Corruption: Nebraska, Washington D.C. and Overcriminalization

By Michael Ramirez - April 12, 2012 via Townhall Daily Comics

I don’t have enough information here to do more than speculate, but. We write a lot here about leadership, and one thing we are all aware of is that what the boss does is what everybody else thinks they can do, too. In other words, “Monkey see, Monkey do”. So it would seem, to me, reasonable the GSA thought that if the White House (you know, where the boss works) can jet around the world wasting the taxpayers money; they can too. At least they didn’t forget the little people, you know, the interns. the only ones hurt were the taxpayers, and who cares about them. It’s called the “leadership culture”, or in Michelle Malkin‘s trademarked phrase The Culture of Corruption”.

A few articles that have come to my attention that I think you should pay attention to.

From Nebraska Watchdog:

LINCOLN — Lincoln is spending $24,000 a year in taxpayer dollars to a Lincoln company to maintain a promotional website and Facebook page touting the progress and merits of the $344 million arena project under construction downtown.

The Thought District was first hired in late 2010 to create the Haymarket NOW website and Facebook page. The initial contract paid the Lincoln firm $1,500 to create the Facebook page alone. The new contract allows the company to continue to be paid $2,000 per month to keep the website updated with new content and “provide high-quality marketing coy” to interact with website visitors.

The Thought District’s description of the purpose of the website and Facebook page said it provides an “up-to-date, transparent view of the project,” inform the public and “curb negative sentiment and excite supporters of the arena.” In other words, lots of promotion and cheerleading.

Thought District CEO and Founder Eric Dinger said he’s charging $100 an hour, which he said is below market value.

“We’re breaking even on it,” he said.

The contract does not allow his company to charge any more than $2,000 a month, so that works out to about 20 hours a month. The least amount of time his company has put into the job was 18 hours, and the most was 48, he said.

“People who build websites are not cheap people to have on staff,” he said.

Lincoln Pays $24,000 a Year for Arena Website and Facebook Page.

I usually am the one that maintains our company’s website, and I can tell you that while I don’t update all that often, when I do, I spend far less time on it than I do this blog, and my time isn’t billed at $100/hr ever. (Wish it was!!)  Nebraska has a problem with control of their agencies, at least in my opinion. I wrote about our local ones a while back here and here’s an except:

… I was out to the grocery store today to pick up some, well, groceries, and I noticed that the old Wal-Mart store next door, which was abandoned when they built the super Wal-Mart a few years ago, had a new sign. A really nice one too. And I was sort of thinking about it because Grassroots in Nebraska wrote about it in Lincoln back in September. They provided a tour also, so go see what they found (and found out). The link is here.Anyway about this sign. It’s one of Daktronics Galaxy full color models, with lighted signs above and below it. It’s about 4′ X 12′ in the LED segment which is a computerized message board, and double-sided, of course. Here is a comparable one in Illinois:

In fact, I was so impressed that when I got home I googled it and read about it, of course the website has no pricing (that protects their dealers, my manufacturers do the same thing) but I did find one on E-bay, a smaller unit and only single faced, the buy it now price was $12,000 without shipping. So it’s a really nice sign. In addition the entire structure and wiring for it has been replaced, parenthetically the wiring is not code compliant for a commercial location, the Wal-Mart sign was quite small and used little power. My guess for the price of that sign installed? Somewhere between $50 and 75 thousand dollars, maybe more.

One would think a really thriving business must have taken over that store, wouldn’t one? It’s one of the prime retail locations in town with several thousand square feet of newly remodeled space, it’s really nice inside.

So who is the lucky merchant, you ask. Let’s see, there are several.

• The Chamber of Commerce tourism office
• The local Community College
• The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services
• Job Service
• The County Development office

Not a business in the lot. Every one of these (with the possible exception of the Chamber of Commerce) is tax supported and in all cases had offices in town before, so now there are several storefronts (all in marginal retail locations) abandoned to put these in one (very expensive) location. Of course the owner of the building is politically connected and has had trouble finding a tenant but, that was probably true in their prior location, also. …

I should also note that Grassroots in Nebraska has written about this too. That link is here.

On a somewhat related matter

Montana Corruption is writing on the criminalization of just about everything.

Over the past few years, the political right and left have joined forces to counteract the “overcriminalization” of daily life. 

The titles of recent books, such as Three Felonies a Day by civil libertarian Harvey Silvergate, One Nation Under Arrest by Paul Rosenzwieg and Brian Walsh of the conservative Heritage Foundation, and Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Nearly Everything, edited by Gene Healy of the libertarian Cato Institute, give one a good sense of the current climate of opinion.

Federal criminal law, once reserved for serious misconduct that required the greatest punishment, is now used to punish a broad scope of conduct. In fact, many federal laws today impose steep mandatory punishments even in cases where the defendant acted without criminal intent.

With conservatives, liberals, and libertarians working together, the remedy for reform seems obvious: roll back some of the approximately 4,500 federal crimes Congress has added to the books. The first step, of course, is to convince Congress to stop passing new federal criminal laws with harsh penalties.

