Our Changing Times

If you’ve ever read my columns, you’ll know that my favorite poet is a dead poet by the name of Strickland W. Gillilan.  I’ve posted some of his work in my weekly columns.

This past week I learned of a new website, www.loc.gov, where one can peruse the content of any book in the Library of Congress in Washington.  I used the occasion to look up the book of poems by Gillilan titled Including Finnigin.  In it I ran across a poem I had never read before which reminded me of some of the email messages that circulate today. And for that reason I decided to share this column with some of you who do not usually see it.

The poem I am going to share was written over 100 years ago.  It might surprise you to learn that we were fighting the same battles over politics and religion that long ago. I know it surprised me. Nevertheless, here we have a prime example in a book published circa 1908 of the same questions that trouble us today.

Read the poem first and then I’ll have some summary comments about it.

So the controversy goes on, and though the subject changes ever so slightly, the battle continues unabated.  And yet… and yet, we still have mothers who teach “Now I Lay Me” even after all these years.

I have a verse to add to that of the late Mr. Gillilan, and I hope his soul will forgive me for my brash intrusion upon his genius. I only want to bring his thoughts and words up to date in the Twenty-first Century.

Now the words are “under God” in the pledge we often say.

They were added many years ago, our reverence God to pay.

We may wipe the slate; remove the words to take away His name,

But within the hearts of those of faith God stays there all the same.

For the words are just the language to express what’s in the heart,

And we need not write or say His name to implore God not depart.

Though the critics seek to banish God through time—and time again,

You cannot erase the spirit that lives on in righteous men.

(My apologies to the women. You are included in the last line, but it didn’t fit poetically)

Footnote: Is it any coincidence that the poem was inspired by the actions of a group from Chicago? – Just musing here…

Everybody Out of The Pool

Well, it finally happened…

I was actually thinking about voting for Obama, but then the ADA, with the full support of the Obama administration and the Department of Justice, passed a new regulation that mandates that public-access pools and spas must all have permanent pool lifts installed to give access to our disabled citizens. That includes hotel and Motel pools and spas.

I don’t give a rat’s rear end for pools, but one of my few remaining pleasures in life is to climb into a hot tub at my motel at the end of a travel day.  I soak for about half an hour and that is as good as… well, I’ll let you supply the rest. (My wife never reads my columns, so I can take a lot of liberties with what gives me pleasure.)

Now every single pool and hot tub in America that is not somebody’s private paradise must have a lift installed to enable the handicapped to enter and exit whenever they want to.  These are estimated to cost between $3,000 and $5,000 per lift, plus another $5,000 to $10,000 for installation,  They cannot be portable, so a pool area with hot tub/Jacuzzi will need at least two of them.  And hotels that have a suite with Jacuzzi inside will have to install a lift there as well.

The new design standard was passed down by the Department of Justice on July 26, 2010.  On September 15, 2010, the Final Rule for the Accessible Design for Recreational Facilities, including public pools and spas, was published in the Federal Register. These standards became the law of the land on March 15, 2011, and compliance was required by March 15, 2012 until that deadline was extended to May 21, 2012. 

Since my wife and I have planned a trip for June of this year we will be just in time to enjoy all the “benefits” of this new mandate.  Since it is anticipated that most franchised properties will opt to close their pools rather than try to comply with the new law to the tune of thousands of dollars, I suspect that I will most likely not partake of any hot tub soaks on my trip. 

Thank you, President Obama and Attorney General Holder. I have shared hot tubs with the disabled in the past, and the ones I sat with did just fine with human assistance, which included mine at times.  They got along okay without your stupid and ignorant rules, but now we can all forget about future forays to the pool.

Regarding that opening statement, the one about “…thinking about voting for Obama,”

I don’t want to mislead you there. I was thinking about how anyone not on food stamps, SSI, Medicaid, extended unemployment benefits, welfare or any other form of government aid and dependency—in other words almost anyone with an ounce of intelligence or self-motivation—can vote for this unknown entity whose only revealed philosophy seems to be counter to our culture and law. But then, those groups I listed above are fast approaching, or might have already exceeded 50-percent of the population.  I guess that if they can be dragged to the polls on Election Day, we’ll have four more years of this-if we live that long.  I’m anticipating that the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) authorized in the new Healthcare Law will disapprove my next coronary procedure as being “not cost effective”.

