It's Not What You Say

And it isn't how you say it. It's what you don't say.

Case in point: not too long ago a city councilman was quoted in the Blue Bag Rag as saying "there is a lot of demand for services," without any evidence to back that up. How are the "demands" issued? To whom? Exactly who gets these? Name. Position. Who? Where can we get a copy of these demands? Where is the process for issuing demands documented? Is it publicly available? What is the definition of "a lot?" In the absence of clear, on point answers to these and other questions we're left to conclude we've just been treated to another politician spouting political bullshit in support of something that is out of touch with the public. But of course, nothing was said about this.

The same Rag has the City Manager confessing that staff are looking into any and every way they can possibly jack up the millage ceiling, with a rate hike to immediately follow. A favored approach is for the city management (bureaucrats) to bypass a referendum and unilaterally change the charter, eliminating the ceiling. There is also some blather about avoiding a decrease in city services. OK, what isn't said is how many of these "services" are the result of profligate spending of one-time COVID funds. Of course not. That would suggest that these "services" should go away, so let's not bring that up.

This "we don't need no stinkin' referendum" scheme was discussed on social media (surprise, surprise). The mayor chimed in and at no point clearly and definitively stated that there would be no rate hike, no ceiling lifted without a referendum, as was promised when the city was being sold to the voters. Instead, the mayor was crying poor-mouth because the founders of this city committed, then and for the future, that this city would be limited and spending would stay under control. The political blather sank into a claim that the State Farm complex would have been apartments were it not for the city, and yet, because of the city they're building apartment towers at State Farm. Can any politician put together two sentences without a contradiction? And nothing was said about keeping commitments made to the voters. There was something said about "solving this" (whatever that means) before leaving office, but that assumes there won't be a recall vote. If citizens must demand that their voices be heard at the ballot box do not be surprised if they rise up and do so. 

Rebuilding Trust.

This could go pretty much anywhere, right? Well, it couldn't go to TOD because to rebuild trust you had to have had some in the first place, and that doesn't apply. But it does apply with the Fourth Estate, and no, this is not about the reluctance of major outlets to endorse the political candidate they clearly and consistently support. Nope, this is about how it came to be that this could be an issue at all. They have abandoned objectivity, even knowledge, to make themselves the handmaiden of a political agenda, a political party. It is the words, the adjectives and adverbs, that skew any story favorable to one view, but it is also a casual dismissal of fact. 

This occurred recently in a letter to the editor of the AJC. Since the newspaper is a traditional news outlet, with journalists, and journalistic ethics and practices, they cannot cloak themselves in Section 230 like platforms that merely allow others a distribution channel get away with. After all, the newspaper is worthy of our trust, right? This trust extends to their selection and presentation of outside editorial content. They own their decision and it's their headline in boldface. An outside author does not absolve them of their responsibility. To their profession. To their readers. To the truth. A bad choice is more than a breach of trust, it is blatant propaganda. We cannot stop the lies, they will not rebuild trust.

And so they publish a letter: "Roe v. Wade got it right: Put trust in women" which riffs on the factually incorrect assertion that Roe was about a woman's choice to choose elective abortion. It wasn't. Didn't know that, did you? The summary section of the majority opinion clearly states:

For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician.

As Ginsburg noted, Roe does not confer any rights to women, instead it protects the rights of physicians to practice medicine. In Roe, the woman is never mentioned in the absence of the doctor, the doctor however, well, read it for yourself. 

When you're thinking about women's choice, you are probably thinking about Casey, the court's attempt to fix Roe. After belaboring the importance, the sanctity of stare decisis, the majority hacked away at Roe, leaving what they contend to be Roe's central tenet: elective abortion. It was an attempt to throw out the bathwater while saving the baby, to douse it with holy water and re-name it a "woman's choice." The text of Roe did not change and the intense hypocrisy of the court's simultaneous adoration of, and disregard for, stare decisis was pure foreshadowing.

As Ginsburg also noted, Roe was a clear case of judicial over-reach on a collision course with the constitution. In abandoning judicial restraint, the court wrote new law, a job best left to elected legislatures. The modifications in Casey (e.g., first trimester changed to viability) served to prove that the judiciary should not be creating law, especially not the Supreme Court as the only remedies to their mistakes are constitutional amendment or the Court itself. The latter is what happened in Dobbs.

Once the initial shock subsides, for many it hasn't and for some it never will, most will realize that Ginsburg was also correct in saying that in Roe the Court should have sent the matter back to the states where our duly elected representatives craft laws serving the electorate. This is what passes for democracy in the U.S. The impatient see this as untenable, slow and likely to fail (by their definition of failure). But it has worked before. Prior to the '60s & '70s and the women's movement, no-fault divorce didn't exist and most often proof of adultery was required to secure that parting of ways. Hobbled by lack of financial independence, women were at a severe disadvantage. Today every state in the union has no-fault divorce laws on the books. No federal law, no Supreme Court decision required. We would already be there with abortion had Roe not been mishandled. We'd have ratified the Equal Rights Amendment as well.

