nexus One. It's sleek, the hardware is a step up from almost any smart phone around now and Google has polished the interface a bit. Still not quite an iPhone when it comes to user interaction but. it's not locked into AT&T. Initially it's going to be supported by T-Mobile and then in the spring available to Verizon customers, (at least that's Google's plan).
So, the phones it will directly compete with are.. other HTC phones and Rim's Blackberry phones.
I believe that no one familiar with AT&T's actual network coverage will buy an iPhone if both T-Mobile and Verizon have near equivalent phones available at a decent rate for data/talk time.
When you come down to it.. up until recently the only real other choice for a smart phone was the Blackberry but Droid launched last month and then the Droid Eris was released soon after for people that didn't want to spend over $100.00. Suddenly there's a strong surge of interest in Android based phones.
That puts the ball in AT&T's and to a degree Apple's court if they want to maintain market share in the smart phone realm.
Now, if Verizon would come up with a family plan that could add an 'affordable' data plan come spring I'd likely buy a Nexus One, (if it's not over 200.00 for the phone itself). Especially if Google/HTC tweaks the few issues tech reviewers have noted. (I'm not crazy about the nickel and diming that Verizon does with their 'additional features'.)
* As an ex AT&T customer and current Verizon customer and I can speak to the issue of dropped calls and areas where coverage just vanishes. In my current home town AT&T would at best register three bars usually at home it was two bars, and if you moved just a foot in either direction you could lose a call. On the other hand the only time I've lost a call on Verizon was when I ran out of 'juice' in the phone's battery.
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