Government

I finally got my Made in America American flag up just in time for the close of Labor Day weekend. I have a University of Kansas Jayhawks flag waiting in the wings too. In the garage is my 2017 Can-Am Spyder RT.

I hope everyone living here in the United States had a good Labor Day weekend!

I have served as a federal employee of the United States for close to three decades. I've been a public servant under five different Presidents during this same time period. This year, there has been a lot of talk lately about the oath all federal employees take and where their loyalties must lie. Personally, I don't understand why there is even a debate of what a federal employee signs up for when making this solemn promise. From my point of view, the meaning behind the oath is pretty straight forward and without question.

Shaved my 32 day old beard today. The government shutdown has outlasted my shutdown beard.

I wrote something similar to this on my Facebook page today.

I think I've only posted about half a dozen political posts these past two years. Admittedly, for reasons I care not to discuss here, I didn't invest a lot of emotion into this election cycle. What has disappointed me most about this election isn't the election results despite my opposition to Trump but the behavior of friends, peers, and acquaintances. I've seen friends, relatives, and in-laws burn bridges on long-term relationships for nothing more than the sake to showing their anger against another one's viewpoint via social media. I can survive four years of Trump, but witnessing the lack of respect people are showing one another is a much more difficult hurdle for me to go through emotionally and spiritually.

Computerworld and the National Policy Research Council (NPRC) recently completed a study ranking the Websites of state, county, and local governments on usability and other criteria. In the study, Michigan's site earned top marks.

According to the article, the "the e-government report card is based on an extensive examination of 11,227 official government Web sites." Sites were judged on 25 criteria, including "whether people could use them to pay taxes, bid for contracts, find government jobs and complain to local officials about concerns such as potholes." Also included in the article was a report card summarizing other top e-government performers among city, state, and local sites.

What separated the winners from the losers?