Liberty always has a way of dying when no one is watching. It could not have died during the administration of George Bush or when there was a Republican Senate, not because there was no one in office who wanted power, but because there was vigilance on the part of civil libertarians who feared encroachment on their freedoms. In the last two months, it has begun to whither not due to late night back room deal cutting, but because there was a public outcry for it to be put down. Liberty was given two crippling wounds recently to the delight of a populace who did not recognize what they were applauding.
When the life choices of the “Octo-mom” came to light the tabloids and the public went through a brief period of confusion followed by outrage. A woman with no job or visible means of support and who was mother to six infants and toddlers born from artificial insemination and then delivered eight more babies which had been fertilized in a lab and implanted in her uterus. During the midst of the greatest destruction of personal wealth in a generation, a populous which feared for its jobs and was sweating monthly payments suddenly realized it was going to be footing the bill for fourteen children who were brought into the world only to boost one woman’s feeling of worth. The calls came in: she has an addiction to being pregnant, she suffers from mental illness, she is trying to make up for a lonely and empty childhood by crippling the egos of fourteen babies.
Suddenly it was acceptable to state that she had no right to do what she had done. Everyone, both liberal and conservative, seemed to feel very safe agreeing that she was wrong, that the doctor who performed the procedure had failed in his oath to “do no harm”, and that government had the right and the duty to take the children away from her.
Imagine if, just a few short months ago, someone had spoken up and suggested that the government had a right to limit the number of children a person on public support could have? It was a rock solid part of liberal belief that society had no right to limit the life choices of individuals who continually made bad choices. Once a person goes on public support, their life choices are severely limited but we, the belief has always gone, should not regulate behavior. This has often been extended to not make suggestions about how best to get themselves into a more self reliant. This party explains how an underclass has developed which goes from generation to generation, each having less of a clue of how to raise themselves up than the last one had.
Our response to “Octo-mom” suggests that times have changed. Now, when we the society know better, we have a right to at least criticize. But “Octo-mom is not the only focus of our new involvement. Now, our politicians have given themselves the right to manage the behavior of bankers. Even if a banker uses his own money to remodel his office, we have seen that he can be criticized if his bank later takes a government loan. Even when a bank’s managers are taken into a back office and forced to take bailout money they do not want so others will be more inclined to follow along are subject to the Senate’s rage when they entertain clients and attempt to grow their business. Congressmen who have never taken a business course have assigned themselves the power to know who to run multi-billion dollar corporations.
As a conservative, I would like to say that this new trend is the doing of Democrats, but the back room arm twisting of bankers started under George Bush’s tenure and illustrates why George Bush was never a conservative. The trend has been ramped up incrementally by such figures as Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Christopher Todd and John Kerry.
There is a form of socialism found in the history and economic textbooks which allows for private ownership with government management. It was the guiding economic policy in Spain, Italy and German for several decades of the twentieth century. It is called Fascism. Each time it was tried, it led to a suppression of the poorest citizens while a ruling elite rose under the hand of a dictator. It does not matter if the county’s top leader is George Bush, Barack Obama or Susan Sarandon, we do not need a dictator; we do not need a ruling elite and we do not need the micro managing of a strong central government.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
20090301 Lining the Road to Hell
How do things that are well intentioned turn so terribly wrong? Well it happens all of the time. Sometimes the things which start out the most benignly end up doing the most damage.
Case in point: in the mid-1970’s America was coming to grips with the fact that it had not always treated minority groups very fairly. The practice of “red lining” was particularly on peoples’ minds. “Red lining” was an unwritten policy of making such minorities could not get a loan to buy a home in a “decent” neighborhood. That is, of course, blatant discrimination. Legislation was passed in 1977 to make sure that banks treated everyone equally when evaluating home loan applications.
Flash forward twenty years. While some banks behaved honorably, others feared offending some of their larger customers and had a track record that was questionable at best. The office of Housing and Urban Development announced that it would use a new interpretation of the law and begin enforcing a system of quotas based on census data. If any lending institution was found to not meet the quota level for any minority, it would be subject to legal proceedings.
Move ahead a few more years and the public interest group ACORN began hiring lawyers to sue banks rather than merely reporting the banks to HUD. Banks begin very closely monitoring percentages of minorities living in regions, percentages of minority groups applying for loans and percentages of each minority group approved for loans. In some cases, banks needed to find minorities who were not necessarily looking for a loan. It increasingly became more and more important to bankers that they make loans to every minority group even if some of those loans might fail, after all the banks insured all of their loans. Once the standards for receiving a loan began to fail, it suddenly became easier for anyone to qualify.
As loans were made that were less and less secure, being able to insure tem became more and more important. A.I.G. became the world’s largest insurer by daring to venture into areas that others feared to attempt. As long as the troubled loans remained a small percentage and the rest of the market remained stable then there would be a few write offs but profits would still be made. But nothing exists in a vacuum.
When loans became easier to get, more people were able to buy houses. When more people were able to buy houses, the price of houses went up. The size of the loans that were approved began to increase. This cycle repeated for a little while before speculators fresh from the internet bubble took notice. They needed a place to put money and house prices were having a boom and they poured their money into the market driving prices up further. More and more people were making money in the housing market and it started getting fashionable. TV programs that showed people buying and flipping houses abounded on TLC, DIY and HGTV. Buying houses for no money down was preached as the way to get rich.
A person with a modest mortgage who had a fifty percent equity stake based on his or her purchase price saw the value of their home double or triple. Suddenly they had a seventy-five or eighty percent equity stake and they felt wealthy. Lenders, who knew they were sitting on riskier loans than they historically had, saw the increased equity in their customers’ homes and encouraged home owners to borrow off of this equity. Unfortunately, the act of issuing shaky loans is what inflated those home equity values so the home equity loans did not help prop up the lending structure, it magnified the underlying problem.
I wish I could say that this is the only arena that a situation like this has arisen but I check out the news everyday and I see the exalted leaders of this great nation crafting well meaning ideas into law with no foresight into what changes they are creating. It seems like no corner of our lives is safe from this kind of interference.
Case in point: in the mid-1970’s America was coming to grips with the fact that it had not always treated minority groups very fairly. The practice of “red lining” was particularly on peoples’ minds. “Red lining” was an unwritten policy of making such minorities could not get a loan to buy a home in a “decent” neighborhood. That is, of course, blatant discrimination. Legislation was passed in 1977 to make sure that banks treated everyone equally when evaluating home loan applications.
Flash forward twenty years. While some banks behaved honorably, others feared offending some of their larger customers and had a track record that was questionable at best. The office of Housing and Urban Development announced that it would use a new interpretation of the law and begin enforcing a system of quotas based on census data. If any lending institution was found to not meet the quota level for any minority, it would be subject to legal proceedings.
Move ahead a few more years and the public interest group ACORN began hiring lawyers to sue banks rather than merely reporting the banks to HUD. Banks begin very closely monitoring percentages of minorities living in regions, percentages of minority groups applying for loans and percentages of each minority group approved for loans. In some cases, banks needed to find minorities who were not necessarily looking for a loan. It increasingly became more and more important to bankers that they make loans to every minority group even if some of those loans might fail, after all the banks insured all of their loans. Once the standards for receiving a loan began to fail, it suddenly became easier for anyone to qualify.
As loans were made that were less and less secure, being able to insure tem became more and more important. A.I.G. became the world’s largest insurer by daring to venture into areas that others feared to attempt. As long as the troubled loans remained a small percentage and the rest of the market remained stable then there would be a few write offs but profits would still be made. But nothing exists in a vacuum.
When loans became easier to get, more people were able to buy houses. When more people were able to buy houses, the price of houses went up. The size of the loans that were approved began to increase. This cycle repeated for a little while before speculators fresh from the internet bubble took notice. They needed a place to put money and house prices were having a boom and they poured their money into the market driving prices up further. More and more people were making money in the housing market and it started getting fashionable. TV programs that showed people buying and flipping houses abounded on TLC, DIY and HGTV. Buying houses for no money down was preached as the way to get rich.
A person with a modest mortgage who had a fifty percent equity stake based on his or her purchase price saw the value of their home double or triple. Suddenly they had a seventy-five or eighty percent equity stake and they felt wealthy. Lenders, who knew they were sitting on riskier loans than they historically had, saw the increased equity in their customers’ homes and encouraged home owners to borrow off of this equity. Unfortunately, the act of issuing shaky loans is what inflated those home equity values so the home equity loans did not help prop up the lending structure, it magnified the underlying problem.
I wish I could say that this is the only arena that a situation like this has arisen but I check out the news everyday and I see the exalted leaders of this great nation crafting well meaning ideas into law with no foresight into what changes they are creating. It seems like no corner of our lives is safe from this kind of interference.
Monday, March 16, 2009
20090215 Stimulating Talk
The outlook for the American economy has just gotten worse. I struggled with an opening line this week and then decided just to blurt it out. Congress has passed something they refer to as an economic stimulus bill which provides next to no stimulus. It does provide a lot of spending but very little of it will stimulate the economy. It will have the effect of tying up nearly a trillion dollars worth of capital so that the private sector will not have it available to grow the economy.
In all of recorded history, the number of times that a government spending program helped stimulate the economy is precisely zero. “But Jim, what about the ‘New Deal’; Didn’t that end the Great Depression?” Examination of history tells a different story. Every time the government poured money in to fight the depression, the nation’s wealth dropped, stocks faltered and unemployment increased. In hind sight, the efforts to end the Great Depression actually prolonged it. Only when twelve million men were pulled out of the workforce to fight World War Two was the economy crippled by government interference able to support those remaining.
I could go into a long diatribe about what Congress’ real agenda is in this stimulus package but let’s focus today on something a little more positive. I am going to share with you, my dear readers, what a government stimulus package that would work would look like. It has three components.
First, if the government wants to keep unemployment from growing and keep industry investing, it should allow companies to take an immediate 100% tax deduction on all equipment purchased in 2009 without having to depreciate the equipment for seven, ten or fifteen years. Get the companies retooling for the future now knowing that it is more cost effective to do it now rather than waiting for a recovery.
Second, if the goal is to stabilize falling home values which has caused so many to own more for their house than it is worth, tell anyone who buys a foreclosed property in 2009 and holds that property for a minimum of five years that they will not have to pay capital gains tax. Give people an incentive to get these houses off of the market today. Home prices can bottom out now and begin going back up modestly. Money can be spent renovating the properties and flow more money into the economy.
Lastly, if the government feels a need to spend money and they are serious about ending our dependence on oil and saving the auto industry, they should begin a program of retrofitting all civilian government fleet of car, trucks and buses at all levels, local, state and federal over to natural gas which retails at 99 cents a gallon. It’s a cheaper fuel, that is produced locally gives better mileage than gasoline and greatly reduces emissions. Once the government creates the marketplace, a distribution network for fuel grade natural gas will spring up on the foundation of the current gasoline network. The auto industry can then manufacture smoother running, better mileage cars for the general public.
Rather than soak up capital which it can then be distributed in an inefficient manner by people with no idea how, the government needs to give free enterprise the elbow room to go out and do the job. Please point out to me one thing that the government does efficiently and effectively. Don’t say “Take our money.” Have you seen the tax forms? The government takes our money in the most inefficient way.
I know that you all think I must be brilliant to come up with these ideas, but I have to tell you these ideas are actually based on what has worked every time a government has successfully tackled severe economic problems.
In all of recorded history, the number of times that a government spending program helped stimulate the economy is precisely zero. “But Jim, what about the ‘New Deal’; Didn’t that end the Great Depression?” Examination of history tells a different story. Every time the government poured money in to fight the depression, the nation’s wealth dropped, stocks faltered and unemployment increased. In hind sight, the efforts to end the Great Depression actually prolonged it. Only when twelve million men were pulled out of the workforce to fight World War Two was the economy crippled by government interference able to support those remaining.
I could go into a long diatribe about what Congress’ real agenda is in this stimulus package but let’s focus today on something a little more positive. I am going to share with you, my dear readers, what a government stimulus package that would work would look like. It has three components.
