Category Archives: Random Access

Random Access, the op-ed.

Roads to Riches

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I didn’t want to write this column but I snoozed through most of the Monday n00z.

Everybody’s writing about how Olympic “cyclists covered a 156 mile course through the English countryside and towns south of London including the town of Dorking, which is home to the world-famous Dorking Cockerel” and I’m tired of politics because none of those airheads is doing anything new. They all went to Dorking Cockerel, too, I think, but they didn’t stay there.

This photo is making the rounds on the Interwebs.


political poster

Half the blogosphere thinks President Obama is a traitor for trashing entrepreneurs and the other half thinks Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is a traitor for supporting entrepreneur-politician Mitt Romney.

What, are you nuts?

The least little reading of history — even a World Book Encyclopedia entry — not to mention economics should have taught us how American business followed the river, the trail, the railroad, and then the highway. See, you don’t have trade without transport.

Mile 0Business success drove some roads. Indiana entrepreneur Carl Fisher dreamed up the Lincoln Highway, a road that would make a bee-line coast-to-coast from Times Square to San Francisco. It was first officially recorded in 1913 only about 40 years after the first steam powered, carriage-sized “automobile” drove the existing wagon roads in Wisconsin. About the same time Mr. Fisher was pushing roughly along the 40th Parallel, the Atlantic Highway was established to connect Quebec and Miami. We know that road today as U.S. 1.

Mr. Fisher drove down the Atlantic Highway and did a little bit of real estate development around Miami. Fisher Island, for instance.

Automobile traffic increased. Trade grew. Trade increased. Automobile traffic grew. Planners started drawing a nationwide highway system in 1921. The New York parkway system, Route 66, and other famous routes were built in the twenties as local or state highway systems but we needed the interconnected national system to supplement the existing United States Numbered Highways system.

Yeah, yeah. Dr. Paul maybe wants to make the point that Korea builds roads for different reasons than we do. And the Rightie-Tighties apparently want to remind us that Mr. Obama wants to build more roads with our money.

Or something.

Regular visitors may recall that I abhor negative advertising. I dislike stupid advertising even more.

My grandfather would not use Dial soap because their TV ads trumpeted, “Don’t you wish everybody did?”

He didn’t wish that and so he didn’t use the product.

If your political ads piss off the voters, they won’t vote against the other guy. If your political ads lie to the voters, they won’t vote against the other guy. They simply won’t vote. And that’s a vote for the other guy.

Mr. Obama, speaking in Roanoke on July 13, said, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

The North Korean highway photo doesn’t answer that. The North Korean highway photo just annoys anyone even a little economically literate. At least posters like this one are a far better play on that theme:


political poster

Two Nickles to Rub Together

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I picked up an empty Blueberry-Pomegranate Blast by Colt 45 can on walkies this morning.

I walk a couple of miles each morning at a reasonably brisk rate. I’m still not getting my heart rate up high enough but I do get my resps up. Sometimes I talk on the phone while walking which surprises the bridge fishermen I pass. Sometimes Jody Beauregard walks with me. Jody is a couple inches taller than I am, but he doesn’t like to walk as fast. “You ought to slow down and smell the roses,” he keeps telling me.

But this is about beer cans, not Rosaceae. Nor the original lime juice.

roadside emptiesVermont passed its Beverage Container Law to “reduce litter, increase recycling, reduce waste disposal costs, create local jobs and save energy.” Save energy? The legislature enacted the law in 1972 but delayed implementation until 1973.

I’m thinking that was to give our shopping cart people time to get bigger bags and carts.

The Act covers beer, malt, carbonated soft drinks, mixed wine drinks, and liquor in any glass, metal, paper, plastic or combination bottle, can, jar or carton. We pay 15¢ for liquor bottles and a nickle for everything else. The redemption rate overall is 85%. The Baptists should have such good statistics.

Michigan’s 10¢ bottle bill has a 96.9% recycle rate. Florida is studying the idea.

The Blueberry-Pomegranate <shudder> Blast comes 23.5 ounces to the can. 12% alcohol. Still only a nickle deposit back, though.

That doesn’t make up for inflation. Gas prices went up a nickle on Friday alone here in the protected pocket with the highest gas prices in New England. That price hike comes in the face of dropping prices everywhere else in the nation, and in spite of calls for a Congressional investigation.

I found a single 24-ish ounce empty can each morning last week and I figure this is a bad sign.

“We need to start a petition drive,” Jody said. “If people would just drink two 12-ounce cans in their cars instead of these 24-ounce monsters, their beer wouldn’t go flat as fast and we’d make more money.”

