Monthly Archives: January 2010

A Novel Idea!

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Hilary Clinton had apparently never heard of it before but better late to the party than to miss it all together. “We actually think it’s a novel idea to do the needs assessment first and then the planning and then the pledging,” she said during an international conference on aid to Haiti in Montreal today.

From her mouth to the U. S. Congress collective ear.

I think I’ve heard of needs assessment before.

Haiti wants $3 billion forever to rebuild their country. Congress wants $2 trillion each and every year to rebuild health care here.

Despite the “needs assessment” rhetoric, and concerned about corruption and wobbly leadership in Haiti, Ms. Clinton agreed to a 10-year plan that would “create a better capital city and will cost $3 billion” anyway. Ms. Clinton spoke out of both sides of her mouth and threw us under de bus.

We is doomed.

Who Put These Guys In Charge?

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Last March, Time Magazine noticed that, “Over the past few weeks, the U.S. newspaper industry has entered a new period of decline.” Past few weeks? Anyway, Time reported on 10 major metro dailies that are gone or going. Meanwhile, even the New York Times has dumped hundreds of jobs as employment at newspapers keeps reaching new lows.

Obviously, nobody reads newspapers anymore.

Except I do. As do 44 million other Americans every day.

I wrote op-ed columns for the Burlington Free Press back when Dan Costello was Editorial Page Editor. We also subscribed to that paper for years and I read it regularly. We stopped subscribing, though, not because they stopped publishing but rather because they stopped delivering. They kept billing us, though.

That seemed like a poor business model to support.

The Freep certainly wants my business back. Or someone’s. They used the U.S. Postal Service last fall to mail a beautiful 4-color tri-fold on legal size card stock to “R Harper or anyone else more-or-less breathing at” my North Puffin address. The flier offered 52 weeks of Sunday newspapers delivered for just $22. That’s less than they pay the carrier. [Editorial note: that may not be true. It is true that they tack more than $22 on to subscriber bills for motor route delivery.]

But wait! There’s more! Sign up now and get the Thursday and Friday papers as well!

All for just $22.

The promotion worked.

I was in South Puffin when the flier arrived, so I waited until just before Christmas to take them up on it. I mailed them a check a month ago. I didn’t include an email address on the registration form, but they emailed me at my most private address a couple of weeks ago anyway.

Thank you for subscribing to The Burlington Free Press.

You will receive your newspaper 3 days a week. We’re sure you’ll enjoy everything we have to offer.

And they cashed the check.

The Christmas offer I took advantage of expired 12/27/09. I just received a new one in the mail with the same pitch. The new offer mailed this, the first month of 2010, expired 12/27/09, too.

A month has passed. I looked for the paper religiously every Sunday. OK, I skipped 1/3/10 since we weren’t here but I looked on the 10th, the 17th, and again yesterday. Between the first of the year and today, I figure that makes about 11 newspapers. That makes quite a pile of fish wrap. Or fire starting material. I tried the link to my account they sent in the confirmation email. There was no login button anywhere on that page, on the “contact us” page, or even on the front page of burlingtonfreepress.com. I called their 800 number.

“I show that service started on the 21st,” the Customer Service rep said.

Of this month?

“I’ll send a note to the carrier, Mr. Harper,” she promised. “Let me check the details of your order.” She confirmed my street address, phone number, and zip code and asked me to sign up for automatic billing. I declined. When she read off my very private email address, I asked her to remove it from the system.

“I can do that,” she said.

I reminded her that we hadn’t had a roadside newspaper delivery “tube” since the firebombing incident.

“Do you want me to request a tube?” she asked.

No, I think it would be more productive to schedule an air drop down my chimney.

We both hung up. I puttered a bit. And the computer announced, “Sweetheart, you’ve got mail.” The computer has a little bit of a lisp and sounds remarkably like Humphrey Bogart.

Thank you for notifying us that you did not receive delivery of your newspaper on Thu, Jan 21, 2010, Fri, Jan 22, 2010, and Sun, Jan 24, 2010. We have notified your carrier to ensure proper delivery in the future. Your account has been credited for the missed delivery.

The email came to my very private email address, the one that Customer Service assured us is no longer in the system.

A month has passed since I placed the order. I used to wonder why people think newspapers are failing. I haven’t received a paper. I don’t wonder anymore.

When the Numbers Just Don’t Work

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According to Frank Rich in a New York Times op-ed, the Massachusetts Massacre “was not a referendum on Barack Obama, who in every poll remains one of the most popular politicians in America.”

Huh?

I don’t want what Mr. Rich is smoking; that’s too much milk and honey for my blood.

