Category Archives: Random Access

Random Access, the op-ed.

Taxation with Representation

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Guess what tomorrow is. Taxation with representation ain’t so hot either:

  • Every legislator gets elected by spending someone else’s money.
  • Every legislator stays in office by spending someone else’s money.
  • No legislator has left office poorer than when he arrived.

Got any other questions?


I voted Friday. Followed my plan not to vote for any politician who talked about his or her opponent.

Here in Florida, in addition to mainstream races for governor and U.S. Senator, we’re electing an Attorney General, a CFO, a couple of School Directors to replace the ones who hired the last set of (alleged) crooks, a state rep, two county commissioners to replace the ones who hired the last set of (alleged) crooks, two Mosquito Board directors to replace the ones who hired the last set of (alleged) crooks, and a Commissioner of Agriculture.

Charles Bronson who is neither Charlie Bronson nor Charles Bronson has served as ag commissioner since 2001. He was born into a ranching family in Kissimmee and has a Bachelor of Science in agricultural education plus animal and meat sciences from the University of Georgia. He’s retiring so the open seat has attracted the usual critters.

Agriculture brings in $102 billion/year; it is Florida’s second largest industry. Only Tourism does more. It is also the state’s lead consumer protection agency. One candidate for the job is a young career politician and former state rep and congressman, with support from the opposing party. A second candidate was said to “do to agriculture what he does to everything else, use it for his own good. He was a worthless mayor who managed to double his salary and he ran the Democratic party into virtual bankruptcy.” Another is called a “fake teapartier.”

It’s simple. If one guy in the race talks about the other, he’s probably lying. Vote for the other guy, no matter what. If they both do it (usually the case), figure they’re both lying and WRITE YOUR OWN NAME IN.

I may end up with a lot of jobs come January. Maybe even Public Assayer.

Over in Nevada, it’s hold your nose and vote as Harry Reid and his challenger Sharron Angle have the same problem. Voters don’t like either of them.

Here’s another story.

Founded 208 years ago in the Newton, Iowa, of 1893, Maytag was a $4.7 billion appliance company with the world’s loneliest repairman. It was headquartered there until 2006 when it became part of the Whirlpool conglomerate which moved the rest of Maytag manufacturing to Mexico and China. Newton residents are now the world’s loneliest people. This is a story about corporate outsourcing — Maytag probably would have moved with or without the Category 5 economic storm called the Great Recession — but the town remains depressed because no one else is stepping up to recreate those jobs. It’s a story playing out in every small town in America.

60 Minutes visited Newton last night. To a man or woman Newtonians don’t care whether Repuglicans or Demorats get elected tomorrow.

“I’m sick and tired of people going to Congress in Washington D.C. making a living at it while we starve to death.”

Exactly.


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244

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A list of Barack Obama’s 244 “accomplishments” in his first 655 days in office has gone viral amongst Liberals and Progs. Here’s one example. You can Google all the others on your own.

No, I don’t know why there are 244 and not 655 “accomplishments” on the list. Maybe he didn’t want to admit to the rest.

What, are they nuts? I can’t be arsed to do it line by line but these people are publishing party-line political doubletalk. It ain’t hard to refute and I didn’t even bother with the Armed Forces or ObamaCare.

ETHICS
• as much as possible
Government speak for “tell ’em what they want to hear as often as you need to.” Now that’s change I can believe in.

• limits on lobbyists’ access to the White House
Only our guys can get in; the other guys can pound sand. Oddly, that happens every four-to-eight years. Now that’s change I can believe in.

GOVERNANCE
• The White House website
Woo pee. The only 12 people hired last year with Stimulus money. Every government office has a better website this year than they did last year and the year before that. Evolution and learning and even user demands drive even government web designers. Here’s one of the best recources online, period: Library of Congress dot gov Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Ended the Bush practice of circumventing FDA rules
Sure. Now we have the Obamanation practice of circumventing LAWS. Now that’s change I can believe in.

NATIONAL SECURITY
• Announced Gitmo closure.
Cool. Oh wait. It’s still open isn’t it. Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Will house terrorists at a “super max” in the US
Cool. Oh wait. The’re all still at Gitmo, aren’t they? Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Cut the 1.4 billion missile defense program
Spent 1.4 trillion on pet Obama programs. Now that’s change I can believe in.

ECONOMY
• Authorized the US auto industry rescue plan
Washington-ese for “stole private companies from their owners and divided them among Obama cronies.” Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Housing rescue plan
Another great plan. Housing market stays in the toilet despite more foreclosures than ever. Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Authorized a $789 billion economic stimulus plan (2009)
Do you have a job? Does your neighbor? Now that’s change I can believe in.

TAXES
• Signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which provides small tax cuts for 95% of “working families,” 12 new jobs, and huge added debt for future tax payers.
The tax cuts were tiny and will be recovered just as soon as the earlier “Bush tax cuts” sunset. Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Convened an advisory board that is looking into simplifying the tax code
Is it simpler yet? Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Proposed doubling the child tax credit
Do you have twice as many kids yet? That’ll double your credit. Now that’s change I can believe in.





