Monthly Archives: January 2012

Persembe Peeves

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17,938 Monroe County, Florida, flood insurance policy holders are on the hook for about $896,900 in penalties thanks to FEMA. Policy holders will be charged an extra $50 “added to the premium of every new or renewed flood insurance policy sold within the county for a period of no less than one year from the effective date of probation.” FEMA put Monroe County on probation because a suit claimed that allowing flood insurance in endangered-species habitat violates the Endangered Species Act.

They are adding the surcharge because they can.

The surcharge will go into the black hole of the National Flood Insurance Fund, not to cover higher levels of flood damage, not to mitigate endangered-species habitat violations, but to “offset the extra administrative costs [at] FEMA.”

Tuesday Twaddle: Prostitutes

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Florida hopes to roll the dice.

Florida state Senate sponsor Ellyn Bogdanoff (R-Fort Lauderdale) and state House sponsor Erik Fresen (R-Miami) promise thousands of jobs and the millions of dollars if we just allow “destination resort casinos” in Florida. Their massive bill will open the state to mega-casinos in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Hillsborough Counties. A Florida Senate committee already snuck in a preliminary vote yesterday; seven voted in favor and three voted against. The entire Legislature will take up the landmark proposal during the 60-day session that begins today.

The state would create a new Gaming Control Czar to administer and license the casino resorts and regulate the parimutuels and card rooms.

“Our goal is a significant reduction in gaming,” Rep. Fresen said.

Here in Florida we have hundreds of ways to extract a tax on people who can’t do math, from arbitrage betting, bingo parlors (and church basements), carnival games, casinos, dog and horse tracks and other parimutuels, electronic “gaming,” the Florida Lottery itself with Lotto, MegaMoney, PowerBall, and Wheel of Fortune (the state even has email and text “alerts,” smartphone apps, podcasts, and an RSS feed), sports betting, Texas hold’em tournies, and wee wee wee all the way home.

“Our goal is a significant reduction in gaming,” Rep. Fresen said.

I want some of what he’s smoking.


If you think the guy running numbers out of the bodega is a crook …
the guys in Tallahassee are the kingpins in a vast criminal enterprise.

Or prostitutes.

COLA Wars

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The cost of living increased 3.6 percent.

My friend Dino Russell believes his gay Latino postal carrier and a polygamous triad who live for free in the Chicago Housing Authority’s Stateway Gardens public housing determine the Consumer Price Index rather than the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the Department of Labor (CHA is the largest owner of rental housing in the city of Chicago, providing homes to more than 50,000 families and individuals). By law, the CPI-W is the official measure used by the Social Security Administration and a number of other agencies to calculate COLAs.

Cool. There is also a Cola Collection set on Flickr.

And Cola Collectible Trains on choochoocharleys.

The cost of living increased 3.6 percent.

On Dec 19, 2001, I bought 97.4 gallons of fuel oil for $1.079/gallon. With the three cent per gallon discount for paying within 10 days, it cost me $102.17.

In 2005, our spring fill up cost almost half again as much per gallon. We needed just 95.8 gallons which cost $1.519 per gallon. With the same three cent per gallon discount, the total bill was $142.65. Seeing a trend?

That three cent discount had disappeared in 2009, so 95.2 gallons at $1.950/gal cost $185.64. That’s already almost double the 2001 cost. It doesn’t get any better.

Our most recent automatic fill up was in November when the truck brought 99.5 gallons. This time, after two years of calculations that the Cost Of Living had not changed, that oil cost $3.720/gal so the total bill was $370.14

Wow. The price of heating the house quadrupled in a decade. Even worse, the price of heating the house doubled in just the two years Uncle Sam says there was no increase in the cost of living. (For the record, AARP calculated that New England consumers age 65+ who heated with oil spent $2,917 on it last winter, up from $2,399 the winter before — those same households with incomes under $20,000 will spend at least 20 percent of household income on heating costs).

“Legislation enacted in 1973 provides for cost-of-living adjustments, or COLAs. With COLAs, Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits keep pace with inflation.“

The cost of living increased 3.6 percent.

couponsFuel oil (and gasoline) are not the only commodities that have increased in price. Walgreens has sold the Madam brand of mandarin oranges and the Geisha brand of canned mushrooms for more than a decade. Until last year, the common sale on both was 50 cents/can. Now each costs fifty-nine cents per can, an 18-percent increase.

The cost of living increased 3.6 percent.

I don’t believe our government lies to us.

I do believe Dino was right and that the gay Latino postal carrier and the polygamous triad studied arithmetic at the Business University New College Of Natural Science and Math. That esteemed institution, with campuses in Chicago and in the District of Columbia, developed both the Uranus-based numbering system and the radical departure of teaching modern math concepts with colors.

The seventh planet from the Sun is the third-largest planet by diameter, has fourth-largest mass, and is considered one of the “ice giants” of the Solar System. Masses are increased and time slows there, requiring a more universal numerology. The Business University New College Of stuff introduced this system in 1960 and developed a modern math curricula that showed how 2+4=purple at about the same time.

And that is why the cost of living increased just 3.6 percent.