Category Archives: PC

It’s a Gas!

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Hillary2.0 began the first rally of her campaign with a sharp attack on Republicans. “There may be some new voices in the presidential Republican choir,” she said. “But they’re all singing the same old song.”

Would those lyrics be “Dem policies cost too much, cost too much!”?

I drove the east coast last week, right through the heart of red states and blue states.


3-Month Gas Price, US v. San Francisco

The cheapest gas I saw was in South Carolina at $2.339.

Prior to the 1960s, Democrats were “firmly in control of the government of South Carolina at all levels. The state Republican Party was little more than a country club group… [but] from 1964 to present, the Republican Party has gradually gained strength and by the 1990s it became the dominant party of the state.”

It turns out that the Hillary constituency digs deeper at the gas pump than most North Puffin Perspective™ readers. Drivers in Santa Barbara, for example, pay 75 cents more per gallon than drivers in Tulsa, OK. The pattern repeats in all the liberal strongholds from the Left Coast where gas prices are on the wrong side of $3.50 per gallon to New England and the Northeast where $3 per gallon is the rule. The solid Republican regions across the Midwest and South have the nation’s lowest prices, well below $2.50 per gallon.


3-Month Gas Price, Vermont, NY, and South Carolina

On my road trip last week, I paid more for gas in the Peoples’ Republic of Vermont than in the Keys. In fact, I paid more for gas in Vermont than in any other state.

Florida $2.639 (in the Keys)
Georgia $2.459
South Carolina $2.339
Virginia $2.499
Pennsylvania $2.799 at the Sunoco at Davisville Road (I didn’t buy any)
New Jersey $2.429 (the attendant pumped it and washed my windshield)
New York Northway $2.839
Vermont $2.839

Blown away I was when I saw the price at the pump over the bridge in Vermont was exactly the same as the price in New York State. I drove into Vermont on fumes because I refused to pay that New York price.

New York stations have always charged a dime or two more than Vermont stations because New York gas taxes total 62.9 cents per gallon but Vermont gets “only” 48.9 cents per gallon. Now that extra 14 cents is going straight into gouging in an oh-so-very liberal state but that’s another story.

As a general rule of thumb, every penny we save on a gallon of gasoline results in about $1 billion of money that you and I can spend on stuff. That’s not trivial, even when all the 140-ish million U.S. car owners have to split it. Let me do the math for you. A penny puts seven bucks in your pocket if you drive an average number of miles. I get more because my truck gets lousy mileage. A dime at the pump gets us $71 each. A dollar difference at the pump means my road trip from South Puffin to North Puffin cost me $100 less.

One hundred dollars.

So, here’s the $64 question: Why do liberals vote against their own self interest, let alone against yours and mine? I mean does the liberal really like paying more for gasoline and food and doctoring and taxes and Kool Aid™?

 

The Seven Words I Can’t Use Anymore

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(And It Makes Me Mad)

Girl.
Boy.
Guys.
Lady.
Gentleman.
Old.
Gay.

Before any impressionable younger (experience-challenged) readers get excited, none of these are the seven words that once upon a time could not be repeated on television. I’m not sure if this is a lament for the natural mutation of language or an ode to a politically correct lexicon. You decide.

There is one other caveat. Correctness is in a terrible state of flux. By the time this column appears, all the words may have changed again. Bomb shelters (underground symbols of the fearful manipulation of other-thinking nations) became swimming pools (environmentally appropriate aquatic exercise centers) a few decades ago. The millenial milestone (measured from a date Before the Current Era) has passed. Today that tumult has turned inward. Today we might hear a gentleman with a conservative agenda called a fossilized futzwuffle by a lady of a liberal persuasion. Does that mean the lady is a tramp? This column may cook my personal goose.

Ed Note: some of the names have been changed
to protect privacy. The street names haven’t.

