Category Archives: Random Access

Random Access, the op-ed.

Tuesday Trippin’

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I tweeted Leaving the land of $3.94 gas! Woot & Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyyooooooooo! on Thursday as I drove over the bridge into Vermont from New York State.

Bob and his friend Brad created the tradition of shouting Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyyooooooooo at the top of their lungs on road trips. They started it the first time they drove to the Winter Star Party in the Keys as “a cry of exaltation as each state line was passed.” Usually they are in closed cars, so it hurts only them. I have to admit that I expanded into yelling into everyone’s ears via social media.

Lions and Prayer for All PeopleI drovedrovedrove last week. Then I drovedrovedrove some more. Crossed a number of state lions so I did a lot of Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyyooooooooos.

Road trips are cool. Where else would I get my car detialed (that’s fonetic pronounsation) or discover that Woodstock has a brand new water tower. I shouted it for Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and West BG Virginia.

Car Wash and DetialingAnd then, Heeyyyooooo? How did I get back in Virginia??? And then Heeyyyooooo? Maryland? MARYLAND??

Huhroh?

My GPS is schizophrenic. It told me I was in Pennsyltucky.

This was a visit-old-friends-and-shoot-photos trip. The Laurel Grove Cemetary and the Forsythe fountain. Robertville and Estill which may be pronounced E-stull. Harper’s Ferry. I stopped at a couple of beaches at the Delaware Water Gap and even waded in the river to take some bridge photos. I didn’t take (many) pictures of the friends.

Road Closed - Bridge OutThe run along the Delaware Water Gap was nice although the overcast means the photos I shot there were fairly dull. I’ll still get a couple out of that series.

The rest of the trip was boring except for the rain. There were some serious deluges through which I flat out could not see. I need new wiper inserts — they are pretty worn and I had to push the stiffener down into the arm again when I stopped at lunch time. Can’t find refills anywhere so I guess I’ll end up buying complete new wiper blades. That irritates me.

The (topless)(white) car averaged a skoch over 30 mpg on the trip but I still paid between $3.229 and $3.459/gallon for the privilege. I could have paid $3.169 in one of the Carolinas but I had already filled up at $3.22. I saw $3.949 in Champlain but Stewart’s in Rouses Point was $3.629/gallon. Right across the bridge in Vermont, both the Mobil and Irving were $3.639. It’s $3.679 in Swanton. That came to more than $200 in gasoline alone.

That’s price gouging. Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT) got his sound bite about gouging last year, though, so we don’t have to worry about that any more. See, after he “launched an investigation into unusually high gasoline prices in northwestern Vermont last summer, gas prices in Chittenden, Franklin and Grand Isle Counties became much more competitive.”

Of course that lasted about a nanosecond after the TV cameras (and Sen. Sanders) went elsewhere.

Our neighbor, Captain Gib, sells gas at his country store. He was moaning the other day that he “only makes about four cents a gallon.” For the record, each gallon of gas sold in northwestern Vermont last year made the seller 31.6 cents in average profit; this region turned in the 10th highest profit margin in the U.S. which means I really, really don’t want to drive in the number one market.

Memorial Weekend Snow at Joe's Pond, VermontMeanwhile, I have to mount the mower deck on the tractor and do the first cutting (the grass is more than a foot tall). There are some other chores waiting on me. Two toilets need repair parts and the hot water pipe to the upstairs bath burst over the winter. That made a mess. I have to bleed the air out and refill the furnace with water and anti-freeze. Memorial Day Weekend. It snowed a little just a few miles from here.

I didn’t drive over to see, though. Gas is even more expensive today. And the diesel juice for my tractor is even worse.

Did I mention that this column is about price gouging?

 

Memorial Day

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Today is Memorial Day in the United States. The holiday once known as Decoration Day commemorates the men and women who perished under the flag of this country, fighting for what sets our America apart: the freedom to live as we please.