Welcome to 1984

Don’t let the title fool you; we’re not going back in time. The reference is, of course, to the book by George Orwell.  It was written and published in 1948, and the back-story is that Orwell was playing with titles for his work. He decided that since it was about the future of mankind he could invert the last two numbers of the present year and come up with a probable time when it would become fact instead of fiction.

Now some people believe that Orwell hit the nail on the head and got the right year, but others, like myself, who liked what Ronald Reagan accomplished while president are not so sure.

There was one aspect of the novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which has really blossomed in recent months and years.  It was Orwell’s fictional language, the new way of speaking called, “Newspeak.”  He even included an essay in the book to explain how the language was constructed to eliminate certain words and augment and glorify others. One of the aims of Newspeak was to put a positive spin on any news that would otherwise reflect negatively on the regime.

In regards to Newspeak in our present world, there are several economic reports that are released weekly.  These show the current status of the American economy as to consumer sentiment, unemployment, business activity and inventory and other measurements to show the current weekly activity of our economy. 

Lately the reports have been made to look positive even when they are negative. You may ask, “How is that done?”  Well, if a number goes up, it usually is a positive sign, but if that number is a measurement of a negative trend, like the price of a barrel of oil, then a positive number is bad news. If you report that negative trend in words that are thought of as positive, then it can be made to look good instead of bad.

An example of the above is the weekly Unemployment Report that measures new claims for unemployment insurance payments for recently laid off workers.  The number has been increasing slightly every week for about a month.  That isn’t good, but when the prior week’s numbers are revised upward as they have been repeatedly, the new total appears to be lower.

On April 19, 2012, the unemployment claims for the past week were announced. The number was 386,000 new claims for jobless benefits, a decrease of 2,000 from the adjusted number from the prior week of 388,000.  However, the reported number of that previous week, 'unadjusted', was 380,000, so instead of a decrease of 2,000, the number actually went up by 6,000.

Hint: If you research the numbers for past weeks you will find that in every instance the number from the previous week is ‘adjusted’ just enough to make this week’s number a decrease.  That is, it as always adjusted upward from the prior week’s ‘reported’ number. That enables the reporters to proclaim that the economy is improving, even when the new number is ‘unexpectedly higher’ than was predicted, another catchphrase that has found its way into the economic jargon.

I can’t resist the opportunity to input the Jobless Claims numbers for the week of April 26^th as another example of the ‘apples to oranges’ comparisons detailed above.  The number of new claims was ‘reported’ as 388,000, a decrease of 1,000 from the ‘adjusted’ number from April 19^th of 389,00. The ‘reported’ number for both dates would yield a 2,000 increase, but nobody ever goes back to examine equivalent numbers. Are you seeing how the game is played and the numbers manipulated?

Another example of putting a positive spin on a negative trend: The Consumer Confidence Index recently dropped from 71.6 to 70.2 (1.4-percent of those surveyed were less confident in the economic recovery), but the news report said that, “…consumer confidence eased.”  Now doesn’t that sound like it got better?

In case you’re a skeptic, I read the other day that the department of Homeland Security has a list of “offensive” words that might appear in e-mail messages.  They trigger some action that could put you on a terror list if you use them in your communications.  I won’t list them here—why put myself on that list—but you can probably figure out some of them.

Yes, Winston Smith is alive and well in 2012.  In case you haven’t read the book, he is the protagonist in Nineteen Eighty-Four. 

BP Revisited

Now that it has been two years since the incident occurred, I’d like to revisit the story of the PB oil spill.  Some of you will undoubtedly disagree with my assessment, but then, we never agree on everything.

The explosion and fire aboard the Deep Water Horizon oilrig happened on April 20, 2010.  Subsequently, the 89-day oil leakage began, and we were treated to continuous live television coverage of the oil gushing from the bottom of the gulf until the leak was finally sealed off.  It was horrendous, catastrophic and criminal, and it was said to be an accident of monumental proportions that might kill all life and industry in the Gulf of Mexico and possibly in the whole Caribbean Sea.

