"For The People"

San Diego Unified School District just issued 600 “pink slips” and while some of the concern expressed has been about the effect on education, virtually all of the anguish expressed by those affected, by the media and by the school district has been over the effect on those who will lose their jobs.

The New York Times has a piece about a couple in Ohio. Both of them work for the city government and consider themselves fortunate to be doing so because the employment picture in their town consists of “…a thin crust of low-paying service work that makes public-sector jobs look great in comparison.” The whole piece is about everyone in town wanting to work for the city because the city has the only “middle class” jobs in town.

We seem to be losing sight of what government is supposed to do.

Government has, as its sole purpose, providing services to the public, to the people it serves. In order to do that it needs to hire some employees, but it is the public which is supposed to be the beneficiary of government.

We have turned that principle on its head. Government now exists to provide good jobs for its employees, and the taxpayers exist for the purpose of providing the money to support the government in paying for and maintaining the way of life of those employees. The public sector workers are now the beneficiaries of government and it is the taxpayers who work to support those public sector employees.

In making decisions on budgets and revenues, we no longer ask what the public is willing to pay, or what level of service the public needs, we ask what monetary pay and level of benefits the public sector employees demand and we attempt to raise taxes to meet that demand.

I have no problem with the idea that in times of economic stress the government may need to provide some temporary employment for stimulus, but this is not the issue when we are looking at teachers and a city which provides the only high paying jobs in an entire city. Government needs to pay competitive wages to attract competent workers, but why is a city paying significantly higher than prevailing wages, and why does any government allow employees to negotiate wages against the taxpayers’ interests?

We need to return to governing for the benefit of the taxpayer.

Nuclear Watchdog

The developing disaster in Japan seems like a good time to mention an agency of the US government which has gotten too little recognition for a job very, very well done for many years; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. During the oil disaster in the gulf there was much talk about, “Well, this is the natural result of government regulation.” I kept looking just a few miles up the coast at San Onofre and thinking, “Well, no it’s not.”

Three years ago the NRC caught the operators at San Onofre in some minor safety procedural violations. I read the press release and the infractions were very minor, but the reaction of the NRC was to place full-time, on-site inspectors in the plant for two years to assure proper training and supervision in the plant.

What do they do about major violations? Well, they actually don’t have procedures for major violations, because they are so good at catching and correcting minor violations that major ones simply never develop.

It was the NRC which stepped in at Three Mile Island and prevented that episode from being much worse then it was, and they learned a couple of things from that event. One is that the reactors had been designed with principles that were more pessimistic than actuality. It had been assumed that if fuel elements were exposed to air that they would melt completely and catastrophically, and that did not happen. The reactor actually turned out to be safer than it was supposed to be.

The other thing they learned was that they needed to be more proactive in monitoring the operation of nuclear plants, and they have never slacked off from that lesson. We have not only never had another Three Mile Island, we have never come within shouting distance of such an event, and we have the governmental NRC to thank for that.

My objection to the use of nuclear energy does not revolve around the safety of nuclear plants, and I don’t know that I’m all that anxious about where they are located. Certainly right on top of a fault line is not a good place to build anything, but when backup systems are properly maintained, and with the NRC monitoring their operation, I’m not concerned about the viability of nuclear plants in California. My objection is in terms of the disposition of the spent fuel. Until we have a way to permanently and safely dispose of the waste product of these reactors, we simply do not need to be expanding the use of them.

Unmitigated Disaster

Scenes from Japan will just rip the heart right out of your chest. The most moving are from British journalists, whose reports seem both visually and verbally unscripted. One phrase which particularly struck me was a reference to "a body is removed with as mich dignity as an old blanket can afford." Their focus is on what they are looking at, unlike American journalists whose effort is to dazzle the viewer with scripted prose and camerawork employing closeups of details. At any rate, the devastation in that country is awful.

NCAA Brackets

I am not among those who believe that San Diego state should have had a #1 seed, just because we had a better record than Duke. I am delighted with our placement in the tournament. My brackets can be found online, and I'll leave a bracket link at the top of my blog until the championship is determined.

Needless to say, I have the Kansas Jayhawks shown in the championship spot.

Supporting Democracy

To all of those who are clamoring for us to increase our already profligate use of military power by applying it to the situation in Libya, may I point out that doing so based on the grand premise that "we have to support those who are bravely engaged in a life or death battle in the noble quest for freedom and democracy" would demand that we do likewise for those who are engaged in the same battle in Bahrain, where we actually have military bases. That would mean that we would be engaged in combat with the armed forces of Saudi Arabia. How does that sound to you?

My Vote On Nuclear Energy

I graduated from Nuclear Power School in the Navy, which doesn't mean that I really know much about nuclear reactors. That was in 1963 and the pressurized water reactors I trained on as an operator are much different than the power reactors used today. Still, I do know that when you are injecting sea water into a reactor you are no longer trying to save the reactor. You have written the unit off as a total loss and are trying to save the civilians who live in the area, and you are by no means certain that you will be able to do that.

That being said, while I have not been in favor of increasing our use of nuclear energy, it has not been the plant safety issue that has been my principal reason for opposing it. Until we come up with a way to dispose of the spent fuel, other than storing it in what amounts to large swimming pools adjacent to the reactors which generated it, we should hold off on building any new reactor plants.

Summer, where are you????

Anyone else dying for summer? I am. I just need to hang 

on a few more months. Here are a few cute summer idea's 

I came across while visiting my fellow bloggers.

                                         

        Isn't this lemonade stand stinkin cute? I want one for my kids. The only problem is that I don't really want them selling lemonade in our neighborhood, we don't live in one of the best neighborhood's around. Is it even safe for my kids anywhere out side our house anymore? The times have defiantly changed from when I grew up.

I thought this was a cute summer gift idea from eighteen25

I love this summer wreath, very clever and time consuming. I think I might just make one for my front porch this summer. Visit ourbestbites to see how they made it.

                Dear summer, hurry up and get here my kids are going stir crazy which means I am going crazy. 

I really need you. XOXO