Holiday is a contraction of holy and day; the word originally referred only to special religious days. Here in the U.S. of A. “holiday” means any special day off work or school instead of a normal day off work or school.

The Uniform Holidays Bill which gave us some 38 or 50 Monday shopaholidays moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May. Today is not May 30 but perhaps we can shut up and salute anyway.

Editorial cartoon from Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Lest we forget, the Americans we honor did not “give their lives.” They did not merely perish. They did not just cease living, check out, croak, depart, drop, expire, kick off. kick the bucket, pass away or pass on, pop off, or bite the dust. Their lives were taken from them by force on battlefields around the world. They were killed. Whether you believe they died with honor, whether you believe our cause just, died they did.

Today is not a “free” day off work or school. Today is not the big sale day at the Dollar Store. Today is a day of Honor.

“All persons present in uniform should render the military salute. Members of the Armed Forces and veterans who are present but not in uniform may render the military salute. All other persons present should face the flag and stand at attention with their right hand over the heart, or if applicable, remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Citizens of other countries present should stand at attention. All such conduct toward the flag in a moving column should be rendered at the moment the flag passes.”

The American flag today should first be raised to the top of the flagpole for a moment, then lowered to the half-staff position where it will remain until Noon. The flag should be raised to the peak at Noon for the remainder of Memorial Day.

There are those in this country who would use today to legislate the man out of the fight. They can do that but the men and women we honor today knew you cannot legislate the fight out of the man. They have fought and they have died to protect us from those who would kill us. And perhaps to protect us from those who would sell out our birthright.

There is no end to the mutts who would kill our men and women in uniform even faster than they would kill their own. And there is no end to the mutts in our capitol who would let them. If I had but one wish granted on this day, I wish not another soldier dies. Ever. But die they did around the world again this year and die they will. For us. For me.

Because those men and women died, I get to write these words again this year. And you get to read them. Please pause and reflect as you go to a concert, stop at an artist’s studio, grill a burger, or simply read a book in the sunshine the price we pay to keep our right to do those things. Thank a soldier today. And then do it again tomorrow.

Editor’s Note: This column is slightly updated from one that appeared first in 2008.

 

Fair Share

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A Thomas Sowell quote is making the Internoodle rounds again. “What is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?”

Dr. Sowell is an economist, social theorist, and philosopher. He is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. Dr. Friedman, a Nobel laureate, founded the Chicago school of economics; Dr. Sowell is perhaps the leading voice of that school.

Rationing Means a 'Fair Share' for All of Us“I know the intention was to slam ‘distribution of wealth/social service program’ supporters,” my friend Nola Guay said to me, “But my real question is this: ‘What’s [ExxonMobil CEO] Rex Tillerson’s fair share of the $2.72 million salary and $4.59 million bonus he gets this year’? After all, his $600 million in federal handouts padded their gargantuan bottom line.”

Nola, dear? How much of what you’ve worked for do you want to give me?

“That’s a strawman and you know it, Dick,” she said.

Maybe so, but Mr. Tillerson is a piker. !@#$%^ Comcast’s CEO Brian Roberts picked up $29.1 million in salary, bonus, and so on (down from $31.1 million in 2011) while delivering a whole lot less customer satisfaction. ExxonMobil at least puts a tiger in your tank. Heck, Walmart CEO Mike Duke’s pay jumped 14.1% to $20.7 million, mostly on a performance-based cash bonus. The average Walmart employee would have to work 785 years to earn that much.

Still, Nola, you didn’t answer the question. I really wonder how much you plan to give me out of what you worked for? I really wonder if you’ll tithe to me?

There is a belief that people who have more of something are required to give it to others who have less. Required.

“I’m looking for balanced, moral behavior on everyone’s part,” Ms. Guay said

Yeah, baby. When Rufus starts collecting Social Security this year at age 62, he’ll pull in $1,923/month or $23,076 per year because he qualifies for the maximum benefit. Ms. Guay’s 1040 showed a total income of $19,742. I guess Rufus owes Nola $1,667 this year just to keep them morally balanced. And Mr. Tillerson gets to give it to all of us. Of course, dividing his 7,310,000 pre-tax cash dollars between the 315,848,000 of us gives us each 2.3 cents.