Gay Lombard was a high school classmate. She lived up to her name: cheerful, engaging, involved in good works. The main intersection in a small Pennsylvania city is the corner of High and Gay. Except the long blue nose of Standards and Practices hasn’t allowed us to get higher since Ed Sullivan presented the Doors.

Gay was once a delightful word but because kindergartners titter, certain congressmen grow red faced, and most others with the mentality of five-year-olds get flustered when they hear it, many of us have forsaken gaiety. That’s a loss to Mr. Penn’s sylvan commonwealth, to Ms. Lombard, and to the language.

Vermont now has two cool “oldies” stations. One, serving the Champlain Valley, doesn’t quite reach our friends in North Puffin, but does play neat car tunes for them whenever they drive south of the county seat. The North Country station hits every hill and valley in the county, giving folks less reason to travel. Oldie in this sense is, of course, merely a statement of chronology that relates solely to the musical era of the baby boomers. My dad thinks oldies means big bands, but we can’t convince any radio magnates of that, so he suffers through the Beatles, and Jerry Lee Lewis, and the Sensations. We who grew up as musically challenged baby boomers enjoy the tunes. No one over the age of five would dream of using the word to describe anything (or anyone) calendar-measurement challenged. Not even my mom who complains whenever I have a birthday.

The oldies station played the O’Kaysions’ I’m a Girl Watcher. One of the songs of the sixties with the usual intricate melody and complex lyrics:

“I’m a girl watcher.
“I’m a girl watcher.
“Watchin’ girls go by.
“My my my.”

Liz Arden scowled at me again recently for describing a colleague as “the tall girl with gray hair.”

My mom always joined the “gals” (her word, not mine) for bridge club. Your dad went out with the boys. Although mine are in their seventies (persuns-of-a-chronologically-advanced-stature), they can’t use those terms either. And the word cop best not catch us calling them oldies.

What to do? I teach a college course most semesters. Since I enlighten male and female students alike, I need an acceptable device showing my thoughtfulness when addressing the entire class. “Girls” obviously fails. “Boy” is perhaps worse. I thought guys might work, as in, “Hey guys. May I have your attention?” Honk! Wrong answer.

They told me Youse guys would be all right if I could fake a Brooklyn accent.

I suppose we could rewrite the song:

“I’m a persun-of-the-XX-chromosome-persuasion
observer, which is not to demean those who
watch persuns-of-the-XY-chromosome-persuasion
or those who don’t watch anybody at all on the
principle that the least eye contact with an
individual’s shadow invades the shadow’s domain.

“I’m a persun-of-the-XX-chromosome-persuasion
observer except for ignoring those persuns
who fear the least shadowy eye contact.

“Watchin’ persuns of any chromosomal variance go by.

“Huh huh huh?”

Do you think that changes the melody, too?

It occurs to me, in these days of political correctivity, that if boys weren’t girl watchers and girls weren’t boy watchers, there would be darned few hupersuns here to watch.

Editor’s Note: This column first appeared in the Burlington Free Press in 1996. I have made only minor updates.

 

“Taxes? We Don’t Pay No Steenkin’ Taxes”

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Especially not today!

The Internal Revenue Service filed a tax lien in the Forsyth County Hall of Justice. That’s not too too unusual.

The IRS automatically has the lien as soon as it notifies a taxpayer of back taxes owed. If the taxpayer neglects or refuses to pay the debt on time, the IRS then files a Notice of Federal Tax Lien to alert creditors that the government has a legal right to all of that taxpayer’s property. All of it.

Robert De Niro was hit with an IRS lien for $6.4 million. Martin Scorsese for $2.85 million. Al Pacino for $188,000. Melissa Harris-Perry for about $70,000. These were for delinquent taxes.

Ms. Harris-Perry hosts MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry weekend morning show. She holds an endowed Presidential Chair in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at her alma mater, Wake Forest. In case you haven’t heard Ms. Harris-Perry on the air, here are a few quotes:

“American tourism will ruin Cuba.”
“The term ‘ObamaCare’ is racist.”
“Rich people don’t pay their fair share of taxes.”
We “plan to pay off [our outstanding] tax debt as quickly as possible.”

