wetbeardhairs @ wetbeardhairs @lemmy.dbzer0.com

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3 mo. ago

I see what you did there.

For real though it's going to be hard to undo all of this. The political process for all public services is being hung by a noose made by contractors and GOP voters.

No my point is they offload too much to corporations and thus are beholden to the same concerns of those corporations by proxy.

Honestly I didn't even realize until now how good the cropping is on lemmy compared to redd*t. holy shit the number of memes that came from screenshots of twitter screenshotted on insta screenshotted on whatever the fuck but this one was profile.

I've been in PTA fights over this and yelled at superintendents in multiple school district meetings now. The real answer of where the money is going? Contractors.

Everything is done by contractors now because it's easy to sever and it allows organizations to focus on one thing they're good at. Do you need janitorial staff or do you need to keep things clean? Well the answer is you need to keep things clean - so how? Just pay the contractors because the school board got bribed. Sure, it turns out the contractors cost 3x the cost of a dedicated janitorial staff in the long run, but they were quicker to set up and the board wanted a turnkey solution.

That's the approach that every school board uses to answer that question. Need X - ok well we don't want to hire anyone because that makes people mad about how we use money... so we'll spend MORE money on Y over the long run for something that will be a permanently reoccurring cost. Anyone go to a school cafeteria recently? Did you get food served on disposable styrofoam treys or were you given a melamine tray and plate with reusable utensils? Just kidding I know the answer to that already. Do we provide school supplies to students at the district level? No, every man for themselves go to walmart and pay $60 for school supplies for each child with all the markup instead of letting the district buy them by the pallet and distribute at the cost of wholesale for 15% the total price of everyone wastefully purchasing their own.

Don't forget that school boards are notoriously easy to corrupt. Usually it's something relatively benign like a board member has a family member that owns a company that does contract work and they were recommended to the rest of the board. But often it is outright bribes.

But this short sighted view of how to run things is making everything expensive in America. Everything has ten fucking middlemen between you and what you want. And they're all goddamn contractors now. Cheap in the immediate but far more expensive over time. Why? Because we aren't allowed to have honest conversations about government expenses anymore. We aren't allowed to ask for real services for our children because of the short term demands of the bottom line. And when we do open up those conversations, the calculus shows the quarterly expense of hiring a permanent employee is more than maintaining the contract even though that employee is cheaper at the 5 year mark. We aren't allowed to dig ourselves out once we're stuck in the pit bought by contracts.

Edit: To expand on the list of contractors that now handle (BADLY) the same work done by roles that were traditionally employees who gave a shit and were held to a standard of care and duty:

• Cafeteria food preparation (dont even get me started on the quality and cost of aramark dog prison cafeteria food)
• Cafeteria cleanup
• Bathroom sanitation
• Basic plumbing like unclogging fucking toilets
• landscaping
• replacing lightbulbs (!)
• basic IT services

I've heard rumblings of replacing:

• student counselors
• school nurse
• bus drivers
• HR

About the only jobs safe are the principals and teachers and the football coach and that is only true while unions exist.

School board officials are frequently bribed to hire expensive contractors.

Honestly it's not the administrators. They usually reduce overall headcount by performing the tasks of multiple other dedicated people with one role.

The answer of where is the money going? Contractors. Everything is done by contractors now because it's easy to sever and it allows organizations to focus on one thing they're good at. Do you need janitorial staff or do you need to keep things clean? Well the answer is you need to keep things clean - so how? Just pay the contractors because the school board got bribed. Sure, it turns out the contractors cost 3x the cost of a dedicated janitorial staff in the long run, but they were quicker to set up and the board wanted a turnkey solution.

It could crawl elements within the DOM to save a word cloud of visible text for each bookmark as metadata for later searches. I think it's doable. Separating nonvisible and visible stuff is very difficult though.

I'm seeing mini pcs for sale for basically the same price as the windows license that comes installed on the system. They must be quite literally giving them away at this point to compete with Linux.

I switched over all my devices to 24 hour - phone, computers, cars, etc. I even change the settings on my wife's phone sometimes. It's so much easier to mentally read.

Anecdote: I have an IDE that only works on Windows that can build applications for Linux. I use MinGW as part of the packaging process (AND I FUCKING HATE IT OH MY GOD. All of the pathing is broken!). As of yesterday I learned that WSL is a thing that might replace MinGW and make some processes of packaging for linux targets a little easier.

I used to use former child labor.
I still do, but I used to as well.

I had a decently awarded account on SO because I joined it in 2012. I asked and answered questions. For the first few years it was fucking awesome as a professional developer. Then it's popularity on google search results ended up making it too well known and the comment quality dropped substantially. Then the fucking powerusers popped up and started flagging almost everye one my questions as duplicates while pointing to unrelated questions. The last I really used SO was around 2017. I got too fed up to participate in the platform because when I spent the time to make a well formed question, it would just got shut down and my time wasted.

Honestly if it frees me from MinGW I would be happy

The only part required by the govt is the electronic logbook. It doesnt need gps. It doesnt need ai. It doesnt need cell. It only needs the electronic logbook. So yeah - blow it up

Look, Jim, I know you don't like the explosive collar we bolted to your neck, but you've GOT to stop messing with company property

-you

Wow I'm surprised this hasn't been scrubbed yet.

03-04-05 -- Kushner, Charles -- Sentencing -- News Release

Political Contributor and Developer Charles Kushner Sentenced to Maximum 24 Months for Witness Retaliation and Other Crimes

NEWARK - Real estate developer and political contributor Charles Kushner was sentenced today to 24 months in prison for his pleas of guilty to assisting in the filing of false tax returns, retaliating against a cooperating witness and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie announced.

Calling Kushner's crime "disgraceful and reprehensible," U.S. District Judge Jose L. Linares sentenced Kushner to the top of the eligible range - 18 to 24 months - under the his plea agreement with the government.

"The court of law was the great equalizer for Mr. Kushner, who had obviously convinced himself that his power, influence and immense wealth put him above the law," Christie said. "We are very pleased that justice was done."

Judge Linares ordered Kushner, 50, of Livingston, to surrender to the federal Bureau of Prisons by May 9 to begin serving his sentence. Judge Linares also fined Kushner $40,000, the maximum amount as determined under U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.

On Aug. 18, Kushner pleaded guilty to 16 counts of assisting in the filing of false tax returns, one count of retaliating against a cooperating witness and one count of making false statements to the FEC.

Kushner admitted then that, as chairman of Kushner Companies, he assisted in filing false tax returns claiming over $1 million in partnership charitable contributions as office expenses, causing losses to the IRS of between $200,000 and $325,000.

Kushner further admitted at his plea hearing that he devised a scheme to retaliate against a cooperating witness - his sister - and her husband by having a prostitute seduce the husband and covertly filming them having sex. Kushner admitted that he paid a private investigator $25,000 to arrange for the seduction and videotaping of the cooperating witness' husband. Kushner admitted to personally recruiting the prostitute and instructing that the videotape be mailed to the cooperating witness.

Kushner also admitted to making false statements to the Federal Election Commission which allocated campaign contributions to certain individuals who had no knowledge that contributions were being made in their names and had not consented to him making the contributions.

Christie credited Special Agents of the FBI, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Joseph Billy, Jr.; and Special Agents of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation section, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Patricia J. Haynes.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Scott Resnik and Thomas Eicher of the Special Prosecutions Division.

• end -

Defense Counsel:

Benjamin Brafman, Esq. New York, NY

Alfred DeCotiis, Esq. Teaneck, NJ

Jeffrey Smith, Esq. Teaneck, NJ

Well no, but actually yes.