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12/17/08
Less than 1" of snow on a 6" ruler
09:27, December 17, 2008, I measured 7/8" of light, "powder", cold weather snow on my sidewalk, as a Manistique Department of Public Works truck was out plowing snow, after a previous 3 day thaw, with a day of rain, that bared all sidewalks and travelled city streets. No imminent substantial snow was expected. Similar idiocy has taken place twice this early Winter, as in past recent Winters, on weekends, at markedly greater cost, to ensure certain tax-payed city employees live well, as the local and national economy circles the bowl.
I cannot imagine how much money has been wasted plowing an inch or so of new snow, on weekends, and during the week. I cannot imagine how much money has been wasted tearing up street pavement, shoulders, and vehicles, using plows and salt, so that folk can drive in Winter as they do in Summer. I cannot imagine how much money has been wasted replacing damaged pavement, plow blades, and other vehicle hardware, as a consequence of plow truck drivers trying to drive the blades through the pavement, as is evident by the grinding shower of sparks that, too often, attends the plowing of Manistique City Streets.
Instead of having a little more snow on city streets, due to public money being spent on constructive city labor, we have too much destructive job-insuring labor that benefits few, other than certain city employees. Might Winter layoffs be a little more appropriate, now that there is no seasonal replacement of water and sewer infrastructure, along with new road paving, curbs, concrete driveway entrances, and sidewalks, for those living in the favored areas of the favored side of town?
Now that there is no infrastructure replacement, lawns to mow, or trash to pick up, what does everyone do while waiting for a broken water or sewer line call? Am I unaware of a fleet of silent snow plows prowling the city streets, day and night, determined to keep our city streets bare as they grind down the plow blades, and scatter salt, to help assure future street damage to repair?
I cannot imagine the total cost to the community to seek dry streets, during an Upper Peninsula Winter. I can, with little effort, imagine Manistique's predatory public lunacy that results in the equivalent of maintaining green sod public places in the Arizona desert. Absent qualified management, there is little else for most Manistique D.P.W. employees to do, beyond broken attempts to justify their Winter paychecks.
From my perspective, Manistique City Manager, Sheila "Mother" Aldrich, with the sanction of the Manistique City Council, ensures that the Manistique D.P.W. operates without qualified supervision, contrary to public interest, just as her husband, County Commissioner Keith Aldrich, sanctioned, with the approval of a County Board majority, the broken management of Schoolcraft County Public Transit, Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital, and the Schoolcraft County Sheriff Department.
As there is little to no accountability for those with the public's trust, that make corrupt "white collar" choices to solicit or take other people's money, property, and the life they represent, why should those that manage the public trust, and the attendant fiduciary responsibilities, care? All meet the approval of their self-serving auditors and peers
As I have said before, as a general rule, their is far more honesty and integrity represented by "blue collar" thieves that ply their trades with a gun, than among their white collar equivalents that wreak far more havoc with words and numbers, as they claim to represent their victims' best interests. The basis for the current local and national economic turmoil is testimony to the validity of my perspective. The meaning of the old saw, "Be careful of what you wish for...", as in "something for nothing", has never been brought home so forcefully, in my adult life, as I see in its consequences, today.
For that short period of my life that I sought the current "American Dream", of others condemned to support me as I grew older, diseased, and feeble, I could never understand, condone, or support that concept that is so irrational and alien to all other forms of Earthly life, and natural selection. Only humans evolved with the ability to choose to enslave their peers, and progeny, for generations.
Taking a portion of the product of a life's labor, by deceit, force, or the threat of force, is nothing but a form of slavery, be it for "everyone's benefit" or not. In the real world, where unrestrained individual self-serving predatory human nature would run amok, a civilized society still needs a type of uniform tax slavery to ensure all that is required to foster civilized behavior in a complex productive society of specialized individuals, such as an objective police force, court system, military force, public infrastructure, etc.
Dictator Caesar needed taxes to maintain a productive society, and, in a democratic society, as imperfect as tax paid government may be, for all of recorded history there been nothing better to replace it in complex societies based upon individual and collective creativity and productivity. Regarding reasons and methods, the basic requirements of taxation exist today, more than ever; so do the requirements to control human predators that prey upon those productive members of society that actually create the taxed wealth.