The Winston-Salem Journal reports that Ms. Harris-Perry said that she and her husband plan to pay off the rest of the tax debt as quickly as possible.

Oddly there were about 38,900 results in a Google news search for Ms. Harris-Perry. MSNBC is not listed in the search results as covering the story. Not once.

Odd?

She’s not the first MSNBC in dutch with the IRS. MSNBC darling the “Rev.” Al Sharpton also has more than $4.5 million in current state and federal tax liens. Of course, Mr. Sharpton doesn’t pay anyone. Not travel agencies, not hotels, and especially not landlords. Seems like Mr. De Niro, Mr. Scorsese, Mr. Pacino, and Ms. Harris-Perry are more like Mr. Sharpton than we realized.

 

Let Them Eat Kale

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You can’t tax people into eating kale. Except in Vermont.

Members of the Vermont House Ways and Means Committee are ready bring out H.235, a controversial bill to levy an excise tax of two cents on every ounce of sugared beverage distributed in the state. Sodas. Fruit drinks. Sports drinks. Flavored water. Energy drinks. Iced teas. And probably the orange juice I drink every morning. In short, any nonalcoholic beverage, carbonated or noncarbonated, that is intended for human consumption in Vermont. The bill won support in the Health Care Committee on Thursday.

The excise tax would be charged to the retail stores who would turn around and raise the price on the shelf. It’s a tax that would generate about $30 million in revenue per year for Vermont

Vermonters are debating what a sugar-sweetened-beverage tax would do. The consensus appears split between two choices:

(a) Merely increase sales of sugar-sweetened kale chips; or
(a) Drive sweet-toothed residents across state lines to New Hampshire where there is no sales tax or New York where not long ago, huge 17-ounce beverage cups were banned. And there are a lot of taxes.

Nobody surveyed thought it would change behaviors.

A bottle of fruit juice with some added sugar costs about 66 cents or 3/$2. That fruit juice would jump to about 86 cents with the tax, Vermont Retail and Grocers Association president Jim Harrison said. In some cases, the cost of your favorite fizzy beverage would about double.

Eat Mo Kale“There is no doubt their real reason is the $30 million,” my red-haired friend Caitlin Abbate said. “Bye bye BOGO.”

They’re both right. Two cents is about the retail price per ounce of a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi™ or Coke™ which tells me the members of the state Ways and Means Committee aren’t interested in fixing obesity in the state. They’re interested in the $30 million in new annual revenue. And, since sin taxes never drop (consider the taxes on cigarettes, whiskey, gasoline, and oregano), we can expect a can of pop to cost about the same as a pack of smokes in a year or two.

Even Florida’s manatees have taken up the cause. I reckon someone convinced them it will mean more free lettuce for them.

I filed a FOIA request and found a Vermont lobbying permit granted to the BORECOLE Corporation. Ban Or Eliminate Costly Oversight for Lettuce Eaters is a Florida corporation headquartered in Manatee County.

“The cost of a beverage would nearly double…”

I was able to speak to Josiah (not his real name) Bartlett about their lobbying efforts. “We believe in obesity and in re-education,” he said. “People need to be taught to consume kale-based foods in order to reduce the demands on lettuce.”

To that end, a pilot plant is already up and running right on the river in Bradenton where the first Kaola Pop is on trucks waiting for delivery. Kaola Pop is a kale-based cola with no high fructose or any other corn syrup, added sugars, honey, agave nectar, or even beet juice. It has no sweetening at all, just the natural goodness of Kale.

A spokesman for U.S. Sugar in Clewiston, Florida, welcomed Kaola Pop to the market.

“Someone convinced the manatees it will mean more free lettuce for them…”

“Manatees are so stupid,” Marie Antoinette said some years ago. “Let them eat kale.”

