Joe's & Barry's Lies

[dgs49]

VP Biden and the President have recently tried to make the case that if the Republicans refuse to implement Barry’s “jobs” bill, there will be more murders and rapes in the U.S. There is about $35 Billion in this bill that is targeted for retention and hiring of state and local government employees, including police. It is self-evident, they claim, that if this money does not go out there will be fewer police “on the street,” and the crime rate will inevitably go up. (I will not address the “problem” of the majority-Democrat Senate not passing the bill; it’s just a footnote). The WHite House yesterday confirmed that this scurillous accusation is the formal and correct position of the Administration.

It is being said on the (non)campaign trail that the Republicans are pro-murder and pro-rape, pro-robbery, arson, and so forth. And that their partisanship will lead to fiery human deaths in burning houses due to the phantom firefighters who will not be around to put out the house-fires.

Having studied law enforcement and penology, I’m a little bit skeptical about the correlation between police headcount and the crime rate. Ask any policeman and he will tell you that it is extremely rare for a police officer to stop or prevent a crime-in-progress. They come to the scene in the aftermath, after the crime has been committed.

It is true that on a nationwide scale, the apprehension and incarceration of large numbers of criminals has led to a reduction in ad hominem crime, but the “axiom” that more police equals less crime is not universally embraced, and it may simply be untrue. The public image of a protective “cop walking a neighborhood beat” is largely a myth. See the data accumulated here:

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-toughcrime.htm

More importantly, this is just another example of the President’s prevaricative, hateful, and inflammatory rhetoric, in which he attempts to portray those who honestly disagree with him as being in favor of, for example, crime, dirty air, the spread of disease, poisoning the water, global warming, poverty, starvation, homelessness, and so forth.

A moratorium on new federal environmental regulations is not, “rolling back decades of environmental laws.” Declining to expand (unconstitutional) Federal education spending is not “condemning our children to ignorance and poverty.” And so on.

And why won’t they be honest and admit that this recent initiative is not a “jobs” bill, but rather a “government and unionized employee jobs” bill. In fact, the ONLY beneficiaries would be unionized government workers and unionized construction workers who live off government contracts and their odious “prevailing wage” requirements. As for the other 85% of “workers” in the private sector, we are pretty much left to fend for ourselves. As it should be.

In fact, this Administration has demonstrated in some very emphatic ways that they are NOT supportive of JOBS, generally, but merely of government jobs and union jobs – to the detriment of non-union workers (e.g., Boeing in South Carolina). They have no sympathy whatsoever for the coal miners who will be idled by their new constraints on power plant emissions, and have done nothing at all for the majority of American auto workers who DO NOT belong to the UAW. Further, they insist on extending unemployment benefits indefinitely for those who have not worked for years, while offering essentially nothing to workers at the bottom of the scale, who often make LESS than the UEC beneficiaries, though they work full time jobs. I have personally been in this situation, and was not very pleased with Government's generosity to others, I'll have you know.

Oh, the hypocrisy of it all! They claim to fight for the Little Guy, but when push comes to shove, they bail out the bankers and brokers, and try to direct the ire of the Working Class as those who are already paying the lion’s share of FIT, as though life would be better if they only paid “their fair share.”

I can’t wait for November, when I can vote to throw these lying, phony bastards out.

[Gob]

While I totally disagree with most of your points Dave, you have my profound admiration for your courage in posting your views for all to debate here.

[Grim Reaper]

A whole lot of accusations, and not much proof to back them up. Coupled with lies and falsehoods, and you have a typical dgs49 post.

[quaddriver]

While I totally disagree with most of your points Dave, you have my profound admiration for your courage in posting your views for all to debate here.

why is that, most of his points (if not all) are verifiable. could you be a bit more specific?

[Grim Reaper]

Of course you would say they're verifiable, but he's the one who makes the claims, he's the one who should have some links up there.

And the one link he does provide, doesn't prove what he claims it does.

[dgs49]

Do I need to link the statements by Biden, the White House and Obama? They are all over the media for Christ's sake.