First, if the government wants to keep unemployment from growing and keep industry investing, it should allow companies to take an immediate 100% tax deduction on all equipment purchased in 2009 without having to depreciate the equipment for seven, ten or fifteen years. Get the companies retooling for the future now knowing that it is more cost effective to do it now rather than waiting for a recovery.
Second, if the goal is to stabilize falling home values which has caused so many to own more for their house than it is worth, tell anyone who buys a foreclosed property in 2009 and holds that property for a minimum of five years that they will not have to pay capital gains tax. Give people an incentive to get these houses off of the market today. Home prices can bottom out now and begin going back up modestly. Money can be spent renovating the properties and flow more money into the economy.
Lastly, if the government feels a need to spend money and they are serious about ending our dependence on oil and saving the auto industry, they should begin a program of retrofitting all civilian government fleet of car, trucks and buses at all levels, local, state and federal over to natural gas which retails at 99 cents a gallon. It’s a cheaper fuel, that is produced locally gives better mileage than gasoline and greatly reduces emissions. Once the government creates the marketplace, a distribution network for fuel grade natural gas will spring up on the foundation of the current gasoline network. The auto industry can then manufacture smoother running, better mileage cars for the general public.
Rather than soak up capital which it can then be distributed in an inefficient manner by people with no idea how, the government needs to give free enterprise the elbow room to go out and do the job. Please point out to me one thing that the government does efficiently and effectively. Don’t say “Take our money.” Have you seen the tax forms? The government takes our money in the most inefficient way.
I know that you all think I must be brilliant to come up with these ideas, but I have to tell you these ideas are actually based on what has worked every time a government has successfully tackled severe economic problems.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
20081228 2008 Wrap Up
Let me tell you, Dear Reader, those self absorbed looks back at the year gone by really annoy me worse than Pee Wee Herman trying to help while I’m replacing a windshield wiper on the van. Well, it’s the end of the year and time to look back at whether this blog has been on the money or not in my bold predictions.
Straightforwardly stating what is going to happen in the future is a dangerous business. In the May 2000 issue of Digital Time editor Joshua Quittner proclaimed that the technology boom “continues without end”. Sadly, the economy had begun contracting two months earlier. And, when was the last time you saw a copy of Digital Time on the Newsstand.
Back in 2007, this blog predicted that gasoline would hit four dollars a gallon as oil neared two hundred dollars a barrel, but when the economy tanked, the speculators would bail, oil would drop to forty-five dollars a barrel and the price at the pump would follow. I was told that I was being too extreme. As it turns out, I was too conservative. Gasoline went to well over four dollars a gallon here in New York. Now, as the country is deep in recession, oil is down to thirty-eight dollars a barrel.
When the economy was booming and the stock market was hitting new highs, this blog said that a recession was coming. While I was not carrying a sign saying that the end was near, real estate was overinflated and a tremendous amount of debt was leveraged on these superheated values. What was surprising was the number of people who wrote in saying that major recessions were a thing of the past and we could never experience another one. I’m sure those people never lost sleep until the day they lost everything.
One thing that I was wrong about was the breadth and depth of the recession. When I saw it coming, I thought I was smart because I cashed out some money and moved it overseas in Brazil, Russia, India and China. I did not see that a collapsing world commodities market would hit the Brazilian stock market so hard. I did not expect Russia’s president to go crazy and cause the world to back out of Russian stocks and create a severe Russian recession. I did not count on fear of terrorism to effect India so much. I really did not expect the Chinese to go into the huge financial spiral that it did for another five to ten years. For all of our hand wringing, the financial market in America has held up better than most of the world.
On April twentieth, Notes from the Red Lodge predicted that the big push toward ethanol would lead to higher food prices, wide spread inflation and third world starvation. Sadly, this has happened. Now that oil has dropped, this year’s harvest has already been lost and food prices have stayed up. It is nearly impossible to buy gasoline that is not labeled ten percent ethanol so we continue to destroy the environment.
After examining president elect Obama’s energy policy, the blog predicted that Democratic congressional leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi would begin implementing it before 2009 was over. The core of the plan is not to encourage new energy sources but to punish the use of gasoline by artificially keeping the price at the gas pump above six dollars a gallon. Now, before 2009 has even started, legislation is being prepared to double the federal tax on gasoline.
Now, what do I want for the year ahead? I hope that next year I can say that I was wrong on the policies implemented in Washington pulled us out of the recession. I also hope that Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd and share a podium so they can announce that they are frauds and will be stepping down and retiring from public life.
Straightforwardly stating what is going to happen in the future is a dangerous business. In the May 2000 issue of Digital Time editor Joshua Quittner proclaimed that the technology boom “continues without end”. Sadly, the economy had begun contracting two months earlier. And, when was the last time you saw a copy of Digital Time on the Newsstand.
Back in 2007, this blog predicted that gasoline would hit four dollars a gallon as oil neared two hundred dollars a barrel, but when the economy tanked, the speculators would bail, oil would drop to forty-five dollars a barrel and the price at the pump would follow. I was told that I was being too extreme. As it turns out, I was too conservative. Gasoline went to well over four dollars a gallon here in New York. Now, as the country is deep in recession, oil is down to thirty-eight dollars a barrel.
When the economy was booming and the stock market was hitting new highs, this blog said that a recession was coming. While I was not carrying a sign saying that the end was near, real estate was overinflated and a tremendous amount of debt was leveraged on these superheated values. What was surprising was the number of people who wrote in saying that major recessions were a thing of the past and we could never experience another one. I’m sure those people never lost sleep until the day they lost everything.
One thing that I was wrong about was the breadth and depth of the recession. When I saw it coming, I thought I was smart because I cashed out some money and moved it overseas in Brazil, Russia, India and China. I did not see that a collapsing world commodities market would hit the Brazilian stock market so hard. I did not expect Russia’s president to go crazy and cause the world to back out of Russian stocks and create a severe Russian recession. I did not count on fear of terrorism to effect India so much. I really did not expect the Chinese to go into the huge financial spiral that it did for another five to ten years. For all of our hand wringing, the financial market in America has held up better than most of the world.
On April twentieth, Notes from the Red Lodge predicted that the big push toward ethanol would lead to higher food prices, wide spread inflation and third world starvation. Sadly, this has happened. Now that oil has dropped, this year’s harvest has already been lost and food prices have stayed up. It is nearly impossible to buy gasoline that is not labeled ten percent ethanol so we continue to destroy the environment.
After examining president elect Obama’s energy policy, the blog predicted that Democratic congressional leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi would begin implementing it before 2009 was over. The core of the plan is not to encourage new energy sources but to punish the use of gasoline by artificially keeping the price at the gas pump above six dollars a gallon. Now, before 2009 has even started, legislation is being prepared to double the federal tax on gasoline.
Now, what do I want for the year ahead? I hope that next year I can say that I was wrong on the policies implemented in Washington pulled us out of the recession. I also hope that Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd and share a podium so they can announce that they are frauds and will be stepping down and retiring from public life.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
20081214 Paying for Public Education
A few months ago school tax bills went out to this part of the country. Here in New York State, we spend more money per student than any other state spends but our students do not rank nearly as well as many other states. In fact, they do rather poorly. While we do not want to short change our students, New York’s standings make a strong case that blindly spending money does not equal a good education.
I, myself, am a product of New York State’s public school system. More so, I am a product of my parents being actively involved in my education from day one. They knew every teacher I had. They went to every open house. They looked at my homework. They knew who I was hanging out with. That was a bigger factor than how much was spent at the public school where we had drafty portable classrooms and broken lab equipment. In fact, the successes I have had in life came from life lessons outside of school.
My son attends a private school for a myriad of reasons. Receiving a quality education is not the least of these reasons.
I have three school tax bills, all in Rensselaer County within two school districts. Any one of those three school tax bills is just slightly less than what I pay for one year’s worth of private school. The operating budgets for those two school districts dwarfs what my son’s school has at its disposal. The amount they spend per student is many times over what my son’s school spends. Yet my son’s school has test scores well about the public school. More importantly, the graduation is statistically at one hundred percent, there is no drug problem and none of the girls are pregnant.
It may not be a real world solution, but you have to ask, wouldn’t we be better off turning the public schools over to the people who run private schools. If the children got a better education and the public’s tax burden was reduced, isn’t society better off? Isn’t that the essence of good government?
Of course, just handing over the keys to the office is not going to be the answer. As I have already stated, the conditions at the school are secondary to the framework created by the child’s home life. But as long as the classroom is geared toward the least common denominator, the chance of excellence is severely stunted.
One thing our educational system has especially failed society is in teaching students life lessons about their own finances. Most high school graduates do not understand what money is or how it works. At this moment, the citizens and government of the United States is looking around for places to put blame. Do credit card companies take advantage of users? Do mortgage companies take advantage of borrowers? Is health insurance inaccessible? Who owns the big corporations?
We have a society filled with citizens who do not know if a house is an asset or a liability? Should they buy a car or lease one? Is a time share ever a good deal?
Do the people who teach our children know the answers to these questions or do they believe that thinking about money diminishes them? Do the people on the school board know these things? Does the school’s business manager know these things?
Perhaps we need to take responsibility for our own lives and learn these things for ourselves and then pass them on to our children. But we have digressed from the primary question of this article: is there a better way to run our schools to spend money but increase the quality of the education? As a group, we consistently stress the importance of a good education, but are we willing to take a long, hard look at what that means?
I, myself, am a product of New York State’s public school system. More so, I am a product of my parents being actively involved in my education from day one. They knew every teacher I had. They went to every open house. They looked at my homework. They knew who I was hanging out with. That was a bigger factor than how much was spent at the public school where we had drafty portable classrooms and broken lab equipment. In fact, the successes I have had in life came from life lessons outside of school.
My son attends a private school for a myriad of reasons. Receiving a quality education is not the least of these reasons.
I have three school tax bills, all in Rensselaer County within two school districts. Any one of those three school tax bills is just slightly less than what I pay for one year’s worth of private school. The operating budgets for those two school districts dwarfs what my son’s school has at its disposal. The amount they spend per student is many times over what my son’s school spends. Yet my son’s school has test scores well about the public school. More importantly, the graduation is statistically at one hundred percent, there is no drug problem and none of the girls are pregnant.
It may not be a real world solution, but you have to ask, wouldn’t we be better off turning the public schools over to the people who run private schools. If the children got a better education and the public’s tax burden was reduced, isn’t society better off? Isn’t that the essence of good government?
Of course, just handing over the keys to the office is not going to be the answer. As I have already stated, the conditions at the school are secondary to the framework created by the child’s home life. But as long as the classroom is geared toward the least common denominator, the chance of excellence is severely stunted.
One thing our educational system has especially failed society is in teaching students life lessons about their own finances. Most high school graduates do not understand what money is or how it works. At this moment, the citizens and government of the United States is looking around for places to put blame. Do credit card companies take advantage of users? Do mortgage companies take advantage of borrowers? Is health insurance inaccessible? Who owns the big corporations?
We have a society filled with citizens who do not know if a house is an asset or a liability? Should they buy a car or lease one? Is a time share ever a good deal?
Do the people who teach our children know the answers to these questions or do they believe that thinking about money diminishes them? Do the people on the school board know these things? Does the school’s business manager know these things?
Perhaps we need to take responsibility for our own lives and learn these things for ourselves and then pass them on to our children. But we have digressed from the primary question of this article: is there a better way to run our schools to spend money but increase the quality of the education? As a group, we consistently stress the importance of a good education, but are we willing to take a long, hard look at what that means?
Sunday, December 28, 2008
20081130 Black Friday Death Watch
Good news, Dear Reader: my Christmas shopping is done. I did it in fifteen minutes while playing an online game and updating my Facebook account. I know that writing it that way makes it sound like I put no thought into the presents I will be giving out, but that is actually far from the truth. I pretty much knew what I would be buying for each person before that fifteen minutes started.