 

And that’s the Truth! Pbbbbbbbbt!

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Genetically Modified apples that don’t brown are in the news this week. The Arctic Golden and Arctic Granny apples were created by Okanagan Specialty Fruits, a small company in Canada. The USDA approved them for U.S. consumers on Friday.

Moron Holding Sign“The morons say GMO foods cause famine?” an incredulous Rufus said when we saw one on ABC News holding a sign.

Global Warming, measles, and GMO apples give us a good stepping stone to consider facts and truth and moronity.

GLOBAL WARMING
Political Assertion: “Man-made Global warming is making sea level rise.”
Fact: The Isthmus of Panama “recently” formed; that allowed armadillos to migrate from South America into North America by the early Pleistocene.
Fact: The Bering land bridge intermittently connected Asia with North America as sea levels rose and fell under the effect of ice ages; at one point that allowed early humans to migrate from South America into North America.
Truth: The climate does change over time but none of those huge changes had anything to do with humans. Only a moron could believe a politician can fix it with a tax.

MEASLES
Political Assertion: “Vaccinations cause bad shit.”
Fact: The United States eliminated measles in 2000 thanks to vaccination levels over 90% of the school-age population. China and Mexico have almost no measles infections thanks to vaccination levels over 90% of the school-age population.
Fact: Measles cases in the United States are at their highest level since 2000.
Truth: Most current infections occur in unvaccinated people, most of whom declined the injections for religious, philosophical or political reasons. Only a moron could believe that the political science of climate change is so vastly right but the real science of disease prevention is so vastly wrong.

GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS
Political Assertion: “GMO foods cause famine.”
Fact: Genetically modified wheat doubled yields in Mexico, India, and Pakistan and have saved over a billion people from starvation.
Fact: Modern corn (maize) began with a huge leap in genetic modification about 10,000 years ago when farmers in Mexico domesticated maize by choosing seeds because they came from taller plants or tasted better or were easier to grind. This selective breeding or artificial selection led directly to the corn we enjoy today. Modern genetic tools reduce the labor force needed to produce enough food for us and reduce the need for evil pesticides.
Truth: Politicians make stuff up. Morons believe them.

TRUTHS
• The solar deniers cult simply ignore the inconvenient truths that their computer models are flawed, that Michael Mann’s flawed hockey stick graph was never real science, and even that solar activity has some small teeny-tiny relationship to temperature here.

Whether climate change is man made or not has become a religious argument with the faith-based politicians who believe with all their hearts and none of their brains using the story to make money and that magic will keep their feet dry and their crops growing. The facts paint a different story.

The climate is always changing. The wise human will prepare for the change while the moron rails against the thermometer.

• The liberal left and the conservative right have joined forces under the anti-vaxer’s tinfoil hat of political science disease prevention.

Whether vaccine is good or bad has become a religious argument with the faith-based anti-vaxers political cult who believe with all their hearts and none of their brains that magic will keep them safe. The facts paint a different story.

Vaccination can prevent the once common diseases that ravaged us — polio, measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, rubella, mumps, tetanus, rotavirus and the flu. The wise human will protect him or herself while the moron rails against the needle.

• ABC  News also noted in the GMO story that 80% of the corn we eat is genetically modified. ABC News was dead wrong. 100% of the corn we eat is genetically modified.

Whether genetic mods are good or bad has become a religious argument with the faith-based politicians who believe with all their hearts and none of their brains trying ban all change and that magic will keep them fed. The facts paint a different story.

Foods evolve whether we do it in the field or the lab. The wise human will measure the impact of the change while the moron rails against the science.

So. Facts and truth and moronity.
The wise human observes a problem, gathers facts, has an idea, tests the idea, and draws a conclusion. The wise human tests that conclusion against any new data.
The moron hears a perfect idea on the Interwebs, finds a fact that confirms the idea, concludes it was a great idea and never ever needs changing, and then rails against the science that contradicts him or her.

And that’s the Truth!