Taking Stock (August 17, 2009)

Posted in Society on August 17, 2009 by e-commentary.org

Was it a self-absorbed fête of sex, drugs and rock and roll or a selfless gathering celebrating peace, love and Woodstock?  Perhaps a mix of both.  The celebration could have started with a nod and a moment of silence to acknowledge the discipline and sacrifice of the parents who made all the spare time and change to fund the event possible.  Great and enduring sounds.

There did seem to be some possibility and promise of change and improvement.  Perhaps one had to be young and naïve to believe that humans could change and improve and change and improve society.  However, the stubborn limits that nature fixes for human conduct have not changed or improved.

If time will tell, time has not told an inspiring tale.  The Greatest Generation still seems to be a greater generation.  Both generations have worked together to mire the Republic in the current economic and spiritual maelstrom.

Witnessing the festival from afar was a very small part but a part nonetheless in at least one person’s quest to question and reject the arrogance, hypocrisy, dishonesty, and materialism of adult society.  And yet a two-inch repp tie and a buttoned-down shirt remain more appealing than a ripped tie-dyed tee shirt.

Bumper stickers of the week:

No matter how things stay the same, they stay the same.

The Age of Aquarius?

Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional.  Fulfill your duties, but don’t exercise the option.

Leave a comment »

Less Government Regulation Series: Cell Phones And Driving (August 10, 2009)

Posted in Cell Phones, Less Government Regulation Series on August 10, 2009 by e-commentary.org

Her left hand skillfully dangled a glowing butt just outside the window at such an angle that the slipstream did not extinguish it.  Her right hand clutched a cup of java, an eyeliner brush and the cell phone.  Her eyes appeared glued to the rear view mirror and to the task of gluing plaster to her eye lashes.  All the while negotiating a civilian urban assault vehicle at just under 35 miles an hour while merging into or possibly colliding with traffic.  Unless her knees had fingers, who was at the wheel of the four wheeled beast?  She managed to muster an outwardly friendly smile and another hand to wave thanks to the drivers diving into the ditch and median.  Quite a performance.

Bastante; Enough.

Self interest is not acting as a governor of bad behavior.  The Feds should step in and ban all cell phone usage and texting by the driver of any vehicle on any road at any time.  If a person is caught using a cell phone, the cell phone should be confiscated immediately and be subject to forfeiture or a payment of a $500 fine to obtain its release.  Drivers will continue to eat, sleep, crochet, change diapers, hit the kids, work on crossword puzzles, perform open heart surgery, etc. while driving.  However, cell phone usage is so widespread and dangerous and so easy to detect and deter that we as a society need to ban the use of cell phones in vehicles by the driver immediately.

Bumper stickers of the week:

Hang up and drive

This morning in the interstate I looked over to my left and there was a woman in a brand new Cadillac with her face up next to her rear view mirror putting on her eyeliner.  I looked away for a couple seconds.  When I looked back she was halfway over in my lane still working on that makeup.  As a man, I do not scare easily, but she scared me so much that I dropped my electric shaver which knocked the doughnut out of my hand.  In all the confusion of trying to straighten out the car using my knees against the steering wheel, my cell phone got knocked away from my ear, which feel into the coffee between my legs, ruined the damn phone, soaked my trousers and disconnected an important call.  Damn women drivers.

Leave a comment »

Less Government Regulation Series: The Terrorist Tax Again (August 3, 2009)

Posted in Automobiles/Automobile Industry, Energy, Gas/Fossil Fuel, Less Government Regulation Series, Taxation, The "Terrorist Tax" on August 3, 2009 by e-commentary.org

July, 2008:   Gas:   over $4 a gallon   Toyota Prius Hybrid Car:  $3000 over MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price) and a line of buyers occupying the showroom.

July, 2009:   Gas:   under $3 a gallon   Toyota Prius Hybrid Car:  $3000 under MSRP and a flotilla of the cars littering the car lot.

The Volkswagen tdi (turbo diesel injected) cars followed the same price arc in response to the price of diesel.

The market should maintain its central role in American society.  Embrace it.  Taxing gasoline/diesel at a “quarter a quarter” per gallon contemplates a twenty-five cent ($.25) increase in the tax on fuel each financial quarter (90 days).  [See the “e-ssay” dated December 18, 2006 entitled “Pass The ‘Terrorist Tax’”]  As a compromise, raise the tax twenty-five cents a year every year.  Any tax by its nature contracts the economy which in this situation is akin to the body politic sucking in its stomach a little.

Implementing the tax while the market price of fuel is low is timely and crucial.  The market is ready.  More Prius cars will be built without the government passing legislation requiring more Prius cars.  More resources will be invested creating a more improved hybrid car or a new more efficient car without further government directives to create improved and new vehicles.  Although not fundamentally a revenue-generating measure, the tax funds can fill the fisc and reduce the country’s dependence on Chinese money.  So many other positive economic changes will result without any further government action.

