There are three types of pulp that are used to make tissue paper: Grade 1 contains long narrow fibers from northern softwood trees, Grade 3 contains relatively short fat fibers from southern softwood trees, and Grade 4 contains even shorter fibers from hardwood trees. These three grades are mixed together to make "furnish" for the paper machines. Each grade imparts a different characteristic to the finished paper. Grade 1 provides tensile strength, the resistance of the paper to being pulled apart by two opposing forces. Grade 3 provides porosity, which translates to absorbency, and is measured by drawing air through a test sample. Grade 4 is cheap filler, which tends to reduce both tensile strength and porosity. The mix that we used to make tissue grade paper that was a component of our disposable diapers was largely Grade 3, maybe 70%. Grade 1 usually ran about 20%, and the rest was Grade 4. There are a number of ways to increase tensile strength in the finished product, one of which is to increase the percentage of Grade 1 in the mix. If your porosity is running low, you can increase the Grade 3, and if it's too high you can increase the Grade 4.
I don't know this for a fact, but to my experienced hands, toilet paper seems to have less tensile strength and more porosity than the tissue we used to make at our paper mill. This leads me to believe that they use a lot of Grade 3 to make it. Southern softwoods are plantation grown in the southeastern U.S. They are planted in rows, the whole stand is harvested at the same time, and a new crop is planted right in behind the old one. Grade 4 is produced from low quality, relatively fast growing hardwood trees like Aspen. Grade 1 is mostly wild grown Canadian spruce, a tree that produces relatively low grade lumber compared to pine or Douglas fir. While it might be possible to over harvest Canadian spruce, this is the first I ever heard of anybody actually doing it.
Paper is highly recyclable, but it degrades somewhat in the process, so high grade paper can be made into a lower grade, but not the other way around. Tissue can be made from other tissue, writing paper, milk cartons, paper plates, paper cups, but not from newspaper or brown paper bags. Recycled paper can be mixed with virgin fiber to achieve most required characteristics, so it's not a question of either-or. The same with bamboo shoots, cotton linters, old rags, and anything else that contains cellulose fibers. I think the determining factors are cost and availability. Procter & Gamble originally got into the paper business to use up all the cotton linter fiber that they were generating by producing cotton seed oil. It worked so well for them that they were using up the cotton waste faster than they were generating it, so they started buying trees.
Three rolls per week sounds about right, I don't know how Old Dog gets by with less than that. Single ply tissue is not just cheap, it's the only kind you can use if you have a septic tank and drain field. You don't want to flush facial tissue either because it has "wet strength" and takes forever to break down.
Thursday, February 28, 2019
Flushed away
Why don't we sing this song all together...
Okay, is Uncle Ken having flashbacks to the late 60s? Not one of the Stones' best albums but still, a treat to see it mentioned. It's so very lonely, you're two thousand light years from home.
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Unless I missed something, it's safe to say that machine politics is dead in Chicago. The next mayor, regardless of who wins the runoff election, will be a black woman and I didn't see that coming at all. I didn't expect the supposedly well connected and well-heeled white guys to be shut out so completely. But as a wise man once said, "Politics ain't beanbag," and I'll have to review what the local pundits have been saying.
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No deals in Hanoi this week as Trump walks away from the table, still spinning a tale of cautious optimism. Kim says one thing, Trump says another, and everyone shakes their heads in amazement at this display of diplomacy.
Meanwhile, Cohen continues to blab away and whether or not he is telling the truth makes no difference to me because it's entertaining as hell, as are the responses from those on both sides of the issues. I hope that there is documentation for the assertions being made otherwise it will be a stalemate with nothing being proven. One guy's word against another's will get us nowhere but there are still plenty of other guys we haven't heard from yet, like Felix Sater. He might have something interesting to say as these stories keep unfolding.
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Fake news has reached the bathroom. There was a recent article about the threat to Canadian forests by the US demand for plush toilet paper and it is claimed that the average US consumer uses three rolls of toilet paper per week. That number sounds insane to me; I use the cheap stuff, single-ply, and a roll easily lasts a few weeks, being used also as Kleenex and wiping up small spills and such. I don't keep track of how much TP I buy but it's always a single roll, and not that often. I was wondering if Mr. Beagles, with his paper mill experience all those years ago, had any industry insights about TP consumption in the US. Jeez, if the discussion isn't about one kind of asshole it's about another kind. What a world we live in.
Okay, is Uncle Ken having flashbacks to the late 60s? Not one of the Stones' best albums but still, a treat to see it mentioned. It's so very lonely, you're two thousand light years from home.
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Unless I missed something, it's safe to say that machine politics is dead in Chicago. The next mayor, regardless of who wins the runoff election, will be a black woman and I didn't see that coming at all. I didn't expect the supposedly well connected and well-heeled white guys to be shut out so completely. But as a wise man once said, "Politics ain't beanbag," and I'll have to review what the local pundits have been saying.
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No deals in Hanoi this week as Trump walks away from the table, still spinning a tale of cautious optimism. Kim says one thing, Trump says another, and everyone shakes their heads in amazement at this display of diplomacy.
Meanwhile, Cohen continues to blab away and whether or not he is telling the truth makes no difference to me because it's entertaining as hell, as are the responses from those on both sides of the issues. I hope that there is documentation for the assertions being made otherwise it will be a stalemate with nothing being proven. One guy's word against another's will get us nowhere but there are still plenty of other guys we haven't heard from yet, like Felix Sater. He might have something interesting to say as these stories keep unfolding.
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Fake news has reached the bathroom. There was a recent article about the threat to Canadian forests by the US demand for plush toilet paper and it is claimed that the average US consumer uses three rolls of toilet paper per week. That number sounds insane to me; I use the cheap stuff, single-ply, and a roll easily lasts a few weeks, being used also as Kleenex and wiping up small spills and such. I don't keep track of how much TP I buy but it's always a single roll, and not that often. I was wondering if Mr. Beagles, with his paper mill experience all those years ago, had any industry insights about TP consumption in the US. Jeez, if the discussion isn't about one kind of asshole it's about another kind. What a world we live in.
Paladin rides again
Our mayoral elections have been non-partisan for maybe the last twenty years. Well it made no sense to have a meaningless republican primary and afterwards a general election where everybody knew the democrat would win. There was a self-made Black businessman and an ex-cop who might have been republicanish, but the rest were dems the range being from connected to outsider.
Lori got my vote as an outsider but now she is going to have to run against a big insider and she's going to have to go somewhere to get the dough, so we'll see how it goes.
I think the reason we had so many candidates is that the current mayor Rahm dropped out at the last minute without anointing anybody which left a huge vacuum and a lot of people said what the hell.
Whitewater never got the Gate appellation, it was just Whitewater. I wouldn't say it came to nothing, Clinton did get impeached and came close to being convicted and losing the presidency in the Senate. The issue the reps used to impeach were perjury and obstruction of justice. I don't think anybody, besides that 35% Ever Trumpers, believe the present prez hasn't done both things in spades.
Newt and his successor both fell due to their own martial indiscretions during the Clinton impeachment and the people were so pissed off that Bill got a big boost in the polls. That's one reason I differ with the base in impeachment. If you can't kill the king, don't try to.
As the reps pointed out maybe a thousand times Cohen is a convicted liar, but then he was being disagreed with by Stone and Trump, also two very big prevaricators, You know with those reps who spent most of their time saying what a very bad man Cohen is, I'm surprised that nobody asked the question, if he is so bad, why did Trump, the smartest man ever to be president (many experts say so), choose him for his personal attorney and keep him on for ten years.
I certainly didn't like the guy when he was lying for Trump, but now that he is on the other side he doesn't seem so bad. Well anybody being insulted by the howling jackals of the rep questioners is bound to attract a little sympathy. I never watched Palidan but I understand that he was like a gun for hire, and maybe there is some feudal loyalty in that, in that you expect the guy you give your loyalty to to not have your back if you get into trouble. You certainly don't expect him to offer you up on a silver platter, so maybe there is something to be seen in a guy who wants vengeance for the breaking feudal rules.
Or maybe he is just trying to save what he can of his skin. In any case the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Lori got my vote as an outsider but now she is going to have to run against a big insider and she's going to have to go somewhere to get the dough, so we'll see how it goes.
I think the reason we had so many candidates is that the current mayor Rahm dropped out at the last minute without anointing anybody which left a huge vacuum and a lot of people said what the hell.
Whitewater never got the Gate appellation, it was just Whitewater. I wouldn't say it came to nothing, Clinton did get impeached and came close to being convicted and losing the presidency in the Senate. The issue the reps used to impeach were perjury and obstruction of justice. I don't think anybody, besides that 35% Ever Trumpers, believe the present prez hasn't done both things in spades.
Newt and his successor both fell due to their own martial indiscretions during the Clinton impeachment and the people were so pissed off that Bill got a big boost in the polls. That's one reason I differ with the base in impeachment. If you can't kill the king, don't try to.
As the reps pointed out maybe a thousand times Cohen is a convicted liar, but then he was being disagreed with by Stone and Trump, also two very big prevaricators, You know with those reps who spent most of their time saying what a very bad man Cohen is, I'm surprised that nobody asked the question, if he is so bad, why did Trump, the smartest man ever to be president (many experts say so), choose him for his personal attorney and keep him on for ten years.
I certainly didn't like the guy when he was lying for Trump, but now that he is on the other side he doesn't seem so bad. Well anybody being insulted by the howling jackals of the rep questioners is bound to attract a little sympathy. I never watched Palidan but I understand that he was like a gun for hire, and maybe there is some feudal loyalty in that, in that you expect the guy you give your loyalty to to not have your back if you get into trouble. You certainly don't expect him to offer you up on a silver platter, so maybe there is something to be seen in a guy who wants vengeance for the breaking feudal rules.
Or maybe he is just trying to save what he can of his skin. In any case the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Why So Many?
Why were there so many candidates in the recent Chicago election? Was it a primary or what? Cheboygan city elections are non-partisan, but I didn't think that Chicago's were. We don't have run-offs in Michigan, if nobody gets a majority the guy with the plurality is the winner, but that's only in the primaries and the non-partisans. I don't remember any partisan election where neither major party candidate got a majority. Other than the city, the only non-partisans we have are the judges, but they're not really non-partisan. Each judicial candidate is nominated by a party, but the party's names aren't listed on the ballot. I don't know why, but that's the way it is.
I just read a couple articles on my news app about the Cohen testimony. As one of them put it, "There was lots of smoke but no gun." I still don't see what all the fuss is about. It reminds me of when they tried to pin some kind of real estate scam on the Clintons, I think they called it "Whitewater Gate", or something like that. I seem to remember that it went on for years, but nothing ever came of it.
We will be out of firewood within the next 24 hours and our winter is far from over. Although this winter has been a little colder than average, it hasn't been a record breaker so far. The problem is that I didn't put up enough wood for the season, time just got away from me. Anything green that I cut now won't be dry enough to burn until next season. I know where there is some dead stuff, but it's widely scattered about the property and hard to get at this time of year. It would be a better use of my time to start working on next year's supply, but I'm way behind on that effort as well. I don't know where the time goes anymore. Damn Einstein!
I just read a couple articles on my news app about the Cohen testimony. As one of them put it, "There was lots of smoke but no gun." I still don't see what all the fuss is about. It reminds me of when they tried to pin some kind of real estate scam on the Clintons, I think they called it "Whitewater Gate", or something like that. I seem to remember that it went on for years, but nothing ever came of it.
We will be out of firewood within the next 24 hours and our winter is far from over. Although this winter has been a little colder than average, it hasn't been a record breaker so far. The problem is that I didn't put up enough wood for the season, time just got away from me. Anything green that I cut now won't be dry enough to burn until next season. I know where there is some dead stuff, but it's widely scattered about the property and hard to get at this time of year. It would be a better use of my time to start working on next year's supply, but I'm way behind on that effort as well. I don't know where the time goes anymore. Damn Einstein!
The votes are in Gennelmens
I didn't remember if the polls closed at six or seven so I dropped in at my polling place to inquire, While there I discreetly asked about those ballots that went into the metal cabinet, and I was assured that they had been counted and perhaps they had been because my candidate, Lori Lightfoot, won. Well actually she took 17%, Preckwinkle the reformer/boss took 16% and Bill Daley (yar mayor not prez, my bad) had to concede after pulling in 15%. Now there will be a runoff between the two top vote-getters which 67% of the people voted against.
Richard I was commonly called a crook, but it wasn't technically true. While he was surrounded by cronies who stole rampantly he never partook himself, living in that Bridgeport bungalow the whole of his life. Richard II came in with the patina of a reformer (Actually so had his dad), and he was better on diversity (The story about Richard I was that he considered eleven Irishmen and a Swede diversity), not so hot on corruption and deadly afraid of ever raising taxes, why Chicago is in such a hole right now. The worst thing he did was sell off revenue from parking tickets so that the city will not receive that money for like a hundred years.
Trump and Sung are engaging in some mild petting right now, the real makeout session will be tomorrow. It hasn't gotten much coverage because nobody expects much to come of it except for some blather and some tear-stained hankies waving as they depart. The real story is Cohen's testimony. Yesterday's was behind closed doors but today's will be in front of preening and battling congressmen, a far more interesting show than the goings-on in Hanoi.
Oh yeah Pakistan and India, two nuclear powers who hate each other's guts now exchanging gunfire. Nothing happening here, move along.
Practically speaking a prez can be impeached for whatever the house decides it wants to impeach over, but with the reps holding the senate even if they discover that he and Putin, holding hands, went on a shooting spree down Fifth Avenue the senate will never convict. The jury is still out on whether or not a sitting prez can be prosecuted, probably nothing happening on that front before 2020.
Speaking of 2020 I was not pleased to hear some embittered Hillaryites carping about Bernie flying on a private jet while campaigning for her. These petty grudges do not become my ilk. As the Rolling Stones sang fifty years ago:
Richard I was commonly called a crook, but it wasn't technically true. While he was surrounded by cronies who stole rampantly he never partook himself, living in that Bridgeport bungalow the whole of his life. Richard II came in with the patina of a reformer (Actually so had his dad), and he was better on diversity (The story about Richard I was that he considered eleven Irishmen and a Swede diversity), not so hot on corruption and deadly afraid of ever raising taxes, why Chicago is in such a hole right now. The worst thing he did was sell off revenue from parking tickets so that the city will not receive that money for like a hundred years.
