Where have all the jobs gone? Part 2

Originally published in
Reader Weekly
June 10, 2004

Sorry, I can’t find “Where have all the jobs gone? Part 2” on this computer.  I’m at a coffee shop and will have to look for “Part 1” on an older computer.  It might be in an old email account.

I sympathize with Amy Hoff in her job hunting ("Where have all the jobs gone?" Reader Weekly, May 27, 2004).  I didn’t feel successful in my own search in 1999-2000, but then I didn’t put as much effort in as she has.  I do think we both may have been overly optimistic about opportunities.  A region the size of the Twin Ports will rarely have as many job opportunities as many of us would like.  It is almost impossible in a modern, complex economy.  Few employers want generalists who can learn on the job.  Either the job does require skills that require special training or the employer doesn’t want to pay for on-the-job training.  No employer is going to hire a liberal arts major to be a geologist, and some employers will not hire a person to work with left-handed widgets who has only worked with right-handed widgets.

She blames the job market as a reason “youth are leaving this area”.  I think many young people will leave this area regardless of the job market.

In 2004, about 3,500 students received degrees, diplomas, and certificates from area colleges(1).  There are about 86,000 people over 21 years old in the labor force in the Duluth Superior Metropolitan Statistical Area(2).  That means that area colleges are graduating enough students to replace every worker in 25 years.  If most people work for 40 years and if degreed students would not be interested in many of the available jobs, then many will have to go elsewhere to seek employment.  Besides many students came from elsewhere (why do we have a rental housing crunch) and don’t plan to stay in the area.

Even if there were jobs going begging, many people, raised here or not, would choose to move elsewhere.  There are certain jobs that will never be available here and people will move elsewhere to get them.  How many opera companies or oil exploration companies are there in the Twin Ports area?  Other people will move elsewhere because they want warmer climate or a longer ski season or …  And this is true for any area of the country.

I came from elsewhere to the Twin Cities, went yet elsewhere, came back to the Twin Cities, and then moved to Duluth.  I may or may not move to Brimson.  I have many friends and acquaintances that moved from elsewhere to the Twin Ports – from farm communities and from cities like New York and Chicago.

Other problems Amy Hoff cites are poor hiring practices, low wages, and high cost of living.  The indifference to prospective employees is not unique to Duluth.  Wages are definitely lower in Duluth but the cost of living is relative.  The cost of living is not as low as it has been in Duluth but it might not be as bad as elsewhere.  One 900 sq. ft house in south Minneapolis was recently listed for $200,000.

What can be done to improve the job situation in the Twin Ports area?  The simple answer is import more money.  Sound trite?  Let’s explore this a bit.

An area of 250,000 people or a million people or ten million people cannot be economically self-sufficient given today’s expectations.  Could the Twin Ports support an automobile plant if the only customers were local residents?  Autos have to be imported from elsewhere.  To import Rangers from St. Paul or Saturns             from Tennessee we have to export money. Since we can’t print money here we have to import it from somewhere else.  That means we either have to have goods and services to export or figure out how to import people who will spend their money here.  Once upon a time this was all covered with timber, taconite, and tourists.

The timber isn’t what it once was.  There may be plenty of aspen and spruce but the big pines are long gone.  Why is it that The Pinery on Lake County 2 with its 200+ years-old trees is an attraction?  Taconite is a replacement for the long-gone rich ore that made the Mesabi Range famous, and taconite has many competitors including scrap iron.  Tourists, bless them, are still abundant.  However, tourism doesn’t create high-value opportunities except for entrepreneurs.  The resulting jobs are retail; these are generally low-wage unless there are large commissions to be made.

One of the largest regional industries is health care, but that is almost a wash for importing money.  Most of the patients are regional and what money comes from outside the region is offset by insurance premiums and tax dollars going out.

Education is another large regional industry.  Students come to Duluth from all over the world but are there enough from outside the region to provide a significant “importation” of money?  Research done in the new UMD science building may provide some spin-off into an industry.  This bears considering, but can government officials do anything to influence this?

Manufacturing has been cited as a creator of good-paying jobs.  Cirrus is a good example of an expanding company both in itself and in the suppliers it supports.  But we have to remember that private airplanes are a unique product and most manufacturing is of commodities.  Commodities, be they agriculture or manufacture have many, many competitors.  Trying to attract a manufacturing company is a zero-sum game.  Duluth may attract a company from Wisconsin, but some other community will be working to attract companies from Duluth.  Communities just get into bidding wars subsidizing companies.  And companies enticed from elsewhere can go elsewhere just as quickly, especially if the managers have no stake in Duluth.

One good export industry is culture – literature, art, and music.  This area does have some successful writers, artists, and musicians.  Unfortunately, they are a small drop in the economic bucket and do not create a lot of additional jobs.  But here is a clue for other economic successes.  Why are these writers, artists, and musicians in Duluth?  Could it be that they like to live here?

It gets back to my old argument.  Why worry about attracting this business or subsidizing that business?  Create an infrastructure that supports any business – good transportation, good utilities, and consistent application of rules.  But more importantly, make Duluth a city that people from elsewhere want to move to.  If the range of people so attracted is broad enough, entrepreneurs will be part of that range.  They will figure out what businesses may be a good fit for this area and build them.  With roots established here, they will be likely to keep them here through good times and bad.

(1)    I added these up from graduating class figures in the Duluth News Tribune, May 8, 2004,

(2)    I derived this figure from U.S Census figures.  Go to http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts.xhtml and enter your community..  You’re on your own then.  You may also find some very depressing info about our area.