O’Bama must deliver a speech on the proposal as compelling as his speeches in Philadelphia and Cairo.  He can sell it.  Writing the speech would be fun.

The Cars Allowance Rebate System (CARS), the “Cash for Clunkers” Program, is a short-sighted, expensive and misdirected use of government resources and misuse of public resources.  Too much government money is being spent to spew vehicles on the road that require substantial resources to produce and consume substantial resources to use.

Bumper stickers of the week:

25 cents a quarter

Stop funding terrorists

Leave a comment »

Racing Backwards; Moving Forward? (July 27, 2009)

Posted in Race on July 27, 2009 by e-commentary.org

Using the word “stupid” often seems stupid.  O’Bama’s use of the phrase “acted stupidly” to describe the actions of the Cambridge police was neither smart nor appropriate.  However, he rebounded well and is turning the experience into something positive.

However, there is nothing black and white about it.  Blacks (and Hispanics and kids and the underclass) get harassed and detained and arrested far, far more often proportionately than Whites.  Harassment, detention and arrest are rites of passage.  When the light bar ignites on the black and white (the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor), it does not usually light up one’s life if you happen that day to be Black, Hispanic, young or an underclassman.

What really went on in Cambridge is difficult to determine.  When you lose your house keys and decide to break into a home, one hopes that a concerned neighbor will call the police and report an individual trying to break into a home.  A neighbor apparently did call.  Seems that everyone overreacted.  Many words were exchanged, few of them poetic.  Early unconfirmed reports suggest an overdose of testosterone.

We as a country handcuff and lock up far too many people.

A summit conference at the White House with a few cold beers may allow everyone to chill out.  They should discuss ways to reduce the use of handcuffs and lock up.

Bumper sticker of the week:

Silence is silver

Leave a comment »

He’s Doin’ Okay (July 20, 2009)

Posted in Economics, Health Care, O'Bama on July 20, 2009 by e-commentary.org

O’Bama ran as a moderate and is running the country as a moderate.  Six months into his first term, he’s doin’ okay.

O’Bama is trying to unwind World War III.  Those who want America constantly at war are furious.  America was once regarded as the “city upon a hill” by people and by peoples who had never heard of the notion of the “city upon a hill.”  Talk to citizens overseas.  In past years, they said that they liked individual Americans but not America.  Now they like America.  That sentiment may keep individual Americans from getting killed.

O’Bama is trying to right a wrong economy.  Neither he nor his advisors recognize how thoroughly eviscerated the economy is today.  Paul Krugman is getting a lot of air time contending that the country should spend, spend, spend, spend and spend.  The country should not and cannot continue to spend, spend, spend, spend and spend without any real or realistic goal or strategy.  The economy is far more intractable than they acknowledge.  The Depression II is inevitable.  The growing number of long-term unemployed will impact O’Bama’s employment.  The undoing of the economy could be O’Bama’s undoing.

O’Bama has a healthy attitude toward health care reform.  The cost of doing something is a concern, yet the cost of doing nothing is an even greater concern.  He has not yet brought his trademark “Change” to the challenge of global climate change.  In time, one assumes.  He does seem inclined to reform such laws as the Mining Law of 1872 which has done much to ravage the environment.  Little things are revealing.

Not a bad start, O’Bama.

(This is the 40th anniversary of mankind landing and walking on the moon.  The “space race” may have been a continuation of diplomacy using other means.  NASA followed the Biblical directive to turn military rockets into civilian space ships.  The populace watched with awe and wonder at an awesome and wonderful achievement.)

Bumper sticker of the week:

One small step . . .

Leave a comment »

McNamara (July 13, 2009)

Posted in Foreign Policy on July 13, 2009 by e-commentary.org

His last name forever will be associated with one word:  the Southeast Asia War Games.  He knew the Truth in 1965 and only had to live it.  Confronting President Johnson required superhuman and monumental strength, courage and tenacity.  McNamara could have sat down and pounded and pounded and pounded and pounded on Johnson, politely.  And he would have been pounded and pounded and pounded and pounded on by Johnson, impolitely.  The personal and professional downside to McNamara viewed in the right light is even promising; Johnson could have McNamara fired but not shot.  If Johnson had threatened to fire him, McNamara could have tendered a resignation letter.  “Bob, what’s happened to you?”  “Mister President, after consulting many others inside and outside this administration and reflecting for a considerable period of time on this matter, I became and remain convinced that our current strategy in Vietnam is counterproductive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “

That’s just not the way it is done.  He waited a generation – 30 years – until 1995 to confess his error and along the way condemned a generation to death and despair.  Fathers and mothers lost sons and daughters; brothers and sisters lost sisters and brothers; etc. lost etc.