I picked up just a nickle each day. I could have been making a dime.

How Low Can You Go?

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I am just sooooo tired of you airheads. Politics ain’t a limbo contest.

limbo barAn open letter to Jim Messina and Stephanie Cutter on the Left, Matt Rhoades and Kevin Madden on the Right:

The Thief-in-Chief calls the Candidate-in-Chief a “liar or a felon” over the date he signed some papers.

Let us not forget that the Loyal Opposition has long claimed the Thief-in-Chief has no papers.

The Candidate-in-Chief retorted “liar liar pants on fire” about the Thief-in-Chief.

Let us not forget that the Loyalists have long claimed the Candidate-in-Chief is an evil, religious, rich guy.

I don’t give a hoot.

I don’t have a job.

Barack Obama made more money in Illinois selling political favors than you made in all of 2001. I don’t care.

Mitt Romney made more money last night than you made last year. I don’t care.

See, I read the news. I already know what Barack Obama has done to this country for the past three years. No amount of sleight-of-hand or political spin will change that although I have noticed he is running on “change” again. I also know what Mitt Romney has done for the past twenty years.

“I fixed the auto industry!” Mr. Obama crows in his ads. Sure. Stealing General Motors from its stockholders and introducing the worst selling car since the Aztek (which itself sold 112 more cars than the Edsel) is a great fix.

Mr. Obama? Quit it. Just stand up there in front of your record unemployment, your record public debt, your Chicago politics and tell us step-by-step how you are going to fix what you’ve done.

“I know what it’s like to worry whether you’re gonna get fired,” Mr. Romney said in New Hampshire.

Mr. Romney? Quit it. Just stand up there in front of your record at Bain, good and bad, your Olympics record, your Massachusetts record, and tell us step-by-excruciating-step what you will do to fix this mess.

otterMy friend Dean “Dino” Russell is a roofer in the middle Keys. Dancing about on roofs all his life has made him the most physically fit man in the Home Depot and gives him a unique overview of life. Dino noted that, “What this country needs is a veterinary service that will spay and neuter otters at a reasonable rate, not another third-rate carnival barker who can do the limbo.”

And, for the record? Until the IRS tells me otherwise, I figure Barack Obama and Mitt Romney followed the tax code to the letter and paid exactly the taxes they each owed. As did Mortimer Zuckerman and Warren Buffett and David Koch and Sheldon Adelson. And me.

And I don’t even have a job.

Lordy Lordy™.

UPDATE – UPDATE – UPDATE – UPDATE – UPDATEJuly 21, 2012 — “We will pull all the ‘comparison’ ads.”

July 22, 2012 — CBS Sunday Morning today aired the singing Romney ad. “Approved by Barack Obama. Paid for by Obama for America.” CBS’ Face the Nation today aired the “You can change” ad. Paid for by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads PAC.

Good to see nothing ever changes.

I Can’t Count That High

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One of the cops running for Monroe County, Florida, Sheriff told an election forum that it’s common to have 13 deputies with 13 supervisors on any shift. “One supervisor for every deputy isn’t right,” he said. The current undersheriff, also a candidate, said studies show the Sheriff’s Office division of ranks is very similar to other Florida departments of equivalent size.

Well, sure.

5-pointed starThe stable population of Pinellas County, Florida is 928,031 with over 3,000 Sheriff’s Office employees in five major service bureaus. The Broward County Sheriff’s Office handles both law enforcement and fire rescue duties with 6,300 employees for 1,753,578 population. The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office employs 543 people for a population that in peak season (January until April) may reach as high as 150,000 but is stable at less than half that.

Each Florida county also has municipal departments. Key West P.D., for example, has 108 employees and Key Colony Beach another five. And we haven’t counted the state police, the highway patrol, or the FDLE.

BSO revenues are about $65 million annually (BSO receives about $700 million each year).

As a point of reference, the Franklin County, Vermont, Sheriff’s Office is the county’s primary law enforcement agency. Franklin County has about half the Monroe County population at 47,806, and 23 FCSO employees. Even counting St Albans City P.D., Swanton P.D., there are fewer than 70 law enforcement personnel in total. Even the Vermont State Police has fewer troopers statewide than any one Florida county.

FCSO revenues are about $2 million annually.

As a side note, every organization of long standing will swell its supervisory ranks; good people need promotions or they don’t stay. And more supervisors need more people in the trenches to, well, supervise.

