Category Archives: Random Access

Random Access, the op-ed.

Eat More

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Heh.

I don’t know about you but I still have a lot of turkey left over.

Different turkey here so I hope you stopped by for something other than the recipes.

Bo Muller-Moore is a folk artist in Montpelier, Vermont who made the national news today and not for his new spray paint/stencil prints at the Montpelier Art Walk. Those images at the Skinny Pancake honored some of the animals of Vermont and the cavemen that painted them first.

eatmorekaleMr. Muller-Moore has built a substantial home business around the words “eat more kale” which silkscreens on T- and sweatshirts. He calls it “an expression of the benefits of local agriculture.”

For the record, I put kale right up there with lima beans in the food pantheon but I will fight to the death your right to eat it. It is probably better for you than limas, too.

A couple of Mr. Muller-Moore’s friends, “Paul and Kate of High-Ledge Farm, penned the phrase over ten years ago when they special ordered two shirts for themselves. I must admit, I gave the design very little thought,” he wrote. “I drew the letters and cut the stencil in less than 20 minutes. I printed their shirts and delivered them at the next farmer’s market. The idea became ‘viral’ before people knew what ‘viral’ was, then quickly spread to all corners of the world.”

Meanwhile Chick-fil-A, the second-largest chicken restaurant chain in the country, owns and aggressively guards the trademarked phrase eat mor chikin™. Chick-fil-A, the second-largest chicken restaurant chain in the country, sounds very Canadian to my ear, eh? I thought Canadians could spell, eh?

Mr. Muller-Moore has now filed a trademark application for “eat more kale.” About 30 seconds later, the second-largest chicken restaurant chain’s legal team sent him a cease-and-desist letter in which they listed at least 30 examples of attempts by others to co-opt the “eat more” phrase, attempts that they bullied into withdrawing. The letter ordered him to stop using the phrase and to turn over his website, eatmorekale.com, to Chick-fil-A.

VermonsterThis is not the first time a Vermonter has had to stand up on his hind feet.

Matt Nadeau’s Rock Art Brewery is a micro brewery in Morrisville, Vermont. A couple of years ago they introduced a beer called “Vermonster” that ran afoul of the Hansen Natural brand “Monster” energy drink folks. The two settled the case when Rock Art agreed never to go into the energy drink business. As far as I know, Ben & Jerry never went after Mr. Nadeau for infringing on their 14,000 calorie bucket with the same name.

At the end of the day, I kinda don’t think anyone will buy an ‘eat more kale’ shirt thinking it was a Chick-fil-A turkey.

Giving Thanks

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Thanksgiving is a patriotic holiday, sandwiched as it is between Veterans Day and the “official” beginning of the Christmas Shopping season.

Pilgrims, Progressing SouthI’ll come back to the sandwiches.

Everyone not living under a rock knows that Thanksgiving Day is America’s primary pagan festival, celebrated to show thanks, gratitude, and love to the gods for a bountiful harvest on a New England day that fields have been barren for weeks and are now mostly covered in snow. This holiday has moved away from its religious roots and is now a time to participate in the largest single slaughter of fowl in the universe.

Here in the States, we mark Thanksgiving Day on the fourth Thursday of November each year. Our Canadian neighbors celebrated it six weeks earlier, on the second Monday in October. The snow falls earlier on Canada’s by-then barren fields. We saw one of those neigbors at the Kmart yesterday, looking for a potato masher. She was pleased to get two thanksgiving meals; she was less pleased to cook two thanksgiving meals.

Our collective memory of the holiday is sort of wrong. In American as Pumpkin Pie, Plimoth Plantation tells us that

Prior to the mid-1800s, Thanksgiving had nothing to do with the 1621 harvest celebration, Pilgrims, or older immigrants. Thanksgiving started as a traditional New England holiday that celebrated family and community. It descended from Puritan days of fasting and festive rejoicing. The governor of each colony or state declared a day of thanksgiving each autumn, to give thanks for general blessings. As New Englanders moved west in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they took their holiday with them. After the harvest, governors across the country proclaimed individual Thanksgivings, and families traveled back to their original homes for family reunions, church services and large meals.

I expect to have a “traditional” Thanksgiving meal this year, whether I cook it myownself or drive over to the Cracked Conch with Nancy and Joe and Willie and maybe Ed if he makes it back from Provo. We’ll have a small turkey with bread (not oyster, thank you very much) stuffing, cranberry sauce, smashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, cole slaw, and pumpkin pie for dessert.

That basic menu has remained unchanged for a couple hundred years but that’s all the older our menu is. The three-day pig-out of 1621 at Plymouth (the “First Thanksgiving”) may have had ducks or geese, but yes they had no potatoes, and bananas were equally scarce. No apples. And no pumpkin pie. Likely no turkeys who were wily even then.

I don’t care. I shall have pah.