See also
http://magree.blogspot.com/2010/08/if-you-really-want-to-create-jobs.html
http://magree.blogspot.com/2010/07/have-good-paying-jobs-really-been.html
http://magree.blogspot.com/2010/05/did-jobs-ever-return.html
http://magree.blogspot.com/2010/03/jobs-times-they-are-changin.html
http://magree.blogspot.com/2009/11/dentistry-and-economy.html
http://magree.blogspot.com/2009/09/stop-creating-jobs-and-start-creating.html
http://magree.blogspot.com/2006/10/where-have-all-iron-range-jobs-gone.html

Misuse of "conservative" and "free market”

Letter to New York Times public editor

I wish writers would more carefully use the terms “conservative” and “free market”.

Those labeled with these terms, by self or others, are too often neither.

Are “conservatives” thoughtful and cautious about change, or are they rigid in whatever their views?  For example, “conservative” religious sects are more often throwing the first stone rather than feeding the poor.  Do “conservatives" really follow the Constitution as it currently exists, or are they “activists” interpreting it to suit their own views?  “Persons” are corporations?  “People” in the Second Amendment are now persons.  “Regulate Commerce” is totally ignored.

As to “free market”, it is too often meant to mean corporations should be free to do what they please without government interference.  Adam Smith must be spinning in his grave as those who live by profit (not to be trusted) buy so many politicians with money or a barrage of misleading statements.

A true free market

Has many buyers and sellers
Both buyers and sellers are free to enter or leave the market
Both buyers and sellers have all the information they need to make a decision
All costs are paid for in the transaction, that is, there are no externalities.

Too many “free marketers” want as few sellers as possible, do their best to lock buyers into the market, find out as much as possible about buyers but hide or provide false information to the buyers, and ignore all the externalities like pollution and bad diets.

See “The Invisible Adam Smith”, http://magree.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-invisible-adam-smith.html

Mining and Adam Smith

If you think mining is good for northern Minnesota or anywhere else, read
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/opinion/appalachias-sacrifice.html.

Also consider what Adam Smith wrote about those who live for profit.  And consider that a true free market has no externalities, like pollution that is not in the cost of a transaction.

More on the Electoral College

For a different view than I gave in “Why we have our electoral mess”, see J. Craig Scherf,  "Electoral College maintains one of Constitution’s checks and balances" Duluth News Tribune, 2106-11-15.

Times have changed since the Constitution was written.  Then the voters were male property owners.  Their interests were in protecting their property, whether it was real estate or slaves.  They felt that they could best protect their property by state laws, not federal laws.

But the interests of the states as property protectors has diminished in several ways.

Many of us are not fixed or even interested in our states as defenders of all of our interests.

Those of us who are property owners might change property for a variety of reasons.  We might want a bigger or smaller residence.  We might want to move from a rural area to a city or vice versa.  Or we might move out of state, something that seems to happening more frequently as people change jobs within a company or get a job in a different company.

I have lived in three states and three foreign countries.

I grew up in Cleveland OH and in surrounding areas.  I have not lived in Ohio for 53 years.  When the Cleveland Indians were in the World Series, I could care less!

I have lived in Minnesota for 42 years.  Do I know what the state song is?  What the state flag looks like?  I probably know more U.S. and world history than I do Minnesota history.

Our state lives get even more complicated.  How many people live in one state but work in another?  Duluth-Superior?  New York City with commuters from three states: New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut?  Philadelphia with Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.  I myself commuted from an exurb west of Philadelphia, through Philadelphia, and on to Cherry Hill NJ.  Chicago also has commuters from three states: Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

And don’t forget that there are many reverse commuters who go from the central city to jobs outside the city, especially as more and more companies build facilities outside the central city.

Many of these commuters have no real property, they rent their living spaces.  So, where do their local loyalties lie: where they live or where they work.  They only get input into the laws that affect where they work is through federal law, not state laws.  The only way they have input into the affairs of the state in which they work is through personal contact with acquaintances who are residents of their work state or letters to the editor of the regional newspaper.

The electoral college could give our co-workers more or less clout in an election than we have.  The Delaware resident who works in Philadelphia had a greater weighted Electoral College vote than his or her colleagues who live in Pennsylvania!  It’s almost like saying that short people have more votes than tall people!

"Would we truly want large regional majorities from the two coasts to alone choose our president? The system of checks and balances left to us by the Founders is the surest guarantee of protecting minority rights that we have.” - J. Craig Scherf

But do we want small regional electoral majorities to take away the rights of the majority of the whole nation?

“Market” sends mixed “signals” about Trump’s “win"

The indexes for Friday, 11 November, showed the market going up, varying between 3.78% and 5.36%.

However, my portfolio of mostly mutual funds went down 2.44%.

Could it be that the short view is more optimistic than the long view?  That short term view is optimistic about the economy but that the long term view is pessimistic?

We’ll see next year.

Why we have our electoral mess

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." Attributed to Abraham Lincoln, supposedly in 1858.  See http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:547?rgn=div1;view=fulltext.

The electoral college was one of the Constitutional stratagems slave owners used to protect themselves from the North taking away their slaves.  Another was counting slaves as three-fifths persons. This increased the number of representatives they got far beyond the number of actual voters.  Also basing the Senate on states rather than population, these less-populated states further increased their furtive power grab.

By increasing their relative state power in presidential elections, they hoped they could keep the end of slavery at bay.

