How do you plan on stimulating the economy?
Right or wrong, the checks are actually in the mail and local businesses are looking to grab that cash as quickly as they can. What do you think about the economic stimulus plan?
One McGovern down…
Former Sen. George McGovern, an early supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, urged her to drop out of the Democratic presidential race and endorsed her rival, Barack Obama.
Can’t be long now, what’s it going to be Jim?
But think of the children
I’ve been biting my tongue on the education funding issue for some time now, it’s an issue where I agree with too few locals to even bother with, but it’s really getting silly now. I just noticed on the Whos of Who-cester blog another call for more ‘strongly worded letters’, as if the solution to Worcester’s problems is paper cuts for politicians. Unfortunately things are starting to get disingenuous at an exponential rate and positive arguments are lining up to do more harm than good.
Over there Tracy writes:
At-Large Councilor Rick Rushton. His request that the School Department find five new places to cut spending make one wonder if he’s been anywhere near a school budget over the past six years. One suspects not. He’s standing in front of a skeleton, trying to cut more fat. It isn’t there.
- Are you telling me there is not one no-show job in the Worcester Public Schools?
- You’re telling me that kids on Olean St need a bus to West Tatnuck School? And the ones who walk need crossing guards, even though their parents are holding their precious little hands?
- That overcrowding is as relevant in HS as it is in elementary schools and reshuffling or even outsourcing to the colleges (the colleges that will do anything for the city if we back off PILOT foolishness), isn’t possible?
- How about energy costs? Are we working on cutting down plant costs overall?
- Meals? Are the foods we provide the best and most cost effective?
- And most importantly, can we guarantee that EVERY union member in the Worcester Public Schools is carrying his/her own weight?
There are six, since I know nobody on the council has the testicular fortitude necessary to tackle that last white elephant.
Bang for the buck, we’re looking down the barrel of one of the worst deals in history. I have zero interest in my son being educated simply to pass standardized tests in an authoritarian time warp. Good luck on the rest of this one kids, you’ve just crossed the line from concerned parents, to shills fueled by mock outrage.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Tips
Looks like its game over for sanity in the Woo. At last nights council meeting we saw a unanimous vote to adopt a new amendment expanding adult zoning just enough to keep the city from facing a slam dunk of a constitutional challenge. Of course this introduces a slew of new problems, but since they’re mostly logical and contradict the teachings of the infallible Chief Gemme, don’t expect anyone to notice.
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In other ridiculous news, the Council last night voted to apply for a 10 million dollar grant from the FAA for airport upgrades. What makes this confusing is it seems if we were to shutter the airport today we would be about 9 million in the hole to the FAA. Call me crazy but if we have a 9 mill balance sheet with the feds instead of taking another 10 might it make more sense to call it even and just turn the lights off? I know these monies don’t truly balance themselves out, but at what point do we start reeling this one in? I don’t follow airport happenings the way I should, all my airport info comes from Bill Randell these days, but this seems like one of those times when you sort of expect Kenny Rogers to show up and start singing the chorus from ‘The Gambler‘.
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Oh, and councilor Rosen is calling for a local hearing on marijuana decriminalization. Apparently years of research, overwhelming popular support and no end to the dollars flushed down the toilet is still not enough to convince some local leaders everything they were raised to believe about drugs is utter horse shit. No, what we need is the opportunity for Councilor Haller to trot out her Breault on a leash to make us look like back water buffoons in a public forum. sweet.
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Best of Worcester online
I don’t know this person, but her twitter feed and blog have been making me snort pretty consistently for a few weeks now.
So thanks AnnMarie, I hope the Lorazepam works out for you.
The Telegrams midlife career change
It’s kind of depressing when the newspaper business has come to the point where self-deprecation is perfectly acceptable, it’s no joke. Yesterdays Dianne Williamson column in the T&G tried to make light of the troubles the newspaper business is seeing.
Since the analysts predict that newspapers may soon be obsolete, it’s time to consider a new career. The only problem is, I have no skills that would qualify me for a real job.
It always strikes me as a little sad when I try to imagine what it must feel like to be stuck on a sinking ship. But the reality in this case is the ship didn’t get torpedoed the way many like to spin things, its sinking because the captain is asleep at the wheel.
What may be my biggest frustration where local business is concerned, is watching good business go bad and suffer simply because the owners didn’t want to learn new tricks. I’ve talked about this here before, in the form of the Tatnuck Bookseller. But a newspaper is something different, can anyone actually imagine a city the size of Worcester without a daily? Of course not and therein lies the rub. The T&G isn’t going anywhere, it’s just going to continue to get smaller both in scope and impact until it can be bought out by someone who cares less about local news than the Times, which is nearly impossible.
The unfortunate thing is it doesn’t have to be this way. Talk to anyone who’s over 35 in the newspaper business and you’ll get the same tired line about the internet being at fault for declining readerships, it’s code for ‘we’re old and the internet scares us’. All one has to do is take a quick glance at the T&G website and it becomes pretty clear they are willfully pissing potential revenue away. There’s no search engine optimization in play, the advertising is all local which means cheap and their headlines and ledes are written to hit with old ladies in Spencer instead of the news readers discovering and seeding stories via social bookmarking sites like digg, reddit and stumbleupon. And let us not forget the T&G employees who still publicly proclaim the internet to be some sort of fad. These problems can all be fixed, easily.
