Lots of Stuff

Government Jobs:
I found this job application website.  Makes you want to quit the private sector and go to work for the government.  

Question:  How can the government pay more for jobs than the private sector?  Doesn't the private sector job pay for the government job?  Kinda crazy.  Well come to the year 2011.

Federal Jobs Net (Career Center)

Government Jobs / Federal Jobs / Civil Service Jobs / Post Office Jobs Are you considering a government job? The federal government employs approximately 2 million federal workers plus 700,000 Postal workers and hires hundreds of thousands each year to replace civil service workers that transfer to other federal government jobs, retire, or leave for other reasons. Average annual salary for full-time federal government jobs now exceeds $79,197. The U.S. Government is the largest employer in the United States, hiring about 2.0 percent of the nation's work force and the workforce is expanding significantly due to health care reform, in-sourcing, and many new regulatory programs. Federal government jobs can be found in every state and large metropolitan area, including overseas in over 200 countries. The average annual federal workers compensation, including pay plus benefits, now exceeds $119,982 compared to just $59,909 for the private sector according to the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis. Texas Minority Majority State (Saw this on LaredoTejas Blog) My question is; Why is this a big deal? Texas to officially become a minority-majority state Texas will officially become a majority-minority state for the first time based on 2010 census estimates. The switch occurred in 2005 and its source includes both Hispanic immigration from Mexico as well as black migration from other parts of the United States. Texas joins Hawaii, California, New Mexico and the District of Columbia as states and a federal district lacking a majority of whites who are not Hispanic. Eight more states, led by Arizona, Maryland, Nevada and Georgia, have shares of non-Hispanic whites nearing the tipping point of 50 percent. Why do we let the government categorize us by race?  What is the difference between a black, Hispanic, or white issue?  People are people, and to segment people by race, is well, racist.  Or at least that what Dr. King thought.  Is this a political issue?  What, Hispanics should only elect Hispanics?  Whites should only elect whites.  No wonder this country is screwed up.   In 2002 I opposed Laredo building a monument to honor only Hispanic Medal of Honor recipients.  I said the memorial should be built for all the people of Laredo.  A city councilman told me, while I was addressing the council meeting, "If an Anglo from Laredo is awarded the Medal of Honor, we will build them a separate memorial."  Later that week in a letter to the editor, I was accused of being a racist for wanting a single memorial that would serve all Laredoans.  Go figure. High Speed Rail Why are we even considering high speed rail as an efficent form of transportation in this country?  The cost to build this system are beyond out of sight.  Just the land purchase (right of way) alone will be billions and billions of dollars.  Then you have maintainence and other cost.  The ticket prices would have to be in the hundreds of dollars to ever pay back the expense of operation and construction.  Let's say there is high speed rail between Laredo and San Antonio.  That is 150 miles of right of way to purchase.  You cannot mix high speed rail on the freight tracks.  Cannot be done, don't even go there.  Then all the over/underpasses to be built.  You surely don't want a train moving 200 mph crashing into a vehicle.  Just think of all the at grade accidents we have today.  Then once you arrive at the destination of the train, what will you do, walk, get a cab, rent a car to get around town.  If you only need to be in San Antonio for a couple of hours, will you have to wait for the return train?  How many high speed trains will there be?  I do not see very many opportunities for the rail to be anywhere near cost/time effective.  Why not invest in something that we know works?  Airports, not much right of way needed there vs. the number of people who can move at more than twice the speed of "high speed rail." Food Prices Rising Thanks alot United Nations, Al Gore, George W Bush, Barrack Obama, and others.  Your idiotic idea that corn/sugar/other food source based ethanol is just what we need is causing food prices to soar, not only in the United States, but world wide. I was in Kansas last October, and saw field after field of corn sitting awaiting harvest.  Most of these fields in past years were put  up for wheat, but now corn.   I asked a good friend of mine who owns an implement dealership why all the corn was not harvested.  He said the farmers were awaiting commodity prices to go up.   And they did.  Now the corn is harvested.  Good business move by the farmers, but really bad for the US consumer.  If the US government were not subsidizing ethanol (pathetic fuel) we would not be paying such ridicolus prices for meat, or other food stuffs.  Sugar and corn syrup are used in almost everything we eat.  Nor would we be forced to use an inefficient fuel for our vehicles. Now that there is a shortage of  wheat worldwide (remember that corn sitting in what used to be wheat fields) there will be substansial increases in food prices for those foods that use wheat.  How is this better  than drilling for oil and natural gas, or building nuclear power plants? Let's stop this insanity now.