Americans today are a lot more un-patriotic than my granfather's generation.

There were many members of the WW II generation that had major issues with the Korean War. Did that make them un-patriotic too?

With a rapidly aging population, I imagine any career that caters to the elderly will probably be in demand in the coming years.

I don't think it's a big surprise that Clinton won WV. However, I do find it interesting how many people voted for candidates other than McCain, Clinton, or Obama.

It looks like 7% of Democrats and 24% of Republicans in WV aren't terribly happy with their choices and decided to vote for someone who's no longer running. Does anyone know if this is pretty typical?

Democrats
Clinton: 238,939 67%
Obama: 91,613 26%
Edwards: 25,849 7%

Republicans
McCain: 89,661 76%
Huckabee: 12,171 10%
Paul: 5,912 5%
Romney: 5,188 4%
Giuliani: 2,831 2%
Keyes: 1,427 1%
Curry: 726 1%

Real interesting bit of info. A buddy of mine was visiting a top wine growing region in Hungary, Eger, this past weekend. He was invited by a vineyard for tastings and to watch vine graftings. He was surprised to learn that the vineyard specifically flew Mexicans in from California to do the work since they had the best skills and were the fastest. And no they aren't the cheapest by far there is very cheap labor from Slovakia, Romania and Serbia available.

Specifically, which vineyard hires Mexicans?

My in-laws live outside of Eger and we try to go there every couple of years. I may be wrong but I have never heard of any vineyard hiring Mexicans. I'm sure my in-laws would have mentioned it, as they are very sensitive about "foreigners" taking their jobs (mainly Romanians, Turks, and Gypsies).

In fact, it's a somewhat new phenomenon that Eger (specifically, "The Valley of Beautiful Women") actually has any decent wine. It used to have quite a reputation of making some of Hungary's worst rot-gut. Eger has always been a tourist destination for Hungarians, but through some international investment, it has become a major tourist destination for central Europe. Several of Eger's vineyards also export to the US and are usually described as variations of "Bulls Blood" (which the name also has an interesting story behind it).

I have no doubt that wine specialists in California were consulted but I have major doubts that Mexicans were imported for labor.

This kind of stuff isn't all that uncommon. Though, I must admit it's much more common in older cemeteries.

I've worked on many cemetery relocations, and rarely (if ever), do the number of headstones truly represent the number of burials. And often, headstones aren't even over the actual burials. In addition, older burials (w/out gravestone) are often encountered while digging modern grave shafts. Though most won't admit to it, with this situation it's generally SOP for funeral homes to just dig a shallow shaft and place the modern burial on top of the older one.

At this point, nothing would surprise me...

In fact, the first large project I ran (many years ago), we were contracted to move a cemetery that involved excavating about 100 burials (dating between 1850 and 1980). Upon excavation, we also discovered the cemetery was on top of an even larger, prehistoric cemetery. Needless to say, it really complicated things :-)

I support completely revamping the GI Bill.

Though, because I am nearly 100% positive this bill won't pass (nor get through a veto), I wish they would make some easy and inexpensive changes to the current GI Bill.

They need to do whatever is needed to allow for more efficient processing of paperwork and quicker disbursement of funds. They should also ban any university or college from essentially punishing the student (by not allowing him/her to register, graduate, receive grades, get a transcript, etc...) due to delays in processing GI Bill paperwork.

While an undergrad, there were numerous semesters where (through no fault of my own) my GI Bill paperwork (as well as ARNG EAP) was held up and funds weren't disbursed until half way through the semester. I know I wasn't the only one who dealt with this, and unless things have dramatically changed recently, this was (and I'm sure still is) a huge issue. My congressman's office was so used to dealing with these problems, they had a form letter just for GI Bill related issues.

They need to also make changes to the National Guard/Reserve GI Bill program. To receive the money, a reservist needs to be actively drilling. With back-to-back deployments (and multiple AT's a year) it's very hard for a lot of reservists to get through a 4-year college during a 6-year enlistment. I also believe any reservist who serves more than 3 years on active duty should be entitled to active duty GI Bill.

It's a shame Congress won't make the easy changes to the existing program. These issues have been on-going for decades and are nothing new. They'd rather fight for a bill that they know won't be signed into law for political reasons.

Obama will win big in Huntington, Charleston, Morgantown, and Martinsburg. He will lose decisively everywhere else. I think it will be closer than anyone is predicting, as it will be easier to get voter turnout in those cities.

One thing none of the pundits are taking into account, is a lot of people don't particularly care about the Presidential primary but local elections are a very big deal in Appalachia. "Home Rule" is also a big issue for West Virginia this year and may also draw more people to the polls in pro-Obama areas.

I suspect Clinton is going to win big tomorrow in West Virginia. Though, driving through Huntington, I've noticed way more Obama signs than Clinton. Obama supporters are also much more active going door-to-door with literature.

I've also noticed that people are much less interested in the Presidential primary than they are with local races for Sheriff, mayor, and city council.

My prediction is Obama will win big Huntington, Charleston, Morgantown, and Martinsburg but lose by significant margins everywhere else.

dan, a MBA took the company I worked for down the shitter and my pension went south with him. Are you going to prop me up? Start sending your checks on the 15th of the month. Don't miss a month because I have a life style I need to maintain.