With identical approval/disapproval ratings of a record low 47%, I’m thinking he isn’t as popular as Mr. Rich would have us believe. Nixon had a 56% approval and only 20% disapproval rating a year after his inauguration. Even Jimmy Carter was still 51% approval and only 28% disapproval after a year. Reagan had slipped to 49% and 39% by then but was back to 63% to 29% immediately before he left office. Bush 41 was 79% to 10%, far better than Clinton’s 53% to 38%. And, not surprisingly, Bush 43 had 84% approval and only 13% disapproval a year after his inauguration.

I guess Mr. Obama’s “most popularness” is “as compared to Adolph Hitler.” Or to Barney Rubble.

Oddly, David Pogue used his New York Times column this week to decry manufacturers who fudge their numbers.

Maybe Yes, Maybe No

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Are “Big D” Demorats capable of answering a direct question? My friend Rufus thinks the answer is a resounding “No!” Today’s 800 words are dedicated to trying to get a one word answer.

I posed a question on Facebook over the weekend: do you think businesses should make their customers absorb the taxes those businesses pay? Yes or No?

Here’s the back story. President Obama now plans to crank up the tax on banks. The Star-Ledger , an actual newspaper in New Jersey, reports that the sharp increase in the taxes paid by the nation’s largest banks will raise $90 billion or so. Demorats just love these regressive taxes: sales taxes, taxes on hospitals, fees on dollar stores.

Wikipedia defines a regressive tax as one that “imposes a greater burden (relative to resources) on the poor than on the rich — there is an inverse relationship between the tax rate and the taxpayer’s ability to pay as measured by assets, consumption, or income.”

Put more simply, pretty much everyone who deals with a big bank will see their fees go up a buck or two per month in response to the tax. If your income is $500 per month, a buck or two could make the difference between getting that $4 generic prescription or not. If your income is $50,000 per month, a buck or two won’t make difference in getting that $15 Viagra™.

Former North Puffin car dealer Buster Door and Democratic party official took up the challenge.

“Learn the difference between tax policy and a business model,” he replied.

It was a yes or no question, Buster.

Singer Jimmy Buffett had a thought or two about ducking these difficult queries:

Some say life isn’t fair,
Hey, I don’t know, I don’t care.

Ambivalent, well, yes and no.
Hey where did all the hippies go?
Our conversation sounds like actors’ lines.
Is it time for your medication or mine?…

If you’re looking for a quote from me
I’ll be under the mango tree.
Just can’t say how I’ll get there
Hey, I don’t know and I don’t care.

I love the liberal approach: when faced with facts, obfuscate, deny, point to someone else as the problem, and leave.

Tell us, Buster, I asked, do you think businesses should make their customers absorb the taxes those businesses pay? Yes or No.

“We raised prices when doing so made sense in the context of our business plan…” he replied.

Ignoring the fact that pricing goes in a marketing plan (not a business plan), that is perhaps the best obfuscation printed in politics this week. In fact, I’m sure I’ve heard a similar phrase come out of Washington: “We would never raise taxes unless doing so made sense in the context of the growth of revenue in the private sector …”

Huh? It was a yes or no question.

Tell us, Buster, I asked again, do you think businesses should make their customers absorb the taxes those businesses pay? Yes or No.

“Typical binary wingnut thinking: YES or NO?” he answered. “I think that businesses decide, on a case by case basis, which costs to absorb and which to pass on.”

I wrote, “Tell us, Buster, do you think businesses should make their customers absorb the taxes those businesses pay? Yes or No?” That asked for a 1 word answer. Buster wrote another 100 words. Businesses do indeed make their own decisions but he never answered the question.

Tell us, Buster, do you think businesses should make their customers absorb the TAXES those businesses pay? Yes or No?

“Are you really having trouble reading and comprehending the statements, ‘Taxes are a cost, Dick. Like all other costs, they are absorbed or passed along on a case-by-case basis.’? Or are you just wallowing in some bizarre thread-length bit of ego-boo?”

You’re right, Buster, this thread is not about taxes; it’s all about me and my ego. When asked for a one-word answer (YES or NO in case anyone forgot), Buster delivered dozens and dozens more words and still didn’t answer the question.

Buster crawled down the presidential “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” rabbit hole with his final response to the question: “What’s the square root of pi, Dick? YES or NO?”

“Pretty typical, innit,” Rufus commented.

I wouldn’t dream of putting words in Buster’s mouth but methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. You, gentle reader, could conclude that, in answer to the question of whether businesses should pass new taxes along to their customers, Buster would give a resounding “No!” Which begs the question of whom he thinks will pay the new tax?

After all, when Buster crawls under the mango tree, I simply can’t help but hear the echoes of Ronald Reagan: The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.

