Facebook is lame. I'm friends with family, distant family, vague acquaintances from grade school through college and so on. The crowd is too diverse and if I post anything the least bit divisive, it turns into a 30+ comment argument. No thanks! I prefer the comfort and quietness of my own little blog. So it is here that I can wax visceral and really let my hair down. Er... if I had any, that is.
Today at 3PM a KC City Council document, signed by six council members and the mayor, was put into effect, to immediately terminate the employment contract with the City Manager. Wayne... Wayne Cauthen... Oh how I hate his name! May his name be listed in KC infamy and obscurity. May it be remembered along with Pendergast and Lynn Elliot, if it be remembered at all.
Now I realize it may not seem fair to judge him so. After all, he had a difficult job. I won't pretend that all my reasons for disliking are firmly grounded in objectivity and reason. Some of them are, some are not. Some are subjective and some are just my "impression". However unfair, I shouldn't let that stop me from articulating my distaste for the man!
First off, he's an outsider. He came from Denver, with a poor track record there, to show Kansas City how to be a "world class" city. I never cared for his pretention or for Mayor Barnes, who seemed to be obsessed with the phrase "world class". The whole notion that we aren't classy enough is based on a loathing of Kansas City's quiet simplicity and familial environment. I loathe their loathing.
Wayne acted like a teenage kid with his dad's credit card. He bartered the City's future with every TIFF and bond issue. He was all about spending money that doesn't exist, to build a brighter future. This mindset put some big ticket items on the map, but to what avail? He brought in contractors and management companies from outside of KC to tend to the P&L district. He forced through the Sprint center, which still doesn't have an anchor. He set up one area after another that, through TIFF's, encouraged existing businesses to move into the tax friendly zones or were driven out of business altogether. The immediate result has been a net loss of jobs (from what I can recall from articles I've read but can't cite). I believe the long term impact is that the City will be saddled with expensive maintenance of assets which aren't able to cover their own costs. In short, he has screwed Kansas City.
Wayne did a lot of damage to the internal operations of the City as well. How much money has been wasted by CIMO consultants? Yeah, they got some stuff done- but at triple the price! How much Water Dept revenues have been raped to pay for bloated IT initiatives (PeopleSoft) or providing basic services that should be funded by taxes (street sweeping, household hazardous waste)? He has hired numerous cronies from Denver who have had their own best interest at heart as well.
He has been rampant about consolidation. From CIMO to the action center, he has, without any proper thought or setting of benchmarks, reorganized City business. He has forced all citizen calls through the 311 Action Center, but didn't provide any increased staff. Never mind that they took on the work of over 30 customer service reps from the Water Dept alone. He thought their already overwhelmed staff of 17 was up for the task.
Now to get a bit personal, one such crony is the IT Director. His motto is "centralization is better". He's been marking his territory (and buffering his budget) by centralizing any and everything that looks like IT. This is done without analysis or benchmarks. There are no goals, no business metrics or any type of process analysis done. There is no way they can show that things indeed are more efficient and they're not interested in that. He just wants the money and is generally confident that centralizing things always makes life better. His effect on my dept has been very negative. It now takes us much longer, and with much more bureaucracy, to get the same things done. Hopefully he'll be out the door right behind his boy, lil' Wayne!
Now to get really personal. Hubris. I could withstand a lot of the other crap, but when he was rude to our secretary- all condescending and blowing her off at a City event- that was intolerable. It doesn't matter how low the City employee was on the ladder, or how high he was, that type of arrogance is totally unbearable.
And last of all, he had really soft hands and a weak shake. Yeah, that's right: soft hands. I'm a friggin programmer but I have calluses like a gorilla. This is from working on the house and other stuff, and from lifting weights. I'm no construction worker, but this guy's flaccid handshake was like holding a bunch of flower petals. That tells me he doesn't do anything. I already didn't respect him as a manager but that experience caused me to lose basic respect for him as a man. Maybe he's hoping to be Lady Wayne?
So long, lil' Wayne. Go back to Denver. Go cash in all those kickbacks I am reasonably sure you've been storing up whilst raping and pillaging the good people of Kansas City. This City deserves better.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Technogasm
Gigiddy gigiddy! We are in the process of a home technology extreme makeover. This is thanks in large part to various technology tips passed along by friends.
Several weeks ago Percussivity told me about a sweet tech called Playon that will pump internet video from a computer to a Wii. After getting that put in place we signed up for Netflix and have been using their 'instant watch' feature quite a bit, although we really don't even watch much TV. We have decided that this is sufficient to replace our use of cable TV since the price for basic has steadily gone up.
