Is Gov. Scott Walker following the Wisconsin Constitution?

The preamble of the Wisconsin Constitution states:

We, the people of Wisconsin, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, form a more perfect government, insure domestic tranquility and promote the general welfare, do establish this constitution.

First, Gov. Walker had on his podium at his acceptance speech a sign that that stated, "Wisconsin, Open for Business".

Business generally means a few people, not "the people".  This was clearly shown when Gov. Walker was entrapped into speaking with a resident of Manhattan, New York,  David Koch, Executive Vice President of Koch Industries.

Second, by raising such a contentious issue as restricting the rights of public employee unions, no matter at what level of government, he definitely is not seeking domestic tranquility.

Third, promoting the welfare of business over people is not promoting the general welfare.

Some would argue that this is a case for impeachment.  Whether it is or is not, the Wisconsin Legislature is controlled by Republicans; impeachment is a moot point.

Maybe some Wisconsin dissident would display this version of the Wisconsin Constitution:

We, the corporations of Wisconsin and elsewhere, grateful to the Republican Party for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, form a more pliant government, insure domestic tranquility and promote corporate welfare, do establish this constitution.

The "people" are speaking, but a bit late

This morning's Duluth News Tribune published my Local View contribution with the title "The people (some of them, anyway) have spoken".  My own title was "The people have spoken!  Which ones?"

I was considering changing the opening from Egypt to Wisconsin, but I couldn't see how to replace it without rewriting some of the rest of the article.  Also, if I made a change, it might be delay publication.

My change was:

"[T]he people of Wisconsin chose to switch control of the governorship, assembly and senate to Republicans" according to Newt Gingrich on the website Human Events.  Which people, Newt?

Granted, Scott Walker received 52.25 percent of the votes cast, but the turnout was only 49.56 percent.  That means that 50.44 percent of the eligible voters didn't care for any of the candidates, at least care enough to show up.   Scott Walker received the support of 25.9 percent of the eligible voters.  That is a very poor second to none of the above.  Looked at this way, Scott Walker does not have the support of "the people".

From data published online by the Wisconsin Accountability Board.

"The people" are speaking in another way.  I wouldn't say the protesters against Walker's anti-union efforts represent "the people", but many people from around the world are supporting the protesters.

Last night we heard on MPR about Ian's Pizza going from 300-600 pizzas a day to over 1000 pizzas a day, the increase because of orders from around the world to send pizzas to the protesters at the Wisconsin State Capitol.  Even from Egypt, where they know a thing or two about protest.

If you would like to send a pizza to the protesters, order it through Badger Bites.  The top of the page has ordering instructions.

Calls for action from those who can do nothing

Government leaders from around the world are saying that the actions of Gaddafi of Libya are unacceptable, including Hilary Clinton and Ban Ki-Moon.  However, many commentators from bloggers to the Wall Street Journal are calling for more concrete action.

But what can any government do without making matters worse?

First, they have to get all their citizens out of Libya safely.  There are many thousands from dozens of countries who have to not only get to an airport or a harbor, but the countries have to supply sufficient craft at places where they won't be attacked by pro-Gaddafi supporters.

Second, if they did supply limited military forces at these embarkation points, would that very act put their countrymen in even more danger?  When dealing with delusional leaders, one does have to expect the worse.

Third, if they did invade beyond the embarkation points, would that unleash an even bigger massacre of civilians, Libyans and foreigners alike?

About the only military action would have to be from the Arab League, and many of the members have their own upheavals to deal with.

That leaves only the Libyan Army to resolve the problem.  We are starting to see many units join "the people".  How effective they will be outside the areas that "the people" control remains to be seen.

As more and more cities come under control of anti-Gaddafi groups, we may see an acceleration towards a conclusion favorable to these groups.

Meanwhile, really the best others outside Libya can do is keep up the verbal pressure, make sure information flows out of Libya, and make sure some information gets back in.

What a way to run a railroad!!

Given my reluctance to fly and my growing reluctance to drive long distances, my sister-in-law suggested that we take Amtrak to visit them in Colorado in May.

I checked Amtrak for schedules.  The cost for two of us from Minneapolis-St. Paul would be $694, not too bad for two coach seats.  But the trip leaves Minneapolis-St. Paul on May 15 at 11:15 p.m., arrives in Portland OR on May 17 at 10:10 a.m., leaves Portland on May 17 at 2:25 p.m, arrives in Sacramento CA on May 18 at 6:15 a.m, leaves Sacramento on May 18 at 11:09 a.m., and arrives in Denver CO on May 19 at 6:38 p.m.  That is labeled as the "Shortest Trip".

That would be four days of sitting up day and night.  A roomette from the Twin Cities to Portland would be $268 extra, rooms from Portland to Sacramento are already sold out for May 17, and a roomette from Sacramento to Denver would be $436.

I can drive from the Twin Cities to Denver in two days and sleep in a solid bed overnight for less than half the cost of a roomette on the cheapest leg.

Also, the $694 is for one-way.  Even though I clicked Round-Trip, the web site only gives me one-way.

Looking at a route map, the alternative is to go to Chicago and then to Denver.  So I gave that a go with scheduling, giving a round trip itinerary.  The time would be much better with an eight hour and an eighteen hour leg.  Unfortunately, there would be a 22 hour layover in Chicago on the way to Denver and a 23 hour layover on the way back.  Plus, the web site wouldn't process this any further – "Problem with your itinerary".  I gave up.  I don't know the cost of this trip.

It seems that Amtrak has almost been designed to discourage train travel.  I think that only two groups of people would be interested.  First would be those who have time and are traveling between two cities on the same train.  The sold out rooms on a May train between Portland and Sacramento may be an indicator that this group will support the current schedule.  Second would be those who take trains just to take trains.

It doesn't have to be this way.  I took trains as a kid out of Cleveland's Terminal and it was a busy place.  Now the Cleveland stop isn't much more than a siding for a one train a day each way.  I've taken trains all over Europe, both day trips and overnight, and I have ridden the bullet and regular trains in Japan.

Maybe Steve Jobs will start the train "for the rest of us"?

A pun in French that I hope is to your taste

Il y avait un compositeur qui a écrit une chaconne à son goût.
(There was a composer who wrote a chaconne to his taste.)

A chaconne is a musical form; "chacun à son goût" means "each to his taste".

I knew there was an opera which had an aria including "chacun à son gout". I found a multi-lingual snippet of "Die Fledermaus" performed at Covent Garden in 1984.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6uEmtn56M0

But I didn't hear "chacun à son goût"!

On a second viewing I heard it at the end of Prince Orlofsky's aria.  I remember seeing a production with Beverly Sills years ago, and I remember hearing "chacun à son gout" several times.

Oh, drat!  "Chaconne à son gout" is not original.  Google gives over 1500 hits including a P.D.Q. Bach Gross Concerto by that name.

Power plays

We have the Republicans in Congress voting in lockstep to oppose Obama and the Democrats.  Well, almost, now we have "Tea Party" Republicans voting in lockstep to defeat spending proposals of veteran Republican legislators.

We have Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate disappearing to deprive the Republicans of a quorum to pass an anti-public union bill.

We have thousands packing the Wisconsin capitol to protest the bill.

I have a couple of questions.

How many of the protestors voted in the last election?  If the turnout of these voters was the same as the general population, they partly have themselves to blame.  If they all turned out, maybe they should work harder at getting a bigger turnout in the next election.

Why the big push to strip unions of power?  Could it be part of a larger corporate strategy to weaken those who question corporate power?

It seems that many corporate executives want everything their own way; governments and unions shouldn't even question their decisions.  It seems that their only goal is to maximize their own compensation, to hell with the shareholders, to hell with the environment, to hell with the public good.

Not all corporate executives behave this way, but enough do and are pushing us down a slippery slope to a very uncivil society, one which really won't be good for business in the long term.  It's another version of Lenin's "A capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him with."

What is a "fair share"?

One of the buzz words on taxes is "fair share", meaning that those who have higher incomes should be paying more taxes than currently.  Those who oppose taxes in general think that "fair share" will stifle business.

What we should really be asking is: are people paying for government services balanced according to what they receive in government services and according to what they can afford to pay.

To take a trite example, many theaters offer student and senior prices.  If there are no seat-related prices, the benefit to all ticket purchasers is the same.  The assumption is that students or seniors will be less able to pay the full price and so are given a discount.  Actually it is to the theaters' benefit to entice a few more buyers to fill the seats.

So it is with government services.  Some people really can't afford to pay the taxes commensurate with the services received.  Firefighters aren't going to determine if the occupants have paid sufficient taxes before they turn on the hoses.

On the other hand, some people with relatively high incomes receive far more benefits than others.  Their businesses would not survive without the services provided by taxes.  For example, without an efficient highway system, they could not have goods brought in and goods moved out, they could not have customers come to their stores, and they could not have employees come to work.

How many big box stores went to the outskirts of cities to get cheap land?  Now few customers and employees can walk to these stores, few if any bus lines are available, and almost all customers and employees have to drive on more miles of roads.  What is the fair share of taxes for the executives of these stores who are getting big salaries?

