Your stimulus dollars at work

I found this link on Instapundit. 
It's from The Charleston Gazette. 

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Nobody told Hurricane librarian Rebecca Elliot that the $22,600 Internet router in the branch library's storage closet was powerful enough to serve an entire college campus.

Nobody told Elliot how much the router cost or who paid for it. Workers just showed up and installed the device. They left behind no instructions, no user manual.

The high-end router serves four public computer terminals at the small library in Putnam County.

"I don't know much about those kinds of things," Elliot said last week, before politely leaving to help an elderly patron select books. "I just work here."

The state of West Virginia is using $24 million in federal economic stimulus money to put high-powered Internet computer routers in small libraries, elementary schools and health clinics, even though the pricey equipment is designed to serve major research universities, medical centers and large corporations, a Gazette-Mail investigation has found.

The state purchased 1,064 routers two years ago, after receiving a $126 million federal stimulus grant to expand high-speed Internet across West Virginia.

The Cisco 3945 series routers, which cost $22,600 each, are built to serve "tens of thousands" of users or device connections, according to a Cisco sales agent. The routers are designed to serve a minimum of 500 users.

Yet state broadband project officials directed the installation of the stimulus-funded Cisco routers in West Virginia schools with fewer than a dozen computers and libraries that have only a single terminal for patrons.

Hit the links to read the whole thing.  I don't know what company made these routers, but I bet I can tell you which presidential candidate they support. 

Ok, see that little button to the right of the page, the one that says "Assorted Deceptions For A Gullible Public"? 
That's a link to the Stimulus Package website.  You can go there to see how the Porkulus dollars have been spent in your neighborhood.  How many jobs were "created".  (Intentional scorn quotes.)  What they cost. 

Guess what I'm doing in my free time?  I'm contacting those organizations and business closest to my home and my warehouses and doing some interviews and having some conversations.  I suggest you do the same. 

Eventually, I'm going to post them.  They're fascinating. 

Joe Biden is in charge of making sure that none of this money is wasted, BTW.  Here's Obama rolling out the Porkulus Plan to Congress and the nation. It's only 37 seconds. Play it. Play it loud. Somebody in West Virginia has been seriously messin' with Joe:



“You compare the nation to a parched piece of land and the tax to a life-giving rain. So be it. But you should also ask yourself where this rain comes from, and whether it is not precisely the tax that draws the moisture from the soil and dries it up. You should also ask yourself further whether the soil receives more of this precious water from the rain than it loses by the evaporation?” - Frederic Bastiat

Charleston West Virginia had some serious losses due to evaporation. 

Elizabeth !! Warren !!!!! broke the color barrier at Harvard

Elizabeth !! Warren !!!!

You can hit the label at the bottom of this post to read more about the excitement, the bed-wetting ecstasy, the thrill, and the Why-Are-We-Allowed-To-Live-On-Her-Planet fawning and slobbering that surrounds Elizabeth !! Warren !!!!!

She's now running for the U.S. Senate, by God.  How long til the offers come in from Penthouse and Hustler? 

Seriously.  We're not worthy !!!!!!! 

Go here to read about a Fordham Law Review piece where Elizabeth !! Warren !!!! was described as Harvard Law's "first woman of color" !!!!!!!!

But open it in a new window, so you can have this Tim McGraw greatness playing in the background.  Crank it up for Elizabeth !!  Warren !!!!!!!!!!

Let's clear out the photo files again !!

It's time once again to clear out the photo files, all from Facebook, Reddit, or your emails. 
Enjoy !!

As a response to the anti-libertarian question "But who will build the roads in a truly libertarian society?", I've long been wanting to take pics of the devastated streets and highways near my hometown of Drew Mississippi. 
Until I can get around to that project, this pic will do nicely:

I saw this on the Barnes And Noble newstand a couple of months ago.  I threw up in my mouth just a little bit. 

The Dems were for real when they produced this....

The painter was for real when he painted this.....

And Newsweek was for real when they published this....

