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It snowed here, again. Friday, we got anywhere from 4 to 6 inches, depending on where you measure. It was a bitch to drive in and drive in it I did. I left Monroe, NC at 3:34 PM. My GPS unit said I would be home @ 7:33 PM. It was 11:00 PM when I got here. I hit snow just outside of Charlotte at 4:00 and it was pretty much downhill from there. Greenville had a lot of ice on the road and a few wrecks. South of Greenville, though, the roads were just wet but it was snowing harder. I did OK from there until about 1-1/2 miles from the exit I get off of I-85 on. Everybody just stopped. Didn’t move over 100 ft for the next 30 minutes. I switched to local radio from satellite and heard people talking about sitting in the same area for hours. I was determined not to get in a hurry coming home from the beginning but I had a time limit on my overly caffeinated bladder. A quick survey of the surroundings confirmed that if I had to let loose and ‘write my name’ on the white line on I-85 (a little thingy I like to thing of as “signing the dotted line” <snerk!>), the cops couldn’t get to me even if that old bat in the OldsmoBuick Landyacht DID call them. As it turned out, I maintained my civility as well as my dry pants long enough to get to a Racetrac station. Anyway, that was a little before 9:30 PM and I had about 30 miles to go to get home. That took 1-1/2 hrs. Average speed – 20 MPH.
There is no big climatic ending to the story except to say I got home in one piece. I learned a few things though:
1) There are some dumb asses out there. I was out there because I had to get home. I wasn’t just joyriding. I can give the benefit of the doubt that a lot of the others out there were not there for kicks but rather necessity. My main goal in life was to get home in one piece, though. Their’s seemed to be to see how fast they could go while hopefully keeping the car on the road. I had a guy pass me in a curve on solid ice just this side of Winder. I swore to myself that if I saw him down the road in the gulley, I would call 911 but I would not stop to help his stupid ass. Why risk my vehicle and my safety to help an irresponsible dumbass when I was doing everything I could to get home alive? Screw him. Hope he made it home OK but I hope he loses his nuts in a hot coffee incident before he procreates. That’s not just me talking – that’s Darwin.
2) Guard rails at really steep drop offs are woefully short of where they need to be. Man! A few creek bottoms I came up on were a tad on the scary side. Where you start sliding is BEFORE the guard rails, too. Coulda went right off behind them in a second flat. Just sayin’.
3) Thank God for the guys and chicks out there driving tow trucks, utility trucks, police, fire, ambulance, pizza delivery, snow plow, salt trucks, etc. And before you wonder why I included pizza delivery guys in there, think about it this way: Every pizza they delivered kept at least one car (probably with a few people in it) off the road. I hope those guys got tipped to the point of kicking back on a beach real soon.
If you find yourself out there sometime and get in a pickle of an ice incident, just use common sense and slow down. Don’t apply constant pressure to your brakes going down hill and don’t trust the anti-lock to figure it out for you – If you have to brake, just easily apply them for a second or so and let up. Keep doing this to reduce or limit your speed only as much as necessary. Otherwise, stay away from the brake. If you’re going slow enough while approaching a stop, you can just about coast to a stop. Don’t tailgate the car in front of you and by “tailgate”, I mean “occupy the same ZIP code as”. You really have to allow a lot of room between you and the guy ahead of you. Otherwise, just do what you have to to get home to your family. That cheesedick that passed me may think he impressed me by doing it and in a way he did – I’m impressed what a cheesedick he is. But I bet I impressed my wife and daughters a lot more by walking in the door in one piece.
The answer to this age-old question that haunts the minds of, perhaps, 10’s of people as it relates to Pi Are Squared is quite simply, “No”.