I AM™ a lucky boy lucky. My family is scattered across a couple thousand miles but we are all speaking to each other. Anne’s broken leg is healing. My island house value sank a little more so my future property taxes may be lower and I did not get four inches of snow yesterday. The insurance company finally decided I really should have had collision coverage and paid the shop. Next week, I shall have white meat turkey sandwiches slathered with mayonnaise on good crunchy sourdough bread for lunch every day of the week. Most important, I have been blessed by friends.

People decorate for Halloween and for Armistice or Remembrance Day and for Christmas but Thanksgiving, not so much.

Ben Franklin thought the turkey should be America’s bird so I’m thankful to have found a big inflatable turkey in a local yard for this week.


ahh, supper

Keep Your Hands Off My Junk

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We used to call it our “privates” because we (allegedly) value our privacy and don’t want to show off our, well, junk.

Everybody in the known universe (except in Andromeda) knows that Facebook and privacy don’t mix well. Frankly, the Innernoodle and privacy don’t mix well but that’s another story. Facebook is >||< close to settling with the Federal Trade Commission after the FTC charged the social networking site with issues related to your privacy and mine. See, Facebook has access to a lot of our junk and they keep changing how they will display it.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg reminded PBS viewers that everything Facebook knows about us is everything we have put there. Other companies, he said, like Microsoft and Google and Yahoo, “have search engines and ad networks, have a huge amount of information about you. It’s just that they’re collecting that information about you behind your back really. But you never know that… it’s less transparent than what is happening at Facebook.”

I can keep my junk hidden from the Interwebs simply by not using the Interwebs. No Facebook. No Google. No online bill paying. No Netflix streaming.

[Image]Meanwhile, the bank known as Chase Manhattan until it merged with J.P. Morgan a decade ago, is one of the Big Four banks of the United States. I’ve been a Chase customer since I got my first “BankAmericard” in the late 1960s.

Chase sent me a privacy notice with a lot of little aptitude-test ovals to fill in completely. I’ve never been one to color inside the lines but I did my best. “We’re going to send you junk mail from these guys.” NO THANK YOU. “We’re going to bill you for these other guys.” NO THANK YOU. “We have this wonderful offer for …” NO THANK YOU.

I can keep my junk hidden from Chase as long as I send in the “opt-out” form. Every five years. Unless they ask for it more often. Like tomorrow.

The St. Albans Messenger reports that the village of Richford has become the first northwestern Vermont community to install law enforcement surveillance cameras on its streets; their two new cameras cost five grand (money that was to have underwritten a second constable). The live video feeds directly to the Sheriff’s Office via the Internet. U.S. Border Patrol and Vermont State Police also have access to the feed. The cameras were installed as a “safety measure” in response to concerns from residents about area crime but not all residents are happy about the cameras.

Richford officials remind us that Richford is not the first to have cameras trained on its streets. Public Access TV has cameras looking at the streets in both St. Albans and Enosburg, officials said. The fact is that those cameras were not installed at taxpayer expense and those cameras don’t feed Law Enforcement.

I can keep my junk hidden from Richford’s cameras as long as I …
Oh. Wait. I can’t keep my junk hidden from Richford’s cameras.

The World Naked Bike Ride got me thinking about this question I found online: “Imagine that you live in a place where public nudity is not only legal, but also socially acceptable. Assuming that the climate is favorable, how often would you be totally naked in public?”

In that case, I’d opt in to show off my junk.

Dead? Dead

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Burlington, VT (October 28)–Our own local group of Occupy Wall Streeters began a weekend encampment in City Hall Park in Burlington today, but it’s unclear whether they’ll be allowed to stay in the park overnight. Under city ordinances, people are forbidden from sleeping in parks after 10 p.m. or setting up tents and bedding for that purpose. The Vermont Workers’ Center, meanwhile, “encourages everyone to stop by with family and friends to celebrate the right to peaceably assemble and to exercise the right to free speech.”

It’s a real conflict. Most of Burlington’s city government is pretty much on the OWS side but there is a farmer’s market in the park on Saturday, so Occupy Wall Street is gonna end up Occupying Main Street and fouling local commerce.

“Real change can happen and it feels to me like it’s starting to simmer…” my friend Enola “Fanny” Guay said.

That may well be, but the issue still comes down to a single question: Do the protesters have a defined goal?

I was in college during the anti-war protests of the 60s. Looking back on my actual experience, there were a lot of different, non-homogenous groups running around but they all had one over-riding goal: they would shout and shout until the war came tumbling down.

I don’t remember any protesters shooting each other.

Burlington, VT (November 10)–Police are investigating three deaths — two fatal shootings and an apparent overdose — at or near Occupy protest camps last Thursday.

A young man was fatally shot Thursday evening just yards from the Occupy Oakland encampment outside City Hall. And a homeless veteran died after shooting himself in the head in a tent in Burlington’s City Hall Park, where the local Occupy movement has set up tentkeeping. Police here cordoned off part of the park as a crime scene sparking a confrontation with the protesters.

