budget cutting

Comment of the Day: “When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Unethical…”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Buck, a professional firefighter, has some wry observations on the Camden County, Georgia plan, discussed in a recent post here, to save money by letting prison inmates fight fires. Here is his Comment of the Day on When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Unethical, Chapter I: Camden County, Georgia has a Terrible Idea to Save Money:

“Oh! This is a wonderful idea, for a variety of reasons:

“1. This puts obviously unemployed workers back to work.

“2. Since public safety personnel are our best and brightest in our community, we would put fewer of them in harm’s way. We have to save their lives to be available for the next parade to represent how trustworthy and respectable they are. If we replace them with convicted felons. and one of them loses their life, there is no loss, truly. True firefighters are much too valuable to risk doing such a dangerous job. On a truly dangerous emergency, the convicts could be sent in to do the dirty work. This would work! Continue reading →

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Unethical, Chapter I: Camden County, Georgia has a Terrible Idea to Save Money

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Fortunately, ax-murders aren't eligible for firefighting duties....YET!

Camden County officials are considering putting prison inmates to work as firefighters as a cost-cutting measure.

The program would put two inmates in each of three county firehouses. The prisoners (will they wear striped fire-fighter uniforms?)  would respond to all emergencies, including residential fires, alongside the trained firefighters. The special program would be open to convicts charged with non-violent crimes, including drug offenses and robbery.

According to the details of the plan, the inmates would have no guards, but would be monitored by a surveillance system and by the non-criminal firefighters, who will undergo training to guard the inmates. It is estimated that the inmate firefighter program could save the county more than $500,000 a year.

Oh. Well, I guess that makes this irresponsible, reckless, offensive program all right, then! Continue reading →

“Here’s Our Chance!” Congressional Black Caucus Member Mel Watt Exploits the Debt Crisis to Gut House Ethics Oversight

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Don't fool yourself...a lot of our leaders would be happy to turn the US "red."

Although Speaker Nancy Pelosi hardly “drained the swamp” regarding corruption in Congress as she extravagantly promised, she did do more to establish genuine, non-partisan oversight of the genuine, non-partisan sleaziness in the House of Representatives. Last year, 20 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Rep Mel Watt, co-sponsored legislation that would have gutted and neutralized the Pelosi-created Office of Congressional Ethics. Why did the Congressional Black Caucus have it in for the OCE? Well, a disproportionate number of its members were being investigated for ethics problems. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), who crafted that bill, suggested that this was because the office was racist. In fact, it was because the Congressional Black Caucus has a disproportional number of wheeler-dealers whose definition of “ethics” is self-serving at best, and the OCE, not being subject to political intimidation like the House Ethics Committee, just followed the money and raised the appropriate questions about members’ activities, Republican or Democrat, black or white.

Fudge’s bill died, never coming to a vote in committee or on the House floor, since the House realized that effectively ending ethics oversight after the disgraceful Rangel affair would not look good to voters. Now, however, ethics isn’t the main focus; cutting spending is. So Congressional Black Caucus member (and one-time target of an OCE investigation) Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) is seeking to add an amendment to the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill that would cut OCE’s funding by 40 percent. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Week: Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Is he the dumbest Representative? Let's hope so.This is perhaps the ethical equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel (which, come to think of it, isn’t very ethical), since Rep. Conyers has been displaying his rank incompetence in word and deed for decades (he was first elected in 1964). It was Conyers, after all, who during the health care reform bill debate last year not only admitted that he hadn’t read the bill, but ridiculed the notion that anyone would expect a House member to read such a complex, wide-reaching piece of legislation before voting for it. I might suggest that the Congressman is suffering the mental ravages of age, but  a) that would be age discrimination and 2) he doesn’t deserve an excuse. He’s always been like this.

Conyers is also a powerful and high-ranking member, so his special brand of cluelessness is neither harmless nor cute. It is useful, however, at least to Republicans looking for the perfect example of the proverbial Democratic Congressman who only knows one way to govern: spend as much money as possible in ways that will line the pockets of constituents and thus guarantee re-election. The Republicans would like the public to believe that all Democrats are like this, which isn’t true. The fact that at least one Democrat is like this, however—not only like this, but candid and proud about it—makes the stereotype much more credible.

Here is what Conyers said this week: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Daily Kos Blogger “bal”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Did Past Paul Ryan make Future Paul Ryan a hypocrite, or vice-versa? Is that even possible?

I sometimes comfort myself with the fantasy that the extreme left websites like The Daily Kos are written and read solely by 15-year-olds. While this adds to my anxieties about the public schools’ incompetence at teaching basic skills like logic, analysis and argument, it soothes my fears that our nation’s policies and political discourse are being dangerously warped by millions of addled adults whose passion is untempered by even a modicum of fairness and common sense. In this spirit, I am hoping that bal is a teenager, which would explain, though not justify, his absurd post on Kos. I fear he is not.

He writes, “I guess it’s only when social programs help other people that they’re bad, because I haven’t seen Paul Ryan acknowledging how Social Security benefits helped him and his family in trying times. Continue reading →