Last month the WSJ recorded 15 million unique page views, up 175 percent from the same period a year prior. This was probably both the biggest as well as worst reported story in this sector of the quarter, which shouldn’t be surprising, why would publishers want a reminder on how things should be done. Where’s the humor in that? It’s easier to just pretend that nobody reads the news anymore and spin it into a joke, right? If that’s the case then the jokes on us.
Pigeon-cam
Since it will probably be gone by the time anyone reads this, here’s a screencap of what appears to be a pigeons ass blocking the view of city hall.
Meet Ed’s brother
This morning while waiting for my coffee at the Bean Counter on Highland I was looking over their bulletin board when my eye caught an 8.5×11 piece of paper down at the bottom advertising an event for Ed O’Reilly, who I gather is running for Senate this year. The flier was rather atrocious, just a picture of Ed up top, and some huge, left justified black text. Intrigued by the terrible presentation, I read it.
I found myself invited to an event at the Library to get familiar with Ed’s positions. Fair enough. But the very last line read, and forgive me, I’m working off memory here
Come meet Ed’s brother. Sorry, Ed can’t make it.
What the fuck is that? Why would I want to meet Ed’s brother? Nothing against Ed’s sibling, I’m sure he’s a great guy, but isn’t Ed the one running for office here? What would compel anyone to go listen to a stand in discuss another guys positions, because the guy who should be there is too busy?
I wish you luck Ed, where ever you are, you’re going to need it.
WPS - Making life miserable one child at a time
I was just poking around the Worcester Public Schools website looking for the types of ‘fun’ we’ve banned in town. Spurred by this story in the Washington Post, I have a feeling my decision as to whether or not my son will attend public schools will hinge less on issues like funding and quite a bit more on the degree of bat shit insane authoritarianism ruling the day. While I couldn’t find out for sure if tag and dodge ball are banned in the WPS, I did find some things that made me giggle before getting mostly depressed.
Rule 15 of the WPS code is a great one:
Rule 15. - Cellular Telephones, Beepers, and Laser Pointing Devices
A student shall not possess a beeper, pager or other mobile telecommunications or two-way radio communications device of any type on school premises or at a school-sponsored situation, provided, however, that a student may possess a cellular telephone on school premises or at a school sponsored situation but may not use such cellular telephone during the hours school is in session or during a school sponsored situation. Any such device found in a locker may be considered to be in the possession of the student assigned to the locker for purposes of disciplinary action.
While I get the basic idea behind keeping mobiles out of the classroom, am I the only one who sees a problem with banning phones at a “school sponsored situation”, to be honest I don’t know what the hell a ‘situation’ is. But if I’m reading this right a kid could be disciplined for using a phone at a football game.
But if that isn’t weird enough how about this line of logic:
Although some parents and students feel it’s appropriate to have access to cell phones during the school day in case of emergencies and other school safety incidents, notifying family members immediately during the event can interfere in school officials addressing the incident in a safe and effective manner.
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Let’s pretend for a moment that a city HS was to have a real incident, do we really not want kids on the inside being able to phone out? Lets imagine a real deal school shooting, doesn’t the ability to communicate with people on the inside, in real time, make Police efforts easier? Or does a canned press statement by Rob Pezzella fix everything immediately?
This one was great too:
Canine Unit is helpful to keeping Drugs Off Grounds
The Worcester Police Department’s Canine Unit has been assisting the School Safety Office recently by participating in Operation DOG (Drugs Off Grounds). Officer Steve Cortes and one of his trained canine drug dogs (Bria) visited a high school and middle school within the last few weeks and showed school administrators how the special dog can detect or discover drugs in student lockers. We are sending a stern message to students and parents that drugs will not be tolerated on school property,and if they are found,long-term suspensions and/or law-enforcement involement will occur.
Operation DOG will continue for the remainder of the school year.
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I left the spelling and grammar errors in there on purpose, but only for the benefit of those of you who enjoy pointing out my terrible spelling and grammar. I was taught by the best, you see.
Anyways, Bria must be what’s hurting MCAS scores. If I was unable to get high before class in HS I would have certainly done even worse, which is almost impossible to imagine. I’d probably still be a freshman, some 16 years later, if not for early morning bong hits in the DMHS parking lot. If not for my sitting next to a vent in algebra class, which allowed me to smoke cigarettes and weed in the middle of the day with my oblivious teacher 10 feet away, I probably would have shot the place up myself and we’re talking years before we even had mobiles to confiscate! I look forward to pulling my son out of school on drug dog day, I don’t have any interest in raising my kid to believe it’s OK to piss on the fourth amendment for the sake of prohibition.
School just doesn’t look like a very good time these days, I suggest those of you in charge get rid of the drug dogs, let kids have their mobiles back and maybe even let them throw a ball at a class mate without fear of litigation. I would imagine a system of happy kids would produce better results and maybe even justify increased funding. But just a little less irrational fear in the world would be a close second.
6 cities caught shortening yellow lights for profit
Here’s a nice round up of 6 American cities who have been caught shortening yellow lights at intersections where traffic cameras had been installed for increased profits. Worth noting is the presence of Dallas on this list, their camera system became news recently when they began shutting down systems which were no longer profitable.
Anyone who still says traffic cameras are about public safety is exactly the kind of person you should kick in the shins. Maybe a shin kicking raid on Council Chambers is in order? Do I need a permit for that?