Also on Friday, a 42-year-old man was found dead inside his tent at Occupy Salt Lake City in Utah. Officials believe he died from a combination of drugs and carbon monoxide poisoning.

[Image]This sign is making the social network and email rounds.

“It’s obvious the sign maker and all the Facebook copycats are either blind to or unwilling to discuss the class advantages and good luck that bolstered their hard work,” Fanny Guay said.

That’s Fanny-speak for “we need to take away that advantage so no one can get ahead of anyone else.”

It’s particularly worrisome that most of the OWS simmering comes together that way. After all, most of Vermont’s flower children had liberal college educations that their parents provided. Many of Vermont’s flower children have grown up to accumulate the advantages and luck

And here in Vermont, it is mostly the children and children’s children of privilege who band together to protest.

All curmudgeonliness aside, OWS could be a good thing if they stay peaceful. Protesting our problems is an American tradition and Wall Streeters getting $100 million bonuses from tax money is a problem.

If the simmering does come together, the OWS might have something to shout and shout about, a cause that allows every man, woman, and child to live in an identical, government-owned house, with identical, government-provided healthcare, watching identical, government-programmed television. As long as everyone can have a television.

I wouldn’t bank on it.

For now? It seems like all noise and no tumbling. And it’s dying a blusterous death.

We’re Number One!

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“I’ve been trying to figure out why businesses aren’t insisting on single payer healthcare,” my old friend Enola “Fanny” Guay said, “and I realized it’s because we’re all in this great shift into being corporate serfs.”

Although I’’ve known Ms. Guay for nearly 50 years and know how proud she is of her experiential learning, I also know she can be a bit blinded by her ideology. She’s a second generation member of Helen and Scott Nearing’s back-to-the-land movement in Vermont. The Nearings bought an old farm house and built a simple, self-sufficient lifestyle here, far from big government and rampant consumerism. Their descendants are now the power brokers and consumers of Montpeculiar.

Fanny Guay really really really believes in single payer. “All Americans have a constitutional if not a moral right to health care,” she says, “and a single payer plan would cover everyone by default for doctors, hospital, preventive and long-term care, mental health, reproductive, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs.”

Be nice if we knew how to pay for that.

“We won’t need as much money under single payer,” Ms. Guay said. “With all the patients under the single system, the payer has clout. The VA, for instance, gets a 40% discount on drugs because of its buying power. This monopsony explains why drug prices in other countries are lower than here. That’s how Medicare forces hospital and doctor costs down as well.”

Be nice if we knew how to pay for that.

“See, there is already plenty of money in the system now to pay for it because we already pay for health care.”

Erm, no. Rutland City Treasurer Wendy Wilton’s analysis shows that there is no pot of gold in taxpayer pockets.

She looked at all current state revenues. The property tax, already earmarked for education, is maxed out. Vermont is number four in the nation in property taxes, and just .05% behind number three Connecticut. (The property tax raises 42% of the state revenues.) General sales taxes plus the tariff on gas and booze runs a close second, raising 30% of revenues. State income tax, no longer coupled to federal, is likewise maxed out.

Vermont may grow rocks but there’s no more blood in the stones.

In fact, CNN ranked Vermont number one, numero uno, primo supremo, in the tax wars with a total state and local tax burden of 14.1% of per capita income. That’s far more than New York (13.8%), New Jersey (11.6), or California (11.5) or even Florida (10%).

“That does seem high, but we are a small state and we have a great quality of life.”

Can’t hide from the facts. Vermont will need another payroll tax.

“But we don’t need new taxes!” Ms. Guay said. “We just need to tap the insurance premiums we’re already paying.”

Ms. Wilton found that the state will need a new 14.5% payroll tax but is still going to run $300 million yearly budget deficits even with that new tax. She believes the Shumlin Administration is over-estimating the cost savings a single-payer system can deliver.

She also believe the Shumlin Administration is playing hide the walnut with how much they will have to raise taxes this year, next year, and the year after that, and so on ad infinitum.

The new Vermont legislative session begins Thursday. Guess what’s first on the agenda.

Ms. Guay wondered “why businesses aren’t insisting on single payer healthcare.” Pretty simple, really.

  • Gov. Shumlin’s plan will drive the couple of remaining insurance companies out of business here.
  • Gov. Shumlin’s plan will make it illegal not to provide health insurance to all employees.
  • Gov. Shumlin’s plan will double the size of government (which doubles the size of taxes) overnight.
  • Gov. Shumlin’s plan will drive the couple of remaining Vermont employers out of business here because a business can’t do business if they can’t predict how much their taxes will go up every year.

And no business wants to be legislated into being sort of a serf to the state.

Be nice if we knew how to pay for all that.