Category: Public Employees
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Epiphany
A friend of the blog emails: My child is not going to public school. Now that we are doing home based learning, the school continues to provide the excellent education we expected. We have a high quality teacher who gives a daily schedule that has my child doing educational work, physical activity related to the…
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Officer Friendly
There’s a video of two Calumet County Wisconsin Sheriff’s deputies hassling a woman because her kids went to the neighbor’s house to play. In response, the Sheriff posted this message: The problem with both the video and the response is the attitude. This is the kind of behavior that gets people upset at law enforcement. …
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New Properties In Material Physics!
This just came out from the State of Wisconsin: Because glass, apparently, isn’t virus-proof. No. It’s because while science is vital, government bureaucracy is all the things we do together, stupidly.
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Sycophants
On Friday, when Minnesota had 14 cases of the virus, Governor Walz announced schools would remain open because health care workers needed daycare so they could go to work and fight the virus. On Sunday, when Minnesota had 35 cases of the virus, Governor Walz closed the schools except for children of health care workers who need daycare…
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“Good Faith”
Even if the FBI had a good faith basis to open the inquiry, it did not have one to continue the inquiry. And what about all those unmaskings? FBI wiretaps Trump campaign, gives information to Susan Rice in the White House, and it ended there? Nothing got forwarded to the Hillary campaign? Do we believe that?Joe…
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Transfer Of Wealth
Chicago teachers are on strike. Again. But it’s not just for them, this time. Nosirreebob. In the last two contract fights, the union brought up these issues, but they also had to concentrate on protecting their members whose jobs were being threatened by school closings and the opening of charter schools. The school district also…
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Kamala Harris Is Everything That’s Ugly And Stupid About Government
The thing about “progressivism” is that while it flaps its jaws about “helping” the vulnerable, it inevitably ends up harming them. Give them a $15 minimum wage and mandatory sick time? Get them laid off! Attack landlords for the “quality” of housing they provide? Make housing unaffordable! Kamala Harris, in her celebrated (by the media)…
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Miscarriage Of Justice – Part II
Yesterday, I started telling the story of Dr. Massoud Amin – a man who came to the US as a teenager with his parents after the Iranian Revolution, became a citizen, and rose to the highest levels not only of academia, but of national security, as one of the nation’s foremost experts in cybersecurity. And…
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Miscarriage Of Justice – Part I
Last year, a story broke that had a little something for everyone – where by “everyone” you’re referring to “incurious, uncritical consumers of shabby information”. It involved a professor from the University of MInnesota, Dr. Massoud Amin. Amin was convicted of “Theft by Swindle” for, it was alleged, concealing funds from his soon-to-be ex wife…
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Our Own Lying Tastebuds
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: The reason that cases like this infuriate people is we know what’s going on behind the curtain. The public wants to be protected from impure food. The customers in the lobby can’t see what’s going on in the kitchen. Commercial food preparation is hidden from view, it’s not transparent,…
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Black Wednesday
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: First half property taxes are due May 15th. When I arrived at work this morning, customers were already lined up outside, waiting for the doors to open at 8 AM. Retail stores open at midnight on Thanksgiving to serve customers. Banks are open on weekends to serve customers. Why…
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The Party Finds You
Tesla – intended originally to be a “disruptive” force in the automotive industry – is getting disrupted… …by – what else? – the State of California.
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It’s Almost Anticlimactic…
…reading stories of anti-gun politicians and their staffers owning the guns they desperately want to deny the little guy.
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Our Slimy Overlords
Mark my words: Any police official who refers to citizens as “sheep” (and, perforce, to police as “Sheepdogs” or “Lions”) needs to be escorted from public life, sans badge, gun, and power, with extreme prejudice. Like Broward County sheriff Scott Israel – whose office didn’t have time to investigate nearly forty contacts with Nikolas Cruz, but has…
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On The One Hand…
…the bureaucracy – any bureaucracy – runs by rules of its own. Those rules usually have more to do with sustaining bureaucracy itself than to solving whatever problem or administering whatever service that bureaucracy is supposed to be doing. On the other? Read past the bureaucratese in this report and it appears that the Minneapolis…
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Ripped From The Fictional Headlines
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Scene: a cluttered office, a fat, balding man chewing a cigar, reading a script and scowling at it. A young man steps into the doorway and raps on the door, three times, quickly. Writer: Boss, I’ve got a great idea for a new show. It’s a political thriller, got…
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This Is What $1.4 Billion Of Government Work Gets You
It used to be that when you waited for the Green Line train, a little billboard on the platform told you how many minutes away the next train was. Today? The time is nice, if you have a schedule and the trains are on time (which you don’t and they’re not). The track number? There’s one…
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Prioritization
While MInneapolis’ mayor Betsy Hodges has spent four years diffusing her efforts over a bewildering jumble of social-justice virtue-signals, the poor woman will never top the list of “Mayors with Bizarre Priorities” list while New York’s Bill DiBlasio is in office. Hizzoner’s latest target? In a city with rising crime, infrastructure that’s crumbling faster than…
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The Swanson Conundrum
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: The State of Minnesota is suing President Trump for ending payments that a federal judge has already ruled must be ended. Attorney General Lori Swanson’s argument: President Obama started giving us illegal payments and President Trump continued the illegal payments while Congress worked on the problem. We budgeted based…
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Meet The New Tree; Same As The Old Tree
Eagan has a new city logo: a more expensive version of the old city logo: [The old] symbol, a more realistic green tree outlined in black, was in use since 2004. It was sometimes compared to a stalk of broccoli. A prominent graphic designer who lives in Eagan, Allan Peters, designed the updated logo for…
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People Addict People
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. There is a crisis. People who are prescribed drugs containing opioids can become addicted to them. There is a problem. People who receive medical treatment have privacy rights. We don’t know who’s doing the prescribing, who’s doctor-shopping, who’s obtaining prescriptions only…
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Let’s Sue The President Over His Twitter Account
A bunch of journos are apparently getting ready to sue the President for blocking them from his Twitter account. I’m about ready to send money to their plaintiff’s fund. Wny? Because the journos are right. Why should pols get to decide whose speech to restrict, and from whom they can restrict access to their public…