Civilized tax slavery can be achieved by behaviour modification; i.e. holding accountable and discouraging predators and opportunistic foragers that would support themselves by victimizing those that choose constructive paths to wealth. If that means isolating them together, on some piece of God-forsaken real-estate, to live or die by the rules they chose, so be it.
From my perspective, that noble and necessary accountability has been lost at an alarming rate for the past few decades that I have paid attention. To often, those human parasites that ply their trades without guns are considered model citizens, as if they are better than armed robbers because they developed intellectual forms of wholesale victimization, without the obvious use of guns.
Taking something for nothing, from productive members of society, is not only a facet of human nature exhibited by street thugs with guns. In the U.S.A., it is far more about white collar criminals, supported by courts, law enforcement officials, and the elected representatives chosen by the victims. By the logical magic of default silence and deliberate "ignorance", most sanction obvious corrupt behavior at all levels of government and private business.
As I have documented, government in Manistique and Schoolcraft County is well served by individuals that qualify as, or support, those that act as "white collar criminals" regarding other peoples' money, and the lives represented by the appropriated wealth.
Too often, when not involved with various forms of white collar theft, government and business interests are still involved with the equivalent of victimizing others by exchanging cheap glass beads for beaver pelts. This form of laissez-faire capitalism is based upon the intellectual fiction that, in a complex and productive collective, it is morally and ethically desirable for some specialized individuals to take advantage of the specific choices and weaknesses of other specialized individuals.
In today's complex civilization, social and economic Darwinism is far more about conscious predatory choices than the rolls of the genetic dice concerning basic human form, nature and survival.
For most folk of limited intellect and physical prowess, the consequences of developing specialized skills and knowledge in productive disciplines makes them easy marks for a variety of predators. As long as there is the specialization of knowledge and skills required for a complex civilized productive society to function, there will be specialized government and business predators.
For those so inclined, it is an historical manifestation of basic human nature to victimize the abundance of ignorant, helpless, and stupid individuals that have, and use, their specialized skills and knowledge to create the source of society's wealth to be pillaged by their victimizers.
Ain't it amazing what plowing an inch of snow represents?
Two passes to plow less than an inch of snow!
S'pose there's a real reason why the economy and
government is so broken?
02/11/08
Yesterday, Tuesday, I wrote and submitted this editorial letter to the local Manistique newspaper, Pioneer Tribune. Photographs follow. It is quite obvious to me that Manistique city government is quite happy to continue to piss away other peoples' money rather than taking care of sewer and runoff separation in a more sane and civilized manner. Lets hire more engineers, relatives and political allies, with few to no credentials of merit, to run the show and be paid to learn at others' expense, for their trial and error efforts; from which everyone refuses to learn!
Hauling Water?!
Tuesday morning, around 11:30am, I watched a city truck
spreading salt on Alger Avenue. The road was 50 percent
wet bare asphalt, after an overnight rain, and a thaw
that continued from the previous day, and is projected
through much of this week. That, in addition to some
two weeks? or more? of the City of Manistique
collecting and hauling snow from the shoulders of city
streets, prompts me to wonder aloud.
Who makes the related decisions, along with plowing
streets with less than an inch of snow, and trimming
street shoulder snow accumulations when there is no new
accumulation to remove from street surfaces?
Why, since I have lived in Manistique from 1987, have I
never seen such blatant Winter "make-work"? How has the
community survived the Winters for so long? Are times
so good that just about every D.P.W. person is involved
with snow removal related "work", with tons of
expensive city equipment, that suggests overflowing
city coffers and a lot more just around the corner?
What would city D.P.W. personnel be doing in Winter, if
they left most of the weather related "work" to Mother
Nature, as in past decades?
Where did all the money come from to buy all the new
toys and projects, and required labor, since City
Manager Housler was replaced by City Manager Aldrich?
How much drainage ditch and culvert work could be done
for the money wasted by collecting and trucking frozen
water from place to place? How much Spring runoff
and storm flooding is the consequence of treating
symptoms instead of causes? Why do I find it necessary
to take a blood pressure pill, as I contemplate the
likely reasons for the latest apparent madness in this
community?
