Category Archives: Random Access

Random Access, the op-ed.

Independence Day

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Here’s a revolutionary idea.

Independence Day commemorates our declaration of independence from the King of England. The revolution officially began two days earlier when the Second Continental Congress approved the legal separation of the American colonies from Great Britain, a resolution proposed by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia in June. After voting for independence on June 2, Congress debated and revised the Declaration itself for two days and approved it on July 4.

In the centuries since, only the current Congress has moved with anywhere near the speed, since the current Congress has passed trillions of dollars of spending on millions of pages of bills in less than 100 days.

The Declaration of Independence fits on one page.

In Peoria just one hundred fifty-five years ago Rep. Abraham Lincoln said,

Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a “sacred right of self-government.” … Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. … Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it.

Lincoln spoke of the enslavement of persons. Today our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust by a government that would enslave We the People, taking more and more of our rights and our land and our life’s blood to its own purpose.

Two hundred thirty-one years ago today, General George Washington marked July 4 with a double ration of rum and an artillery salute for the soldiers who fought off the foreign monarchy that did enslave us. Now it is time to mark July 4 with a double ration of electoral salute to those who would be the modern monarchy of government.


Tax to Save

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Dear Governor Crist:

I know you have built your career opposing tax increases, so I particularly want to thank you for raising the taxes on cigarettes to help balance the Florida budget and pay off the looming deficit. Goodness knows we can use all the help we can get. You had good company. Every Republican in the state Senate voted for it, their statewide political aspirations and “no new taxes” pledges notwithstanding.

On Wednesday, the cigarette tax here in Florida will quadruple, rising a dollar to $1.34 per pack. That pack of smokes will now cost at least $5.

“I view it more as a health issue than a tax issue,” Governor Crist (R-FL) said in the Orlando Sentinel. “Ronald Reagan used to say if you want to kill something, tax it. It wouldn’t be bad if we killed smoking. It would save a lot of lives.”

As of July 1, Florida’s new cigarette tax is $1.34 per pack. Florida’s cigarette tax has remained unchanged for decades. The increase means this state leaps from fourth-lowest in the nation to bumping out Pennsylvania for twentieth spot. The legislature expects that extra $1 tax to generate more than $900 million a year.

Five bucks a day, up in smoke.

Governor, your keen action has had the beneficial side effect you wanted. My next door neighbor, Henryk, has bought his last carton of cigarettes. “I’m too cheap to pay $50 a carton,” Henk said. “I just won’t pay it.”

Now, really, Henk isn’t nearly as cheap as I am. I quit in 1976 when the nation celebrated the bicentennial and cigarettes jumped to fifty cent a pack. That wasn’t for the (w)rapper. That wasn’t for the excise tax. That was the price. Imagine paying FIVE DOLLARS for a carton of the little cigars I preferred. I’m not sorry I quit. Even starting with the now infinitesimal price I paid a third of a century ago, I figure I have saved more than $30,000 dollars or the price of a couple of small cars.

Henk says he’s done with tobacco.

He’s going back to pot.

It’s cheaper.

Predictions

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The House passed the Obama energy and climate bill this week.

“There’s a growing awareness that we need to move on energy,” David Axelrod said on NBC’s Meet the Press today. “We’ve been waiting for decades. And this bill will create millions of clean-energy jobs. It will deal with … our dependence on foreign oil, and we have to deal with that. And it deals this deadly pollution and global warming that we have to move on.” He also admitted that “We have not broken the back of the recession” despite the January rush to pass the $787 billion emergency stimulus package.

The bill includes crap and trade as well as extensive taxes on energy use. Investor Warren Buffett called the bill “a huge tax, and there’s no sense calling it anything else … it’s a fairly regressive tax.”

There is every reason to expect the Senate to pass the Obama energy and climate bill this fall.

I predict that gas prices will exceed $6/gallon
immediately after the midterm (2010) elections.

I predict that the prime rate will exceed 12%
immediately after the 2012 elections.

Spam Scam

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I am, while you read this, driving up the East Coast burning 90% dead dinosaurs and throwing away the other 10% of my fuel dollars on a government scam.

Ethanol is the automotive equivalent of email spam for erection extenders.

You’ve seen the ads.

ED Med proud to offer the world best quality
of erection pills, at huge savings over the brand equivalents.

Ci ialis (only $3 per pill)
Ci ialis Softabs (only $3.33 per pill)
Vaigra (only $1.56 per pill)
Vaigra Softabs (only $1.89 per pill)
Le vitra (only $2.78)

Join our current 5 millions happy users today.

