191–200 of 408 posts
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Does it not create jobs? Not saying it's good nor bad.
According to their website, there are 15.5 FT employees. I don't consider healthy adults getting paid to do meaningless work a benefit to society.
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No, an engineer without a Professional Engineer license is not "cutting corners". They most likely just don't do the type of work that requires getting a PE. The article says 80% of engineers are working without a license. From experience, this is especially true for electrical engineering. Someone designing a building's electrical system would have a PE to sign off on plans (or be working under someone with a PE). B…
The person subject to the complaint prepared stormwater calculations and submitted it as evidence in a legal proceeding. The letter that person received from the board is linked in the article. It states the person is charged and gives them the opportunity for a written response. Civil engineering typically requires a PE.
It's more accurate to say that the kind of projects civil engineers work on generally end up requiring a PE, as a condition of actually being built. Small time civil engineering in your own backyard does not require a PE - eg improving drainage, setting up a windmill, building a chicken coop, etc.
Prohibiting people from applying mathematical formulas in court arguments because doing so is "engineering" is a dangerous idea. If you're fighting a speeding ticket, is it "engineering" to independently calculate your speed by measuring the time between two points?
Ultimately if the stormwater calculations are complex enough that the court is unable to follow them itself, then it is up to the court to disregard his testimony because he is not a professional engineer with a trustable opinion. That would be a perfectly reasonable outcome here.
But what the state board is attempting to do is to prohibit anybody from examining technicalities without the right license. That's the path to closed society madness.
Texas may do a lot of crazy things when it comes to state government, but one thing I think we definitely got right is the Texas Sunset Commission ( https://www.sunset.texas.gov/ ). Basically, all boards set up by the state government are automatically abolished every 10 years I believe unless the state legislature passes a law to continue the board. So every 10 years the Sunset Commission evaluates agencies/boards a…
What benefits is Texas seeing from the Sunset Commission? https://www.tdlr.texas.gov/ shows a lot of what appear to be wholly spurious licensing types: - barbering - cosmetology - dietitians - dyslexia therapy - behavior analysts - polygraph examiners (!) - auctioneers - etc. etc.
The article's title is misleading. NC does not forbid him to talk engineering. He can write blog posts, yell at the corners, print books. What it does not allow him is to testify as a witness in a court presenting himself as an engineering expert. While I agree this distinction (being licensed) is stupid, the court is within its right to impose it. Spinning this case as some sort free speech supression is just bad jo…
There's no problem with the court declining to treat him as an expert witness. This is about the state threatening to arrest him for truthfully describing his experience and opinions.
Texas may do a lot of crazy things when it comes to state government, but one thing I think we definitely got right is the Texas Sunset Commission ( https://www.sunset.texas.gov/ ). Basically, all boards set up by the state government are automatically abolished every 10 years I believe unless the state legislature passes a law to continue the board. So every 10 years the Sunset Commission evaluates agencies/boards a…
The US was actually founded with the idea that this should be done to the entire constitution every couple of decades.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions
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I don't see a lot of overlap here and don't understand how they're spurious. Yeah the polygraph one seem anachronistic, but if people still use them I appreciate the state trying to make sure the practitioners aren't more snake oil-y than the field at large.
> I appreciate the state trying to make sure the practitioners aren't more snake oil-y than the field at large. What do you imagine you're getting from hypothetical oversight? It is not theoretically possible to be more snake-oily than the field at large.
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The US was actually founded with the idea that this should be done to the entire constitution every couple of decades.
Apparently the traditional law of Iceland required a guy to appear every year and recite the law. Whatever he forgot to include was no longer the law.
Texas may do a lot of crazy things when it comes to state government, but one thing I think we definitely got right is the Texas Sunset Commission ( https://www.sunset.texas.gov/ ). Basically, all boards set up by the state government are automatically abolished every 10 years I believe unless the state legislature passes a law to continue the board. So every 10 years the Sunset Commission evaluates agencies/boards a…
The worst example of this is Oregon has their own version of the FAA. It’s grandfathered in because it was established before the FAA. You pay $12 a year for an Oregon pilot’s registration. And in return for this bureaucracy, society gets... nothing.
Some quick googling turns up nothing more than the state Department of Aviation, which looks serve the same purpose as other states' departments of aviation. Namely, to maintain state-owned airfields and support some planning functions.
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> I appreciate the state trying to make sure the practitioners aren't more snake oil-y than the field at large. What do you imagine you're getting from hypothetical oversight? It is not theoretically possible to be more snake-oily than the field at large.
Acupuncture is snake oil, but I would very much prefer knowing that my acupuncturist has been checked out by someone qualified to check their skills. Just because it's snake oil doesn't mean that there are not expectations around its safety and application.
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This one of the principles of parliamentary sovereignty in the UK: No Parliament can bind a future parliament. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty
Didn't the UK establish a Supreme Court in 2009 with the power to bind Parliament?
They can also declare that legislation violates human rights, but that declaration is non-binding. They are effectively just asking Parliament to go back and fix the law.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_Ki...