I was asked by several people if I would be going out on Black Friday. All of the retailers made enticing offers to bring shoppers into their stores for the event and, overall, the results have been positive sales figures sharply contrasting with same store sales numbers going into the holiday.
In my early thirties, I opened a lot of stores and I ran a lot of sales events to promote those openings. The key was always to make it into an event. I pushed the local managers to get a local radio station to do a live broadcast so shoppers could meet the on air personalities and maybe even win some promotional items. Get the mayor or a county legislator in there to cut a ribbon or tour the store for a press release. Have the boy scouts cooking hot dogs out on the sidewalk. Do a couple of door prizes to work up the crowd. Throughout the opening event, stay on the load speaker with unadvertised fifteen minute specials to encourage people to hang around longer.
The key to all of that was to make it an event to get people to come in and then hang out as long as possible. Get them used to being in the store and to finding bargains in the store so it would be easy to make shopping there part of their routine.
The current way that Black Friday is promoted does not make much sense to me. It generates a higher top line sales figure, but little of that tickles down to the bottom line of the profit and loss statement. It moves people in and out of each store quickly chasing loss leaders. Almost every sale seems to generate the illusion of planned shortages in which the customer has to beat out the competition to win their treasure.
At some point, shopping became a full body contact sport. People look forward to fighting for their purchases. It has become the American version of the running of the bulls except that people are hurting other people instead of a provoked animal hurting people.
I wonder if that Wal-Mart store clerk on Long Island knew he was signing up for a death sport when he took a minimum wage job to feed his family. If he was not playing, then he should have simply told the women who broke down the doors and trampled him to death that he was just trying to earn a living and they might have stepped around him to buy their Northface knock offs for an extra ten percent off and marked down flat panel televisions.
Thirty-four year old Jdimytai “Jimbo” Damour came to this country from Jamaica looking for a better life. He was hired by a temp service to work in the Valley Stream Wal-Mart and on Black Friday he was placed at the doors both because of his size and because his workmen’s comp was not covered by them. The store placed a “Blitz line starts here” sign up to encourage a running of the bulls atmosphere and five minutes before the store was set to open, shoppers bloke down the doors and killed man.
The saddest part of this story is that this was not just one isolated incident; it was simply the most horrific of a widespread trend. People were injured in incidents like this all across the country. Also worth noting, the television marked down to $750 from $1000 had been previously marked down to $798 and was widely available online at the $750 price on Friday without the trampling.
So I do not feel like I missed anything by skipping the Black Friday crowds and shopping at home from Amway partner stores. I believe I would pay money to escape a prison riot so I do not see why I would pay to shop in something just as vicious.
I was asked by several people if I would be going out on Black Friday. All of the retailers made enticing offers to bring shoppers into their stores for the event and, overall, the results have been positive sales figures sharply contrasting with same store sales numbers going into the holiday.
In my early thirties, I opened a lot of stores and I ran a lot of sales events to promote those openings. The key was always to make it into an event. I pushed the local managers to get a local radio station to do a live broadcast so shoppers could meet the on air personalities and maybe even win some promotional items. Get the mayor or a county legislator in there to cut a ribbon or tour the store for a press release. Have the boy scouts cooking hot dogs out on the sidewalk. Do a couple of door prizes to work up the crowd. Throughout the opening event, stay on the load speaker with unadvertised fifteen minute specials to encourage people to hang around longer.
The key to all of that was to make it an event to get people to come in and then hang out as long as possible. Get them used to being in the store and to finding bargains in the store so it would be easy to make shopping there part of their routine.
The current way that Black Friday is promoted does not make much sense to me. It generates a higher top line sales figure, but little of that tickles down to the bottom line of the profit and loss statement. It moves people in and out of each store quickly chasing loss leaders. Almost every sale seems to generate the illusion of planned shortages in which the customer has to beat out the competition to win their treasure.
At some point, shopping became a full body contact sport. People look forward to fighting for their purchases. It has become the American version of the running of the bulls except that people are hurting other people instead of a provoked animal hurting people.
I wonder if that Wal-Mart store clerk on Long Island knew he was signing up for a death sport when he took a minimum wage job to feed his family. If he was not playing, then he should have simply told the women who broke down the doors and trampled him to death that he was just trying to earn a living and they might have stepped around him to buy their Northface knock offs for an extra ten percent off and marked down flat panel televisions.
Thirty-four year old Jdimytai “Jimbo” Damour came to this country from Jamaica looking for a better life. He was hired by a temp service to work in the Valley Stream Wal-Mart and on Black Friday he was placed at the doors both because of his size and because his workmen’s comp was not covered by them. The store placed a “Blitz line starts here” sign up to encourage a running of the bulls atmosphere and five minutes before the store was set to open, shoppers bloke down the doors and killed man.
The saddest part of this story is that this was not just one isolated incident; it was simply the most horrific of a widespread trend. People were injured in incidents like this all across the country. Also worth noting, the television marked down to $750 from $1000 had been previously marked down to $798 and was widely available online at the $750 price on Friday without the trampling.
So I do not feel like I missed anything by skipping the Black Friday crowds and shopping at home from Amway partner stores. I believe I would pay money to escape a prison riot so I do not see why I would pay to shop in something just as vicious.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
20081116 Thanksgiving 08
Cynicism can take on the aspect of coolness when you are young. I spent years believing that I did not really have anything to be thankful for; everything that I had was the direct result of my being so cunning and clever. As a result, my observance of Thanksgiving has been less than authentic over the years.
Ames broke ground by being the first mass merchant to throw tradition out the window and open on Thanksgiving Day and, newly divorced and full of cynicism, I always set myself up to work that day. By the time I moved on to Big Lots, nearly every retailer had joined the new holiday shopping tradition and I was able to keep my cynical tradition going.
Granted, I think that I have been a better than average steward of my future. However, in many ways, I am an incredible idiot. I have had good guidance and good fortune. I have much to be thankful for. At the risk of sounding boastful, there is no better time than Thanksgiving to take inventory of good fortune which has befallen me.
Apparently, most people do not believe that I had anything to do with the first item on the list. People constantly tell me that I am very lucky to have retired in my thirties. While I do realize that there were countless factors outside of my control that made this possible, I am human and it would not hurt to stroke my ego by giving me a little bit of the credit. I decided to set straight a friend of mine who was, I thought, getting scammed by Amway and ended up becoming an independent Amway business owner. I ignored my friends who told me it would never work. I shrugged off my parents who would never think of shopping from Amway instead of going to the stores they visited out of habit. I refused to give in when others quit including the friend who I originally tried to help but who became my sponsor and his sponsor who had become like a big brother to me.
So I am lucky that I do not need to go to work and can live my life like a character from Brideshead Revisited only slightly less gay. I have a nice warm house off in the woods and the mortgage was paid off in thirty months. I have thoroughly planned out the house I will build in a couple of years which will allow me to never need to buy electricity or heating oil again. I have no debt and income that is guaranteed no matter what the economy may hold. Three times a year, I go to Florida for two weeks or so to spend time with my father and see that his affairs are in order. Apart from that I take nine vacations a year, generally staying some place where the concierge takes care of things for me.
I would like to be given some credit for what I have. I live sensibly and spent years denying myself any extravagance. When I worked for a living I brown bagged it every day and never bought myself a latté. I have two Chevrolets and no BMWs.
What I am most thankful for is family. I have a son who, at fifteen, still thinks that I am the coolest guy around. I have a very beautiful girlfriend who accepts all of my quirks. No one ever meets them or hears about them and tells me that I am lucky. For some reason, I do get credit for them as if I created them. I might be able to give my ex-wife credit for my son but he is simply a good kid and would be under any circumstances.
I have come to realize that I am lucky to have what I have so this year Thanksgiving has more meaning than in past years. Because of that, the turkey is going to be moister and the cranberries twice as sweet. I hope that you, Dear Reader, have a very special Thanksgiving.
Ames broke ground by being the first mass merchant to throw tradition out the window and open on Thanksgiving Day and, newly divorced and full of cynicism, I always set myself up to work that day. By the time I moved on to Big Lots, nearly every retailer had joined the new holiday shopping tradition and I was able to keep my cynical tradition going.
Granted, I think that I have been a better than average steward of my future. However, in many ways, I am an incredible idiot. I have had good guidance and good fortune. I have much to be thankful for. At the risk of sounding boastful, there is no better time than Thanksgiving to take inventory of good fortune which has befallen me.
Apparently, most people do not believe that I had anything to do with the first item on the list. People constantly tell me that I am very lucky to have retired in my thirties. While I do realize that there were countless factors outside of my control that made this possible, I am human and it would not hurt to stroke my ego by giving me a little bit of the credit. I decided to set straight a friend of mine who was, I thought, getting scammed by Amway and ended up becoming an independent Amway business owner. I ignored my friends who told me it would never work. I shrugged off my parents who would never think of shopping from Amway instead of going to the stores they visited out of habit. I refused to give in when others quit including the friend who I originally tried to help but who became my sponsor and his sponsor who had become like a big brother to me.
So I am lucky that I do not need to go to work and can live my life like a character from Brideshead Revisited only slightly less gay. I have a nice warm house off in the woods and the mortgage was paid off in thirty months. I have thoroughly planned out the house I will build in a couple of years which will allow me to never need to buy electricity or heating oil again. I have no debt and income that is guaranteed no matter what the economy may hold. Three times a year, I go to Florida for two weeks or so to spend time with my father and see that his affairs are in order. Apart from that I take nine vacations a year, generally staying some place where the concierge takes care of things for me.
I would like to be given some credit for what I have. I live sensibly and spent years denying myself any extravagance. When I worked for a living I brown bagged it every day and never bought myself a latté. I have two Chevrolets and no BMWs.
What I am most thankful for is family. I have a son who, at fifteen, still thinks that I am the coolest guy around. I have a very beautiful girlfriend who accepts all of my quirks. No one ever meets them or hears about them and tells me that I am lucky. For some reason, I do get credit for them as if I created them. I might be able to give my ex-wife credit for my son but he is simply a good kid and would be under any circumstances.
I have come to realize that I am lucky to have what I have so this year Thanksgiving has more meaning than in past years. Because of that, the turkey is going to be moister and the cranberries twice as sweet. I hope that you, Dear Reader, have a very special Thanksgiving.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
081005 BJR Press Release
Press release from BJR Property Management
Principle member of BJR Property Management, LLC, Jim Avery congratulates Weldon Adult Homes on their newest Lansingburgh facility. Weldon Adult Homes has the distinction of being the highest rated of the group homes used by local government agencies responsible for at risk adults and maintains one of the highest retention rates for local facilities.
“We are very excited to be doing business with Weldon,” said Jim Avery at a recent board meeting. “They operate quality homes and both Weldon Adult Homes and BJR Property Management should profit from our partnership at the Rosamilia location.”
Prior to being converted to a group home, BJR Property Management operated Rosamilia as a multi-family apartment house. The building was undergoing capital improvements when a representative of Weldon first approached Mister Avery. Weldon Adult Homes has taken a five year lease on the property and will house a maximum of twelve adults.
Principle member of BJR Property Management, LLC, Jim Avery congratulates Weldon Adult Homes on their newest Lansingburgh facility. Weldon Adult Homes has the distinction of being the highest rated of the group homes used by local government agencies responsible for at risk adults and maintains one of the highest retention rates for local facilities.
“We are very excited to be doing business with Weldon,” said Jim Avery at a recent board meeting. “They operate quality homes and both Weldon Adult Homes and BJR Property Management should profit from our partnership at the Rosamilia location.”
Prior to being converted to a group home, BJR Property Management operated Rosamilia as a multi-family apartment house. The building was undergoing capital improvements when a representative of Weldon first approached Mister Avery. Weldon Adult Homes has taken a five year lease on the property and will house a maximum of twelve adults.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
080921 At The Capital
Well, Dear Reader, I have returned from our nation’ capital reassured. Standing in the Jefferson Memorial and looking out across the breadth of the city, the colossal statue of the author of the Declaration of Independence keeps a constant watch over the White House with the best unobstructed view in the city. I do not know why seeing Jefferson standing there was so reassuring to me but it was.