“You’re missing the point as usual, Dick,” she said. “I’m looking for that good behavior on everyone’s part. You want to keep slashing benefits for the disadvantaged while filling the coffers of the already abusive wealthy. That’s just plain hateful and immoral.”

And that’s the smoke-and-mirrors part of Ms. Guay’s argument.

Dr. Sowell was a Marxist too, “during the decade of my 20s,” but he rejected Ms. Guay’s fair share economics (in favor of laissez faire) after he interned with the Feds in the summer of 1960. That’s when he discovered the link between the rise of mandated minimum wages for workers in the sugar industry of Puerto Rico and the rise of unemployment. Studying the patterns led Dr. Sowell to conclude that the government employees who administered the minimum wage law cared more about their own jobs than the plight of the poor.

“I don’t want to give even more money to Big Sugar, either,” she said.

Agreed.

The USDA will buy 400,000 tons of sugar in a massive bailout of domestic sugar processors. That will cost taxpayers about $80 million in the sweetest deal possible for the companies that grow cane and beets. See, they borrowed millions against this year’s sugar harvest but the harvest was soooooooooo good that prices dropped so they can’t pay back all of the loan.

Say what?

The National Debt increases at an average of $3.78 billion per day which will add up to some $1,400,000,000,000 (1.4 trillion dollars) this year so that extra $80 million is just .005% of the total increase in debt. We need to find the other 99.995% of immoral government spending, preferably from handouts to Big Sugar and Big Solar and all the other political boondoggles. After all, individual taxpayers paid $1,434,100,000 (coincidentally about 1.4 trillion dollars) in federal income tax last year. If we have to pay the spending we authorized, we’ll have to double our “contribution.”

It’s a simple calculation. Cut spending or double taxes. It’s your “fair share.”

Your choice.

“I don’t understand how these clowns keep getting elected,” Ms. Guay said. “Oh, wait. I do. They make us believe that the ‘other people’ are our enemies. They run hate filled campaigns. Then these damn fool middle class buy that load of bilge and keep voting them in.”

And all I could think of was, Why is she maligning her own Demorats?

For the record, ExxonMobil paid $31.05 billion in federal income tax last year, after the huge handout of $600 million in annual federal tax breaks, on earnings before taxes of $78.73 billion; WalMart paid just $7.98 billion on $25.74 billion in earnings before taxes.
Comcast got about the same $566 million tax reduction in 2009 and avoided paying all the Pennsylvania corporate income taxes again last year.

 

Oh, Poop

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I’m still in South Puffin but SWMBO is up North.

“Looks like we have a bigger problem. I was doing a load of laundry and heard funny noise. The first thing I did was open the cellar door and heard water dripping, went and shut off washer, then went downstairs. Water was coming out of the big black pipe. Just tried to flush the toilet and that water is coming out of the big black pipe also. Suggestions?”

Needless to say, that got the phone lines humming.

“Sounds like your sewer pipes didn’t survive the winter,” Rufus opined. “That will be an expensive pain.”

Pumping out a Septic SystemMore likely the septic tank has backed up and needs pumping (it’s only been 11 years). Still an expensive pain.

I had trouble with that, though, because the washer is supposed to go to the dry well, not the septic tank. That means she shouldn’t have a leak from the cast iron sewer drain when the washer runs.

She Dropboxed a bunch of pictures to refresh me about what pipes in the cellar connect to where.

Wonderful invention the Internoodle. I can now see exactly where the leak is and can do absolutely nothing about it online.

And rats. The washer goes to the septic tank, not the dry well.

Rufus suggest she take a bucket out to the barn.