Trump and Sung are engaging in some mild petting right now, the real makeout session will be tomorrow. It hasn't gotten much coverage because nobody expects much to come of it except for some blather and some tear-stained hankies waving as they depart. The real story is Cohen's testimony. Yesterday's was behind closed doors but today's will be in front of preening and battling congressmen, a far more interesting show than the goings-on in Hanoi.
Oh yeah Pakistan and India, two nuclear powers who hate each other's guts now exchanging gunfire. Nothing happening here, move along.
Practically speaking a prez can be impeached for whatever the house decides it wants to impeach over, but with the reps holding the senate even if they discover that he and Putin, holding hands, went on a shooting spree down Fifth Avenue the senate will never convict. The jury is still out on whether or not a sitting prez can be prosecuted, probably nothing happening on that front before 2020.
Speaking of 2020 I was not pleased to hear some embittered Hillaryites carping about Bernie flying on a private jet while campaigning for her. These petty grudges do not become my ilk. As the Rolling Stones sang fifty years ago:
Why don't we sing this song all together
Open our heads let the pictures come
And if we close all our eyes together
Then we will see where we all come from
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
It's Tomorrow Already
I'm pretty sure that it's tomorrow already in Hanoi, so anything that happens there today, hasn't happened yet from our perspective. Since electronic communication travels with the speed of light, we could possibly hear about it before it happens, which is kind of spooky. I think something like that has already happened back in the 19th Century when the volcano Krakatoa blew its top.
That last storm was almost certainly not our final thrashing from Old Man Winter. Snowstorms in April are unusual, but not unheard of, around here. Regardless, we've still got March to get through, and any kind of weather can happen in March. I remember my first visit to Cheboygan in 1967, it was the 15th of March, the temp was 15 below zero at midnight, and there was about three feet of old snow on the ground. The previous day, I had helped my father in Palos Park take the snow plow off his lawn tractor and install the mower deck.
I didn't know that a Daley was running for president, or did Uncle Ken mean mayor? All I remember about the first Mayor Daley is that everybody said he was a crook, but he was never convicted of anything. The same thing might be said about Trump, although it's a little early to say "never". It just occurred to me that, if Trump is indeed found guilty of plotting with the Russians during the election campaign, I don't think he can be impeached for it because he wasn't president yet. That would be ex post facto, or ipso facto, or something like that. Then again, I don't see why he couldn't be prosecuted in court because, like I said, he wasn't president yet.
As I said before, we were all warned about the population explosion way back in the 1950s. Everybody didn't believe it at first, but most North Americans got on board eventually. Apparently there are parts of the world that still haven't gotten with the program, and now they want to ship all their surplus people here so we will pay the price for their irresponsibility.
That last storm was almost certainly not our final thrashing from Old Man Winter. Snowstorms in April are unusual, but not unheard of, around here. Regardless, we've still got March to get through, and any kind of weather can happen in March. I remember my first visit to Cheboygan in 1967, it was the 15th of March, the temp was 15 below zero at midnight, and there was about three feet of old snow on the ground. The previous day, I had helped my father in Palos Park take the snow plow off his lawn tractor and install the mower deck.
I didn't know that a Daley was running for president, or did Uncle Ken mean mayor? All I remember about the first Mayor Daley is that everybody said he was a crook, but he was never convicted of anything. The same thing might be said about Trump, although it's a little early to say "never". It just occurred to me that, if Trump is indeed found guilty of plotting with the Russians during the election campaign, I don't think he can be impeached for it because he wasn't president yet. That would be ex post facto, or ipso facto, or something like that. Then again, I don't see why he couldn't be prosecuted in court because, like I said, he wasn't president yet.
As I said before, we were all warned about the population explosion way back in the 1950s. Everybody didn't believe it at first, but most North Americans got on board eventually. Apparently there are parts of the world that still haven't gotten with the program, and now they want to ship all their surplus people here so we will pay the price for their irresponsibility.
Let a thousand pundits blab
As Old Man Winter gives Beaglesonia a final thrashing I'll have to judge Chicago's winter as nothing special except for those very cold days a few weeks ago. There wasn't any prolonged accumulation of snow, no disruptions in city services or transportation except for that brief cold spell, and no snow for Christmas. I think there was more snow on Thanksgiving than Christmas, if memory serves. It might be too early for a final grade but I'll give this winter a "C" anyhow.
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Nothing much has happened in Hanoi yet and we'll be sleeping if it does; they're thirteen hours ahead of Chicago (twelve ahead of Beaglesonia). I've heard Trump talk about how much in love he is with Kim and it's starting to creep me out. I'd like to read some of those "lovely" letters he's received; should Melania be jealous?
And what the hell are Pakistan and India up to these days, trying to use up their bombs before they reach their expiration dates?
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Things have been dull on the AI front lately, and then I read this. One of the features of AI systems is that they teach themselves and they are getting so good at it that they are learning to lie, cheat, and do anything necessary to get the results that are expected of them. Our dependence on these systems is not likely to end well, in my opinion.
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This has been a quiet election in my neck of the woods; not many yard signs or flyers hanging on doorknobs. It's probably due to all the people running and it won't be until a runoff that campaigns may heat up. I did notice something new this year, though: political ads, for both mayor and alderman, on YouTube. I have an ad blocker on the laptop so I didn't start seeing them until I started using the iPad to watch some videos. I think my iPad is too old to run ad blocking software; I keep getting messages that say they "can't be installed on this iPad." Bummer. Anyhow, a funny thing is that the ad software is smart enough to know I'll be voting for an alderman but not smart enough to know which ward I live in; it can't decide if I live in the the 46th or 47th wards. Hint to bots: it's the 47th.
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Nothing much has happened in Hanoi yet and we'll be sleeping if it does; they're thirteen hours ahead of Chicago (twelve ahead of Beaglesonia). I've heard Trump talk about how much in love he is with Kim and it's starting to creep me out. I'd like to read some of those "lovely" letters he's received; should Melania be jealous?
And what the hell are Pakistan and India up to these days, trying to use up their bombs before they reach their expiration dates?
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Things have been dull on the AI front lately, and then I read this. One of the features of AI systems is that they teach themselves and they are getting so good at it that they are learning to lie, cheat, and do anything necessary to get the results that are expected of them. Our dependence on these systems is not likely to end well, in my opinion.
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This has been a quiet election in my neck of the woods; not many yard signs or flyers hanging on doorknobs. It's probably due to all the people running and it won't be until a runoff that campaigns may heat up. I did notice something new this year, though: political ads, for both mayor and alderman, on YouTube. I have an ad blocker on the laptop so I didn't start seeing them until I started using the iPad to watch some videos. I think my iPad is too old to run ad blocking software; I keep getting messages that say they "can't be installed on this iPad." Bummer. Anyhow, a funny thing is that the ad software is smart enough to know I'll be voting for an alderman but not smart enough to know which ward I live in; it can't decide if I live in the the 46th or 47th wards. Hint to bots: it's the 47th.
election day
I was surprised to see that Beagles had nothing to say about a Daley running for president. I don't think he keeps close tabs on Chicago elections, but maybe he just assumes there would always be a Daley running, and he is not far off about that. Wiki surprises.me by telling me that the first mayor Daley was elected in 1955. I would have thought that he had been mayor since before I was born.
My family left Chicago for exotic Chattanooga Tennessee shortly after I was born, and we returned here in 1949, so I had like six years of no Mayor Daley, but I wasn't paying too much attention to politics at that early age, though I decidedly liked Ike.
I remember when the Daley signs went up. It seems like people taped them to their doors, I don't remember yard signs. Our neighborhood was founded in the 20's so we were like newcomers there, and I looked with reverence at the homes with the Daley signs. They most know people, they must have some relative on the city payroll, they must be connected, the next time garbage cans were passed out they surely got the shiniest ones.
Of course most of the people going into the rain forest are going there to live, much as our forebears broke through the Appalachians to the fertile valleys of the midwest. That's why it's hard to talk them out of it, saying we did it but you shouldn't. The situation is more dire now and the Brazilian rainforest is a mightier lung than the midwest ever was and that Alaskan permafrost is melting quickly, Likely Beagles would need a pea green swamp buggy these days.
Whatever happened to birth control? It used to be a big controversy, and now you never hear about it. I take that back, the reps are fighting to have employers who claim to be against it not pay their insurance companies to cover birth control. In a not unrelated matter I read the other day that there is only one legal place to get an abortion in the state of Missouri. Don't throw out those old clothes hangers yet.
There were maybe five people ahead of me at the polling place downstairs. I selected my candidate for mayor and for city treasurer and was surprised that we were also voting for city clerk, Why had I not read of this or seen some commercial about it? I picked randomly. But then the damn voting machine, the thing you slide that big cardboard ballot through, wasn't working. The clerks fiddled with it and nada. People had to go to work and were getting impatient. Eventually they had us slide them through a slot in a big metal cabinet. Well I'm sure that they eventually went to the right place.
My family left Chicago for exotic Chattanooga Tennessee shortly after I was born, and we returned here in 1949, so I had like six years of no Mayor Daley, but I wasn't paying too much attention to politics at that early age, though I decidedly liked Ike.
I remember when the Daley signs went up. It seems like people taped them to their doors, I don't remember yard signs. Our neighborhood was founded in the 20's so we were like newcomers there, and I looked with reverence at the homes with the Daley signs. They most know people, they must have some relative on the city payroll, they must be connected, the next time garbage cans were passed out they surely got the shiniest ones.
Of course most of the people going into the rain forest are going there to live, much as our forebears broke through the Appalachians to the fertile valleys of the midwest. That's why it's hard to talk them out of it, saying we did it but you shouldn't. The situation is more dire now and the Brazilian rainforest is a mightier lung than the midwest ever was and that Alaskan permafrost is melting quickly, Likely Beagles would need a pea green swamp buggy these days.
Whatever happened to birth control? It used to be a big controversy, and now you never hear about it. I take that back, the reps are fighting to have employers who claim to be against it not pay their insurance companies to cover birth control. In a not unrelated matter I read the other day that there is only one legal place to get an abortion in the state of Missouri. Don't throw out those old clothes hangers yet.
There were maybe five people ahead of me at the polling place downstairs. I selected my candidate for mayor and for city treasurer and was surprised that we were also voting for city clerk, Why had I not read of this or seen some commercial about it? I picked randomly. But then the damn voting machine, the thing you slide that big cardboard ballot through, wasn't working. The clerks fiddled with it and nada. People had to go to work and were getting impatient. Eventually they had us slide them through a slot in a big metal cabinet. Well I'm sure that they eventually went to the right place.
Monday, February 25, 2019
Blowin' in the Wind
"First it rained, then it blew, then it frizz, then it snew." - Old New England proverb.
Actually, we got off pretty light. The rain washed some of our old snow away, and then the wind blew most of the new snow away, then it just blew for awhile, and now the temp is heading towards zero. I don't think it could accurately be called a blizzard because we never had less than a quarter mile visibility, but neighboring Otsego County got hit hard. When their visibility got down to 50 feet last night they declared a state of emergency and closed all their roads till morning. They typically get more snow than we do, but it generally melts earlier in the spring. We never lost our electricity, but lots of other people in Michigan did. When your power goes out in the summer, it's an inconvenience but, in the winter, it can be life threatening. We didn't go to Petoskey today, not because of the weather, but because my wife wasn't feeling good. I made a run into Cheboygan this afternoon, and the paved roads were in fine shape, but I suspect the gravel roads are ice covered like our own driveway.
I don't think they are leveling the rain forest just to sell the trees, although that's part of it. The thing is all those people have to live and work somewhere, and they keep cranking out babies like there's no tomorrow. Some time ago, I read in National Geographic that birth control is actually illegal in Brazil, but some women have found a way around that. Apparently their government medical plan makes it more profitable to do a C-section than a normal delivery, and some women have taken to bribing their doctors to tie off their tubes while they're in there.
Actually, we got off pretty light. The rain washed some of our old snow away, and then the wind blew most of the new snow away, then it just blew for awhile, and now the temp is heading towards zero. I don't think it could accurately be called a blizzard because we never had less than a quarter mile visibility, but neighboring Otsego County got hit hard. When their visibility got down to 50 feet last night they declared a state of emergency and closed all their roads till morning. They typically get more snow than we do, but it generally melts earlier in the spring. We never lost our electricity, but lots of other people in Michigan did. When your power goes out in the summer, it's an inconvenience but, in the winter, it can be life threatening. We didn't go to Petoskey today, not because of the weather, but because my wife wasn't feeling good. I made a run into Cheboygan this afternoon, and the paved roads were in fine shape, but I suspect the gravel roads are ice covered like our own driveway.
I don't think they are leveling the rain forest just to sell the trees, although that's part of it. The thing is all those people have to live and work somewhere, and they keep cranking out babies like there's no tomorrow. Some time ago, I read in National Geographic that birth control is actually illegal in Brazil, but some women have found a way around that. Apparently their government medical plan makes it more profitable to do a C-section than a normal delivery, and some women have taken to bribing their doctors to tie off their tubes while they're in there.
Monday Monday
Hispanic is kind of a strange word. Generally it means somebody speaking Spanish, but here in the USA it means something more specific when it comes to identification on forms, It doesn't have that awful gender specific ending like Latin, but it's kind of old and fussy. Chicano was a popular alternative in the sixties, but it never caught on. My blonde haired friend of German descent who came from Chile would be considered Hispanic. Ah well it 's kind of a conundrum sorting people into specific categories because people tend to move around and to intermarry.
The PC people weren't even around when Brasilia was being built. It wasn't popular at first but eventually caught on and is now Brazil's third largest city. It was built in the highlands, not in the rain forest. PC is likely an outgrowth of the sixties, but not one that I think much of. Very roughly I would say that it corresponds to the left the way that the Christian right corresponds to conservatism, fellow travelers but not all lefties are pc and all righties aren't Christian. PC and Christian righties are similar in that they are both puritanical thought police. I don't like either one.
It was never the lefties that encouraged cutting down the rain forest it was business interests. It's not a good thing (I was just listening to NPR about how our air bases in Alaska are having problems with the melting of the permafrost), but it's a bit awkward for he US to tell other countries not to cut down their forests after we have cut down ours.