How many oil executives are getting rich because people are driving more miles for their daily business?  What would the fair share of taxes be for them to cover all the costs of the roads, including repair, widening, traffic management, and crash assistance?

Who benefits from public education?  Of course, each of us benefits personally from our education, whether it is knowing how to be a good citizen or acquiring a marketable skill.  On the other hand, would businesses prosper without a good supply of educated people?  Since a good work force makes possible a successful company, what is a fair share of taxes for the highly-paid executives of a successful company?

"Low taxes" and "fair share" are almost meaningless phrases.  I don't have much hope for any serious thinking among politicians or voters to think past these slogans.

This world cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free

I find it very interesting that some members of the party of Lincoln do not believe the above paraphrase of a statement by Lincoln.

They would have some of the world be slaves to dictators in the interest of our national security.  For example, Tim Pawlenty said we need to "get tough on our enemies, not our friends." ("At CPAC, Egypt appears to be an afterthought", Washington Post, 2011-02-11)

Come on, Tim, with friends like Mubarak we create enemies, like the Egyptian Mohamed Atta.

This won't happen in America

As I wandered the world via newspapers, I came across a Rubygate story in Le Monde, a French newspaper.

You may have heard about Rubygate, the charges against the Italian prime minister, Sergio Berlusconi.  He is accused of paying $10,000 to an underage belly dancer.  I'll let you dig out the details.

Back to Le Monde.  It had a video in the middle of all the French text of a "commercial" made for the new Italian women's group "Se non ora quando" ("If not now when").  Essentially, many Italian women are tired of being second-class citizens.  Sympathetic men welcome.  The video is in Italian, without subtitles or dubbing.  See "Le 'Rubygate' fait descendre les Italiennes dans la rue", Le Monde, 2011-02-09.   How often do you would you see this much in a foreign language in American newspapers?

Well, as of a few minutes ago, even the New York Times has not carried much news about the charges and nothing about the million women who have turned out around the world in support of Se non ora quando".  However, see "Ruby, un milione di donne nelle piazza urlano indignate: 'Se non ora, quando?'" Il Messaggero, 2011-02-13  ("Ruby, a million women in the squares shout indignantly, "If not now, when?")  The demonstrations are being held in over 230 Italian cities and 30 other cities.

The New York Times has nothing about "Se non ora quando" and nothing about the demonstration of 200-300 outside Ruby Tuesday's in New York.  I found out about his in Il Messaggero, "New York, la polizia ordina: 'Manifestate davanti al ristorante Ruby'"

Oh, I should point out that my headline didn't mean that thousands of women across the country wouldn't demonstrate for more dignity.  I meant that few, if any, American newspapers would report so much in a foreign languages.  Of course, few American papers report much foreign news beyond wars and politics.

Freedom and democracy: It's not what you believe but what you do

I find it very hard to read Charles Krauthammer; I think he is very rigid in his thinking.  When he wrote in his latest column, "From freedom agenda to freedom doctrine", Washington Post, 2011-02-10, that George Bush and the neo-cons were the only ones interested in promoting freedom and democracy, I stopped reading.

What he ignores is that the neo-cons solution was to bring freedom and democracy at the point of a gun.  We can see how well that is working in Iraq and Afghanistan where chaos is more the norm.  What he ignores is that the Egyptians have started on a path to freedom and democracy, not with guns but with their gums.  They did it not with outside armies but by themselves.

In writing this, I did go back and skim Krauthammer's article.  He does make a good point with the second point of his Freedom Doctrine, but most of the rest is a call for the world being as we think it should be, not as others may want it.

A much better read is "They Did It", Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 2011-02-12, written in Cairo.  One of the best quotes is, "Because the Obama team never found the voice to fully endorse the Tahrir Square revolution until it was over, the people in that square now know one very powerful thing: They did this all by themselves."

A sneaky attempt to convert the U.S. to the metric system

I am watching Al-Jazeera live and just saw the North American web report.  Chicago was warming up with 3 degrees and Havana had a balmy 20 degrees?

Ah!  That is Celsius.

I wonder if Al-Jazeera gets on U.S. cable, if it will be a wedge to finally move the U.S to the measuring system used almost every where else in the world.

Egypt may gain democracy; will U.S. lose its?

The everyday Egyptians rebelled against an elite that was governing without concern for them.  Many of the U.S. cheered them on.  Now we should look to our own house and consider if we are losing our own democracy to a plutocracy.

Remember, democracy means rule by the people.

Consider that the people's schools are being decimated because we can't afford them.  To afford the schools, we all really need to pitch in.

Plutocracy means rule by the wealthy.

Who is making the most noise about needing lower taxes?  Who is contributing more and more to politicians and political campaigns?  Who decided that corporations should not be limited in making political corporations?

For more on our coming plutocracy, see "When Democracy Weakens", Bob Herbert, New York Times, 2011-02-12.

Revolution as spectator sport

"Egypt from 5,000 Miles Away", a cartoon by Domitille Collardey and Sarah Glidden, encapsulates the feelings of many of us who watched events unfold in Egypt.  We could only cheer for our team, we couldn't bat or carry the ball.

Do you remember where you were when…

...you learned that Hosni Mubarak resigned as president of Egypt.

From http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/02/10/live-blog-feb-11-egypt-protests

6:03pm: He's gone. He's resigned. 30 years of Mubarak rule is over. Omar Suleiman says:
President Hosni Mubarak has waived the office of president.

6:01pm: Omar Suleiman addressing nation now.

6:01 pm Cairo is 4:01 pm GMT, 9:01 am Eastern, and 10:01 am Central.

At 10:35 Central during a break in a University for Seniors French class, I took out my iPod and connected to the UMD network.  Oh, wow!  I interrupted everybody else's conversation to let them know.
The question is did Mubarak "waive the office of the president" or was he pushed out by other ministers or the army.  Do we even know if he is alive?

Either we are for freedom and democracy or we are for realpolitik

The Guardian has an interesting opinion by Slavoj Žižek, "For Egypt, this is the miracle of Tahrir Square".

It was amazing that most of the comments were ad hominem attacks rather than a critique of his thoughts.

Culture of democracy? Who blocked it?

According to Aljazeer.net, Omar Suleiman, Vice-President of Egypt said on ABC that he wanted to see democracy, "But when will we do that?  When the people here have the culture of democracy."Suleiman was quoted in an 11:34 a.m. entry at http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/02/10/live-blog-feb-10-egypt-protests

My question is who has been blocking the development of that culture.

That leads me to make a challenge to the protesters, show him you have democracy.  Organize at the local level, say at Tahrir Square, wherever large number of people have gathered.  Determine the offices that are needed to govern yourselves in your immediate vicinity.  You might start with a rules committee.  Be sure to have more nominations than the members on the committee.  Have everybody in the area vote on the slate.  Let the committee work a day or two.  Vote on their suggestions.  Repeat.  If this process is not real democracy, I don't know what is.

Business-friendly policies? Friendly to which businesses?

One of the buzz words in politics is being business-friendly.  Makes me think the Constitution begins "We the Corporations of the United States…"

Businesses run the gamut from über-corporations like Wal-Mart and Apple to local businesses with a few dozen employees to single-person businesses.  One size of politics does not fit all.

One would think that the U. S. Chamber of Commerce represents all businesses, but according to Daniel Gross, "Does the Chamber of Commerce Know What's Best for Business?", Yahoo Finance Tech Ticker, it is "essentially a lobbying group for large businesses".  Well, not all businesses, Apple quit the Chamber in 2009 over climate change.  Pick your story with a search for "Apple Chamber of Commerce".

Gross points out that the Chamber angers "everyone from deficit hawks" to environmentalists.  He also points out that the Chamber got much of what it wanted but that didn't deliver the results the Chamber promised.

To think that the House of Representatives began its year with the reading of the Constitution and immediately forgot "We the People".

I did half of a New York Times crossword in less than a minute

Today I bought my wife a new iMac and proceeded to transfer her files from her laptop to the iMac.  The process itself is worth a blog I may never write.

After finding all the needed cables, the "migration" supposedly took less than two hours.  I'm not sure, it started with "1 hour 59 minutes remaining", dropped to under one hour, bounced up to over one hour, and so on.

Sometimes around "20 minutes remaining" I did the SuDoKu puzzle and the New York Times crossword puzzle in the Monday's Star Tribune.

When I was about half-way through the crossword puzzle, there was "less than a minute remaining" for the migration.  Every couple of clues, I'd look up and see "less than a minute remaining".  When I finished the puzzle, there was still "less than a minute remaining".

So, I must have done half New York Times crossword is less than a minute.

U.S and Iran need each other, to hell with the people

I found an interesting opinion on how the Arab and Muslim people are caught between a rock and a hard place.  Foreign policy of nations antagonistic to each other goes on without consideration of the affected people.  The author of "Green and Jasmine bleeding together", Hamid Dabashi, makes the point that Islamic Republic of Iran needs to demonize the U. S. to hold its power and that the U. S. needs the threat of Islamic terrorism to support autocratic "allies".  Both sides could care less about the people in the affected nations.

Letter on Egypt to President Obama

In November 2008 many voted for "Change".  As far as foreign policy goes, nothing has changed.  It is still the same old "national security" and "national interest" leading to greater insecurity and results contrary to our real national interests.

