February 26. 2009 by Dick.

Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R-VT) has spent several hours as President Obama’s special guest; this state expects to receive about $900 million as details of the G.R.A.F.T. Act payouts to the states trickle into public view. The President and the U.S. Congress expect some of those funds to shore up “revenue shortfalls” in the states.

Vermont has a TWO hundred million dollar deficit looming over the next two budget years so the Democratically controlled legislature has decided to spend THREE hundred million dollars of our portion of the G.R.A.F.T. Act windfall to “stabilize” the budget.

The Speaker of the Vermont House has proposed a three-man oversight committee to assure the money is spent wisely.

Apparently that is not enough. The Democratically controlled legislature decided today to RAISE taxes by $24 million dollars in order to make up for the revenue shortfall.

Hello?

I think we just fell into Fiddler on the Roof.

“Alms for the poor, alms for the poor,” called Nahum, the beggar.

“Here, Reb Nahum, is one kopek.” Lazar Wolfe gave him the coin.

“One kopek? Last week you gave me two kopeks.”

The butcher shrugged. “I had a bad week.”

“So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?”

Vermonters are having a bad day. The unemployment rate here was 6.4% in December, before the latest round of layoffs at IBM and other Vermont companies. My wife, like so many other American workers, has had her “full time” job cut to just three days per week.

Vermonters are having a bad day but the legislature has voted itself two kopeks.

I have some (small) hope that Vermont will do the right thing on the state budget. After all, a few million is a small enough number that people will notice. I have absolutely no hope that Washington will do the right thing. Congressional action to fix the proposed 1.3 trillion dollar Federal budget comes under rule, It is easier to sell a big lie than a little one.

Watch and learn. The largest Federal budget ever proposed will be bigger when it passes.

Posted in What? Are They Nuts?, Throw Da Bums Out, Politics & News, Random Access | No Comments »

February 25. 2009 by Dick.

I will admit it first: I have just the smallest touch of fuddy duddyness about me when it comes to the language.

Nancy told me that she had friended her son on Facebook.

Say what?

“‘Friending’,” she said, “is FB-speak for inviting someone to join your Friends list.” North Puffin is remote. Sometimes it takes a while for new word usage to make it here to the end of the world. Especially when we already have a really good word that does the job.

No one on FaceSpace apparently knows how to BEfriend anyone.

encarta defines befriend as to “make friends with: to be friendly to somebody, especially to somebody who has no friends and needs help.”

Friends help their friends. I like that.

The O.E.D. notes that someone cobbled befriend together in the mid-16th Century, long enough ago that most of us should know the word by now. I guess if it ain’t brandy new bright and shiny, it ain’t cool.

So what. I wear khakis and button down shirts. I am cool all the time but every couple of decades the world comes around again. And I do use social networks.

OTOH, I don’t much like verbification (heh) and I don’t much like misuse of perfectly good words. The folks on FaceSpace are people we sorta kinda know; we typically do not invest enough time in them to make them real friends.

FaceSpace is a communications tool for we who are cool. It occurs to me that we should ban from FaceSpace those who don’t know that befriending takes more than a quickie email.

Posted in Society, Random Access | 1 Comment »

February 24. 2009 by Dick.

President Obama has sent a memorandum to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to wit, “that it is important to the national interest to furnish assistance under the Act in an amount not to exceed $20.3 million … for the purpose of meeting unexpected and urgent refugee and migration needs … of Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza.

The rug-chewing right-handed blogdom has jumped on the initial days of the Obama presidency. They note that his first call to any head of state was to Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine, his first interview was with Al Arabia, he ordered Guantanamo Bay closed, and more. This memorandum adds to their ammunition when they say the order provides a “free ticket [here in these United States] replete with housing and food allowances to individuals who have displayed their overwhelming support of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).”

Which doesn’t appear to be the case. Having read the actual Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 , I do wonder if the rug-chewing right has choked on a piece of Persian carpet that was never intended to fly here.

The MRAA sets U.S. policy for the involuntary return of refugees and for whatever overseas assistance to refugees and displaced persons we will grant.

We have, after all, put a fair amount of money out in the past to help refugee succor and resettlement all over the world for peeps who stayed if not in their own countries at least on their own continents. The Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and the Boxing Day Tsunami it caused are a case in point. Our response to the humanitarian needs in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand added billions of dollars to our own deficit.

Interestingly, Obama did not need to sign the order in the first place. Then-President Clinton delegated the functions and authorities conferred upon the President by the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act to the Secretary of State, who he further authorized to redelegate those functions and authorities.

On the other hand, the rug chewing right has a serious point. We have a long history of admitting likely enemies to the U.S. under our open doors policy to accept and care for the World’s sick, the poor, the downtrodden wherever they may be. This isn’t even the first time we’ve paid for them to come here and paid for them to live (c.f. Mariel). It is, however, an expansion of the liberal belief that the reaching out of hands, the mere exposure to U.S. culture will change an enemy to a friend.

Of course, that would be the same liberal belief that encourages the segregation of peoples within the U.S. so that their cultures not be lost or assimilated here.

Press “1″ for English.

In this case, I hope I am indeed right although other political prognosticators are so often not and I may have fallen into the trap of believing the Administration would follow the law rather than some cherished liberal wish. If we do indeed relocate thousands of armed insurrectionists to poor enclaves in American cities, it will be treason.

And it might very well kill you and you and you.

And me.

In an interesting coincidence, Bablefish is sure today is “FATTY Tuesday.”

Posted in Society, Politics & News, Random Access | 3 Comments »