I have been very lax in getting here over the last couple of months even though I thought I would be a veritable fount of blogging awesomeness over that time frame, but I obviously miscalculated. Lemme ‘splain myself:
As I said in my last post, I’ve been on a project since late October. It’s been a very involved project as I am living in a hotel room when I’m not in the plant actually working on the nuts and bolts of the project. This means I’m kinda out of my element in that everything is “project centric”. No coming home to the wife and kids and oil changes and stuck shower doors every night. I do come home on the weekends but that amounts to me sweet-talking SWMBO into washing my clothes from the past week and me trying to be a dad and husband for a spell and then getting ready to go back about 4:00 AM Monday morning. So, the sum of the matter is, When I’m there, I’m focused on melting plastic and such. When I’m home, I’m focused on going back to melt more plastic. So if ya wanna take a stab at what my thought processes have been geared toward for the last couple of months, go ahead. I’ll wait. I’m gonna get a beer while you ponder it and be right back…
OK, I’m back. what did you come up with? Anybody come up with “political and sociological ramifications of creating a new entitlement program and calling it a ‘right'”? How about “Where the word ‘indefatigable’ came from”? Or maybe strained analogies between political theory and agricultural activity? Anybody? Well, if you did, you’re wrong. I’m kinda in a “melting plastic” mindset right now.
I know, I know, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable and exciting subject for blogging, fer sure. But, you may find this hard to believe, some people don’t CARE about melting plastic! I know – stunned me, too. You’d think most anybody would be all into the effects of crystallization in cross-linked polymers due to additives and their effect on the IZOD rating of the subsequent polymer, but I have good information that there are those who just nod off whenever the subject comes up. Figgin incredible…and sad.
So, even though I have heard or thought of many things over the last couple months that I was all like, “I’m gonna blawg the hell outta that”, Alas, it has yet to come to pass. Been mentally rat-holing some material, though. Funny how everyday activities will lend themselves to support or challenge long held beliefs but also serendipitous.
I need to figure out where “serendipitous” came from. I could blawg the hell outta that!
See, that’s what I mean.
Anyway, I have the next week off from the project so I’ll drift ever so slightly out of the mindset. But then there’s a holiday in there so I gotta work around that. Might get a legitimate post in – might not. But I’ll be thinking of you guys!
In the mean time, if anybody wants to explore the wonderful world of melted plastic, just drop me a line!!
Ya know, it’s high time I “got my write on”. For those who care but don’t know ( as opposed to those who know but don’t care – a much larger group, I’m sure), I have been on “assignment” for over a month. I’ve been living in a motel about 250 miles from home, working on a project that I have been involved with for about two years. It’s been fun and a constant mental exercise so I have had precious little time to blawg. Even before I came up here, I had a lot of preparation to do for this job. I had to study a lot of things and go back and dig up past experiences so I could look like I’m as smart as the guy who writes the check expects me to be for the invoice I send him. That’s pretty tough when you have a lot of other stuff going on but it’s just one of those things you gotta do.
I know I have been vague about the project to those who have asked and that is not only intentional, but for good reason. The Customer is writing a big check to a lot of people in hopes he can have a machine to do what very few 
people in the world are doing. He has lined up many resources to make this happen. I am not privy to his marketing plans as that is none of my business. Suffice it to say, what ever they are, I have hooked my wagon to his horse and it is in my best interest that his horse runs right where he wants it to. If he wants the world to know what he’s doing – he’ll tell them. I am just a cog in the machine, so to speak, so it is not up to me to release that information.
