Whitefish Energy. They are a two person firm from Whitefish Montana. They were awarded a contract to restore much of Puerto Rico’s power.
Each lineman will be paid $319 an hour. Nightly accommodation fees of $33o per worker. A food allowance of $80 per day. That’s one million dollars a year per lineman (if they work ten hours a day for six days a week with two weeks vacation) just for wages.They are sending 300 lineman.
Misery = Profit. Maybe all of us TBPers can become mega-millionaires when TSHTF. We should put our collective heads together and come up with The Plan.
I am so damned SICK and TIRED of EVERY damned thing in America!
“Oh, just STFU, Stucky. That’s capitalism at work! It’s a beautiful thing. You would do the same thing if the opportunity came along.”
Fuck You. You have no idea what I would do.
Then again …. why not? I’m not hurting anyone. It’s not like the ‘Ricans are paying the bill. The government is. Funny money, just bits and bytes on a computer screen or, maybe black ink on green cotton. The government has been screwing me for years …. my payback is well deserved. In fact, I’m a fucken humanitarian!! Yes, that’s right, I’m doing God’s Work … risking my life, and shit. I’ll even use the money to donate a C-Note to the United Kneegrow Fund. My conscience is clear.
Bullshit. Profiteers from misery should receive looong prison sentences. That’s a law I’d support 100%. Stick THAT up your lineman ass.
You can read about this miserable horseshit by clicking the link below.
What if their very lives are in danger while on the job? How much do Monsanto CEOs make?
Screw that! I’ve done dangerous work – some insanely so – to feed my family, and I’ve never made $729 a day – even if you figure gross pay + benefits. Moreover, I’ve been around people who do things just as dangerous for less than that. This is just typical governmental bullshit corruption, which I see all the time as well, all the way down to the state and local level.
That’s it exactly, Tom. This isn’t even capitalism. It’s crony capitalism, or as Ron Paul calls it, soft Fascism.
Wonder how much the Erik Prince private mercs or Sick Cheney “renditioners/torturers/wet-workers” are “renumerated” for their “actvities”? Sooooo. . . CHOOSE.
Yeah, lineman job in a shithole country with the power out. No thanks, you can keep your 318$ an hour. Maybe I would be more irritated by something like that if celebrities didn’t make many millions a year to do “art” mostly really shitty art. Also athletes making millions of dollars to play sports for entertainment. CEO’s making 30million dollars+ golden parachutes for running a company for a couple years, often into the ground even further. Line work is at least dangerous, and living in a country that just turned into a 3rd world country to do hard and dangerous work would require some serious hazard pay. So maybe 300+ is too much, but I don’t think you are going to see many people head down there for less than 100$/hour, why would they. The risks down there won’t just be from the work itself, but crime and disease as well. So this type of story gets thrown near the bottom of the heap in my give-a-shit meter.
No one is forcing YOU to pay for those high salaries of athletes and movie stars.
OTOH, YOU are being forced to pay for those lineman … for a territory (PR) already neck deep in debt, and this new debt will never, ever be repaid. Another ‘Rican “fuck you” to middle-class American taxpayers.
Which is why it is not profit(eering). Force is rent extraction. Not profit. Being forced to pay for stadiums for the “sports” – same thing. Those “high salaries” are heavily subsidized. Subsidy\taxes is theft. Bread & circuses is extracted from the bread eating, circus going, dopes – & from people who want nothing to do with any of it, too. That’s what it means to be a citizen: denizen of iniquity, the plantation. &, for many, implantation of all the usual suspect nonsense. Who is Keyser Söze? He’s the collusionist-narcissist in 9 out of 10 mirrors.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/01/29/the-2015-super-bowl-stadium-is-a-big-cheat-on-taxpayers/
Profit is a good thing. Rent extraction (theft) isn’t.
Be very careful Mr. forget.
Most of that was coherent and understandable. You may need to up your game some.
mR.dawg, sellin’ CL short is one thing. At least the possibility of buying it back cheaper & pocketing the diff exists. Sellin’ self short, otoh, there’s nobody on the other side of the trade, no matter how compellingly coherent that Brad Pitt alter ego seems.
Coherence carts are pulled by comprehension. Not vice versa. Some carts require Clydesdales. Others Shetland ponies, or even sled dawgs, will do.
So whether this particular cart was lighter, or your husky-pony is putting on muscle, the up-gaming credit goes to your account.
But burying & losing the bone that anything you can’t comprehend-locate is ipso facto incoherent is a losing trade. A negative entertainment. Or an entertainment negative (you know, like those people in audiences that like to wave lit bic lighters – & the people who like to emulate those people…) .
Which some people are into. Moths to the market flame you could put it. Or wax-winged Icarus to the sun. As Ed Seykota says, win or lose, everybody gets what they want out of the market – whether they realize (comprehend) it, or not. Which may not gloss the pain, but is not Panglossian in the least.