She called Drummac. Nice folks. Local. They do line and tank hydroflushing which sounds far more intriguing than running a water hose into a tank, septic pumping and tank cleaning, sludge removal, have water jet services and rent Porta Potties. They should be there right after this appears.

The good news, if there is any, is that one “inspection port” over the tank is still accessible. The tank itself is down 4′. I hope the honey dipper is willing to pump from the front port. Or that they don’t mind digging. The real worry is that the tank isn’t full but that a root has again bent or broken the main leader into the leach field.

Just for the record, one toilet here in South Puffin has a line blockage we can’t find. That leads to an unfortunate tendency to back up in the shower.

2013: the Year of the Poop. I’m gonna have to get up North sooner than later. And I’m sure there will be more to this story.

 

Faded? FADED?

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Liz Arden and I were talking about dog food this morning. She looks for a brand that has plenty of meat and meat by-products, eschews vege loading, doesn’t disgust the human eye or nose, and isn’t “gourmet” priced. Our mutts dined on fresh-frozen horsemeat that we bought in little waxed-cardboard takeout cartons but you can’t hardly find that any more.

“The pups lurve Costco canned food,” she said.

That got me going on chain store brands. I have a Kirkland blue oxford cloth dress shirt that fits well, drapes nicely, has decent stitching, and has a nice hand. Come to think of it, I have a couple of shirts from Wal-Mart that fit the same bill. I might not choose one to impress a client but I would certainly wear them with a tie to go to work.

If I wore ties.

Everybody hates Wal-Mart, though.

Many have good reason. In fact, Google™ came up with about 2,920,000 reasons in 0.27 seconds.

  • The high cost to get low prices;
  • About half of Wal-Mart employees qualify for food stamps;
  • Despite the “Made in America” branding, 85% of Wal-Mart commodities are made overseas with 70% coming from China;
  • Envy: Wal-Mart customers yearn to be Target customers;
  • Wal-Mart is too rich;
  • Wal-Mart customers are too poor;
  • Wal-Mart is building a super center in Puffin County, Vermont.

And the top reason:

  • The stores are always crowded.

A Vermont Environmental Court decision granted Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., permission to build a 147,000-square-foot store in Puffin County. The decision requires Wally to pay the Town additional “public service costs” (such as for fire and police) that its presence cause the Town to incur.

Sadly named Faded Glory t-shirtThe decision is not without precedent in that municipalities often charge developers impact fees before allowing them to build houses and stores.

On the other hand, here comes Wal-Mart, a business that will pay property taxes year in and year out to underwrite public service costs such as the fire and police departments and the schools and the Town gets to charge them extra year after year for the increase in police and fire costs.

Heck, I think as long as we’re putting our hand in their pockets, we should get them to pay extra for satisfying a demand for three ring binders in our schools.

During the negotiations, Wal-Mart released a list of the stores they will put out of business in their first year of operation. The friendly, local bookseller. Gone. The friendly, local drug store. Gone. The friendly local store. Gone. The number of “independent retailers” in the United States declined by 60,000 stores between 1992 and 2007.

For the record, the friendly, local hardware stores either affiliated with the national chains like Ace or True Value or they disappeared, but that happened in the 70s.

I have a different reason not to like Wal-Mart: “Faded Glory.”

Like most large retail and grocery chains, Wal-Mart offers private label store brands, commonly referred to as house brands or generic brands, which consumers expect to be low-priced alternatives to name brand products.

“Faded Glory” is Wal-Mart’s house brand for basic men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing and footwear. It is the store’s primary clothing brand.

Definitions of “Fade”:
1: to lose freshness, strength, or vitality
2: to lose freshness or brilliance of color
3: to sink away : vanish as in “a fading memory”
4: to change gradually in loudness, strength, or visibility
5 (of an automobile brake): to lose braking power gradually
Usage: “He’s trying to recapture the faded glory of his youth.”

Why on Earth would a major chain want its primary customers to think they are fading off to nothingness.

Unless the glory of Sam Walton’s dream has indeed faded.