Blogging From West Virginia

Pat and I drove down from Erie, PA to Charleston, WV on Friday and today we attended a "town reunion" for the little coal mining town of Prenter, WV. My father's parent's lived there from the early 1930's to the mid 1960's, after which they relocated to southern Ohio before retiring to the Orlando, FL area in the 1970's.

After spending years in tiny, cold, wooden "shotgun houses", my Grandfather, without a college education, managed to advance far enough in the coal mining company and earn enough money to be able to move his wife and three sons into the nicest house in the entire town.

Here is a photo of what the only brick home in Prenter, WV looks like today.


Papa Roger's house

I mention this not for the purpose of bragging personally because I had nothing to do with it and have not set foot in the building since 1964, but I ask that you consider these facts in the context of my political commentary and as a means of understanding my recent criticism of Paul Krugman and the NY Times.

My family, on both sides, knows more than a little about adversity, and the value of getting a good education and working hard as the best means of obtaining the things you want out of life.

I am embarrassed to say that I feel that I have fallen far short of the accomplishments of both of my grandfathers as well as that of my father's professional achievements, especially when you look at the relative advantage that I have enjoyed over their meager beginnings.

I will, however, not stop trying to improve myself and I shall not sit idly by while "self proclaimed" experts like Paul Krugman tell me how to do what my family has been doing over the past four generations--and it doesn't involve taxing our wealthier neighbors' asses off to pay the costs of our own necessities and frivolities in life.

That's just the way things are--like it or not...

"Losing Our Country"--Part II

(To Idiots Like This)

Following up on my earlier mention of NY Times’ Paul Krugman’s recent op-ed column entitled ”Losing Our Country”, I am now prepared to offer some additional commentary and possibly explain why I have taken Mr. Krugman to task so often recently here in my blog.

This effort will take the form of two additional postings. This morning’s Part II will address Paul Krugman’s credentials and his fundamental qualifications to comment on domestic economic policy and economic conditions. Part III will offer a point by point rebuttal of Krugman’s logic (or lack thereof) and details (or lack thereof) in ”Losing Our Country.”

First I would like to give credit where credit is due.

Mr. Paul Krugman is, in theory, obviously a very smart man. You don’t simply sleep-walk your way through a BA at Yale and get handed a PHD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology without possessing a fairly high degree of mental capacity and some pretty good study skills.

My argument is not with Paul’s education or intelligence, but rather it is with his choice of topics relative to his knowledge base.

I say that Paul Krugman is what I call a bait-and-switch intellectual.

In support of this argument, here is an excerpt from his biography published on the NY Times online (bold emphasis mine—VRRIII):

“Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the "new trade theory," a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to "that economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge."

Mr. Krugman's current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises.

At the same time, Mr. Krugman has written extensively for a broader public audience.”

Do you see my point here?

No? Well let me explain…

In Mr. Krugman’s “writing extensively for a broader public audience,” I suggest that he is unfairly allowed to step out of his area of true expertise and into areas where, in my humble opinion, the only thing that he can add to the discussion is his own personal agenda and opinion—almost always politically motivated and thereby tainted—and/or a large dose of not always well intended hearsay.

This succinctly quantifies the problem which I have with all national newspapers, particularly the editorial departments—they are guilty of bait and switch editorializing.

The average NY Times reader doesn’t know anything about the writer other than a colloquial belief that “they must be really smart” and that “they must have something important to say,” else the newspaper’s editors wouldn’t let them write in such a high profile position. The NY Times is a master of this illusion.

And what is the Editors’ answer? I suspect that it would be “but we said that it was an opinion…”

What complete and total crappola. They can’t have it both ways intellectually.

To hide the factual inaccuracies, half truths, or outright lies and misrepresentations contained in Krugman’s and his cohorts writings behind the page title of “Editorial” or “Opinion” is still unethical in my opinion because Krugman is generically represented as a PHD economist.

But I remind you that Krugman is a recognized expert on International Trade and Finance, not domestic issues. His bio lets that cat out of the bag, but how many readers bother to look into the details like I have here?

For example, I consider myself to be a bit of a meteorological aficionado, but the Weather Channel should never hire me, a mechanical engineer and aspiring writer, to fill in this week reading the satellite charts and doing hurricane forecasting which the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people and millions of dollars of property depend on to protect.

So why then should Paul Krugman, an expert on International Trade and Finance, be allowed to try to tell me why my country is going down the toilet and the middle class has disappeared?

