Sunday, June 28, 2009

Dimanche

Point of View: Corps workers sticking with it, Senior Project Manager offers family as sacrificial lamb
"I'd like to make one thing perfectly clear. I am not a Corps of Engineers employee masquerading as an ordinary citizen.
I am, in fact, an ordinary citizen who happens to work for the Corps of Engineers."
~Stan Green Jr.
~Editilla sayz that Oxymoron won't hunt!~
Logical Syllodomy #1:
A- All "Ordinary Citizens" are members of the Public.
B- The Corps of Engineers employs "Ordinary Citizens.
Ergo C- The Corps of Engineers is a Member of the Public.
Which in OPPPR Narrative Language implies that the Corps has the Public's Best Interest in mind, even when possibly committing crimes against that very Public.
OK Fine. How about Logical Syllodomy #2:
A-
Hanz was an Ordinary German Citizen.
B- Hanz happened to design and build gas chambers for the Nazis.
Ergo C- Genocide is simply "Ordinary German Civics".

So, Who's on first. What's on 2nd, and I Don't Know is on 3rd.
This Project Engineer seems to have made it to 3rd base, must we assume, by not knowing who is on 1st and what is on 2nd.
He sounds like a very nice person, and his family sounds wonderful. I'm sorry he felt it necessary to bring them into this.
Such rhetoric bespeaks a weaker position, not a stronger one.
If his Corps' Engineering was so strong then we would not be having this little chat about felonious punk lying engineers.

This Corps engineer would pull our heart strings, rather than assure us of his workplace security and the competency of those "other" engineers who would violate it for bad reasons.
He does this as if to say, "I stand to lose too." Yeah, well Duh?
I find that an embarrassing tactic of disingenuous argument, that of Pathos instead of Ethos: Emotion over Expertise.
The Corps is way behind in our mandated and appropriated hurricane protection time-line, they still try to screw us with Pumps, MRGO has yet to be settled, Morganza to the Gulf is still in the bogs, what else... oh, and this engineer has family to worry about too. Wow, cry me another Mississippi River.
Those Germans who built the machines that exterminated at least 6 million people had families to support and protect too.
But their criminal defense did not work in Nuremberg either.

Corps of Engineers again holds city and nation hostage during hurricane season with latest contracting cluster'fork!
~Sheila Grissett

~"June 1, 2011, is our deadline, and failure is not an option," Cindy Nicholas, a corps contracting projects chief, recently told several hundred contractors. "We have lots of projects coming out, one after the other, fast and furious."
"Duration is a new criteria," she said, adding that technical approach and past performance are also more important than price in winning these contracts.
"
Cost isn't the driving factor here -- 2011 is."
~Click to Enlarge Pic~
~Are we talking about this Cindy Nicholas?

The Corps contract officer overseeing the January 2006 bid, Cindy Nicholas, was told about the copied specifications during a conference call with FPI Inc., a Florida company that also bid on the project, shortly after MWI was awarded the contract.
A recording of the briefing was provided to the AP by FPI.
"Are you folks aware that the specifications that you folks put out was a copy of the specifications in the MWI catalog?"
asked Bob Purcell, who was an FPI salesman at the time the bids were taken.
"No, I'm not aware of that," Nicholas replied.
Corps official Dan Bradley said during the briefing that consulting engineers had a hand in drawing up the specifications. Purcell then complained: "We were forced to meet someone else's specifications in entirety." He said the consultants did not cooperate with FPI, and he charged that MWI was given "a head's up" about the job. That, he said, was evident by MWI's order for pump engines before the contract was even put out to bid. "I don't know anything about that, sir," Nicholas responded. She said that if MWI ordered the engines ahead of time, "they took a big risk."
"Obviously it was a risk that paid off, let's put it that way.
They must have had some assurance!" Purcell exclaimed.

"Not from me," Nicholas said.

~Editilla cracks a jagged straight-jacket smile~
It ain't like we didn't toll'ya. Now the Exquisite Corps says it plans a Really Big Show over next few months, according to CPR.
Also according to CPR (Corps Public Relations), everyone should visualize trying to pack the Saints' defensive line into the back seat of a Volkswagen --'cause that is what this Exquisite Corps must go through with this Sisyphian Effort to not only ReBrand itself with the "Building Strong" thingy, but also: Market RISK, please all of you increasingly ungrateful yet savvier naysayers...
--and still cover its own dragging ass. All done by 2011! Whew!
What a Turduckin ASCE'Fuckin Laydown for the Body Politic!
But as for our hurricane protection during our 4th season after they flooded New Orleans? Got any Risk Reduction? Go Fish!

LPTV~Episode 6~ Stanford Rosenthal on Levees.org, NOLA Indie Rock

Plan to End Louisiana Erosion Faulted~Cornelia Dean

Army Corps levee tree rules rattle Sacramento flood agencies
~Matt Weiser
~If a tree grows on a levee, is it bad? According to a recent scientific review, there's no way to tell by reading federal policy.

Insurance stakeholders to gather at forum~Anita Lee

Radio Operators and Catastrophe

Crock Pot Cajun Chicken with Shrimp Creole~Potato Patch

Photographer finds negatives thought lost in Katrina
~Michael Dumas


~Blues on Jackson Square~ Linda Langhorst

The Inmates are Back

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