Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Donate to Haitian Relief Efforts

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While it’s been over a week since the devastating earthquake in Haiti, you can (and should) still contribute to relief efforts. There has been an incredible outpouring of generosity from individuals and governments around the world and many, many lives have been saved . . . but there’s still a lot left to do.

Even after rescue operations are finished, the Haitian people will still need assistance with rebuilding and reestablishing basic provisions of food, water, and shelter. Most of us are not in a position to actually lend a hand—that’s mostly being done by U.S. and foreign military services and religious and secular charities. We can, however, lend some financial support.

I encourage all of my readers to make contributions to reputable religious and secular charitable organizations for Haitian earthquake relief. I personally recommend Catholic Relief Services and the American Red Cross, but there are plenty of other organizations doing great work in Haiti too.

Donate to
Catholic Relief Services

Donate to
the American Red Cross

AP: Republican Wins MA Senate Seat

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The Associated Press projects that Scott Brown (R) has won election as U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, defeating Martha Coakley (D). Coakley conceded the race to Brown at about 9:20 p.m. EST.

The Senate seat in contention was vacated by the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and has been held by Democrats since 1953. Brown would be the only Republican in the entire Congressional delegation from Massachusetts, generally regarded as one of the most liberal states in the union. This unexpected Republican win breaks a 60-vote ‘filibuster-proof’ Democratic super-majority in the Senate.

This special election has been widely regarded as a referendum the policies of President Barack Obama (D) and the unpopular health care reform bills working their way through Congress.

The Democrats’ Huge Miscalculation

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In my analysis immediately following the 2008 elections—which catapulted President Barack Obama (D) and large Democratic super-majorities in Congress into power—I made a prescient statement:

All-in-all, there was no ‘conservative’ on the ballot for us to support. The values of fiscal and social conservatism were not put to a vote this year, and I would kindly recommend that President Obama refrain from interpreting his comfortable win as a mandate for big-government spending programs or liberal social principles. (Emphasis added.)

Many Democrats, however, did apparently misinterpret their 2008 blowout as a mandate for left-wing programs. They kept the financial bailout machine going even though a lot of people voted for Obama as a rebuke of the George W. Bush (R) bailouts. They embarked on an incredible binge of federal spending, almost quadrupling the federal deficit in their first year, even though a lot of people voted for Obama as a vote against the Bush deficits. As if that wasn’t enough, the Democratic Congress embarked upon a massive overhaul of our health care system—developing a plan behind-closed-doors that a solid majority of Americans oppose and then trying to push it through with minimal debate and zero transparency.

In a very short amount of time, Obama and the Democratic Congress have alienated most of the centrists who put them into office. Obama’s approval ratings have dropped faster than almost any other president’s in history, and the Congress is faring no better. In the 2009 off-year elections (for Governor in Virginia and New Jersey), limited-government, conservative Republicans swept the races.

Read more . . .

Got Gas?

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We got home today and found this note from Washington Gas informing us that our service was off because a line had been damaged across the street (presumably amid the home building in the neighborhood).

When the power goes out, they just turn it back on when they fix the problem. Apparently when gas gets shut off, they don’t just turn it back on when they’re done. I think it has something to do with the fact that gas can explode. Go figure.

Anyway, Melissa got a hold of the company while I did a few errands, a guy came out and hooked everything back up and made sure the heater worked, and now we’re good-to-go. It was a big, goofy waste of time really.

Catoe to Step Down as ‘Metro’ GM

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Local media report that John Catoe will be resigning as General Manager of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA, ‘Metro’). He will step down on April 2.

Catoe became Metro GM in 2006, inheriting an already-failing transit system. During his tenure, Metro’s precipitous slide in quality and safety continued unabated—culminating in a deadly MetroRail crash last June. Metro has habitually ignored safety recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Many area residents (myself included) now consider the system unsafe.

Metro has never implemented a redundant fail-safe train detection system, so single failures can cascade into deadly accidents. In fact, there are multiple single points of failure in the system that have caused documented accidents and near-misses. In the aftermath of the June crash, Catoe claimed that no transit system has redundant train detection systems, but here in the real world we know that many have them. In fact, San Francisco’s BART system—often called a ‘sister system’ to Metro because of their technical similarities—implemented a fail-safe mechanism in the 1970s.

When Catoe’s contract was extended by the Metro Board of Directors in September, I issued a call for accountability. I renew that call today. This would be a great opportunity both to replace Catoe with a strong, capable leader and reform the structure of the unaccountable Metro Board. If you’re a D.C.-area resident, write your representatives and tell them so.

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.