But relax, regardless of what he decides to do, this is not earth shaking stuff to very many people. You will not see anything about it on the news. If you did, you wouldn’t care. But to me and the customer, this is a big deal and we are very proud of what we are doing. We are trying our damnedest to make something work for our own benefit. As a by-product of our selfish greed, there will probably be openings for two or three more jobs in Customer’s plant. Jobs that flat out DO NOT EXIST right now. Somebody, somewhere, is sitting at home right now with no job that will be working in the coming months because of what I, along with MANY people much smarter than me, have been working on for a couple of years. The people who will find new jobs because of this may not even work in the plant this machine is in. Probably not for the same company. But the people hired to work on this new line and work because of this new line will not be among those taking other jobs they might otherwise have taken. That will leave a vacancy in those jobs that others will have to fill. In other words, the guys that will work on this line I’m helping build would have had a job regardless because they are going to be better than average people. The other jobs they DO NOT have to occupy that they otherwise would have, have to be filled by someone and that someone is probably sitting at home praying for a job right now. Does this make me a soldier of the Lord? Maybe so, but if so, it is because I like the money I’m making right now doing what I’m doing. Truth is, I like what I’m doing and would, given the opportunity, do it for free. But SWMBO would not be pleased and so that is all academic. Also, I like the bucks. 
While the unemployment rate dropping by 3 people will not make the news, nor will the couple million dollar addition to GDP for the US, it is undoubtedly going to lend a positive bias to the employment and productivity numbers of the present economy. This is misleading because this thing has been in the works for over two years. No recent program or policy made this project happen. It was mainly inertia of past policies and the influence of recent and, hopefully, present market conditions that made this happen. I can assure you that no “stimulus” money played into this. And there was not a damned nickle of Cash For Clunkers ever even SAT next to a reason for it. But those in power will take all the credit and none of the blame for what happens regardless. The “buck” no longer “stops here” – it stopped with the last guy that was here. There are very few, if any, presidents or other gov’t officials who accept responsibility for their policies any more – just a bunch of “we inherited the worst economy in {fill in the blank} years {or decades or centuries, blah, blah, blah}. In other words, The buck stops somewhere else, “…don’t blame us and also don’t blame us if we totally screw you up in our desperate attempt to fix what we know JACK SHIT about. It’s the other guy’s fault so leave us be.”
Tangent. I got off on a tangent. Who saw that comin’? 
Anyway, I am home right now for Thanksgiving and have enjoyed being with my family. We put the tree up today and, as is tradition, went through about two or three bags of pork rinds in the process. Nothing says Christmas like fried pig fat with artificial Bar-B-Q seasoning. How that tradition got started is a WAAY more boring story than you might think it is, but suffice it to say, it got started. We always get the tree down on what many might call “Black Friday” because we are at home and might as well put up the tree that day. SWMBO used to go shopping with my mom on that day before we had kids but that tradition gave way to common sense and they both stopped doing it long ago. Now, the closest thing to a line we stand in is waiting for the page to load at amazon.com.
Amazon has a wing named after me – I just know they do. I first started shopping Amazon when few people had ever heard of it. It was an online book store with a great selection and great prices. Books. That was it. Then they started selling music. Then clothes. Pretty soon, they were doing it all. I remember when they teamed up with Target to have a ‘brick and mortar” presence. I remember how relieved I was they had done that. They wanted to focus on what they did good and partner with someone else to do what they did good. It’s a little trick in business that often works out well. It lets you know the guys at the top of that company are taking a long term view of things. How? Well, look at it this way: Amazon wanted to sell what Target was selling. Target would like to get a big internet presence. Amazon would like to have the ability to sell an item and let the customer pick it up at his leisure. So, either Amazon throws out tons of money to have a brick and mortar presence that will never come close to the market penetration of Target or Wal-Mart, or they partner with someone who already has that presence. Why not Wal-Mart? Wal-Mart has proven itself to be dedicated to one thing and one thing only – low prices. Low prices mean lower margins but volume makes up for that if the margin is steady. WalMart will throw it’s vendors under any bus to shave a nickel off the price. I’m not criticizing Wal Mart here because sometimes I take advantage of that low price commitment. But if you are a company looking to maintain as high a margin as possible and make your name in service over price, you are better off partnering with a company that shares those values. Target and Amazon were a perfect fit.