If you haven't already read Andrew Bacevich's "Washington Rules", please do so as soon as possible.

The U.S. is still propping up anti-democratic autocrats like Hosni Mubarak despite very strong dissatisfaction from a large number of people.  And U.S. diplomats are still supportive of him, buying his line that he is standing between stability and chaos.  Remember the Shah of Iran and his Savak.

Sent via webform at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Al-Jazeera overloaded?

At about 7:00 CST this morning, I could not get the English edition of Al-Jazeera.  The progress bar would only go partway and the pages loaded indicator said "Contacting http://english.aljazeera.net" and nothing more.  If I did nothing, my browser said it was unable to contact the site.

I did find aljazeera.com, a magazine, but it didn't have he details of aljazeera.net.

Finally at about 8:30 I was able to get aljazeera.net.

My guess is that many people on the East Coast were online before going to work or just as they got to their offices.

Today's blog offered hope that the thugs had been pushed back, then it mentions that the army had left one bridge, and finally that thugs crashed through a group of supporters.

Counter-demonstration or government attack

Al-Jazeera and others seem unwilling to call the "pro-Mubarak" demonstrators for what they are without more details.  I think these "demonstrators'" methods speak rather clearly.

If they were counter-demonstrators, they would use the same tactics as the anti-government demonstrators.  They would march, hold signs, and chant slogans.  They would not come in on horses and camels and beat those of another opinion.  They would not drop stones, cement blocks, and fire bombs from buildings.

Proving that these pro-Mubarak people are security police is another matter.  But consider that the security police were outmaneuvered and outmanned by the anti-government demonstrators.  Maybe they disappeared for a few days to regroup and come back in another guise.

Another example of corporate "efficiency"

Yesterday I tried to pay my Verizon Wireless bill online, something I've been doing for more than a couple of years.  It worked fine at the beginning of January.  Yesterday when I clicked the "Submit" button, nothing happened.  Well, the second time I tried, the button enlarged.

Today I tried again.  Same result.  I tried with Firefox instead of Safari.  Same result.

One of the "efficiencies" any well-run organization tries for is cash flow.  Don't let the checks pile up in a drawer, but get them to a bank PDQ and let the dollars work for you.  I don't know how many thousands or millions of dollars Verizon receives each day, but I would think it would review its software changes quickly to get that cash flow back up.

Now I know who should win the SuperBowl

Today a friend asked me who I thought would win the SuperBowl.  I asked who is giving a big bowl as a prize.

Last week another friend asked me who I thought would win, the packers or the bears.  I replied that the meatpackers always win over the bears.

Today I found out a reason to cheer for the Green Bay Packers.  They are the only team owned by the "people" and not by a few billionaires.  There are over 120,000 shareholders of the Packers, and no shareholder may own more than 200,000 shares.  Assuming most of those shareholders live in the Green Bay area, they probably won't move the team to get a better deal.

See "Support the Packers; Annoy the Rich", Brett Arends, Market Watch, 2011-02-01

Keeping up with events in Egypt

If you are a news freak who couldn't get enough news about Iran in 2009, your best source on Egypt is Al-Jazeera.  The English version on the web is at

http://english.aljazeera.net/

For the latest, check out the blogs.  There is also plenty of commentary from many sources and perspectives.  One I found particular interesting is "The triviality of US Mideast policy" by Robert Grenier, a former director of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center.  He relates how the headmaster of his school was unknowingly made irrelevant by an anti-Vietnam War protest.    Similarly, events have made most of U.S. Mideast policy irrelevant and outdated.

P.S. Cairo time is 8 hours ahead of Central Standard Time.

A little thing to help the Egyptian people

On June 23, 2009, President Obama made a strong statement in support of the Iranian people protesting against the official election results.

His concluding remark was:

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people have a universal right to assembly and free speech. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect those rights and heed the will of its own people. It must govern through consent and not coercion. That's what Iran's own people are calling for, and the Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/06/23/presidents-opening-remarks-iran-with-persian-translation

What you can do is send web-form email to the president asking him to speak out more strongly about Egypt in the same way.  You'll find a "contact us" button in the upper right hand corner of most White House pages.

My own message was

Please make strong remarks about the situation in Egypt similar to those you made about Iran on June 23, 2009.

Our quest for "national security" has made us more insecure.

Will North Africa and the Middle East join the democracies of Europe?

People in their 50s and older may remember not only the dictatorships of Eastern Europe, but the dictatorships of Portugal, Spain and Greece. Many of these are now gone.  About the only authoritarian European regimes left are Russia and some of its former "republics".

Many of us had hopes for Iran a couple of years ago, but some of the Ayatollahs, the Republican Guard, and the Basiji put the damper on that.  Now the government of Tunisia has toppled and the situation is in flux.  The Egyptian government has been seriously challenged to a greater extent than Iran was.  In fact, as of today, the people practically rule the streets and have destroyed many government building while protecting popular buildings like museums.

What will the next ten years bring?  The European model or more of the same old self-perpetuation of self-appointed elites?

Compared to North Africans, Tea Partiers are quibblers

Many people in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen are staging wide-spread protests against autocratic governments that were elected, if you can call it that, by sham processes.  Their governments have been corrupt, the top raking in all kinds of benefits with no accountability, the bottom requiring bribes to do the simplest things, like even apply for a government job.

The protesters are fighting the police and army with their large presence, stones, and returned tear-gas canisters (made in the U.S.A.)  In Alexandria, the protest was so overwhelming that the police gave up and shared water bottles with the protesters.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S.A., underwriter of these corrupt regimes in the name of defense, some Tea Party supporters are appearing in public with weapons to protect themselves against "the overreaching government".

How is the government "overreaching"?  It is taxing them more than they would like to provide services they claim they don't like.  They complain that their freedoms are being taken away, but it seems that they have plenty of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly to express their views.  Have you heard any reports of blocking of the internet, shutting down newspapers, or canceling the licences of broadcasters in order to silence supporters of the Tea Party?

How were these "overreaching" government activities achieved?  By elected officials and their appointees.  Sure, we see flawed elections.  But the Floridas and Ohios are the exceptions rather than the rule.  Do we have corruption and bribery?  Sure!  But how often are those who complain about or who expose corruption put in jail or otherwise silenced?  If such silencing was going on, would we even have a Tea Party?

If America is supposedly "exceptional", would we even have a Tea Party to complain about all the things that "are wrong"?

One way government should be run like a business

When a public corporation has its annual shareholder meeting, and the shareholders vote for a certain number of board members, to approve the auditing accounting firm, and such other business that may come before meeting,  the results are almost always announced as the number of shares voting for a proposal out of the number of shares outstanding.  It's been a while since I attended a shareholder meeting, but I don't remember if they give the number of votes withheld or abstaining for a proposal.  I don't think they were.

Wouldn't it be great if the results for elections for public office where announced similarly?  It would be a bit of guesswork as to how many eligible voters there were, but the number of registered voters is known.

Then we might get newspapers reporting that a presidential candidate received 44 million of the votes of the 140 million registered voters.  Reporting like this would give pause to any declaration of mandates or the will of the people.

Of course, we don't want some of the other goings on of corporate elections.

The board chooses a single slate of candidates for each election and recommends that shareholders vote for these candidates.  We wouldn't be happy if we had a single list of candidates for the legislatures that were picked by the legislatures.

The board hires and fires the chief executive officer, who often also sits on the board.  We would not be happy if the legislatures hired and fired the governors or the president.

The board also sets its own compensation.  Few complain about this, but hoo boy!, let the legislatures raise their salaries and the newspapers are flooded with letters.

Corporations don't have one person, one vote, but one share, one vote.  The person with one million shares has a lot more clout than the person with one hundred shares.  If we were to run government like a business, maybe we should have one vote for each dollar of taxes paid.  Gosh, that sounds like a great way to raise taxes.

Second amendment rights, to what purpose?

"A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

Like so much in the U. S. Constitution, the second amendment is open to a variety of interpretations.  One that is used by many is that gun ownership is needed to protect oneself against the government.

Those who hold to this interpretation ignore Article I, Section 8, which includes the power of Congress "To provide for the calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions" and Article III, Section 2, which includes "The President shall be Commander in Chief of … the Militia of the several States when called into the actual Service of the United States".

This has happened at least twice.  George Washington, as Commander in-Chief, lead forces against the insurrection of the those tax-evading participants of the Whiskey Rebellion.  Old George knew what he was doing; he had been president of the Constitutional Convention.  Abe Lincoln was Commander in Chief of the various militia against the insurrection of the Southern States.

If you want to have a gun to protect yourself against the government, the government has the constitutional right to call out the militia to protect itself against you.

So, you want term limits?

If you really want term limits, be sure to vote.  And when you vote, be sure to vote against the incumbent.  At least, vote against the incumbent if he or she has served what you consider a maximum number of terms.

Of course, if your favorite candidate serves more than this maximum, remember that according to some the people have decided.  This means the people have decided against term limits.

I think that term limits is a canard of those who think their party is not getting enough seats.  What will they do when the other party keeps getting more seats more often even with term limits?