From the Liberty Movement's greatest artist, Dan McCall:



This Thursday night - The Liberty Speakers Series kicks off !!!

Thursday, May 17, 2012, 7:00 PM

Hampton Inn and Suites, 2700 Green Oaks Road (Interstate 30 and Green Oaks Road), Fort Worth, TX

This is going to be incredible.  An eye-opener. 

The Tarrant County Libertarian Party is kicking off its Liberty Speaker Series with a discussion of The New Jim Crow Laws - speakers will include Dr. Alan Bean of Friends Of Justice, Shaun McAlister of DFW NORML, and Suzanne Wills of the Texas Drug Policy Task Force. 

As the United States celebrates its “triumph over race” with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of black men in major urban areas are under correctional control or saddled with criminal records for life. Jim Crow laws were wiped off the books decades ago, but today an extraordinary percentage of the African American community is warehoused in prisons or trapped in a parallel social universe, denied basic civil and human rights— including the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits.

Today, it is no longer socially permissible to use race explicitly as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet, as legal scholar Michelle Alexander has demonstrated, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways in which it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once labeled a felon, even for a minor drug crime, the old forms of discrimination are suddenly legal again. In her words, “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.”

Dr. Alan Bean is the Executive Director of Friends of Justice, a criminal justice reform organization that specializes in narrative intervention. Dr. Bean was serving a Methodist church as an interim pastor when 46 people were arrested in Tulia, Texas on the uncorroborated word of a corrupt undercover officer. Dr. Bean’s articulate public protest transformed him into an advocate for criminal justice reform. In 2006, Dr. Bean’s work led to the exoneration of a Louisiana family convicted of running a crack cocaine ring on the perjured testimony of convicted drug dealers. Dr. Bean researched the story of six juvenile defendants in Jena LA, bringing public scrutiny to Jena and creating the biggest civil rights protest since the March on Washington. He is now working on a murder case in Mississippi that has gone to trial six times.

Shaun McAlister is the Executive Director of DFW NORML (National Organization For Reform Of Marijuana Laws). He is a graduate of the Art Institute of Dallas, and has worked in web design since 2004. Now employed by a full-service marketing firm, doing video and web design work, he enjoys applying that marketing skill set to his volunteer work with NORML. Mr. McAlister notes that his most difficult but satisfactory achievement has been to persuade businesses and corporations to openly support NORML and its mission.

Suzanne Wills is an active speaker for the Drug Policy Forum Of Texas.   She is a retired CPA.  She graduated from SMU and had her own practice in east Dallas for 16 years.  She is a board member and treasurer of DPFT and Drug Policy Chair of the League of Women Voters of Dallas.  Her talk is entitled “The Drug War: How We Got Into This Mess And The Special Interests That Keep Us There.”  Suzy is probably the most active anti-prohibition speaker in the DFW Metroplex.  (She's also an active member of Mensa !!)

Dr. Bean, our keynote speaker, will open our event with a description of the infamous Tulia, Texas drug raid, his role in the aftermath, and the formation of Friends Of Justice. Shaun and Suzanne will then speak about their organizations, their goals, and how individuals can make a difference. Allen Patterson, Tarrant County Libertarian Party Chair, will moderate a brief panel discussion, followed by questions from you.

If you've ever wondered why the U.S. has spent more than one trillion dollars on the Drug War, with nothing to show but increased drug use, then you don't want to miss this event.

If you think it's strange that we have only 6% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners, you need to come listen to Dr. Alan Bean.

If you are distubed to know that more African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began, and you want to do something about it, this is the event for you.

Thursday night, May 17th, 7:00, Hampton Inn, Interstate-30 and Green Oaks.

 
I thought about cropping out the tag line on this poster, the blurb about "It is your chance - Vote the Straight Democratic Ticket".  Decided not to.  It doesn't matter who is in charge, Democrats or Republicans, the War On Drugs continues to kill more people than drugs. 

Also, Larry Talley isn't going to be with us because of a scheduling conflict.  He's sending an excellent replacement - Suzanne Wills is now filling his slot.