Can you get stuff cheaper than at Amazon? Yep, everyday. Not a lot cheaper but it’s not hard to shave a nickel off their price. Can you get better customer service than you get at Amazon? Maybe, I don’t know. But I can tell you that anytime I have ever contacted Amazon about an issue on a purchase I made, it was resolved in no time with no problem. Not only that, whether I called or communicated via email, I communicated with a real live Homo Sapien (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I knew a long time ago that Amazon would be the future of retail. With the hassle of crowds at retail outlets and the marked lack of customer service after you have traveled to a store to spend your money, it is no surprise that many brick and mortar stores are having increasing difficulty staying viable. Sure, some retail outlets will always be there. There are the places that sell items you just have to touch, feel, try out, etc. There are some places that rely primarily on the personal retail experience to sell their wares. There are some places that cannot be done over distance. But many typical retail stores are in more trouble than they may want to believe. The times, they are a changing and though old habits die hard, they do die.
How long ago do you think it was when people were thinking that people would ALWAYS have to go to the bank? And not just go to it, but go INTO it. Then, in Atlanta, at least, came Tilly the All Time Teller. 
Along with ATM’s came direct deposit, online banking, debit cards, added to drive through windows and when is the last time you went into the bank? Do you think you go into a bank half as much as your parents or grandparents did? Banks offer a lot of services they didn’t 30 years ago but my guess is there are less than half as many “feet on the floor” per branch as then. Sometimes you have to go into a branch but with technology making it easier to stay out, why go in unless you have to? True, there are some who are set in the old ways. They go in and probably always will. I, myself, who likes to think of himself as an eager adopter of technology in all areas where it increases efficiency have used ATM’s for about 30 years but have yet to make a deposit in one. It just never got that necessary to me. But I probably will one day, if I ever get a check and can’t get to a drive-through window in a reasonable amount of time.
My point is, retailer beware. If you want to buck the “Virtual” trend, you better have a hook; an angle that makes people WANT to come into your store – almost NEED to. Otherwise, the customer will be at your competitors website, spending money galore and all the pretty decorating schemes in the world won’t get a nickel out of them. You sell clothes and think people will never go to buying clothes without trying them on or touching and feeling them? You may be right. They will come to your store and touch and feel and try on your inventory, and then go home and buy it. They may buy some from you, but they will look at a lot more than they plan to buy from you and order the balance from your online presence or competitor in a heartbeat. And remember, some people WILL buy clothes without laying eye nor hand on it ahead of time. As people get used to buying everything else sight unseen, they’ll have very little problem doing clothes the same way.
OK, tangent #2 I guess but the whole point of this post was to let you folks know I didn’t die or drop the blawg or anything. I’ll be here and hopefully with more frequent updates.
See ya later!!!
I Googled my birthday. Put in “10/22/1965” and what I got was the title of this post. I thought it was cool.
When I lived at home, the morning of my birthday, my grandmother on my mother’s side would always call and sing happy birthday to me. She couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket but I always looked forward to it. If I ever made it on the bus to school before she called, I would worry about her. I think that happened once. She stopped calling about five or six years ago because she died. My mom knew what it meant to me to get those calls, so instead of her telling me happy birthday when she saw me, she started calling to sing to me. That’s not going to happen this year. She died just a little over a season ago, in late June. I don’t know if anybody else will try to carry it on and to be honest, I don’t care. Maw Maw started it as a cute thing, I guess and mom continued it because it was tradition. Those two had a right – and almost a slf-imposed obligation – to do it, but I don’t want anybody else to feel obligated to try to carry that on. It’s still kinda sad, though.
If I recollect correctly, I was born at 4:11 PM on this day in 1965. Now I’m a numbers guy and always have been so even in my “yoot”, I analyzed and over-analyzed numbers for stuff. I remember when I decided my favorite number was “4”. I might have been seven or eight years old. I liked 4 because it was, to start with, symmetrical. All even numbers are symmetrical but four is doubly so. It is 2 (symmetrical) times 2 (also, symmetrical). So it is symmetrical in it’s symmetry. How cool is that? So that leads to 16, because it is symmetrical in all four dimensions – 3 space and one time. So 16 is cool, too. And if 4 is cool, then 44 is even cooler because it is not only expressed in the base-10 numerical system we use as two 4’s, but it is 4 X 11 and since I was born at 4:11, it just kinda fits. Not only that, but my birthday is 10/22 and if you add 10 + 22 you get 32 which is a symmetrical expression of 4X4 (4X4 times 2) or better yet (4+4)X4. Even cooler is 16X2 – since 16 is so cool anyway and besides, it’s symmetrical squares of 4. Note: a square has four sides – COOL!! My teachers used to think I was daydreaming, but I was thinking of this kinda crap. Go figure.
I just realized that last paragraph really kinda explains why I thought that Google result was cool enough to use as the title to this post. I guess I always knew numbers were important. In fact, the word “number” and the word “truth” are almost interchangeable in my brain. Sometimes it takes a conscious effort to decide which word to use in a sentence. For instance, I might want to say, “He is telling the truth.” but I have to catch my mouth from saying, “He is telling the numbers.”. I rarely miss it but I figure when I get older, there will be times when I don’t catch myself and everybody will think I have some degenerative brain thingy going on. So it goes, I guess. No use arguing with them. If I try to tell them I have mixed those words up forever, they’ll see that as more proof I’m losing it. For the record, the word “fact” gets mixed in there, too. “Fact”, “Number”, and “Truth” are all the same thing in my head. It really makes sense, if you think about it. They are all three by definition unassailable. I guess it’s kinda crazy to mentally equate them, but I could argue that it’s pretty lame NOT to do so, so don’t judge.
When I was a kid, we didn’t go in for all this nonsense about giving siblings presents when one of them had a birthday. What I mean is, you know how some people will take Little Johnny’s Sister, Suzy, a present when they take Little Johnny a birthday present? I pronounce that, now, and forever more, “Horseshit”. We didn’t do it when I was a kid and I’m not totally warped. Well, any warpage is probably not due to that, anyway. I just think it breeds a sense of entitlement in kids that they have a hard time letting go of later. I think it’s another example of a good intention going bad. With all that said, if anybody reading this wants to give me a gift for my birthday and they know one or both of my brothers, don’t think you have to splurge on them – Give Me It! They can wait for their birthdays to get their own beef jerky.
Wood used to be made out of trees. Stunner, I know and you are wondering what I think wood is made of now if not trees. I know wood is ultimately derived from trees but so much of what we call wood is pretty far removed from the tree. For instance, where in a 24″ diameter tree would you cut a 4′ X 8′ slab of 3/4″ plywood from? That would be pretty hard to do, right? So you see my meaning that while the wood that makes the plywood comes from trees, the plywood, itself, does not directly come from a tree.
Way back in the old days, if you needed a broad flat piece of material, say to make a door from, you were fairly limited in your choices. Metal was heavy and expensive. Stone was heavy period. So what about wood? wood was pretty good but it came in pieces that were too small to cover any meaningful doorway. So the best thing to do was to cut some pieces that were long enough to go from top to bottom of the opening, and then cut some that were long enough to go from side to side. Nail all these pieces together with the long ones vertically and the shorter ones horizontally and you could make a door any size you needed it. Since nailing the two layers together meant the nails were going to show at least on one side, the heads were made large and ornate. They were nailed in from the outside so the points protruded from the door on the inside. Well, that was a little bit dangerous and it was also not very secure. The nails could work loose and the door would become weak and wobbly. The points would also be kinda hard to deal with if you brushed against the inside of the door. So the pointy ends of the nails were hammered over flat against the inside of the door. This was called “clinching” and it held the two layers of wood more firmly together as it prevented the nail from backing out and it made for a smoother interior of the door.
The problem was, nails were expensive to buy or make. They were, each one, made by hand. When you needed a nail, the first thing you did was to go find one that had been used for something else and pull it out. You just didn’t NOT re-use nails. But what about a nail that had been clinched either for a door or something else? The nail was pretty much useless as it could not be re-used ans was therefore considered “dead”. Therefore, we have “dead as a doornail”.