Sheriffs are usually the only county-wide “local” law enforcement agency. The Staties can be run anywhere in the state and municipal police officers report to town/city officials. Sheriffs Departments provide civil process, law enforcement assistance to small towns, help with emergencies such as the recent Floods, perform death investigations, and help stranded motorists.

Most sheriff’s offices provide law enforcement services under contract to municipalities and townships in their County. Each Vermont sheriff may receive up to 5 percent of the value of the contracts as an “administrative fee.” Reports are mixed on the administrative fees available to sheriffs in other states.

All of that adds up to a single question:

Is Vermont under served or does Florida generally and the Keys in particular have way more policing than anywhere else in the nation?

Here’s What Obamacare Actually Does For You

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“Wow! It is without any doubt the law now,” my friend Nola Guay crowed. “And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in it that I don’t like!”

Two days from our celebration of Independence from a monarchy, how about the facts that it is yet another tax, that it will continue to drive up the cost of seeing your doctor, and that the Regent of Pennsylvania Avenue just stole yet another piece of your heritage?

But Mr. Obama says he gave you something good!

She sent me a poster of the Obamacare Top 10.


The Obamacare Top 10

Here’s What Obamacare Actually Does For You:

(1) “Access to health insurance for 30 million Americans …”
Every one of the 46 million Americans without health insurance had “access” to it before Obamacare came to be. Access has never been the problem.

“and lower premiums.”
Your insurance premiums have doubled in the last 10 years. They’ve continued to go up because many Obamacare provisions don’t take effect until after the election or 2014.

The problem isn’t higher premiums. The problem is the high cost of our medical system. Work on cost and I guarantee premiums can come down.

(2) “The ability of business and individuals to purchase comprehensive coverage from a regulated marketplace.”
Wow. I guess the Banking and Insurance industry wasn’t already regulated. Now it will be more regulated. Like Cable TV is. That’s gonna make it better.

(3) “Insurers’ [sic] cannot discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions.”
Um, anybody remember ERISA? Been there, done that.

(4) “Tax credits for small businesses that offer insurance.”
Oh, goody. We’ll raise taxes on all the rich small businessmen and businesswomen to come up with the money to give them tax credits back.

(5) “Assistance for businesses that provide health benefits to early retirees.”
See above. And don’t forget that “early retirees” doesn’t mean thee and me. It means the United Auto Workers who get to retire with full benefits and the GM stock Mr. Obama stole from the other retirees like thee and me who used to own that company.

(6) “Affordable health care for lower-income Americans. Obamacare extends Medicaid to individuals with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty line.”
No new taxes, though. This won’t hurt a bit. You might feel a little pinch…

(7) “Investments in women’s health. Obamacare prohibits insurers from charging women substantially more than men …”
Oh, goody again. So Obamacare singlehandedly disallows the actuarial tables insurers live by. Or men, who cannot have children, get to pay a higher premium than they would under actuarial calculations. And old peeps. And children. All higher premiums.

(8) “Young adults’ ability to stay on their parents’ health care plans.”
That’s a good one. Didn’t need 2,700 pages to do that. Speaker of the House John Boehner mentioned yesterday that the insurance companies themselves lobbied for it because federal law kept them from allowing dependents to stay, well, dependent past their high school or college years.

See, young adults are generally healthier than older adults. That should improve the revenue the insurance plans generate.

(9) “Discounts for seniors on brand-name drugs.”
Oh, swell. The home of the $6,000 hammer will negotiate the cost of your Viagra.

Wait. That’s not right. Don’t the drugs we want fall into the “donut hole”? (That’s the difference between the initial coverage limit and the catastrophic coverage threshold currently in the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. This Administration loves donuts. One box of Munchkins™ coming up for your med-surg snack. Mmmm, donuts.)

(10) “Coverage for the sickest Americans.”
Bwahahahahahahahahah hah ha. And ha.

My friend Rufus had non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 2011. My mom’s breast cancer metastasized in 2001. Oddly, both of them were pretty darned sick. Both of them had coverage, Rufus on a company retirement benefit and Mom on Medicare and Medicare Part B.

That was before Obamacare.

Thomas Sowell commented, “It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”

Bottom line: “It’s a tax,” Chief Justice John Roberts said.

So tell me again, other than nationalizing the payment system for health care (and running up the costs), What Obamacare Actually Does For US? ‘Cause I just don’t see it.

I wrote a two part series a couple of years ago on how to fix our broken health care system:How to Fix It, Part I
How to Fix It, Part IIAnd here’s the entire ObamaCare category:
Obamacare in America

Next week, we look at the squadron of opossums in Ninja outfits who raided my trash can and laid the blame on the raccoons.