interesting bit of misdirection by the media

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http://www.msnbc.com/local/WRC/248263.asp

this particular url is a link to a Washington DC Television station's report on y2k effects on the water supply. Remember now, the District of Columbia admitted back last October that there was no way they were going to get their systems remediated by 01/01/00...so this station's solution to that problem is to report on the one suburb that *will* have it's utilities fixed with time to spare. (For those unfamiliar with the DC metro area, Fairfax County - the suburb in question - is one of the top ten counties in the US by per capita income...)

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), March 31, 1999

Answers

Arlin, it is utterly unfair to try to generalize anything about the rest of the country from the state of affairs in DC. Mismanaged, corrupt, patronage to the max - make your own list. It just doesn't fly.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), March 31, 1999.

So what's so different about Disneyland, I mean DC, Paul? <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 31, 1999.

DC has been mismanaged for years by Marion Barry's cronies. You name it, it's been neglected. Not typical of the rest of the country.

-- Doomslayer (1@2.3), March 31, 1999.

You've never heard of Detroit?!?

-- Tim (pixmo@pixelquest.com), March 31, 1999.

Gee, our nation's capital, and they can't even take care of their own front yard. Whoda thunk it? <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 31, 1999.


Atlanta (with a similar crowd of corrupt - need I add, Democratic - politicians) may be even further behind.

-- Robert A Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (Cook.R@csaatl.com), March 31, 1999.

"Arlin, it is utterly unfair to try to generalize anything about the rest of the country from the state of affairs in DC."

Paul, in what manner is Arlin generalizing? I see no generalization in his post, just an opinion that the media is putting their best happy-face spin on an otherwise bleak situation.

"Mismanaged, corrupt, patronage to the max - make your own list."

That same statement could be made about any large city in America.

-- sparks (wireless@home.com), March 31, 1999.


Paul -

Maybe not for "the rest of the country", but there are certainly a number of cities (New Orleans comes to mind) where corruption, mismanagement, and patronage are standard practice. Y2K will sort the well-run organizations from the poorly-run ones. Problems will arise from all those citizens impacted by the latter...

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.com), March 31, 1999.


Now, Bob, corruption and ineptitude are equitably distributed among the Parties -- as likewise are competence and integrity. And without question Southern Democrats have until very recently constituted -- and acted as -- a de facto third party.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), March 31, 1999.

Fairfax Co.Va. is across the Potomac river from D.C. There are about 3 bridges to get there. There was an article a co mos. back about changing traffic patterns on the Va. side. Nahhh, couldn't be..... it's the red car syndrome, yea that's it...

-- KoFE (your@town.USA), March 31, 1999.


Tim,

ROTFLMAO regarding your post about Detroit! The city that doesn't plow its streets after a snowstorm is assumed to be able to supply essential services post Y2K!

-- Gearhead (2plus2@motown2.com), March 31, 1999.


Detroit just decided that plowing two feet of snow of the streets wasn't "Mission Critical" in the scheme of things. The city doesn't get its streets plowed on days when there's no snow and things work smoothly then. So obviously, plowing isn't critical to public mobility, emergency response operations and keeping the local economy running.

Apply this "tongue-in-cheek" scheme of thought at defining "Mission Critical" to all sorts of agencies, businesses and governments and tell me if you don't get a really bad feeling about how such decision have really been made.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), March 31, 1999.


Ever hear of Dallas? Yes? Well, Dallas has never heard of Y2K. Neither has my northern suburb of Dallas (which shall remain unnamed). Their reaction is Y2 WHAT?

Scary.

-- Preparing (Preparing@home.com), March 31, 1999.


Durham, backup system for sewage plant (pun intended): If the power goes out, a truck trundles a generator to the site. No back-up gen on-site, not enough to go around. Water mains break frequently, very old. When I lived in New Orleans, a pothole grew so big that people posted signs on it after a rain, "Swim at your own risk." In another part of town, a pothole was filled in with dirt and tomatoes planted in it. The city council members here in Durham make their counterparts in Chicago or New Orleans look like choirboys.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), April 01, 1999.

Even D.C would have a hard time displacing Miami from the top of the "Most corrupt city in the country" list.

THE MIAMI HERALD

IF CROOKS CAN
HOLD OFFICE,
WHY NOT VOTE?

SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: CARL HIAASEN Herald Columnist

Convicted felons aren't supposed to vote. It's been that way for a long time, the idea being that criminals aren't morally fit to participate in the political process.

Miami could be the exception.

Considering the recent corruption scandals and unhinged behavior at City Hall, what's the point of barring felons from the ballot box? Could they possibly make worse choices than regular voters have made?

At least 105 convicted criminals cast ballots in the Miami mayoral races last fall. Among those were robbers, car thieves, drug traffickers and killers.

All technically had forfeited their right to vote on the day they were found guilty. By allowing them to register, somebody at the elections bureau slipped up.

But look at it another way. That these felons would take time from their busy days to go to the polls, even illegally, shows they care deeply about city government -- certainly more deeply than the thousands of nonfelons who didn't bother to get off their lazy butts and vote.

The truth is, career criminals could bring a valuable insight to the electoral process. In a place like Miami -- where for years the government has been run by thieves -- the most savvy and knowledgeable voters might very well be those with a rap sheet.

Who better to assess, for example, the unlikely candidacy of suspended Commissioner Humberto Hernandez, indicted on 23 counts of bank fraud and money laundering?

In most law-abiding American cities, Hernandez wouldn't have had the nerve to run for re-election -- or, at the very least, he would have been jeered out of the race.

In Miami, naturally, he won by a landslide. He did it by charming lots of elderly Hispanic voters, and snowing others by painting himself as the victim of an Anglo conspiracy.

I submit the outcome would have been much closer, if not different, had more felons been able to take part in the balloting.

In the first place, Hernandez is a lawyer, and most streetwise criminals don't trust lawyers. Secondly, felons have seen and heard just about everything, so they aren't nearly as gullible as ordinary citizens.

Anybody who's been to prison would instantly see through Hernandez's boyish-innocence act. And as for conspiracy theories, Humberto's would sound pretty lame and unimaginative, compared to the ones heard on any medium-security cellblock.

You might assume a shady character such as Hernandez would benefit from a heavy felon turnout, but it's not necessarily so. True, he might draw a few sympathy votes from other indictees, but my guess is the majority of outlaws wouldn't believe a word the guy said, and would be insulted to find his name on the ballot.

Just as normal voters in a normal city would be insulted.

After hearing two weeks of evidence about rampant vote fraud, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Thomas Wilson Jr. must decide whether or not to call a new mayoral election for Miami.

If he does, he ought to consider suspending the old law and throwing the vote open to all interested criminals. What a bold experiment it would be, with nothing to lose.

City elections can hardly get more tainted than they already are, and the ballot of a well-informed burglar or bank robber would be infinitely preferable to that of a dead person, a nonresident or a forged absentee.

In South Florida, the real menace to democracy isn't from the crooks who vote, but from the ones who run for office.



-- Online2Much (ready_for_y2k@mindspring.com), April 01, 1999.



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