A highlight of my week in Washington was when George W. Bush had the opportunity to see me. I did not see him, but the most powerful man in the world may well have seen me. I was just approaching the base of the Washington Monument when the beating of the rotors of Marine One and its helicopter escort became deafening. The two copters came in low around the monument and turned to the White House. Marine One then landed on the lawn so the President could disembark on his return back from surveying hurricane damage in Texas.
It does not matter what you think of George Bush (while I am no fan, I voted for him twice – or rather I voted against two other guys), you have to admit that this guy can not catch a break. Every morning, he must get up, open the paper and go “Oh, what the hell?” The man has been having a nightmare and we have been along for the ride. Things are going to keep happening no matter who replaces him. We just have to hope that whoever it is makes the right decisions while Thomas Jefferson looks on.
My week in Washington was a wild week of ups and downs in the stock market. Institutions which were considered rock solid a few months ago have fallen. Luckily, I had all of the sites of the nation’s capital to distract me from the news. Washington is a beautiful city.
As you wander around the city taking in its beauty, you wish all American cities could look like Washington does. Even if you have all of the facts, the city’s charm can dazzle you and cloud your realization until you have an aha moment. That is one of the dangers of being a part of the Washington establishment. Living and working inside the beltway for too long can blind you to why it is that Washington is so different from every other American city.
The monuments and park and maintenance and police that keep Washington so beautiful are not a function of its own budget and are not truly integrated into its municipal existence. Everything that sets Washington apart is a part of the federal budget and federal government. Washington the city does not pay for any of what makes it so breath-takingly beautiful. It could never afford to. No city could. It is only able to be what it is because it operates under Congress’ budget and is paid for by taxing the sweat of all Americans. As a city it is an unrealistic dream and a vision of inspiration. As it was always meant to be.
The inherent danger to this is when elected leaders forget the distinction of how Washington the city is separate and distinct from how every other community operates. Assuming they go to Washington understanding that Washington exists as a model for us to aspire to, prolonged exposure to its unrealistic façade gives our politicians a false view of the country. If government can make this one city so inviting, why shouldn’t they do that to all of the country? All they need is for us to be more patriotic and pay more taxes and surrender more control to our centralized government. If Washington is so much prettier than Scranton or Syracuse, shouldn’t we accept that the leaders in Washington can manage our communities better than we can?
Of course the reality is that the illusion will always be greater than truth. By giving up control and money, we give in to those who think the illusion is the reality. We surrender our own priorities to group think.
Would we really want our towns to be Washington? We would have beautiful parks and inspiring monuments. The streets would be clean. We would have the reassurance that our government will protect us. Of course there is no industry, no production, no growth in anything but taxes, unemployment, poverty and crime.
A highlight of my week in Washington was when George W. Bush had the opportunity to see me. I did not see him, but the most powerful man in the world may well have seen me. I was just approaching the base of the Washington Monument when the beating of the rotors of Marine One and its helicopter escort became deafening. The two copters came in low around the monument and turned to the White House. Marine One then landed on the lawn so the President could disembark on his return back from surveying hurricane damage in Texas.
It does not matter what you think of George Bush (while I am no fan, I voted for him twice – or rather I voted against two other guys), you have to admit that this guy can not catch a break. Every morning, he must get up, open the paper and go “Oh, what the hell?” The man has been having a nightmare and we have been along for the ride. Things are going to keep happening no matter who replaces him. We just have to hope that whoever it is makes the right decisions while Thomas Jefferson looks on.
My week in Washington was a wild week of ups and downs in the stock market. Institutions which were considered rock solid a few months ago have fallen. Luckily, I had all of the sites of the nation’s capital to distract me from the news. Washington is a beautiful city.
As you wander around the city taking in its beauty, you wish all American cities could look like Washington does. Even if you have all of the facts, the city’s charm can dazzle you and cloud your realization until you have an aha moment. That is one of the dangers of being a part of the Washington establishment. Living and working inside the beltway for too long can blind you to why it is that Washington is so different from every other American city.
The monuments and park and maintenance and police that keep Washington so beautiful are not a function of its own budget and are not truly integrated into its municipal existence. Everything that sets Washington apart is a part of the federal budget and federal government. Washington the city does not pay for any of what makes it so breath-takingly beautiful. It could never afford to. No city could. It is only able to be what it is because it operates under Congress’ budget and is paid for by taxing the sweat of all Americans. As a city it is an unrealistic dream and a vision of inspiration. As it was always meant to be.
The inherent danger to this is when elected leaders forget the distinction of how Washington the city is separate and distinct from how every other community operates. Assuming they go to Washington understanding that Washington exists as a model for us to aspire to, prolonged exposure to its unrealistic façade gives our politicians a false view of the country. If government can make this one city so inviting, why shouldn’t they do that to all of the country? All they need is for us to be more patriotic and pay more taxes and surrender more control to our centralized government. If Washington is so much prettier than Scranton or Syracuse, shouldn’t we accept that the leaders in Washington can manage our communities better than we can?
Of course the reality is that the illusion will always be greater than truth. By giving up control and money, we give in to those who think the illusion is the reality. We surrender our own priorities to group think.
Would we really want our towns to be Washington? We would have beautiful parks and inspiring monuments. The streets would be clean. We would have the reassurance that our government will protect us. Of course there is no industry, no production, no growth in anything but taxes, unemployment, poverty and crime.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
080914 Last Word on this Election - I Promise
I could not do it, dear Reader. I had planned to do a blog comparing the energy policies of John McCain and Barrack Obama and then one each on the Democratic and Republican conventions. There is just too much political talk out there for me to follow through and subject you to that much more. Instead, this week, I will give a summary of everything as I await a train in NYC’s Penn Station and hopefully skip over all entries political until November.
Rather than an attempt to present the energy policies in a full and impartial manner, here is the crux of them:
John McCain has long been a proponent of alternative energy sources. However, has been opposed to using federal funds to boost ethanol production. This blog has already gone into detail on why ethanol production from current sources is bad for the environment and how it causes inflated food prices in the U.S. and food shortages abroad. Senator McCain held firm to his beliefs during primaries in the farm belt refusing to play to the audience by betraying the truth. He has quietly advocated for allowing more nuclear power as the Europeans (who the Democratic Party generally emulate) do. As for offshore drilling, he is a Johnny-come-lately, only coming out in favor of it when the run up in oil prices began to cause Americans pain. He remains opposed to drilling in the Arctic.
Senator Obama has given lip service to the need to develop alternative sources of energy. He has steadfastly opposed drilling until congress adjourned for summer then, when he could safely avoid voting on it, he gave a speech favoring drilling in certain locations, under certain instances, at certain times. He did not specify the locations, instances or times. When campaigning in the Midwest, he favored using federal funds to develop ethanol, then shied away. He opposes nuclear energy. The core of his policy is forcing conservation by implementing federal gasoline taxes to maintain a price above $6.50 per gallon. Oddly, he does not bring this up in his speeches to the general public but he has written about it.
The only event at the Democratic convention worth mentioning here is selection of Senator Biden as vice presidential candidate. Senator Biden has long sought the office of president and has the distinction of coming out of the primaries as the least offensive candidate from his party and little to no public support. He was also one of Senator Obama’s harshest critics.
The Republican convention gave more entertaining speeches highlighted by the two men I favored for the vice presidential slot: Rudy Giuliani and Joe Liebermann. Senator Liebermann who was once the darling of the Democratic Party is now in the process of being formally thrown out of the Democratic caucus. Absent from the festivities was Ron Paul, a man Ronald Reagan singled out as one of the few true honest men in Washington. The Republican faithful is about as happy with him as they were with John MacCain eight years ago when they wanted to coronate W.
I have to admit that, months ago, I searched through the national figures looking for a woman who would balance out the Republican ticket and could not find anyone who I really believed in. I did not look at governors and Sarah Palin was only in my distant periphery. She brings a lot to the ticket but I do not know as I would want to see a President Palin any more than I would want a President Huckabee (God’s favorite candidate), a President Romney (used car salesman) or a President Obama (disingenuous). After Rudy did not set things on fire in the primaries, it was too late for him to win back the favor of the party damaged by his “liberal New York” ways. Liebermann, besides never being able to pass the social conservatives litmus test, has the disadvantage of being in the Democratic Caucus.
Here in New York State, our governor by accident has had a long honeymoon which ended suddenly last week. After a long reign by George Pataki whose main virtue was that he had no serious competition and a short reign by Spitzer who led because he said he was better than the rest of us slobs, Mr. Patterson awoke one day to find himself governor. After accidently landing in the governor’s mansion he seemed better suited for the job than the men we sent there on purpose. Last week, he broke the peace by angering Republicans by lying about Pataki’s tax stand, flubbing comments to anger his friends and then briefly hitting the national spotlight by accusing Sarah Palin of being racist when she said being governor had more executive branch experience than being “a community leader”. I do not understand how “community leader” is racist code, as Patterson insists, but then I still don’t believe that “state’s rights” automatically means disenfranchising blacks.
Lastly, here are two statements fresh from the Obama camp. First we are reminded that Jesus was a community organizer and Pontius Pilot was a governor. Secondly, it was made clear that the Senator has never called himself a messiah.
Rather than an attempt to present the energy policies in a full and impartial manner, here is the crux of them:
John McCain has long been a proponent of alternative energy sources. However, has been opposed to using federal funds to boost ethanol production. This blog has already gone into detail on why ethanol production from current sources is bad for the environment and how it causes inflated food prices in the U.S. and food shortages abroad. Senator McCain held firm to his beliefs during primaries in the farm belt refusing to play to the audience by betraying the truth. He has quietly advocated for allowing more nuclear power as the Europeans (who the Democratic Party generally emulate) do. As for offshore drilling, he is a Johnny-come-lately, only coming out in favor of it when the run up in oil prices began to cause Americans pain. He remains opposed to drilling in the Arctic.
Senator Obama has given lip service to the need to develop alternative sources of energy. He has steadfastly opposed drilling until congress adjourned for summer then, when he could safely avoid voting on it, he gave a speech favoring drilling in certain locations, under certain instances, at certain times. He did not specify the locations, instances or times. When campaigning in the Midwest, he favored using federal funds to develop ethanol, then shied away. He opposes nuclear energy. The core of his policy is forcing conservation by implementing federal gasoline taxes to maintain a price above $6.50 per gallon. Oddly, he does not bring this up in his speeches to the general public but he has written about it.
The only event at the Democratic convention worth mentioning here is selection of Senator Biden as vice presidential candidate. Senator Biden has long sought the office of president and has the distinction of coming out of the primaries as the least offensive candidate from his party and little to no public support. He was also one of Senator Obama’s harshest critics.
The Republican convention gave more entertaining speeches highlighted by the two men I favored for the vice presidential slot: Rudy Giuliani and Joe Liebermann. Senator Liebermann who was once the darling of the Democratic Party is now in the process of being formally thrown out of the Democratic caucus. Absent from the festivities was Ron Paul, a man Ronald Reagan singled out as one of the few true honest men in Washington. The Republican faithful is about as happy with him as they were with John MacCain eight years ago when they wanted to coronate W.
I have to admit that, months ago, I searched through the national figures looking for a woman who would balance out the Republican ticket and could not find anyone who I really believed in. I did not look at governors and Sarah Palin was only in my distant periphery. She brings a lot to the ticket but I do not know as I would want to see a President Palin any more than I would want a President Huckabee (God’s favorite candidate), a President Romney (used car salesman) or a President Obama (disingenuous). After Rudy did not set things on fire in the primaries, it was too late for him to win back the favor of the party damaged by his “liberal New York” ways. Liebermann, besides never being able to pass the social conservatives litmus test, has the disadvantage of being in the Democratic Caucus.
Here in New York State, our governor by accident has had a long honeymoon which ended suddenly last week. After a long reign by George Pataki whose main virtue was that he had no serious competition and a short reign by Spitzer who led because he said he was better than the rest of us slobs, Mr. Patterson awoke one day to find himself governor. After accidently landing in the governor’s mansion he seemed better suited for the job than the men we sent there on purpose. Last week, he broke the peace by angering Republicans by lying about Pataki’s tax stand, flubbing comments to anger his friends and then briefly hitting the national spotlight by accusing Sarah Palin of being racist when she said being governor had more executive branch experience than being “a community leader”. I do not understand how “community leader” is racist code, as Patterson insists, but then I still don’t believe that “state’s rights” automatically means disenfranchising blacks.
Lastly, here are two statements fresh from the Obama camp. First we are reminded that Jesus was a community organizer and Pontius Pilot was a governor. Secondly, it was made clear that the Senator has never called himself a messiah.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
080810 The Pickens Plan
Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have shut down congress for the summer without voting on drilling for oil freeing Ms. Pelosi for her book tour. We would like our government to step in and solve the problem for us but it is not going to happen. Our elected leaders do not have a strong track record of solving our problems. They usually arrive too late and make a speech while having their pictures taken with the private citizens who did the work.
While no one plan will solve our energy and environmental problems, T. Boone Pickens has put forward a suggestion for a start. In fact, he has done more than that; he has opened his wallet to put the plan into action gambling his wealth in an effort to fix things himself.
Pickens is spending his money in the Texas panhandle building the largest wind farm in the world. He wants to see those turbines stretch northward to North Dakota through a corridor that has the most favorable winds on the planet. Building these turbines would cost private investors one trillion dollars and building the means of moving that power to where it is needed would cost another two hundred million.
The Department of Energy estimates that it is possible to convert twenty percent of electrical power generation to wind sources. Many believe that with recent innovations, that number is much higher. Pickens proposes that we use the wind energy to replace power generated by burning natural gas.
Natural gas burns thirty percent cleaner than gasoline. A natural gas burning Honda Civic is currently rated the cleanest production vehicle in the world. Natural gas is also significantly less expensive than gasoline. In some parts of the country it is as cheap as a dollar a gallon. In Albany, New York, it currently retails for $1.98 while gasoline is $3.98.
We can scarcely afford to keep spending $700,000,000.00 a year on foreign oil. With ninety-eight percent of our natural gas coming from domestic sources and our wind harvested locally, if we could change half of our automotive fleet over to natural gas, we could save $350,000,000.00 a year while cutting greenhouse emissions by fifteen percent.
You can learn all of the details of the plan by going to www.pickensplan.com, watching the videos and reading the articles.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
080727 Customer Service Redux
I am postponing a blog on how T Boone will save us all from oil to revisit customer service. The following is a copy of a letter in my mailbox waiting for the mailman to visit in the morning. A couple of quick notes:
1) Never buy a timeshare from a salesman. You can easily pick up deals for ten to twenty cents on the dollar and then exchange for last minute openings.
2) I have been extrememly happy with my travels with Wyndham and with RCI.
and now:
FairShare Plus by Wyndham
P.O. Box 98940
Las Vegas, NV 89193-8940
July 26, 2008
RE: XXXXXXXXXXX
Sirs,
Currently, I am prepaid through May of 2009. Since taking efforts to be a good customer and pay up front for services, I have been from time to time been blocked from using online applications due to my delinquent payment status and I have been notified three times by mail that I have a past due balance of over one thousand dollars. The most recent notice came today. Each time I have received this notice, I have contacted the billing office where the staff has consistently been polite.
The explanation I am generally given is that I have been double billed. I am told that the matter will be fixed immediately but that it will take two days for the online system to update so that I am cleared to check confirmations and make reservations.
When I called today, I was told that there was a notation that a “Jeremy” had filed the paperwork to correct this on (I believe) the sixteenth of this month but it had never been completed. I was told to call back Monday as nothing could be done on a Saturday which leaves me wondering why the phones are manned. Also in today’s mail was a reservation confirmation which was filed on the nineteenth.
I am very pleased with the product that Wyndham provides and have three vacations set up for the next year and enough points for several more. There is nothing that I could complain about except for the continuing frustration that I am having over being double billed. When rooms are released at resorts I wish to stay at, I may well find that I cannot book them due to this issue and will have the vacation I have planned and prepaid ruined.
A company which has grown and prospered the way Wyndham has, surely must have the operational discipline in its financial office to correct this matter. As my confirmation letter arrived, it appears that updating the online system, which I was told was the most difficult and time consuming aspect was completed again but correcting my record, which I was told could be done immediately, has still not been done despite numerous attempts. Please see that this is corrected and contact me in writing showing my payment status.
As a further aggravation, the collection letter which lists the consequences of being delinquent always states that it contains a return envelope for my convenience. It never does.
Thank you,
Jim Avery
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
East Nassau, NY 12062
1) Never buy a timeshare from a salesman. You can easily pick up deals for ten to twenty cents on the dollar and then exchange for last minute openings.
2) I have been extrememly happy with my travels with Wyndham and with RCI.
and now:
FairShare Plus by Wyndham
P.O. Box 98940
Las Vegas, NV 89193-8940
July 26, 2008
RE: XXXXXXXXXXX
Sirs,
Currently, I am prepaid through May of 2009. Since taking efforts to be a good customer and pay up front for services, I have been from time to time been blocked from using online applications due to my delinquent payment status and I have been notified three times by mail that I have a past due balance of over one thousand dollars. The most recent notice came today. Each time I have received this notice, I have contacted the billing office where the staff has consistently been polite.
The explanation I am generally given is that I have been double billed. I am told that the matter will be fixed immediately but that it will take two days for the online system to update so that I am cleared to check confirmations and make reservations.
When I called today, I was told that there was a notation that a “Jeremy” had filed the paperwork to correct this on (I believe) the sixteenth of this month but it had never been completed. I was told to call back Monday as nothing could be done on a Saturday which leaves me wondering why the phones are manned. Also in today’s mail was a reservation confirmation which was filed on the nineteenth.
I am very pleased with the product that Wyndham provides and have three vacations set up for the next year and enough points for several more. There is nothing that I could complain about except for the continuing frustration that I am having over being double billed. When rooms are released at resorts I wish to stay at, I may well find that I cannot book them due to this issue and will have the vacation I have planned and prepaid ruined.
A company which has grown and prospered the way Wyndham has, surely must have the operational discipline in its financial office to correct this matter. As my confirmation letter arrived, it appears that updating the online system, which I was told was the most difficult and time consuming aspect was completed again but correcting my record, which I was told could be done immediately, has still not been done despite numerous attempts. Please see that this is corrected and contact me in writing showing my payment status.
As a further aggravation, the collection letter which lists the consequences of being delinquent always states that it contains a return envelope for my convenience. It never does.
Thank you,
Jim Avery
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
East Nassau, NY 12062
Sunday, July 20, 2008
080720 Tom Cruise Can Fly
As long time readers know, I enjoy taking in the matinee on Tuesdays and this summer has supplied a better than average collection of films. This past Tuesday, my lady friend and I went to see Hancock after seeing that the drive in had no plans on bringing it in. Now if there is one actor in Hollywood whose work I respect it’s Will Smith, but at the end of the movie when I saw that he had produced the movie, I got worried.
I do not want to spoil the plot for anyone out there who has yet to catch the picture but as the story unfolds, a case of amnesia causes Hancock to have no idea who he is or why he has the amazing powers that he does. He finally gets an explanation but, for me, the answer raises more questions than it resolves. It was not until the end credits that I had a theory. Hancock » Will Smith » Tom Cruise » Scientology.
I remembered reading that Tom Cruise had been trying to recruit Will Smith into Scientology.
There are people out there who insist that Scientology is not a religion. I am not one of them. I think Scientology has everything that all of the so called “real” religions have. I don’t mean to offend any believers out there. There is a long history of hard core believers tossing infidels into lion pits, or stretching them on the rack or waging jihads or, in the case of the Scientologists, sending out armies of lawyers.
Scientology seems specially made for Hollywood celebrities. It tells them that they are gods among men. Church doctrine states "that man is a spiritual being whose existence spans more than one life and who is endowed with abilities well beyond those which he normally considers he possesses." Much of the core beliefs of Scientology are kept secret or “confidential” and only revealed to practitioners as they advance through Operating Thetan levels and make financial donations. Special efforts are made to recruit celebrities and they advance through OT levels quickly by writing large checks.
At OT level III, members are allowed to learn the story of how Xenu became the alien ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy." In order to quell free-thinkers and remove any threat to his rule that kind and just people would create, Xenu brought billions of people to Earth seventy-five billion years ago. He transported them in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living and continue to do this today. Hubbard called these clustered spirits "Body Thetans," and advanced-level Scientologists place considerable emphasis on isolating these alien souls and neutralizing their ill effects.
Of course, when science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard first created the basic doctrines of Scientology in 1952, he termed Scientology as a “study of knowledge”. It was not until 1960 that he termed it “a religion by its basic tenets, practice, historical background and by the definition of the word 'religion' itself.”
So what was the meaning of Hancock? Does Will Smith see himself as a superhuman placed on the planet by an alien force? Did Tom Cruise get to him?
I do not follow celebrity “news” closely enough be in the know if Will Smith makes a statement about this.
I also find that I need to worry that the infection may have spread to Jason Bateman. If the “Arrested Development” movie comes with anyone other than Tobias Funke joining the church, I will be suspicious.
I do not want to spoil the plot for anyone out there who has yet to catch the picture but as the story unfolds, a case of amnesia causes Hancock to have no idea who he is or why he has the amazing powers that he does. He finally gets an explanation but, for me, the answer raises more questions than it resolves. It was not until the end credits that I had a theory. Hancock » Will Smith » Tom Cruise » Scientology.
I remembered reading that Tom Cruise had been trying to recruit Will Smith into Scientology.
There are people out there who insist that Scientology is not a religion. I am not one of them. I think Scientology has everything that all of the so called “real” religions have. I don’t mean to offend any believers out there. There is a long history of hard core believers tossing infidels into lion pits, or stretching them on the rack or waging jihads or, in the case of the Scientologists, sending out armies of lawyers.
Scientology seems specially made for Hollywood celebrities. It tells them that they are gods among men. Church doctrine states "that man is a spiritual being whose existence spans more than one life and who is endowed with abilities well beyond those which he normally considers he possesses." Much of the core beliefs of Scientology are kept secret or “confidential” and only revealed to practitioners as they advance through Operating Thetan levels and make financial donations. Special efforts are made to recruit celebrities and they advance through OT levels quickly by writing large checks.
At OT level III, members are allowed to learn the story of how Xenu became the alien ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy." In order to quell free-thinkers and remove any threat to his rule that kind and just people would create, Xenu brought billions of people to Earth seventy-five billion years ago. He transported them in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living and continue to do this today. Hubbard called these clustered spirits "Body Thetans," and advanced-level Scientologists place considerable emphasis on isolating these alien souls and neutralizing their ill effects.
Of course, when science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard first created the basic doctrines of Scientology in 1952, he termed Scientology as a “study of knowledge”. It was not until 1960 that he termed it “a religion by its basic tenets, practice, historical background and by the definition of the word 'religion' itself.”
So what was the meaning of Hancock? Does Will Smith see himself as a superhuman placed on the planet by an alien force? Did Tom Cruise get to him?
I do not follow celebrity “news” closely enough be in the know if Will Smith makes a statement about this.
I also find that I need to worry that the infection may have spread to Jason Bateman. If the “Arrested Development” movie comes with anyone other than Tobias Funke joining the church, I will be suspicious.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
080713 Cocktails, Anyone?
What could be better during the hot, sticky months of summer than reaching for an ice cold bottle of water? It is hard for most people to comprehend that something so simple and filled with common sense could be so bad for both them and for the environment. However, changing just a couple of habits can make grabbing that refreshing bottle of water as healthy as it would appear.