They unleashed a long bloody war to protect this despicable practice. Unfortunately, they forgot the Constitutional provision that Congress could call out the militia to suppress insurrections.  (In our own time, Congress seemed to forget this provision in dealing with the Bundys.)

So, the Electoral College differs from democracy and the five victories because of the Electoral College in our country's history have differed from democracy.  Poor Abe must be spinning in his grave, especially when the descendants of the slave owners have taken over his party.  Poor Abe must be spinning in his grave, especially when the descendants of the slave owners have taken over his party.

See also "More on the Electoral College".

"The voters" decided for Clinton. The Electoral College decided for Trump

The above two lines are my comment to “Thoughts for the Horrified”, Paul Krugman, New York Times, 2016-11-11,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/opinion/thoughts-for-the-horrified.html?comments#permid=20443404:20445015.

Consider that an extra 50,000 votes total in just three states would have given Clinton the election.

See "For Reeling Democrats, Now What?", Cathleen Decker, Los Angeles Times, 2016-11-10,
http://www.latimes.com/nation/ct-for-democrats-now-what-20161110-story.html

Were you one of these 50,000 non-voters?  Did you steal the election?  Did you help rig the election?

In the next election, remember that

The only way
You throw your vote away
Is to stay away

Also remember that if don’t vote, you will probably get the candidate you like the least.

However, there is hope for a run-around for the Electoral College.  According to the U.S. Constitution, each state gets to decide how to choose its electors.  In the beginning, it was the state legislatures.

Now there is a run-around to the Electoral College in that states will select their electors based on the national vote.  See “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact.

Trump was right, the election was rigged

But the rigging was not done by his opponents.

Let’s assume there are three states, East Coast, West Coast, and Flyover.  East Coast and West Coast each have a population of a million people.  Flyover has a population of two million.  Each of the three states has two Senators.  East Coast and West Coast each have one Representative in Congress; Flyover has two Representatives.

Therefore, East Coast and West Coast each have three electoral votes and Flyover has four electoral votes.  That is, East Coast and West Coast together have six electoral votes for a combined half of the nation’s population.  Flyover has four electoral votes for the other half of the population.

Now assume we have three candidates, Marsy, Dosy, and Lammsy.  Marsy and Dosy have large followings and Dosy has a couple of thousand.  The eligible voters in each state are 80% of the population, but turnout is only 50%.  That means that eight hundred thousand vote in East Coast and West Coast combined and eight hundred thousand vote in Flyover.

In East Coast and West Coast, Marsy got 49 percent of the vote, Dosy got 48, and Lammsy got three percent.  In Flyover Marsy got 40 percent, Dosy got 52 percent, and Lammsy got eight percent.  In numbers of votes, in the East Coast and West Coast, Marsy got 392,000 votes, Dosy got 384,000, and Lammsy got 24,000.  In Flyover, Marsy got 320 thousand, Dosy got 416 thousand, and Lammsy got 64 thousand.

Clearly, Dosy is the winner with 800 thousand votes against Marsy’s 712 thousand and Lammsy’s 90 thousand.  Wrong!  Marsy is the winner with six electoral votes as opposed to Dosy’s four electoral votes.

This “rigging” wasn’t done by anybody involved in this hypothetical election.  It was done in the Eighteenth Century with the approval of the Constitution.

Ironically, this “rigging” benefited the candidate who complained throughout his campaign that the election was “rigged”.

See also “The election was stolen, really!”

The election was stolen, really!

Who stole it?

All those eligible voters who didn't show up.  They are the one's who had no confidence in Donald Trump as president, but they couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton.  Many of these believed Trump's accusations against Clinton even though they disbelieved everything else Trump said.

Consider that an extra 50,000 votes total in just three states would have given Clinton the election.

See "For Reeling Democrats, Now What?", Cathleen Decker, Los Angeles Times, 2016-11-10,

http://www.latimes.com/nation/ct-for-democrats-now-what-20161110-story.html

Were you one of these 50,000 non-voters?  Did you steal the election?  Did you help rig the election?

The only way you throw your vote away is to stay away.

Be sure to vote in 2018 to bring about a better balance in Congress.

Election prediction and telephones

In 1948, the headlines were “Dewey Wins”.  However, the result was that Truman won.
See “Dewey Defeats Truman”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman.

See”A ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’ Lesson for the Digital Age”, Jim Gutenberg, New York Times, 2016-11-09, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/business/media/media-trump-clinton.html;
“Case Study 2: The 1948 Presidential Election”, https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case2.html

However, what really counted was how polls were taken, often by telephone.  In 1948, many who leaned towards Truman did not have telephones and weren’t called.  See “Dewy Defeats Truman, Joe Walter, “The True Facts, 2019-05-31, http://www.thetruefacts.com/dewey-defeats-truman/

So, were the predictions off because too many people don’t answer their cell phones if they don’t recognize the number?  I know that I do.

Another thought, maybe many of Trump’s supporters who did answer their phones didn’t admit that they were Trump supporters.

Day-o! Day-o! Daylight comes and me want to go vote!

See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/opinion/campaign-stops/harry-belafonte-what-do-we-have-to-lose-everything.html.

I’m sorry I didn’t post this earlier, but Harry Belafonte was spot on that if we don’t vote, we lose.

2016 turnout seems to be super…

… now if we can only continue that each and every election day.

My wife is a precinct judge, and based on her text reports on turnout, that precinct may have over 90% turnout.  I think her figures are for those who voted today.  Considering the number of early voters in Duluth and elsewhere, many areas of the country may have over 90% turnout.