Do I have to link the story about the Boeing plant in South Carolina? It has been in the news for months.

Do you need me to spoon feed you the plans for the $37B in money for state and local governments?

Do you think you could Google-News the stories about the expected impact of the new regulations on coal-fired power plants? Barry has been saying for years that he intends to shut down all the coalfired plants before he's through. Even the coal union executives are writing op-ed pieces about how devastating the new regs will be to their members.

Sorry, I assumed that the people who post here were literate and not oblivious to current events.

[Grim Reaper]

Translation: No links for you! (Mainly because I massively over-dramatized what people said and don't have any real links to back up my nonsense)

[dales]

Dgs wrote:

I can’t wait for November, when I can vote to throw these lying, phony bastards out.

To be replaced with...

[Grim Reaper]

The lying phony bastards from his own party of course.

It doesn't really matter what President Obama does, a lot of people won't be happy until a Republican is in the White House again. I mean, here we have dgs49 accusing President Obama of lying, when President Bush lied to the American people in order to involve us in a war in Iraq that we are just now finally ending. Thousands of American lives lost, tens of thousands severely injured, a hundred of thousand Iraqi lives lost, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent rebuilding the country. But that's fine for dgs49, because it was a Republican doing it.

[rubato]

BushCo caused the worst economic collapse in 80 years and his party is still too stupid to ask them what they have learned that they won't do again.

Its like a slaughterhouse where the animals volunteer to be killed.

yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

What a tag team: Grim Reaper and rubato.

Gag.

[rubato]

While I totally disagree with most of your points Dave, you have my profound admiration for your courage in posting your views for all to debate here.

And so like our respect for "Eddie the Eagle". Putting it all out there in a hopeless cause.

yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

Dave raises some very valid points.

I saw Biden's performance. Blatant political demagoguery of the most shameless sort. (If anyone feels inspired by that comment to reply that Republicans also engage in shameless demagoguery, let me save you the keystrokes and stipulate to that.)

Whenever the Dems want to pay back their big buck public employee union boss contributors, they always wave the bloody shirt of "cops, firemen and teachers" as though these benighted souls are the only public employees that could be let go to trim state and city budgets...

The facts are quite different. Some interesting data from The Census Bureau...

(BTW, it took me a considerable amount of time to locate this information, I first tried to get info just for San Francisco, then I tried the state of California...I tried numerous search combinations; I finally managed to find out from a Chronicle article that SF has approximately 27,000 city employees total, but I still have not been able to find a breakdown of how many cops, fire fighters, or teachers....If you thought that a search like "number of city employees San Francisco" or "number of police officers, San Francisco" would immediately pop up sites with that information, you'd be very much mistaken. Apparently state and local governments are going to great lengths to keep these numbers as buried as possible. Fortunately, the census bureau doesn't have a campaign contribution/butt covering agenda.)

The numbers I'll be quoting come from this link:

http://www2.census.gov/govs/apes/10stlus.txt

This represents the 2010 totals for all state and local government employees nationwide. (For convenience, I'm going to use the full time numbers; you can also see the substantial number of part time employees as well.)

Also, if you'd like to see the numbers broken down into just state and local only, you can see that at this link:

http://www.census.gov/govs/apes/

Total Number of State and local government employees 14,775,679

Now let's look first at the police:

Police Protection Total 908,215
Police Officers Only 689,614
Other Police Employees 218,601

Well, first of all, the 900K number represents only a little over 6% of the total. But hang about, what's this I see? For every 3 police officers, (which remember includes all officers, including the entire brass hierarchy; not just front line cops) there is 1 "other" employee. One non-cop for every three cops being employed by the police departments....

I don't know about you, but if I were a Mayor/Governor who cared about the well being of the citizens of my city/state, and I felt absolutely compelled to save money by cutting from this 6% percent of my personnel, I'd take a long hard look at those "other" employees, (as well as the number of lieutenants, captains, and deputy chiefs I had on the payroll) before I laid off a single cop on the beat....

