09.19.07 |Permalink|Comments Off on Congress 5x More Corrupt
In the general population of the US as of 2005, ~7 million of our ~300 million citizens, or ~0.0076% of the population is somehow involved in the prison/parole system. See this entry on the so-called “war on drugs” for hard data around the US prison population.
Now consider the US Senate and Congress, consisting of 535 members. Admittedly, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington doesn’t claim that the entire list of 22 members is in the prison system yet, but, there are serious allegations that probably would, with regular citizens, end with that outcome. That means that 4% of the population of our Representatives, or 5.4 times the rate of the US population in general, are corrupt according to this report.
In a population of any size there will be a variety of traits represented. But, in the government branch that represents the people, who were voted into office, I would expect that there is a closer correlation to the population at large. This list merely represents the members who have been caught. One has to wonder what the real rate of criminal and unethical activity is as the data may support a broader culture of corruption.
It’s no wonder that this Congress won’t hold members of a criminal Executive Branch accountable, they’re too busy with their own shenanigans. The 2006 elections were a good start, but more change is necessary to clean this mess up.
The video quality is awful, but the message comes through. And it is chilling. If you watch one video on the Internet this year, this should be the one. CNN is now reporting on this incident, read the comments on that page, we’re in big trouble.
I don’t know which point is most disturbing about this incident:
That a young man was arrested and tasered for asking pejorative questions of a powerful politician in public
That John Kerry didn’t step in on behalf of this young man, in fact, he continued the event while the man was being tasered in the back of the room
That other students didn’t intercede on this young man’s behalf
That he was being arrested for “inciting a riot” and accosted for identification
John Kerry, SHAME ON YOU! We clearly have to get professional politicians out of the way, they do not understand the concept of free speech when its looking them right in the face. You may be a war hero, but you were nothing close to being a hero on this day. UF Police, SHAME ON YOU! You escalated a situation that didn’t need to be escalated. Get some remedial training, start by reading the Constitution of the United States. UF Students, SHAME ON YOU! That could have been YOU! And might be YOU at some point in the future. Suggest you read the Constitution and start exercising your rights.
This is a sad, sad example of how free speech is dying in this country. No wonder people are afraid to speak out…they can be arrested and tasered under bogus charges. This young man was asking questions that needed to be asked and refused to take no for an answer. This is why we have the Constitution, to protect his (and your) ability to speak out in public without fear of arrest and/or torture.
If you’re a blogger and you want to drive traffic to your site, you ought to check out Blogrush. It has overtones of multi-level marketing (not good) but uses these along with the viral nature of the internet to your advantage, potentially. I will say the jury is still out on this one as I can’t yet see the impact, but I can definitely see the potential.
If you look at the left bar on this page, scroll down to the Tools section, you’ll see a box that looks like the image below.
If there is one thing every blog author wants, it’s an audience. There are all sorts of ways to generate traffic to come to your blog and they all require money and work. This one requires a little work (and we’ll see how much money in due course) to embed the widget code in your blog in the right spot. The basic premise is this: each time the widget is served on your blog, you will earn a “syndication credit.” As time passes, you will amass syndication credits that are then used as a bank to supply a link to your blog in other blogs related to yours as the widget is served on those sites.
Here’s where it gets interesting. If you notice the little tab on the widget that says Blogrush, each time someone clicks that, signs up for Blogrush, and embeds the widget, you get syndication credits for their blog traffic in addition to your own. This credit accumulates through 10 levels of referrals from your widget. It’s this multi-level marketing component coupled with the network effect that gives this Blogrush approach great potential for success, and, great potential for abuse by the “get rich quick” crowd.
So far, here’s what I like:
Fast, easy sign-up – minimal personal information required
Clean design to the widget, easily embedded in sidebar.php
No observed degradation in page serving performance
During sign-up, a warning that this is for “real” blogs, not just Adsense delivery vehicles
The potential of how this could work in practice
Turn about is fair play, here are my concerns:
No validation that my blog is “real” – low signal to noise ratio as the MLM crowd rushes to get in on this.
Dashboard, Statistics, and FAQ aren’t available yet (it is Beta, they have been live for less than a week – they get some time to address these.)
Association with “single” category, like Sports, Technology, or Pets – if you have diverse content like I do, it’s tough to find a good category.
Potential for abuse, I don’t want to advertise for questionable content in this widget. While there are keyword and URL filters, it’s unclear how well these work as yet.
Future model changes, as the company grows and matures, it’s sure to want to monetize. In the case this really works, I hope it’s a palatable monetization strategy.
Well, that’s what I know about this tool right now. If you click the links in this article, you’ll be associated with my Blogrush account. If you don’t wish to do that, simply open a new browser tab or window and type in https://www.blogrush.com/. Your mileage may vary. As I learn more about how this works in practice, I’ll write more.
The Geothermal Resources Council (GRC) will hold its annual meeting at John Ascauga’s Nugget October 1-3. There are multiple field trips and pre-meeting sessions offered in the days leading up to the meeting as well. The draft agenda is beefy and it’s clear that this is the event you want to attend if you’re the least bit interested in geothermal systems, both from an electricity production and direct use perspective.
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Aerial photo of Devil’s Slide Project
Today, I visited the south construction zone for the Devil’s Slide Tunnel by-pass project. It was a dog and pony show with many local politicians showing up to state their support and claim credit for their contributions. It wasn’t nearly as offensive as it could have been, some of the speakers even managed a little self-deprecating humor. The most important thing is, the digging is now under way after 2 years of preparatory work on site, and 11 years after voters approved the project in 1996.
The two tunnels when complete will be 4,200 feet (1,280m) in length each from the portal on the south side (Half Moon Bay) to the Shamrock Ranch portal. The tunnels will be exacavated using the New Austrian Tunneling Method which uses lithostatic force from the surrounding rock mass to stabilize the tunnel structure. From the north side, the tunnels will exit onto twin 1,000 foot (305m) long bridges across a deep valley. Work on the bridges should be complete by the summer of 2008, work on the tunnels should be complete by winter 2010, and all the clean-up and associated projects should be completed by 2011. The existing Route 1 over Devil’s Slide will become a recreation area.
I snapped some photos while at the event, they’re embedded below with a little commentary with each picture. Click any image to get the large version (2048×1536.)