Now if we could only get all eligible voters to turn out for each and every election, not just presidential elections.

If you are eligible to vote in the U.S. I hope you show up or showed up to vote today.  If you are reading this before the polls close and have not voted, I hope you make a point of voting before they close.

Gun rights vs. property rights, a conundrum for "conservatives"

'Tis hunting season in Minnesota.  Right now it is deer season and we can hear gunshots now and then.  I hope they were all on federal land to the south of us.

Technically, we are supposed to post "No Hunting" signs all around our property, but it is a real pain to post signs around 80 acres (half-mile along the road and a quarter-mile deep).  Besides, there always seem to be some jerks that will go right by a "No hunting/no trespassing sign.

Given that in St. Louis County, one can access the Online Land Explorer to find out ownership of every parcel of land, and so there is no excuse for trespassing.  In some other counties one can buy land maps.  Given all the other costs of hunting, I would think the maps are small change.

Now the conundrum, if a gun owner in a residential area is entitled to shoot and kill a "trespasser", should not a rural resident be entitled to shoot a trespassing hunter?

Case in point, several years ago a bird hunter shot down our driveway with a red pickup clearly visible in the driveway.  Would I have been entitled to shoot and kill that hunter in self-defense?

This particular hunter had a "right" to have a shot gun, but I have a right to my property without worrying about an irresponsible gun owner.

I have many friends who are responsible hunters, but shouldn't there be some restrictions on irresponsible people even owning guns.

Hunting with the wrong license

My wife left our cabin early today to visit a friend.  Before she had gone ten miles a buck jumped out in front of her in a well-shaded place.  Her car hit it in the hindquarters.  Once she came to a stop she looked for the deer for some time but never found it.

Did it survive?  If not, will a hunter find it before the wolves or carrion eaters such as crows and eagles?

The damage to her car seems minimal, only a cracked headlight, one we just had replaced.

I told her to call our insurance company as soon as possible.  Also when the adjuster comes to make sure he checks for frame damage.  When I hit a bear in 2014, the adjuster only looked at body damage.  A few years later a mechanic found significant mechanical damage.

Quotes of the Day, misdirected politics

 “It’s just more about getting the other people than worrying about the American people.” Christine Etima, quoted in "Immersed in the election, but unable to vote", Duluth News Tribune, 2016-11-05

"But not making a choice — sitting out the election — is to turn our fate over to others."  Ann McFeatters, Duluth News Tribune, 2016-11-06

Rain or shine: VOTE! If you don't, you could give the election away!!

Rain or cool weather means lower Democratic turnout.  Does this mean those without cars don’t show if the weather is not good.

"These findings significantly illuminate the theory in regards to voter turnout. In
particular, these results show that the primary exogenous mechanism through which
turnout affects elections is the composition effect. In other words, when turnout is
increased, newly mobilized voters are disproportionately Democratic.  Furthermore, these results illuminate a question that has been claimed to be unanswerable: If one could increase voter turnout, would it help Democrats? We find that the answer to this question is, resoundingly, yes.”

"The Joke Isn’t on the Democrats?  The Partisan Effects of Voter Turnout"
Alexander Kendall, Political Science, Stanford University
http://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci353/2004spring/reading/kendall_final.pdf

Revolution if Clinton Wins?

“Some Donald Trump Voters Warn of Revolution if Hillary Clinton Wins”
Ashley Parker and Nick Carasaniti, New York Times, 2016-10-27
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/us/politics/donald-trump-voters.html

Those threatening "revolution" if Donald Trump loses the Presidential Election don't really know the U.S. Constitution.

As to the elections being "rigged" consider

"Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections...of its own Members..."

- U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 5

This means that the outgoing House and Senate get to judge the elections to keep themselves in office or to judge the fairness of the election of their replacements.  If the Clinton "landslide" many are predicting comes true, wouldn't many members of Congress be out of office?  Do you really think there are so many Republican members of Congress who believe the elections are "rigged" that they would nullify the election of their successors?  Given the number of congressional Republicans disavowing Trump, I seriously doubt they would nullify the election of their replacements.

As to having a "revolution" consider

"The Congress shall have the power "To provide for calling forth the Militia to ...  suppress Insurrections..."

U.S Constitution, Article I, Section 8

Whatever the result of the election, would not most members of Congress, Republican or Democrat, be repulsed by an insurrection in support of a defeated Presidential candidate?

Election rigged in Trump's favor?

If Timothy Egan's sister's preacher said that Trump's election is part of God's plan, then I would say the election is rigged in Trump's favor.

Posted to Timothy Egan's "Final Plea to Trump's America
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/opinion/campaign-stops/a-final-plea-to-trumps-america.html

Sleaze Attack on Chobani

The usual suspects are attacking somebody who makes a good-hearted effort to help others.

See “For Helping Immigrants, Chobani’s Founder Draws Threats”, David Gelles, New York Times, 2016-10-31,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/business/for-helping-immigrants-chobanis-founder-draws-threats.html?comments#permid=20314776:20316147

My comment to a reader’s comment about buying more Chobani yogurt follows:

Me too! I stopped eating Chobani yogurt, the best yogurt I've ever had, in a diet experiment. The experiment failed, and I've had a few servings of Chobani since. Maybe I'll eat put Chobani on my oatmeal and granola instead of almond milk. Let's meet hate with love, love of a good product and of a corporation with a heart.

When NYT notified me that my comment was approved, I found that many others had the same sentiment.  I didn’t read more than a few dozen comments, but I found no sleaze attacks, only support.