I'm going to vote for Lori Lightfoot, and /I expect that she will lose to Daley and Preckwinkle and then I'll vote for Preckwinkle, and whoever wins that run off and is elected I will probably hate in about six months. I too am surprised that there are so few mailings. In previous years they have had to move the trashcans right next to the mailbox at election time. The mailers were like huge and barely fit into our little mailboxes. It wasn't worth the effort to even try to read the names as you poured them into the trash. Maybe the candidates have learned from that. TV is pretty full of ads.
OAS is indeed very weak. Do they even have meetings anymore? Anyway it is probably best if its neighbors take care of the situation. Nobody there has fond memories of American troops marching in and fixing things. It is dangerous to have an ignoramus as the head of the gummint at times like this, but mainly I think he is just using it bash the dems with the word socialism and has little interest in other details. Right now he is flying to the open arms of charming Kim Il Sung.
The PC people weren't even around when Brasilia was being built. It wasn't popular at first but eventually caught on and is now Brazil's third largest city. It was built in the highlands, not in the rain forest. PC is likely an outgrowth of the sixties, but not one that I think much of. Very roughly I would say that it corresponds to the left the way that the Christian right corresponds to conservatism, fellow travelers but not all lefties are pc and all righties aren't Christian. PC and Christian righties are similar in that they are both puritanical thought police. I don't like either one.
It was never the lefties that encouraged cutting down the rain forest it was business interests. It's not a good thing (I was just listening to NPR about how our air bases in Alaska are having problems with the melting of the permafrost), but it's a bit awkward for he US to tell other countries not to cut down their forests after we have cut down ours.
I'm going to vote for Lori Lightfoot, and /I expect that she will lose to Daley and Preckwinkle and then I'll vote for Preckwinkle, and whoever wins that run off and is elected I will probably hate in about six months. I too am surprised that there are so few mailings. In previous years they have had to move the trashcans right next to the mailbox at election time. The mailers were like huge and barely fit into our little mailboxes. It wasn't worth the effort to even try to read the names as you poured them into the trash. Maybe the candidates have learned from that. TV is pretty full of ads.
OAS is indeed very weak. Do they even have meetings anymore? Anyway it is probably best if its neighbors take care of the situation. Nobody there has fond memories of American troops marching in and fixing things. It is dangerous to have an ignoramus as the head of the gummint at times like this, but mainly I think he is just using it bash the dems with the word socialism and has little interest in other details. Right now he is flying to the open arms of charming Kim Il Sung.
Sunday, February 24, 2019
Mess in Venezuela - Blizzard in Beaglesonia
Venezuela has been going to hell for some time now, and it looks like the situation is finally coming to a head. The reason they are refusing to allow aid into the country is that they are in denial about their problems, but nobody is fooled by this. I don't think resolution of this mess is dependent on Trump, there are plenty of other people concerned, and it seems likely that they will resolve it with or without Trump's assistance.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBTYf0s?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
Meanwhile, Northern Michigan is experiencing it's first official blizzard in a decade, but Beaglesonia doesn't seem to be getting the worst of it. Nearby communities have been reporting wind gusts between 50 and 60 MPH, but ours have remained in the 40s so far. There doesn't seem to be a lot of new snow on the ground, but it's hard to tell since most of it is still airborne. We're supposed to go to Petoskey tomorrow, but we might have to cancel if the storm hasn't died down by then. The official blizzard warning expires at 7:00 AM, and we're supposed to leave for Petoskey by 11:30. That's cutting it kind of close, but we'll have to see what it looks like in the morning.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBTYf0s?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
Meanwhile, Northern Michigan is experiencing it's first official blizzard in a decade, but Beaglesonia doesn't seem to be getting the worst of it. Nearby communities have been reporting wind gusts between 50 and 60 MPH, but ours have remained in the 40s so far. There doesn't seem to be a lot of new snow on the ground, but it's hard to tell since most of it is still airborne. We're supposed to go to Petoskey tomorrow, but we might have to cancel if the storm hasn't died down by then. The official blizzard warning expires at 7:00 AM, and we're supposed to leave for Petoskey by 11:30. That's cutting it kind of close, but we'll have to see what it looks like in the morning.
Nothing much Sunday
I nearly forgot about the local election we have this Tuesday for mayor and other city offices. It's a doozy of a field since Emanuel decided to not run for a third term; there are 14 candidates vying for the office. I'm familiar with more than half of them but most of them are cut from the same cloth as regular political hacks so I have to do a little research on them. The aldermanic race in my ward is the same thing; incumbent not running so there are nine people going for the gold. More unknowns, more research required. There has been surprisingly little political junk mail in the mailbox lately; direct mail campaigns might be too expensive and less effective than social media and robo-calls. In any case, I expect no winners on Tuesday and a run off election will be required. We'll see.
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The current state of affairs in Venezuela makes me think that the OAS is an organization that doesn't do much at all regarding the welfare of it's members. I read that the authorities in Venezuela were burning food and humanitarian supplies from Colombia, a crazy situation if the people are starving. There are a lot of ways this scenario can unfold, most of them badly. Imagine if Russia or China offer assistance to Venezuela in exchange for certain concessions, and they accept. What do you suppose the Infant in Chief would do?
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The current state of affairs in Venezuela makes me think that the OAS is an organization that doesn't do much at all regarding the welfare of it's members. I read that the authorities in Venezuela were burning food and humanitarian supplies from Colombia, a crazy situation if the people are starving. There are a lot of ways this scenario can unfold, most of them badly. Imagine if Russia or China offer assistance to Venezuela in exchange for certain concessions, and they accept. What do you suppose the Infant in Chief would do?
Friday, February 22, 2019
Don't Cry For Me Argentina
I think that's a song from a movie about Eva Peron, who was the wife of a famous Argentine Dictator. I haven't seen the movie, I just borrowed the song title for this blog. I don't know if Argentina takes a periodic census, but if they do, and it's similar to ours, they probably ask people what race they consider themselves to be. Apparently most Argentines consider themselves to be White. Hispanic is not listed as a race on our own census forms. First they ask you what race you are, and then they ask you if you are Hispanic. According to my dictionary, a Hispanic is somebody from a Latin American country who is currently living in the United States. By that definition, an Argentine is not a Hispanic unless he moves to the U.S. If he subsequently moves from the U.S. to Canada, he would cease to be a Hispanic, but I don't know what the Canadians would call him. As I said in a recent post, I don't even know why they call Central and South American countries Latin American, since Latin is not the official language in any of them. Who speaks Latin anymore anyway? The Roman Catholic Church used to, but they gave that up a long time ago. I don't know if doctors and lawyers even speak Latin anymore either.
I used to know a guy from Brazil who claimed to be a mixture of Portuguese, Black, and American Indian, but he looked White to me. He used to tell this little joke about himself: "If a vegetarian primarily eats vegetables, and a fruitarian primarily eats fruit, and a lactarian primarily eats dairy products, then my ancestors were humanitarians."
I remember, when we were in school, there was talk about Brazil trying to reinvent itself. Most Brazilians lived around Rio de Janeiro in those days, and it was getting overcrowded, so they built a new capitol city way out in the jungle in an effort to get people to move into the interior of the country. This was considered to be a good thing at the time, kind of like when they used to say "Go west young man!" in the U.S. I don't remember when they changed it, but for some time now the PC people have been crying about how the Amazon Rain Forest is being destroyed. Well, what did they think was going to happen? Like Carl Marx said, "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
Kids didn't speak Czech or Polish back in the day, just the old people, grandmas and grandpas. My parents spoke Czech as a second language, I suppose because of the clientele in their store. A lot of them spoke Polish, but that language is close enough to Czech that my Dad was able to communicate with them. When the Lawndale neighborhood started to turn Hispanic, my Dad told me that he was even starting to learn a little Spanish before he retired.
I used to know a guy from Brazil who claimed to be a mixture of Portuguese, Black, and American Indian, but he looked White to me. He used to tell this little joke about himself: "If a vegetarian primarily eats vegetables, and a fruitarian primarily eats fruit, and a lactarian primarily eats dairy products, then my ancestors were humanitarians."
I remember, when we were in school, there was talk about Brazil trying to reinvent itself. Most Brazilians lived around Rio de Janeiro in those days, and it was getting overcrowded, so they built a new capitol city way out in the jungle in an effort to get people to move into the interior of the country. This was considered to be a good thing at the time, kind of like when they used to say "Go west young man!" in the U.S. I don't remember when they changed it, but for some time now the PC people have been crying about how the Amazon Rain Forest is being destroyed. Well, what did they think was going to happen? Like Carl Marx said, "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
Kids didn't speak Czech or Polish back in the day, just the old people, grandmas and grandpas. My parents spoke Czech as a second language, I suppose because of the clientele in their store. A lot of them spoke Polish, but that language is close enough to Czech that my Dad was able to communicate with them. When the Lawndale neighborhood started to turn Hispanic, my Dad told me that he was even starting to learn a little Spanish before he retired.
Morton Downey Fucking Junior
I remember reading years ago about Brazil or Argentina that it was the country of the future, and always would be. That was maybe thirty years ago, and now it is still the country of the future.
Sixty, maybe sixty-five years ago I remember sitting in a darkened room at Enrico Tonti grade school and watching the flickering image cast on the wrinkled screen, something about when our leaders wore wigs and wrote with feathers and the phrase "Monroe Doctrine," stood out. The tone of voice of the crackly narrator was like he was speaking of something noble and good. I remembered the phrase for years, but not really what it was until I learned that it meant that European countries should keep their hands off South America. If there is any fucking to be done with those countries the USA would do it.
Kind of daring for the pipsqueak of a country we were at the time, but I guess it speaks to the disinterest of Europe that it was never violated, or not too much. Plenty of people, plenty of resources I don't know why it never amounted to much on the world stage. I don't see the a United States of North and South America. We don't even want to let Puerto Rico become a state.
Here's another odd thing I learned poking around on wiki. Argentina is 85% white. How is that?
When I returned to Chicago in 1987 every now and then some rattletrap car armed with loudspeakers would rumble down the street blaring the glory of LaRouche. Every now and then I would run across them at some table or on a street corner, youngish guys as I recall, their eyes with that gleam like you sometimes saw in Moonies or Hare Krishnas, but those guys were headed for some bright eternity, but the LaRouches, what were they getting out of it? I dared not approach them and ask because there would go the afternoon.
I remember Lar Daley, and wasn't there some guy who dressed up like a clown, maybe it was the same guy. Thinking of him I remember a similar flaming crackpot, Morton Downey Junior. What a flash in the lunatic pan he was. I especially remember him now that the city is abuzz over that Jussie Smollett affair. As his star was rapidly fading he faked being attacked by neo Nazis and the KKK in some public restroom who, he claimed, roughed him up and drew a swastika on his forehead. The swastika was backwards, the way it would be if somebody was looking in a mirror and drawing it on their own forehead.
The network news shows, after giving you the bad news in the first fifteen commercial free minutes, tend towards softer stuff afterwards, and the very last segment is something heartwarming like kids and animals. It doesn't fool me any, I know we are going to hell in a handbasket.
I don't remember many people speaking Czech or Polish (not that I would have known the difference) in my hood. I do remember the shopping cart women, older, not very well dressed, who trundled up and down the busy streets fiercely dragging their full or empty carts behind them. Oh and I remember the term DP (Displaced Persons, a phrase from WW II), used to disparage somebody's fashion sense as in "You look like a DP."
Sixty, maybe sixty-five years ago I remember sitting in a darkened room at Enrico Tonti grade school and watching the flickering image cast on the wrinkled screen, something about when our leaders wore wigs and wrote with feathers and the phrase "Monroe Doctrine," stood out. The tone of voice of the crackly narrator was like he was speaking of something noble and good. I remembered the phrase for years, but not really what it was until I learned that it meant that European countries should keep their hands off South America. If there is any fucking to be done with those countries the USA would do it.
Kind of daring for the pipsqueak of a country we were at the time, but I guess it speaks to the disinterest of Europe that it was never violated, or not too much. Plenty of people, plenty of resources I don't know why it never amounted to much on the world stage. I don't see the a United States of North and South America. We don't even want to let Puerto Rico become a state.
Here's another odd thing I learned poking around on wiki. Argentina is 85% white. How is that?
When I returned to Chicago in 1987 every now and then some rattletrap car armed with loudspeakers would rumble down the street blaring the glory of LaRouche. Every now and then I would run across them at some table or on a street corner, youngish guys as I recall, their eyes with that gleam like you sometimes saw in Moonies or Hare Krishnas, but those guys were headed for some bright eternity, but the LaRouches, what were they getting out of it? I dared not approach them and ask because there would go the afternoon.
I remember Lar Daley, and wasn't there some guy who dressed up like a clown, maybe it was the same guy. Thinking of him I remember a similar flaming crackpot, Morton Downey Junior. What a flash in the lunatic pan he was. I especially remember him now that the city is abuzz over that Jussie Smollett affair. As his star was rapidly fading he faked being attacked by neo Nazis and the KKK in some public restroom who, he claimed, roughed him up and drew a swastika on his forehead. The swastika was backwards, the way it would be if somebody was looking in a mirror and drawing it on their own forehead.
The network news shows, after giving you the bad news in the first fifteen commercial free minutes, tend towards softer stuff afterwards, and the very last segment is something heartwarming like kids and animals. It doesn't fool me any, I know we are going to hell in a handbasket.
I don't remember many people speaking Czech or Polish (not that I would have known the difference) in my hood. I do remember the shopping cart women, older, not very well dressed, who trundled up and down the busy streets fiercely dragging their full or empty carts behind them. Oh and I remember the term DP (Displaced Persons, a phrase from WW II), used to disparage somebody's fashion sense as in "You look like a DP."
Thursday, February 21, 2019
No News is Good News
I've often wondered why we don't hear much about Canada in the news and, come to think of it, the same could be said about Central and South America. It just occurred to me that the reason might be that not much happens there that is considered news worthy. Central America and Venezuela have both been in the news lately, but that's just because bad things are happening there. I've often heard people complain that we hear more bad news than good news, but maybe that's because people are more interested in bad news than good news. As Uncle Ken has said, "Nobody wants to see a movie about Beagles making ice cream and sleeping in his deer blind." News about kids and animals seem to be the exceptions that prove the rule.