Despite Buster’s liberal application of fancy footwork, banks aren’t the only businesses that quietly pass along taxes to consumers. Sirius XM added a $2 RIAA tax its monthly bills to pay the court-ordered “royalty” tax for listening to satellite radio. Customers of SECO, the Sumter Electric Cooperative in Hernando County, Florida, will see a $50 increase in their monthly electric bill when Congress passes Crap and Trade. Every phone bill has a line item for “Regulatory and Compliance Fee Recovery.” That’s phone company speak for baldly passing on a tax the government imposed on the business (it’s up about 50% since last year on my bill.)

And the banks themselves raised credit card interest rates and fees last month in anticipation of new laws forbidding higher credit card interest rates and fees.

The words quoted in this piece are real. Only the names have been changed to protect the dumbfounded.

This just in. Campaigning in Massachusetts President Obama said, “Bankers don’t need another vote in the United States Senate. They’ve got plenty.” I expect this tax to fail the same way bankers beat back the heavy Wall Street bonus tax. Of course, Congress can always raise the needed $90 billion by adding a tax to the three health care policies they haven’t exempted from new taxes. That would be your policy, Rufus’, and mine.

Put the ‘A’ back in SCC

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I took some time off from worrying about the claim that women’s hot flashes are responsible for Global Warming to reminisce about the years I raced “pony cars” in sports car races in the 1970s.

It is very hot in a race car cockpit.

Many think that the pony cars started life when Ford launched the Mustang — the nearly eponymous name came from the ‘Stang — in 1964 but the real start of the breed was the popular and sporty Corvair Monza from Chevrolet. The cars were (and are again) compact, stylish, affordable, and sporty.

The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), first and foremost a sanctioning body for automobile racing, created amateur and professional racing classes for pony cars in 1966. Amateurs turned the cars out for trophies in “A-Sedan” while pros brought the same cars to the track for cash prizes in the fabled “Trans-Am” series. The rules were pretty simple then: tune the suspension, widen the steel body for a 64″ track, get really good brakes, install a roll cage, then jack up the Holley 4-barrel carburetor and pour a 5 Liter, 500 horsepower, engine under it. The cars looked like ones you could buy from the dealer down the street. Mostly.

The Trans-American Sedan Championship began as a manufacturers’ series for racing these pony cars. The original races were open to cars in SCCA’s A and B Sedan classes; The Over 2.0 Liter and Under 2.0 Liter cars ran in the same races. The original races that most fans remember included the AMC Javelin, Chevrolet Camaro, Dodge Challenger, Ford Mustang, Mercury Cougar, Plymouth Barracuda, and the Pontiac Firebird. Oldsmobile had no pony car. Mark Donohue won the championship in 1968 and 1969 driving Camaros for Roger Penske. He returned in 1971 to win in a Nash. As an aside, the Pontiac Trans Am was named after the series. The last time a Pontiac Trans Am won a Trans Am was in 1984; the model has won 7 of 446 events.

Back to me. I raced Camaros in the 1970s but SCCA “evolved” the classes out from under me.

“Put the A back in SCC” first referred to a grass roots campaign within the SCCA when the club dropped the A Sedan category in favor of lumping all the A Sedans together with the top two roadster categories to form the new class called GT-1. Camaros were a second or two a lap slower than the “production-class” Corvettes at a track like Lime Rock so SCCA also changed the way we built the cars. Although designed for the big Detroit iron, today’s Trans Am and GT-1 cars are front engine, rear wheel drive, tube framed cars with body work cleverly made to look like a street car. (As an aside, most are very, very similar to the NASCAR Nationwide short track race cars.)

We Luddite A-Sedan and Trans Am drivers didn’t much like the change. We asked SCCA to put the A (Sedan) back in their line-up. They did not although in 1995 the club did start the amateur-level American Sedan class for cars which is cross between Showroom Stock and the old A-Sedan.

The Trans-American Sedan Championship died in 2006 but has come back. In 2009, Jaguar won the championship in a car that doesn’t look remotely American. Other competing marques include Audi, deTomaso, and Porsche. The 2010 series will race at New Jersey, Mosport, Miller Motorsports Park, Lime Rock, Toronto, Brainerd, and Virginia International Raceway.

And that’s exactly where this history lesson is going.

The Trans-American Sedan Championship began as a manufacturers’ championship for American-made sedans. I’ve been looking at and test driving that new breed of sedans and I guarantee that the 2010 Chevrolet Camaros, Dodge Chargers and Challengers, and Ford Mustangs are faster, better handling street cars on street tires than my 1969 or 1971 full race Camaros.

Not only that, those cars look like real Trans Am cars should look.

I think it’s time again to put the A back in SCC as well as in Trans Am. This time, though, let’s make it a series for American sporty cars. It is time to celebrate just how good American cars can be.