How many seconds in a minute and other corporate misdeeds

According to Apple, there are five seconds in a minute!

I just did a software update on my MacBook Air, and near the end, the screen said there were five seconds left.  i watched and watched, but the number didn’t change.  I did Mississippi-one, Mississippi-two and so on.  I stopped at about Mississippi-thirty.  A bit later, the counter disappeared.  And a bit later, the system rebooted.

Yahoo! Finance redid their web page several weeks ago and took away drag and drop.  I have a list of symbols in a TextEdit file that I would drag and drop in the symbol look-up list.  I have been using this successfully and satisfactorily for years.  Then poof!  It didn’t work!  I now had to copy and paste.  Gosh!  Drag and drop has been an Macintosh feature for over twenty years.  Now Yahoo! decides its users don’t need drag and drop.

This week Yahoo! Finance flummoxed its users again by providing some very circuitous means of providing a list of quotes.  Instead of a spreadsheet-like page, they have buried a text list on the side of the page.  By some magical clicking, one can get the spreadsheet listing, but I haven’t memorized it yet.

Many users left comments complaining about this, but I doubt if there will be any change.  Some threatened to go to Google Finance.  I tried Google Finance and didn’t find it any easier to use.

My suspicion is that corporations put together focus groups and browbeat them into accepting what management wants to do.  Then management browbeats long-time customers into accepting the changes by saying the changes were what focus groups wanted.

Of course, there are many fine corporations that bend over backward for customer satisfaction.  Toyota has had some bad recalls, but many of their dealers bend over backward to provide customer satisfaction.  My examples are Kari Toyota of Superior WI and Maplewood Toyota of Maplewood MN.

For the likes of the corporations that screw up the customer experience, I can only say that the U.S. Postal Service has historically provided far superior service, when Congress lets it.  And believe it or not, the IRS too.  I have had the IRS send me corrections on my returns, both for underpayment and overpayment.

Quote of the day: Republicans with double standards

"One of them is Wendy Lynn Day, who was pushed out of a leadership role at the Michigan Republican Party last week after refusing to endorse Mr. Trump. She criticized her party’s male leaders, saying that in past years, they had proclaimed that morality and character mattered in a president, but that they were ignoring that principle when it came to Mr. Trump."

"Abandoning Donald Trump and, for Some Women, the G.O.P., Too", New York Times, Trip Gabriel, 2016-10-27,  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/us/politics/donald-trump-republican-party-women.html

A rebuttal of the Star Tribune misuse of the term “free market”

I submitted the following commentary to the Star Tribune a day or two after D.J. Tice’s column which I considered another misuse of the term “free market”.  I have not seen it published yet.  Could it be that “free marketers” don’t like reminders of true free markets?

D.J. Tice’s column “ A foolish system and your money …” leads me to believe he is one of those who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  I wonder if he has considered the number of times in a day that he has benefitted from public goods.

Did he drive on a freeway to work?  Did he pay the full cost of his share of the road, the full cost of the pollution from his car, and the cost of the loss of tax revenues from the houses that once were above the trenches that divide up our cities?

Did he take a bus to work?  His fare would have only paid part of the cost.  But the bus is a public good in that it reduces the number of cars on the road.  If he had to pay the full cost of his bus ride, he probably wouldn’t take the bus.

Did he walk to work?  Did he pay a toll for the sidewalk he used?  Did he put a coin in the traffic lights so that he could cross the street?

Let’s hope that his house never catches fire.  He would not be happy paying the full cost of the fire department response.  If his neighbor had the misfortune of a fire, would he help pay the cost of the fire department whose response kept the fire from spreading to his house?

I am a graduate of the Cleveland Public School System.  I doubt that my mother could have afforded the full cost of the schooling that qualified me to attend college.  Many other people, some childless, helped pay the cost of my education.

I could not have afforded the tuition at Case Institute of Technology.  A foundation paid full tuition the first year.  I flunked out of Case but the foundation kept paying a fraction of my tuition at Ohio Wesleyan University.  At both schools, many donors provided money to keep the tuition down somewhat.  Three-percent federal loans also helped.  I managed to get back to Case for graduate school with a graduate assistant position.  I doubt any of the work we did paid in full for our jobs and tuition.

Companies are demanding more and more highly specialized “skills”, but they are not willing to train people.  They expect the public schools and the colleges and universities to train these employees.  But they don’t want to pay the taxes for the public schools and colleges, institutions that would help those who can’t afford the elite institutions.  The smaller the pool of potential employees, the harder it is to find “qualified” employees.

Could he pay out of pocket for each and every medical visit he needed: office or hospital?  For those of us with well-paying jobs, health insurance pays for a chunk of the care, if not all.  But what about people who have jobs with no health insurance?  Has he considered that their lack of health insurance benefits him with lower prices? (Or the owners with much higher profits.)

What if there were a deadly epidemic that had no respect for wealth?  How might such an epidemic start?  Maybe those who first became ill could not afford the health care, health care that would have reduced their chances of spreading their disease.

Modern economies run a large array of public goods: roads, schools, police, fire, and regulatory inspections.  As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes supposedly said, “I like taxes; they buy me civilization.”

Politics: Donald Trump, Listen to the Grandmothers

I read a New York Times article about Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren blasting Trump for calling Clinton “a nasty women”.  It was titled “Senator Elizabeth Warren Tells Trump: ‘Nasty Women Vote’" by Matt Flegenheimer.  The lead line was “In Introducing Hillary Clinton, the senator said, ‘We nasty women are going to march our nasty feet to cast our nasty votes’ against Donald Trump.”

