Featherbedding

The question of sending a fire engine to a medical emergency is one fire districts often question — but the firemen say it is necessary, and so do their friends and fellow fire house buddies, the EMTs heartily agree.
Of course it is featherbedding, and fully supported by the fire unions — although unions are specifically [...]

A Little Perspective

Mark Steyn hit it this morning when he remarked upon the list of 500,000 on the watch list, and that it is not easy to check that list instantly.
Steyn remarked that if you buy a book on Amazon.com, and access that site 8 years later, the site will instantly remind you of that previous book [...]

Pure, Blind, Dumb luck

I saw our Homeland Director on two TV news/opinion shows this a.m. She appeared either clueless, or restrained — either way it was not reassuring.
The Obama administration appears to treat this ‘attack” as a criminal matter at home, while it engages in war abroad — not just Afghanistan and Iraq, but in Yemen. Yemen appears [...]

Alchemy!

While I find it interesting that Amazon.com sold MORE Kindle books this Christmas  season than they did printed books, the Senate healthcare Reform Bill was far more interesting.
In what can only be called alchemy, the Senate says they can take half a TRILLION dollars out of Medicare but keep it whole without reducing its value [...]

No! (To a Third Party.)

The concept of a “third party” is insane – we already have a third, and fourth and probably a fifth, sixth and seventh.
None of them, and I am a member of one of them, ever gets enough votes to matter. Voting in an alternative party is like praying – it doesn’t do any good but [...]

There is a Tsunami Coming!

“Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) — California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, anticipating a $21 billion state budget deficit, plans to ask President Barack Obama to ease mandates and minimums on social programs to save as much as $8 billion.
The Republican governor plans to seek the relief, according to a California official who asked not to be identified because [...]

We Are Relearning How To Fight

It is amazing to me to compare and contrast the Revolutionary War (since I wrote about the Delaware Crossing) with the fights we now endure.
In the Revolutionary War, the two British commanders were brothers – the Howe brothers. One commanded the fleet, the other the British Army – both had tried to talk King George [...]

Hugo Learns Fast…

From the Wall Street Journal: “Venezuela Warns on Toyota Plant
“Venezuela’s president has threatened to expropriate Toyota’s local assembly plant if it doesn’t produce more vehicles designed for rural areas and increase technology transfer.”
President Obama needs to send an envoy to teach Hugo how to do these things with greater subtlety!

Reform The Public Pension Program?

 

All negotiations regarding pay and pension for public employees to be done in PUBLIC. (It’s OUR Money!)

 

Pensions to be figured ONLY on “base pay” — ignoring “spiking” final pensions by including overtime, and extra pay and benefits.

 

All disabilities to be figured and determined after retirement, stopping “Chief’s illness” where police and firepeople get disability in [...]

So What Do We Do About Global Whatever?

There is a vast difference between scientific consensus and political consensus.
We are much like a patient who has been diagnosed with a serious illness by a doctor.
What is our confidence in the doctor? What is our confidence in the test results? If the prognosis is dire, do we even want to afford the proposed solution [...]