If government should get out of the way of business, why…

If government should  get out of the way of business, why do so many businesses keep asking for government help?

Wellington Management Inc. wants to develop the former State Farm Insurance site in Woodbury, MN into an office park, a senior housing center, and a Costco store.  Among government assistance it would like is financing through bonding or tax exemption.  See "State Farm site plan may need state help", Star Tribune, 2011-01-22.

The owner of the company claims that the project will create 2,000 new jobs.  I won't judge the accuracy of that projection, but it would be interesting to see how many such projections come true.  It certainly didn't happen with United Healthcare in Duluth.

Some critics of government support for industries, for example, ethanol production, say government shouldn't be picking winners and losers in business.  I wonder how many supporters of the Woodbury project are among those critics.  I do know some supporters of the project belong to the same party as those critics.  Many members of that party do say that government should get out of the way of business.

No new taxes, but lots of new costs

I just came back from the hardware store where I bought my second 50-lb. bag of salt, $21.99 per bag plus tax.

I have put no salt on the garage apron next to the alley, none on the sidewalk to the garage, a little bit on the sidewalk around the house, practically none on the front walk and steps.  I have put almost all the previous salt on the public sidewalk in attempt to get rid of the ice buildup from the street snow plowed on the sidewalk.

Now let's put some perspective on taxes and costs.  Our real estate taxes to the city are about $330, half what we pay to the county and about two-thirds what we pay to the school district.  The city taxes are what many people complain about the most.

Let's see if I can figure out Duluth's 2009 financial report correctly.  From the summary of revenues, expenses, and changes in net assets, page 17, Duluth spent 124.942 million dollars of which Public Works spent 7.616 million.  That's six percent of the city budget, or I paid far less than $20 per year for snow removal by the city.

But I've personally paid over $40 in 2011 for snow reduction.  I've spent many hours working on snow reduction, and there is still much to go.

I assume the city could keep my walk practically clear for far less money and in less time than I have.  But that would mean I would have to pay more taxes.  So, it is a good thing I'm paying more out of pocket for a bit of service than I would pay in taxes for more service.

I think I'll go have a cup of tea.

Business-friendly? Friendly to which businesses?

One of the current political buzzwords is "business-friendly" or more likely "business-unfriendly".  "Business friendly" generally means minimum or no interference with businesses or giving of breaks, tax or otherwise, to businesses.

Although some consider "business-friendly" to mean "people-unfriendly", one "business-friendly" act for one business can be "business-unfriendly" to another business.

I read a case of this in today's Star Tribune, "TCF gains in fight over debit-card fee limits", 2011-01-21.  TCF and other banks are complaining that new Federal Reserve rules on exchange-fee limits will hamper their profits.

However, other businesses complain that the exchange fees cut into their profits.  And of course, the exchange fees may cut into people's pockets with higher prices.

It wouldn't surprise me that many of the proponents of higher fees see no conflict with their call for lower taxes.  It's all right for businesses to raise prices when their costs go up but not all right for government to raise taxes when its costs go up.

Another example of one business' gain being another business' loss is fuel costs.  Maybe the producers will have more profits, but the truckers and the airlines, will have higher costs.  The fuel users will do their best to raise their prices, but another fuel user, the governments that clear the snow will be constrained.

Maybe we should have a mantra to match "No new taxes" with a people-friendly "No new prices".

The same issue of the Star Tribune reports that the newly elected governor of Wisconsin want to increase the setback for wind-farms, "Wind showdown".  On first glance, this would seem a business-unfriendly move.  But I suspect it's only towards a new business many Republicans don't like - alternative energy.

Were these politicians opposing a high-voltage power line when many Wisconsin residents were fighting against it?  The line went across, not near, their property, and they were forced to sell the right-away at a cost determined by others.  Doesn't sound very free market to me.

I wonder if the Wisconsin Republicans will bend to the popular will if there is land-owner opposition to a new nuclear plant.

Computers: How the times change!

Twenty-eight years ago last month, I left Univac to form my own software company based on the new microcomputers.  Partly I felt Univac was stuck in old paradigms of big boxes, and partly I wasn't doing very well myself on creating new ideas.

A few years after that, Burroughs bought Univac and called the new company Unisys.  Unisys continued making mainframes for a few years and slowly moved to being more of a consulting company.

Before that really happened, I moved to using Macs only and haven't stopped since.

Now, Unisys is now considered a "technology services specialist", and some Motley Fools think that Apple and Unisys may reach some agreement to help Apple seek enterprise and government contracts.

Also, once companies started adopting personal computers, the "gold standard" became PCs and Microsoft.  The Mac was a toy and not a business computer.  Now "Apple's Tim Cook [acting CEO] says the iPad is being deployed or piloted in 80% of the largest corporations today, and 88 of the Fortune 100 companies are testing or using the iPhone."

See "3 Stocks Ready to Roar", Motley Fool

And older readers may remember all the predictions of Apple's demise in the 80s and 90s.  I read somewhere that Apple now has more market value than Microsoft.

And as I've said many times before, we ain't seen nothing yet in technology.

Health care repeal is the real job-killer

The Republicans are calling for the repeal of the "job-killer health care bill".  But have they considered that the previous health care "system" was the real job killer?

Why?  Consider that many people seek jobs based on the "benefits" offered by the company – "benefits" generally meaning health care insurance.  These people will seek jobs in large companies rather than smaller companies.  Once people work for large companies, they are almost "locked" into their jobs.

People who are "locked" into their jobs won't venture out on their own, whether to be consultants, to be employees of smaller companies, or to start their own companies.

When people move in any of these directions, they may be moving to a more creative environment.  That creative environment may in itself create more jobs.  Thank goodness that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were young, healthy, and well-enough off to start Apple and Microsoft, respectively.

But have many people not started companies because they didn't want to be concerned or couldn't afford health care for their employees.  That situation is/was a job-killer.

About the only job-killing I think the health care bill does is reduce the number of people who are looking for ways to deny care.

Ideology, compromise, and the big picture

Today was another publication day for me.  My letter to the editor of the Star Tribune was published as "Political Discourse: You want compromise?  Are you sure about that?"

Ross Douthat also wrote a blog about politicians jockeying for position rather than trying to solve problems: "The Roots of Overheated Rhetoric".

He does take a good look at bigger issues than just who believes what on some "little" issue.  However, I take issue with one of his statements: "a protective government ready to save us from our foolishness when the economy goes bad".

Who is this "we" in "our foolishness"?  Granted, many of "us" overextended ourselves with inducements from many sellers of this and that; a little reflection could have kept our credit card bills small.  On the other hand, credit was extended by "trusted advisors" who few had any reason not to trust.  When the mortgage officer at "Neighborhood Bank and Trust" tells us we can afford the mortgage, few of us have the expertise to ask the right questions.  And when "Oversize Bank and Trust" of Wall Street tells Neighborhood Bank and Trust that it will buy Neighborhood's mortgages, Neighborhood feels it can and should sell as many mortgages as it possible.  The whole problem was out of "our" hands.

Well, maybe not completely.  Enough of us believed the rhetoric about "getting the government out of the way", not realizing less government oversight meant less corporate oversight of the long-term effects of its short-term thinking.

A possible name and basis for a new party?

There is no real middle between today's so-called conservatives and so-called liberals, other than those who feel caught between two extremes.

What we need is a party that determines what the real problems are and what real, possible solutions to those problems may be.  Maybe this party should be called the Realistic Party, not to be confused with reality shows.

Of course, once a group has a name and real people start joining it, then the group starts moving from its original goals.  Oh, well!  I tried.

This entry was partially inspired by Ross Douthat's latest column, "Scenes from a Marriage", New York Times, 2011-01-16.

He writes about the mutual antipathy between "the media" and Sarah Palin, which Douthat writes is more co-dependence.

Based on his realistic look at the issue, I would say he might be an ideal spokesperson for the Realistic Party.  On the other hand, does his over-generalization that some journalists are "the media" disqualify him from this role?

A Freudian slip of the fingers?

As I was copying the keywords from "Give Governance a Chance" to attach to the next entry, I discovered a big, bad typo.  I had typed "Conversatives" instead of "Conservatives".

Is there some truth in that so-called "conservatives" react "conversely" to anything they perceive so-called "liberals" espousing?

Responses to "Give Governance a Chance"

So far there have only been two posted responses to my "Local View" submission, "Give Governance a Chance".  One simply was "Well stated."  The other was a long paragraph about living at the end of a mile-long private road and not worrying about getting cholera.  The Like or Dislikes were 10-2 and 2-11, respectively.

I haven't been around town since it was published, but four acquaintances told me that they liked it, as well as my two adult children (of course).

"Give Conservatives a Chance" has over thirty comments, including replies and replies to replies.  I didn't bother reading most of them, being "same old, same old" regardless of the "side" taken.

Was Microsoft Office 2011 for the Mac written by the government

After a long wait for a replacement for Office 2008, which took away Virtual Basic macros, I was able to buy Office 2011, which supposedly put macros back.

Guess what?  I'm not sure they work.

