Political Tidal Wave

The back water that is Worcester was overrun with politicians yesterday which anybody who reads this blog regularly knows was not a pleasant development for me.  There was a good side to it, kind of, sort of.

General Colin Powell came in to talk with the students of the local technical high school and we had to provide some buses to transport him around Worcester.  Powell is one of the good guys and I liked that he shot straight with the kids he was speaking to.  Despite his august achievements he admitted to being a really poor student and credited his family for keeping him in school until he reached his potential in the military.

General Powell in Worcester Yesterday

It seems all too often kids are let down by their families when they struggle in school.  Instead of encouraging and insuring they remain in school they take the easy way out, throw their hands in the hair and let them quit.  The drop out then becomes society’s problem.  Everybody develops at a different rate and to give up on a kid before he /she finds himself approaches criminal behavior.  The most important lessons any kid can be taught is that the world is not going to fall into his  lap just because he’s out of school.  Families need to provide the support and love (even if it expressed in hard nosed discipline) to provide the young with the tools they’ll need to become contributory members of society and not drains.

The governor of the Commonwealth of Taxachusetts descended on Worcester yesterday specifically to visit our company and the new electric buses we’ve fielded.  The governor’s office corresponded directly with our political leadership so very few details were leaking down to the people who were responsible for getting everything arranged.  Why is that the higher in authority you go the more some people treat information as power and are reluctant to share, even if it’s needed.  I saw the same thing in the military, especially the Pentagon.

The governor’s advance team showed up two hours before the event and asked where all the arrangements they’d requested from our political leadership were.  We professed an honest mystification since we had not been told.  We were able to react, due to some magnificent efforts by a couple of employees, to save the political leadership’s bacon.

Governor Patrick at Our Bus Station Yesterday

I asked one of them why they hadn’t forwarded the emails with all the details sent a couple of week’s ago by the governor’s office.  He blithely dismissed my question while efforting himself into a photo op with the governor, saying they changed the time so he thought there would be more information coming.  Politicians really shouldn’t be allowed to actually run anything other than their mouths.