If this sounds easy, think again. Or, better yet, ask Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

Paul has come under fire recently for insisting that the full Senate debate and consider amendments to three new crime bills.  The bills add certain chemicals, which are being used by some to make synthetic marijuana and other synthetic drugs, to Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

Paul believes most drug offenses should be handled by state and local governments, a view held by those concerned about overcriminalization, as well as by conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who recently testified before Congress that the federal courts were being clogged by routine drug cases.

Continue reading CONVICT PARENTS THAT HAVE HOUSEHOLD CLEANERS IN THEIR HOME?

There is a very old saying that goes, “More law=Less Justice”.

Signs of Trouble

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t know much about either advertising or marketing, although as a corporate officer, I have an interest in both. I live in a town where the major employer is a meat packing plant (or as we sometimes refer to it, ” A disassembly plant for cows.” Which is more true than we know, one of Henry Ford‘s models for the assembly line was the packing plants in Chicago. Anyway as John Wanamaker observed “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” I don’t know either.

But I do know this, we have an entitlement problem in this country when 47% of the population is collecting some form of government support. I also know that when you want more of something you fund it. So, maybe we shouldn’t be funding the welfare agencies quite so well.

Someplace the other day I read about a woman talking loudly in a diner about the extension of unemployment that just passed Congress. Her comment was (not verbatim) ” I could get a job anytime for $7-10 and hour but why wouldn’t I wait for something I want to do?” Sums it up in a pretty good nutshell, doesn’t it? Why work for $8 dollars an hour when I can make enough on unemployment. I can’t really argue with her on economic grounds, either. We all know there are costs involved with being employed, commuting, lunch, different clothing, whatever. It could easily add up to at least 3-5 dollars a day if you’re working a 40 hour week. So, as long as we have essentially forever unemployment (which is what I would call 99 weeks, that’s almost 2 years) getting a job is more of a moral question than an economic one. There are studies indicating that a majority of people on unemployment find jobs within two weeks of their benefits ending. How’s that work, anyway?

So we have here two divergent points in one post, don’t we? Not really. I was out to the grocery store today to pick up some, well, groceries, and I noticed that the old Wal-Mart store next door, which was abandoned when they built the super Wal-Mart a few years ago, had a new sign. A really nice one too. And I was sort of thinking about it because Grassroots in Nebraska wrote about it in Lincoln back in September. They provided a tour also, so go see what they found (and found out). The link is here.

Anyway about this sign. It’s one of Daktronics Galaxy full color models, with lighted signs above and below it. It’s about 4′ X 12′ in the LED segment which is a computerized message board, and double-sided, of course. Here is a comparable one in Illinois:

In fact, I was so impressed that when I got home I googled it and read about it, of course the website has no pricing (that protects their dealers, my manufacturers do the same thing) but I did find one on E-bay, a smaller unit and only single faced, the buy it now price was $12,000 without shipping. So it’s a really nice sign. In addition the entire structure and wiring for it has been replaced, parenthetically the wiring is not code compliant for a commercial location, the Wal-Mart sign was quite small and used little power. My guess for the price of that sign installed? Somewhere between $50 and 75 thousand dollars, maybe more.

One would think a really thriving business must have taken over that store, wouldn’t one? It’s one of the prime retail locations in town with several thousand square feet of newly remodeled space, it’s really nice inside.

So who is the lucky merchant, you ask. Let’s see, there are several.

• The Chamber of Commerce tourism office
• The local Community College
• The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services
• Job Service
• The County Development office

Not a business in the lot. Every one of these (with the possible exception of the Chamber of Commerce) is tax supported and in all cases had offices in town before, so now there are several storefronts (all in marginal retail locations) abandoned to put these in one (very expensive) location. Of course the owner of the building is politically connected and has had trouble finding a tenant but, that was probably true in their prior location, also.

A relatively minor note that bugs me, the old HHS office downtown had their sign replaced within the last six months. Why? They have known for at least that long that they were moving, so why replace the sign front, the old one was perfectly serviceable. And for that matter, why does an office that is open from 9-12 and 1-5 pm need a lighted sign anyway?

Do we really need to make these services so very accessible that they take prime retail space from merchants. Yes, the owner had trouble renting this location, from what I hear, his price was ridiculous. Think he cut his price to get the government in there? Yeah, me neither. And it took six months to remodel, too.

So, what do we have here? We are overfunding welfare at an atrocious rate, and provided them with essentially unlimited funding to make their life so very comfortable. I don’t have much problem with their offices being reasonably comfortable and efficiently equipped, (you know, like mine) that’s a good use of resources. But the biggest, baddest, advertising sign in town? That’s a lot to stomach out of my tax money. I’m sure someone is thinking here that they probably got federal funding for the project. You’re probably right but, so what? It’s still my tax money.

Why are we allowing the welfare agencies government to have prime commercial space in our towns? They would get just as many freeloaders if they were located in a tent downwind from a feedlot. If you don’t understand that statement, you need to come and visit, I’ll show you what I mean.

And furthermore, why should these agencies be allowed any advertising beyond a listing in the blue pages of the phone book and a discreet sign at their door. Why are we encouraging people to use these services, I always thought they were to be used like a crutch, to help you heal from an injury, It seems like we have turned it into a career for both the recipients and the agency personnel.