After I sent the link to my wife, grandmother of my grandchildren, I realized that both Clinton and Warren are both grandmothers.  If a grandmother chides you, you should always listen.

When I went back to write this it had morphed into a different article, but it still had Warren blasting Trump for his comment.  See “Liberals Hope Elizabeth Warren Will Serve as Clinton’s Scrutinizer-in-Chief”, New York Times, 2016-10-24, Amy Chozick and Matt Flegenheimer, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/25/us/politics/hillary-clinton-elizabeth-warren.html.

The video that accompanies this article does have Warren’s remarks in full.  Her fervor is far greater than what comes across in print.

Quote of the day: Hillary Clinton beating men

"Clinton is a woman beating men at their own game. Deal with it."
Charles M. Blow, "Clinton's Specter of Illegitimacy", New York Times, 2016-10-24, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/24/opinion/clintons-specter-of-illegitimacy.html.

War: When Will We Ever Learn

This entry was inspired by the work of The White Helmets written by Raed Saleh.  It is a heart-breaking story of carnage caused by those who only seek their own power, not that of the people.  See
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/21/opinion/we-have-tried-every-kind-of-death-possible.html

Where have all the flowers gone?  Gone by scorched earth warfare.

Where have all the young girls gone?  Bombed under rubble like the girl pictured in the article.

Where have all the young men gone?  Shot or bombed by somebody who doesn't like the side to which these young men have gone, often enticed by glory rather than defense of their homes.  Often killed by someone in the sky enticed by those who don't like the people that enticed the young men to war.  Someone who probably goes to a safe barracks with a good warm dinner.

Where have all the graves gone?  Buried under more rubble, certainly not to flowers.

When will we ever learn?

Not very soon:(

Trump and the rule of personality, not of law

"Donald Trump is the personification of the distortion of a constitution by men who hate the constitution with such passion that they are willing to swear complete fealty as they destroy everything it stands for.” - Montreal Moe in response to Ross Douthat’s “The Trump Afterlife”, New York Times, 2016-10-19.

Douthat, being a true conservative, doesn’t care much for Trump’s anti-constitutional remarks.

To Montreal Moe’s comment I added:

Hear! Hear! I find it ironic that so-called conservatives rant about activist judges. So-called conservative Supreme Court Judges have defined corporations as persons and defined "people" in the Second Amendment to be "persons". Changes like these are certainly not "conservative”.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/opinion/campaign-stops/the-trump-afterlife.html?comments#permid=20183212:20184925.

Louis the XIV famously proclaimed “L’état, c’est moi!”.  "The state, it is me!"  Is Trump planning on being Donald the I?  Hm, in Trump’s case does “I” mean “me” or the first or both?  Trump’s remarks certainly sound monarchical (rule by one) rather than democratic (rule by many).

When leaping to conclusions…

…you can fall flat on your face.

Many of the stories say that Democrats raised about $13,000 for the Hillsborough NC Republican office that was firebombed. They also say that Republicans raised about $4,000.

But, how many Republicans donated to the first appeal and so didn't donate to the second appeal?

We just can't leap to the conclusion that the Democrats are more generous than Republicans when it comes to small donations.  Or that more Democrats reach out to Republicans than Republicans reach out to Democrats.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/us/acrid-air-and-dismay-linger-in-firebombed-gop-office-in-north-carolina.html

A flimsy attack on clean air

I submitted the following comment to the New York Times, article "A flimsy attack on clean air" but as far as I know it was not published.

"The Congress shall have the Power to...regulate Commerce...among the several States... U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8.

Maybe the polluters have a case if ALL of their pollution stays within their own state. However to do so, they'll probably have to dam rivers and stop the winds. But since these flow into other states...

Trump and mathematics

"When you add it up, here's the math that counts. Trumpworld is a Mobius strip, with no exit ramp to reality.”

Nancy Lederman, posted as a comment to
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/upshot/how-one-19-year-old-illinois-man-is-distorting-national-polling-averages.html?comments

Robert Reich predicted the likes of Donald Trump

"[People] think if the big guys cheat in big ways, they might as well begin cheating in small ways. And when they think the game is rigged, they're easy prey for political demagogues with fast tongues and dumb ideas.
- Robert Reich,  Beyond Outrage, 2012

 In Beyond Outrage Reich also pointed out that "Conservatives" don't conserve much.  He wrote they are regressives who want to return to a time when very few were very, very well-off and most had to struggle to make a living, often in dangerous, unhealthy conditions.

He didn't spell it out in detail but "conservatives" sure don't want to conserve resources, clean air, or even a well-functioning government.  "Conservatives" are certainly "liberal" in interpreting the Constitution to their ends, "liberal" at "throwing money" at the military, and "liberal" in awarding generous compensation to those at the top of large corporations, even those who really screw up the company.

Quote of the Day: TV viewers vs. newspaper readers

"Yes, I know, people should be paying more attention [to candidates climate change plans or lack thereof]— but this nonetheless tells us how easy it is for voters who rely on TV news or don’t read stories deep inside the paper to miss what should be a central issue in this campaign."

- Paul Krugman, "What About the Planet", New York Times, 2016-10-07, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/opinion/what-about-the-planet.html

Why you should vote

“But when all is said and done, Jefferson has beliefs, Burr has none.”
- Lyric from "Hamilton" on Hamilton not liking either candidate but choosing Jefferson.