I put a simple one-line macro back in an Excel spreadsheet, and it worked.  But, every time I typed in a cell, Excel would only except one number and then do nothing.  I had to enter the data in the formula bar.  At least the formula bar seems to be standard in Office 2011; in some update to Office 2008 the formula bar would keep disappearing.

I tried removing the macro and putting it back in again, and now the macro stops with some mysterious error.

If I opened the progress bar in Entourage (Office 2008), it would be there the next time I opened Entourage.  In Outlook (Office 2011), it is never present the next time I open Outlook.

The installation process for Office 2011 ignored many of my preference from Office 2008.

Outlook changed the type font and size, and it only remembers the reset type font but not the reset size.

Outlook automatically includes the message I'm answering in my response.  I had turned this off in Entourage; I have yet to find a preference for this in Outlook.  I have to remember to remove the message in my response, and it is often below my writing area.

Outlook has put some of my old messages in the task list.

Outlook did not get my message categories right.  It put "Family" messages in "Iphone, saved to".

Outlook changed the links to many of my Entourage replies.  The linked messages sometime bear no relation to each other.

Gosh, with these errors and many others, Office 2011 must have been written by the government instead of an "efficient" private company.

To tell the truth, I do have some sympathy for the Microsoft programmers.  When I gave up on my own software programming company, for my far simpler program I had a problem list far longer than the list above.

I do wish Microsoft had had a bit bigger budget on testing.

I also wish that I could just call or email someone with these problems.  Instead, the user has to spend hours looking through forums to find a specific problem, which nobody may have raised yet.  This is part of the larger trend in far too many enterprises to push costs on to the customers.  See "Technology: A big bother we can't do without".

Give Democracy a Chance

After reading of the popular uprising in Tunisia, I can't help but give this entry a parallel title to my previous entry.

The chance I hope for any democracies that arise in the Arab world by popular demand is that the U. S. stays out of the way.  Almost anything the U.S. does, be it some support for the existing rulers or some support to the people is bound to backfire in one way or another.

The only thing the U. S. should do is to listen to whoever is in power, but promise nothing.

But, I'm pessimistic.  Somewhere in the vast U.S. military-intelligence complex will be those who call for intervention in our national interest.  Our only national interest is to help any U. S. citizens who want to leave countries in turmoil.

Give Governance a Chance

This is the title of a "Local View" article I wrote for the Duluth News Tribune.  You can find it at

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/188796/

It was my response to "Give Conservatism a Chance" published earlier in the week.  It is at

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/188404/

Be forewarned: The Duluth News Tribune makes articles available for free for only a week; after that you have to pay.

Limp or wimp?

Today I decided to make my traditional triangle walk to Bixby's for coffee, UMD for University of Seniors, and back home.  I have been driving to Bixby's because with all the unshoveled walks, walking has been no fun.  However, parking at UMD is no fun during the day.

Because the city of Duluth has partially cleared many walks with a large snowblower, I've been able to stride instead of mince.  Even though it was snowing lightly, off I strode.

Our street wasn't so bad.  Then I got to the first traffic light.  The pedestrian button was unreachable without climbing a thigh-high pile of snow - an icy pile with few footholds.  I got up high enough to push the button, but when I turned around to come down, things looked almost impossible.  I kind of leapt down from depression to depression but my momentum carried me right into the street.  Fortunately for me, no cars were whipping around the corner.

I stood at the corner waiting for the light to change, but guess what?  There was no traffic!  Do I cross now or wait?  I waited.

The rest of the walk to the coffee shop was uneventful.  Some parts of the sidewalk were even, some had deeper snow, none too difficult to walk in the 8-inch work boots I had on.

After coffee I went to UMD for a couple of classes.  When I got to the campus, the walks were freshly brushed with only a dusting of snow.  There were some icy patches at the edge, but I could walk normally.

While I was in the classes there was light snow.  I wondered if I wanted to take a bus home or walk.  As I told a friend, it was a question of limp or wimp - limp on uneven sidewalks or wimp out by taking the bus.  I opted to limp.

Again, the campus walks were no problem at all.  As soon as I crossed into a neighborhood, the situation deteriorated.  The first couple of blocks had wide boulevards and plow snow had not made it to the sidewalk.  But few had shoveled their walks in the last couple of weeks.

When I turned onto the thoroughfare, things got worse.  The city's snowblower had come by, but a plow had been by again, putting snow and "rocks" on the sidewalk.

Now walking became mincing.

Just after I took the picture and stepped off the curb at the corner, a car turned right in front of me!  What nerve!  What luck!  It was my wife who was coming home from her own activities.  I only had about three minutes walk to get home, but I was glad for the relief.

She wended her way through the neighborhood to our alley, and just as she was pulling in the garage, I saw the bus coming down the hill.  I would rather have ridden with her than with a bunch of strangers.

Sign language: does it really means what it says?

Toilets block easily
Please go easy on toilet paper
Thanks
The management

So said a sign in a store restroom.

Mandate? Landslide? Let's count ALL the voters

Frank Rich used "Reagan" and "landslide" many times in his article, "Let Obama's Reagan Revolution Begin", 2011-01-09.

I was going to post the following as a comment, but I was too late as comments were already closed.

Please stop using the term "landslide" to describe Reagan's win of the 1984 election.  Forty-three percent of the voters didn't even show up, indirectly voting for "none of the above."  Ronald Reagan did receive 58.7% of the votes of those who did show up which is impressive.  But if one considers the no-shows, he had the backing of only 33.5% of the people.  In other words, he came in second to none of the above.

If we reported elections with all the relevant data we could either stop winners from declaring a "mandate" or get more people out to vote the next time.

See also "Voting is not a horse race" and "If you don't vote, you have only yourself to blame".

Are fewer manufacturing jobs always a bad thing?

Dick Palmer picked a poor example about the decline of manufacturing when he mentioned Rochester, New York, home of Eastman Kodak.  How many rolls of film has he been buying recently?  Few people use film anymore; most cameras are now digital and can take many more pictures than film cameras.  In fact, it is difficult to even sell a film camera on eBay. "State exports may be up but nation still hurting", Dick Palmer, Duluth Budgeteer, 2011-01-06.

Technological changes have led to many more job changes, but I'll come back to these in a bit.

Another contributor to job changes for over two hundred years has been low cost manufacturing, whether by low-cost labor or high productivity.  Weavers in England and India were put out of business by power looms in England.  Instead of high-skilled weavers, children could and did operate the machines.

New Englanders stole some of the designs and set looms up in Massachusetts.  They hired hundreds of young women to operate the machines.  Feeling exploited, workers organized into unions to push for more rewards for their labor.

Then the textile mills lowered their costs by moving to the South where unions were not tolerated. Even then, people found opportunity for better paying jobs and to attract labor, the companies had to raise wages.

Then shipping became cheaper, and textile companies found even lower cost labor in Asia and Central America.  And as labor becomes more expensive in those countries, the companies move on to other countries.

Higher productivity means fewer people are needed to manufacture the same amount of goods.  Higher productivity comes from more and more mechanization and now computerization.  Even in the 80s, Ford could produce cars for less than GM because it used more mechanization and fewer workers.  Fewer highly skilled machinists are needed thanks to numerically-controlled machine tools.  Write a little program to make the cuts, put the code into the machine, and have a cup of coffee.

My father was a well-regarded dental prosthetic technician specializing in crowns.  I have a folder of letters from dentists praising his work.  When I got a crown last year, the dentist waved a wand over my teeth, an image appeared on the computer screen, he rotated the image and made some adjustments, he clicked OK, and a machine in the basement proceeded to make the crown.  We chatted awhile, and then he went downstairs to get the crown.  He put it in my mouth, pulled it out, made some adjustments with his drill, put it back in again, had me grind my teeth, and so on.  In two hours, I had a new crown in my mouth, not a temporary to be replaced in three weeks and several visits later.

What is manufactured has changed dramatically in the last few decades.

When I worked at Univac programming mainframes mainframes in the 1960s, dozens of people would thread wires through little iron donuts for the main memory.  When I started, a large memory had less than 400,000 characters, each character represented by six donuts.  When I left nearly twenty years later, a large memory had about six million characters on an array of integrated circuits on several sets of large circuit boards.  Now I carry eight billion characters of memory in my shirt pocket.

The miles of film that Eastman Kodak spewed out and put in little boxes have been replaced by memory cards the size of the end of one of those boxes.  On a 1991 trip to Japan I shot nine rolls of film; my cost was over one hundred dollars for film and processing.  On a 2007 trip to Japan I shot almost forty percent more pictures on a single memory card that cost less than fifty dollars, and I used the card over and over again for many hundreds of pictures more.  My cost of processing was my time to download the pictures to my computer.

What is considered manufacturing has changed even more dramatically.  We don't consider software on a disk or downloaded from a website as a manufactured product, but it is.  It's just that the balance between design and physical rendering has moved dramatically to the design side.  I haven't checked, but I assume that Apple Computer has more employees today than IBM and the "Seven Dwarves" of mainframes had thirty years ago.  Apple definitely has more customers spending a lot more money than the mainframe manufacturers did.

The problem is not the decline of an economic sector, but the rate of change of the economy.  I think few people, whether individuals or people in government, business, and education, have sufficient understanding of the change.  Too many people are judging tomorrow by what happened a decade ago.  And too many people are assuming that solutions that seemed to work twenty years ago are going to work today.