The Best and the Brightest in America were and are really the Clever and the Connected.  “Smart” in America is too often defined as someone who can successfully lie, cheat and steal and score an estate with a helipad and stables and then a political sinecure or worse a critical post.  Success is simply about succeeding at any costs usually to someone else and almost always to society.  The profitable universities are the farm system and the training grounds.  All the gilded books and pretty poems on Truth and Beauty and Beauty and Truth that McNamara had the good fortune to ingest were just so much pulp.  The Harvard M.B.A. was a harbinger of harmful things to come.

When his avatar, Donald Rumsfeld, appeared and spouted the same message of death and violence, the nation embraced it with little reflection or reservation.  One can say with a high degree of confidence, as McNamara once prefaced his pronouncements, that the next Donald McNamara/Robert Rumsfeld is being groomed and polished for success by America’s public and private institutions as we speak.

Bumper sticker of the week:

Wrong, terribly wrong

Leave a comment »

Health Care Again (July 6, 2009)

Posted in Health Care on July 6, 2009 by e-commentary.org

America is engaged in a civil war between those who are already wounded and those who are inflicting additional pain and suffering on the injured and infirm.  Health insurance companies are the greatest contributors to the grief.  A company whose business plan is to deny all claims is not the proper entity to be reviewing and covering proper claims.  The companies are mustering their considerable resources to work from the inside to preclude and prevent a comprehensive national solution.

America is spending an increasing percentage of a decreasing gross domestic product (GDP) on health care and receiving less prevention and treatment of illness.  The constituency for national health care reform grows each day with every valid claim that is wrongfully denied.  Those who are not covered at all seek coverage.  The cost of comprehensive coverage admittedly appears capable of bankrupting the country; the cost of no and limited coverage is bankrupting the individual citizens of this country.

What happened to a single-payer system?  Although the consensus seems to be that this is not the right time for sweeping reform, it is the time.   A single-payer system is the most efficient system.

[See the “e-ssay” dated February 25, 2008 entitled “’American Medicine’ Not ‘Socialized Medicine’” and the one dated October 23, 2006 entitled “Efficient Health Care: Making American Business More Competitive.”]

Bumper stickers of the week:

Above all, do harm

–America’s health insurance companies

Press “1” to hear your claim denied in English; press “2” to hear your claim denied in Spanish; press “3” to hear your claim . . .

Eat healthy; Exercise

Leave a comment »

On Ambition: “And Then You Die” (June 29, 2009)

Posted in On [Traits/Characteristics], Society on June 29, 2009 by e-commentary.org

. . .

X     “They don’t tell you that this is what life is all about.  You work hard to get into the right preschool and then work hard to get into the right kindergarten and then work hard to get into the right grammar school and then work hard to get into the right middle school and then work hard to get into the right high school and then work hard to get into the right college and then work hard to get into the right law school and then work hard to get the right judicial clerkship and then work hard to get into the right law firm and then work hard to be a junior associate and then work hard to be a senior associate and then work hard to be a junior partner and then work hard to be a senior partner and then you work hard and then you die.”

Y     “Hardly works for me.  I’m getting out.”

. . .

_____________________________________

. . .

G     “I am happy.  What do you mean I’m not happy?”

B     “You’re not happy.”

G     “Who are you to tell me I’m not happy.”

B     “I’m me.  Reminding you that you’re not happy.”

G     “I am happy.”

B     “I once told you that I would never lie.  I never did; I never will.  I am comfortable sitting here playing Carl Rogers.  Isn’t that what you really want.”

G     “No, I want you to tell me I am happy.”

B     “You are happy.”

G     “You’re lying.”

B     “I’m lying.  Keep at least one eye on the road and look at it this way.  We don’t have to play games or maintain fronts.  Our circumstance provides me and even you with tremendous freedom and opportunity.  I am free to offer observations the last guy did not touch after what . . . some eight months. There was no percentage in him being bluntly honest with you.”

G     “Or apparently in being honest.”

B     “From what I see, there are only two of us in the car.  You only have to fool yourself and me.  I only have to fool myself and you.  That offers great promise and potential.  Late at night it may dawn on you that I simply do not care to fool me or to fool you.”

G     “Hypothetically, how could I not be happy?  Look at what I’ve done.  Look at what I’ve got.”

B     “Look at this car.  What happened to ‘Small Is Beautiful’.”

G     “This car is beautiful.”

B     “It isn’t efficient.  It isn’t small.  You abound in toys and bound from one diversion to another.  You stay busy and distracted so that you don’t have to pause and reflect.”

G     “No I don’t.  Modern life is busy.  Look at everything I have to do in a day.  You just don’t understand.  I am very successful at what I do.”

B     “You have done well and done good.  Why don’t you keep driving.”

G     “The car? Why? Where?”