I recall watching CNBC and seeing that oil billowing out into the sea and thinking, can’t they hurry up and cap that thing before the whole gulf turns black?  I’m sure we all had that image seared into our brains.  But, like all bad things, once the images are gone, we tend to forget about them

For some strange reason the BP oil spill has come to the forefront again, so I wanted to see just how true the predictions of catastrophe were.

Well, it turns out that the well wasn’t as poisoned as we thought.  Nearly two years after the spill, the recovery is well under way.  Oh yes, many people who fish for a living were harmed economically, and those who work the big rigs were put out of their jobs by the moratorium on deep water drilling.  But overall, life goes on, and the fishing industry is coming back a lot faster than was hoped.

Carl Safina a veteran of the Exxon Valdez spill and head of the Blue Ocean Institute, an environmental group, went to the Gulf Coast last spring to see how the recovery was going.  He was also doing research for his recently released book A Sea in Flames so I don’t think he would have put a positive spin on it if there were no good news.

What Safina found was heartening, and his accepted verdict was that “it could have been a lot worse.”  That isn’t to say that it wasn’t bad, but the long-term damage was way overplayed.  I’ll let you buy and read the book if you care to examine that aspect more closely.

I’m more interested in the hype that grew around the BP Spill and that still abounds today.  For one thing, the graphic footage (an antiquated term in the digital age) we saw was rather skewed toward the sensational.  It looked like thousands of gallons were spewing forth every minute. 

However, I’d like you to imagine any of the Great Lakes—say Erie—and a person standing on the shore with a garden hose.  (I wanted to say a squirt gun, but I thought that would be harder to portray even though it is closer to the true magnitude of the spill) The hose is turned on full blast and there is a camera about 5 feet away taking a movie of it.  We never see the full expanse of Lake Erie in the background, but only that water blasting out of the hose into the nearby lake. Put it underwater if you want to create the same effects as the BP Spill. Of course, you wouldn’t actually see the water flowing into the lake then, would you?

Now substitute oil in the hose and watch it discolor and pollute the lake.  Wow, it sure looks terrible, doesn’t it?  I’ll bet that if the oil continued to flow from that nozzle for three months that whole lake would be just covered in oil. 

Fortunately, that’s not how oil disperses in water.  It has a specific gravity much higher than the water, so it tends to stay below the surface.  And it doesn’t spread nearly as fast as a liquid with a lesser SG. I’m no scientist nor can I qualify as an “expert” on oil spills, but I do know that oil doesn’t play well with water.  The two don’t mix together well and that is observable.

I’d be surprised if that oil spread any more than about a twenty-mile radius from the spot where is entered the water. Bad yes, but catastrophic?  I think not, especially when there are natural enzymes and catalysts in seawater to cleanse it, and there are those in the seas of our world. Even where the oil did wash up on beaches, it was mostly in the form of tar balls, separate from the water around it.

My wife and I visited some of the beaches along the gulf coast back in February, and I have to tell you that they were just as beautiful and pristine as I expected them to be.  I didn’t see any evidence of the vast oil spill and pollution that those graphic live feeds of two years ago predicted.

I believe we have been had by the environmentalists, and look what it has cost us in lost energy sources, jobs, prices and deficit spending.  And the BP oil spill has been used as a tool to further delay or prohibit our energy independence.  I’m not writing this in ignorance. Go read that book written by an environmentalist and learn for yourself how bad the spill was.

Thrill of a Lifetime

Last Sunday was the conclusion of a very important week here in Augusta; Masters Week.  If you don’t live here, and don’t attend the golf tournament, you wouldn’t know the interesting things that occur during Masters Week.

One fact of interest is that many of the native Augustans leave town during the week for their very own “spring break.”  The public and private schools always have spring break for students during Masters Week for that very reason.

Another reason for people to desert their homes is that many lease them to the visitors for huge fees.  One person I know of leases a five-room house to the CBS Crew every year for $25,000.  It pays the mortgage on the house for the year. Many of the golf pros stay in the same houses every year too.  Of course, these are all in a beautiful gated community called Westlake.