There was a good news story about kids and animals on TV this evening. It seems that two young children were spotted on the edge of a busy highway in Florida. It didn't say how they got there or if the two dogs that were with them were their own. The dogs were leaning on the kids, holding them against the guardrail, which kept them out of the traffic lanes, and probably saved their lives. When two passing motorists stopped to help, the dogs acted happy to see them, even though they were unknown to each other. The motorists bundled both the kids and the dogs into their cars, called 911, and waited there till the police arrived.
I don't know where I got the idea that there were more renters than home owners in Europe. Maybe it was because I was stationed in Berlin, which is a big city, and it turns out that Germany is one of the few countries that has more renters than owners. Now that I think of it, I have seen British TV shows on PBS that are set in suburban areas that look a lot like those in the U.S. except that the cars are driving on the wrong side of the street.
Funny that people resent it when others around them are conversing in Spanish, but I don't remember the same thing happening when people spoke Czech or Polish back in the day. Maybe that's because we grew up hearing those languages so they didn't seem so foreign to us. The first time in my life that I remember meeting somebody's grandparent who didn't speak with a foreign accent was shortly after I moved to Cheboygan. Turned out that their family had been here so long that they didn't even remember where they came from.
There was a good news story about kids and animals on TV this evening. It seems that two young children were spotted on the edge of a busy highway in Florida. It didn't say how they got there or if the two dogs that were with them were their own. The dogs were leaning on the kids, holding them against the guardrail, which kept them out of the traffic lanes, and probably saved their lives. When two passing motorists stopped to help, the dogs acted happy to see them, even though they were unknown to each other. The motorists bundled both the kids and the dogs into their cars, called 911, and waited there till the police arrived.
I don't know where I got the idea that there were more renters than home owners in Europe. Maybe it was because I was stationed in Berlin, which is a big city, and it turns out that Germany is one of the few countries that has more renters than owners. Now that I think of it, I have seen British TV shows on PBS that are set in suburban areas that look a lot like those in the U.S. except that the cars are driving on the wrong side of the street.
Funny that people resent it when others around them are conversing in Spanish, but I don't remember the same thing happening when people spoke Czech or Polish back in the day. Maybe that's because we grew up hearing those languages so they didn't seem so foreign to us. The first time in my life that I remember meeting somebody's grandparent who didn't speak with a foreign accent was shortly after I moved to Cheboygan. Turned out that their family had been here so long that they didn't even remember where they came from.
Americans for the Americas
At the risk of letting my imagination dive off the deep end I was wondering if South America has the potential of becoming a sleeping giant. Most of the nations share a common language and since there doesn't seem to be much animosity between them it seems possible to me that some of those countries could join up to form larger nations. What's to stop them?
Historically, the US has done a good job of ignoring South and Central America, putting most of it's attention on Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This is unfortunate, especially considering that just about all the nations of North and South America are members of the OAS, the Organization of American States, which is like NATO except that it's our own back yard. One of the principles of the OAS is "An act of aggression against one American State is an act of aggression against all the other American States," an idea that can be used to great advantage instead of building walls.
The Americas, both North and South, have geography on their side in that they are impossible to invade. Sure, we can get bombed to hell and have missiles landing in our bedrooms but being invaded? I think not; no nation has the capability to maintain the necessary supply chains. And it isn't like we wouldn't try to stop them.
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I've been trying to pay a little more attention to geography lately, mostly due to another YouTube channel I stumbled upon. This guy has some interesting stuff, talking about problems that some nations, like Russia, China, and India have with geography. Some of the stuff never occurred to me, like arable land, population distribution, lengths of borders, and natural resources. For a taste, you can see what he has to say about Brazil. He covers other topics too, like why public transportation in the US sucks and why trains are so expensive. Plenty of worthwhile stuff to check out, in my opinion.
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Nobody's mentioned the recent death of Lyndon LaRouche, one of the all time great political nutjobs. Which is just as well, I suppose, since there doesn't seem to be shortage of political nutjobs these days. When I heard of his death I remembered another guy who was just as goofy but was active in the Chicago area: Lar "America First" Daly. Remember him? He was always running for mayor and never got anywhere. I should see what Wikipedia has to say about him.
Historically, the US has done a good job of ignoring South and Central America, putting most of it's attention on Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This is unfortunate, especially considering that just about all the nations of North and South America are members of the OAS, the Organization of American States, which is like NATO except that it's our own back yard. One of the principles of the OAS is "An act of aggression against one American State is an act of aggression against all the other American States," an idea that can be used to great advantage instead of building walls.
The Americas, both North and South, have geography on their side in that they are impossible to invade. Sure, we can get bombed to hell and have missiles landing in our bedrooms but being invaded? I think not; no nation has the capability to maintain the necessary supply chains. And it isn't like we wouldn't try to stop them.
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I've been trying to pay a little more attention to geography lately, mostly due to another YouTube channel I stumbled upon. This guy has some interesting stuff, talking about problems that some nations, like Russia, China, and India have with geography. Some of the stuff never occurred to me, like arable land, population distribution, lengths of borders, and natural resources. For a taste, you can see what he has to say about Brazil. He covers other topics too, like why public transportation in the US sucks and why trains are so expensive. Plenty of worthwhile stuff to check out, in my opinion.
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Nobody's mentioned the recent death of Lyndon LaRouche, one of the all time great political nutjobs. Which is just as well, I suppose, since there doesn't seem to be shortage of political nutjobs these days. When I heard of his death I remembered another guy who was just as goofy but was active in the Chicago area: Lar "America First" Daly. Remember him? He was always running for mayor and never got anywhere. I should see what Wikipedia has to say about him.
habla espanol?
I did some reading on wiki last night on Chile. I know a guy from Chile, a blonde haired guy with a German surname. Years ago when Wrigleyville was a Puerto Rican neighborhood we went up there from Champaign to catch a game. Some young Puerto Rican kids were making fun of the Gringos in Spanish and Pedro let them have it in Spanish much to their surprise.
My mother stayed in Gage Park as it turned Mexican. One of the things she didn't like about her new neighbors is that they spoke Spanish. I guess that was natural, their English was probably not so hot, and I imagine it is relaxing to lapse into your native tongue. And you know it is probably fun to be in a crowd of English speakers and speak a language they didn't know, like having your own secret code. I know it's not nice but sometimes you might want to poke a little fun at some stranger. It's awkward to whisper it to your companion, so much easier to say it aloud in a language they can't understand.
Actually that is what my mother thought they were doing to her. She'd be in the doctor's waiting room and everybody would be yakking in Spanish and she thought they were all talking about her. My memory fails me, but I think there may have been an ugly scene or two.
But back to Chile. It had an interesting history. There were Indians in the southern part of Chile who the Incas could never conquer, and the mostly desert northern part, it seems like early on there were some battles with Venezuela and Ecuador and Colombia over that. I'm not sure if it was liberated by Bolivar, being way over in the east behind the mountains, In its first census it was 70 percent white, though after that it seems like the nonwhite percentage started to rise.
I would have thought that all the countries of South America would have similar stories, but maybe they have their own individual stories. That's an awful lot to learn. I tried to educate myself on the history of China some years ago, but one of the problems was that all the historical figures were strangers to me and they tended to blend together.
We read European or American history and familiar figures keep showing up and we have a general idea of how things were at the time, were they using swords or muskets, and were they wearing armor or wigs, that sort of thing.
I was intrigued by Beagles's assertion that Europe had more renters than the USA. Could this be like the remnants of kingship, like that tv static that is the remnants of the big bang? But according to wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate there are only four European countries with more renters than the USA. But I guess there are a lot of factors that go into determining how many rent and how many own. There are a couple old apartment buildings along Chicago Avenue west of State that were built to resemble a bunch of separate houses cheek by jowl and I remember reading that that was because Americans generally owned their own separate housed and the idea of unrelated people living in the same building was a bit scandalous.
My mother stayed in Gage Park as it turned Mexican. One of the things she didn't like about her new neighbors is that they spoke Spanish. I guess that was natural, their English was probably not so hot, and I imagine it is relaxing to lapse into your native tongue. And you know it is probably fun to be in a crowd of English speakers and speak a language they didn't know, like having your own secret code. I know it's not nice but sometimes you might want to poke a little fun at some stranger. It's awkward to whisper it to your companion, so much easier to say it aloud in a language they can't understand.
Actually that is what my mother thought they were doing to her. She'd be in the doctor's waiting room and everybody would be yakking in Spanish and she thought they were all talking about her. My memory fails me, but I think there may have been an ugly scene or two.
But back to Chile. It had an interesting history. There were Indians in the southern part of Chile who the Incas could never conquer, and the mostly desert northern part, it seems like early on there were some battles with Venezuela and Ecuador and Colombia over that. I'm not sure if it was liberated by Bolivar, being way over in the east behind the mountains, In its first census it was 70 percent white, though after that it seems like the nonwhite percentage started to rise.
I would have thought that all the countries of South America would have similar stories, but maybe they have their own individual stories. That's an awful lot to learn. I tried to educate myself on the history of China some years ago, but one of the problems was that all the historical figures were strangers to me and they tended to blend together.
We read European or American history and familiar figures keep showing up and we have a general idea of how things were at the time, were they using swords or muskets, and were they wearing armor or wigs, that sort of thing.
I was intrigued by Beagles's assertion that Europe had more renters than the USA. Could this be like the remnants of kingship, like that tv static that is the remnants of the big bang? But according to wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate there are only four European countries with more renters than the USA. But I guess there are a lot of factors that go into determining how many rent and how many own. There are a couple old apartment buildings along Chicago Avenue west of State that were built to resemble a bunch of separate houses cheek by jowl and I remember reading that that was because Americans generally owned their own separate housed and the idea of unrelated people living in the same building was a bit scandalous.
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Boundaries and Borders
The way I remember it, the Pope drew a line down the middle of the Atlantic ocean to avoid conflict between Spain and Portugal which were both doing a lot of exploring in those days. I'm not sure why the Pope got the job, but I suppose it was because Spain and Portugal were Catholic countries and the Pope was somebody they both would listen to. The intent was that Spain would get the Americas and Portugal would get Africa. One day some Portuguese sailors got lost either going to or coming from Africa and accidently discovered the easternmost tip of, what it today, Brazil, which happened to be on the Portuguese side of the Pope's line. It was only a small portion of Brazil that stuck out over the line, and I'm not sure how the Portuguese ended up with the rest of Brazil or, for that matter, how any of the borders between South and Central American countries were determined.
I seem to remember seeing a PBS show that mentioned Argentina as a country with lots of Germans in it. I don't know how they ended up there, but I know that some of the NAZI war criminals went there to hide out after the war. I think that's because there was already an established German presence in the country. I also seem to remember reading, probably on Wiki, that there were plans to establish a Portuguese government in exile in Brazil after Napoleon's people took over Portugal, but it never came to pass.
My comments about the Great Spirit's ownership of Indian lands were based on reading and conversation about our local Chippewa and Ottawa tribes. I don't know to what extent that belief was shared by other tribes throughout the country, but I don't think that many Indians had the same concept of land ownership that we do today. Neither did most Europeans either, for that matter. In Europe, the land was owned by the king, and he granted charters for its administration to his noblemen. Even today, there are more renters in Europe than land owners. When France lost it's holdings in North America to England, the King of France bestowed the land on the King of England, in keeping with the custom of the times. The King of England would have done the same when he ceded the Northwest Territory, but there was no King of America, or even a president yet, so he gave the land to the Continental Congress, with the condition that the Indians would be allowed to remain on the land.
hot today Chile tomorrow
In what seems today to be an odd occurrence the pope decided the border between Brazil and the rest of South America roughly along a north/south meridian (had to look up meridians and longitudes, the things one learns when one is a fellow of The Institute). I assume that the conquistadors and their ilk carved up South America with the blessing of the crown of Spain, but why those exact boundaries? And what about comparatively small countries like Uruguay and Paraguay without a coastline? I'll put a wiki expedition on my calendar.
Chile is indeed one of the oddest nations with the driest desert in the world and some of the highest mountains. It was not a very habitable area for the Indians and I believe it is the South American country with the highest percentage of Europeans. I think the countries vary considerably in percentage of white and non-white. You kind of wonder why more Europeans headed for Ellis Island didn't decide to head for warmer climes. I wonder if malaria was a problem.
Even though they are high in the polls I don't see much future for Joe or Bernie, or for that matter the Big Girl who has to be stroking her chin. The dems want new blood. There is also some troubling talk about how the candidate should be nonwhite and/or a woman. I don't see anything wrong with such a candidate, but i don't think we should be excluding white guys on principal. Well we are yet in the primeval mists of 2020.
At what point did the settlers go from being Englishman to Americans, or more accurately to Virginians or Pennsylvanians and so on? Or maybe I should ask when did they go from being Virginians and Pennsylvanians etc. to being Americans. The original colonies weren't that interested in expansion because once people got too far into the woods the state lost control of them. If you take that Frederick Jackson Turner's book about the frontier which we have discussed briefly, it was the guys who went into the woods who were the real Americans while those coastal colonies were just a remnant of the old guard.
I don't know if you can speak for all Indians with this Great Spirit stuff. There were a lot of Indians in a lot of different places and I'm guessing they came up with a lot of different religions. That nature worship is a thing that Europeans and I imagine all people had when they were in a hunter/gatherer stage, and I don't think it is unique to the Amerinds. And while they may not have thought of an individual owning land in the tribal territory, they did believe in the tribe collectively owning the land and fought other Indians and the white man over that.
Chile is indeed one of the oddest nations with the driest desert in the world and some of the highest mountains. It was not a very habitable area for the Indians and I believe it is the South American country with the highest percentage of Europeans. I think the countries vary considerably in percentage of white and non-white. You kind of wonder why more Europeans headed for Ellis Island didn't decide to head for warmer climes. I wonder if malaria was a problem.
Even though they are high in the polls I don't see much future for Joe or Bernie, or for that matter the Big Girl who has to be stroking her chin. The dems want new blood. There is also some troubling talk about how the candidate should be nonwhite and/or a woman. I don't see anything wrong with such a candidate, but i don't think we should be excluding white guys on principal. Well we are yet in the primeval mists of 2020.