That’s better.
Citius, Altius, Fortius, Dawg. (Have sought dis\confirmation before, to no avail: you have posted you’re a CL trader, yes?)
Stuckey, the lineman aren’t being paid 319. an hour, the business is charging 319. an hour. I have no idea what it costs to do this sort of task in a place like Puerto Rico, but I’m sure it’s very expensive. I have no idea at this point whether this Whitefish outfit is one of Ryan Zinke’s buddies and this is just pure graft, but I suspect you’re right on that. But let me ask you a question. How do you restore the power in Puerto Rico? Guy who runs their power company said everybody else wanted the money up front. Whitefish got Wall Street to bankroll them and rolled the dice. After Hurricane Andrew, I did a lot of contracting in a very similar way. People were so beaten up, it was very hard to get deposits from people. So I did all my jobs out of pocket and billed them when I was finished. Didn’t get burned one single time. A little riskier, but I closed every deal with that arrangement. Again, I smell corruption here. But how are you going to fix Puerto Rico’s power problems? Everybody wants it done fast, well it’s getting done. It was always going to be ugly, one way or the other.
Guy I know, a very experienced carpenter, went down to New Orleans after their hurricane, by himself, started working for people rebuilding their houses. Reasonable rates, didn’t do it to get rich, did it because they badly needed guys like him.
Haven’t seen him around for a while. Guess he may have headed on down to Houston. Or Puerto Rico.
That’s how things used to get done once upon a time, in the land of the free. Not so much, now.
According to CNN (yeah, I know, Criminal News Network), Whitefish only has a few employees, but they’re using subcontractors to do the work, who will get paid much, much less. Also, I assume that price includes all material required for the job, such as lines, transformers, etc.
“in a shithole country”
Puerto Rico is not a country.
https://www.usa.gov/state-government/puerto-rico
It used to be. Now the U.S. owns it.
Stucky, if you were a lineman making maybe $30 or $40 per hour and sleeping in your own bed at night, how much would it take to get you to leave home for an extended period for line repair after a disaster?
And how much more would it take to get you to go to an impoverished area with high levels of known corruption, populated by people likely to envy and resent you? To a place where your personal safety would not be at a similar level to what you are used to at home?
Or looking at it from the other side, if some regulation or culture mandated that you be paid no more for that work, in that location, than your contractual overtime rate at home, would you be interested in going?
If some of the guys who show up for the high wage turn out to be less than qualified or otherwise undependable, how many men will be in line to replace them, if that wage is not high enough?
How much in enough, and how much is too much? I don’t know the answer to that question. The guys in Montana made a guess. Time will tell whether they chose well.
The Old Guy
You guys are retarded. It may be true that most of Puerto Rico has been blown down, but it is still an island paradise. It isn’t dangerous. It isn’t a hell hole. These criminals aren’t putting themselves in anything like danger. It’s a cush job in a great place. The real question is how in the hell did a two man shop in bum fuck backwater get a huge contract to hand out this graft. This has to be payback for something, what the hell is it? How are these criminals connected to the DC criminals?
Yeah, I can see your point. But what does it take to ramp up the infrastructure repair quickly? Also, are lineman a dime a dozen? Do they, for the most part, work contractually? Do they sign non-compete?
In a bucket truck in the tropical sun all day. No living in a luxury hotel in San Juan but in whatever accommodation can be found in a inland village. The towns crawling with drug addicts and thieves. The pay maybe high but they will not be living high while they are making it.
If they were ‘awarded a contract’, then most likely, this contract was bid. Low bid usually is ‘awarded a contract’.
Now I know nothing about this situation, but in my business, we bid public projects all the time. There is a spec. and drawings. You bid to those specs. Your bid states if you can do it exactly as they expect, or you take exception. Then it’s up to the owner (town, city, state, fed, etc… and their hired consultants) to decide which bid is the best for them. Low bid, with the least exceptions almost always is awarded the contract. There are usually ‘proof of experience’ and ‘proof that you can accomplish’ clauses in most public bids. And they are always bonded. So in case you don’t get it done, on-time, or to spec (contract), the bond is called-in and the insurance company finishes the job. The insurance companies don’t bond anyone they don’t think can do it.
Kinda simple system, it works. Note this is for public money. Private has more leeway but follows a similar system.
And as it’s supposed to happen, smarts, experience, hard work, sacrifice, understanding risk, etc…. usually does OK.
Now there is certainly corruption, but you chose to play games or not.
Chris, what you outline is how the system is designed to work. But when a 2-person firm in the northern Montana gets a huge contract in PR, I’m smelling the aroma of corruption.
Add to the fact that the Secretary of Interior is from Whitefish and his son worked for the 2-person firm over the summer and the stench is getting pretty strong.