Now let's look at the Fire Fighters:

Fire Protection Total 324,828
Firefighters Only 300,021
Other Fire Employees 24,807

Well lookie here:

Firefighters represent about 2% of the total number of employees. (Again, including the brass)

BUT

Let's have a nice round of applause for the fire departments, for managing to keep their administrative and support personnel to firefighter ratio to a number that is something other than completely ridiculous....(Some folks from the Police departments ought to stop by and take notes)

Next, elementary and secondary education:

Elementary & Secondary Education Total 6,129,400
Elem & Sec Instructional Employees 4,402,466
Elem & Sec Other Employees 1,726,934

Well teachers, unlike (cops or certainly firefighters) definitely represent a significant percentage of the total employees...About 41% of the total...

But once again, we have a 3-1 (actually it's a little worse than that) ratio of teachers to administrators and support....

Anyone starting to see a pattern here?

Again, a responsible mayor or governor would be taking a long hard look at those 1.7+ million "other" employees before yanking a single teacher out of a class room....

But I saved the best for last...


Higher Education, (State and city colleges and universities)

Higher Education Total 1,490,438
Higher Ed Instructional Employees 493,916
Higher Ed Other Employees 996,522

Wowsers...

I've been mocking the Police Departments and Education Departments for their outrageous support and supervisory to frontline employee ratios, but they're miserly penny pinchers compared to what's going on in public state and city colleges and universities...TWICE as many folks employed in support and admin as there are instructors....

If I were a governor or a mayor looking for a place to trim personnel, that would be what I would call a "target rich" opportunity....

There are just about as many people employed as "other" in higher education as there are frontline cops and firefighters, total, combined....

So when the Vice President tells us that without this 35 billion dollar cash infusion, states and localities are going to have no choice but to make our wives, daughters and mothers more vulnerable to being raped, or our houses more likely to burn down, or our kids unable to learn how to spell their names...

He is blowing huge clouds of thick, heavy, Cubano Cigar smoke up our collective keisters....

On top of all this, the whole approach is unsustainable and bassackwards...it's the kind of "solution" one would expect from folks who know nothing about economics but a great deal about how pay back their political cash cows and demagogue issues by trying to scare the public...

They did the same thing with hundreds of billions in the MOAP, and accomplished nothing...

To draw an analogy to illustrate the flaw in this approach, (for those for whom it is not immediately obvious) think of the city and state governments as retail stores..

The Obama Administration's idea of how to stop the stores from going under and how to keep the store clerks employed is to take federal money (actually borrow it) to pay the store clerks salaries...

Uhh, I hate to be the one to point this out, but that ain't gonna solve the problem...(in fact it doesn't even remotely relate to solving the problem....)

The problem, is not enough paying customers buying enough merchandise in the stores...(In the case of city and state governments, the "customers" are taxpayers; individual and business, paying into local and state government coffers)

Here's a radical thought...

How about we put in place policies and incentives that will address that end of the problem? You know, the part of the equation that would actually solve the problem... rather than just buy time with borrowed money, until we have to buy more time with more borrowed money?

Had this been done with the original stimulus package, we wouldn't even be talking today about Son Of MOAP...

[Gob]

From a personal perspective, I can certainly agree with Jim's main point here.

Working in health I am constantly appalled by the number of meaningless middle management posts we have. Usually these are created for clinicians who are too incompetent, lazy or dangerous to let near clients. They get shuffled off into little offices where they work on "research" or "policy" or "staff development". The worse type are those who get into "Accreditation", as not only do they get in the way, they have power over work and workplaces. These rolls are normally saved for the real nasty buggers who no one likes.

[quaddriver]

Ok DGS posted some stuff (which I agree with btw), and after being imprecisely told he is wrong, LJ backs it up, and no one disagrees.

What should we conclude? that the facts magically became true after LJ posted? That you now agree with DGS?

Sorta confused here?

But anyways, now that it is accepted as fact, whaddya all say about the OP? A horrible sitch we find ourselves in eh?

[Gob]

This the sort of thing you were talking about Jim?

A police force which is having to find £134m of savings has spent £100,000 on artwork for its new headquarters.