At what point did the settlers go from being Englishman to Americans, or more accurately to Virginians or Pennsylvanians and so on? Or maybe I should ask when did they go from being Virginians and Pennsylvanians etc. to being Americans. The original colonies weren't that interested in expansion because once people got too far into the woods the state lost control of them. If you take that Frederick Jackson Turner's book about the frontier which we have discussed briefly, it was the guys who went into the woods who were the real Americans while those coastal colonies were just a remnant of the old guard.
I don't know if you can speak for all Indians with this Great Spirit stuff. There were a lot of Indians in a lot of different places and I'm guessing they came up with a lot of different religions. That nature worship is a thing that Europeans and I imagine all people had when they were in a hunter/gatherer stage, and I don't think it is unique to the Amerinds. And while they may not have thought of an individual owning land in the tribal territory, they did believe in the tribe collectively owning the land and fought other Indians and the white man over that.
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Separate But Equal
I don't think it's accurate to say that the Americans colonized the Indians the way that the Spanish, French, and English colonized the Indians. Indeed, one of the bones of contention that led to the American Revolution was the British attempt to keep the American colonists from spreading their influence west of the Alleghenies. The British had their 13 White American colonies along the Atlantic coast, and that's where they wanted them to stay. The British presence in the Northwest Territory was all about the fur trade with the Indians, and they did not want anybody to disrupt that by establishing permanent settlements in the region. When Americans later settled that territory, all they wanted was the land, without a lot of Indians on it. When the English ceded the territory to the Americans after the war, one of the conditions was that the Indians' right of occupancy be preserved, and the Americans had to figure out a way to weasel out of the deal without giving the British an excuse to try to take back the land like they did in the War of 1812.
Truth be known, the Indians never really owned the land. According to their own traditions, the land was owned by the Great Spirit, who graciously allowed the Indians to live on it. Since the Kings of France and England ruled "by the grace of God", and since both kings respected the Indians' right of occupancy, things didn't change all that much. When France ceded the land to England, and when England subsequently ceded the land to the Americans, it was the Indians' right of occupancy that was preserved, not their title of ownership. With some difficulty, the Americans eventually persuaded the Indians to give up their right of occupancy in exchange for some tools, trinkets, free medical care, free hunting and fishing, and exclusive rights to any casino operations that might be established in the future. There is no evidence, however, that the Great Spirit ever signed off on the deal, which is why Northern Michigan is called "God's Country" even unto this day.
Truth be known, the Indians never really owned the land. According to their own traditions, the land was owned by the Great Spirit, who graciously allowed the Indians to live on it. Since the Kings of France and England ruled "by the grace of God", and since both kings respected the Indians' right of occupancy, things didn't change all that much. When France ceded the land to England, and when England subsequently ceded the land to the Americans, it was the Indians' right of occupancy that was preserved, not their title of ownership. With some difficulty, the Americans eventually persuaded the Indians to give up their right of occupancy in exchange for some tools, trinkets, free medical care, free hunting and fishing, and exclusive rights to any casino operations that might be established in the future. There is no evidence, however, that the Great Spirit ever signed off on the deal, which is why Northern Michigan is called "God's Country" even unto this day.
The American hemisphere
The topic of colonialism has been one of the more interesting topics that has popped up recently and the dynamics fascinate me. I was looking at Google Earth today and if you adjust the global view just so all you see is North and South America, the New World. If, with the exception of Brazil and some French colonies on the Atlantic coast, South America was colonized by the Spanish how did the national boundaries come into being? Were they determined by local Spanish governors who got together and, with support of local tribes, decided who got what? Chile has the most extreme boundaries of any nation that I've seen, no other nation is so tall and skinny. Being tucked between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains I wonder if the Chileans feel isolated from the rest of South America. There's a lot to learn but I don't know how far I'll be digging.
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So, Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for president, not what I think is a good idea. I don't see him winning for a number of reasons, his age for one, and some of his views are too far left for a lot of voters. If he can't tone it down a bit he'll continue to come across a crank. I don't know how influential he is in the Senate but it doesn't seem like he has a lot of his colleagues marching to the beat of his drum.
There's still plenty of time to see who's going to be running against Trump, if Trump is still around to run. He's starting to sound and act like someone who is itching to be thrown out of office, one way or the other. A good ploy for him; he can play the victim and spread the blame widely, a noble patriot undone by the evil media and corrupt members of the FBI.
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So, Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for president, not what I think is a good idea. I don't see him winning for a number of reasons, his age for one, and some of his views are too far left for a lot of voters. If he can't tone it down a bit he'll continue to come across a crank. I don't know how influential he is in the Senate but it doesn't seem like he has a lot of his colleagues marching to the beat of his drum.
There's still plenty of time to see who's going to be running against Trump, if Trump is still around to run. He's starting to sound and act like someone who is itching to be thrown out of office, one way or the other. A good ploy for him; he can play the victim and spread the blame widely, a noble patriot undone by the evil media and corrupt members of the FBI.
more on colonialism
It strikes me that the US and Canada were unusual colonies because they were white people. They were also different in that a lot of the colonists left because they were hostile to the British government. Wait a minute, did I call us colonists? I suppose we (Americans) were colonizing the Indians, not really, the Spanish and Portuguese colonized their Indians putting them in settlements and teaching them about Jesus, why so many Indians are still in South, as opposed to North America, where we basically just took there land and threw them out.
It's been the subject of many books why in the last half of the nineteenth century Europe, a former backwoods, came to colonize a good part of the rest of the world. Myself I think we just happened to be at the right place at the right time, if the yellow, red, brown, or black people had been there they would have done the same. This is not what the white people at the time thought. They thought that the fact that they were currently at the top of the heap meant that they were clearly superior to any nonwhites. This gave them a license to treat the nonwhites badly, but the bleeding hearts of the time thought it was our responsibility, the white man's burden, to raise them up to our level of civilization.
Bleeding hearts have never been a powerful constituency, and their aims became window dressing for steamrolling the natives. The Conquistadors encountering Indians would yell at them in Spanish to lay down their arms and accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior and when the Indians ignored that it was clobbering time. Technically they were converting rather than conquering the Indians though they did manage to ship a lot of gold (to kill Protestants in Italy and the Netherlands) back to Spain.
But in more benevolent colonies an attempt was made to transport the European forms of government to the colony, but there was a reluctance to give them much schooling lest they become restive, and to allow native people to assume any kind of high office in their own countries because, you know, they weren't white. When the Europeans found the colonies unprofitable and shed them in those outlandish ceremonies the countries fell on their face.
Some of these countries were still getting their freedom back in the sixties and anti-colonialism was a part of the new left's lexicon, It fit right in, you could blast the powers that be while excusing the excesses of the downtrodden by calling them victims.
You don't hear it so much anymore, because after all that was like seventy to a hundred years ago, and stronger countries have always bullied weaker countries, so like, you know, get over it.
I was going to get into speculating on why South America, so big and rich in resources has never been much of a player on the world stage, but that will have to wait for the next posting. Adios.
It's been the subject of many books why in the last half of the nineteenth century Europe, a former backwoods, came to colonize a good part of the rest of the world. Myself I think we just happened to be at the right place at the right time, if the yellow, red, brown, or black people had been there they would have done the same. This is not what the white people at the time thought. They thought that the fact that they were currently at the top of the heap meant that they were clearly superior to any nonwhites. This gave them a license to treat the nonwhites badly, but the bleeding hearts of the time thought it was our responsibility, the white man's burden, to raise them up to our level of civilization.
Bleeding hearts have never been a powerful constituency, and their aims became window dressing for steamrolling the natives. The Conquistadors encountering Indians would yell at them in Spanish to lay down their arms and accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior and when the Indians ignored that it was clobbering time. Technically they were converting rather than conquering the Indians though they did manage to ship a lot of gold (to kill Protestants in Italy and the Netherlands) back to Spain.
But in more benevolent colonies an attempt was made to transport the European forms of government to the colony, but there was a reluctance to give them much schooling lest they become restive, and to allow native people to assume any kind of high office in their own countries because, you know, they weren't white. When the Europeans found the colonies unprofitable and shed them in those outlandish ceremonies the countries fell on their face.
Some of these countries were still getting their freedom back in the sixties and anti-colonialism was a part of the new left's lexicon, It fit right in, you could blast the powers that be while excusing the excesses of the downtrodden by calling them victims.
You don't hear it so much anymore, because after all that was like seventy to a hundred years ago, and stronger countries have always bullied weaker countries, so like, you know, get over it.
I was going to get into speculating on why South America, so big and rich in resources has never been much of a player on the world stage, but that will have to wait for the next posting. Adios.
Monday, February 18, 2019
No Colombian jokes in South America
Beagles does a pretty good job with the history of central and south America. You know a peculiar thing about South America, if you look at a map of it shortly after Bolivar, the countries and their borders are about the same as they are today. No countries taking over other countries, no civil wars resulting in new nations. There have been wars but I think they have been border skirmishes. So without wars and without conquerors or rebels, what kind of history do you have?
Not much, or not the kind of history that gets into books. I remember once feeling bad about not knowing much about South America, like much of the United States does, It seems like every four or eight years the new administration announces a new focus on our forgotten friend and then promptly forgets it. I had a bit of trouble finding a book on South America, and when I read it, it was pretty boring. Lots of leaders I never heard of succeeding leaders I had also never heard of, but not much else.
I worked with a guy from Colombia a few years and once I asked him if they had a thing in South America like we do in Europe where Poles aren't very bright, and Italians are passionate, and French are snobs, and the Brits are prissy. That was cool stuff back in school. Once you found out what you were you could make fun of other kids and they of you. It was all good clean fun, and I think it is still allowed a bit, after all it is just white people making fun of other white people. Anyway my friend said no such thing existed in South America. See, boring.
Territory is just a place but in the US I think the assumption was that it would eventually become one or several states. People in territories can't vote in federal elections and they don't pay the federal income taxes but they do pay payroll taxes and various other taxes that go into the US treasury.
I don't know if I would describe China or India as feudal or tribal, but they were weak at the time of colonization and I think the main thing the colonizers looked for was weakness. Certain countries like Thailand, Iran, and Ethiopia in the path of colonization were never colonized. In some countries like in Africa there was no country to colonize and the colonizer took a few port cities and called it a colony.
Not much, or not the kind of history that gets into books. I remember once feeling bad about not knowing much about South America, like much of the United States does, It seems like every four or eight years the new administration announces a new focus on our forgotten friend and then promptly forgets it. I had a bit of trouble finding a book on South America, and when I read it, it was pretty boring. Lots of leaders I never heard of succeeding leaders I had also never heard of, but not much else.
I worked with a guy from Colombia a few years and once I asked him if they had a thing in South America like we do in Europe where Poles aren't very bright, and Italians are passionate, and French are snobs, and the Brits are prissy. That was cool stuff back in school. Once you found out what you were you could make fun of other kids and they of you. It was all good clean fun, and I think it is still allowed a bit, after all it is just white people making fun of other white people. Anyway my friend said no such thing existed in South America. See, boring.
Territory is just a place but in the US I think the assumption was that it would eventually become one or several states. People in territories can't vote in federal elections and they don't pay the federal income taxes but they do pay payroll taxes and various other taxes that go into the US treasury.
I don't know if I would describe China or India as feudal or tribal, but they were weak at the time of colonization and I think the main thing the colonizers looked for was weakness. Certain countries like Thailand, Iran, and Ethiopia in the path of colonization were never colonized. In some countries like in Africa there was no country to colonize and the colonizer took a few port cities and called it a colony.
Sunday, February 17, 2019
No Taxation - No Representation
In keeping with the spirit of not looking things up, here's what I seem to remember about U.S. territories: I think the reason they are called territories is that the first one was called "The Northwest Territory". When the 13 colonies won their independence, the Brits threw in the Northwest Territory at no extra charge. The United States of America hadn't been organized yet, so the Brits gave the Northwest Territory to the Continental Congress, which subsequently passed The Northwest Ordinance to govern it. When the U.S. Constitution was written, it gave Congress the power to govern new territories and carve them up into states. Residents of U.S. territories are U.S. citizens, but they don't pay income tax and they don't vote in national elections. At least that's what I thought, but I remember hearing reports of election returns from some territories during the last presidential election, so maybe that was changed at some point. When I went to school, each territory got to send one non-voting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, and I have no reason to believe that has been changed. Puerto Rico has voted down statehood resolutions a number of times. I understand that about a third of their people want statehood, another third want independence, and another third want to retain their territorial status.
Most, but not all, South and Central American countries speak Spanish. Brazil speaks Portuguese, Haiti speaks French, and I think Jamaica speaks its own dialect of English. None of them speaks Latin but, for some reason, they are all called Latin American countries. They were all European colonies at one time, and I think that Jamaica still is. A guy named Simon Bolivar was instrumental in liberating several South American colonies during the 19th Century. He envisioned a United States of South America, but it never came to be.
Our former Governor Snyder was always trying to persuade business interests to locate in Michigan. He even solicited one from Red China, but the deal ran aground when it was revealed that an inordinate number of their Chinese employees had committed suicide to escape their unpleasant work environment. I seem to remember there was some talk about a space center too, but I don't think anything ever came of it.
Most, but not all, South and Central American countries speak Spanish. Brazil speaks Portuguese, Haiti speaks French, and I think Jamaica speaks its own dialect of English. None of them speaks Latin but, for some reason, they are all called Latin American countries. They were all European colonies at one time, and I think that Jamaica still is. A guy named Simon Bolivar was instrumental in liberating several South American colonies during the 19th Century. He envisioned a United States of South America, but it never came to be.
Our former Governor Snyder was always trying to persuade business interests to locate in Michigan. He even solicited one from Red China, but the deal ran aground when it was revealed that an inordinate number of their Chinese employees had committed suicide to escape their unpleasant work environment. I seem to remember there was some talk about a space center too, but I don't think anything ever came of it.
Beaglesonian Space Force?
The topic of colonialism is a big bone to gnaw upon and I'm taking my time, avoiding online resources and depending on memory of classes taken, books that I've read and whatever collective wisdom I may have picked up. For the time being I'm just yapping off the top of my head...
If there was ever a "golden age" of colonialism I would say it started with the discovery of the New World and lasted until the middle of the 20th century. I agree with Mr. Beagles' assertion that the Europeans considered feudal and tribal lands as fair game, ripe for the picking. But not all European nations played the colonizing game; it seems to have been limited to those nations that had a significant maritime presence and the financial resources to take the big risks necessary for successful colonization. It ain't cheap but the rewards were more often then not worth the risks.
