Category Archives: History

Happy New Year – Here’s the Check

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SANDERS PLAN: RAISE (U.S.) TAXES!*
SANDERS BACKS GREECE’S ‘NO’ (NEW TAXES) VOTE!**

Feel the Bern but also Feel the Pain.

It’s a pain that will come no matter whom we elect this year.

“Things are going ‘so well’ with the truth of how our system works that we are bankrupting ourselves,” wrote a concerned citizen.

Every politician since the wicked Nimrod has lied to us. Oh, some told little white lies but they lied to us nonetheless. “We know how to fix it!” they all say.

“We are not Greece, we are not Portugal,” Mr. Obama said in 2011 as Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s prepared to downgrade America’s top credit status.

Yeah, they fixed it alright.

Liar, Liar, Pants on FireAccording to a new report by Kotlikoff and Michel, U.S. government debt stands at $210 trillion, not at the official $13.1 trillion nor the almost $18.9 trillion of the US Debt Clock nor the $86.8 trillion calculated by Cox and Archer.

Even using the make believe $13.1 trillion debt, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the debt will be well over 100% of GDP by 2039. When CBO incorporates its estimates of the impact of the continuing large federal deficits on the nation’s economy, it estimates that the accumulated debt held by the public will reach 180% of GDP by 2039.

For homework, try to find out if any member of Congress or the President has ever read these CBO reports.

The Feds will tell you every man, woman, and child of the 326,387,900 people now alive in the U.S. owes “only” $40,136.29 of that debt.

The reality is far different. The real debt load works out to $643,406.20 per person in the United States, 16 times higher than the current official level and 2-1/2 times our total net worth.

In 2014 the net worth of all U.S. citizens was pegged at $80.7 trillion. Wealth is commonly measured in terms of net worth, which is the quite simple sum of all assets (what you have in the bank, the market value of real estate, like your home, any stocks and stuff you own) minus what you owe on all of that. which accountants call “liabilities.”

(Including human capital such as skills, the United Nations estimated the total wealth of the United States in 2008 to be $118 trillion. The United Nations has never been good at accounting or science.)

$210 trillion in debt <==> $80 trillion in assets.

Yeah, they fixed it alright.

Mr. Sanders isn’t the only financial nincompoop. He’s just the most obvious among the economic geniuses we’ve elected.

A record Federal Reserve “reverse repo” auction on the last day of business means credit markets and mutual funds are in trouble. Like the “credit swaps” and off-balance-sheet financing that caused the Great Recession, the financial markets are again playing with numbers none of the geniuses understands.

“It is government’s fault for offering a housing finance program without making an effort to maintain underwriting standards,” then-Rep. Barny Frank (D-MA) said of the Housing Crisis.

That would be the same Barny Frank who imposed “affordable housing” requirements on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Before he did that, the government lenders had been required to buy only prime mortgages. Mr. Frank forced Fannie and Freddie to meet a government quota for bad loans to borrowers who could never repay them.

Yeah, they fixed it alright.

The Dow fell 450 points this morning, on its way to the worst opening day in 84 years. The Fed figures it can’t head off or even contain the coming financial crises.

Meanwhile China’s government-managed stock market tanked again today, too. Looks like China’s politicians are about as good at this financial stuff as ours.

And none of this helps rein in the stampeding public debt.

The Demorat’s answer to the National Debt is “there is no national debt but we’ll raise taxes anyway so we can spend more.” The Repuglican’s answer to the National Debt is “there is some national debt so we need to raise taxes so we can spend more.”

“We know how to fix it!”

Yeah, they’ll fix us right up.

How to Avoid Bankruptcy — For Dummies tells us:

  • Get your financial house in order by spending less than you take in.
  • Sell your assets.
  • Take over a large foreign country with lots of natural resources and land.

OK, I added the last one but, hey! It worked for Genghis Khan, Rome, Great Britain, and Google, right?

* Let’s get specific. How high would Bernard Sanders go on tax rates?
“We haven’t come up with an exact number yet, but it will not be as high as … 90%.”

 

** “I applaud the people of Greece for saying ‘no’ to more austerity..
“In a world of massive wealth and income inequality, Europe must support Greece’s efforts” to loot the real European economies which create jobs and income.