B     “Anywhere, somewhere, nowhere.  Why not head West for one hour.  I’ll drive back and you can sleep.  You can saunter through the day tomorrow.  You know there was a time when it was a great joy to watch you breath while you slept.”

G     “To do what exactly?”

B     “Anything, something, nothing.  To stay up past your bedtime.”

G     “That is so irresponsible.  I have to get up early.”

B     “When you are finally honest with yourself, it may be too late.”

G     “Just who are you to tell me whether I am happy.”

B     “I’m me reminding you that you really want to be happy.  And you deserve to be happy.”

. . .

[With a nod to Montaigne’s Essais.]

Bumper stickers of the week:

She who dies with the most toys, . . .

She who dies with the most joys, . . .

Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero

Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.  Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment.  Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labor which thou takest under the sun.                                               Ecclesiastes 9, 7-9


If I had it to do over again, I would go into the office more often.


. . .

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha!  He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
He’s a man who won’t fit in.

“The Men Who Don’t Fit In”  The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses © 1940 by Robert W. Service.  (Reprinted without permission which will be sought in due course.)

Leave a comment »

Housing Revisited (June 22, 2009)

Posted in Case-Shiller/S&P Index, Depression, Economics, Greenspan, Housing, Recession on June 22, 2009 by e-commentary.org

Four years have past, four summers, with . . . the housing market continuing to deteriorate.  The cover of the June 18 – 24, 2005 edition of “The Economist” depicts a falling brick with the words “House Prices” on it and leads with an article entitled “After the fall.”  The article and earlier articles in the magazine were prescient in warning about the explosive rise and pending collapse of house prices.  In conclusion, the article notes:

“Of course, by the time American prices begin to fall, probably sometime next year [2006], they will not be Mr. Greenspan’s headache.  He will have retired and someone else will be in his job.  If weaker house prices push the economy towards recession, the awkward truth is that America’s policymakers will have much less room to manoeuvre than they did after the stock market bubble burst.  Short-term interest rates of only 3% leave less scope for cuts.  In 2000, America had a budget surplus.  Today, it has a large deficit, ruling out big tax cuts.

The whole world economy is at risk.  The IMF has warned that, just as the upswing in house prices has been a global phenomenon, so any downturn is likely to be synchronized, and thus the effects of it will be shared widely.  The housing boom was fun while it lasted, but the biggest increase in wealth in history was largely an illusion.”

In the last few weeks, when someone applied for a building permit to construct a 12 by 16 foot shed, too many commentators were ready to proclaim the housing crash ended.  Few seem to realize that the housing market is just starting to crash.  The infection is now impacting families with reasonable fixed-rate 30-year mortgages and long-term ties to their communities who are losing their jobs and will soon lose their homes.

Until housing prices drop to at least the extrapolated historical levels of a bench mark such as the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, the decline in prices will continue.  The Federal Funds Rate is zero which eliminates the primary tool to shape economic events.  The Fed is creating other gimmicks to stimulate the economy that are unwise, unwarranted and unfounded in law.  More later.

Bumper stickers of the week:

Still pushing hard on a string

Everything that goes down does not necessarily go up

Leave a comment »

Less Government Regulation Series: Motorcycle Helmets (June 15, 2009)

Posted in Less Government Regulation Series, Society on June 15, 2009 by e-commentary.org

There is something invigorating about open cockpit flying even if only in two dimensions.  Hitting the open road is liberating and rewarding; hitting the open road is also debilitating and punishing.  Donning a “brain bucket” or “skid lid” should be as natural and normal as wearing one’s Schott or Langlitz jacket.

Too many young guys transition in a few seconds from tandem wheels fore and aft underneath them to parallel wheels port and starboard on their sides.  So many of those who are injured are young and reckless and unaware of their mortality or crippled mortality.  We need them to be active in our society.  We need them to ride a motorcycle not roll a wheel chair.

Those who actually ride a chrome pony seem to have more credibility on the subject.  Those who care for those who are injured on motorcycles also have a say and some insight.  Talk, really talk, to the kids who have been mangled and burrow beneath and beyond the macho and the veiled rationalizations and defenses.

Should it be an individual choice?  Sure would like it to be an individual choice.  Too many people who don’t have the best judgment or even a handle on their own affairs are quick to tell others what to do and how to live.

Regulation of motorcycle helmets is done at the state level.  There are many different laws.  Should there be federal regulations?  There are a lot of federal regulations.  If I were God for a day:  The filthy, nasty, officious State should require everyone to wear a motorcycle helmet as a matter of law.  And I do hate to be told what to do.

The majority of motorcyclists who would not release the clutch lever without first sporting a helmet are rationally and passionately opposed to mandatory helmet laws.

Bumper stickers of the week:

Watch for motorcycles

Ride to live; Live to ride

Live

Leave a comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »