Posts Tagged ‘local government’

We should pay more attention to our local governments

Posted: March 30, 2024 by navygrade36bureaucrat in business
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The company DroneUp! made the news in 2021 when it announced that it signed a deal with Walmart to do drone delivery. Recently it announced it a new all-in-one delivery service that could be rolled out to any store and deliver packages within 30 miles and under 10 pounds, all while automatically maintaining flight safety rules. In their spare time, they also manage to release the occasional cute video, like this one, on Facebook.

With all this right around the corner from my house, and with the fact I buy a lot of things from our local Walmart, you’d think I’d have a never-ending stream of drones dropping off items on my front porch.

And you’d be wrong. Why? Because I don’t live in Virginia Beach.

See, DroneUp! approached my city about adding drone delivery, but my city insisted that every drone position be operated like an airport. Yup, that’s a thing. Essentially my city council wanted every Walmart to run under the same restrictive rules that airports do. Never mind that the FAA doesn’t insist on this. Never mind that there is more restricted airspace in Virginia Beach then my city, with the nearby Oceana and Norfolk airports contributing to plenty of civilian and military flights everyday. Nope, my city insisted on stupid antiquated rules.

So instead of drone delivery, we get nothing.

Local government elections get ignored too often. As a society we argue over national elections, but fail to show up to local elections. That’s how we get crummy school boards that push pornography in school libraries, crummy state prosecutors that let criminals run free, and crummy city councils that equate drone delivery to running an international airport. On a bigger scale, we’re seeing some states, like Florida, tackle issues like squatting head on, while other states allow criminals to kick people out of their homes and trash them. We’re seeing some states like Georgia get ahead of election security while others allow it to falter.

If we don’t pay attention to our local problems, it’ll be impossible to solve the national ones.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Bristol Palin, Grover Cleveland and the Civil Service

Posted: November 26, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech, oddities, opinion/news
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I’ve never much card for American Idol, or Dancing with the stars, at game night over Dave’s house its on so I do my best to ignore it but neither one are anything that I care to watch. Unfortunately the convergence of the show with the Palin wars forced it into the news. I didn’t want to write about it at the time but now that it’s over there are some valuable lessons for everyone here.

Once Bristol Palin started to advance in the show the left started getting into a huff because better dancers were being eliminated and complained comically about the “integrity” of a vote in popularity show. It was admittedly a lot of fun watching them have a cow as she made it into the finals. This show was nothing significant but they had made it so as a way to hit the Palin’s who were simply having fun. This is and was a great example of Palin Derangement Syndrome

It was at this point that many on the right made a fatal mistake. They decided that because the left had invested themselves into this TV show emotionally that they would have to as well. This was a huge mistake and an example of the same idolatry that elected Barack Obama.

Gone was the principle of advancement by merit, that conservatives prize, gone was the opposition of special preference, we preferred Sarah Palin and by Extension Bristol Palin plus we could upset the left so many people invested themselves in an attempt to gain a victory that would feel good for a day but prove Pyrrhic. In the end the mirror image of Obama worship gave the left a talking point and a cause to smile as Bristol Palin came in 3rd. It was frankly a meaningless victory but one that got some small meaning because Palin fans made it so.

In 1884 Grover Cleveland was election becoming the first Democratic president since before the Civil war. Democrats who had been in the wilderness for a long time looked forward to the fruits of the spoils system but unfortunately for them President Cleveland’s reputation for honesty was well-earned. He was studious in replacing only the unqualified and when pressed by the party over this replied “A Democratic Thief is as bad as a Republican one.” (It is the lack of such democrats today that helped push me into the GOP). When people blindly voted for Bristol they made that same mistake that Cleveland scolded the party insiders for.

I like Sarah Palin a lot, of the candidates I believe are running only the very qualified Haley Barbour has a shot of getting my vote. Palin combines the practicality of an authentic life and a common sense approach to most issues, with the courage to stand up for things she believes in even if there is a political cost (as Lincoln said of Grant, he Fights!) when others hide in the shadows. She is however a person, I am going to disagree with her on occasion, she will get things wrong and/or make mistakes on occasion as we all do, and if we blindly follow, we are doing both her and ourselves a disservice.