 

Dog Through the Window

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Changes and Coinkydinks.

South Puffin is a city. A very small city. This is a “before” photo of sand and water, before a single road was was graded or a single house was built.

South Puffin BeforeOur small residential community is one of the smallest in the country and may be the only city that entirely encompasses a single island. The city has a total area of under 450 acres. About 320 acres (half a square mile) of that is land and the rest is water. We have just over 800 residents in 422 households, and 253 families here in the city. The population peaks to about 4,000 in mid-winter. That means we’re a lot smaller than North Puffin except when we almost catch up thanks to winter or summer visitors who maybe flow back and forth. Our parallel streets start with Abundance Street and Bacchus Street and run up the alphabet to Magnificence Street (which the locals call Mysterious Street) and the extra, Napoleon Avenue. I live on Kittywhopper Street.

Florida has some 4,510 islands that are ten acres or larger and some uncounted number that ebb and flow in smaller sizes. Only Alaska has more. Our major island chains include the Keys, the Ten Thousand Islands, the Sea Islands, and the barrier islands of the Intracoastal Waterway.

I like living on an island I can drive to but sometimes driving here is full of danger.

My friend Evangeline threw a dog in the window of my truck one day. She and “Gussie” were out for a walk when I stopped to chat. SWMBO and I ended up dogsitting for a week or so until Gussie’s owners returned from a cruise. Gussie is a pound pup who is used to change so she fit right in at my little house and fit right in later when her own people reclaimed her.

Change is the very nature of island life. My beach eroded this fall as we lost a foot of sand; that’s a foot of depth. Most of that sand settled as a beach-sized shoal out by the breakwater so it will eventually come back but for now it’s a long step down to the beach and the water is shallower than usual.

A new couple bought a house on Last Street. It’s not the actual last street on the island; that honor goes to Napoleon which is beyond Magnificence. Turns out they have a farm near Rolph’s Wharf in Chestertown, Maryland, a short hop down the river from Kibler’s Marina where we kept the boat. Chestertown is my favorite city on the Chesapeake. It’s as old and as interesting as Annapolis but without the congested harbor or crowded streets. Kibler’s is now the city-owned Chestertown Marina and a lot more upmarket than it was 50 years ago when we were there. Joe Strong’s WWII 6×6 chassis cab that he used to haul boats is long gone. As is Joe who died a couple of months after my dad did in 2005. Devils Reach, the final bend in the river before C-Town is still there. I don’t think I knew the people our new friends bought from. Those folks are gone now, too.

Change.

Another newcomer owns a business in Connecticut across the street from my neighbor’s childhood home. They shared stories at a beach party the other day.

Speaking of homes, a new beach buddy lived right on the corner across the creek from the railroad station my grandparents lived in. My dad grew up there, just a quarter mile from the house I grew up in. The school bus turned that corner every morning and every night when I went to elementary school.

Very few other people are here from Vermont but I did run into a retired city employee I know from St. Albans at the Winn-Dixie the other day.

New people built a grand new house at the end of Kittywhopper Street where their seawall stretches around two sides of the lawn from canal to Bay. I chat with them as they walk their Labradoodle most mornings. Nice people. Great dog. And I noticed this morning that the new owners of Luis’ house are digging up the driveway pavers to change them.

Lots of changes here in South Puffin. It amazes my grandkids that I have met all these new people without once friending them on Facebook or tweeting at them.

Gussie’s people have listed their house. They’re moving up to north Florida to be nearer to family and to a good vet. I guess we’ll have to stay in touch by email.

Gussie’s dad took her back to Evangeline of the pitching arm so the kids could play with her the other day. I carefully avoided driving that day.

We won’t tell SWMBO about that one.

 

Let It Snow!

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City residents in Plattsburgh NY will be cited and may be fined if they don’t clear the snow off their own property.

