October 26. 2009 by Dick.

It’s the Keys, mon. The sweat rolling off my back doesn’t turn into ice cubes before it hits the floor.

I had a mostly uneventful trip from North Puffin to South Puffin last week. I bought half a sailboat and didn’t buy a motor home.

Half a boat conjures a Wiley Coyote image of a bald guy hanging onto the mast, trying to keep the chewed off after end out of the drink. That would be a small error. Rufus bought the other half, so we’re probably safe as long as I can keep him away from the chainsaw. We spent a couple of days completing the purchase, getting the trailer tags, making sure everything would stay connected. He fed me well.

Speaking of chewed off after ends, my neighbor Joe went fishing yesterday and almost boated a pretty nice mackerel. Except he had reeled the fish in to withing spitting distance of the boat when a much larger mackerel saw dinner on the hook and chomped off the back half. No shaking, no rending, no tearing. Open wide. Bite down. Swim away. ‘Nother reason I pefer fishing for cow.

I tend to listen to podcasts and talk shows while driving so I discovered a surprisingly conservative broadcast about a news media watchdog’s 40th anniversary on C-Span, of all venues. Of course, C-Span is kind of the public access television for inside the Beltway, so perhaps it is not so surprising.

The trailer towed easily at all speeds and neither the tires nor the bearings got hot. The traffic cooperated. I even drove right through D.C. and, other than the G.P.S. scolding me about “better routes,” had no tie-ups. Even the rain wasn’t too bad to drive through. The motel yard cats liked the boat at each stop.

Gas prices climbed through the entre trip. I stopped for gas at a 7-11 in Port Charlotte, Florida. The road signs advertise a $2.58⁹/gallon price for regular. The actual price at the pump was $2.73⁹/gallon. The store clerk told me no manager was at the store but one would “probably” be available on Monday.

Later, I checked in to a Red Roof Inn in Naples. The Florida Roomsaver ad promised “It’s all new under the Roof” with gourmet coffee, a free USA Today, and WiFi Internet access through T-Mobile.

Not every motel in the Florida Roomsaver offers Internet access but all that do offer it just as they do a complimentary hot breakfast or the towels — included the cost of the room. After I checked in, the clerk told that the WiFi Internet access through T-Mobile would cost me $8/day. I could buy the T-Mobile card then, he said, and ask for a refund in the morning. I spent the evening without any ability to check mail, plan my route, or download porn. I never saw a paper, either.

I’ll write the usual nastygrams. I can pretend that 7-11 will sanction the franchisee and Red Roof will give me a free night somewhere. I can even file deceptive advertising complaints with the Florida Attorney General and, as an ExxonMobil shareholder, I will ask that company to pull Exxon and Mobil gasoline from all 7-11s nationwide. It certainly leaves me not liking what’s “all new” under the roof. Or at the 7-11.

I ’spect the most I’ll get is this blog entry.

Running the Tamiami through the Everglades in daylight was the best part of the trip. I stopped at the Collier-Seminole State Park just to see what is there this week and discovered the 1924 Bay City walking dredge. It is on the National Register as the earliest remaining dredge of that type. Designed to work in the swamps that bog down traditional wheeled or tracked construction equipment, it dredged the canals for the roadbed fill that created the Tamiami Trail at a rate of 80 feet per 18 hour day. There are several heron rookeries along the way, so I stopped a couple of times. The herons in the Glades are less trusting of people so they flushed as soon as I walked along the shoulder. On the other hand, the observation deck of the Oasis Visitor Center at Big Cypress National Preserve gives a bird’s eye view of eight alligators, plus active fish, herons and cormorants, and other wildlife such as tourists.

The Styrofoam “Omaha” meat cooler still had northern ice — I did not refresh its ice during the trip. That may not make the record books but it sure worked for me. On the downside, I can’t pick my nose any more. A neighbor is sitting in his living room across the canal, looking in my living room at me looking in his living room at him.

Good thing I didn’t tarry any longer on the road, though. I ran out of clean underwear.

Ah, heck. Who needs underwear? It’s the Keys, mon.

Posted in Community, Business, Random Access | 1 Comment »

October 19. 2009 by Dick.

Vermont’s public service commissioner David O’Brien said the City of Burlington broke the law when it used $17 million of city money to set up a city-owned telecommunications service. Commissioner O’Brien also said statements by the city officials trouble him because the mayor and city administrator have admitted they knowingly disobeyed the law. “Taxpayers are not risk investors,” he said.

Burlington Telecom is a city-built, city-owned, city-operated, and now city-financed telecommunications company that is a division of the city government. It offers television, telephone, and broadband internet services to residents throughout the City of Burlington, Vermont.

It’s a nice system other than that little issue that “Taxpayers are not [supposed to be] risk investors.”

Bernard Sanders, (I-VT) and now the junior senator from Vermont, was Burlington’s mayor in the 1980s. The self-described democratic socialist formed the Progressive Coalition, the forerunner of the Vermont Progressive Party. Mr. Sanders was first to put forth the concept of a network that could connect every home and business of Burlington.