Greater Manchester Police (GMP)'s new £64m head office in Newton Heath will replace its current Old Trafford base.

The two murals - costing £60,500 and £40,500 - commemorate the father of modern policing Sir Robert Peel. They will hang in the building's entrances.

The force said the pieces of work were "an integral part of the interior design and complete the building".

A spokeswoman added: "They represent the history of GMP, capture values that our staff and officers hold dear and are designed to motivate.

"They are iconic pieces in a new force headquarters that will be a point of interest to the public and all its visitors."

GMP has to save £134m by 2015. Almost 3,000 jobs - split between officers and civilian staff - are expected to be shed over the next four years.

Work began on the new building before the government spending cuts. The majority of funding is from Greater Manchester Police Authority (GMPA).

Up to 1,000 members of staff are due to work at the new site. Some will start moving in by the end of this year.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-ma ... r-15420615

[Lord Jim]

That would be one example of clear ridiculousness Strop, and there are a lot of anecdotal examples of local governments spending absurd sums of money on individual projects...

The City That Used To Know How recently spent over $567,000 building a wheel chair access ramp to the President of the Board Of Supervisors Dais and the clerk's desk...

And it still ain't finished:

The Board of Supervisors is set to move back into its historic City Hall legislative chambers Tuesday after a $567,735 makeover to make the president's dais and clerk's desk accessible for wheelchair users and to comply with federal disability rules.

Well, the president's desk isn't accessible - yet.

Still not finished is the specially fabricated bronze handrail that will go up the side of the 10-foot ramp to where the board president sits. That is set to be installed when the supervisors are on winter recess and until it is, officials don't want people in wheelchairs to navigate the ramp, said Susan Mizner, director of the Mayor's Office on Disability.

The last supervisor to use a wheelchair was Michaela Alioto-Pier, who left the board in January and never was able to access the president's desk.

The project involved lowering the president's dais to two steps from five so it now sits 12 inches above floor level, and building a ramp 10 feet long to the dais. In addition, the clerk's podium was lowered one step to floor level and moved 14 inches closer toward the center of the room.[ And they were able to do this for just 567K? Such a deal...]

And all this had to be done under the watchful eye of preservationists to ensure that the integrity of the national landmark was kept intact.

"We're really proud of how the project turned out,"[I'd be keen to learn by what bizarre set of metrics she has managed to reach that conclusion] City Administrator Amy Brown told City Insider on Friday. "We preserved the beautiful and unique historical features of the room while making the podium fully accessible, and that, we feel, sends a really important and powerful message that we're fully complying with the law and that there's really, truly access for all to that space."

The cost breakdown for of the long-debated project: $170,641 in architectural and engineering work; $49,824 for oversight by preservationists; $201,678 for labor; $25,200 for materials; $49,000 to fabricate the bronze handrail; and $20,350 to handle and dispose of hazardous materials. Then there was the $51,042 cost to temporarily relocate the weekly meetings to a hearing room two floors up.


While the chambers were off-limits to the public for the duration of the project, the city also upgraded the long-outdated audio-visual equipment at a cost of $131,680. Crews also took the opportunity to give the chambers a thorough dusting, to change the 128 lightbulbs in the chandeliers and to touch up the paint and the like.

- Rachel Gordon

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... z1be9xuVjp

But leaving these outrageous and amusing anecdotal spendthrift examples aside , my larger point is that the overall figures indicate that there are plenty of ongoing systemic personnel costs that state and local governments can look at cutting before they have to start firing front line first responders or teachers.

[Grim Reaper]

Ok DGS posted some stuff (which I agree with btw), and after being imprecisely told he is wrong, LJ backs it up, and no one disagrees.

Because dgs49 didn't really say much beyond "hurr the President is a liar" that could actually be discussed. And of course he threw a little tantrum after being reminded of the big lie told by the previous person in office.

[Liberty1]

Besides allof the arguments about BO and Bidens lies, they can't even get it past their own senate.

[Grim Reaper]

So not being able to turn something into a law automatically makes it a lie? Interesting, and I bet it somehow doesn't apply to Republican presidents.