Leaning On Shovels, Raising Your Electric Bill

I was watching that bunch of guys down the street. They work for a contactor working for Florida Power & Light. FP&L was installing a row of humongous ugly poles through the city of North Miami to carry high tension power lines connecting two substations. That gaggle of nine or ten guys? One operated a back hoe that lifted the base section of the pole into place. Two guided it into exact position. The rest stood around with their shovels and watched. We pay for that extravagance in our electric bills.

This make-work charade was repeated for each pole in turn, as the route snaked its way three plus miles through the city bringing cancer causing electro-magnetic radiation through our residential neighborhoods. Why use an outside contractor, though? It opens up the way for FP&L executives to choose the contractor, and judging by the exposes turning up from time to time in the Miami Herald, a lot of palms get greased in the process. Mind you, I'm not making any accusations here. I'm not saying that there was any wrongdoing in this project. I'm just saying that it makes you wonder. Little details, like is the contractor's wife related to an FP&L executive's third cousin on his mother's side, or some-such.

Ah, well, like I said, we pay for it all in our electric bills, just a measily few cents a day, and we can all get that nice warm do-gooder feeling just from knowing that all those nice guys standing around leaning on their shovels aren't standing around in the unemployment line.