Not that anything here is surprising, I mean, do we ever get thorough investigations. However, I thought this pretty much summed up the quality of the American Society of Civil Engineers assigned by the government to investigate the World Trade Centers and the levees in New Orleans:

The group of 140,000 member, based in Reston, Virginia, sets engineering standards and codes and publishes technical books and a glossy magazine.

Wasn't sold on 140,000 members, but the glossy magazine?

Sold!

While driving to and from Virginia last week I stumbled across some radio programs on a public radio station WETS at 89.5 MHz.
I can get the station here in Maryville, but just barley. If I had not saved the channel frequency while I was still up in north east Tennessee I am sure I could not have found it again.

I really liked the 6:00 PM program from Democracynow.org.

I listed to over an hour of testimony from the Winter Soldiers.

Forrest Erickson

Just got back from Florida. Here are some photos...

Our education system is preparing students for jobs that do not even exist.

Link...

Finally, somebody said this out loud. We need to get wise about manufacturing. As if to understand, there won't be much of it here in the future. Globalization is here, and has been here since the web has had a presence. Americans like to use terms like free trade and globalization. What many don't understand, this is a race to the bottom. Bottom being the cheapest. If virtual design, virtual engineering and virtual meetings can all be done here, but China can make it, where do you think it's going? At $160 Link... per month, do we really think their labor rates are going to rise to ours anytime soon? If theirs don't rise, how do we get fair trade? The answer is - we don't.

We should be setting up our kids for knowledge based and service skills. Skill sets that are proprietary to them. Setting them up to make widgets is setting them up to be jobless.

I'm actually against Free/Fair trade with impunity with those countries that are communist and/or have no desire to fulfill their end of the agreement. Remember, NAFTA was going to "fix" the environmental disaster that is Mexico. Remember China was going to improve it's human rights efforts? How are those things working out?

Look at this way, if Levi's was still here, a worker might make $20 an hour. The locally made jeans in a store would cost $60. Outsourcing pays a foreign worker $4 dollars an hour (figure shipping/handling) to make the jeans. Now the jeans can be sold in the store for $20. Problem is, the $20 per hour factory worker is now at one of the discount big box stores making $7 per hour.

See the paradigm shift? The jeans are going to be three times your hourly wage regardless. But all that assumes the basis of our economy remains Materialism/Consumerism. What happens when or if this ceases to be the case? Suppose we are not buying or manufacturing? The answer is - have a skill or knowledge you can sell anywhere in the world. BTW - prepare your kids for transatlantic flights when they are ready to fly away from the roost.

That's my take. I know there will be many here to tell me how I've got this wrong. Trust me, I look forward to it.