I have some ideas for posts, just not enough time to write them right now. Gimme a day or two and I’ll have some stuff.
Love you guys – all one or two of you!
Muah!!
It pretty much started before the Russian Revolution in 1917. But we’re going to pick up this particular story at the meaty part. Lenin and Trotsky understood the power of public perception. And I mean they REALLY understood it on several levels. They understood that the real power of any nation, state, country, whatever resides with the masses. They also understood that power cannot be held long if taken by force. You have to have the people GIVE you power because someone who gives you power is less likely to try and take it away from you than someone you took the power from.
So, how do you get someone to give you anything? You make him think he is going to get something of greater value to himself than that which he gives up. This is the basic tenet of Capitalism. But if you are trading a box of air for a valuable commodity like power, what happens when the other guy opens the box and sees nothing or very little? You convince him of two things – 1) The box isn’t empty, it’s really half full. 2) Some bad guy (usually “The Rich”) got the missing half and all he needs to do is give you more power so you can take back what is rightfully the “victim’s”. This describes every successful power play in history. You have four players: Those who want and get power; those who give power; some good, service, or program which to trade for the power; and a bad guy who purportedly muddies up the deal to enrich himself. It is very important that you couch the bad guy in terms of greed. You can’t say the bad guy took what is rightfully the “People’s” just out of meanness. Most people cannot identify with that. They CAN, however, identify with the most ill-defined word in the English language – Greed. You can’t eat power or drive it to work or put it over your head to keep the rain off. You can trade it for those things when someone offers you worldly riches for that which cost you nothing. This seems like a really good deal to the peasant or John Q. Public since a street sweeper or factory worker has long ago learned to acquiesce to other’s whims in order to have a job. So all he does is acquiesce to the government to gain some other benefit like housing, food, health care, Cash for Clunkers, etc. In this, the peasant thinks HE is being greedy and getting ahead like “The Rich” do. He’ll show them!
Ever hear the saying “If you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth”? Well, you can’t stand on every street corner and tell you lies or even hire people to do it. But if you get an artist – one trained in the skills of getting people’s attention and then holding it long enough to get a simple idea in their head – to create art that pushes your agenda, then you have a very efficient machine for not only swaying sentiment and getting power, but also for molding public opinion to further your agenda and maintain power. See, artists are way more important than they seem. They don’t have any more power than you or I, but they are able to help steer power from the audience to the intended elites.
But, how do you get the artists to work for you? They have to be paid. The most efficient way to do this is to first get enough power from the masses that they give you money (taxes) to spend on whatever you want to (say, subsides), then you use those subsides as “funding” for the artist. Now, you can SAY that you are concerned about the cultural well being of the masses and want the artists to just do as they please to “expand the minds” of the populace in the arts. Then, you can go to the artists, once they get hooked on the funding, and strongly suggest that the funding is contingent on their support for your policies.
- “The Way To Prosperity”
I know that the US has used propaganda posters before – particularly in WWII. “Rosie the Riveter”, “Loose Lips Sink Ships”, “Buy War Bonds”, etc. and all that stuff. Arguably, it could be said that was war time and the very survival of the nation was at stake. So, they get a pass. But the Soviets took propaganda art to a whole new level. It was constant and it was about everything. Government commissioned art was a pretty good business in the USSR back in the day. It was bright colors or sticking contrasts – the simpler the better. It had one message and it was “in your face” – again, the simpler the better. It either showed action or strong positive emotion, no nuance here – simple, better. And it emphasized the pride or strength of the powerless to get something or keep something – simple, better. The overriding theme was “simple images, simple messages, simple people”. In other words, kinda like those “Monter Truck Rally” commercials or used car commercials where they think the louder they yell at you, the dumber you are. You do know that when you hear a commercial on the radio or see one on TV, the louder and more times a phrase is repeated, the dumber the target audience, don’t you?