Quoted by Paul Anderson, retired Minnesota Supreme Court Judge and life-long Republican in "This Lifelong Republican is voting for Clinton".

See http://e.startribune.com/Olive/ODN/StarTribune/Default.aspx.

If you don’t vote, you have only yourself to blame

Originally published in
Reader Weekly
October 28, 2004

The U.S. is still considered a democracy.  The word comes from the Greek demos for people and kratein for rule.  It means the people rule.  If you don’t vote, how can you rule?

Democracy has been interpreted as majority rule.  But no president has ever been elected by a majority of the adult population.  Before the 1860’s few blacks could vote.  Before 1920 few women could vote (Wyoming territory being the exception in 1869).  Since 1932 the voter turnouts have never been greater than sixty-three percent (1).

That high was in 1960 when John F. Kennedy won with 34,227,096 votes to Richard M. Nixon’s 34,108,546, a difference of 118,550.  However, over 40 million people did not vote!  More people stayed away than voted for either candidate. (2)

Ronald Reagan supposedly had a landslide victory in 1980 over Jimmy Carter.  The voter turnout was less than 53 percent.  If you consider that less than 28 percent of the eligible voters voted for Ronald Reagan, he did not have a mandate.  Almost twice as many people stayed away as voted for Jimmy Carter.

Bill Clinton had five million votes more than Bob Dole in 1992 but the turnout was 55 percent.  Fewer voters might have shown up if Ross Perot hadn’t run and won almost 20 million votes, more than half of those that went to Bob Dole.  Even then 84 million people stayed away, giving Bill Clinton a plurality of 27 percent, a lower plurality than Ronald Reagan who also had a three-way race.

Even if you don’t like any of the presidential candidates, vote.  You don’t have to mark a vote for every office.  A lot of people skip voting for judges or conservation district commissioners, why not skip voting for president?  Leaving a blank presidential ballot shows you care enough to show up, and you get counted in the vote totals.

Many people blame Ralph Nader for Bush winning in Florida in 2000.  Nader got 97,588 votes and the difference between Bush’s and Gore’s totals was 537 votes (3).  However, over three million of Florida’s eligible voters did not even show up at the polls (4).  That is, more people stayed away than voted for either Bush or Gore.

In no midterm election since 1974 have more than forty percent of the adult population voted (2).  Midterm congresses aren’t the best money can buy; they are the result of extreme voter apathy.

You can vote strategically, you can vote tactically, but vote.  You can vote because of an overall result you want; say you want one party to dominate in Congress.  Therefore you wouldn’t vote for a third party candidate you respect.  Or, you can vote because you want a specific person in Congress.  Therefore you would vote for a third party candidate or a “major” party candidate in a party different than the party you want to dominate in Congress.  Either way, vote

You think Bush should be punished for the mess he made and that Kerry shouldn’t get the blame when he tries to fix it.  So vote for Bush, but vote.

You think that Bush has done a marvelous job, then especially in Minnesota you should vote.

You think Bush should not be rewarded for the mess he made and that Kerry can clean it up.  So vote for Kerry, but vote.

You think Hilary Rodham Clinton should be president in 2008.  If so, Kerry should not be president.  But don’t stay away, vote.

You think Hilary Rodham Clinton should not be president in 2008.  So vote for Kerry, but vote.

Do you think the make up of the Supreme Court is important?

Do you consider yourself patriotic?

Do you think the country is on the right track?

Do you think the country is on the wrong track?

For any of these reasons, vote.

You can’t get time off from work to vote?  Wrong, by law (in Minnesota) your employer must allow you paid time off to vote.  It’s your future, vote.

You can’t get a ride to the polls to vote?  Call for a ride.  (Sorry, I have no current phone numbers for these, but you can probably find some party info on facebook.  Look for your party of choice at the municipal or Congressional district level.)

OK Northlanders!  Let’s show we care about our country.  Let’s have over 90% turnout of the voting age population on November 2, 2004 (as of this re-posting, November 8, 2016).

VOTE!

(1) World Almanac 1998
(2) "National Voter Turnout in Federal Elections: 1960-1996", Federal Election Commission (http://www.fec.gov/pages/htmlto5.htm)
(3) “Nader Has Impact on Presidency”, Associated Press, posted at http://quest.cjonline.com/stories/123100/nad_nader.shtml (The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.)
(4) “Who took votes from whom?” http://magree.blogspot.com/2010/12/who-took-votes-from-whom.html

©2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2016 Melvyn D. Magree

Quote of the day: “free market” and government

Comment to Paul Krugman's "Progressive Family Values"

Brice C. Showell, Philadephia

To ask why we need government to manage a "free market" is like asking why we need referees, rules and managers in sport.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/26/opinion/progressive-family-values.html?_r=0#permid=19920631

Paul Krugman's use of "free marketer"

I'm surprised the economist Paul Krugman is using "free market" as loosely as the so-called "free marketers" do.  "Free market" too often means fewer and fewer sellers doing whatever they please.  A true free market has many buyers and sellers, both buyers and sellers are free to enter and leave the market, both buyers and sellers have all the information they need to make a decision, and all costs are paid for in the transaction.

How many independent pharmacies are there is our cities? You can probably count on one hand the corporate pharmacies.

How many situations like Epipen where the buyers are not really free to leave the market?

As to full information how much do the sellers know about you while fighting with dozens of lobbyists to hide information about their products. GMOs?

Externalities? These "free marketers" don't want the government to regulate worker safety and don't want government to regulate the pollutants from their smokestacks, farms, and mines going downwind or downstream.

