|
|
Post by blustnmtn on Aug 12, 2022 12:01:19 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by missouriboy on Aug 12, 2022 16:10:00 GMT
Nathan Bedford Forrest would have understood that tactic perfectly. |
|
|
|
Post by missouriboy on Aug 12, 2022 19:39:16 GMT
Based on my experience in government, we could manage to get by quite well without most of them ... forever. Second that. Bureaucrats are empire builders who create/fabricate the need for extra staff. Ever heard a bureaucrat say he/she/ze was underworked? In the wild, the herd is regularly thinned by the hazards of their environment. Ability and luck select those that will reproduce. And available food supply caps the population. In government, the hazards have been largely removed, and the herd multiplies, constrained only by budget and "the philosophy" of management. In the America of the last 50(?) years, budgets have only rarely been capped, so the herd expands. Government employees start out as normal people who landed a position in "the hive" and work as hard as management and the job requires. The go-getters attract attention and move up the food chain. The less-than-gifted and less-than-productive hang on, as they are difficult to remove ... and the job of doing so is unpleasant ... unless you really piss them off. In fairness I must state that American bureaucracies are "a bit" more efficient than the ones I saw in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
As background for an example, I worked for 8 years with the USGS in Flagstaff, Arizona. The USGS is "proudly designated"  as one of our "premier" science organizations. And is full of "scientists" working on funded so-called priority public missions in the physical and biological sciences. Everything from fish to volcanoes and beyond. Flagstaff USGS landed the role of scientific support for studies of the Colorado River "ecosystem(s)" when it was transferred from the Bureau of Reclamation. It is largely funded by power-generation revenues. BOR's primary mission is water management and power generation. Grand Canyon ecosystem management was added as a response to "public" outcries over the downstream effects of management on this system. The Grand Canyon is "sacred space" and if you have ever hiked and floated the Canyon and its tributaries, you would understand. That is where God lives on his vacations.  When I was younger and could carry a 60+ pound pack over great distances, I had the privilege of exploring many of the tributary canyons that drain into Lake Powell and what is left of Glen Canyon below the Dam. I would fly down from Alaska in spring to meet up with comrades to rent aluminum skiffs with 25 hp engines to explore the canyons from the bottom up.
The USGS Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center (GCMRC) exists to study the system. And study it they did/do. Ground surveys, boat-mounted sonar and aerial reconnaissance (digital imagery and LIDAR) provided data for evaluating the state of sand resources and native fish populations in the system under differing BOR management actions. There was a university professor who conducted his own research in the early days, and concluded (for very little money) that if you stop most of the sand in the system from moving downstream (the Dam), the sand deposits in the lower system will slowly and inexorably be winnowed out and moved downstream. Who woulda thought? Less sandbars and camping beaches for the customers of the companies that ply the river in wooden and rubber boats. Short of piping sand around the Dam (that is being considered) the intuitive professor was right. The sand is going away. When flash floods from the remaining tributaries below the Dam input large enough quantities of sand into the main channel, the BOR stages mini-floods to move some of it up onto the sandbars. Certain wry-witted BOR managers call it "changing the sheets" (for the boater set). And the GCMRC goes right on studying the river. If there ever is a pipeline around the Dam, GCMRC will be right there ready to go. The drought conditions in the upper basin will undoubtedly affect water management decisions by BOR, But, no matter what they do, the GCMRC will be there to document the results. I am not disparaging the GCMRC or many of their scientists. They do good work ... slowly ... and forever ... if there is a budget. On the judgement day, the last scientist-bureaucrat out the door will deliver a report confirming that the intuitive professor was right, but we managed to "change the sheets" for many years. After all, God would have done it himself if he had the money. So far, God is silent. And the River continues its flow to the shriveled delta of the Gulf of California. If we disappear, it will over-top the Dams, or erode their abutments, and slowly grind them down to base level.
|
|
|
|
Post by missouriboy on Sept 12, 2022 2:21:21 GMT
Will Fidel's son continue to run the Worker's Paradise of Canada? We can only hope that someone is about to get an ass-whoopin.
|
|
|
|
Post by code on Sept 12, 2022 3:35:12 GMT
Will Fidel's son continue to run the Worker's Paradise of Canada? We can only hope that someone is about to get an ass-whoopin.
I like the new guy.
|
|
|
|
Post by missouriboy on Sept 29, 2022 22:47:02 GMT
Why Not a Convention of States?
|
|
|
|
Post by missouriboy on Oct 7, 2022 16:08:06 GMT
My, My. Who woulda thought.
|
|
|
|
Post by ratty on Oct 8, 2022 1:03:31 GMT
My, My. Who woulda thought. Of course, people with such high ethical standards would never, ever consider manipulating a count. Would they? |
|
|
|
Post by missouriboy on Oct 8, 2022 2:39:48 GMT
My, My. Who woulda thought. Of course, people with such high ethical standards would never, ever consider manipulating a count. Would they? Look into the histories of many American big cities. Voting in Chicago ... early and often. |
|
|
|
Post by code on Oct 25, 2022 16:10:36 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by missouriboy on Oct 25, 2022 22:07:19 GMT
Watch Elon deliver heart attacks to all Karens' at Twitter.
OH woe is us!
/photo/2
|
|
|
|
Post by code on Nov 24, 2022 18:03:47 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by blustnmtn on Nov 24, 2022 23:10:35 GMT
I’m not. Liberty is why the United States came in to existence. The government of this country is so far from the founder’s vision and the Constitution that they would be in open conflict with the present rulers. Disgusting situation and extremely sad. |
|
|
|
Post by blustnmtn on Dec 29, 2022 13:57:54 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by missouriboy on Dec 29, 2022 16:02:51 GMT
The Government(s) is more dangerous than all the semi-demi-private-authoritarians-criminals put together and squared. It is so not because the humans employed there are initially any worse than humans employed anywhere else. It is so because of governments' size and power. Walking pustules of contagion are dangerous but containable when scattered throughout the general population. Cluster them in government and they will spread and metastasize. Government must be small and barely able to accomplish its' publicly agreed to mandate(s). Anything larger will spoil and infect the whole structure.
Had a wild-eyed college friend who "claimed" to be an old-fashioned Communist. He was fond of saying that ... he never wanted to see a day when the government had a monopoly on violence.
|
|
as one of our "premier" science organizations. And is full of "scientists" working on funded so-called priority public missions in the physical and biological sciences. Everything from fish to volcanoes and beyond. Flagstaff USGS landed the role of scientific support for studies of the Colorado River "ecosystem(s)" when it was transferred from the Bureau of Reclamation. It is largely funded by power-generation revenues. BOR's primary mission is water management and power generation. Grand Canyon ecosystem management was added as a response to "public" outcries over the downstream effects of management on this system. The Grand Canyon is "sacred space" and if you have ever hiked and floated the Canyon and its tributaries, you would understand. That is where God lives on his vacations. 
When I was younger and could carry a 60+ pound pack over great distances, I had the privilege of exploring many of the tributary canyons that drain into Lake Powell and what is left of Glen Canyon below the Dam. I would fly down from Alaska in spring to meet up with comrades to rent aluminum skiffs with 25 hp engines to explore the canyons from the bottom up. 