Abraham Lincoln said it 165 years ago, "As our case is new, so must we think anew."

To his credit, Dick Palmer has started to think anew.  He does end his column with and elaboration on "The secret ingredient to success today is education…"

The "Huckleberry Finn" rewrite: Thomas Bowdler is alive and well

Michiko Kakutani wrote a marvelous slam about the latest attempt to force Mark Twain to write according to some people's taste; "New 'Huckleberry Finn' Edition Does Disservice to a Classic", New York Times, 2011-01-06.

One of her best sentences on changing "nigger" to "slave" was, "Never mind that attaching the epithet slave to the character Jim — who has run away in a bid for freedom — effectively labels him as property, as the very thing he is trying to escape."  Another is that it "stands as a powerful indictment of slavery (with Nigger Jim its most noble character)".

Rewriting by translators is one reason that I prefer reading books or seeing movies in the original language.  I may comprehend the text less in the original, but that is my doing, not some intermediary's.

See also "Bowdlerization", Melvyn Magree, Reader Weekly, 2001-04-12.

Are those worried about blasphemy the real blasphemers?

Although I will be referring to Muslims because the actions of some Muslims are in the current news, let us not forget that other believers have taken drastic action.  The Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada, had many tortured and killed because they were suspected of not having complete fealty to the Church of Rome.  The Puritans of Massachusetts executed Quakers because they refused to stop preaching.  And the Jews of Biblical times slaughtered those who worshiped Baal.

The latest incident to make the news is the assassination of the Governor of Punjab by one of his bodyguards.  The "sin" of the Governor?  He wanted to overturn the blasphemy laws of Pakistan that call for the death penalty for those who "insult" Mohammed or Islam.

Other incidents include the murder of a Dutch filmmaker and the threats against European cartoonists who have "insulted" Mohammed or Islam.

If God/Allah is omnipotent, wouldn't God/Allah deal with blasphemers with a bolt of lightning or other public displays of power?  If Elijah's Jehovah could burn a water-soaked offering pyre, why did Elijah chase down and kill the priests of Baal?

If God/Allah is unknowable, how does anybody know the mind of God/Allah enough to actually carry out "God's will"?  If a person assumes that he knows the mind of God/Allah, isn't that blasphemy too?

It is ironic that many Muslims preface taking an action with "Insallah" ("God willing").  But if they don't know God's will, how can they act in God's name?

I think people who attack those who believe differently are themselves insecure in their faith.  Their beliefs are threatened by those who believe differently.  This holds for radical Muslims, the Puritans, Torquemada, or Elijah.

Fortunately for those of us who don't have the "True Belief", whichever one that is, most of the co-religionists of the "True Believers" are willing to get along with others who do not share their beliefs.

Government inefficient, business efficient? Hah!

The following is the second message that I've sent in the last two days to Wells Fargo; Wells Fargo manages shareholder reinvestment accounts for Allete.

Once again you are emailing me that "A new Allete, Inc. tax form has been posted to your account", and once again that form is for the 2009 tax year, identical to the one I received a year ago, and at least twice this past few weeks.

The 2010 Form 1099 should have a larger amount than the 2009 form because I have the dividends reinvested.

I think I'll post this business inefficiency to my blog: http://magree.blogspot.com

Isn't Wells Fargo one of the banks involved in improper foreclosures?  A Google search for "wells fargo foreclosures" yields "Judge Rejects Wells Fargo Foreclosure Documents Again", Daily Finance, Abigail Field, 2010-12-10.

I'm glad that I long ago paid off my truck loan with Northwestern Bank (now Wells Fargo).  At least they couldn't repossess it from me for some obscure technicality; I sold it.

Snow removal – something only higher taxes can buy

To avoid taxes on residents for clearing sidewalks, cities by law expect that residents clear the sidewalks in front of their houses.  But to do so one must spend time and energy clearing the sidewalk or pay somebody else to clear the sidewalk; either one is a tax by inaction.  If one has a friendly neighbor volunteer to clear a walk, that time and energy is a tax on that neighbor.   Add to the time and energy the costs of snow shovels, ice chippers, snow blowers, and ice melt or sand.  Oh yes, gas and oil for the snow blower.  And in some cases heart attacks or muscle pain.

All of this is inefficient and more.  Hired snow clearers do a couple of houses in one area and move on to another.  Individual homeowners may or may not clear their walks at the same time or even on the same day.  Depending on the size of the boulevard, the sidewalk snow may be thrown into the yard, to become melt water in warmer weather, run across the sidewalk, and then freeze in colder weather.

People who might normally walk now drive for their own safety and comfort.  Parents who are concerned about their children's safety demand school buses, even for walks of less than a half-hour.  School buses are operated with tax money.

This cycle can be repeated several times in any given snow season, the snow pile getting higher and the frozen melt getting thicker.

Wouldn't it be more efficient and cost effective if the city were to remove as much plowed or blown snow as possible after each storm?  The state certainly does it on bridges and underpasses.  What if as soon as possible after plowing, the city came back with large snowblowers and trucks and removed the snow on boulevards?  What if next the city came back again and cleared and removed the snow from sidewalks?  It may be a lot of money up front, but the overall savings to the community might be very large.

If all else fails, let's resort to the argument that snow removal creates jobs.  Gosh, if there is tax money to induce a business to move to a city to "create jobs", can't there be tax money to "create jobs" to make a city more livable?

What nationality are you? An irrelevant question!

Asking "What nationality are you" seems to be an American social game.  But is it really a relevant question?  When people ask me this, I answer, "I'm American."  How can I be anything else?

Three of my grandparents were born in the U.S. and one in a part of Germany now in Poland.  I hardly knew my German-born grandmother when I was growing up.  I certainly was not German when I went to Germany.

Four of my great-grandparents were born in Germany.  See above.  I never met any of them.  Three of my great-grandparents were born in England.  I only knew one of my great-grandmothers and about the only English custom observed when we visited her was drinking tea, with Carnation milk!  I certainly was not English when I went to England.

One of my great-grandfathers, the one with the "Irish" name, was born in Williamsburgh, New York, now a neighborhood of Brooklyn.  I never knew him, and I only drove through Brooklyn to get to JFK.  I doubt anybody anywhere would consider me a Brooklynite.

I've known several people who've called themselves Swedish or Italian, but I bet I've spent more time in those countries and know more of both languages than many of these people's parents.  Not all by any means, but enough to wonder why these people call themselves Swedish or Italian rather than Americans.

Ironically, Americans often consider Canadian, Australian, and New Zealander as nationalities.  But these countries are populated with people from all over the world, just like the United States.

Even more ironically, many of the "nationalities" represent nation-states that are themselves made of people with ancestors outside the borders of the nation states.  Consider the often beleaguered nation Poland.  Most of the people there have German, Swedish, Finnish, Russian, Latvian, and other ancestors.  The French skier, Jean-Claude Killey's grandfather was a Kelly.  And what nationality is the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy?  According to American custom he is Hungarian-Greek-Jewish-Spanish-…  Are there any French "birthers" demanding to see Sarkozy's birth certificate?

We need to do a makeover of Duluth

In 2007 I wrote an article for the Reader Weekly, "Economic development to beat all economic development" about tearing Duluth down and starting all over again.

As I've been clearing plowed snow off our sidewalk and getting ice out of the sump pump hose, I've been thinking about this again.

Snow plowed from the streets onto sidewalks is an old issue with me.  Suffice it to say that streets widened to accommodate more traffic mean narrower boulevards (tree lawns to some) to store plowed snow.

Much of Duluth has an early 20th century sewer system.  This means that storm water run-off often got into the sanitary sewers and filled the sanitation holding tanks past capacity.

First we had to have a sump pump installed and any basement drainage into the sanitary sewer blocked.  This meant that water that had been put into the sewers was now dumped out on the lawn.  Because Duluth is built on a hill, this meant the water would often run onto the sidewalk causing ice buildup in the winter.

Next we had to have our sanitary sewers from the house to the street replaced because ground water was seeping into them, contributing to the capacity problem.  This also meant that the ground was even more saturated after rains or thaws, and that meant that even more water flowed onto the sidewalk.

Add to this overflow problem that the snow bank acts as a dam and that many sidewalk sections are tilted away from the street, the overflow stays on the sidewalk.  This then means that homeowners need to spend hours each week to ensure that the sidewalks in front of their houses are accessible and safe.

Revisiting the ideas in "Economic Development", when we level Duluth to start again, we should include double sewer lines from houses, one for sanitary waste, one for ground water runoff.  We should rebuild all streets with a minimum of four-foot wide boulevards.  We should rebuild all sidewalks with a slight tilt toward the street, and we should place them higher than both the curb and the boulevard.

I'm sure you can add many more ideas about improving walkability in Duluth, but I'll limit this little essay to dealing with snow and ice.

War of the words

In response to Germany's Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer suggesting that employees not use foreign words such as "der Laptop", U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has suggested that employees respond to fellow workers sneezes with "Bless you" rather than "Gesundheit".