Quiet Firing.

Much like quiet quitting (AKA "slacking off"), quiet firing has been around for some time and heretofore was simply known as "de-hiring."  This approach to encouraged unemployment is to make certain conditions of working undesirable or unpleasant to the point that the targeted employee, or employees, up and quit. Post pandemic this has become much easier, especially in high tech, as employees had become quite well adjusted to [not] working from home. Back to office, or office repopulation, has been met with employee resistance with many threatening to quit. Just as an aside, when any employee threatens to quit the proper response has always been to accept that offer. Your team and your company are better off without them. What has changed is a bit of a role reversal with companies enforcing policies that some say have the intent of driving employees out, much like a layoff but with considerably better severance from the company's point of view. As with any right-sizing, the impact on employee morale is somewhat negative. 

It is interesting to view the current USPS fuster cluck through this lens. 

But first, some context. The USPS has two types of employees: career; and non-career. Career employees are permanent and receive federal benefits even though some work part-time. Non-career employees are temporary, perform the same work as career employees but at a lower pay. As you might imagine, career employees are virtually impossible to get rid of, while non-career are inherently temporary. Despite ongoing, long term efforts to shift operations towards the more cost-effective non-career workers, they remain less than 30% of the USPS workforce. 

Now we get to de-hiring. 

A common approach is to move the job location. You still have your job, with pay and benefits, but you work out of a different location. In the tech world, this is moving your office from your basement back to the corporate facility just a painful commute away. One might view the USPS restructuring, consolidating dispersed sorting operations into a more centralized and efficient facility as a way to shed staff, particularly of the career variety. It is highly unlikely this is a primary motivation, but is likely a beneficial consequence. 

Now we get to politics.

While this change was clearly intended to have consequences (e.g., improved efficiency) there have been some less desirable impacts, notably delivery delays and failures. The finger was immediately pointed at these new facilities, but is that a knee-jerk reaction? Data are thin on the ground, but recent examples, numbering in the single digits but relevant to our area, indicate that the Palmetto facility is not to blame and the fault lies with the incumbent local offices. Seems that one individual needing to correspond with the DeKalb courthouse on a routine basis sent a certified, return-receipt mail to the courthouse, resulting in a tracking showing a 2-day delay to get into the system, but an 18 hour turnaround from Brookhaven to Decatur, where the mail went missing for a month, beyond the system's tracking window. Even when finally delivered the return-receipt never was. Efforts to contact the Decatur post office to resolve the issue were fruitless, but this is in fact where the mail was embargoed. Not Palmetto. 

Now let's fire up the conspiracy train. Why would this happen? Perhaps morale is low, particularly with career employees who see jobs moving away from their little part of heaven. After all, a career job with USPS is a sweet gig, but do you really want to move to Palmetto to keep it? And here's the great thing: you can hardly blame it on demographics as Palmetto and DeKalb are quite similar. How often does that happen around here?

The things the USPS are doing are the same things that any company in a competitive situation would do, but it seems leadership are a bit out of touch with how entrenched employees might "resist" the changes. But this is not a competitive situation as the USPS is an "independent" agency of the executive branch and is the only such agency explicitly authorized by the US constitution. Therefore, very, very political. It should come as no surprise this issue is being misrepresented for individual political gain, even by politicians who claim they will fix things. Nothing will get fixed until they shut up and move on.

Student Driver? Driving Students?

Why do they do this? It isn't as if they free up an entire lane by blocking the bicycle lane. 

Do The Bicycle Fascists Know This?

Does make you wonder sometimes, doesn't it? What exactly would have to happen to actually get police patrols in our residential areas? 

Have We Gotten This Petty?

That appears to be the case. 

Torn Apart Over Trump

The sad thing is that it is likely the person who did this is old enough to vote but clearly not mature enough to make a reasonable choice. Of course that doesn't matter because we're not being offered a reasonable choice by either of the two major parties. Yes, yes, that statement will piss off the partisans, both red and blue, but about a third of voters don't drink either KoolAid and they're kinda pissed at the crap candidates curated by these parties. Vandals and vandalized, it doesn't matter. They both suck. 

Guest Post: Informed Recipient

As noted earlier, the USPS is a struggle bus that stops at no good locations. But here's an idea for transforming Informed Delivery into something useful. Something others could and some do.

This estate is gonna be the death of me yet. I swear. Finally got the Final Report in. How do I know? Well, UPS reliably delivers and offers tracking. Then, as they should, the Probate Court cashed the check. That's right, every move you make, there's a check they take. Not that that necessarily means anything, at least not for certain. Now here is one thing the Probate Court does really, really well: they answer the phone. And you can talk to a real live person who, given the proper info, can tell you the current status of the estate. I know folks just love to bitch about government incompetence but they better not be dissin' DeKalb Probate.