“MONSTER BLOW OUT SALE!! MONSTER BLOW OUT SALE!! MONSTER BLOW OUT SALE!! NO CREDIT APPLICATIONS REFUSED!! NO CREDIT APPLICATIONS REFUSED!! AT BILLY’S USED CARS, IF YOU CAN BEATHE, YOU CAN DRIVE!!!
Does that sound like a Mercedes Benz commercial? Lexus? BMW? Ummm, no. Loud+repeat=stupid target market. Much in the same way mass produced bright color “art work” with simple messages of policy=dumb masses (say that real fast)
This formula was so successful that other “Socialist” (re: Communist) nations adopted the format.
Chinese farmer
North Korean soldier smashing the US Capitol
So, what does this have to do with the here and now? It seems there was a conference call. A conference call between government officials and recipients of government grants. No biggy, right? Wrong. Seems the government officials asked the grant recipients to use the government (read: taxpayer) money to further the President’s agenda, politics, and policy initiatives. Andrew Breitbart has been working on a little project that implicates the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) of trying to get artists to create “art” that promotes the political goals and initiatives of the Obama Administration. See, this would violate the non-partisan charter of the NEA. Of course the NEA denied it, and so did the White House. It turns out, both of them were flat out lying.
According to the LA Times Blog “Culture Monster”, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) wrote an open letter to the NEA warning them that political influence over the artists funded by the NEA violates the non-partisan charter of the organization. He was tipped off to a conference call that included Yosi Sergant, who is listed on the NEA’s website as communications director, White House official Buffy Wicks, film maker and political director for Def Jam’s Russell Simmons – Michael Skolnik, A rep for Winner and Associates in Los Angeles – Bim Ayandele, among others. Some of the others are verrry interesting. (Check Big Government.com for a fuller list)
One guy invited to the call was Patrick Courrielche. He owns a Los Angeles marketing and entertainment company, inform Ventures. He apparently used to employ Yosi Sergent but has been somewhat critical of the arts community’s lack of dissent of the policies and decisions of the new administration. That must have escaped the radar of the political power players as he was invited to attend the call anyway. He was disturbed by some of what he heard. As he writes in a post on BigGovernment.com:
“Backed by the full weight of President Barack Obama’s call to service and the institutional weight of the NEA, the conference call was billed as an opportunity for those in the art community to inspire service in four key categories, and at the top of the list were “health care” and “energy and environment.” The service was to be attached to the President’s United We Serve campaign, a nationwide federal initiative to make service a way of life for all Americans.”
According to “NATIONAL FOUNDATION ON THE ARTS AND THE HUMANITIES ACT OF 1965,
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS APPROPRIATIONS AS OF FISCAL YEAR 2006,
AND RELATED LEGISLATION” 20 U.S.C. § 953 § 953. National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities (d) – top of page four:
“Prohibition against Federal supervision over policy determination, personnel,
or curriculum, or administration or operation of any school or other non-Federal
body. In the administration of this Act no department, agency, officer, or employee of
the United States shall exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the policy
determination, personnel, or curriculum, or the administration or operation of any
school or other non-Federal agency, institution, organization, or association.”
And here’s a real whizz-banger from the same legislation (middle of page 25):
“No part of any appropriation contained in this Act shall be available for any activity or the
publication or distribution of literature that in any way tends to promote public support or
opposition to any legislative proposal on which Congressional action is not complete other
than to communicate to Members of Congress as described in 18 U.S.C. 1913.
[PL 109-54, Title IV, Sec. 402]”
Now, scroll up and re-read Mr. Courrielche’s quote from his post and then re-read that last part again. Tell me what smells fishy.
I’m looking for the transcript to the call. I’ve read parts of it but will post a link to the whole transcript when I find it.
Good links for info on this subject:
Pi Are Squared 