Just wondering…

Losing Our Country

(To Idiots Like This...)

We made it from Erie, PA to Charleston, West Virginia today. What a beautiful drive it was. A little rest, a little dinner, and a few drinks--I'll be good to go.

If you have the time, here is today's reading assignment, the NY Times editoral entitled "Losing Our Country."

Here is a recent picture of the author:


NY Times' Paul Krugman

(Someone I know very well did a little Photoshop editing I'm afraid.)

I heard Armstrong Williams mention this miserable writing today when he was guest-hosting Rush Limbaugh's radio show, and I'm getting mentally wound up to take Mr. Krugman on.

Check back later to see what I have to say, and believe me--it's more than a mouthfull...

You Can Make It Fool Proof

(But you can’t make it damn fool proof)

Being a Mechanical Engineer is a frustrating profession. The general public, consisting mainly of people who are not engineers, somehow think that engineers and the work we produce should be perfect, no matter how unique or complex the problem being addressed.

I have news for you, we’re not perfect, and a whole bunch of engineers working out there, in spite of their education and the possession of credentials like professional registration, are down right dangerous. Somehow enough good ones (engineers) manage to overcome the shortcomings of the bad ones.

Take aircraft, for instance. Although we have only mastered powered flight for the past one hundred years, the general public expects commercial and civilian aircraft to be models of perfection. Every time there is an accident, the survivors’ families attempt to sue the ass off of the manufacturer. The lawsuits nearly put manufacturers like Cessna and Piper out of business in the 1970’s.

I remember one instance where a guy pulled the front seat out of his Piper Cub so that he could mount a video camera in a position looking out of the windscreen. The guy also moved the rear seat forward temporarily so that he could fly the airplane and operate the camera at the same time.

He took off in the plane in front of his family, the modified seat came loose and slid backwards, the pilot yanked the stick back thereby stalling the airplane, and killed himself in the ensuing crash.

What did the wife do? Of course she sued Piper.

What did the jury do at the trial? Of course the found Piper at fault.

They ordered Piper to pay millions, even though the modified seating arrangement was not factory approved. They said Piper was to blame in not foreseeing the possibility that someone would move the seat to a position on the seat track beyond the normal range dictated by two seats.

I call BS on that verdict—but I wasn’t on the jury.

The good news is that the jury in Florida this week refused to blame Lear Jet in the 1999 crash that killed golfer Payne Stewart and five others.

“Orlando, Florida—A jury in Orange County, Fla., cleared a luxury jet manufacturer in the 1999 crash that killed pro golfer Payne Stewart and five others, according to Local 6 News.

A Learjet lost cabin pressure soon after taking off from Orlando in October 1999, killing all on board within minutes. The plane eventually ran out of fuel and crashed into a South Dakota pasture.

Stewart's family sued Learjet after the crash claiming a mechanical problem is what doomed the charter jet.”

See, it’s less than funny that so few people want to take responsibility for doing little things like maintaining the fancy doohickeys that we (engineers) design and build, and even fewer want to accept responsibility for any undesirable outcomes that result from their own negligence.

Another common reaction is to ask the government to step in and pass a law or regulation to solve some newly perceived problem. Take your car’s tire pressure, for instance.

The government is demanding that the auto manufactures install tire pressure sensors on all vehicles by the 2008 model year. The funny thing is, the manufacturers don’t like the way the rules are written and they are suing to delay the program’s implementation.

As is usual when the government gets involved in anything, the wording of the law is flawed:

“The group said the rule doesn't require the systems to operate with replacement tires, and the systems would only kick in when a motorist had been driving between 30 and 60 mph continuously for 20 minutes. That would make it difficult for someone driving in a city or under other stop-and-go situations to know if a tire had low pressure.

"With this rule, motorists may mistakenly feel safe and not believe they need to check their tires," Goodyear said in a statement.”

How bogus is that?

What I want to know is, if you are worried about wrecking due to tire pressure, rather than passing a law, why not just go out and buy a $2 tire pressure gauge and use it once in a while like I do?

You don’t have to be an engineer to think of that, do you?

Lake Erie

Vacation day number four finds us staying a few miles from the shore of lake Erie. I had no idea how many grapes they grow in northern Pennsylvania. The grape vines are everywhere—thousands of acres.

Here is a picture of my lunch dates at a marina restaurant on Tuesday:




And here is our view overlooking the lake from the restaurant patio:


 

It's beach day on the lake, water temperature--about 50 degrees F...Burrrrrrrhh

Travel Safety--Or the Lack Thereof...

