Ships Archives - Where Is The Outrage?

The Fighting Temeraire

The painting above is called The Fighting Temeraire. It was painted in 1839 by J.W.Turner.

Please click here to learn more about Mr. Turner.

The Fighting Temeraire is the sailing ship being pulled into port by the steam ship at the front of the picture.

Here are some facts about the ship The Fighting Temeraire .

The idea of the painting is that the age of sail is over. The steam ship is hauling in the Temeraire to be broken up at the ship yard.

While it turns out that this is a well-known painting, I’d not seen it until I recently read a book called Ship–The Epic Story Of Martime Adventure by Brian Lavery.

The story of a newer technology replacing an older technology is as old as the hills.

Progress has value.

At the same time, government has an obligation to help hard-working people who have been displaced with education relevant to finding a new job, access to health care, and unemployment benefits.

Machines are machines and people are people..

Ships go to scrap yards. People merit better.

In our modern idolatry of technology and markets, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the object of public policy is to improve the lives of human beings.

We cannot lose sight of the fact that we are here on Earth to help others.

By admin|2011-03-23T23:17:23-04:00March 23rd, 2011|Books, General|Comments Off

Pentagon waste is worse than I thought

Hey, buddy, can you spare $300 billion? $300 billion is the amount of money that the Government accountability office (GAO) has estimated that has been squandered. This is not money that we used for the bailout. Instead, this is money that we have appropriated to the Pentagon for weapons systems. These weapons systems have been underbid, over budget or in some cases not even built. Yet, the Pentagon keeps throwing money at these contractors. (GAO report – all 205 pages of it)

Great Video below.

From WaPo:

Government auditors issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon’s biggest weapons systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.

The Government Accountability Office found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion, and are delivered almost two years late on average. In addition, none of the systems that the GAO looked at had met all of the standards for best management practices during their development stages.

Auditors said the Defense Department showed few signs of improvement since the GAO began issuing its annual assessments of selected weapons systems six years ago. “It’s not getting any better by any means,” said Michael Sullivan, director of the GAO’s acquisition and sourcing team. “It’s taking longer and costing more.” (more… )