It’s a nice idea other than that little issue that the U.S. Congress has ruled that public entities like the National Guard may not compete with private businesses.

Burlington Telecom has an attractive and competitive cable TV plan that offers with 152 channels, 45 digital music channels, Local-On-Demand, Video-On-Demand plus 57 High Definition channels available on an optional package and a la carte access to premium channels. The free channel cable TV offerings include local channels plus Al Jazeera English on channel 132 and Fox Business News next door on channel 133. They even have the Speed Channel, a crucial offering for my friend Rufus, and Food Network, equally important to my friend Kay Ace now that she has all that time on her hands. The system operates on a city-wide fiber-optic network. Their “Triple Play Bundles” include free access to BT’s city-wide Wi-Fi hot spots and a telephone Call Block option that allows subscribers to create a blacklist of numbers that can’t connect to your phone. That would eliminate at least some spam calls that sneak around the Do Not Call list.

It’s a nice program other than that little issue that Comcast has the license to provide those services in Vermont.

Burlington’s Chief Administrative Officer Jonathan Leopold didn’t bother to inform anyone that BT was financing its activities with city funds. He is presently urging the city to relax its rules so BT can grab more city money to expand the system outside city limits which means the system could arrive in North Puffin sometime soon. Mr. Leopold said the money shouldn’t be regarded as “taxpayer” money because it comes mostly from other city “business activities.”

Right.

Commissioner O’Brien says the city violated the promise that taxpayer money would not be used to start a telecommunications company. With a wink and a nod, Mr. Leopold called the promise “overly optimistic.”

It’s a nice system other than that little issue that “Taxpayers are not [supposed to be] risk investors.”

Current mayor Bob Kiss (Progressive-Burlington) defended his actions and the business. “Commissioner O’Brien’s statements … are inaccurate, inflammatory, and totally inappropriate,” he said. I suspect that Commissioner O’Brien is on Mayor Kiss’ Call Block list now.

Mayor Kiss is right to be outraged. After all, Commissioner O’Brien chose to publicly excoriate the Chosen Ones of Burlington for using tax money to take over businesses and we now know that is perfectly legitimate behavior. After all, Mayor Kiss has the President of the United States and the United States Congress as bright and shining examples.

Or not.

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

October 12. 2009 by Dick.

BARRE TOWN, VERMONT — Kathy Rubacalba lives with about 100 chickens and, now, almost no roosters. Her home and her backyard egg operation sits on a quarter-acre homestead in East Barre. Town officials there say her roosters crow. That must violate something, don’t you think?

Last Wednesday afternoon, three police officers, the town’s animal control officer, and a “representative of the town” — a self-proclaimed town “chicken expert” — raided Rubacalba’s roost without a warrant; they confiscated four roosters (three too small to crow) because they, well, crow.

“Dogs bark, roosters crow, mufflers are loud, you live in a village there’s noise,” Ms. Rubacalba said.

Vermont prides itself on being a little behind the times — we were the last state to get a WalMart for heaven’s sake — but Vermont is right at the top of the list on property rights.

Except at Ms. Rubacalba’s house.

One neighbor noticed that the Town “brought a SWAT team” to take a roosters and a couple of chicks.

Max Sennett couldn’t make this property rights and due process stuff up.

The Vermont Right to Farm Act exempts backyard farms from nuisance claims which means flatlanders can’t complain when the farm next door spreads manure in the fields. It also means the East Barre selectboard should have quashed the complaint before the cops got caught up in a clustercluck.

There’s more. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found in Michigan that a local zoning officer violated a landowner’s rights by conducting a warrantless search of the landowner’s property. The zoning enforcement officer made several unannounced visits to the property. The Court noted that the unannounced warrantless searches were not routine inspections. Not only that, the Court said it makes no difference that the zoning enforcement officer was not a law-enforcement officer since “it is clearly established that a government official does not have to carry a badge and a gun to be subject to the restrictions on the Fourth Amendment.”

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court in New Mexico similarly rejected a building inspector’s nonconsensual warrantless search of private property.

East Barre didn’t even send a zoning officer. They sent a “chicken expert” and three police officers who prevented Ms. Rubalcaba from accompanying the expert into at least one of the closed-door chicken coops on her property.

Media attempts to reach Town Manager Carl Rogers or Town Attorney Michael Monte for comment have been unsuccessful.

Ms. Rubalcaba says she is “a full-time chicken farmer” since her job at Norwich University was “eliminated” in April. Her backyard farm is called Layed In Vermont.

By the way, the chicken expert apparently did get one rooster but took two or three hen chicks. Cartoonist Jeff Danzigger promised to design a logo for Ms. Rubalcaba. Maybe it could look like this.

Posted in What? Are They Nuts?, Politics & News, Random Access | 3 Comments »