I have every sympathy for the family and friends of Miss Natalie Holloway, the Alabama girl missing in Aruba.

But…

Unfortunately, our popular culture has allowed college spring breaker’s and now high school aged kids to travel to destinations which twenty years ago were only frequented by seasoned adult travelers. The current situation, in my mind, is not entirely unforeseen—that is, by anyone that has even a modicum of travel savvy. Times are changing in the Caribbean, but danger lurks in the shadows and I hope that school authorities and parents alike take notice.

For instance, the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico—today’s inexpensive spring break Mecca—was a completely undeveloped chunk of sleepy fishing villages in the 1970’s until the Mexican government and a bunch of international resort developers bought it (or stole the land from the poor farmers) and did a little “urban renewal.” In that day Acapulco, Mexico, on the Pacific Ocean, was the destination of choice and was typically economically out of the reach of all but the most well-heeled travelers.

I learned at an early age that you “aren’t in Kansas anymore” once your leave the borders of the US. I had the opportunity to travel to Subic Bay Philippines in the summer of 1978 while serving in the US Navy reserve. Ferdinand Marcos was still “dictator-in-chief”, Amelda Marcos was still buying her shoe collection, and the life of a young American sailor was worth exactly the amount of cash and jewelry you had on your person at the moment of the attack.

The first week I was in country, a middle aged Marine Sergeant from my ship (USS New Orleans-LPH 11) went out into town, got drunk, passed out, and woke up having had his ring finger cut off his hand to facilitate his assailants taking a cheep $50 plain man’s wedding band. I was mortified…

The local “bar girls” ran extortion scams where they would accuse a young sailor of some petty assault, you would be arrested by machine gun toting Filipino Police officers, and your ship would sail out of port with you sitting in a filthy jail cell with a bucket for a toilet—eating stale bread and rancid soup for your three squares a day—unless you paid the “fine” which was actually a form of blackmail shared by the lady and the corrupt police authorities. Needless to say that I was a good boy…

Everything, including life in general, and the lives of children, was cheep there. To enter the town from the Navy base, you crossed through a simple security checkpoint and then over a bridge on the Olongapo “Shit” River where you would witness little preteen girls standing on “bonka boats”—outrigger canoes—offering to “show you my tits” if you threw them a Peso. Each boat had a little boy on board who would dive off of the boat into the filthy water to retrieve the intentionally errantly thrown money. I was horrified.

Once in town, there were three forms of transportation: ankle express, “Jeepneys,” and “Trikes.” Our orientation told us to avoid the Trikes at all cost, but the Jeepneys--small, gaudily decorated open air busses—were ok. I met a jeepney driver named Virgillio (Virgil in Spanish) and he generally took care of my travel requirements when I was in town on leave.

You had to be back on base or in a motel room, otherwise off of the streets, by midnight. One night I was wandering back toward base real late, by myself because my cohorts had all gotten a motel and I had an early watch on the ship.

A trike driver, a Honda 50 motorcycle with a sidecar, came by and offered me a half-price ride back to the gate. The next thing I knew we were flying down deserted side streets, zigzagging into the slum areas of a town which was basically all slums.

When my driver finally stopped the trike and announced that he had to run an errand, I promptly leapt out of the sidecar and sprinted away as fast as my 6’2” tall, 160 pound well conditioned frame would carry me. Someone was chasing me, more than one person.

I probably ran past the same places twice as I tried to find my way back to main street, finally jumping into yet another trike headed toward the gate and successfully eluding my pursuers. (Realize that the average Filipino male is about 5’ tall-100 lbs, but is dangerous as hell when wielding a butterfly knife or a switchblade.) I could have jumped OVER anyone that accosted me at that point.

In the past 15 years I have spent a good deal of time traveling in the Bahamas and Jamaica. “No problem Mon,” are you feeling “Irie?” While both the Bahamas and the Caribbean are excellent family travel destinations, like America’s large cities, there are problem areas and neither are safe for little blond-haired, blue-eyed, debutants to go wandering around in helter-skelter at 3 AM in the morning.

I seriously doubt that I could successfully guarantee the safety of my own 6’3”, 235 pound middle aged white butt around Kingston, Jamaica at 3 AM wielding a machete and a machine gun. Prancing around with a pair of 36C’s, pierced bellybutton, and butterfly tattooed lily white, thong clad, 18 year old female buttocks would increase the probability of injury or death about 1000%.