I've never had a traditional pension and am going to rely entirely on my 401k and IRA.

I'll admit I don't know much about pensions but aren't they typically insured by the federal government?

The first is that pensions of Northern states are in dismal shape, because of population shift and a declining tax base. And because the politicians that run those states (and others, unfortunately) don't happen to come from the private sector, they react to a declining tax base by raising taxes, which exacerbates the shift

I think that is a very valid point. On the same subject, many northern states pay out much more in federal taxes than they receive in federal spending. Has anyone ever seen any analysis of how this impacts their economies?

Senator John McCain is believed to be carrying the new Contagious Skin Cancer strand and Cindy, his wife, may sleep in a separate bedroom because she is afraid to touch his skin.

I've never heard of such a thing. Is there really a contagious cancer?

As someone who currently lives in WV, I have no doubt Clinton has a strong lead in this state. One thing that will help Obama is that a great deal of his support will be in Huntington, Charleston, and Morgantown. Most of Clinton's support is in rural portions of the state.

I think Obama will be able to rally his base in the cities and get very good turn out. This won't make up for such a huge deficit but it should help tighten things up a little.

We've also had three Obama supporters come to our door in the past week with info packets. Based on the handouts, it appears he's trying to do some damage control on the flag pin and "secret Muslim" stuff. All of the things they gave out are how he is pro-veteran and a good Christian.

So far, nobody from the Clinton campaign has called or knocked on our door.

This sounds great for Dems. It was Geraldine Ferraro's husband John Zaccaro's refusal to release his tax records that contributed to Dukakis / Ferraro getting their asses handed to them in the general election

Actually, Dukakis's running mate was Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. Ferraro ran in 1984 with Walter Mondale.

We have perpetual scandals coming from our DEQ, such as permitting carcinogenic foam insulation to substandard construction materials, fuels, emissions, pollen and airborne wastes.

From what I can determine these people may not even be Oregonians, many don't know the physical layout of the territories they supposedly over watch data for.

Imo, this is a purposeful concerted elimination of investigations as well as the erosion of public health.

Is it common practice to privatize air & water shed data collection or management?

Posted by redlightrobot at 2008-05-08 02:18

About 90 % of my company's work involves section 404 compliance work but we've done a wide range of projects. I really can't speak for Oregon, but elsewhere it's very common to use private companies for air and watershed management.

In theory, the way it's supposed to work is a big project like this is put out for a competitive bid. In general, these projects are linked to an "undertaking" that involves federal funding or permits. It's not actually the DEP/DEQ that's paying for the study (they're merely the lead-agency), it's the company that's putting in the mine, power plant, etc. that's funding it for regulatory compliance.

Numerous environmental firms will bid and it will go to the most qualified firm with a middle-of-the-road bid. Typically, an environmental firm will do the data collection/analysis and may outsource the geospatial (GIS) aspects to a sub-contractor (many firms are doing this in house now). The DEP/DEQ should be very active in monitoring the environmental firms work and provide consultation throughout the entire process. The final reports should also be reviewed by someone qualified in the field.

Unfortunately, what often happens in reality is the project often goes to the lowest bidder, who may-or-may not be qualified in the field. If the state DEP/DEQ doesn't adequately monitor or review their work, there's absolutely no incentive for the company to do any kind of decent work. It's been my experience that a poorly managed review agency often prefers short and low quality reports over long, detailed, and high quality ones.

Another problem that often arises, is in some states these reports are monitored by a permitting branch of a government agency and not actually by a qualified scientist. For example, in some branches of the Army Corp, it's not uncommon for a permitting bureaucrat to be responsible for reviewing archaeological or biological assessments related to a 404 project. Of course, when this is the case everything gets rubber stamped.

All of this leads to very shoddy work and questionable contractors. My firm has actually stopped working in several states for this very reason. We do very high quality, honest work, but many of our competitors don't do either. Since there is very little oversight in a few states, they always manage to undercut us significantly. In states with decent oversight, we do significantly better because they can't manage to get any reports through review.

As I mentioned before, these kind of problems are rampant throughout the entire system.

In the environmental area, since there is next to no private science being done, the funding is overwhelmingly government-based, and the science has become politicized to the point of not being science.

I'd really like to see your source for this data.

I've worked in environmental consulting for many, many, years. The vast majority of environmental work is performed by the private sector. Yes, a great deal of pure research is performed at universities, but this money pails in comparison to how much private work is being done.

The federal government also out sources most of their environmental work to private companies (my firm does a great deal of work for the Army Corps, HUD, DOT, FCC, etc.). Federal and state agencies then provide oversight to private companies for this work. They're the ones that review our field work and reports.

Unfortunately, the problem mentioned in this article is also rampant for many states. For example, in Appalachia, coal companies have a great interest in making sure their projects go through w/out interruption. They often "encourage" state governments to pressure the DEP (which act as lead agency in enforcing EPA requirements) to rubber stamp assessment reports. When you take the teeth from an oversight agency, drastically cut its funding, or politicize it, it just encourages very shoddy work in the private sector. It also completely negates any potential cost savings by privatizing.

This problem is pretty universal among many fields; in order for privatization to truly save money, regulatory agencies need the funding and independence to enforces their own regulations.