Author Archives: eehines

Federal Workers Working Remote

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I agree with the concept, sort of.

The Federal Government Initiative, an NGO government watchdog, has noticed that current federal telework practices, implemented during the Wuhan Virus situation, are associated with a dramatic reduction in paid leave used by the federal workforce. The FGI has expressed misgivings.

Before the federal government engages in expanded telework in perpetuity, its impact should be investigated more fully by agency Inspectors General, Congress, and other oversight entities[.]

I agree that many—most, in fact—nearly all—Federal workers should be allowed to work remotely, and in perpetuity. Remotely, mind you, not via telework.

The Federal offices, especially the large ones, like Education, Interior(!), Commerce, Federal Reserve, Treasury, and agencies like CFTC, SEC, CFPB (these are not at all exhaustive lists) should be removed from DC and scattered around the middle-sized and small towns of middle America, of flyover country. Those offices should be among the people they serve, us average Americans, and away from the overweening influence of the bubble-residing coastal elites.

Here’s the deal, though: all of the employees should be required to come back to the office. No more teleworking. The remoteness of their work will consist of working in the small towns of the Midwest, the north, the Southeast, and the Southwest. They’ll get used to it, though, and they’ll learn that middle America isn’t all that remote, after all.

Think about Leaving

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Portland business owners are more than fed up with the level of crime destroying their businesses. Their idea of who has the solution is misguided, though.

Frustrated business owners are calling on city and county leaders to do more to combat rising property crime in Portland….

This situation is not solely on the heads of Portland’s city councilmen or the county commissioners. The business’ fellow residents of Portland keep electing those councilmen and commissioners, politicians who’ve demonstrated their lack of commitment to order and rule of law.

Why would any business owner want as his customers folks who so consciously approve of and vote for such politicians? Those are the voters, after all, who then vandalize, rob, and otherwise trash their businesses. There are plenty of jurisdictions that do regard rule of law to be a Good Thing, and those jurisdictions have sound economies with plenty of room for businesses currently domiciled in lawless Portland.

Projecting

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That’s what Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is doing vis-à-vis the United States.

Washington went the furthest. … Some “unnamed officials” from the Pentagon actually threatened to inflict a “decapitation blow” on the Kremlin, but, in fact, it is a threat to physically eliminate the head of the Russian state[.]

This is the Russian thinking out loud about what he and/or his BFF and boss Russia’s President Vladimir Putin have in mind regarding our own government.

Another bit of Lavrovian projecting:

It is no longer a secret to anyone that the strategic goal of the United States and its NATO allies is “victory over Russia on the battlefield” as a mechanism for significantly weakening or even destroying our country.
…
…Washington is also solving an important geopolitical task—to break the traditional ties between Russia and Europe and to further subjugate the European satellites.

This, again, is the Russian thinking out loud about what the men of the barbarian government has in mind for themselves regarding Europe and Putin’s lost (and to be recovered and then expanded) empire. He’s also assuming that because the barbarian would do such a thing, other nations, per force, must be intent on those things.

I Don’t Watch the NBA

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I stopped watching the NBA years ago when one team’s General Manager tweeted in support of Hong Kong’s then-freedom protestors. That GM was promptly canceled, not just by the Left, but by the NBA (he was forced to resign), as players, owners, sports commentators came out of the woodwork all yelling that there was money to be made in the People’s Republic of China; how dare this GM endanger their pocketbooks like that. The point of the freedom protestors’ protests has since been amply demonstrated by the men of the People’s Republic of China government.

The NBA’s utter disregard for morality, for anything resembling common human decency, continues. Enes Kanter Freedom, late of the NBA, has the tale.

The NBA [is the] “No Boundaries Association.” The NBA gives free propaganda to a genocidal regime[.]

This is the sort of thing that has drawn Freedom’s disgust, and mine:

NBA league owners all allegedly have over $10 billion invested in China and a video from the Washington Wizards showing Chinese Ambassador Qin Gang shooting free throws.

Freedom went on.

When the Muslims are being literally slaughtered in concentration camps in China, you [Adam Silver] are silent, and not only are you silent, but you’re literally working with this genocidal regime. You’re literally working with the most brutal regime in the world hand-in-hand and trying to make money and business over there.
Please look me in the eye and say you don’t know nothing about the 3 million people in concentration camps in China [who] are getting tortured and raped every day. Shame on you.

Freedom is being generous. Of course Silver knows that. Every man and woman in the NBA knows that. They don’t care. There’s money to be made.

This is another reason to ignore the National Basketball/No Boundaries Association and everything its members do or say.

Happy New Year

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Originally published in 2012, I repeat it here.

This blogger hopes for increasing prosperity for all in the new year just begun.  Following are some additional thoughts, from those better than me.

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
–William Makepeace Thackeray

New Year’s Resolution: to tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.
–James Agate

Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with resolution.  Employ it, and thou art wise; be wise, and thou art happy.
–Akhenaton

Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.
–Cavett Robert

And ye, who have met with Adversity’s blast,
And been bow’d to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass’d
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury –
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen.
–Thomas Hood

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.  Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives…not looking for flaws, but for potential.
–Ellen Goodman

New Year’s Day: now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
–Mark Twain

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve.  Middle age is when you’re forced to.
–Bill Vaughn

This bit of ’70s-style wisdom:

A year from now, you’re gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.
–Phil McGraw

And finally,

Let our New Year’s resolution be this: we will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.
–Goran Persson