I’m terribly sorry Mr. & Mrs. Holloway, but you just might have loved your daughter to death…

Free Parking

Back in the early 1990’s I had a business partner that was, shall we say, a total ass. The deal was fifty-fifty, fair and square. I did all the work, and he made all the profit. Such a deal…

My partner was ten years older than me and had a LOT more money than I had, and he basically ran roughshod over me in any situation in which he had an opinion or financial stake. In the middle of our relationship he decided to buy a good sized office building. He got a good deal on it in a foreclosure auction, but he couldn’t possibly fill it up with his own people, so he was scrambling for tenants and cash flow any way possible.

One of those ways was to demand that I move our business into the new building, at nearly double the rent (naturally paid to him) that I was previously paying at our old location. I reluctantly complied, but the commute was nearly double and the fancier space did little for our company’s bottom line.

I hated it.

The building was situated in a parking lot adjacent to a group of three little strip shopping centers clustered around a common parking lot. Our parking lot was basically an asphalt extension of the Shopping Centers’ lots.

There were two restaurants in the adjacent center and in the evening, as is often the case in suburban retail areas, there was a need for overflow parking for “Squid Roe”—a good seafood restaurant next door--and our parking lot was the obvious choice.

My partner, being the workaholic that he was, always worked to 8 or 9 PM and soon noticed the parking situation. What did he do? He had a “shit-fit” and ran out in the parking lot, waving potential diners away from HIS parking spaces.

What an Ultra-Maroon.

He then demanded that the owner of the restaurant pay him rent for using the parking lot. The owner basically told him to perform a “rectal cranial inversion” maneuver (stick his head up his own ass) and a battle ensued.

My partner made a big production of installing galvanized fence posts and chain barriers across the entry to our lot, but before he could lock the chains the first evening the restaurant owner relented, and agreed to provide my partner with a $75 per month credit toward food in the restaurant. It took him three months to recoup the cost of the chains and posts.

I dumped the business relationship within the year, at great personal and financial expense, and thus ended the first couple of semesters of what I call my “Street MBA.”

Having said all of that, I can’t say that I don’t admire the homeless guy in this story that was caught collecting cash from tourists to park in a free lot..

Destin, FL--A homeless man is facing a possible prison term for allegedly charging tourists $5 to park in a free lot during the busy Memorial Day weekend.

Bruce Lee Thompson, 57, was held Monday at the Okaloosa County jail in Crestview on $2,000 bail. He has a July 19 court date on charges of obtaining property by impersonation, theft and a licensing violation. If convicted, penalties could range from probation to more than five years in prison.

The unemployed man set up a sign advertising "party parking," according to his arrest report.

"It's totally ridiculous," said Beverly Canady of The Finishing Touch, a store in the small shopping center where Thompson put up his sign. "We don't mind people parking here, but you just don't come literally off the street and charge people to park."

I know that its private property, but I applaud the guy’s initiative. He found an underutilized, undervalued asset, and capitalized on the opportunity.

I say that "homeless advocates" should take his business model and build on it.

Naaah, they would just rather hand cash and free housing to the “disadvantaged”…

I Have a Suggestion

Go To Bed Earlier...

The headline reads: "Early School Bell Cost Teens Sleep--US Study"

Click on the link and read the entire story for yourself...and while you're at it--make up your own ranting and raving.

I'm on vacation and don't have the energy right now.

NY Times—Full Of Crap…Again (Updated Version)

Check out this story in today’s NY Times Online

Richest Are Leaving Even The Rich Far Behind

“When F. Scott Fitzgerald pronounced that the very rich "are different from you and me," Ernest Hemingway's famously dismissive response was: "Yes, they have more money." Today he might well add: much, much, much more money.

The people at the top of America's money pyramid have so prospered in recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of the population, an analysis of tax records and other government data by The New York Times shows. They have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Call them the hyper-rich.

They are not just a few Croesus-like rarities. Draw a line under the top 0.1 percent of income earners - the top one-thousandth. Above that line are about 145,000 taxpayers, each with at least $1.6 million in income and often much more.

The average income for the top 0.1 percent was $3 million in 2002, the latest year for which averages are available. That number is two and a half times the $1.2 million, adjusted for inflation, that group reported in 1980. No other income group rose nearly as fast.

President Bush said during the third election debate last October that most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. In fact, most - 53 percent - will go to people with incomes in the top 10 percent over the first 15 years of the cuts, which began in 2001 and would have to be reauthorized in 2010. And more than 15 percent will go just to the top 0.1 percent, those 145,000 taxpayers.”