First, ask yourself where that water comes from. No matter how serene the spring pictured on the packaging, the majority of bottled water comes from the municipal water system. This means that any living organisms in the water should have been removed but not other chemical by products. Many people do not realize just how many chemicals are involved. This spring the major news agencies picked up the story of just one category of contaminant – pharmaceuticals. To get enough of our medicines through our systems to have their desired effects, the doses run high. Most of it goes right through our systems to pass out through our urine and back into the closed system of the municipal system. Public water systems have been found to contain unnatural levels of estrogen, Viagra, epilepsy medicine, anti-depressants, and steroids along with other compounds too numerous to mention here. The only effective way to remove these substances is through reverse osmosis filtering which is considered too expensive to implement on a city size system. Each bottle of water you purchase has a better than even chance of containing a cocktail of medications, plus fertilizers, pesticides, chlorines and some much, much more.
Next, you have to consider how the bottle got to you. Somewhere a plastics factory which required light and heat and land had to take petroleum out of the energy supply to make and shape the bottle. Trucks burning hydrocarbons and emitting exhaust then shipped the bottles to the point where the water was pulled from the city water system. The water got bottled in a plant which also had to be lit and heated and have workers driving in and out. Then the water got trucked to a store where it crowds out space from local food producers filling a spot that needs light and so on. A lot of energy and greenhouse gases went into getting that bottle to you.
You finally get your water; refresh yourself and stand there looking at the empty bottle. You could separate it out into the recycle bin and feel good that you did your part. However, an awful lot of communities are like mine; they take all of the separated goods and dump them together in the landfill. Here at the Red Lodge, if I want to recycle plastics I pile them up until I head into a nearby city where I own two apartment buildings and pay a city recycling fee. The city professes that it recycles and I am looking forward to touring the facility later this year. If your community recycles, you should be aware that leaving the cap on the bottle may well cause it to be tossed back in the trash and sent to the landfill. While the bottle is recyclable, the cap is not and having someone uncapping all of the plastic bottles costs more than the finished recyclables are worth.
There are two schools of thought about all of this here at the Red Lodge. I have purchased an e-Spring water treatment system from Amway which runs my water through a compressed carbon filter and a reverse osmosis filter and hits the water which an ultraviolet light. With that I know my water is totally locally sourced and safer than what is sold in stores. I keep an e-Spring pitcher in the fridge and always have reusable e-Spring bottles chilled. My lady friend who likes buying organic food in the store but is afraid of the eggs the free range chickens across the street lay, turns up her nose at my water and goes to the store for bottles filled from the Latham Municipal Water System.
She does not want to hear it. Of course she is always running out of water, running through cash and feels out of sorts quite often. And I get to dispose of her bottles.
Oh, and when we were kids, we drank from the garden hose all summer.
First, ask yourself where that water comes from. No matter how serene the spring pictured on the packaging, the majority of bottled water comes from the municipal water system. This means that any living organisms in the water should have been removed but not other chemical by products. Many people do not realize just how many chemicals are involved. This spring the major news agencies picked up the story of just one category of contaminant – pharmaceuticals. To get enough of our medicines through our systems to have their desired effects, the doses run high. Most of it goes right through our systems to pass out through our urine and back into the closed system of the municipal system. Public water systems have been found to contain unnatural levels of estrogen, Viagra, epilepsy medicine, anti-depressants, and steroids along with other compounds too numerous to mention here. The only effective way to remove these substances is through reverse osmosis filtering which is considered too expensive to implement on a city size system. Each bottle of water you purchase has a better than even chance of containing a cocktail of medications, plus fertilizers, pesticides, chlorines and some much, much more.
Next, you have to consider how the bottle got to you. Somewhere a plastics factory which required light and heat and land had to take petroleum out of the energy supply to make and shape the bottle. Trucks burning hydrocarbons and emitting exhaust then shipped the bottles to the point where the water was pulled from the city water system. The water got bottled in a plant which also had to be lit and heated and have workers driving in and out. Then the water got trucked to a store where it crowds out space from local food producers filling a spot that needs light and so on. A lot of energy and greenhouse gases went into getting that bottle to you.
You finally get your water; refresh yourself and stand there looking at the empty bottle. You could separate it out into the recycle bin and feel good that you did your part. However, an awful lot of communities are like mine; they take all of the separated goods and dump them together in the landfill. Here at the Red Lodge, if I want to recycle plastics I pile them up until I head into a nearby city where I own two apartment buildings and pay a city recycling fee. The city professes that it recycles and I am looking forward to touring the facility later this year. If your community recycles, you should be aware that leaving the cap on the bottle may well cause it to be tossed back in the trash and sent to the landfill. While the bottle is recyclable, the cap is not and having someone uncapping all of the plastic bottles costs more than the finished recyclables are worth.
There are two schools of thought about all of this here at the Red Lodge. I have purchased an e-Spring water treatment system from Amway which runs my water through a compressed carbon filter and a reverse osmosis filter and hits the water which an ultraviolet light. With that I know my water is totally locally sourced and safer than what is sold in stores. I keep an e-Spring pitcher in the fridge and always have reusable e-Spring bottles chilled. My lady friend who likes buying organic food in the store but is afraid of the eggs the free range chickens across the street lay, turns up her nose at my water and goes to the store for bottles filled from the Latham Municipal Water System.
She does not want to hear it. Of course she is always running out of water, running through cash and feels out of sorts quite often. And I get to dispose of her bottles.
Oh, and when we were kids, we drank from the garden hose all summer.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
080621 Cruisin'
I am not a cruise person. That is not to say that I did not enjoy my recent cruise. I really did have a very good time. I just am in no hurry to run back out on another one. There are people out there who could gladly move from cruise to cruise. That is just not me.
To put last week in reference, I had an opportunity to purchase tickets for my lady friend and myself to take a four day cruise to Canada at what I think was a great price. I won’t mention the price here because I do not want readers writing in to tell me that I paid too much. Neither of us had ever been on an oceanic cruise before. A three hour Hudson River cruise was pretty much the high end of our experience curve. Four days and four nights at sea from New York City to Saint John Canada and back seemed like a good opportunity to learn how much we like cruising. We sailed Tuesday evening, spent Wednesday at sea, explored Saint John on Thursday, were at sea all day Friday and made port Saturday morning.
When you are at sea you can go swimming, lie in the sun, eat to excess and gamble in the casino. As I learned from my trip to Atlantic City last year, I don’t really enjoy casinos or gambling and I can swim, sun and eat until I am sick in my own house. It is nice to do it on a cruise ship but after the novelty wears off you might as well go home.
I have to wonder what kind of person is a cruise person after stopping to relieve myself. Next to every toilet on the ship was a plaque asking me to please not flush towels. Now did someone in charge gaze thoughtfully toward the horizon and receive the divine inspiration that he needed to make sure no one ever tried to flush a towel? Or did some genius ask himself what he should do with all of the damp towels and get it into his head that all he had to do was flush them. It has never occurred to me that I should flush I towel, but after reading that plaque the first time all I could think of was flushing towels. I never did of course.
In fact, I behaved so well that I only needed to be spoken to by staff once on the entire cruise. Apparently elegant dining night extended to the dining room I had entered and shorts did not cut it. I am very proud to say that the only time I needed to be spoken to on the cruise was when I was told to leave the dining room.
I was afraid I would not even make it onto the ship. When I climbed up to the second floor of the pier and saw the line snaking back and forth across the platform and then security running luggage though a metal detector, the was the possibility that I might be accused of breaking the rules. My luggage contained a bottle of Long Island Iced Tea. The Carnival Cruise Lines takes a dim view of any alcohol which does not come from one of their many bars. The only exception to this is wine which is brought on board and turned over to the crew who will provide it in the dining room for a corking fee of ten dollars.
Luckily there was no x-ray to go with the metal detector and I made it onto the cruise ship safely. Unexpectedly, disposing of the empty bottle was harder than bringing the bottle on board. The cruise was actually a good time but I don’t know how soon I would want to go out on another.
To put last week in reference, I had an opportunity to purchase tickets for my lady friend and myself to take a four day cruise to Canada at what I think was a great price. I won’t mention the price here because I do not want readers writing in to tell me that I paid too much. Neither of us had ever been on an oceanic cruise before. A three hour Hudson River cruise was pretty much the high end of our experience curve. Four days and four nights at sea from New York City to Saint John Canada and back seemed like a good opportunity to learn how much we like cruising. We sailed Tuesday evening, spent Wednesday at sea, explored Saint John on Thursday, were at sea all day Friday and made port Saturday morning.
When you are at sea you can go swimming, lie in the sun, eat to excess and gamble in the casino. As I learned from my trip to Atlantic City last year, I don’t really enjoy casinos or gambling and I can swim, sun and eat until I am sick in my own house. It is nice to do it on a cruise ship but after the novelty wears off you might as well go home.
I have to wonder what kind of person is a cruise person after stopping to relieve myself. Next to every toilet on the ship was a plaque asking me to please not flush towels. Now did someone in charge gaze thoughtfully toward the horizon and receive the divine inspiration that he needed to make sure no one ever tried to flush a towel? Or did some genius ask himself what he should do with all of the damp towels and get it into his head that all he had to do was flush them. It has never occurred to me that I should flush I towel, but after reading that plaque the first time all I could think of was flushing towels. I never did of course.
In fact, I behaved so well that I only needed to be spoken to by staff once on the entire cruise. Apparently elegant dining night extended to the dining room I had entered and shorts did not cut it. I am very proud to say that the only time I needed to be spoken to on the cruise was when I was told to leave the dining room.
I was afraid I would not even make it onto the ship. When I climbed up to the second floor of the pier and saw the line snaking back and forth across the platform and then security running luggage though a metal detector, the was the possibility that I might be accused of breaking the rules. My luggage contained a bottle of Long Island Iced Tea. The Carnival Cruise Lines takes a dim view of any alcohol which does not come from one of their many bars. The only exception to this is wine which is brought on board and turned over to the crew who will provide it in the dining room for a corking fee of ten dollars.
Luckily there was no x-ray to go with the metal detector and I made it onto the cruise ship safely. Unexpectedly, disposing of the empty bottle was harder than bringing the bottle on board. The cruise was actually a good time but I don’t know how soon I would want to go out on another.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
080607 Farewell Citizen Sarandon
Today I wanted to give you a nice blog explaining how bottled water was leading the country down the road to destruction both by poisoning us with toxins and by ruining the environment but Susan Sarandon had to speak up and attract my attention. The actress most recently seen in the heart wrenching “Speed Racer” in a role which has not been deemed worthy of a character bio on the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) is threatening to leave the country. With five movies currently in production she has apparently resigned herself to finish her Hollywood Days.
Ms. Sarandon literally launched her acting career by disrupting the 1968 Democratic convention. While I keep the mailman busy toting Netflix envelopes and spend many Tuesday afternoons at the movies, I have not seen a movie with her in it since “Children of Dune”. I did, however, grow up in era when teens were required to watch “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at midnight every Friday.
After helping to put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000, this Ralph Nader backer has announced that she will leave the country if John McCain is elected this fall. She has been vocal in her support for Barack Obama and VERY vocal in her dislike of Hillary Clinton. I have searched the internet looking for some way she may have qualified her statement but to no avail. I have hoped to find clarification to show me that what she really meant was that America might not be a nice place.
It seems that Ms. Sarandon meant her remark to be an “If I don’t get my way, I’ll hold my breath until I turn blue” or, more exactly, “You’ll miss me when I’m gone” kind of threat. Now, it seems, I need to rearrange my list of qualifications for a president.
1. Who can provide for safety of Americans in the world of today and tomorrow?
2. Who can most effectively guide the nation economically?
3. Who can provide visionary leadership to protect the environment while new technologies are fostered?
4. Who can create a national consensus to rise above partisan politics?
Now, at the top of the list, whose election will cause the least ramifications from Susan Sarandon or any other Hollywood figures that need to be negotiated with?
While I mouth off my opinion here each week as well as to anyone who will listen to me the rest of the time, I do not really expect anyone to need to react to what I say. Hollywood types, however, seem to believe that sit up, take notice and do things based on what they say. Can she really believe that what she does the day after the election should be a factor in how people vote?