Is there any difference between colonies and territories? The US doesn't have any colonies that I know of but has plenty of territories like American Samoa, Guam (I think), Puerto Rico, and some others. Politically they are all part of the United States even if they lack statehood; the residents are all US citizens, aren't they? This is stuff that I'm sure I was taught in school but have long since forgotten.
Something that I haven't forgotten because I don't think it was ever taught to me is Central and South American history, I know a little, not much, about Mexico but I am shamefully ignorant about all those other countries. Were they all colonies at one time of European nations and gained independence? I wonder what differentiates the people of those many small nations; they all speak Spanish and look a lot alike to me.
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The state of Michigan never ceases to amaze me. I read that the former governor, Rick Snyder, had a study to establish a facility to launch rockets in Northern Michigan. The new governor has killed that idea for the time being because it lacks details, which is a shame. The Northern Lights are cool but watching rocket launches would be much cooler. A bad financial decision, but still cool.
If there was ever a "golden age" of colonialism I would say it started with the discovery of the New World and lasted until the middle of the 20th century. I agree with Mr. Beagles' assertion that the Europeans considered feudal and tribal lands as fair game, ripe for the picking. But not all European nations played the colonizing game; it seems to have been limited to those nations that had a significant maritime presence and the financial resources to take the big risks necessary for successful colonization. It ain't cheap but the rewards were more often then not worth the risks.
Is there any difference between colonies and territories? The US doesn't have any colonies that I know of but has plenty of territories like American Samoa, Guam (I think), Puerto Rico, and some others. Politically they are all part of the United States even if they lack statehood; the residents are all US citizens, aren't they? This is stuff that I'm sure I was taught in school but have long since forgotten.
Something that I haven't forgotten because I don't think it was ever taught to me is Central and South American history, I know a little, not much, about Mexico but I am shamefully ignorant about all those other countries. Were they all colonies at one time of European nations and gained independence? I wonder what differentiates the people of those many small nations; they all speak Spanish and look a lot alike to me.
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The state of Michigan never ceases to amaze me. I read that the former governor, Rick Snyder, had a study to establish a facility to launch rockets in Northern Michigan. The new governor has killed that idea for the time being because it lacks details, which is a shame. The Northern Lights are cool but watching rocket launches would be much cooler. A bad financial decision, but still cool.
Friday, February 15, 2019
Fonts, Taxes, and Colonialism
We have discussed this before. Maybe different browsers display things differently but, when I log in, the page that comes up is the page from which we compose our posts. If I want to see the blogs the way visitors see them, I click on "View Blog" in the upper left hand corner, but I seldom have a reason to do that. The "View Blog" page is the one with the grey font, but the page that comes up when I log in has a regular typewriter type font as a default. When I want to quote something, I copy and paste it and then put quotation marks around it. That doesn't seem to affect the default font, but it often affects the grey font on the "View Blog" page. I went there just now to see what Uncle Ken was talking about, and I noticed that the first sentence in the last paragraph was indeed grey, while the rest of the post was in black. I didn't do that on purpose, and I don't know how it came to be like that.
I didn't mean to imply that the Federal Reserve should have the power to levy taxes, I just meant that if it did, they could use it as a way to take money out of circulation. As it is, they take money out of circulation by selling the treasuries that they bought when they wanted to put new money into circulation. It would seem, then, that taxation has nothing to do with monetary policy. So what are taxes good for? The Fed controls the money supply, so why can't they just supply the government with the money it needs to operate instead of giving it to the banks? There is probably a good reason, I just don't know what it is.
I think that most of the colonies that were founded by European countries were not nation states at the time they were colonized, they had tribal or feudal systems. The Europeans gained a foothold by supporting one faction against another, and eventually marginalizing their allies. That's not the same thing as one nation state conquering another but, from the indigenous point of view, it still sucks.
I didn't mean to imply that the Federal Reserve should have the power to levy taxes, I just meant that if it did, they could use it as a way to take money out of circulation. As it is, they take money out of circulation by selling the treasuries that they bought when they wanted to put new money into circulation. It would seem, then, that taxation has nothing to do with monetary policy. So what are taxes good for? The Fed controls the money supply, so why can't they just supply the government with the money it needs to operate instead of giving it to the banks? There is probably a good reason, I just don't know what it is.
I think that most of the colonies that were founded by European countries were not nation states at the time they were colonized, they had tribal or feudal systems. The Europeans gained a foothold by supporting one faction against another, and eventually marginalizing their allies. That's not the same thing as one nation state conquering another but, from the indigenous point of view, it still sucks.
the colonial experience
Beagles' explication of the Fed sounds approximately correct as far as my understanding of it goes which I admit is not very far.
There is a lot of conspiracy theory, both on the left and the right about the Fed. Imagine what that would be like if the Fed, an unelected body, had the power to levy taxes, and of course with that goes the power to decide where the taxes fall. Our elected government chose a couple years ago to excuse the rich from paying much of their taxes, and now the dems are trying to get some of that money back. That's democracy I guess. And shouldn't the body that spends the money also be able to decide how that money is received? And money taxed does not disappear from circulation, it is immediately spent.
I thought the first line in the fourth paragraph was some kind of quote because it is grey, but I think that is just one of the vagaries of the blogspot editor. Actually the whole post should be grey instead of black, but I think I understand how that works, kind of like email, when you paste something into it then it wants to follow the font of the pasted item and sometimes it is just to much of a pain in the ass to try to get everything right so you just say fuckit and go along with it, am I right?
Actually I hate that grey font because it is hard to read. What I am typing right now is a nice black, but once I post it it will all turn to grey. When I paste something from another post it appears grey and I have to edit it to make it black again. I usually put it in italics to make it stand out. One thing I like about email and the blog better than using a type writer is the use of italics and bold, I think it considerably extends my range of expression.
Colonialism was a strange thing. I think it began with the trading companies wanting an exclusive deal with the local poobahs, who of course were likely to play footsie with other companies so the company (which was sort of an extension of the state) had to put the hammer down and the best way to enforce that was to just take over the country, and the folks at home just loved it when that country became the same color as theirs on a map. Even if their house isn't any bigger and they aren't any richer or better looking their hearts go thump thump thump when they think their country has defeated another country and now rules it. Go figure.
But the conqueror eventually discovered that it was awfully expensive to maintain an army in another country, and in fact the wiser expedient was just to buy cotton wherever it was cheaper, and slowly they began to free their subjects. There would be a big ceremony with bigwigs and flags and bands and the new nation would proudly take its place in the pantheon of nations and fall flat on its face. Some claimed it was because the colonizer didn't really prepare the country for independence, or that if they had never colonized it in the first place it would be better off. But the whole thing seems a wash to me, countries in the same area whether they were colonized or not seem to have fared about the same.
There is a lot of conspiracy theory, both on the left and the right about the Fed. Imagine what that would be like if the Fed, an unelected body, had the power to levy taxes, and of course with that goes the power to decide where the taxes fall. Our elected government chose a couple years ago to excuse the rich from paying much of their taxes, and now the dems are trying to get some of that money back. That's democracy I guess. And shouldn't the body that spends the money also be able to decide how that money is received? And money taxed does not disappear from circulation, it is immediately spent.
I thought the first line in the fourth paragraph was some kind of quote because it is grey, but I think that is just one of the vagaries of the blogspot editor. Actually the whole post should be grey instead of black, but I think I understand how that works, kind of like email, when you paste something into it then it wants to follow the font of the pasted item and sometimes it is just to much of a pain in the ass to try to get everything right so you just say fuckit and go along with it, am I right?
Actually I hate that grey font because it is hard to read. What I am typing right now is a nice black, but once I post it it will all turn to grey. When I paste something from another post it appears grey and I have to edit it to make it black again. I usually put it in italics to make it stand out. One thing I like about email and the blog better than using a type writer is the use of italics and bold, I think it considerably extends my range of expression.
Colonialism was a strange thing. I think it began with the trading companies wanting an exclusive deal with the local poobahs, who of course were likely to play footsie with other companies so the company (which was sort of an extension of the state) had to put the hammer down and the best way to enforce that was to just take over the country, and the folks at home just loved it when that country became the same color as theirs on a map. Even if their house isn't any bigger and they aren't any richer or better looking their hearts go thump thump thump when they think their country has defeated another country and now rules it. Go figure.
But the conqueror eventually discovered that it was awfully expensive to maintain an army in another country, and in fact the wiser expedient was just to buy cotton wherever it was cheaper, and slowly they began to free their subjects. There would be a big ceremony with bigwigs and flags and bands and the new nation would proudly take its place in the pantheon of nations and fall flat on its face. Some claimed it was because the colonizer didn't really prepare the country for independence, or that if they had never colonized it in the first place it would be better off. But the whole thing seems a wash to me, countries in the same area whether they were colonized or not seem to have fared about the same.
Thursday, February 14, 2019
Caesar Giveth and Caesar Taketh Away
"I'm a little confused by Beagles' proposal. Is he saying that instead of taxing people the government should just print more paper whenever it wants to fund something?" - Uncle Ken
Well, it's not exactly a proposal, it's just an expression of my own confusion about how our economic system works. The federal government is the only legal source of all money. They literally create money out of nothing. They say, "Let there be money", and lo there is money. Between 10 and 20 percent of it is actual currency, the rest of it is not paper money, it's money on paper. The Federal Reserve is charged with controlling both inflation and unemployment. When they determine that inflation is too high, they reduce the supply of money in circulation and, when they determine that unemployment is too high, they increase the supply of money in circulation. They also do something with interest rates but I think the only rate they directly control is the Fed Funds Rate, which is the rate that banks charge when they borrow money from each other. All the other interest rates tend to follow suit, but I think that's just a function of the market place. The market place generally responds faster to economic changes than any action taken by the Federal Reserve, which is why said action doesn't always have the desired effect, but it seems to work most of the time. I say "seems to work" because we don't know for sure what would have happened if the Fed had taken a different action, or no action at all.
What I don't understand is the role that taxation plays in all this. If the Fed had the power to levy taxes, then they could use that as a way to take money out of circulation when they wanted to, but only Congress has the power to levy taxes. Taxes are raised and lowered mostly for socio-political reasons, and the Federal Reserve is supposed to be above all that. Government activity vastly exceeds the amount of money brought in by taxes, and the difference is made up by borrowing. When the Fed wants to increase the money supply, they buy government debt from private brokers with money that they create by decree. When they want to reduce the money supply, they sell government debt back to private brokers. I don't know what would happen if the Fed kept any of that debt to maturity. It seems like that would cancel out said debt because the government wouldn't have to repay itself, but I don't know that for sure. I doubt that the government could fund itself solely by creating new money. That has been tried in other countries and has led to hyper inflation and political upheaval. I think that's what's currently going on in Venezuela.
I think the reason Europeans colonized other countries is that Europe advanced beyond the feudal stage earlier than those other countries. The Europeans were able to exploit local conflicts to their own advantage, but those conflicts were going on before the Europeans arrived on the scene, and they're still going on even unto this day. At some point, the Europeans decided that keeping colonies was more trouble than it was worth but, for some reason, they still seem reluctant to make a clean break and let the chips fall where they may.
terrible stews
I remember years ago on one of those Sunday shows, they were talking about the Mideast peace talks of the time and shaking their heads sadly about the hopelessness and somebody, likely Sam Donaldson, or some Sam Donaldson type, piped up to George Will, "Well isn't it a good sign that at least they are talking about peace?" And Prissy George Will pursed his lips and said, "No."
I like George Will a little now that he has come out as an Anti-Trumpist, but back then I seldom agreed with him, but on that particular question I thought that he was spot on. The thing is there were moderates on both sides (more then than now I think) and everytime they got together and moved close to an agreement, the hard-liners on both sides became alarmed, and these guys don't write searing letters to the editor, they go out and kill members of the other side, so maybe they are better off just not talking at all.
I don't know about the boundaries. This is an argument that was common in the sixties, kind of an anti-colonialism thing where the people fighting each other were blameless because it was the result of boundaries established by those awful White colonialists, like all would be hunky dory if that had never happened. I'm not buying it.
I wonder if any conflicts could be resolved without the outside influence of the big nations like the US, Russia, China, the EU, or any of their neighbors waiting on the sidelines trying to pick a winner.
What I think Old Dog is saying is that maybe these combatants would be better off if the first and second world didn't stick their noses in. I am thinking of those proxy African wars of the late sixties, early seventies, where one side would appeal to the USA or USSR so the other side would appeal to the other, and sometimes one side would switch backers so the other side would do the same, kind of a checkers game we and the USSR were playing on the blackboard of Africa about which neither side gave a shit. That was bad.
One thinks of the Mideast as rather a sleepy part of the world before Israel and oil, and strangely enough neither of those things seem to be driving the current hostilities. Israel is sitting on the sidelines taking cheap shots at Syria, and oil, the world seems to be awash so it is not such a big deal to outside powers. One side appears to be Russia/Iran/Shiite, and the other side USA/Saudi Arabia/Sunni, the whole thing breaking down to fanatics and warlords and innocent bystanders at the ground level, a terrible stew.
I didn't get much out of that Bill Gates thing. Of course he doesn't want to be taxed. These wild ideas out of the left are just that, ideas. It seems to me that they are worthy of some discussion rather than being slain in their nests.
I'm a little confused by Beagles' proposal. Is he saying that instead of taxing people the government should just print more paper whenever it wants to fund something?
I like George Will a little now that he has come out as an Anti-Trumpist, but back then I seldom agreed with him, but on that particular question I thought that he was spot on. The thing is there were moderates on both sides (more then than now I think) and everytime they got together and moved close to an agreement, the hard-liners on both sides became alarmed, and these guys don't write searing letters to the editor, they go out and kill members of the other side, so maybe they are better off just not talking at all.
I don't know about the boundaries. This is an argument that was common in the sixties, kind of an anti-colonialism thing where the people fighting each other were blameless because it was the result of boundaries established by those awful White colonialists, like all would be hunky dory if that had never happened. I'm not buying it.
I wonder if any conflicts could be resolved without the outside influence of the big nations like the US, Russia, China, the EU, or any of their neighbors waiting on the sidelines trying to pick a winner.