I’ve become increasingly frustrated and it has nothing to do with Mr. ED. We in this part of the blogosphere are doing good things: we’re asking the right questions and we’re honing the good answers.

We’ve known since 2006 that the taxpayer-funded subsidy for ethanol came to $1.45 per gallon. We’ve known for even longer that ethanol cuts mileage at a time the same government that underwrites this non-fuel mandates higher economy and greater ethanol usage. We’ve also known that ethanol laced fuels corrode automotive, marine, and lawnmower fuel systems. And we have certainly announced it.

No one hears us. The Beltway Bandits of the world don’t (won’t? can’t?) listen and 306,711,705 people here in these United States have never even heard of No Puffin (in a wild flight of fancy, I assumed that one thousand peeps have). “ED Med” claims 5,000 times that many satisfied users.

And you, gentle reader, have. You may even agree some of the time.

Unfortunately, that audience of one is insufficient to effect change.

People seem to buy from spam. Otherwise, spammers wouldn’t do what they do.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Gone Fishin’ (Part II) – China dot Com

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Readers from last week will recall that Missy and Biff brought their friend Marlin along when they visited South Puffin in April. Marlin is … shadowy. He spends half his time unearthing secrets and the other half living with friends or friends of friends.

While Marlin was off chasing more spies or working on his tan, I spent the weekend with an old friend: the novel Hong Kong by former naval aviator Stephen Coonts. I am not an expert on international affairs, so my take on this story is more personal.

About a decade ago, as much as a nanosecond after Britain lost its lease to the crown colony of Hong Kong, trillions of dollars skipped to china dot com. Even more have followed from companies in which I have invested including General Motors and Rohm & Haas (now a specialty materials division of Dow Chemical). The Haas family got out of the latter in time. So did I.

Mr. Coonts wrote Hong Kong while the China honeymoon was still widespread in the press, just a couple of years after Beijing recrafted the island as the “Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.”

“Pretty good book,” Marlin said. “Back in ’96 I gave Coonts a heads up that there would be a couple of catastrophic bank failures there.”

I know I promised to dump this story, but life imitating art is too too sad to leave alone even if we are poking road kill with a stick.

“Hong Kong,” pages 30-31.
Scene setting: Rip Buckingham is the editor of a Hong Kong newspaper. Saburo Genda is President of the Bank of the Orient in Hong Kong which has closed its doors in the face of a bank run.

“What happened Mr. Genda?” Buckingham asked.

“They killed the bank.”

“They? Who is they?”

“Someone in Japan made a decision, Mr. Buckingham,” Genda said. “I don’t know who or why. The decision was to make the bank fail.”

“Make it fail? You mean allow it to fail.”

“No, sir. When the Finance Ministry seized our Japanese assets, the Ministry forced the bank to close its doors. There was no way it could stay open. They took a course of action that made the failure of the bank inevitable.”

On June 2, one day after filing for bankruptcy, GM announced that it would sell its Hummer line to China dot com. That moved the U.S. Army’s primary ground vehicle production into the hands of a foreign adversary. On June 10, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court cleared the way for Chrysler to sell out to Fiat. Nanjing Automobile Corporation is a China-based, state-owned company. It has significant ties with Fiat.

page 109.
Scene setting: Richard Buckingham owns a media empire based in Australia and is Rip’s father:

Richard Buckingham was patient. “Billy, with the Communists in power,” he said, “nothing in China is worth real money. That’s the lesson the Americans and British and Japanese are going to learn the hard way.”

As of March, 2009, China dot com owned $767.9 Billion in United States Treasury notes. China is the single largest foreign holder of treasury securities.

page 124.
Scene setting: Virgil “Tiger” Cole is an American entrepreneur and the United States consul general in Hong Kong:

“Thirty years ago,” Tiger said, “America’s liberals refused to fight for freedom in Asia — now they’re partners with the propaganda ministry of the Communist government as investors in China.com. Anything for a goddamn buck! Yeah, I’m funding a revolution…”

Marlin had caught a couple of low level “true believers,” two United States citizens spying here in the United States for Cuba. Walter and Gwendolyn Myers had stolen U. S. secrets for more than 30 years. Congress will express righteous indignation. President Obama may even shake his finger at Cuba.

Meanwhile, the Administration has fast tracked the theft of America’s biggest manufacturers.

“What do you call those who steal, then give away the entire country?” Marlin asked last week.

page 35.

“All politicians are sewer rats, not just ours.“

Marlin and Coonts and Pogo wuz right. Some people — like some fish — just stick around a day too long.

Traitors should have a shorter shelf life than fish.

“Despite all my powers, I can’t do anything about the real rats,” Marlin said.