SBGold said:
Brown Water
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-humiliated-as-dc-fountain-he-restored-turns-brown/
LOL
Everything he touches fails
VOTE BLUE
NOT A PERSONAL ATTACK ON ANYONE ON THIS BOARD
This accusation won't hold water (intentionally bad pun).
Trump had no hand in this. He only asked, presumably, that this fountain and others be restored to operating condition by July 4th.
This fountain and others are under the care and jurisdiction of the National Park Service. The Park Service is a government agency. My guess is that the job entailed more than the Park Service was capable of doing, and they contracted it out. What happened was the Park Service handed the job on a no-bid contract to professional plumbing contractors and engineers, working on a government contract requiring DEI and other regulations, to complete the work.
They connected the fountain to old piping which has some rust in it. The Park Service has announced that they will continue the flushing of the lines and will be done in a few days. So what really happened was that the fountain was not ready to perform as required on July 4th. Anyone who has ever been around renovation or remodeling projects knows it is very hard, sometimes impossible, for architects, engineers, or contractors to estimate what is inside old piping, old wiring, that has not been operated for years, or what is inside old walls, until you take them apart. In this case, especially with the government agency involved running things, meeting a deadline from Trump was probably unrealistic.
About 20 years ago, the tree roots under our little one block street were lifting up the pavement, and the City of SF decided to dig up the tree roots and re-pave the street. They told us it would take 6 months. It took over two years, and our neighbors and I had to find other streets to park on as we had no access to our garages for all that time.
Trump's mistake was letting the Park Service pick the contractor and run the job. Maybe government regulations gave him no choice.
I have a relative who is a gardener who works in Golden Gate Park. He has a friend, a plumber, who gets his jobs by hiring out to different private plumbing contractors at the Union Hall. The plumber seldom could get a full year's work this way. One day my relative spotted an ad on a bulletin board at City Hall advertising a job for a plumber to work for the City, and he told his friend. The friend applied for the job and was hired.
On the first day of work, the shop foreman took him around, showed him the shop, his desk and locker, and how to obtain a truck. The foreman told him, "When you come to work tomorrow, there will be 3 slips of paper on your desk, each one with a job for you to do."
So the next day, the plumber comes to work, gets some tools and the truck, and heads for job #1, which was to fix a drinking fountain in the Park. He finished that, and went on to finish the other two jobs, a broken shower in a high school, and a toilet leaking in an office building. He then went and had lunch and was back at his desk in the Plumbing Department by 2 PM. The foreman was angry.
"What are you doing back in the office. Didn't you see the three job orders on your desk?"
"Yes, sir. I finished the 3 jobs this morning."
Tho foreman was furious. "That was supposed to be 3 jobs for 3 days!"
So now our plumber comes to work by 7:30AM, picks up his 3 slips for 3 jobs, goes out and does one of the jobs, and then returns home, and maybe heads for the golf course, or a swimming pool, or maybe just lounges around the house having a beer and watching TV.
If the Donald did make a mistake here, it was in thinking this was just a simple repair job, and expecting that the Park Service could get this done on time, even if they contracted it out. With such a highly publicized event as the 250th Anniversary, he had to make sure he got his own people in place to make it happen on time, including this one fountain, especially if you have a government agency running the job.
SFCityBear