A coworker told me about another product called Google Voice. This is an amazing new Google product that allows you to centralize all your phone numbers under one number. You have to request access from Google, which took about eight weeks to come through. Once in place, I could call my new Google phone number and my cell, home and Skype numbers all rang. It has tons more functionality as well, which gives you a lot of control.
We've also been using Skype and have just purchased a permanent Skype number plus a service that allows you unlimited calls to and from regular phones. My friend Guy has been doing this for a while now. My wife found a USB device that works with Skype on your computer and allows your regular phones to act as 'Skype phones'. So we'll soon be dropping our home phone service as well as TV. The only drawback to this arrangement is that we can't user our Google # as our Skype caller ID #, so people we call might get confused. I think at some point Google and Skype will probably work this out.
The sweet mulah we'll be saving on our reduced Time Warner bill is being shifted over to pay for a data service plan on a freakin' awesome T-Mobile MyTouch. Unfortunately this product is pimped by Whoopi Goldberg: but it's still a sweet product. My wife has been toting around a Dell Axim for about the last seven years and it's been telling us the system battery is shot for the last three years. Now it can be retired, along with her crappy Nokia. To my wife I say: Merry Christmas, happy birthday and happy anniversary! :-P Just kiddin'. With all the stuff she has to keep up with, this will be a great help to her. Now I can email her about dinner and expect an immediate response no matter where she's at.
One final note, if the unabashed short attention span reader is still reading this, mucho propso to you for fixing the lights on my trailer! You are one dude I will loan any of my stuff to, any time.
Several weeks ago Percussivity told me about a sweet tech called Playon that will pump internet video from a computer to a Wii. After getting that put in place we signed up for Netflix and have been using their 'instant watch' feature quite a bit, although we really don't even watch much TV. We have decided that this is sufficient to replace our use of cable TV since the price for basic has steadily gone up.
A coworker told me about another product called Google Voice. This is an amazing new Google product that allows you to centralize all your phone numbers under one number. You have to request access from Google, which took about eight weeks to come through. Once in place, I could call my new Google phone number and my cell, home and Skype numbers all rang. It has tons more functionality as well, which gives you a lot of control.
We've also been using Skype and have just purchased a permanent Skype number plus a service that allows you unlimited calls to and from regular phones. My friend Guy has been doing this for a while now. My wife found a USB device that works with Skype on your computer and allows your regular phones to act as 'Skype phones'. So we'll soon be dropping our home phone service as well as TV. The only drawback to this arrangement is that we can't user our Google # as our Skype caller ID #, so people we call might get confused. I think at some point Google and Skype will probably work this out.
The sweet mulah we'll be saving on our reduced Time Warner bill is being shifted over to pay for a data service plan on a freakin' awesome T-Mobile MyTouch. Unfortunately this product is pimped by Whoopi Goldberg: but it's still a sweet product. My wife has been toting around a Dell Axim for about the last seven years and it's been telling us the system battery is shot for the last three years. Now it can be retired, along with her crappy Nokia. To my wife I say: Merry Christmas, happy birthday and happy anniversary! :-P Just kiddin'. With all the stuff she has to keep up with, this will be a great help to her. Now I can email her about dinner and expect an immediate response no matter where she's at.
One final note, if the unabashed short attention span reader is still reading this, mucho propso to you for fixing the lights on my trailer! You are one dude I will loan any of my stuff to, any time.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
The Rights of Man
The concept of the rights of man is one that I don't believe people in our country really understand anymore. The concept itself is critical to the nature of our government and it's operation. But ignorance of this, ingrained by modern humanism, and fear of it, for sounding "Laodicean", are it's enemies from the left and from the right. Because of these things, the point which is the very foundation of our government is undone. As the psalmist said:
Psa 11:3 If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?
I will attempt to reflect that which I read by Thomas Paine on this topic. He certainly is not the only founder to have something to say on it, and arguably he is not the most authoritative. But it is a starting point and he makes a good case.
In the days of the founders they had a task that few have ever had before them: to create a government from the ground up. They could have copied a more well known form from Europe- noone would've blamed them. They could have set up the Kingdom of America and elected Washington their first monarch. They could have instituted a Greek-style pure democracy. But instead they reasoned from the very beginning of humanity: what is government? What is the purpose of government? Who is government for and what are the best means whereby it's goals may be attained?