Now it was time to get this done and dusted, so I filed the petition to close the estate. Much like the final report it was: complete the petition; get supporting docs; write a check; and deliver via UPS. UPS got it there overnight with confirmation of delivery. Probate cashed the check 5-7 business days later. Then. Nothing. Not for another week. Not for another two weeks. Then three. Before it was an entire month I call. Same experience as before. Come to find out the judge had signed off on the petition and it had mailed out the same day. USPS. I'm subscribed to "Informed Delivery" and though it has been over two weeks there has been no delivery and no information. 

So I got to thinking if I've signed up to be informed why do they restrict it to delivery? Keep in mind, what they show in that email is only loosely related to what they put in my mailbox and they have never informed me that a neighbors mail would wind up in my box though it happens all the time. What seems reasonable is that the USPS could inform me when they get any mail, except maybe "resident" junk mail, that is addressed to me. As soon as they stamp that postmark an email should be headed my way. After all they have my physical address and my email address. That way I would know that the Probate Court had sent something my way. 

You might argue that would expose the incredibly long time local mail takes to go across town, but we already know that from the postmark, which is timestamped, and the time we pull it out of the mailbox. There may be some concern that notification of mail entering the system that somehow never exits the system. Lost mail, never found, but now we'd know. Heaven forbid.

Where's Martha?

Artificial Intelligence?

Natural stupidity? Core ignorance? [D|M]isinformation? Maybe all of the above? 

We're in the midst of one of the most objectionable election seasons in a lifetime, even Biden's long, long lifetime, and it comes with Helene-ic floods of blather that are just plain wrong. Only thing worse is the pushback with the Biden/Harris tribe branding anything they don't want to hear as "disinformation." Even when they are legit questions with actual, factual answers. Just answers they don't want to say out loud. 

How did we get here? 

Probably started with the wordsmiths, the purveyors of news, olds, the finders of facts and liars of lies. Yep. The media. And they've been subtle, which makes them incredibly dangerous. We've been given this almond-scented dose from the left-leaning Huffington Post:

"a Food and Drug Administration-approved update to the Mammography Quality Standards Act"

Why is this dangerous? Because it is either profound, entrenched ignorance from those who should know more and better, or it is intentional subversive propaganda. And it has been going on for so long that most folks don't even see it for what it is. Do you? You see, the FDA is a federal administration and part of the executive branch. As such, the FDA does not create congressional acts, and congress neither seeks nor needs the FDA's approval because it is the FDA's job to establish regulations conforming to the MQSA. The MQSA passed by congress. Who knew? Apparently NOT the fourth estate, the self-appointed, self-proclaimed defenders of our democracy. 

We're in trouble comrades.

Buck Up, Buttercup!

Two Bucks, Chuck

Martha and Her Entourage

Criminal Minds

Do you watch it, the TV show? It is a fiction, or so one would hope, involving the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, which is in fact a real thing. If Wikipedia is to be considered a reliable source, BAU operation is summarized as:

The BAU focuses on preventing targeted violence by identifying concerning behaviors. For example, active shooters meticulously plan and prepare for acts of violence. Throughout this process, they frequently exhibit worrying behaviors, characterized as observable and identifiable actions suggesting potential progression towards targeted violence. While no individual behavior definitively signifies an individual's trajectory towards committing targeted violence, the presence of multiple behaviors may warrant attention and concern.

It may come as a surprise that the FBI has been studying the issue of School Shooters for some time now and have published a document: The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective. Now this document is over twenty years old as a preface is provided by Janet Reno and is based on work beginning in 1999, so there has been plenty of time for this information to be disseminated throughout educational and security communities.

Perhaps it has.

It certainly has not made an impact on mass media with the FBI noting that "[n]ews coverage magnifies a number of widespread but wrong [...] impressions of school shooters," citing specific misinformation: "school violence is an epidemic"; and "easy access to weapons is the THE most significant risk factor." [emphasis in the original]. On the contrary they note "[un]usual or aberrant behaviors, interests, hobbies, etc., are hallmarks of the student destined to become violent," which seems intuitively obvious. There is a strong suggestion that biased media coverage also leads to knee-jerk reactions, but counters with H. L. Mencken's aphorism that "for every problem, there is a solution which is simple, neat, and wrong." Fair enough, but perhaps a nod to Occam's Razor is also in order, after all, adolescent Black females aren't shooting up schools. Finding out why one particular demographic seems to predominate should gather the attention of researchers. Regardless, this document is must-read for anyone with adolescent children in schools, particularly public schools. It will keep you up at night and might have you asking pointed questions at the next school open house.

A couple of sections are particularly concerning. The first fright is Family Dynamics with almost every item being a symptom of, or exacerbated by, the newest fad: gentle parenting. Truly terrifying is the section on Personality Traits and Behavior. Most of these are what you would call "teenager," but what might happen is a perfect storm as many of these traits feed on one another. Others are more concerning, including narcissism, entitlement, pathological need for attention, and anger issues, all of which seem to have become increasing issues with adolescents over the years. In addition, media: TV; video games; and the internet are mentioned, maybe even featured. A particular issue is "fascination with violence-filled entertainment," so if your adolescent enjoys watching "Criminal Minds" they very well may have one.