[PLUG] The house bill, a possible problem...

[Ron Braithwaite]

Steven A. Adams wrote:
> Well Carla, I'm not going to get into this full-blown rant again. All I
> will say is that these folks have dedicated a lot of time and energy
> into this and I, for one, highly respect their effort and tenacity.
> However, to use a phrase that we have heard a lot of lately, "The
> Reality of the Situation is" that passing legislation to mandate
> something, anything, that is already adopted by government rule, and is
> already being practiced by government agencies, will only grow more
> government, add more process and slow production. Would you, with clear
> conscious, advocate that Oregon add more government for no other reason
> but to mandate that government continues to do what government already
> does?

Sorry, but that is NOT what government does. What mid-to-upper level 
managers in government (and in much industry, too) is go with what they 
know. They can reject Open Source out of hand because "there isn't any 
such package to do what we need." And they don't have time to do 
research to find anything that isn't there, right?

They *won't* do the research into the alternatives unless they *have* to.

Not because they are lazy, but because the simpletons running the 
legislature (not to put too fine a point on it) can't figure out that if 
you try to maintain the infrastructure by overworking the poor schmoes 
who are trying to keep it all together, someday it will all fall apart.

> In a nutshell, I have to agree with the opposition (as much as that
> hurts me personally) when they say that the Bill is not needed. My
> "lighten up" comments were just that, light hearted and not intended to
> pick on Ken or anyone. Ken and I have gone a few rounds in the past but
> we're both adults and in the end we do possess the ability disagree
> peacefully.

This is going into a political vein and so I will say this one time and 
will then back off. I will not respond to any further posts on this -- 
I'm just making my point because this political agenda always seem to be 
able to sneak into almost every discussion except the purely technical ones.

That said:

Libertarianism is as every bit as much a failed experiment as State 
Centralized Socialism that was found in the old Soviet Union. One 
extreme of deregulation of everything without doing something about the 
monopoly of greed is just as bad as sitting in Moscow trying to plan out 
how many shoes to produce for the next five years in Uzbekistan.

Oregon is in its current state is because a bunch of whacko right wing 
Republicans bought into some of what Libertarians say while leaving out 
the rest. And lets face it, many of them won't adopt the rest except at 
gunpoint. So what we get is the mess that we are in now.

I am personally an anarcho-syndicalist, so don't give me crap about 
being a commie socialist pinko hippie whatever. I just happen to believe 
that democracy is a tricky, slow-moving thing that requires a lot of 
compromise on all sides. The legislative leadership that won't 
compromise can't figure out that their One True Faith of weird-ass 
whacko Libertarian-influenced Republican ideas has screwed up the state 
without getting anyone any closer to any sort of ideal society.

And a lot of the blame for where Oregon currently is has to fall at the 
feet of the folks who constantly preach their ideology to others who 
only pick up on the part of the message that they like. And that screws 
our state up for everyone else.

There. Now that was a rant.

I will spare you in the future, but I just was fed up with listening to 
that stuff and not letting it pass because we don't (and we really 
don't) want politics to take over the PLUG list for weeks and get a lot 
of feelings hurt. But I just couldn't let it go by.

Now, having put a stick into the hornet's nest and stirred vigorously, I 
will back off and go back to lurk mode.

Bright Blessings of Peace,
Ron Braithwaite

-- 
"It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made 
mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You 
had to cling to this sort of image because if you didn't you would have 
to face the fact that ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and 
told their children bed time stories, were capable of then going out and 
doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to 
blame it on "them." It was bleakly depressing to think that they were 
"us." If it was "them" then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was "us" 
then what did that make "me?"  After all, I am one of "us." I have 
certainly never thought of myself as one of "them." No one ever thinks 
of themselves as one of "them." We are always one of "us." It's always 
"them" that does the bad things." - from "Jingo" by Terry Pratchett