The four-day Masters Badge entitles the spectator/holder to enter the grounds all four days of the tournament. It is a closely held privilege to own a badge, and they cost around $300 per year and are not exchangeable.  However, there are scalpers who do buy and sell badges and tickets for exorbitant prices—badges for up to $6,000.  Individual tickets are scalped for up to $500 for a one-day admission. 

The Masters is always held the first week of April in order to coincide with the blooming of the beautiful flowers that always surround the greens.  However, Mother Nature played a joke this year and all the flowers had bloomed early, so the flowers you may have seen in some of the opening and closing shots for commercial breaks were not really there on the course. No, this year it was a green course, not a colorful one.

I’ve lived in Augusta for six years and have never seen the Augusta National Course. It sits behind a 15-foot hedge and fence, and the course is not open to the public. Unless I am fortunate enough to win the ticket lottery and become entitled to buy a ticket, I doubt that I will ever see the course other than on television, though it is situated in the middle of the city of Augusta and I pass it at least once a week.

A nice touch that has been added in recent years is that any adult with a four-day badge or a daily ticket can take one child up to 12-years-old in for free.

Our local talk radio station, WGAC, provides golf coverage including traffic reports for Masters Week. The hosts are local sportscasters, and they take calls from locals and guests during the week. They also field calls from people who have seen celebrities among the golf crowd, many of whom come to the tournament.

One call came in Sunday morning from a caller who took her young son to the course earlier in the week on that free admission I referenced above. This woman and her son were standing by the practice green near the first tee box.

Tom Watson was on the green practicing before teeing off on his round for that day. He noticed the young lad watching him putt, and Mr. Watson walked over to him and struck up a conversation.  He asked if the boy would like to “putt a few.”  How could the kid refuse that offer?

Watson lifted the restraining rope and invited the boy onto the practice green, allowing him to use his putter and golf balls to stroke three putts.  The boy was ecstatic! What a kind gesture from one of the consummate gentlemen of golf.

The woman called in to ask if there was any way her son could send his letter of thanks (which he had already written) to Mr. Watson.  The radio host suggested the means to do so and thanked the woman for her telling the story on air. 

There is a memory that will last a lifetime for a young boy who was privileged to meet a legend of golf in a most unusual setting.  Don’t you just love a feel-good story like this?

Suspension of the 6th

I knew it was coming, but I never thought it would arrive so soon. 

Many people have worried about losing our 2^nd Amendment right to bear arms, and it hasn’t helped that our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has been working closely with the United Nations to accomplish that end.  However, so far, she has been unsuccessful in getting consensus in the Congress to signing on to the weapons ban.

However, we now have a perfect case where our 6^th Amendment right to a trial by jury has been negated.  I’m referring, of course to the Trayvon Martin shooting in Sanford, Florida.

The main-stream media has blown this case out of all proportion.  Not only have they tried and convicted the Shooter, George Zimmerman in the press and on radio and TV, they have even produced biased and doctored audio of the 911 call that Zimmerman made on the night of the shooting.

In case you are one of those people who only gets your news from NPR or one of the major networks, here is a summary of what was reportedly said and what the actual call transcript shows.

NBC's "Today" show ran an edited audio of George Zimmerman's phone call to a police dispatcher in which Zimmerman says: "'This guy looks like he's up to no good … he looks black." 

But the audio recording in its entirety reveals that Zimmerman did not volunteer the information that Martin was black. Instead, Zimmerman was answering a question from a police dispatcher about the race of the "suspicious person" whom Zimmerman was speaking about.

The transcript of the complete 911 call shows that Zimmerman said, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”

The 911 officer responded saying, "OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?"

"He looks black," Zimmerman replied.

The abridged conversation between Zimmerman and the dispatcher ran on March 27 on NBC. Critics have said the edited version was made to suggest that Zimmerman targeted Martin because he was black -- an accusation by many that is still under investigation. 