The public bidding process is only for the little people. The big boys just give the money to their cronies.
A $40/hr lineman will make triple time on holidays, so $120. For extended stay tradeskill work its often holiday pay+per diem for the duration of the visit.
The pay seems a bit on the excessive side, but honestly you’d have to pay quite a bit extra for skilled labor to take the risk.
My biggest issue is the size of the outfit. Even if those two people were the best of the best…they don’t have the equipment or logistics to even begin to extend themselves.
It stinks of corruption, but your guy on the ground actually doing the work isn’t the one you need to be worried about. Its the guys who actually inked the contract.
Love this crap! Supply and demand…..except when it is some ballsy, highly skilled and trained individuals who, yes, are in very short supply. Houston, Florida…you think those systems were restored by the crews who live there? Lineman from all over the country left hearth and home for weeks to put that stuff back together.
Some “Warrior” with large hands and quick feet makes this kind of money each week and is not branded a criminal. Keeping the lights on and the beer cold is heroic work. Talk is cheap, especially for those who have not gaffed a pole. Thats right! I doubt most of rural PR has infrastructure that allows access for buckets.
No doubt the system down there is totally to spec, not a dangerous cobble, that would be a hazard to work on if intact. What is it about Americans that makes them so vociferous when a working man gets to make a buck? Fine, keep your money, and fix that shit yourselves!
“What is it about Americans that makes them so vociferous when a working man gets to make a buck? Fine, keep your money, and fix that shit yourselves!”
Good enough. Except you ignore one question: WHO is paying for it??
You KNOW it’s the government. Ummm, that would be YOU and me. But, you have no problem with over a quarter of a billion fucking dollars being spent. SMH.
“You KNOW it’s the government. Ummm, that would be YOU and me.” That is rich! I can’t remember when those boys asked for my input on anything. The point I was trying to make is people have no problem with ghetto thugs or fat-assed rascals with houses in The Hamptons routinely pulling in “obscene” amounts of cash for a short helo ride to Manhattan or playing a game on Sunday.
$300 buys in 2017 what $40.00 bought in 1968. Real wages for most trades have been flat or declining since that time. Corruption? You bet! You would have the same situation if you were striking flint to heat the wigwam or light your way to the shitter. No government necessary, just a big dude with a knife or a club who, by right, demands a piece of your action.
So are you going to leave 3.5 million Americans without power until they figure it out? Who fucking cares how it gets paid for? It needs to get done. Stucky, if your house had no power and no roof I guarantee you’d be crying like a bitch until it got fixed, and your more capable than most. They call these kinds of situations disasters for a reason. They are generally out of most people’s skill range to fix. I’ve gone through five major hurricanes in the last 13 years. Francis, Jeanne, Katrina, Wilma, and this year Irma. I’m very fortunate that I have men and equipment, and the means and knowledge to put things back together. But how would I have done if I had taken a direct hit from Andrew in 1992? It leveled everything down in Homestead like a bulldozer. There was nothing left. I would have been as helpless as the next bitch. Well, that’s what Maria just did to Puerto Rico.
Indifference to how•l is predicate to sowing wind, reaping whirlwind….
“I am so damned SICK and TIRED of EVERY damned thing in America!”
You and me both. Where, when and how does this shit end?
I know I would feel very fucking uncomfortable profiting like that from the misery of others, though not sure I would be able to refuse multiple dumptrucks full of cash.
Also, this is NOT fucking capitalism. This is in in the same fucking zip code. Where is the competition????????? Obviously nowhere to be found or it wouldn’t cost anywhere near this fucking much.
While you are on the link, which makes it real, check out the journeyman and apprentice positions available in Spanish Fork. Go for it ….easy money. Right?
https://www.ksl.com/?sid=46032187&nid=968
Disaster relief and disaster aid workers of all kinds should be required to work for free.
And I mean all disasters, including the ones like roofers and auto body workers after a disastrous hail storm.
No one should be allowed to make money off of a disaster of any kind that causes people to suffer, no one at all.
Dumbass shit for brains. No wonder you hide as a chickenshit Anon.
That is NOT what I’m saying.
The thirteenth amendment to the US Constitution outlawed the practice you describe.
Unfortunately.
I think we have a new candidate for Village Idiot.
That was far, far more idiotic than anything our beloved BB has ever written.
Do I have a second?
Which means nobody would be willing to help. People general work to make money. Who can take that much time off without pay? And is it worth even buying a plane ticket or ship’s fare to get there when you won’t be making any money?
Yes, right, too damn much.
I bet the Clit-on Foundation would do for Puerto Rico like they did for Haiti. They would do it for charity, yes, might not ever get done but we could feel good about ourselves. That is all that matters right?
Washington lawyers are making more than that to investigate how Trump got the Russians to make the FBI hide evidence of Hillarys sale of Uranium One to Putin.