Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Various Little Adjustments

Posted

I spent a bit of time this evening making a handful of small, mostly administrative updates to the site that I’ve been stewing on for a few weeks:

  • I finally added our new shotgun to the Firearms page; I totally slacked on this for the last month.
  • All site policies and rules have been brought together on one new Policies & Rules page.
  • I’ve added a new Technology page under About the Site to highlight all the products and tools that go into making this site work. Most people won’t find this too interesting, but a few might.
  • I’ve promoted the old Web & Software page to the main menu, re-named it Software, and set it up to be able to support any new software projects I might take on.

Nothing too earth-shattering for now. Enjoy!

Share to:

Send to:

Posted in: Site

Fairfax Sewer County

Posted

sewercountyI’ve lived in Fairfax County, Virginia, for much of my life—about 18 years of it now, believe it or not, in three different stints. I have always hated the Fairfax County Sewer manhole covers. They’re intended to say “Fairfax County” around the outside and “Sewer” in the middle. Well, maybe there’s something wrong with me, but every time I’ve seen one of these—as a child, as a teen, and now as an adult—I instinctively read it as “Fairfax Sewer County.”

Not exactly the message they’re trying to get across.

There are obviously much more important things for Fairfax County to worry about, but really guys, come up with a clearer label for your manhole covers. How about putting “Fairfax County” together as a phrase on the top and then upside-down on the bottom so it can be read from almost any angle. Or, maybe we should just not put the county’s name. We know we’re in Fairfax County, so it really just needs to say “Sewer.”

Just a thought.

Privatize the Postal Service

Posted

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution states that “[The Congress shall have Power] To establish Post Offices and post Roads.” This is the foundation of the United States Postal Service (USPS), one of the few things our government does with valid Constitutional authority.

The idea behind the Postal Service was to provide a reliable, inexpensive way for the people, businesses, and government of the United States to communicate with one another and ‘grease the wheels’ of our society and economy. In the 1780s when the document was written, there were no telegraphs, telephones, Internets, or Twitters to use for our intercommunication. Mail was it. Needless to say, times have changed.

We don’t necessarily need a Postal Service today—especially not one with a federally enforced monopoly on the transmission of letters. The text of the Constitution does not require the government to operate a Postal Service, it merely gives them the authority to establish one if they choose. It’s time to disband the federal Postal Service by privatizing it and ending its monopoly on letter carriage. It’s time to allow FedEx and UPS to compete directly with, or even purchase, the existing USPS entity and its infrastructure.

John Potter, current Postmaster General, knows that things have to change at USPS. He doesn’t, however, talk about privatization. He defends the existence of the Postal Service, but apparently doesn’t concede that its time as a federally protected monopoly should be coming to an end. There will probably always be a need for mail—especially package delivery, though letter delivery has its increasingly-limited place too. There is not a need, however, for a government-established mail monopoly in the United States anymore. Congress should end the monopoly and privatize the agency with one simple regulation: the USPS and any other business that chooses to engage in private mail delivery across state lines must offer delivery to all residences and businesses in the United States, just like the current Postal Service does.

Moose on the Roof

Posted

Yeah, I know, I haven’t been super great about regular posting this week. It’s the end of the summer, the weather is turning, and . . . well it’s a bit of a slow news week. Between the slow news week, my comparative lack of motivation, and my bit of writers’ block . . . well I just don’t really haven’t had much to write about.

This, too, shall pass.

I did want to take a couple of minutes today to acknowledge my slackerdom and, most importantly, call your attention to the most important news story of the week: The Moose on the Roof.

Enjoy!

A Prelude to the 2010 Midterms

Posted

Every once in a while, I read an article that just makes me want to yell out in frustration—usually when the so-called ‘mainstream media’ or the government discovers something painfully obvious that I and others had been saying all along. This happened to me again yesterday when I read in the Washington Times that former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke lied to Congress and the American people during last year’s bailout bonanza.

Paulson and Bernanke, both appointees of former President George W. Bush (R), were the primary cheerleaders working to convince us that the universe was coming to an end unless the government dumped billions upon billions of your and my money into propping up failed corporations like AIG, Bank of America, General Motors, and more. Lots of us saw this for what it was—an unprecedented and ill-advised power grab by the federal government that would, in reality, do nothing to ‘fix’ the economy. It was an affront to our free market economy and blatantly unconstitutional.

Paulson, of course, left office when Bush did along with most of his other appointees. Bernanke, on the other hand, stayed on (Fed. terms follow their own four-year schedule) and was recently reappointed by President Barack Obama (D). ‘Change’ indeed.

Read more . . .

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.