I hope that everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving. A lot of folks have the day off and try to avoid shopping. I’m hoping to encourage some discussion around whatever is on your mind. Many spent Thanksgiving with relatives. We love them, but they are more likely to have different political views than the people we meet at Democratic meetings.
This is an open thread but I’ll make a few suggestions.
Patronage versus constituent service. What is appropriate and what isn’t? Would civil service tests help? In another life I worked in a technical profession. From what I saw the Civil Service exams did not help to ensure a merit based hiring system. I have known others in other areas of government who would say the same thing.
Keeping folks politically active. What kinds of activities are you interested in doing? Organization building? Educational forums around issues and legislation? Voter registration/Democratic registration? Learning more about messaging?
What was the buzz around Thanksgiving dinner? What’s on people’s minds?
n/t
was the whole South/North Korean situation (and I don’t mean Palin screwing up which was which). My sister’s son is an adopted Korean child so maybe it was a little closer to home, but there was much discussion about Why is this happening? Where will China come in? What will happen if it escalates?
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p>So fun remarking about the Probation department, talks about Sen Scott Brown and FireFighter Ed Kelly having “business” discussions (strange bedfellows…) and top discussion was “would the 32 people (totaling over 5,000 pounds, close to 6,000 after we ate) in my Mother’s 100+ year old Dorchester house cause the floors to collapse under us. We almost stuck a table of people out on the piazza, but it was too cold (and I was worried she’d stick the Republicans out there since there was only a few of us).
We’ll make a Democrat out of you yet. :-!
I’ll also note my “doing it together” sig… was a few days before President Obama’s Thanksgiving radio address. He copied me but that’s ok…
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p>Great message, I hope the rest of leaders(?) were listening.
He just can’t admit it. đŸ˜‰
don’t we have rules on ad hom insults?
The only national/international thing that came up was Korea. Which is funny, because the domino economic failures in Europe augur much worse in my opinion…
That’s my (likely) answer to your first point. If you want programmers who know Java and J2EE, test for it.
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p>No government, at any level, can credibly claim to have a hard time finding talented people when unemployment hovers near double-digit levels.
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I think I heard a story last week pointing out the large mismatch between available jobs and the unemployed. Apparently employers are having difficulty filling technical and skilled positions, because the workforce lacks the needed skills. Anyway, that’s what All Things Considered or Marketplace had to say.
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p>TedF
Is where people pay for political appointments. Constituent services is what our Reps and Senators do as their jobs. Regardless of campaign contributions.
when Joe on Beacon Hill get’s a job for Jane on Beacon Hill’s cousin Jake, nobody is getting paid… but that ain’t constituent service in my mind.
Conversation around the table was the dumbing down of America and its effects upon the political system.