Sarah Palin isn’t “the one”, nor is her family, I like them both and think she is the best choice for 2012 but I refuse to be caught up in the same throes of passion that drove the election of President Obama or the frenzy concerning Bristol Palin and neither should you.

We are conservatives for a reason, lets act as such.

Twin City Tea Party candidate forum Democrats attend!

Posted: June 29, 2010 by datechguy in local stuff, opinion/news, special events, tea parties
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The Twin city tea party had its monthly meeting at the Border Grille and Bar yesterday. That in itself isn’t big news.

What WAS big news is that it included a candidates forum and two sitting DEMOCRATIC members of the General Court attended.

Jennifer Flanagan (Sen 4th Worcester district) and Jen Benson (Rep 37th Middlesex District) along with their opponents Neal Heeren (4th Worcester Senate) and Kurt Hayes (37th Middlesex) showed up and took audience questions and stayed to talk to the people at intermission!

The significance of this can’t be overestimated. For over a year the media has been painting tea party members as wild eyed extremists. Congressmen and women have avoided town hall meetings in fear of encountering them and now sitting democratic members of the General Court attend events.

Both Jens deserve a lot of credit for doing so, it shows a respect for the people who will be voting in this election, but more importantly it shows that they are smart enough to realize that pretending a portion of the electorate must be ignored is a losing policy. Rather than giving the floor to their opponents they engaged the tea party members as voters to be persuaded.

Did they win any votes? I don’t know but I think both were impressive and helped themselves. Just as it is hard to stereotype the tea party when you actually interact with them it is hard to do the same with candidates who take the time to talk to you.

Incidentally I’ll have video uploaded and posted later in the day.

Is this an anomaly or is this the shape of things to come? Well as goes Massachusetts…

Update: Instalanche! Thanks Glenn, welcome all take a peek around. Find out why Foster Kamer is Vizzini, why the Iranians are just cowardly bullies, check out my cynical look at Church Closings and Dave Weigel and of course my Amazon reviews.

Update 2: This is actually the Second bi-partisian event held by the Twin City Tea Party. The First was on Flag Day and included the mayor of Leominster. The evidence of change in drawing local pols is evidenced by this video:

When local pols in the most liberal state in the nation feel comfortable being seen at tea party events the worm has turned. I think tea parties nationwide should take a good hard look at what the Twin City Tea Party group is doing and copy it.

Update 3: Here is the video of Flanagan and Heeren

Update 4: And here is the video of Benson and Hayes.

Tonight I will at the Planning Board meeting…

Posted: April 13, 2010 by datechguy in abortion, local issues, local stuff
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…that the Sentinel and Enterprise reported on yesterday:

The petition calls for an amendment to the city zoning ordinance, to require that medical offices acquire a special permit from the City Council before opening downtown.

The City Council heard anti-abortion advocates speak in favor of the petition in March, before sending it to the Planning Board for review. Anti-abortion advocates oppose the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts’ plan to open an office at 391 Main St.

Why do we continue to fight so hard, maybe it’s because of this:

The counselor was told that the teen was between six and eight weeks pregnant. When asked if there is a baby, she is told that there is only “fetal matter… no arms, no legs, no heart, no head, no brains”. This is a blatant lie… according to the Planned Parenthood counselor, all of this is non-existent. All that exists is “fetal matter”.

The counselor even goes so far as to try to talk the teen out of adoption, calling all of the aborted children “burdens”. The counselor clearly was making the case that, if not for abortion, we would have millions of unwanted children, presumably with no homes. Of course, as Live Action points out in the video, there are far more couples seeking babies to adopt than children who actually get adopted.

Hot air deserves the click but you need to see the video.

One of the reasons why Planned Parenthood does so well is the light isn’t shined on them, well Casey and Lila are doing their best to end this.

Will we be successful tonight? Who know but I do know that not fighting is the best way to lose.

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