Tuesday Twaddle: Prostitutes

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 by Dick.

Florida hopes to roll the dice.

Florida state Senate sponsor Ellyn Bogdanoff (R-Fort Lauderdale) and state House sponsor Erik Fresen (R-Miami) promise thousands of jobs and the millions of dollars if we just allow “destination resort casinos” in Florida. Their massive bill will open the state to mega-casinos in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Hillsborough Counties. A Florida Senate committee already snuck in a preliminary vote yesterday; seven voted in favor and three voted against. The entire Legislature will take up the landmark proposal during the 60-day session that begins today.

The state would create a new Gaming Control Czar to administer and license the casino resorts and regulate the parimutuels and card rooms.

“Our goal is a significant reduction in gaming,” Rep. Fresen said.

Here in Florida we have hundreds of ways to extract a tax on people who can’t do math, from arbitrage betting, bingo parlors (and church basements), carnival games, casinos, dog and horse tracks and other parimutuels, electronic “gaming,” the Florida Lottery itself with Lotto, MegaMoney, PowerBall, and Wheel of Fortune (the state even has email and text “alerts,” smartphone apps, podcasts, and an RSS feed), sports betting, Texas hold’em tournies, and wee wee wee all the way home.

“Our goal is a significant reduction in gaming,” Rep. Fresen said.

I want some of what he’s smoking.

If you think the guy running numbers out of the bodega is a crook … the guys in Tallahassee are the kingpins in a vast criminal enterprise.

Or prostitutes.

Posted in Throw Da Bums Out, Politics & News, Random Access | 2 Comments »

COLA Wars

Monday, January 9, 2012 by Dick.

The cost of living increased 3.6 percent.

My friend Dino Russell believes his gay Latino postal carrier and a polygamous triad who live for free in the Chicago Housing Authority’s Stateway Gardens public housing determine the Consumer Price Index rather than the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the Department of Labor (CHA is the largest owner of rental housing in the city of Chicago, providing homes to more than 50,000 families and individuals). By law, the CPI-W is the official measure used by the Social Security Administration and a number of other agencies to calculate COLAs.

Cool. There is also a Cola Collection set on Flickr.

And Cola Collectible Trains on choochoocharleys.

The cost of living increased 3.6 percent.

On Dec 19, 2001, I bought 97.4 gallons of fuel oil for $1.079/gallon. With the three cent per gallon discount for paying within 10 days, it cost me $102.17.

In 2005, our spring fill up cost almost half again as much per gallon. We needed just 95.8 gallons which cost $1.519 per gallon. With the same three cent per gallon discount, the total bill was $142.65. Seeing a trend?

That three cent discount had disappeared in 2009, so 95.2 gallons at $1.950/gal cost $185.64. That’s already almost double the 2001 cost. It doesn’t get any better.

Our most recent automatic fill up was in November when the truck brought 99.5 gallons. This time, after two years of calculations that the Cost Of Living had not changed, that oil cost $3.720/gal so the total bill was $370.14

Wow. The price of heating the house quadrupled in a decade. Even worse, the price of heating the house doubled in just the two years Uncle Sam says there was no increase in the cost of living. (For the record, AARP calculated that New England consumers age 65+ who heated with oil spent $2,917 on it last winter, up from $2,399 the winter before — those same households with incomes under $20,000 will spend at least 20 percent of household income on heating costs).

“Legislation enacted in 1973 provides for cost-of-living adjustments, or COLAs. With COLAs, Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits keep pace with inflation.“

The cost of living increased 3.6 percent.

Fuel oil (and gasoline) are not the only commodities that have increased in price. Walgreens has sold the Madam brand of mandarin oranges and the Geisha brand of canned mushrooms for more than a decade. Until last year, the common sale on both was 50 cents/can. Now each costs fifty-nine cents per can, an 18-percent increase.

The cost of living increased 3.6 percent.

I don’t believe our government lies to us.

I do believe Dino was right and that the gay Latino postal carrier and the polygamous triad studied arithmetic at the Business University New College Of Natural Science and Math. That esteemed institution, with campuses in Chicago and in the District of Columbia, developed both the Uranus-based numbering system and the radical departure of teaching modern math concepts with colors.

The seventh planet from the Sun is the third-largest planet by diameter, has fourth-largest mass, and is considered one of the “ice giants” of the Solar System. Masses are increased and time slows there, requiring a more universal numerology. The Business University New College Of stuff introduced this system in 1960 and developed a modern math curricula that showed how 2+4=purple at about the same time.

And that is why the cost of living increased just 3.6 percent.

Posted in What? Are They Nuts?, Throw Da Bums Out, Newspaper "Science", Politics & News, Random Access | 3 Comments »

Persembe Praises

Thursday, December 22, 2011 by Dick.

2%. That’s the amount straight off the top of the (soon-to-be-bankrupt) Social Security “trust” fund.

Everybody in Washington wants to extend a tax cut that is a little good for your wallet today, a lot bad for your Social Security tomorrow. Nobody in Washington can get it together to extend that tax cut that is a little good for your wallet today, a lot bad for your Social Security tomorrow.

Where have I heard this before?

Why am praising these mutts? Because Congress shows us over and over and over again how good they are at this stuff. Gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling about throwing ‘em all out, now doesn’t it? Even the 2% of them who might know what they are doing.

Posted in Throw Da Bums Out, Dick's Dumps | 3 Comments »

Persembe Peeves

Thursday, November 10, 2011 by Dick.

