Debunking my City Councilman

I like my city councilman, Sheffie Kadane. He’s done a good job for my district, and he has been responsive to my neighborhood’s requests.

But his staff screwed up. Last Friday, they sent an obvious mail hoax to all District 9 community leaders, falsely alleging that a local TV station reported on a North Park Mall carjacking scheme.

I was the first to tell him it’s a hoax. His staff didn’t budge.

Amidst their refusal to retract and increasingly bizarre justifications, I tipped off Allen Gwinn, publisher of Dallas.org. That resulted in this article: Council Member’s Carjacking Email Debunked.

Responsible government should never mislead constituents. Attention to issues is already scarce; it’s terrible to waste it on a confirmed hoax!

I have no problem retracting misstatements. Nothing less is acceptable from a public leader.

Why was that so hard for Sheffie’s office? Does pride trump the truth?

Update: it’s hitting the Dallas blogosphrere:

All they had to do is retract it!

Auto worker unions are eyeball gougers

no_uaw_smallTHANK YOU to the Senate for killing the automaker union bailout.

Yes, union bailout. Unions are mostly behind the domestic auto industry’s failure. They literally killed the “goose that laid the golden egg” by forcing salaries almost 60% more than PhD college professors!

$160K total compensation for repetitive, assembly line work.

This bailout is–literally–leftist Congressmen buying votes from their leftist union friends. A few supposed conservatives jumped on for flaky reasons, including “my district needs a bailout, too”; paranoia of economic apocalypse; and because they fear unionized constituents.

Generations of automaker management have failed to convert their supposed vision into quality products. That’s partly why domestics have made crap cars for decades.

But if vision is currency, unions are the eyeball gougers. When unions guzzle so much revenue, what’s left but scraps? What funds innovation? Management’s #1 fault is playing nice with unions.

Did the Senate kill the union bailout? Perhaps, but, again, the unions caused the failure: they stubbornly refused meaningful compensation concessions. Senate Republicans demanded they drop wages to PhD college professor-levels instead of medical doctor levels. Either way, union members would still be overpaid for turning a screwdriver all day.

I hope this debate causes a colossal shift in union legitimacy.

Unions have their place. I support them when they rise against bona fide workplace abuses.

But when become institutionalized, when their purpose is a monopoly on labor, when they violate our Constitutional right to free association (“closed shop”), unions are a strategic blunder. They shift broad economic focus from what makes the United States special–innovation–and instead try make us like every other gray, socialist or communist country–artificial wage inflation. That’s why domestic automakers are failing–unions converted them from innovators into a socialist jobs program.

It’s time for the auto unions to go. If the foreign automakers’ non-union employees are so highly paid, then domestics can pull it off, too.

One last note: Nancy Pelosi claims we’re playing “Russian roulette” by not bailing out her union buddies. In fact, any Russian roulette is when the bailout debt causes future inflationary pressure.

Wikipedia wastes my time

Wikipedia logo
Wikipedia logo

Last night, I finally gave up Wikipedia editing. It’s not worth it.

Wikipeida is a bona fide nonprofit, and work on it is charitable. But what makes charitable work “worth it”? Here’s a few reasons:

  1. Have a connection. Charity work with a group of friends counts, as does charity work for an organization in which I have a relationship.
  2. Get value out of it. I like my volunteering with Boy Scouts and my neighborhood association because it’s as much an education for me as it is a benefit for them. Also fulfilling a religious calling is a value.
  3. Some kind of permanence. My charitable effort must make a lasting difference in someone’s life.

Wikipedia does none of these.

I have no connection. I only know two editors, and I have met netiher in person. I value relationships, but I only have “so much time” to develop them. I’m not interested in spending that scarce resource on people whose connection is only editing an encyclopeda.

I get little value out of it. I see no “higher purpose” merit. Sure, maybe a little entertainment on the debates, maybe a little pride in knowing I affected some articles. But whatever value I get is totally offset by the lack of permanence described below.

Among Wikipedia’s largest flaws is the lack of authority. Any clown can destroy your changes. Content that is both not part of common sense of laymen and not easily verifiable will be destroyed by successive edits.

I think it was Science magazine that found that Wikipedia is remarkably accurate for scientific articles. Maybe so, but it’s only because the facts are so easily verifiable. The accuracy and verifiability of other articles are debatable. I’ve especially noticed this in articles with a political slant; way too often they conform to how political authorities market things in ways they aren’t.

Good bye Wikipedia. It was interesting, but you’re not worth my time.