I am also at a loss for what it is about John McCain that Ms. Sarandon finds so objectionable. While the center of gravity of the Republican Party has shifted away from its libertarian base, Senator McCain has remained a voice of reason. He has proved that he can work with Republicans and with Democrats and he has consistently put the good of the country’s citizens ahead of his political career.
Whether or not her candidate is elected depends more on someone she has lost no love on that her threats. Five months out, this election looks to be very close. If Hillary Clinton packs up and goes home like Ronald Reagan did when he lost the nomination in 1976, then Senator Obama will be crippled. But if she stumps for him the way a defeated Ted Kennedy did for Jimmy Carter, then Obama’s base is broadened. This weekend, Hillary Clinton made her concession speech endorsing Barack Obama. Staying true to form, Senator Clinton spent most of her endorsement speech talking about herself. Senator Obama may need Ms. Sarandon as his ace in the hole.
If there are die hard Susan Sarandon fans out there who are worried about the future, please think back eight years. While Ms. Sarandon was working to convince Democrats to vote for Nader instead of Al Gore, her boyfriend Tim Robbins issued the following threat: if George Bush becomes president, he is outta here.
Ms. Sarandon literally launched her acting career by disrupting the 1968 Democratic convention. While I keep the mailman busy toting Netflix envelopes and spend many Tuesday afternoons at the movies, I have not seen a movie with her in it since “Children of Dune”. I did, however, grow up in era when teens were required to watch “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at midnight every Friday.
After helping to put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000, this Ralph Nader backer has announced that she will leave the country if John McCain is elected this fall. She has been vocal in her support for Barack Obama and VERY vocal in her dislike of Hillary Clinton. I have searched the internet looking for some way she may have qualified her statement but to no avail. I have hoped to find clarification to show me that what she really meant was that America might not be a nice place.
It seems that Ms. Sarandon meant her remark to be an “If I don’t get my way, I’ll hold my breath until I turn blue” or, more exactly, “You’ll miss me when I’m gone” kind of threat. Now, it seems, I need to rearrange my list of qualifications for a president.
1. Who can provide for safety of Americans in the world of today and tomorrow?
2. Who can most effectively guide the nation economically?
3. Who can provide visionary leadership to protect the environment while new technologies are fostered?
4. Who can create a national consensus to rise above partisan politics?
Now, at the top of the list, whose election will cause the least ramifications from Susan Sarandon or any other Hollywood figures that need to be negotiated with?
While I mouth off my opinion here each week as well as to anyone who will listen to me the rest of the time, I do not really expect anyone to need to react to what I say. Hollywood types, however, seem to believe that sit up, take notice and do things based on what they say. Can she really believe that what she does the day after the election should be a factor in how people vote?
I am also at a loss for what it is about John McCain that Ms. Sarandon finds so objectionable. While the center of gravity of the Republican Party has shifted away from its libertarian base, Senator McCain has remained a voice of reason. He has proved that he can work with Republicans and with Democrats and he has consistently put the good of the country’s citizens ahead of his political career.
Whether or not her candidate is elected depends more on someone she has lost no love on that her threats. Five months out, this election looks to be very close. If Hillary Clinton packs up and goes home like Ronald Reagan did when he lost the nomination in 1976, then Senator Obama will be crippled. But if she stumps for him the way a defeated Ted Kennedy did for Jimmy Carter, then Obama’s base is broadened. This weekend, Hillary Clinton made her concession speech endorsing Barack Obama. Staying true to form, Senator Clinton spent most of her endorsement speech talking about herself. Senator Obama may need Ms. Sarandon as his ace in the hole.
If there are die hard Susan Sarandon fans out there who are worried about the future, please think back eight years. While Ms. Sarandon was working to convince Democrats to vote for Nader instead of Al Gore, her boyfriend Tim Robbins issued the following threat: if George Bush becomes president, he is outta here.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
080518 Sunshine State Versus Solar State
Sometimes the simple things can be the most confusing. I am currently in Citrus County Florida (third highest percentage of senior citizens within the general population within the country) with my father. It would seem that the sun shines down every day. It feels that way. The temperate is currently shooting up nearly twenty degrees warmer than it is back home. Although the gulf coast is several miles away, it would seem like there is a steady breeze coming in every day. Those are perceptions which I think I experience.
I had thought that the conventional wisdom was that as air moved from a large body of water, such as the Gulf of Mexico, and then passed over a land mass, such as the Florida peninsula, it generated wind. I had thought that there was a regular and predictable history of tides raising and lowering the depth of the coastal water on a daily basis. I thought that Florida was called the sunshine state because of its generous and warm sunshine.
That is all wrong and it says so in black and white right in this urgent notice from the power company.
From my experience with this part of the country, the local power supplier SECO has had a history of providing a steady connection to the grid while being responsive to its consumers and keeping prices reasonable. I have had every reason to be happy with SECO. I hold in my hand a mailing from their offices, however, which calls into question either my conceptions of how I can readily observe common elements of reality or my faith in SECO to tell the truth. It sounds almost like it was written by the staff of Democratic congressman Nick Rahill of West Virginia who long time readers will remember as the anti-Semitic coal industry mouthpiece who wants to outlaw wind energy because it is bad for the environment.
SECO is very angry is Florida Governor Charlie Crist who, in my humble opinion, is one of the best governors in the country. Governor Crist has become very proactive in pushing for limits to greenhouse gas emissions and would like to see a greater amount of the electricity generated from new sources to be renewable. Some readers have been confused by my stance in the past. While I have disproved that any global warming is the result of man-made carbon emissions (why is Mars experiencing a warming trend similar to Earth’s), that does not mean that I think it is a good idea to keep pumping such huge quantities of it into the atmosphere. Crist has the right idea. Unfortunately, the same status quo leaders of the Republican Party who denounced John McCain eight years ago have made Crist into an outcast.
SECO wants to build new coal burning plants to generate electricity. Crist questions the wisdom of generating electricity of lighting houses by burning things. SECO contends that Florida does not receive enough sunlight to generate electrical power. According to SECO, Florida is prone to overcast skies which would make solar power impossible to generate. Also, SECO has found that Florida, with its long coastline, is subject to stagnant air incapable of turning a wind turbine. SECO makes no mention of tidal turbines.
This is all very confusing. Especially since I have found that in upstate New York, where the sun comes in at a much more indirect angle than it does in Florida, I can power Drumlin Cove (when I build it) with solar panels and sell nearly half of the power to National Grid. Between the lower cost of the new micro thin panels being manufactured and incentives, the system can be installed at a minimal price. We also have wind farms being built in an area with no ocean to generate coastal air flow. Tidal turbines are being installed in New York City to power Staten Island.
What is the strong allure of building huge plants that we can truck coal in from a distance for burning that causes SECO to see this as the only alternative? Why are they latched onto a plan which is costly, dirty and inefficient and are unwilling to even admit that alternatives exist? And why are they so set on this that they would take on the governor and the regulators?
I had thought that the conventional wisdom was that as air moved from a large body of water, such as the Gulf of Mexico, and then passed over a land mass, such as the Florida peninsula, it generated wind. I had thought that there was a regular and predictable history of tides raising and lowering the depth of the coastal water on a daily basis. I thought that Florida was called the sunshine state because of its generous and warm sunshine.
That is all wrong and it says so in black and white right in this urgent notice from the power company.
From my experience with this part of the country, the local power supplier SECO has had a history of providing a steady connection to the grid while being responsive to its consumers and keeping prices reasonable. I have had every reason to be happy with SECO. I hold in my hand a mailing from their offices, however, which calls into question either my conceptions of how I can readily observe common elements of reality or my faith in SECO to tell the truth. It sounds almost like it was written by the staff of Democratic congressman Nick Rahill of West Virginia who long time readers will remember as the anti-Semitic coal industry mouthpiece who wants to outlaw wind energy because it is bad for the environment.
SECO is very angry is Florida Governor Charlie Crist who, in my humble opinion, is one of the best governors in the country. Governor Crist has become very proactive in pushing for limits to greenhouse gas emissions and would like to see a greater amount of the electricity generated from new sources to be renewable. Some readers have been confused by my stance in the past. While I have disproved that any global warming is the result of man-made carbon emissions (why is Mars experiencing a warming trend similar to Earth’s), that does not mean that I think it is a good idea to keep pumping such huge quantities of it into the atmosphere. Crist has the right idea. Unfortunately, the same status quo leaders of the Republican Party who denounced John McCain eight years ago have made Crist into an outcast.
SECO wants to build new coal burning plants to generate electricity. Crist questions the wisdom of generating electricity of lighting houses by burning things. SECO contends that Florida does not receive enough sunlight to generate electrical power. According to SECO, Florida is prone to overcast skies which would make solar power impossible to generate. Also, SECO has found that Florida, with its long coastline, is subject to stagnant air incapable of turning a wind turbine. SECO makes no mention of tidal turbines.
This is all very confusing. Especially since I have found that in upstate New York, where the sun comes in at a much more indirect angle than it does in Florida, I can power Drumlin Cove (when I build it) with solar panels and sell nearly half of the power to National Grid. Between the lower cost of the new micro thin panels being manufactured and incentives, the system can be installed at a minimal price. We also have wind farms being built in an area with no ocean to generate coastal air flow. Tidal turbines are being installed in New York City to power Staten Island.
What is the strong allure of building huge plants that we can truck coal in from a distance for burning that causes SECO to see this as the only alternative? Why are they latched onto a plan which is costly, dirty and inefficient and are unwilling to even admit that alternatives exist? And why are they so set on this that they would take on the governor and the regulators?
Monday, May 12, 2008
080511 Riding the Rails
I am sorry Gentle Reader, but I seem to have screwed up this week’s blog. It was all written and ready for me to upload Saturday evening prior to my departure for Florida when my cab (and I was lucky that they had one driver who knew how to find his way out to Hoag’s Corners) arrived a half hour early. I suppose I could have asked the driver to wait while I went to blogspot and cut and pasted it all into the proper box, or got the bright idea to e-mail it to myself, but the truth is that I panicked when I saw something as unfamiliar as a cab so far out in the woods and pulling up my driveway.
So I am sitting here writing an apology as I speed past New Jersey marshes after my train popped up out of a tunnel under the Hudson River. A brand new and exciting blog sits trapped in my desktop back in my study. Fairly, you might not consider it all that new. As I am departing the great northeast for an undetermined length of time (I do have cruise ship reservations to sail from NYC on June tenth so I cannot stay overly long.), I thought it best to revisit all of the topics we have covered in the last few months and make an effort to solve all of the world’s problems. We could all use a couple of weeks to relax before we read over the news and say, “Wait, how many people still died in Burma after food, water and supplies were brought to the border?” There will time to be righteous and indignant later. (Well, not for the children in Burma who are getting dysentery today and the days to come.)
Right now, I am fascinated by the rail. While I have always said I wanted to take a train across Canada, I have never really thought it would be a good idea. When situations this weekend put me on a train instead of a plane, I was more than a little dubious. Flying would have been cheaper (okay, there fuel surcharges which are not immediately apparent when you shop for a ticket) and quicker. I would not have had to crash at a friend’s so I could get up at four in the morning and go the two blocks to the station without a shower.
It turns out that there is something to be said for rail travel. Rather than being packed into cramped quarters like cattle as I usually am on a plane, I have a more comfortable seat than from the airlines with more than enough room to stretch out my legs. I can ride along enjoying the passing country and cityscapes while sipping ice tea, writing this blog and watching Babylon 5. (If you have not been keeping score at home, I am a giant nerd or, more properly, nerdicus gigantium.) Plus, I am not making the carbon footprint I would on a plane.
While I have not been a regular rider of the rails, I have long been a defender of them. One of our country’s great failings is its ongoing reluctance to properly fund the rail system. It is a vital resource the value of which has not always apparent. It is hard to always see the worth of a resource that is not needed immediately. With gasoline rapidly approaching four dollars a gallon, the need for both commuter rail and freight lines is growing more obvious with each passing day.