"Der laptop?  Nein, nein", Deutsches Presse-Agentur as reported by the Star Tribune, 2010-12-30

Hm!  Has somebody started a rumor?  If I go to either www.dpa.com or www.dpa.de and search for "laptop", I get "Kein Suchergebnisse" - "no search 'whatever'".  Besides, the Star Tribune is not using richtig Deutsche; it should be "Der Laptop?"  Nouns are almost always capitalized in German.

Mein Deutschekunnigheit?  Nicht so gut!  Ich habe zu viel vergessen:(

1968 Letter from Europe

My mother-in-law kept many of our letters from Europe in a scrapbook.  After she died three years ago, my wife kept the scrapbooks.  This week she has been rereading our old letters.  She pointed out to me one I wrote from Basel 29/30 October 1968.

I was in Basel, Switzerland to prepare a demo for a potential Univac customer.  Univac didn't have one of its own computers in Europe yet, and so we borrowed or bought time on customer computers.  For this demo I was working with an 1108 at Sandoz in Basel.  Sandoz is now called Novartis.

I don't remember much of the trip except I was introduced to raclettes, cheese melted on a board in front of a fire.  The German I was working with took me to a restaurant near the bahnhof that specialized in raclettes.  I've had and have made raclettes since then, but none have compared to those at that Swiss restaurant.

And I don't remember if we made the sale for which we did the demo.


Letter to my in-laws, Jean and Fred Smith, 29/30 October 1968

Dear Folks,

I am back in Basel on a four week assignment and back to learning German, but tomorrow or Thursday I go back to Rome for the rest of the year, I hope.  Not quite, we hope to take a two week ski vacation at Christmas time, but in Switzerland.  I tried calling three hotels in Davos yesterday, and found out you have to make your reservations in the spring or in January when you leave, so we will probably spend this year in Italy.

All this travel is not as exciting as it may seem.  As I generally work nights and have to see people during the day it often becomes an eat-sleep-work cycle.  Right now I am writing this while waiting to get on the machine [a Univac 1108 computer].  Hah, just as I finished the last sentence, the machine became free.  Now I am baby-sitting the machine at the console.

The most interesting and frustrating experience of being in Europe is the language problem.  My minimal French, German and Italian gets me throughout quite a variety of situations, but general conversation is a rare and difficult thing.  The missing ingredients are vocabulary and listening ability.  I really think that in the U. S. not enough emphasis is put on foreign language ability and they are are treated as an academic subject.  Throughout most of the world to much importance is given to grammar and not enough to vocabulary.  I always cringe when a grammar author boasts that he only introduces 20 words per lesson.  I have found, especially in Italian, that one can use a grammarian's nightmare of a sentence but still convey the thought if one has sufficient words.  Conversely with a bit of vocabulary and little grammar one can at least get the sense of newspaper stories.  To me the best method would be to have classes using conversation and reading newspapers and magazines.  Tests would be on the things read just as they might be in English lit or History.  (Most Europeans who graduate from high school can speak 2 foreign languages, of course not all finish, but still.)

Sincerely,
Mel

We don't have political parties, we have dreaming parties

We have one party that engages in wistful thinking and another that engages in wishful thinking.  One dreams of a time that never was and the other of a time that never will be.

Too many commentators try to make a continuum from one to the other.  What we really need are a political party or two that can define the real problems of here and now and come up with practical solutions for them.  These would not be "moderate" parties, taking a little bit from one side and a little bit from the other.  These would be parties that are interested in governance over grandstanding.

It's happened before in our country, but we are 150 years overdue for it happening again.

Government workers aren't productive?? Try this job!

I haven't taken time to read all the stories about the East Coast blizzard, but there seem to be a lot about the various governments not being prepared.  Do these critics want to pay the taxes necessary to have enough equipment and personnel ready to clear the snow?

The people who clear the snow work harder and longer than most of us would tolerate.  I know it's hard enough to drive a bus for eight hours on dry roads; try running a snow plow with obstacles everywhere you look.

In the case of New York City, they assigned park employees who normally took down trees to drive plows on city streets.  See "Obstacles at Every Turn for Plow Crew", New York Times, 2010-12-29.

Let's get our perspective right on healthy food

My daughter handed me a cellophane bag of chocolate balls as an early Christmas present.  She said they were chocolate-covered cranberries and were half-healthy.  I replied, "You mean cranberries aren't healthy?"

If you liked this anecdote, you might enjoy "Major Food Groups", a spoof piece my wife and I dreamed up ten years ago and was published by the Reader Weekly, then called the Northland Reader.  It still is one of the more popular pages on my website.

"The People" decided what?

In a presidential election year, when a president is selected by the number of electoral votes, many of those who supported the successful candidate say, "The people decided…"

Wait a minute!  Electoral votes do not always coincide with actual votes.  A candidate may win based on electoral votes, but not have gained a majority, or even a plurality of the actual votes.  The people who voted for the other candidate are not "people"?

In a presidential election year, the party of the winning presidential candidate generally gets majorities in both the House and the Senate.  But the other party always gets a large number of votes.  The people who voted for the other party are not "people"?

Then two years later, supporters of the party that was less successful start saying the President and members of Congress are not listening to "the people".  But the President and Congress are listening to "the people" that elected them.

Unfortunately, too often more people didn't bother to vote than voted for either candidate in far too many races.  Does this mean "the people" don't give a damn about either party?

It would be great if "people" would use more precise words in their discussions and writings, but it ain't going to happen.  "People" want to use imprecise words so that they can prevent both their supporters and the opposition from thinking clearly.

Tired of pouring gas on your shoes?

How often have you poured gas into your lawnmower or snowblower, looked down at your shoes or the tires, and seen gas dribbling on them?  Gosh, darn, you tightened the spout on as much as you could.

Somehow, a couple of years ago, after decades of frustration, I came upon a little trick to get the spout on really tight.  Most of the time, that is.

Place the spout 1/4 turn counterclockwise from where you want it, place the screw ring around the spout, hold the spout a bit up and in its turned position, and tighten the screw ring as best you can.  Then without holding the spout, tighten the ring even more.  The spout should turn close to the desired position.

Now, maybe, just maybe, the spout should be the gas can sufficiently tight so that no gas dribbles out.

Of course, all bets are off with these new "safety cans" with their little stops to prevent accidental opening.  Of course, they also deter planned opening.  How can something be safer if users become so frustrated using it that they become careless in some other aspect?

City to be run like a business

Bowing to critics who say that government should be run like a business, Mayor Les S. Moore has announced several initiatives to follow certain business practices.

Following the lead of orange juice companies who reduced the size of their cartons from 64 ounces to 59 ounces, he has ordered all snow plow drivers to clear only 59/64th the width of city streets.

Noticing that facial tissue now comes in 132-count boxes instead of 200-count boxes, he has ordered the police department reduce its staff from 200 sworn officers to 132.

When Mayor Moore goes grocery shopping, he'll be looking for more examples to apply to city government.

When the city produced its new quarterly to keep citizens informed of the activities of the city government, he followed the lead of the newspapers and had no one proofread the articles.  He was embarrassed to see that a library manager wrote that the library had materials for geneology.

To centralize citizen/customer communication with the city, he has ordered that the phone numbers and email addresses of department heads no longer be published.  Instead, a single 800 number and a single email address, customersupport@city.gov, will be provided.  These both will be handled by a limited staff in India.

Taking a cue from the telecommunications industry, he will offer more and more services electronically with greater and greater speeds.  Each increase will be advertised as with no new taxes in the first six months.

He did balk at following one business example as he thought it would reduce his chances of re-election.  He didn't think he would be very popular if he increased his salary as he cut the number of employees.

The high cost of no new taxes

In my part of Duluth we had about 12 inches of snow on the night of 2010-12-20.  The city snow plow drivers did a great job of clearing the streets, but the result is heavy packed snow on our sidewalk, too much for this little 5hp 22in snowblower, and definitely too much for my back.

According to city ordinance, home owners are responsible for clearing their sidewalks within twenty-four hours of a snowfall.  However, if the city plows push snow on to the sidewalk, the city is responsible for clearing the sidewalk.

Even if I made a Herculean effort to clear the sidewalk, it would be futile.  When the plows come by again, there will more heavy snow on the sidewalk.

If last year's Christmas week storm is any guide, the city won't clear our sidewalk for at least a week.  Meanwhile, pedestrians of all ages and abilities have to walk in the street; they are taxed for the city not raising taxes.

You really are good at foreign languages

How often have you heard people say, "I never was any good with foreign languages!"  But any of us who read a lot or listen a lot, know lots of foreign words and phrases as part of our own language.

Consider the following:

Oui, non, savoir faire, coup d'état, menu, restaurant, merci beaucoup, la plume de ma tante, père, mère, soirée, bon jour, monsieur, madame, mademoiselle, garçon, parlez vous français

Si, gracias, señor, señora, señorita, taco, burrito, chili, sombrero, serape, fiesta, siesta, madre, padre, muchacho, muchacha, piñata, guerrilla, mesa

Ja, nein, Blitzkrieg, danke, sprechen sie Deutsch, guten morgen, auf Wiedersehen, angst

Da, nyet, troika, glasnost, perestroika, tsar, soviet, sputnik, vodka, tundra

Smörgåsbord, fjörd, tack, Viking, ski, lingon, orienteering, ombudsman, moped

Judo, karate, karaoke, sumo, sushi, tofu, miso, manga, sake, kimono, samurai, futon, tsunami

Si, no, italiano, spaghetti, opera, pasta, forte, piano, ciao, arrivederci, buon giorno, vino

I bet you know over 90% of these words and can identify each of the groups.