What I think Old Dog is saying is that maybe these combatants would be better off if the first and second world didn't stick their noses in. I am thinking of those proxy African wars of the late sixties, early seventies, where one side would appeal to the USA or USSR so the other side would appeal to the other, and sometimes one side would switch backers so the other side would do the same, kind of a checkers game we and the USSR were playing on the blackboard of Africa about which neither side gave a shit. That was bad.
One thinks of the Mideast as rather a sleepy part of the world before Israel and oil, and strangely enough neither of those things seem to be driving the current hostilities. Israel is sitting on the sidelines taking cheap shots at Syria, and oil, the world seems to be awash so it is not such a big deal to outside powers. One side appears to be Russia/Iran/Shiite, and the other side USA/Saudi Arabia/Sunni, the whole thing breaking down to fanatics and warlords and innocent bystanders at the ground level, a terrible stew.
I didn't get much out of that Bill Gates thing. Of course he doesn't want to be taxed. These wild ideas out of the left are just that, ideas. It seems to me that they are worthy of some discussion rather than being slain in their nests.
I'm a little confused by Beagles' proposal. Is he saying that instead of taxing people the government should just print more paper whenever it wants to fund something?
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Bars, Boats, and Big Bucks
We've got our share of bars in Cheboygan, although I think there were more of them when I first moved here than there are now. We've also got a fancy historic opera house that was built in the late 19th Century. It had fallen into disrepair by the time I moved here but was totally restored back in the 70s. They don't do a lot of operas there, maybe one or two a year, but they also do other stuff like plays and music concerts. We've only got one movie theater, but it has multiple screens. There is a nice bowling alley about five miles out of town. At least I think it's still nice, I haven't been inside the place in decades. We've got lots of boating activity too, I guess I forgot to mention that. There is a nice public marina near the mouth of the river, and a fancy private one around the corner on Duncan Bay. The hunting and fishing is not what it used to be, but it's still available, with lots of state land nearby and several public boat ramps on the river.
I've said this before, but I still don't know why we have to pay federal taxes at all. The federal government literally creates money out of nothing and gives it to the banks, who loan it out to the people. Why not cut out the middle man and distribute the money directly to the people? Whenever it is determined that there's too much money in circulation, they could just distribute less for awhile until equilibrium is restored.
I've said this before, but I still don't know why we have to pay federal taxes at all. The federal government literally creates money out of nothing and gives it to the banks, who loan it out to the people. Why not cut out the middle man and distribute the money directly to the people? Whenever it is determined that there's too much money in circulation, they could just distribute less for awhile until equilibrium is restored.
No news is good news, or not
It's always nice to look forward to something, as Uncle Ken hinted at when he mentioned pitchers and catchers. Although still below the horizon, spring (and baseball season) is lurking and will be upon us before we know it. But there is threat to the world of Cracker Jack. In a first, there is a minor league ball club that will be banning peanuts from their ballpark. I can see the benefits for the greater good but it saddens me to see that such steps need to be taken and I wonder what the future holds. Will peanuts be banned from all public venues?
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I've been ignoring a lot of the news lately so I missed the flap about the antisemitism which, as Uncle Ken states, is really anti-Jewish but there doesn't seem to be a better word for it than antisemitism. I'm about ready to give up on figuring out the situation in the Middle East except to state that it all goes back to the Western nations that determined the current boundaries after the two world wars. I wonder if any conflicts could be resolved without the outside influence of the big nations like the US, Russia, China, the EU, or any of their neighbors waiting on the sidelines trying to pick a winner. You can see why I didn't have a promising career with the State Department.
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Other news I've been ignoring is that which covers income equality, taxation, and all that mess but I did catch a bit about the difference between taxing income and taxing wealth, courtesy of Bill and Melinda Gates. Makes sense to me that wealth should be taxed in a different way especially since I've read that Amazon paid zero taxes, again. I'm disappointed that all those graduates of egghead schools of economics can't come up with a better system.
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First it was the screen of my laptop that bit the dust and now it's the keyboard that's acting up and it's driving me crazy. I have a big old Microsoft keyboard plugged into a USB port and it works like a champ, even if it is a beast with more keys and special buttons than I know what to do with. There's a mouse plugged in, too, so it's a funky yet functional system. One step forward, two steps sideways, and I'm not used to this big keyboard yet; I don't use it unless I have a lot of typing to do. The laptop's keyboard and trackpad are good enough for routine computer usage, for now.
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I've been ignoring a lot of the news lately so I missed the flap about the antisemitism which, as Uncle Ken states, is really anti-Jewish but there doesn't seem to be a better word for it than antisemitism. I'm about ready to give up on figuring out the situation in the Middle East except to state that it all goes back to the Western nations that determined the current boundaries after the two world wars. I wonder if any conflicts could be resolved without the outside influence of the big nations like the US, Russia, China, the EU, or any of their neighbors waiting on the sidelines trying to pick a winner. You can see why I didn't have a promising career with the State Department.
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Other news I've been ignoring is that which covers income equality, taxation, and all that mess but I did catch a bit about the difference between taxing income and taxing wealth, courtesy of Bill and Melinda Gates. Makes sense to me that wealth should be taxed in a different way especially since I've read that Amazon paid zero taxes, again. I'm disappointed that all those graduates of egghead schools of economics can't come up with a better system.
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First it was the screen of my laptop that bit the dust and now it's the keyboard that's acting up and it's driving me crazy. I have a big old Microsoft keyboard plugged into a USB port and it works like a champ, even if it is a beast with more keys and special buttons than I know what to do with. There's a mouse plugged in, too, so it's a funky yet functional system. One step forward, two steps sideways, and I'm not used to this big keyboard yet; I don't use it unless I have a lot of typing to do. The laptop's keyboard and trackpad are good enough for routine computer usage, for now.
Google Earthing Cheboygan
Had to look up Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. I was familiar with the words, but I didn't know what the words were for, and it turns out that they were a choosing game like eeny meeny minie mo, which in my heyday in Gage Park had an unfortunate second line.
I believe it has been established that while I enjoy a nice beer garden, I am no big fan of the out-of-doors, which obviously Cheboygan has a lot of and Chicago, well none to speak of. Looking out my window I can see the south bank of the river which has some trees, and rumor has it that there may be bears, though that rumor is promulgated only by myself.
After Mackinaw we went north to that foreign country. It was a big deal crossing a border for a little kid, I got to thinking how come we didn't pass through Milwaukee on the way back, sure I would remember Milwaukee, but I do remember passing through Wisconsin Dells and Madison, I guess we passed through Rockford, that forgotten city on the way back.
With all this talk I took a Google Earth tour of Cheboygan. I didn't see much in the way of nightlife, by which I mean, oh some lodge or fancy hotel of some sort, the place where some hunters or fisherman go after a full day of hunting and fishing to knock a few back. Well maybe the tourists or resorters of Cheboygan are guys that like to just hang in their cabins playing cards and drinking beer. There are worse ways to spend an evening. And boaters, I reckon there are a lot of boaters in the area.
At least once a year I like to take the evening cruise on the Chicago River, the city looks very nice at night, but I realize that doesn't make me a boater. I think I understand boaters even less than I do outdoorsmen. But I guess there are fishing boats, seems like there are some pretty big fish in the northern great lakes,
I wondered about this tweet of Omar's causing such an uproar. I mean isn't the goal of AIPAC to promote the state of Israel? Isn't that why people give it money? Isn't that what it uses to raise funds? Doesn't it go after any rep or sen who is seen as insufficiently pro-Israel?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. So what is the big deal? I guess it's the way she phrased it. A long time trope of anti-Semitism is that they are money guys who control everything, and that led to the holocaust. But still, does that make it bad to criticize AIPAC because then you are an anti-Semite. And what is with anit-Semite? Both the Jews and the Arabs are Semites, how can the Arabs be anti-Semite?
The thing is that even though Arabs and Jews are Semites,anti-Semitic has taken on the exclusive meaning of anti-Jewish. And now being anything less than totally for the state of Israel is considered being anti-Semitic.
I believe it has been established that while I enjoy a nice beer garden, I am no big fan of the out-of-doors, which obviously Cheboygan has a lot of and Chicago, well none to speak of. Looking out my window I can see the south bank of the river which has some trees, and rumor has it that there may be bears, though that rumor is promulgated only by myself.
After Mackinaw we went north to that foreign country. It was a big deal crossing a border for a little kid, I got to thinking how come we didn't pass through Milwaukee on the way back, sure I would remember Milwaukee, but I do remember passing through Wisconsin Dells and Madison, I guess we passed through Rockford, that forgotten city on the way back.
With all this talk I took a Google Earth tour of Cheboygan. I didn't see much in the way of nightlife, by which I mean, oh some lodge or fancy hotel of some sort, the place where some hunters or fisherman go after a full day of hunting and fishing to knock a few back. Well maybe the tourists or resorters of Cheboygan are guys that like to just hang in their cabins playing cards and drinking beer. There are worse ways to spend an evening. And boaters, I reckon there are a lot of boaters in the area.
At least once a year I like to take the evening cruise on the Chicago River, the city looks very nice at night, but I realize that doesn't make me a boater. I think I understand boaters even less than I do outdoorsmen. But I guess there are fishing boats, seems like there are some pretty big fish in the northern great lakes,
I wondered about this tweet of Omar's causing such an uproar. I mean isn't the goal of AIPAC to promote the state of Israel? Isn't that why people give it money? Isn't that what it uses to raise funds? Doesn't it go after any rep or sen who is seen as insufficiently pro-Israel?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. So what is the big deal? I guess it's the way she phrased it. A long time trope of anti-Semitism is that they are money guys who control everything, and that led to the holocaust. But still, does that make it bad to criticize AIPAC because then you are an anti-Semite. And what is with anit-Semite? Both the Jews and the Arabs are Semites, how can the Arabs be anti-Semite?
The thing is that even though Arabs and Jews are Semites,anti-Semitic has taken on the exclusive meaning of anti-Jewish. And now being anything less than totally for the state of Israel is considered being anti-Semitic.
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Rich Man, Poor Man
How does that old poem go? "Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief." I think there's more to it, but that's all I remember. Anyway, we've got all of them and more in Cheboygan. About 5,000 people live within the city limits, and about 21,000 are spread out over the rest of the county. That's only counting the year round residents, I don't know how many people keep second homes here that they only use on weekends and vacations. Many of those people end up selling their homes down below and living here full time after they retire from their jobs. Then there are the "snowbirds" who spend their summers here and their winters in Florida. Most of them are probably retired as well. These part timers are commonly called "tourists", but it would be more accurate to call them "resorters". A true tourist is somebody who's just passing through and doesn't own real estate in the area, and we get our share of them as well.
Many of those low paying seasonal jobs that I talked about are in what they call "hospitality", which is hotels, motels, restaurants, and stuff like that. The more I think about it, Cheboygan doesn't have as many of those as places like Mackinaw City, Petoskey, and Charlevoix, which is where they are crying about a shortage of cheap help. We do have a lot of people employed in retail, though, which doesn't pay too well either. Somebody did a study once that concluded we will never have full employment in our area because too many people want to live here. I remember talking to a guy decades ago who had just returned from Oklahoma, where he had been working on an oil well. When the well shut down, he came home because, as he said, "I'd rather be poor in Cheboygan than in Oklahoma."
Uncle Ken, when you took that tour around Lake Michigan with your family, you probably followed U.S 31 to the Straits, and then U.S. 2 through the U.P. Then you picked up U.S. 41 in Wisconsin and took it all the way back to Chicago. You would have missed Cheboygan by about 15 miles. If you would have turned right at Mackinaw City and picked up U.S. 23, you could have followed it through Cheboygan and along the Lake Huron shore to Detroit. Then you could have taken U.S. 12 back to Chicago. Those "scenic routes" are still in operation, but most travelers prefer the interstates, which are faster but not as interesting.
Many of those low paying seasonal jobs that I talked about are in what they call "hospitality", which is hotels, motels, restaurants, and stuff like that. The more I think about it, Cheboygan doesn't have as many of those as places like Mackinaw City, Petoskey, and Charlevoix, which is where they are crying about a shortage of cheap help. We do have a lot of people employed in retail, though, which doesn't pay too well either. Somebody did a study once that concluded we will never have full employment in our area because too many people want to live here. I remember talking to a guy decades ago who had just returned from Oklahoma, where he had been working on an oil well. When the well shut down, he came home because, as he said, "I'd rather be poor in Cheboygan than in Oklahoma."
Uncle Ken, when you took that tour around Lake Michigan with your family, you probably followed U.S 31 to the Straits, and then U.S. 2 through the U.P. Then you picked up U.S. 41 in Wisconsin and took it all the way back to Chicago. You would have missed Cheboygan by about 15 miles. If you would have turned right at Mackinaw City and picked up U.S. 23, you could have followed it through Cheboygan and along the Lake Huron shore to Detroit. Then you could have taken U.S. 12 back to Chicago. Those "scenic routes" are still in operation, but most travelers prefer the interstates, which are faster but not as interesting.
catering to the one percent
There's been much talk here about living wages, and it would seem to me that a living wage would be high enough for somebody to maintain a car, It seems like if the businesses of Cheboygan want more help maybe they should pay more. Where does this low cost help come from? At under seven square miles it seems like anybody could walk anywhere they wanted to go in Cheboygan. Are there a lot of people like Beagles who have their freeholds strewn across the land?
Well I remember those two years when I had a car. It was a cheap one so it kept breaking down, then there was gas and insurance. As soon as I didn't need it anymore I abandoned it to some parking lot. For years I worked for minimum wage and not that steadily either, still I managed to have an pleasant enough lifestyle (there was always money for beer). Not sure if I could have maintained that if I was always shelling out dough for some consarn automobile.
Does Cheboygan get its share of tourist trade in the summer? Hunters and fishermen, outdoorsmen? I imagine there are some passing through on the way to Canada and parts north. One vacation, after the family had gotten that pea green Customline we drove around Lake Michigan. We went up the west coast of Michigan, and through Mackinaw and then back down through the UP and Wisconsin. I was wondering if we might have passed through Cheboygan, but it looks like it was a bit to the east of our probable route.
That Jamaican help probably has their airfare subsidized by the gummint. and I'm sure the employers prefer them to the local help because if they get any lip from them they put them on the next plane trip back to the island.