No Cupcakes in Your School

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Google™ has about 2,090,000 results for a search on cupcakes and school.

A Michigan elementary school has banned the classroom tradition of celebrating a child’s birthday with cupcakes.

The interestingly spelled Syndee Malek, principal at the South Redford elementary school, insists that birthdays be honored with “healthy foods.”

Schools, the first bastion of fat-kids-with-high-self-esteem over performance, have had gravy on the French fries instead of vegetables and soda machines in the halls for more than a generation. Now, in 2010, the same schools promote student nutrition and fitness. Lunch at Ms. Malek’s school is very different from most schools. Nothing is fried, hot dogs are made with turkey, and she thinks the kids love the fresh fruit and vegetable bar.

Cupcakes have a nutritiously terrible ingredient list: all purpose flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda, a teaspoon of salt, some shortening, water, eggs, and milk. Chocolate cupcakes add a little vanilla and some melted, unsweetened, baking chocolate. For comparison, Hard Do Bread, a popular artisan bread sold in West Indian stores, has all purpose flour, white sugar, water, salt, vegetable oil and margarine, and yeast. Pasta has all purpose flour, baking powder, a teaspoon of salt, some butter or shortening, and eggs.

Cupcakes also have a long and momentous history. In 18th Century France, for example, Marie Antoinette was permanently enjoined from bringing them to school for having the audacity to tell the school administrators, “Let them eat cupcakes.”

Another Internet search turned up list after list of the significant benefits of cupcakes. Cupcakes apparently cure AIDS, arthritis, and autism. They alleviate eczema and emphysema. Certain special recipes ameliorate hair loss and headaches. They mend Parkinson’s disease by flushing toxic metals from the body. All cupcakes palliate stuttering. They sweat out viral and yeast infections. And, perhaps most important, they rectify low SAT scores.

My handy Roget’s Thesaurus shows us that cupcake also stands in for any number of terms of endearment for the fairer sex: angel, babe, bathing beauty, beauty queen, broad, bunny, centerfold, chick, cover girl, cutie, cutie-pie, doll, dollface, dream girl, dreamboat, fox, glamor girl, good-looking woman, honey, hot dish, hot number, peach, pin-up, raving beauty, sex bunny, sex kitten, sex pot, and even tomato.

Perhaps they have been banned out of political correctness after all.

Whatever the benefit, whatever the reason, you still can’t bake cupcakes to send to school with your kids for their birthdays anymore.

For the record, I could have expanded this to 1,000 words or trimmed it to 100. Moderation in all things is important, so it is just 400.





I Can’t Be Arsed

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I don’t usually use George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” in public and rarely write them.

Mr. Carlin’s original words are what we now call “vulgar slang,” seven nouns, two of which often stand as verbs. Two excretory functions, four that denigrate, two action terms, and one that is every boy’s favorite body part. I’ve never been fond of bleep-censoring but it is still used by American network broadcasters to titillate us.

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
–Mark Twain

Although Twain pretended he did not have a typewriter, he was a pretty smart feller. The modifiers we use in writing can take away from the message. That doesn’t stop us from specially crafting flowery, robust, descriptive text.

Some simply avoid the “dirty words” by substituting clean ones.

Liza Arden has said she “couldn’t be arsed” at work more than a few times this week. Ms. Arden is an engineer and no relation to the cosmetics conglomerate. Her cow orkers were unmoved by her phrasing which surprised her and sent me on this flight of fancy. Thanks to PBS and the Internet, there are probably few British substitutes for bothered that we haven’t heard before.

Substitutes? Google offers about 210,000 results for alternate swear words.

Bleep and fweep and meep and yeep are popular.
RedDwarf adopted smeg as an all purpose curse.
The movie peeps use airhead for rectally enhanced individuals.
Freak (and the ever popular freak off) explain themselves.

As Andy Rooney might say, “Gosh is for people who don’t believe in heck. Who the frell do they think they are?”

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports on “Y U Luv Texts, H8 Calls.” Teens send 3,339 texts a month. Adults, just 323 per month. Me? I get two or three incoming texts in a busy month and those are usually mistakes.

Although Ms. Arden calls me a Luddite, that’s not because I cannot text.

“Yeah, right,” she said. “You’re too cheap to buy a data plan.”

Texters started abbreviating to save space and stay under SMS limits or to encode the looming presence of authority (LTTIC). Unlimited text plans have largely eliminated the need for brevity but typing on a micro keyboard is still typing on a micro keyboard.

I don’t text because I see brevity, misspelling, malaprops, and corruption replacing the richness of language. And I hate the tiny keyboard, not to mention picking out letters on a phone keypad.