Normally I would ask the rhetorical question: “so what’s their point?”

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, the NY Times point is all too clear here—class envy and class warfare.

They even go to the trouble to quote a few wealthy liberals in an effort to make their point:

“But some of the wealthiest Americans, including Warren E. Buffett, George Soros and Ted Turner, have warned that such a concentration of wealth can turn a meritocracy into an aristocracy and ultimately stifle economic growth by putting too much of the nation's capital in the hands of inheritors rather than strivers and innovators.”

I guess it’s easy enough for Buffet, Soros, and Turner to lament the evils of being rich—since THEY ALREADY HAVE MADE THEIR FORTUNES. So they want to go out and tax the rest of the producers in the economy and provide additional barriers for achieving success in the form of increased taxes on income and capital gains.

I’m sorry, but the entire logic of this article is typically one sided and flawed. What the heck is wrong with people succeeding and making LOTS of money. The Times acts like the high income earners are stealing their money or otherwise not earning it, and that it is somehow a sin for the government to let the people that EARNED the money KEEP more of it on April 15th.

The other significant fact that the NY Times refuses to admit is this. Most of the households they define as “rich” ($100K-500K per year income) are simply dual income families with two college grad wage earners. They aren’t making that kind of money sitting by the pool sipping mint juleps—two people are working their asses off for 25 or 30 years each.

And the article’s so-called “hyper rich?” Like it or not, the “hyper rich” are also business owners and investors putting all of their “riches” back into the market by providing working capital so businesses can provide jobs for all of the “working families” the Times is so intent in protecting and proving tax refunds, rebates, and credits to. To hear the Times tell it, the wealthy Americans make their money, then bury it in their back yard or stuff it in their mattress—never to be seen again unless the government steps in and recovers it for use through taxation.

As I’ve said over and over and over before…

YOU CANNOT GET A TAX REFUND OR TAX CUT IF YOU DO NOT PAY TAXES!

As I wrote way back in September 2004 in my posting Tax Cuts For Working Families:

"Seriously folks, how can you cut taxes on someone that already doesn’t pay taxes? The bottom 20% of income earners already gets an earned income credit and a resulting tax refund equaling 5.7% of their non-taxable income. The bottom 40% of households earned 9.7% of the total household income and had a negative tax rate of 2.8%. This means, even after Bush’s tax reform, that the imperial federal government of the United States uses the IRS to take money from the top 60% of income earners and give it to the bottom 40%. The Dem’s figure that if they can just increase this figure from 40% to 51% that they will be guaranteed re-election to local and national offices for eternity."

Now they’re (the Dems) working on getting these same poor souls out of paying their own Medicare and Social Security tax. It is somehow considered to be unfair to make a "working family" pay one thin dime toward the cost of their own retirement and government supplied medical care. Satellite TV, yearly trips to Disney, beer, cigarettes, unplanned children, and bass boats are obvious higher priorities than education, hard work, planning and savings.

They want refunds and benefits for “working families”, but the Times insists that it is the duty of all of those mean old “HYPER RICH” to dam well by God pay for it through taxation.

I am so SICK of this refrain...

A Fool & Their Money…

Are soon parted

We made it to Pittsburg yesterday. The trip was uneventful--airplanes on time and light crowds at the airport. I was in "news and information withdrawal" by the time we got in to the hotel after dinner last night.

The hotel has high speed internet--but not wireless and I forgot to bring a CAT5 cable and am forced to use dial-up. AAAAAHHH, it's better than nothing, but just barely.

I've tried to catch up on the news, and I love the Local6.com Website because they always have stories like this one about some bartender selling an 8” French fry on E-Bay.

“WALCOTT, Iowa An 8-inch french fry found by a bartender has sold for nearly $200 on eBay.

Mindy Marland said she was working at the Checkered Flag Bar & Grill, across from the Iowa 80 Truckstop, when she spotted the unusually long french fry.

"A waitress was walking by and I saw it sitting right on top of a plate she was getting ready to serve - I was intrigued by it and took it off the plate," said Marland, 29, of Walcott.

Marland said she decided to sell it on eBay. Bids started at $1. By the time bidding ended, it had sold for $197.50.”

So what is one to do with a $200 French fry? Eat it, or frame it?

Imagine the owner's horror when he/she wakes up after a night of partying to find that a stoned college friend had a little snack...