No new taxes, right? The acting administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced a new federal tax of 15 cents per tree on Christmas Trees to pay for a new Christmas Tree Promotion Board. Tree farmers sell about 25-30 million real Christmas trees in the U.S. each year

Radio guy said we should call our Congress Critter and Senators. I would but they are all ultra liberal drinkers of the Obama Kool-Aid.

The Board will run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry … [to] enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States.”

THREE POINT SEVEN FIVE MILLION DOLLARS.

I guess we should thank our lucky stars it isn’t $3.75 Billion.

Posted in Taxed Again, Throw Da Bums Out, Dick's Dumps | 5 Comments »

Lie to Me

Monday, October 31, 2011 by Dick.

Choosy mothers may not choose Jif any more ¹ .

The price Jif is going up by more than FORTY percent today, according to published reports.

Social Security checks are going up by less than FOUR percent, according to published reports.

Decades before she collected Social Security, my (very choosy) mom branded us a Skippy Peanut Butter household. After all Jif is just creamed peanuts in a jar but Skippy is peanutbutter.com.

Monthly Social Security for more than 60 million Americans will increase by 3.6 percent starting with checks issued January 1, 2012 (the Supplemental Security Income increase starts with checks issued December 31 of this year).

The San Antonio Express News reported that “the Cost of Living Adjustment ensures that the purchasing power of Social Security and SSI benefits is not eroded by inflation. It is based on the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) from the third quarter of the last year a COLA was determined to the third quarter of the current year. If there is no increase, there can be no COLA. There was no COLA in 2010 and 2011 because the CPI-W, as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor, for those years did not increase above the level of the third quarter of 2008, the last year a COLA was determined.”

Some recipients, may see their Social Security partially or completely eaten by the rising Medicare premiums.

Is Lie to Me Real?

Lie to Me was a Fox television series that spanned three seasons from 2009 into 2011. The show centered on human lie detection based on applied psychology including interpreting microexpressions, a Facial Action Coding System, and body language. Lie to Me was cancelled by Fox in May but probably not because people can’t detect liars.

Nearly 80% of Americans said they do not trust the government to do what is right, according to a Pew Research Center public opinion survey released in 2010. It was the highest level of distrust of Washington in half a century.

That was 2010.

A New York Times and CBS poll released last week shows now, just 18 months later, 89% of Americans do not trust government to do the right thing and 74% of us say that we believe the nation is on the wrong track. That’s higher than the highest level of distrust of Washington in more than 60 years.

There are plenty of partisan political reasons for discontent but I figure it is simpler than ideology.

Uncle Sam lies.

From Vietnam body counts to “I am not a crook” to “I did not have sex with that woman,” we have become lost in a misery of misstatements, mistruths, misdirections. Lies.

I don’t believe the statistics that show my cost of living has risen only 3.6% since 2008. Somebody monkeyed with the numbers. Somebody lied.

I don’t believe Harry Reid who said “It’s very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine. It’s the public-sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers,” last week while pimping a $35 billion bailout for public employee unions. Somebody monkeyed with the numbers poorly. Somebody lied.

I don’t believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming. Lots of somebodies monkeyed with the numbers to make that case. Somebody lied.

Of course it may be entirely because that well-known inventor of the Internet, Al Gore, lied to us in order to feather his own very noble but lightbulb-intense mansion.

---

Unfortunately, the result of the lies is that choosy mothers can’t afford Jif and really really choosy mothers will have to give up on Skippy for the peanut butter cookies in my Halloween basket.

Posted in Throw Da Bums Out, Society, Politics & News, Big Thoughts, Random Access | 5 Comments »

Labor Day? Really?

Monday, September 5, 2011 by Dick.

On this day named for Laborers on which we do not Work, it is worth noting that politicians do not create jobs, no matter what they say.

I think Congress should pass the President’s job package, the one he’s been talking about for weeks, the one he will announce and may even give one or two details for, on Thursday. After all, he promised!

Jay Carney, asked if Mr. Obama’s package would drop unemployment below 9%, said, “Based on, when you’re talking about economic predictions, yes. Economic analysts, economists will be able to look at this series of proposals and say that based on history, based on what we know, based on their collective expertise, that it would add to economic growth and cause an increase to job creation.”

Uh huh. Politicians do not create jobs.

Back when she was still boss in 2009, Nancy Pelosi (D - CA) wrote about the final G.R.A.F.T. Act, “This legislation will jumpstart our economy, create and save 3.5 million jobs.” She used the phrase “create jobs” or “create really really outstanding jobs” 41 times.

Uh huh. Politicians do not create jobs.

The site michigan.gov trumpeted that, “Thanks to Governor Granholm’s 21st Century Jobs Fund, this new economy is actually taking shape… The first round of awards has already provided funding to 67 companies and projects, creating thousands of jobs…”

Uh huh. Politicians do not create jobs.

Michigan is closer to the truth. Politicians give away OPM to businesses that create jobs. “OPM” is “Other People’s Money,” something politicians think they have an infinite supply of and that We the [Other] People know is running out.

It is Labor Day and 25 million Americans are still not laboring.

It is Labor Day and we are not laboring because 0 jobs were created last month. Zero. Nada. Zip. None.

It is Labor Day and we are not laboring. Politicians will create no jobs today, either, but they will walk in parades and pretend they have.

In 2009, the White House said President Obama’s stimulus plan would bring unemployment to below 8%.

Uh huh. Politicians do not create jobs.

---

This column first appeared on Monday, September 7, 2009. I have updated it slightly.
You might also enjoy last year’s Labor Day reminiscence, Milestones

Posted in Throw Da Bums Out, Politics & News, Random Access | 1 Comment »