There are no words on how stupid and corrupt this administration is.
Thanks Obama!
In order to drain the swamp we must first build the swamp.
As litigious as he is I’m assuming he’s suing this shoddy company for the benefit of the bargain, that is, THEY’LL be on the hook for covering the proper fixes done by a competent company?
The company has 20k in assets. The money paid for the original work has already been spent on various “consultants” and other nontangible expenses. Many to people or companies that only exist on paper and all funnel back to a few individuals.
The company is found liable, but doesn’t have the resources to pay for restorations and folds. No money is ever returned. No repairs are made. The $14m is “gone” in the bank accounts of the corrupt.
A new pool company is opened, the assets from the first are sold at bargain prices to the new to liquidate it’s measly assets to satisfy courts and bankruptcy requirements. All are ready for a new grift.
Let’s bring back debtors’ prisons then. I’m fucking sick and tired of all the “there’s nothing we can do” bullshit. There ARE things, but no one has the stomach for them.
Debtors prisons are pretty terrible and hurt the vulnerable.
Remove a lot of the legal separation between a corporation and those that own and run it. Make the owners and leadership liable and don’t stop at the articles of incorporation.
How can they need on the hook when he likely never paid them to begin with. I mean we all know how Trump likes to treat his contractors
It does look like a nice color in the pic
The very best color
Concrete still too wet and poorly prepared for the paint, in short, incorrectly applied
Jeez. This dumb fuck really does fuck everything he touches, doesn’t he
He paid a lot of taxpayer money to a friend, and I’m sure he got a hefty kick-back too. Why would he care beyond that?
Trump-quality workmanship.
The reflecting pool is turned green to represent Red White and Green of Iran on the occasion of Iran’s victory.
Wait… they’ve been dumping bleach and hydrogen peroxide and who knows what in the pool, did they actually fuck it up from sheer incompetence?
No they paid $17 million to a contractor to do a $500 job. It’s not incompetence, it’s corruption.
Yes, permanently.
Just drain it and then clean the paint off and sand it down to smooth out the stone again.
Then you can fill the pool with water that has been treated properly.
It’s not hard, it just takes competent people being in charge of it. Not someone’s “pool guy”
I’m reading Maintenance of Everything: Part One by Stewart Brand (of Whole Earth Catalog and the WELL fame) and it makes a great companion piece to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Anyway, reading this book at the same time as watching this colossal fuckup by know-nothing blowhards like Donvict is quite interesting. For instance, I just read the part about the reconstruction of the Statue of Liberty and what was involved, and the discussion on the war on rust.
I’m sure a thoughtful writeup on the problems here and the attempts on fixing it would be a great thing for other parts in the series. I might even reach out to him to suggest it…
It’s not that simple. They’ve already sand blasted and pebble blasted a couple of times, and this is even after the whole granite reflecting pool was torn out and replaced by concrete several years ago.
The truth is, and this is in no way to defend Trump, fixing the problems with the reflecting pool have been an ongoing issue for more than 25 years now. To those knowledgeable on the issue, what makes Trump‘s failure particularly spectacular is that he was so public about it, spent so much money on it, and clearly had such an incredibly ignorant understanding of the problems at it faced, and what is really required to fix the problems, that it only magnified his already Trumpian buffoonery. Although, I am kind of enjoying this ridiculous failure.
The problems with the Reflecting Pool are both numerous and old. It’s a complicated system that is fed by the nearby Potomac River, has a complicated pumping and filtering system, and just a whole bunch of other bullshit that clearly Donald Trump does not understand. A lot of very intelligent people have spent a lot of time and a lot of money trying to fix it, and have still had trouble.
It Trump - with zero knowledge at all (even of its name) thought he could fix it, and hired the most corrupt pool guy he ever met to try – and it has failed so hilariously. Ran on his birthday, too, when a whole butt load of tourists are in Washington DC to see his failure.
The joke here isn’t that Trump failed, which, of course he would, it’s that he failled so publicly and loudly after spending so much time making such a big deal about giving everyone else who did a better job than him shit for not doing what he, himself, has also failed to do.
It can’t possibly cost much more than 14 million to just turn it into a normal chlorine pool, with a normal pump.
The thing is that it isn’t a normal pool, and the pumping and filtering system is extraordinarily complex and unique.
Nothing about this is normal
Like another poster said, it’s truly a microcosm of the MAGA/Republican governing style. Pay a buddy way too much pretending that the problem is easy to solve. The buddy grifts by cheaping out on everything. They fuck up the system so badly it becomes a cesspool. And result is that it gets worse and becomes even more expensive to fix.
My point isn’t an argument against yours. It’s just one segment, and what you’re talking about is another segment.
Systemic problems require systemic solutions. You and I in each of us can be angry at one or two or three of the causes of the problem, but until all of the causes of the problem are identified and dealt with individually, and then, systemically in aggregate, the problems we face a date are not gonna be reversed.
For example, you’re looking at the problem from a top-down view, whereas I have been speaking from the problem from a bottom-up view. It will certainly require not only both of these perspectives, but a middle (up and down)view as well. And a lot more views and perspectives about the causes and results of all of this.
And to even begin to tackle all of us, the biggest thing we all need to realize is that the most important thing is we all realize what is really fucking wrong here: fascism. And that, while we may disagree on some specific particulars on how to deal with it, WE ALL NEED TO DEAL WITH IT, AND WE ALL NEED TO DEAL WITH IT RIGHT NOW.
It’s gonna be difficult, it’s gonna be complicated, and it’s gonna take a long time, but those of us who are against fascism need to stop slapping each other around and silly in fights, and we need to start working together. Now.
We also need to realize that we need the collective courage to shift the Overton window back left by huge leaps and bounds whenever we get the opportunity. And all that this would require of any of us is to be both more human and more humane. I really don’t think that’s too much to ask of any of us here.
The first steps, of course, must be to eliminate the outrageously corrupt gerentocracy that currently is the fatal cancer in the Democratic Party. Embracing and supporting the new wave of young progressive is the only way forward. Is the only way to survival.
The Overton window also needs to be pulled back to the centre of the libertarian/authoritarian axis. It would be no good shifting directly left from where we are now. Authoritarian left sucks about as much as authoritarian right.
Awww. I used to think saving the world could be that easy.
But then 18 years went by, and the world got a lot nastier.
Wake up, do better, and fight harder, for the good of all of us!
*And then blame democrats
Don’t forget the best part… Now that it’s worse than ever, the next attempt to fix it by someone else will be even more expensive and they’ll loudly point that out. It will probably the opposite party because voters swing wildly with no memory.
and they’ll loudly point that out.
So document everything and have the memes ready to keep the memory alive when the next attempt is made.
The thing is, as far as I’m aware, he wasn’t even trying to fix the problems. He was, in almost the Trumpiest way possible (the only thing more Trump would be to use fake gold), just trying to gild the lilly. It was purely about appearance, not function.
I see your problem right there
You said “competent people”, and this is not only the US government, this is the US Trump government.
Competency has gone long, long ago
I think they drank half of it first.
And that was just RFK
Is that a serious question?
With this country, at this point you can say ‘yes, they fucked it up because if she incompetence’
The it in the sentence can be almost everything…. Only a few things are also because of evil
According to the article
No complaints have been reported, however, from the local ducks, who have been conducting business as usual.
Apparently, they don’t mind the hydrogen peroxide. But maybe that’s just the article trying to be funny.
I just realized my first reaction to this was “SURELY it can’t be this shady contractor that fucked up, it had to have been the US government” and the fact there’s a decent chance that this is correct is somehow still amazing to me.
It’s both. This couldn’t have happened unless the contractor, and the government employees involved, weren’t in agreement here.
Dude, American Patriot Desert Eagle USA Coatings Inc, LLC is sooOooo legit.
did they actually fuck it up from sheer incompetence?
Fucking things up with sheer incompetence has been a hallmark of this entire administration. At this point, I’d be astonished if it was just a run-of-the-mill accident.
Corruption in play sight, terrifying symbolism for all to see. Washington is more transparent that people think.
It’s not that transparent because of the algae.
So that whole reflecting pond is pretty much ruined now?
Hopefully it makes a few people who see it reflect.
If those people were capable of reflecting this wouldn’t have happened in the first place unfortunately.
They reflect like a motherfucker it’s just that they reflect on how to enrich themselves over anything. We really are in the death throes of Rome, aren’t we? I mean the long rambling nonsensical speeches, the opulence, the pointless wars, crying about barbarians and appointing of horses and tv hosts as cabinet members… Literal fucking gladiator fights at the Palatine Hill.
One of these days people will come and ransack the fucking thing.
…and knowing who’s in charge, it’s going to be abandoned and left to …well, bloom.
Depends if you’re a gnome staring into it
No, it’s slightly dirtier than 5 years ago. It’s just a placid surface to reflect light. The fuss about it is really dumb.
I mean the fuss about it is the blantant corruption of a no bid contract and the fact that it is a very visible/public demonstration of Trumps inability to do anything correctly.
He’s murdering children and giving away billions of dollars at this exact moment. These beans are so small
Oh absolutely, but when ~40% of Americans support ICE and the Iran war, sometimes these smaller things can help make the failures of this administration more blatant.
I wish things like rounding up people illegally and detaining them in concentration camps was enough, but it seems like conservatives in america aren’t swayed by those kinds of abuse of power.
I mean, I’m not out here canvassing. Whether this would inspire someone to do so, I don’t think so. And finding a trump supporter on lemmy to convert with this is difficult, considering the abject hatred, banning, and widespread defederation of right wing instances and users. Focusing so hard on the pool thing here feels like a waste of mental energy if it won’t push numbers
how long until they fill it in with concrete and paint that blue?
(then wonder why tf it ain’t “reflecting”?)
A blue mirror.
BAAAAAHAHAHAHA it’d be funny if it weren’t so horribly sad.
Ha! I fucking called this not even a week ago! And two people down voted out, btw.
People are pretty shitty with downvotes tbh. They use them as a more passive middle finger. Just a quick “feel bad, because you are bad” signal. I wish I didn’t care about them but my human nature gets the best of me. If switching instances was easier I’d probably go to one that has them disabled.
deleted by creator
Everyone called it
At least it will be easy to remove after he’s gone
Where?
To hell
Back to his home planet, hopefully
Uranus ?
100% they will blame liberals for this. Even if they have to invent new idiotic conspiracy theories
They’re blaming Obama for the algae already
Yeah, and now they’ll come up with some conspiracy about them sabotaging the new lining
Joe Biden caused the contractors to paint untreated wet concrete?
If I had to guess, it’ll be closer to like, “I heard Mamdani and Obama were hanging out by the reflecting pool at 2am last week, and they were seen dumping large amounts of something into it. The very next day, I was reading stories about the paint peeling.”
Of course he did. Why the question mark?