They began their reasoning like an engineer would begin analyzing a complex system, by looking at it's original state. Paine, though not a believing Christian, quickly turns to the Biblical creation account, at least as a point of history. From this he clearly notes "the unity of equality of man". He quotes the Creator, "Let us make man in our own image. In the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." He notes, there is no distinction between men and that this "...shows that the equality of man, so far from being a modern doctrine, is the oldest upon record."
Our modern, Christian-fear to discuss rights are addressed when he says: "By considering man in this light, and by instructing him to consider himself in this light, it places him in close connection with all his duties, whether to his Creator or to the creation, of which he is part; and it is only when he forgets his orgin, or, to use a more fashionable phrase, his birth and family, that he becomes dissolute [indifferent to moral restraints]."
My impression of modern Bible believers is that they fear to discuss having any rights because they don't want to be associated with the church of Laodice. This is as much an overreaction as fearing to talk about the Holy Spirit because of foolishness done in the charismatic churches. Like any other concept, we shouldn't fear to address it and frame it in a proper context and hold it in a proper balance: we should only fear holding it in imbalance, or holding to falsehoods or ignorance altogether. Paine implicitly addresses this by equally discussing duty- and specifically duty towards our Creator- in the same context. Duty is what balances a discussion of rights, for the "rights" we have from our Creator are given to us that we may serve him and each other, and not ourselves.
On another note, his observation about people becoming less moral when they forget their "origins" is prophetic! This statement was writtin in the 1790's, seventy years before Darwin published On the Origin of Species.
This really just introduces the topic and sets it in a right context. Knowning the short attention span of certain persons, I will cover the rest of this discussion in my next post.
Psa 11:3 If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?
I will attempt to reflect that which I read by Thomas Paine on this topic. He certainly is not the only founder to have something to say on it, and arguably he is not the most authoritative. But it is a starting point and he makes a good case.
In the days of the founders they had a task that few have ever had before them: to create a government from the ground up. They could have copied a more well known form from Europe- noone would've blamed them. They could have set up the Kingdom of America and elected Washington their first monarch. They could have instituted a Greek-style pure democracy. But instead they reasoned from the very beginning of humanity: what is government? What is the purpose of government? Who is government for and what are the best means whereby it's goals may be attained?
They began their reasoning like an engineer would begin analyzing a complex system, by looking at it's original state. Paine, though not a believing Christian, quickly turns to the Biblical creation account, at least as a point of history. From this he clearly notes "the unity of equality of man". He quotes the Creator, "Let us make man in our own image. In the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." He notes, there is no distinction between men and that this "...shows that the equality of man, so far from being a modern doctrine, is the oldest upon record."
Our modern, Christian-fear to discuss rights are addressed when he says: "By considering man in this light, and by instructing him to consider himself in this light, it places him in close connection with all his duties, whether to his Creator or to the creation, of which he is part; and it is only when he forgets his orgin, or, to use a more fashionable phrase, his birth and family, that he becomes dissolute [indifferent to moral restraints]."
My impression of modern Bible believers is that they fear to discuss having any rights because they don't want to be associated with the church of Laodice. This is as much an overreaction as fearing to talk about the Holy Spirit because of foolishness done in the charismatic churches. Like any other concept, we shouldn't fear to address it and frame it in a proper context and hold it in a proper balance: we should only fear holding it in imbalance, or holding to falsehoods or ignorance altogether. Paine implicitly addresses this by equally discussing duty- and specifically duty towards our Creator- in the same context. Duty is what balances a discussion of rights, for the "rights" we have from our Creator are given to us that we may serve him and each other, and not ourselves.
On another note, his observation about people becoming less moral when they forget their "origins" is prophetic! This statement was writtin in the 1790's, seventy years before Darwin published On the Origin of Species.
This really just introduces the topic and sets it in a right context. Knowning the short attention span of certain persons, I will cover the rest of this discussion in my next post.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Mellowing out with Monty
Since Montesquieu has been less contentious, I'll post another smattering of his writings before returning to Paine and almost certain disagreement over his thoughts on 'natural rights'.
From Montesquieu, Book 3: 'Of the principles of the three kinds of government'
This statement needs some context. He is trying to explain what holds up a government (what he calls 'springs'), based on each type of government. Here, he is contrasting democracy with monarchy and despotism by highlighting it's most significant difference:
But in a popular state (republican), one spring more is necessary, namely, virtue.
Other statements:
When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community.
As virtue is necessary in a republic, and in a monarchy honor, so fear is necessary in a despotic government...