I know that I am not alone with my perspective...
02/06/09 - Manistique snow banks
02/06/09 - City of Manistique trucking snow banks instead of using culverts and building drainage ditches
02/09/09 - Manistique snow banks gone by the magic of money; not Nature...
02/10/09 - Manistique snow banks - Why the need for cambered roadbeds and ditches?
02/10/09 - Typical Manistique street - little to no crown or drainage
02/10/09 - Houghton and M-94 corner rebuilt at least 4 times in 25 years - same problem today
02/10/09 - Manistique flood control - push the snow down hill to your neighbour's property
02/10/09 - Recently re-built road bed, drainage, and pavement, equals other folks' money pissed away
02/10/09 - Instead of well designed and functioning ditches, culverts, storm drains, road beds, and pavement, Manistique hauls snow, salts, and replaces pavement.
02/11/09 - 7 inches of snow accumulation, 9 inches across the street, salt laden wet bare street,
bare sections of shoulder grass, in a climate that could go to -15F, or colder, next week...
02/12/09 - Loaded City trucks are still busy collecting and hauling snow, running up and down Alger Ave., and other city streets, trashing the thin pavement covering the soggy, plastic, thawed roadbed surfaces. You can stand at the shoulder as they pass and watch the pavement flex, and the salt water ooze out of the fractures, as the trucks pass. I have watched the same, elsewhere in the city, for years...
I wonder. Why are there thaw related road load restrictions on county roads, but none in the city? Are county load restrictions due to markedly different weather, and inferior road construction and maintenance techniques? Is it due to the absent professional management skills of Manistique government, administration, and department employees?
The photographs show some of the many city streets that are designed, built, and maintained as leaky catch basins. They act as sponges, due to various degrees of fractures, holes, and absent drainage. Consequentially, they absorb salted melt water into the roadbeds. Subsequently, the tops of the roadbeds are soggy and flexible, subjecting the pavement to traffic damage as the road bed compresses and shifts under heavy traffic loads. When it gets cold enough to freeze, the roadbeds heave, splitting the pavement. The many single Winter freeze and thaw cycles are caused by the varying salt concentration of the penetrating water created by the city's indiscriminate use of crushed rock salt.
Then there is all the vehicle damage, other infrastructure damage, and environmental damage, from the corrosive and other chemical effects of salt...
Oh, I keep forgettin'. Who cares? It's about other peoples' infrastructure, and other peoples' vehicles, and other peoples' environment, paid for with other people's money, earned by other peoples' lives; ain't it? Why change the unsustainable, when there is a constant supply of new "other peoples' money", from a constantly inflating Manistique real estate tax roll for the politically disfavored, plus a runaway confiscatory water and sewer revenue stream policy, plus misused federal and state grant and gasoline tax revenue, plus a city policy to skim 10% off the top of most revenue accounts to buy work toys for, and pay relatively unskilled and unsupervised workers to maintain or build expensive broken city infrastructure according to little more than city neighborhood political influence?
I don't forget it's voter approved, as if there is little to no criteria, beyond familial, social, religious, fraternal, and political, for electing, hiring, and appointing those who take and waste, with impunity, the wealth of others, while catering to those with political "pull" behind the scenes. For those that do not believe me, tell me why little to no significant infrastructure renewal work had taken place in the west side of town, since City Manager Housler retired?
The crumbling sewer line under Alger Ave. was scheduled for replacement, years ago, just before I took a down-state vacation. Apparently, the leaky sewer I saw exposed during a lateral line repair, a year or so earlier, has renewed itself. Now, with the economy in turmoil, all that I and my neighbors have to do is wait for some administrative genius to levy a special assessment against our properties, after we helped pay for the infrastructure renewal across town.
Ah! The magic of predatory neighborhood politics, administered by one, certified by me and known to many, as a con artist and promoter of theft!
02/13/09
I saw 3 city trucks hauling snow, today, from the east side of town to the Tannery Road snow dump site.
Manistique Tannery Rd. snow dump site
Manistique Weston Ave. snow dump site
Manistique Schoolcraft Ave. area smaller snow dump sites
© 2008
Peter C. Markham - Manistique.org