The earliest snowstorm on record struck New York, Connecticut and other parts of New England yesterday, burying some areas in more than a foot of snow that closed roads and airports, knocked out power to more than 300,000 homes and turned russet autumn to wintry solitude.
The storm — an Oct. 4 marvel caused by a collision of cold and soggy air masses — was the earliest in the region since the Army Signal Corps began keeping weather records in 1870. It eclipsed one that blew in on Oct. 10, 1925, and it even toppled the 150-year-old unofficial record — a blizzard that almanackers say hit on Oct. 6, 1836. The National Weather Service reported snow accumulations of up to 20 inches in places. Pownal, Vermont recorded 18. It caught forecasters by surprise.
NYTimes, October 5, 1987

Blizzard of 78 in AlburghNWS Blizzard of 78 VolkswagenThat was 1987. We made it through the fourth this year and no snow will surprise us today. Not even any frost. It was 42°F on the porch with beaucoup sunshine. Mostly sunny all day with a high near 60°F. Mostly cloudy tonight so it won’t get quite as cold.

42°F is not warm, people.

Now the rest of the story. Getting rid of the snow.

Plattsburgh law requires property owners to clear sidewalks within 24 hours of a snowstorm.

“Some residents have stopped by the City Hall expressing concerns about a fine on top of the snow-removal fee. We’ve had others thinking a fine is the way to go. Many cities throughout New York state, as well as many states, do have a fine that they use,” city Counselor Dale Dowdle told WPTZ.

Say what?

So if Bobby jumps off the roof, you have to jump, too?

What if Bobby does something dangerous, like rob a bank or do a home invasion?

Plattsburgh law requires property owners to clear sidewalks within 24 hours of a snowstorm.

There are two issues here.

(1) If the sidewalk belongs to the property owner, that law is a taking that happens over and over again; or (2) If the sidewalk belongs to the city, that law places the property owner in involuntary servitude.

The Fifth Amendment’s just compensation rule applies not only to outright government seizures of private property, but also to some government regulations. “Property is taken in the constitutional sense when inroads are made upon an owner’s use of it to an extent that, as between private parties, a servitude has been acquired either by agreement or in course of time.” United States v. Dickinson, 331 U.S. 745 (1947).

Many states have passed laws that limit the mandates a state government can put on a Town government without money to pay for them. In Connecticut, state regulations on storm water runoff are in contention because they are unfunded mandates.

Imagine the outcry if the law demanded We the Overtaxed People to perform other tasks without just compensation like, say, change our septic systems to mound systems or buy health insurance.

Oh. Wait.

We already do that.

The bottom line here is simple. The Plattsburgh law is yet another example of creep. It’s a government reaching farther and farther into its citizens’ private lives. And we keep letting them do it. It’s an example of the other kind of creep, too.

 

Laboring for Service

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This is a story of people laboring at their jobs. Or not.

The Post Office
The North Puffin branch Post Office no longer has a postmaster; we lost that distinction when the Postal Service decided we don’t rate service. Or at least not full time service. Our postmaster is in massive Puffin Center where, obviously, metropolitan rules must, must, must be enforced.

Our address here has been
P.O. Box 1
North Puffin VT 05990
for about the last umpty-seven years.

The North Puffin office has no real “Box 1” but our longtime postmaster set that up for us. In fact, we “share” the vanity box number with another, even longer-time resident. “It’s easy to keep straight,” she told me then.

We have a new clerk and she was ordered not to hand any mail across the window (I believe that means she’ll have to cut any packages up and fit them in our box) and to return any mail that is misaddressed. Especially mail to a “custom” box number.

In addition to our custom PO Box, we also have some mail that comes addressed to various forms of our street address. That’s fairly common in rural areas but it is increasing in these days of FedEx, UPS, and Amazon drone dropping boxes on the porch. Or the Porsche (our UPS driver left an ultra overnight envelope on the car seat once.) I’m thinking there will be a lot of pissed off campers if their credit card or cable bills or their car registrations get returned. After all, most credit card companies, cable companies, and DMVs have historically required street addresses.

“We all used to aim high. As a country we don’t aim high any more. We are too protective.”
— Walter Issacson.

Not to mention the fact that we have 37 years of precedent. And the Tyler Place, arguably a slightly larger mailer than the mighty HarperCo, has used PO Box 1 probably for longer.

Customer service? We don’ need no steenkin’ customer service. This is the Post Office, not a labor of love.

Story #2: Calendar Listings
This year is the 25th anniversary of our Summer Sounds concert series so we’re having a Big Blowout Benefit Music Festival with continuous music on Sunday, September 20, the last Sunday of summer.