Long time readers will remember that when I build Drumlin Cove, I have a room set aside exclusively to build a model railroad in. Nerdicus Gigantium.
So, it may be a week or two before I can connect online sufficiently to put in a new blog. Rest assured, my first act after returning to the Empire State will be to file a new edition.
Happy Mothers’ Day.
So I am sitting here writing an apology as I speed past New Jersey marshes after my train popped up out of a tunnel under the Hudson River. A brand new and exciting blog sits trapped in my desktop back in my study. Fairly, you might not consider it all that new. As I am departing the great northeast for an undetermined length of time (I do have cruise ship reservations to sail from NYC on June tenth so I cannot stay overly long.), I thought it best to revisit all of the topics we have covered in the last few months and make an effort to solve all of the world’s problems. We could all use a couple of weeks to relax before we read over the news and say, “Wait, how many people still died in Burma after food, water and supplies were brought to the border?” There will time to be righteous and indignant later. (Well, not for the children in Burma who are getting dysentery today and the days to come.)
Right now, I am fascinated by the rail. While I have always said I wanted to take a train across Canada, I have never really thought it would be a good idea. When situations this weekend put me on a train instead of a plane, I was more than a little dubious. Flying would have been cheaper (okay, there fuel surcharges which are not immediately apparent when you shop for a ticket) and quicker. I would not have had to crash at a friend’s so I could get up at four in the morning and go the two blocks to the station without a shower.
It turns out that there is something to be said for rail travel. Rather than being packed into cramped quarters like cattle as I usually am on a plane, I have a more comfortable seat than from the airlines with more than enough room to stretch out my legs. I can ride along enjoying the passing country and cityscapes while sipping ice tea, writing this blog and watching Babylon 5. (If you have not been keeping score at home, I am a giant nerd or, more properly, nerdicus gigantium.) Plus, I am not making the carbon footprint I would on a plane.
While I have not been a regular rider of the rails, I have long been a defender of them. One of our country’s great failings is its ongoing reluctance to properly fund the rail system. It is a vital resource the value of which has not always apparent. It is hard to always see the worth of a resource that is not needed immediately. With gasoline rapidly approaching four dollars a gallon, the need for both commuter rail and freight lines is growing more obvious with each passing day.
Long time readers will remember that when I build Drumlin Cove, I have a room set aside exclusively to build a model railroad in. Nerdicus Gigantium.
So, it may be a week or two before I can connect online sufficiently to put in a new blog. Rest assured, my first act after returning to the Empire State will be to file a new edition.
Happy Mothers’ Day.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
080504 The Nagging Issue Of Self
It has come to light recently that I am a hypocrite. As much as I like to think highly of myself as well as to think highly of all people, certain information has come to my attention which casts serious doubts regarding my beliefs. It was quite a surprise to me and in the interest of fairness and full disclosure I thought it best to share this with my readers..
It was a Saturday evening when my lady friend decided that what had started as a head cold was more serious and she needed to see a doctor so I drove her off to the emergency room. The prognosis was that she had tonsillitis and laryngitis. We had an older male licensed practicing nurse who seemed highly preoccupied with pregnancy tests. I considered telling him they would just be a waste of time as pregnancy was impossible but I held my tongue as it seemed any attempt at derailing his obsession might backfire and take us even longer.
After blood was drawn by another male nurse (I think it was men only night at the hospital.) who we nicknamed Stabby MaGee, tests were done and the LPN returned with a big smile. “I know you said you couldn’t be pregnant, but I’ve got some news; congratulations!” he gushed.
That was when I spoke up. “But… she had a tubal ligation.”
“Hmmm,” he answered thoughtfully. “That would be unusual, but not impossible. When was your last period?”
“Right now.”
“Hmmm, unusual, but not impossible. There’s no doubt about it. Congratulations.” And he left the room.
It was over sixty hours before we could have a qualified medical professional review two urine tests and one new blood test and say that no, she was not in fact pregnant. During those sixty hours, the dominant thought running through my head was “Well, we’ve got to get that thing out of there.”
I have been on the record as strongly stating my belief that once you have paired off your chromosomes, you have a human life with all the rights of any other human being. You have a human being who cannot defend themselves and that needs to be protected. I have always been solidly in the “right to life” camp.
I am also a man whose greatest joy comes from his son. Before he was born, I was not so hot on the idea of fatherhood, or even on maintaining a marriage that was in its final days, but the instant the nurse handed him to me, my life was transformed in ways that only exist in corny clichés.
“We’ve got to get that thing out of there.”
That is what kept running through my head.
I retired in my thirties to enjoy life. I set up my finances around my lifestyle and drew up specific monetary plans. I spend six weeks a year in Florida with my dad and travel five weeks a year for vacations. I have reservations in Atlantic City for the week that this baby would have been due.
My beliefs have not changed. I am apparently highly conflicted. I still think that even if it is smaller than my thumb and looks like a sea monkey, it is a human being. However, if it is inconvenient to me…
It was a Saturday evening when my lady friend decided that what had started as a head cold was more serious and she needed to see a doctor so I drove her off to the emergency room. The prognosis was that she had tonsillitis and laryngitis. We had an older male licensed practicing nurse who seemed highly preoccupied with pregnancy tests. I considered telling him they would just be a waste of time as pregnancy was impossible but I held my tongue as it seemed any attempt at derailing his obsession might backfire and take us even longer.
After blood was drawn by another male nurse (I think it was men only night at the hospital.) who we nicknamed Stabby MaGee, tests were done and the LPN returned with a big smile. “I know you said you couldn’t be pregnant, but I’ve got some news; congratulations!” he gushed.
That was when I spoke up. “But… she had a tubal ligation.”
“Hmmm,” he answered thoughtfully. “That would be unusual, but not impossible. When was your last period?”
“Right now.”
“Hmmm, unusual, but not impossible. There’s no doubt about it. Congratulations.” And he left the room.
It was over sixty hours before we could have a qualified medical professional review two urine tests and one new blood test and say that no, she was not in fact pregnant. During those sixty hours, the dominant thought running through my head was “Well, we’ve got to get that thing out of there.”
I have been on the record as strongly stating my belief that once you have paired off your chromosomes, you have a human life with all the rights of any other human being. You have a human being who cannot defend themselves and that needs to be protected. I have always been solidly in the “right to life” camp.
I am also a man whose greatest joy comes from his son. Before he was born, I was not so hot on the idea of fatherhood, or even on maintaining a marriage that was in its final days, but the instant the nurse handed him to me, my life was transformed in ways that only exist in corny clichés.
“We’ve got to get that thing out of there.”
That is what kept running through my head.
I retired in my thirties to enjoy life. I set up my finances around my lifestyle and drew up specific monetary plans. I spend six weeks a year in Florida with my dad and travel five weeks a year for vacations. I have reservations in Atlantic City for the week that this baby would have been due.
My beliefs have not changed. I am apparently highly conflicted. I still think that even if it is smaller than my thumb and looks like a sea monkey, it is a human being. However, if it is inconvenient to me…
Sunday, April 20, 2008
080420 Biofuel eats The Poor
Doing what is right is not always easy. I am not talking about any moral debates over the good of the many outweighing the good of the one no matter whether the argument is attributed to John Stewart Mill or to Mister Spock. Sometimes it is just hard to know what is right.
One quick example of this is the compact fluorescent light bulb. We all know that we are supposed to use them because they are good for the environment. There is a commercial that plays quite often. I do not know what there are advertising but there is a happy smiling woman who tells us that doing something simple like changing a light bulb gives us a feeling of empowerment over our lives. I changed my own light bulbs over to the fluorescent kind two years ago. The problem is – when these bulbs die and we throw them away, they are full of toxic mercury. Suddenly they are very bad for the environment.
A bigger and more pressing issue is ethanol. It is a popularly accepted belief that ethanol is good for the environment. I believe that it is true that corn burns cleaner than oil. However, corn burns a lot less efficiently than oil. You use more ethanol fuel to go somewhere than you do oil. It also takes more energy to turn corn into fuel than it does to turn oil into fuel. Ethanol is also corrosive. Fuel made from oil can be pumped through a pipeline. Ethanol would eat through the pipeline so it needs to be trucked to where it’s going. To burn a gallon of ethanol turns out more pollution than a gallon of oil based fuel.
This is not to say that there is no place for ethanol within the whole. Even with all of the new oil being pumped out of the ground, it is not going to be here forever. I remember the predictions that it would be gone by 1990. While that was wrong, it is true that is a finite resource that everyone wants and this takes power and control away from us (the users) and gives it to people who have radically different feelings about life and death (the producers). We need to find better ways to make ethanol and better ways to use it.
The biggest problem with ethanol is that it reduces the food supply. I have to give credit to Fidel Castro, he had this right. Because the industrialized world is concerned with how much we need to spend to fill our gas tanks, food is being removed from the third world. A sizable chunk of the world population spends seventy-five percent or more of their assets on food. Any increase in food prices is devastating to them. We are beginning to see food riots in places like Egypt and the Philippines. The famines in Africa look to be the worst they have been in generations.
Back here in the states, we are seeing price increases that dwarf what happens at the pump. Whether we are shopping in the cereal aisle or ordering a thick crust pizza, the price is going up because the food supply is being tampered with. Anything with corn or wheat or flour in it is affected. Over the last few decades, we have seen the phenomenon of low cost food being less healthy than more expensive food and low cost food is loaded with corn syrup and corn starch.
Ethanol is a quick fix that we can do so that we feel better about ourselves, but the reality is that it causes pollution and drives millions to starvation. We were better served to find ways to replace petroleum wherever possible.
One quick example of this is the compact fluorescent light bulb. We all know that we are supposed to use them because they are good for the environment. There is a commercial that plays quite often. I do not know what there are advertising but there is a happy smiling woman who tells us that doing something simple like changing a light bulb gives us a feeling of empowerment over our lives. I changed my own light bulbs over to the fluorescent kind two years ago. The problem is – when these bulbs die and we throw them away, they are full of toxic mercury. Suddenly they are very bad for the environment.
A bigger and more pressing issue is ethanol. It is a popularly accepted belief that ethanol is good for the environment. I believe that it is true that corn burns cleaner than oil. However, corn burns a lot less efficiently than oil. You use more ethanol fuel to go somewhere than you do oil. It also takes more energy to turn corn into fuel than it does to turn oil into fuel. Ethanol is also corrosive. Fuel made from oil can be pumped through a pipeline. Ethanol would eat through the pipeline so it needs to be trucked to where it’s going. To burn a gallon of ethanol turns out more pollution than a gallon of oil based fuel.
This is not to say that there is no place for ethanol within the whole. Even with all of the new oil being pumped out of the ground, it is not going to be here forever. I remember the predictions that it would be gone by 1990. While that was wrong, it is true that is a finite resource that everyone wants and this takes power and control away from us (the users) and gives it to people who have radically different feelings about life and death (the producers). We need to find better ways to make ethanol and better ways to use it.
The biggest problem with ethanol is that it reduces the food supply. I have to give credit to Fidel Castro, he had this right. Because the industrialized world is concerned with how much we need to spend to fill our gas tanks, food is being removed from the third world. A sizable chunk of the world population spends seventy-five percent or more of their assets on food. Any increase in food prices is devastating to them. We are beginning to see food riots in places like Egypt and the Philippines. The famines in Africa look to be the worst they have been in generations.
Back here in the states, we are seeing price increases that dwarf what happens at the pump. Whether we are shopping in the cereal aisle or ordering a thick crust pizza, the price is going up because the food supply is being tampered with. Anything with corn or wheat or flour in it is affected. Over the last few decades, we have seen the phenomenon of low cost food being less healthy than more expensive food and low cost food is loaded with corn syrup and corn starch.
Ethanol is a quick fix that we can do so that we feel better about ourselves, but the reality is that it causes pollution and drives millions to starvation. We were better served to find ways to replace petroleum wherever possible.
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