Interestingly, Apple's TextEdit only flagged five words as not in its dictionary; these were burrito, chili, serape, nyet, and fjörd.  TextEdit was happy when I spelled fjörd as fjord. In fact, TextEdit insisted on changing it as I typed.  Microsoft's Word is a bit fussier; it didn't recognize any of the words that contained diacritical marks, like in garçon, señor, and smörgåsbord.

See, you're also smarter than a computer.  You could recognize all the words.

Next time somebody says they have never been good at whatever, reply that they just haven't spent enough time and interest learning that whatever.

Ciao, amici miei!

Forget Ranked Choice Voting, Try Ranked Vote Reporting

Many people tout Ranked Choice Voting as a solution to the gridlock of the so-called two-party system.  Others say it will be to confusing to voters.  One thing I do know is that it requires charter and constitutional changes.  Like many elections of candidates, charter changes will probably not be brought about by a majority of eligible voters.

We can put a better perspective on election results with a simple election administration change.  Each precinct, county, and state should publish the totals of registered voters who did not vote and include it in a ranked report.

For example, assume a precinct with 1,000 registered voters of whom only 600 showed up.  290 voted for A, 250 voted for B, and 60 voted for C.  A is declared the winner because A received the plurality of votes.  And A's party will be dancing until midnight celebrating the victory.

But, let's consider the true count.  400 voters didn't care to show up at all.  If the precinct had to include these un-cast votes in its report, we might see something like this:

400 (40%) no vote cast
290 (29%) Candidate A
250 (25%) Candidate B
  60  ( 6%) Candidate C

Even if Candidate A had received 310 votes or a majority of the votes cast, the report would still show Candidate A coming in second to "no vote cast".  Not exactly an overwhelming victory; Candidate A did not get a "mandate".

Actually, we don't even need an administrative change.  If media started reporting results in this manner, it would have the same effect.  Most large media organizations have access to this data.

If this idea really took hold, we might get one or more of the following.  Candidates would work to increase turnout; candidates would work to widen their appeal; additional candidates may run because they would see the "popular" candidates as not so popular.

Social Security checks didn't stay the same; they went down

This week we received our Social Security Benefit statements for 2011.  As predicted the "monthly amount" stayed the same, but the deductions went up!

Medicare medical insurance went up $74 per month and the Medicare prescription drug plan went up $4.60.  So, we'll each have $78.60 less every month to spend in the local economy.

We do have other sources of income, but we have saved those to use for big ticket items, like property tax.  For us, this decrease is an inconvenience; for others it can be a major blow.

I sent the above to Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken and to Rep.-elect Chip Cravaack.

Duluth Digs: Hope for shoveled walks??

Email to Don Ness, Mayor of Duluth, on Duluth Digs, an initiative to "encourage people to do a little more to keep sidewalks clear."

As you know from some of my Reader Weekly articles on walking in Duluth, I'm all for keeping sidewalks clear for pedestrians.  I applaud you and Duluth Digs for attempting to make Duluth a more walkable city, but I'm pessimistic it's going to happen for two reasons.

First, wherever there is a narrow boulevard, which is anything less than four feet, snow plows are going to dump a huge amount of snow on the sidewalks.  This snow is not the light, fluffy, new-fallen snow, but heavy wet gunk.  It is not easy to lift.  Because of this, many people don't even attempt to shovel their walks.

We were away during one of the big snows last winter.  When we came back our sidewalk was covered with three feet of ice and snow.  It was even hopeless to do with a snowblower.  It was many days before a crew was able to get to our block to clear this.

Second, the mandated sump pumps are putting a lot of ice on the sidewalks.  With the many rains, the ground was saturated and the pump water continued on to the sidewalks.  When the temperature dropped, the standing water became ice.  I did sand it, but given its unevenness, it was no fun to walk on.

I don't know how many hours spread over many days I've spent chipping at this ice, some of it two inches thick.  Only today did I manage to have a strip less than two feet wide along our portion of the sidewalk.

I have just about given up walking in Duluth in the winter or after dark.  In winter because the uneven surfaces lead to various muscle problems; after dark because of all the overhanging branches and protruding shrubbery.

I know in your heart you would like to follow in the footsteps of a former mayor of Eden Prairie.  When asked why her city was successful in attracting businesses, she responded that they made Eden Prairie a nice place to live.  Sadly, doing so today is considered a cost rather than an investment in a benefit.

References:
"Talking about walking about", http://www.cpinternet.com/~mdmagree/walking_2001-10-25.html
"In-Your-Face while Walking", http://www.cpinternet.com/~mdmagree/walking_2004-10-21.htm
"Save energy! Encourage Walking!" http://www.cpinternet.com/~mdmagree/walking_2007-12-06.html
"Save energy! Promote Walking!" http://www.cpinternet.com/~mdmagree/save_energy_2008-05-08.html

Who took votes from whom?

In 2000, many Democrats said that Ralph Nader took votes from Al Gore in Florida making it easier for George W. Bush to become president.

In 2010, Tony Sutton, chair of the Republican Party in Minnesota, said that Tom Horner, Independence Party candidate took votes from Tom Emmer, allowing Mark Dayton to become governor of Minnesota.

Maybe both complaints are misdirected.

In either case, have they considered that many of the people who voted for the "minor" candidate might not have even voted if they hadn't had a third choice?

In the 2010 Minnesota governor case, has anyone considered that Mark Dayton might have "taken votes" from Tom Horner?  Maybe many voters would have voted for Tom Horner, but they didn't want to "throw their votes away" and allow Tom Emmer to become governor.  So, maybe they voted for Mark Dayton because they thought he was a better choice than Tom Emmer.

Unless we interview in depth every single voter, we'll never really know their motivations.  It really is presumptuous to assume to know the intent of unknown voters.

Would today's Republicans support Abraham Lincoln?

When I read Wired's "Republican Congressman Crowdsource Attack on Science", I thought of all the projects they oppose without even weighing costs and benefits.  The crowdsourcing is an attempt to get the general public to expose "waste" in federal spending, starting with the National Science Foundation.  They essentially take an apparently frivolous aspect of a project without looking any deeper into what benefits might be gained.  They have started YouCut Citizen Review.  Maybe the first cut in the federal budget should be to disband YouCut?

Would today's Republicans support Abraham Lincoln's push for a transcontinental railroad?  Especially with the huge outlay of bonds to fund it?  That would not lead to a balanced budget.

Would today's Republicans support Abraham Lincoln's handling of the Civil War?  Although today's Republicans are big on spending on the military (without any meaningful analysis of the benefits), they are also big on states' rights, the major argument leading to the Civil War.

Those special places

Today Jim Heffernan republished "That Special Christmas Place" on his blog; it was originally published in 1983.

It made me think of some of the places where I lived that don't exist anymore.  I personally saw that the house I lived in from 1947 to 1951 is no more as well as some of its neighbors.  From Google Street view I saw that an apartment building I lived in from 1951 to 1953 is gone and that a drugstore that we lived over in the early 1940s is gone.

They weren't the best houses in the world, but they were home.  I have no ownership of them and few would value them as a place the "famous" Mel Magree lived.  However, that there is a vacant lot or a parking lot where I once lived does leave a vacant spot in my heart.  I think this is so because I can't put my hands on any pictures I may have of these places and that my descendants can't go to the places as they are in my memory.

See also "Often you really can't go home".

Don't worry, insurance will pay for it!

How often have you heard this remark?  This leads many people to see a doctor for even small problems that may go away on their own.  This also leads many providers to not be cost conscious of the work they do, at least not as cost conscious if the patient was paying out of pocket.

People rarely ask the follow-up question: who pays for insurance?  The answer is that we all do, directly or indirectly.  If we pay the premiums directly, it comes out of our pockets.  If our employer pays the premiums, its money that could go into our pocket instead or its money that has to come from the price of the goods or services sold.  If the government pays, it comes out of our taxes.

Since there are so many payers of health care, there are no real controls on the costs.  So, no controls, no limit on costs.  Up and up they go.

For some more thoughts on this, see "What Happened to U.S. Health Care Costs?" Megan McArdle, The Atlantic, 2010-12-01.

She has an interesting graph showing how U.S. health care costs diverged dramatically from the costs in other countries.

We're exceptional 'cause we say so

Thomas Friedman wrote a spoof cable from the Chinese Embassy back to Peking; it would be hilarious if it weren't so sadly true.  You can find it at "From WikiChina", New York Times, 2010-12-01.

I've always found "exceptionalism" a bit arrogant.  It's kind of grade-schoolish; "my whatever is better than your whatever!"  Does it really matter?  Can't our whatevers be our whatevers without having to be better than somebody else's?

See "I Live in the Best House in the World".