I didn't know that the fact that the top one percent owns forty percent of the wealth was strictly a liberal lament. I thought it bothered a lot of other people. We have had the discussion before in the halls of The Institute as to whether income inequality could become a problem if it becomes too well, unequal, but I don't recall us ever coming to any conclusions. But I guess it is more a preoccupation of the left than the right. I am already seeing in the arguments for not soaking the rich, that if we soak them too hard, which means soak them at all, why that will stifle the flow trickling down to those holding out their empty hands for scraps beneath the silk-curtained windows of the one percenters at their feast.
There was a local woman, a successful businesswoman but not a one percenter, who rented out like thirty motel rooms for tent people at the height of the vortex. I reckon the cost of renting out those rooms for a year was less than it costs to keep up one of those luxury condos, That's how you make a living catering to the one percent.
At last word it looks like there is a settlement on that budget shutdown thing. It remains to be seen if Trump will sign it, but I think there is a good chance he will. Maybe now we can turn our attention to Brexit which it looks like is hurtling towards an exit with no deal which will be a hard bump indeed..
Well I remember those two years when I had a car. It was a cheap one so it kept breaking down, then there was gas and insurance. As soon as I didn't need it anymore I abandoned it to some parking lot. For years I worked for minimum wage and not that steadily either, still I managed to have an pleasant enough lifestyle (there was always money for beer). Not sure if I could have maintained that if I was always shelling out dough for some consarn automobile.
Does Cheboygan get its share of tourist trade in the summer? Hunters and fishermen, outdoorsmen? I imagine there are some passing through on the way to Canada and parts north. One vacation, after the family had gotten that pea green Customline we drove around Lake Michigan. We went up the west coast of Michigan, and through Mackinaw and then back down through the UP and Wisconsin. I was wondering if we might have passed through Cheboygan, but it looks like it was a bit to the east of our probable route.
That Jamaican help probably has their airfare subsidized by the gummint. and I'm sure the employers prefer them to the local help because if they get any lip from them they put them on the next plane trip back to the island.
I didn't know that the fact that the top one percent owns forty percent of the wealth was strictly a liberal lament. I thought it bothered a lot of other people. We have had the discussion before in the halls of The Institute as to whether income inequality could become a problem if it becomes too well, unequal, but I don't recall us ever coming to any conclusions. But I guess it is more a preoccupation of the left than the right. I am already seeing in the arguments for not soaking the rich, that if we soak them too hard, which means soak them at all, why that will stifle the flow trickling down to those holding out their empty hands for scraps beneath the silk-curtained windows of the one percenters at their feast.
There was a local woman, a successful businesswoman but not a one percenter, who rented out like thirty motel rooms for tent people at the height of the vortex. I reckon the cost of renting out those rooms for a year was less than it costs to keep up one of those luxury condos, That's how you make a living catering to the one percent.
At last word it looks like there is a settlement on that budget shutdown thing. It remains to be seen if Trump will sign it, but I think there is a good chance he will. Maybe now we can turn our attention to Brexit which it looks like is hurtling towards an exit with no deal which will be a hard bump indeed..
Monday, February 11, 2019
Supply and Demand
When I first moved to Cheboygan, the Greyhound stopped here and I knew a few people who rode it occasionally. I don't remember when they discontinued the service, probably because nobody made a fuss about it. Some people did make a fuss when the railroad pulled out, but our paper mill was the last freight customer in town and, when it closed, no justification could be found to keep the trains running. Passenger service had been discontinued before I moved here, so I don't know whether or not its passing was lamented. We have had several taxi cab services in Cheboygan, but none of them lasted very long. We have had a shuttle bus service for some years now, I think it's one of those dial-a-ride things. Last I heard, they would take you to nearby towns like Petoskey and Mackinaw City, but I don't think they go as far as Traverse City. They might be persuaded to, though, if enough people wanted to go there. That's the thing, nobody is going to run an empty bus up and down the road day after day. If there is sufficient demand for a service, somebody will provide it. If not, they won't. It's just that simple.
Well, maybe it's not that simple. Since the economy has pulled out of the last recession, we have been hearing business owners complain that they are having trouble finding cheap help anymore. One of the reasons is that those jobs don't pay enough to keep a reliable car on the road, and public transportation is practically non-existent. Funny, though, they can afford to fly in seasonal help from Jamaica and provide cheap housing for them near their businesses, but they are either unable of unwilling to bus people to work from 20 miles away or provide cheap housing for them nearby.
On the other hand, the liberal lament is that one percent of the people in this country have most of the money. It would seem, then, that only one percent of the housing should be high end first class. How can airlines, ball parks, and real estate developers make a living providing services to only one percent of the population?
Well, maybe it's not that simple. Since the economy has pulled out of the last recession, we have been hearing business owners complain that they are having trouble finding cheap help anymore. One of the reasons is that those jobs don't pay enough to keep a reliable car on the road, and public transportation is practically non-existent. Funny, though, they can afford to fly in seasonal help from Jamaica and provide cheap housing for them near their businesses, but they are either unable of unwilling to bus people to work from 20 miles away or provide cheap housing for them nearby.
On the other hand, the liberal lament is that one percent of the people in this country have most of the money. It would seem, then, that only one percent of the housing should be high end first class. How can airlines, ball parks, and real estate developers make a living providing services to only one percent of the population?
just a slow feb monday
Well that Canadian system sounds alright. As long as the public care is ok, and I think it is, you don't hear a lot of Canadians complaining. I guess if insurance companies want to work outside of the public sector that is ok as long as they are not taking a slice out of everybody's insurance bill. Well what is the point of being rich if you can't toss your money around?
Have you guys noted that airlines are refitting their planes to add more and better first class service. Kind of a disturbing trend, like when they redo ballparks and the main reason is to put in more luxury boxes, and most of those gleaming new skyscrapers they are putting up here in Chicago are luxury condos for people who have five or six which is why the new towers have a lot of dark windows. Meanwhile SROs are being rehabbed into nicer apartments, kicking out the former inhabitants. Why aren't they building new SROs, can't they turn a profit, and what about just plain old middle class housing? Nobody seems to be building much of that.
That green thing was never very specific, just a general mandate. Maybe not every window in every hot dog stand needs to be triple glazed. It is something to be talked about, and I think it is a good thing to talk rather than shoot it in the cradle for being nutty. The only high speed trains we have in the USA is the Acela between DC and New York and the last I looked it was turning a profit. It's not all that fast though. Nobody complains about building airports or highways, but the cost of building the high speed rail is always part of the cost of the bullet trains.
I used to ride the Greyhound and then it got pretty crappy and when the Megabus appeared I was on it. But then the Megabus got increasingly crappy and I went back to the Greyhound and was pleased to discover they had cleaned up their act. But the old Greyhound used to make 5 stops between Chicago and Champaign and now it only makes 2, I think there is an informal network among the carless in towns like Traverse City and Cheboygan, where they know somebody who has a car and that person has a steady income from people who don't have cars.
Pitchers and catchers, and Valentine's Day coming up this week. And perhaps another gummint shutdown. I thought the reps and dems together without Trump could hammer something out, and apparently they were but then they hit a snag, and the last I heard it hadn't been worked out,
Trump heading down to El Paso today, I think he is going to talk about how dangerous El Paso was before they built a snippet of wall in that location, except that El Paso was never dangerous. The mayor of El Paso (a republican) wants to make that point, but I wonder if that word will get to Trump. Well there he is again, ready to ruin another Monday.
Have you guys noted that airlines are refitting their planes to add more and better first class service. Kind of a disturbing trend, like when they redo ballparks and the main reason is to put in more luxury boxes, and most of those gleaming new skyscrapers they are putting up here in Chicago are luxury condos for people who have five or six which is why the new towers have a lot of dark windows. Meanwhile SROs are being rehabbed into nicer apartments, kicking out the former inhabitants. Why aren't they building new SROs, can't they turn a profit, and what about just plain old middle class housing? Nobody seems to be building much of that.
That green thing was never very specific, just a general mandate. Maybe not every window in every hot dog stand needs to be triple glazed. It is something to be talked about, and I think it is a good thing to talk rather than shoot it in the cradle for being nutty. The only high speed trains we have in the USA is the Acela between DC and New York and the last I looked it was turning a profit. It's not all that fast though. Nobody complains about building airports or highways, but the cost of building the high speed rail is always part of the cost of the bullet trains.
I used to ride the Greyhound and then it got pretty crappy and when the Megabus appeared I was on it. But then the Megabus got increasingly crappy and I went back to the Greyhound and was pleased to discover they had cleaned up their act. But the old Greyhound used to make 5 stops between Chicago and Champaign and now it only makes 2, I think there is an informal network among the carless in towns like Traverse City and Cheboygan, where they know somebody who has a car and that person has a steady income from people who don't have cars.
Pitchers and catchers, and Valentine's Day coming up this week. And perhaps another gummint shutdown. I thought the reps and dems together without Trump could hammer something out, and apparently they were but then they hit a snag, and the last I heard it hadn't been worked out,
Trump heading down to El Paso today, I think he is going to talk about how dangerous El Paso was before they built a snippet of wall in that location, except that El Paso was never dangerous. The mayor of El Paso (a republican) wants to make that point, but I wonder if that word will get to Trump. Well there he is again, ready to ruin another Monday.
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Missing the bus
Buildings can be constructed greenly and end up using a lot less energy in their construction and in their maintenance, and isn't that laudable?
Yes it is but my objection was to the notion of applying new rules to all existing buildings and structures. Not every window needs to be triple glazed, nor every roof a solar panel. Improved building materials can be mandated but first all of the many construction and building codes will have to be modified and that means legislative changes; don't hold your breath. I think this is a non-issue because newer construction of all types includes many forward-thinking ideas of the green persuasion. The smart money is already betting on the green ideas without onerous meddling from the government. It's fine to establish new regulations for new construction but I think older buildings should be exempt in most cases.
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High speed rail is amazing and amazingly expensive. I think all high speed rail lines are losing money and require heavy subsidies from the governments that operate them, but I could be wrong. Rail lines are almost perfect for freight and bulk cargo but not so great for passengers, I fear. Transportation in the US is a mess on many levels, even bus companies can't stay in business to provide reliable service between smaller towns and cities, or so I've read. Is it possible to travel to Traverse City from Cheboygan without a car?
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Latinx is a new term for me, too. I think it's hilarious that the terms Latino and Latina are offensive because they are gender specific. What are they going to do about the rest of the Spanish language or other languages that have gender specific words? I don't think this a fight worth waging; it's like they are trying to make words less descriptive and useful. Oh, well. Every generation or social sub-group develops it's own vocabulary and way of speaking; sometimes the changes stick but mostly they fall out of use. I'm still waiting for the NAACP to change their name, Really, who uses the term colored anymore?
Yes it is but my objection was to the notion of applying new rules to all existing buildings and structures. Not every window needs to be triple glazed, nor every roof a solar panel. Improved building materials can be mandated but first all of the many construction and building codes will have to be modified and that means legislative changes; don't hold your breath. I think this is a non-issue because newer construction of all types includes many forward-thinking ideas of the green persuasion. The smart money is already betting on the green ideas without onerous meddling from the government. It's fine to establish new regulations for new construction but I think older buildings should be exempt in most cases.
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High speed rail is amazing and amazingly expensive. I think all high speed rail lines are losing money and require heavy subsidies from the governments that operate them, but I could be wrong. Rail lines are almost perfect for freight and bulk cargo but not so great for passengers, I fear. Transportation in the US is a mess on many levels, even bus companies can't stay in business to provide reliable service between smaller towns and cities, or so I've read. Is it possible to travel to Traverse City from Cheboygan without a car?
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Latinx is a new term for me, too. I think it's hilarious that the terms Latino and Latina are offensive because they are gender specific. What are they going to do about the rest of the Spanish language or other languages that have gender specific words? I don't think this a fight worth waging; it's like they are trying to make words less descriptive and useful. Oh, well. Every generation or social sub-group develops it's own vocabulary and way of speaking; sometimes the changes stick but mostly they fall out of use. I'm still waiting for the NAACP to change their name, Really, who uses the term colored anymore?
Friday, February 8, 2019
Canadians and Mexicans
Back when Obamacare was being debated, I looked up the health care systems that some other countries had, and I liked the Canadian system the best. Their government pays all the bills, but it doesn't cover everything, and private insurance is still available for the stuff not covered by the government system. Doctors can opt out of the system and revert to private practice with their patients paying for it, either out of pocket or with private insurance. Some of the provinces offer services beyond what the national system provides. Prescription drugs are generally not covered, but the government has some kind of control over the prices charged. What's not to like? Well, people have to wait six months or more to get elective procedures like knee replacements. I think that's because they take care of the emergency cases first, but there could be more to it than that.
When the US acquired all that territory as a result of the Mexican War, the Mexicans who lived there were allowed to remain. I'm not sure if they automatically became citizens at that time, but I'm pretty sure that those who owned real estate were allowed to keep it. I don't think the border was controlled very much in those days, and people who lived near it probably came and went as they pleased. At some point Mexicans got in the habit of crossing back and forth to do seasonal farm work, and I don't think a lot of control was exerted over that practice until the aftermath of 9-11, when the US started getting serious about border security. Mexicans then started staying on our side once the got here because it was easier than going out and trying to get back in again. Then all those people from Central America started swarming in and Trump started advocating for his wall.
I saw a thing on TV awhile back where they interviewed a border control guy who worked on the Saint Mary's River, which forms part of the Canadian border. He had been there for a decade or two and reported that he intercepted several illegals a month from several different countries, but not one Canadian.
When the US acquired all that territory as a result of the Mexican War, the Mexicans who lived there were allowed to remain. I'm not sure if they automatically became citizens at that time, but I'm pretty sure that those who owned real estate were allowed to keep it. I don't think the border was controlled very much in those days, and people who lived near it probably came and went as they pleased. At some point Mexicans got in the habit of crossing back and forth to do seasonal farm work, and I don't think a lot of control was exerted over that practice until the aftermath of 9-11, when the US started getting serious about border security. Mexicans then started staying on our side once the got here because it was easier than going out and trying to get back in again. Then all those people from Central America started swarming in and Trump started advocating for his wall.
I saw a thing on TV awhile back where they interviewed a border control guy who worked on the Saint Mary's River, which forms part of the Canadian border. He had been there for a decade or two and reported that he intercepted several illegals a month from several different countries, but not one Canadian.
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