Delaware elites posturing in public while I get fries with that

This is actually the problem with corporatist government and centralized planning by elites who will never miss a meal in their entire lives.

The News Journal (which at least acknowledged its conflict of interest in both sponsoring and writing a puff piece on the same event) "reports" on Wednesdy's "job forum" at UD.

Here's the real takeaway from the event, the list of panelists:

Governor Jack Markell

His record: thousands of jobs lost on his watch; millions wasted in bad loans/lost tax revenues to Fisker, Bloom, Bluewater; tens of millions spent on corporate welfare; no raises ever proposed for State employees; government via illegal task forces and secret AG opinions; gutting of Coastal Zone Act for fun and profit; don't even get me started on his education "reform"

State Board of Education Chair Teri Gray

Her record as a Markell appointee: well, basically, there isn't one, because the current State Board of Education has no real power, no real education policy-making authority, and when it does vote, it votes exactly like the Secretary of Education tells it to

Nicholas Marsini, PNC Delaware regional president

His reason for being on the panel: PNC co-sponsored the event; large banks and financial organizations actually own the State of Delaware and the Delaware Democratic Party; what banks want in Delaware from the government they get, because they paid for it.

Robert Atkins, President of Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

His credentials: another "President" of yet another "Foundation" that exists (you guessed it) off corporate and government funding to make recommendations that are, you know, palatable to corporations and the government.

Robert Schwartz, Harvard Graduate School of Education

His institution, Harvard, recently said that 85% of its applicants (of whom it only accept 15%) are fully qualified to go to Harvard, and where the median grade for all classes is an A-, certainly has the foundation for discussing real-world kinds of educational issues.

Now let's think about who wasn't sitting at the table:

1. No actual representative of a real Delaware-owned business with employment needs.
2. No actual representative of Delaware public or higher education (to include Del Tech, the main purveyor of vocational training in the State.)
3. No representative whatever from a labor union or trade organization.
4. Nobody whose business depends on hiring low-wage, unskilled, or semi-skilled workers.
5. No students, no graduates, no workers, no unemployed workers.
6. Nobody who could actually tell you jack about the process of being laid off and retrained in Delaware.
7. Nobody from the General Assembly who would actually have to craft any laws or policies to change things.
8. Nobody from any state or urban area or even foreign country who actually has a workable plan in place to deal with these problems.
9. No actual economist.

I could go on, but you get the point. What we have here is the usual corporatist elite mentally masturbating in public about what would serve its interests best, in an atmosphere completely devoid of ANY actual expertise about the subject at hand.

And this (even allowing for both its co-sponsorhip and Democratic Party house organ status) is supposed to be news?

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici...

Search This Blog