The Town of Highgate, Vermont, was the original home of Summer Sounds and we’re having this bonanza in part to say “thank you!” The festival will raise money to build a band shell in Highgate for the next 25 years of music and will support programming at Camp&nbsp;Ta-Kum-Ta.

I posted listings for the Festival on the Free Press and Seven Days calendars. It took almost two hours each because the sites kept rejecting the entries for technical glitches. And each time they did, I had to fill in the info again.

It was so like my Healthcare.gov (and Vermont Health Exchange) experience, I wondered if CGI designed their forms.

Story #3: Internet Mail
I transferred a customer’s dot-com domain name from my old registrar to my business account at massivehostingservice.com last week.

Simple, right? Get an AUTH code, click a few buttons, and away we go. It’s the kind of job that should need no human intervention.

Well, no. Finding the EPP request on the old site was a little time consuming but I did that without human intervention. Then I spent 1:39:00 on the phone with my tech support folk at massivehostingservice.com making the transfer actually happen.

First the automated transfer page told me harpersfavoritecustomer.com was “not available to transfer.”

Say what?

I called. The phone number on their site was out of service.

Uh oh.

Googled for another number and got through. Started explaining the problem. Got put on hold. And the call quietly evaporated. Called again. Explained the problem to a knowledgeable tech. In the Philippines, I think.

“OK,” he said. “Just send the AUTH code to me at massivehostingservice-t1@outlook.com.”

Say what?

Apparently the massivehostingservice.com mail system they give tech support is very slow. They use outlook.com as a workaround. I had him send me an email from that address. It came through after getting hung in Gmail’s spam filtration. So. After the rest of that first hour passed, we got the transfer started. A couple of hours later, I got the “confirm transfer” instructions from transfers@registrar.massivehostingservice.info. I clicked the link.

Nupe. It went to the right page. I clicked the big green CONFIRM button and it faded and quit.

I called the other number and got through. Just started ‘splaining to the tech rep when the phone went back to the autoattend. I called in again and got a very nice lady in Connecticut in what sounded like her kitchen.

Lordy.

She transferred me back to the Philippines. Nice fellow. First level tech support so he was slow and had to consult but he got it done. 39 minutes later.

An (automated) email from massivehostingservice.com this morning announced a “Successful change of provider for the domain harpersfavoritecustomer.com.”

This was a tale of people laboring at their jobs. Or not.

Story #1, the Post Office, is entirely a story of people at work, working hard to make a simple task harder for their customers.

Story #2, an Internet form, is a story that needed people at work, so an online form with no help desk person to back it up failed and failed for the customers.

Story #3, an Internet service, is another story of people at work, but this time working hard to make a simple task that unfortunately failed into a success for their customers.

Happy Labor Day, everyone. Liz Arden is back home from Burning Man and will labor all day to clean alkali dust out of every crevice. SWMBO and I are off to a picnic.

 

Katrina 10

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Resurrection: Today is the 10th anniversary of Katrina. News stories are full of hope.

Today: The population of New Orleans is higher than ever now as more and more people pour in. More and more people are nutz.

Yesterday: The Army Corps of Engineers levees and dikes had to protect 169 square miles of lowland. Katrina’s storm surge caused 53 different breaches to the levees and dikes in and around New Orleans. 80 percent of the city was submerged with some areas under 20 feet of water.

Today: The First Baptist Church of New Orleans worked hammer-by-glove with Habitat for Humanity to rebuild homes in the Upper Ninth Ward.

Yesterday: Of the 60,000 people stranded in New Orleans, the Coast Guard and the Louisiana National Guard rescued more than 33,500. FEMA saved three.

Today: The non-profit Build Now constructed site-built, elevated, traditional New Orleans-style houses on hurricane-damaged lots and brought families back home.

Yesterday: There was no government. Thirst, exhaustion, and violence in the days after the storm caused hundreds of deaths.

The lessons of Katrina may be learned from FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers:

If government can’t handle terraforming and storm management for 169 square miles (New Orleans scale), how on Earth does the Far Green expect government to handle terraforming and climate management for 196.9 million square miles globally?