“I sooo no ur thinking about me. So I thot I wud say hi! LH6”
“My luser cat did the CRZest thing. Off to vet.”
“Orf to home garden sho. I luv U. TBL”

DQMOT: I think the Brits do this better than we do but sooner or later it’s so satisfying just to have a good fuck.





We Fed Them KOOK a COLA but They Drank the KoolAid

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“It’s the economy, stupid!”

We’re back! There is no inflation. The Cost of Living has not risen yet again and seniors get stiffed for the second year in a row. I wrote this column in April but there have been developments:

The Associated Press reports that “the government is expected to announce this week that more than 58 million Social Security recipients will go through another year without an increase in monthly benefits.

“It would mark only the second year without an increase since automatic adjustments for inflation were adopted in 1975. The first year was this year.

“Based on inflation so far this year, the trustees who oversee Social Security project there will be no cost of living adjustment for 2011.”

Cost of living is by definition the cost of maintaining a certain living standard.

Employment contracts, pension benefits, and government payments such as your Social Security check can be tied to a cost-of-living index, typically to the CPI or “Consumer Price Index.” Federal law requires the Social Security Administration to base its Cost of Living Adjustment on the consumer price index changes in the third quarter of each year (July, August and September) with the same quarter in the previous year. Remember that.

The CPI reports the average price of a lot of stuff — what is called a constant “market basket of goods and services” — purchased by average households. According to Bloomberg Business News, the CPI wonks add up and average the prices of 95,000 items from 22,000 stores and 35,000 rental units. Those prices are weighted by assuming that you distribute your spending along strict percentages. Housing: 41.4%, Food and Beverage: 17.4%, Transport: 17.0%, Medical Care: 6.9%, Other: 6.9%, Apparel: 6.0%, and Entertainment: 4.4%. Taxes are exempt from the CPI totals so when your property tax or sales tax or income tax or ObamaCare health tax or gasoline tax or telecommunications tax or blue cheese tax rises, it doesn’t actually cost you any extra.

In calculating the CPI, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a formula that reflects the fact that consumers shift their purchases toward products that have fallen in relative price. Although this substitution game means the BLS reduces what we pay by “living with” store brands instead of name brands, BLS says my analysis is incorrect. Their objective “is to calculate the change in the amount consumers need to spend to maintain a constant level of satisfaction.” As long as the BLS gets to define “satisfaction.”

Where, oh where is Mick when we need him?

The Social Security Administration writes, “Since 1975, Social Security’s general benefit increases have been based on increases in the cost of living, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. We call such increases Cost-Of-Living Adjustments, or COLAs. Because there has been a decline in the Consumer Price Index, there will be no COLA payable in 2010.” Or 2011.

Did your cost of living go down?

  • Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup costs between 80 cents and $1.29 per can in most markets today. Do you remember when it was 40 cents? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
  • A five-pound bag of flour costs about $2.49 in most markets today. Do you remember when it was a buck? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
  • Gasoline prices dropped in the third quarter but its cost is flying upwards again; it will be over $3 before I get back to Florida this year. Do you remember when it was $0.999? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
  • According to USAToday, health insurance premiums cost about $13,375 per annum in 2009. (And despite the new law, insurers say they do not have to cover kids with pre-existing conditions.) Do you remember when a family policy cost $2,500? I do. But your premiums will still go up. And, of course, the Cost of Living has declined.
  • Milk costs between $3.50 and $4 per gallon in most markets. Do you remember when it was $1.75? Or $1? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
  • Property taxes on the Vermont house are $3,869.96 and $3,892.26 on the Florida house this year. Do you remember when they were each $900? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.

The AP report continued, The stagnant Cost of Living Adjustment is “not seen as good news for Democrats as they defend their congressional majorities in next month’s elections.

“Last fall a dozen Democrats joined Senate Republicans to block an effort to provide a bonus payment to Social Security recipients to make up for the lack of a COLA this year.”

I wish stuff didn’t cost so much but even more I wish our “leaders” didn’t lie to us about stuff costing so much. Oddly, I still cannot vote myself a raise.

Bob reminded us last time this appeared that “taxes don’t go into the CPI” so I updated the list to include property taxes. I didn’t include the little increases in government programs “recovery” on the phone bill or the increasing number of cities and towns implementing local sales tax “options.”

44 million Americans subsist below the poverty line because the cost of things we buy has skyrocketed past our incomes. Guess how many of those Americans depend on Social Security?

It is likely that Medicare Part B premiums will remain frozen at last year’s levels but premiums for Medicare Part D, the prescription drug program, will rise.

Federal law requires that the Cost of Living Adjustment be based on the CPI changes in the third quarter of last year to the third quarter of this year. Well, Ollie, some of the items in the CPI haven’t changed much, so seniors are now behind the same eight ball as they were last year.

Except their taxes, insurance premiums, drugs, heating oil, and cable TV subscriptions are all going to cost more.

Good thing there is a sale on cat food down to Price Chopper, isn’t it? Mmmm. Cat food.