Fear must therefore depress their spirits, and extinguish even the least sense of ambition.
Montesquieu's observations about the requirement of 'virtue' (I think what we would now call character) for a successful republic are based on studies of Greek and Roman systems, which both eventually failed. This is very consistent with the thinking of a least some of the Founders:
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other. Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts (1798-10-11)
If Montesquieu and Adams are correct, then the most fundamental civic duty that anyone has is to both practice and to teach virtue/morals/character. As Christians, this is already part of our core mission, a.k.a. the great comission,; so Christians ought to be the most desirable of all citizens!
On the note of fear, both under Barry and under W, we have been constantly bombarded with messages of fear. Fear the terrorists, fear global warming, fear pandemics, fear economic collapse. It's not difficult to see that this is nothing but power grabbing by the Federal government. As noted by Monty, that type of leadership is a trademark of despotic rulership.
From Montesquieu, Book 3: 'Of the principles of the three kinds of government'
This statement needs some context. He is trying to explain what holds up a government (what he calls 'springs'), based on each type of government. Here, he is contrasting democracy with monarchy and despotism by highlighting it's most significant difference:
But in a popular state (republican), one spring more is necessary, namely, virtue.
Other statements:
When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community.
As virtue is necessary in a republic, and in a monarchy honor, so fear is necessary in a despotic government...
Fear must therefore depress their spirits, and extinguish even the least sense of ambition.
Montesquieu's observations about the requirement of 'virtue' (I think what we would now call character) for a successful republic are based on studies of Greek and Roman systems, which both eventually failed. This is very consistent with the thinking of a least some of the Founders:
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other. Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts (1798-10-11)
If Montesquieu and Adams are correct, then the most fundamental civic duty that anyone has is to both practice and to teach virtue/morals/character. As Christians, this is already part of our core mission, a.k.a. the great comission,; so Christians ought to be the most desirable of all citizens!
On the note of fear, both under Barry and under W, we have been constantly bombarded with messages of fear. Fear the terrorists, fear global warming, fear pandemics, fear economic collapse. It's not difficult to see that this is nothing but power grabbing by the Federal government. As noted by Monty, that type of leadership is a trademark of despotic rulership.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Thomas Paine
Finally! My wife found the missing book tonight, so now I can post some of Thomas Paine's quotes from The Rights Of Man... that is, in between the crippling coughs...
Paine wrote this book largely in response to another work, Reflections On The Revolution In France by Edmund Burke. They are typically published as a single piece. Burke takes an ill view of the Frog's revolution while Paine ardently defends it. My own, very stunted, understanding of the French revolution has left me with the impression that it was a victory of unhalted humanism. It has been a great surprise to find out the details of this and to see it in an entirely new light.
Since this quote is a bit longer, I'll just post this one for the day:
It was not against Louis XVI, but against the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted. These principles had not their origin in him, but in the original establishment, many centuries back; and they were become too deeply rooted to be removed, and the Augean stable of parasites and plunderers too abominably filthy to be cleansed, by anything short of a complete and universal revolution.
When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it. That crisis was then arrived, and there remained no choice but to act with determined vigor, or not to act at all.
This one stuck out to me because he's basically saying the government was so broken, it was beyond repair and revolution was the only recourse. That gave me pause to consider our own circumstance! Have the parasites and plunderers so infected Washington that it is ill beyond all healing, or is it simply the most daunting task ever faced by our nation?
Paine wrote this book largely in response to another work, Reflections On The Revolution In France by Edmund Burke. They are typically published as a single piece. Burke takes an ill view of the Frog's revolution while Paine ardently defends it. My own, very stunted, understanding of the French revolution has left me with the impression that it was a victory of unhalted humanism. It has been a great surprise to find out the details of this and to see it in an entirely new light.
Since this quote is a bit longer, I'll just post this one for the day:
It was not against Louis XVI, but against the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted. These principles had not their origin in him, but in the original establishment, many centuries back; and they were become too deeply rooted to be removed, and the Augean stable of parasites and plunderers too abominably filthy to be cleansed, by anything short of a complete and universal revolution.
When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it. That crisis was then arrived, and there remained no choice but to act with determined vigor, or not to act at all.
This one stuck out to me because he's basically saying the government was so broken, it was beyond repair and revolution was the only recourse. That gave me pause to consider our own circumstance! Have the parasites and plunderers so infected Washington that it is ill beyond all healing, or is it simply the most daunting task ever faced by our nation?
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Bathroom update
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