A grainy video of the arrest of Mr. Zimmerman was later shown on ABC Television and purported to show that he was not, as a witness alleged, beaten by Mr. Martin prior to the shooting, which would have made it a case of self defense.  However, later pictures and video showed that Mr. Zimmerman did exhibit cuts and abrasions from the beating.

In another attempt to skew the facts, the stock picture of Trayvon Martin shows him at age 12, five years younger than the 17-year-old young adult he had become.  It made him appear a weak child unable to perpetrate the violence he was alleged to have engaged in.

To add to the firestorm, our president joined in the lynch mob mentality lead by Reverend Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  Mr. Obama failed to criticize the Black Panthers for their $10.000 bounty on Mr. Zimmerman, and then made comments that could only incite the already “out-for-blood” crowds, stating, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

If anyone believes that Mr. Zimmerman can get a fair and unbiased trial after so much race baiting and media hype, they are out of their mind.  I don’t know where the object of all this hatred is located, but I hope he is well protected by someone.  (That is also guaranteed by the 14th Amendment) I fear that he will never get a chance to face his accuser in a trial, but will most likely be executed on the spot now that he has been tried, convicted and sentenced by our “fair and balanced” media.

Are We There Yet?

We must all recognize the question.  It is usually associated with long—in the mind of the questioner—car trips.  The question might result from boredom, but we would like to think that it is asked because the person wants to arrive at their destination, be it The Magic Kingdom, or grandma’s house.

In this case, the query is in regards to the true end of the financial mess we’ve been in for the past decade.  I know there are some who will dispute the timeframe, but the housing crisis that triggered the meltdown in 2008 really started much earlier than that. And other than the Dot Com boom and bust of the late 90s and early 2000s, I date the present troubles to around the 911 attacks.

This is really the third in a series of columns dealing with the sad state of our economy.  The first two, The Precious Penny and Nickeled and Dimed to Death, dealt mainly with the perception we have of product pricing and the incremental creep of those prices.  This one will deal with how we can determine that the hurting is finally over—or if we can ever get to that state again.

I must first confess to you that I have been extremely fortunate in that my nest egg was not halved or even reduced during the last ten years.  Call it dumb luck or good planning, but my assets actually grew or stayed about even.  That is no reason for me to brag, and I really do sympathize with those who have lost their homes, their retirement or their jobs.

I had no job to lose since I’m retired and have been since 1995, but I certainly do have a three-tiered program that I draw on for daily living expenses.  My modest town home has no mortgage and we own both of our cars, so I don’t have any short- or long-term debt.

I am, in the words of my favorite financial wizard, Bob Brinker, in a state of critical mass. (If you don’t understand any of the above then read the book I sent you last year)

Now I’m going to give you another saying that I believe fits the current scenario: it goes “Necessity is the mother of all invention.”  One way or another, the present people in Washington are intent on creating a need for a new energy source, and what better way to do that than to raise the price of our current fuels—petroleum, coal, nuclear and yes, even electricity.  When the price gets high enough people will welcome alternative energy, and especially renewable, green energy.

The historical fact that most of the new age energy sources have proved to be too costly and ineffective doesn’t deter the elite in their quest to save the earth.  The Solyndra, Ener1 and Chevy Volt debacles, paid for by our tax dollars, are more proof that we have a long way to go. “No, we aren’t there yet!”

If we aren’t even close to a breakthrough in renewable energy, then the next question is, “How long will we continue to artificially create the need?”

It is my opinion that the answer to that question lies in the outcome of the voting this November.  If we re-elect the same folks who are bent on forcing alternative energy on us regardless of the cost or the results, then we will be treated to at least four more years of being nickeled and dimed to death through the inevitable process of incrementalism.

Now for the good news… As I explained earlier, I have made it to my golden years with a pretty good next egg. Despite what happens in November and beyond, I don’t believe I will have to suffer too long. I have enough assets to see my wife and myself through at least the next 5 to 10 years if we last that long. Under Obamacare, I suspect I won’t be around after my next medical emergency because the Independent Payment Advisory Board (That’s the group that Sarah Palin called the Death Panel) will rule that treatment isn’t cost effective for someone my age.

The news might not be so rosy for you if you are under 60-years-old.  That is all the more reason to get informed and vote intelligently in November.