I’ve been following the story on the Metro train crash yesterday and I’ve seen the various newscasts that toss blame every where but where it belongs. They’ve blamed sensors, old train cars, mechanical over rides, brush on the side of the tracks, a curve in the track – everything but what it really is.<\/p>\n
I’ve spent a long time on this planet and I’ve seen some pretty incompetent people do some really stupid crap in my life. I’ve even spent time in third world countries. But until I moved to Washington, DC, I’d never seen incompetence – at least not on the scale I’ve witnessed here.<\/p>\n
When I talk to people who are coming here for the first time, I tell them they’ll be OK if they live by one simple rule; everyone in this city is more important than you are. Everyone in this city is too important to do whatever job it is they’re getting paid for. None of the traffic regulations apply to whoever it is that’s on your right, left, front or rear. <\/p>\n
The smartest person in the entire city is whoever you’re talking to at a given moment.<\/p>\n
I’ve seen fat-assed female cops direct traffic from inside their air-conditioned squad car parked in the center of the intersection. I’ve seen deaf bus drivers who yelled at a bus-load of people because they didn’t ring the bell to stop the bus (actually he was so old and deaf he couldn’t hear the bell). Even the hobos are incompetent – one guy pretending to be crippled had a T-shirt wrapped around his leg to simulate a cast. <\/p>\n
It’s not DC that sucks – it’s the morons who populate the place. Taxi drivers who don’t know their way around the city, waiters that can’t bring you what you ordered, ticket-dollies who write you a parking ticket before your meter expires.<\/p>\n
Was I surprised at the crash yesterday? Not in the least. I’ve watched the drivers of those things and their antics with their friends in the cabs of those trains for ten years (ten years next week as a matter of fact). The only thing that surprises is me is that it hasn’t happened more often. <\/p>\n
Like the Metro train driver who, on the Blue Line near Arlington Cemetery saw smoke coming out the tunnel near Roslyn during rush hour and he decided to drive his train full of rush hour passengers coming from the Pentagon into the tunnel to “investigate” the fire. Brilliant, huh?<\/p>\n
Why do you think the Army is moving Walter Reed from Georgia Avenue to Fort Belvoir and Bethesda? Because they have hundreds of incompetent people working at Walter Reed that they can’t fire, so they’re moving it so they can let them go. But everyone is afraid to say so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"