Posted at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/26/opinion/progressive-family-values.html?comments#permid=19921473

What corporate efficiency?

“Free marketers” laud the efficiency of corporations over the inefficiency of government.  I think there is no difference between the forms.  What it depends on is management.  A good mayor or governor can get some great things done.  A lousy CEO or low-level corporate manager can make a real mess of things, such a mess as to cause death or injury.

What follows are my notes in trying to navigate vanguard.com to find a report that I was told today was available.

Vanguard site navigation

You sent me email that I had a report for Vanguard High-Yield Corporate Fund Admiral Shares Report, but you provide no direct link to it.  I finally reread the message and find that there is a link to Fund Reports.

I clicked on that but did not find Vanguard High-Yield Corporate Fund Admiral Shares listed!

Oh, there is a little drop-down box in the upper right corner that toggles between regular and admiral shares.

I toggle to admiral and then I get "Please wait".  I waited!  I went downstairs to get a snack!  I came back!  The "Please wait" box was still present.  I did something or another and got a page that asked me to log in.  But I already had a page up that had me logged in!  I am using that page, without logging in again, to send this message.

Off to try to get back to where I was ten or fifteen minutes ago.

Comment in satisfaction form

Recd msg today, 2016-09-20 of fund report for High Yield Corp Admiral.  No link given in msg.  Finally found my way to page with list of reports.  Latest report is 2016-07-xx!?!?

Also added in another part of satisfaction request: hire some good human interface people.

Follow up after signing off ins satisfaction.

Downloaded report, but Vanguard was unhappy with my Adobe Reader XI.  Report would not open, damaged.  Version is 11.0.17, undated.  Finder gives date modified as 2016Aug 5.  Checking for updates gives “Already up to date”.

End of notes.

Offers just for you?

Because I have signed on with  the AARP Advantage program, I am bombarded with email with titles like the above (without the question mark).

But if these offers are just for me, why do they contain offers from companies that I already use?  In this case Consumer Cellular, a cell phone service we use.

Islam prohibits music?

My wife has been visiting her sister outside Bradford, Ontario this past week.  They often gathered around the TV to watch the news.  But at home we don’t even have a TV, we get most of our news by reading three or more newspapers online.

I kidded her that every minute she watches TV news her IQ goes down one point.  It would take her three minutes of reading a newspaper to gain it back.  We went back and forth with text messages about what she found interesting and I countered with stories she probably wouldn’t see on TV.

To prove my point, I visited the Toronto Globe and Mail website to get a sample of news she probably wouldn’t see on TV.  One story that jumped out at me was “Mandatory music classes hit a bad note with some Muslim parents” by Colin Freeze and Mahnoor Yawar.  Strange, I didn’t know that Islam forbade music to its followers.  After all there is “Ey Iran”, a patriotic Iranian song.  And don’t most Islamic countries have military bands?

See http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/mandatory-music-classes-strike-sour-note-with-muslim-parents/article31716832/.

I emailed a Muslim friend about this article.  His response included that “music is not forbidden in Islam if the additional message (oral or video) in the music is not against any other principle of Islam.”

I looked up military bands and found that even the Saudis have one.  The Saudis promote a very rigid form of Islam called Wahhabism.  You would think if anybody would prohibit music, it would be the Saudis.  The Saudi military band played the “Star Spangled Banner” for President Obama as well as playing the Saudi national anthem.  I found a picture of Iranian military trombonists marching past then President Ahmadinejab.  If Islam prohibited music, you would think the Ayatollahs would prohibit a military band.

I searched Talal Itary’s translation of the Qu’ran and found no mention of music.

Ah ha! it must be in the Hadith: a collection of commentaries that followed the writing of the Qu’ran.  A Google search for “hadith" and “music” turned up some very strong admonitions about any music.  For example, http://www.islamiq.sg/2011/04/hadith-evidence-music-haram.html.  This article gives a very strong prohibition against music of any kind.

Other articles give a more generous interpretation of hadith: https://controversialislam.wordpress.com/music-banned-in-islam/.  Supposedly other hadith have Muhammad suggesting sending a singer to a wedding: “The Ansar are a people who love poetry. You should have sent along someone who would sing, ‘here we come, to you we come, greet us as we greet you.’”

To think that all hadith apply to all Muslims is like thinking that all the Pope’s encyclicals or all the doctrines of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod apply to all Christians.

What should apply to all believers, Muslim or otherwise, is the equivalent of “...and you should forgive and overlook: Do you not like God to forgive you? And Allah is The Merciful Forgiving.” _ Qur’an (Surah 24, “The Light”, v. 22)

Business prefers transit over parking?

Businesses in Toronto want to see parking money diverted to transit!

Think about it.  Would go downtown more frequently in any city if you could take a bus every twenty minutes rather than look for a parking place.  On the other hand, if the bus was every half-hour or even every hour, wouldn't it be easier to drive to "the mall".

See
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/put-parking-lot-money-toward-transit-torontos-business-lobby-says/article31890340

Jumping to conclusions can…

Lead one to fall flat on one’s face.

See http://finance.yahoo.com/news/trumps-fed-bashing-is-ridiculous-181419495.html

The problem is the usual one of ascribing more power to a person or an organization than if available i reality or law.

The generalization that frosts me the most is calling the President of the United States the “Leader of the free world”.  One, who elected him or her to such a position.  Certainly not people in England, France, Germany,…

The world is a complex place.  The President of the United States cannot even get his or her allies to agree to each and every U.S. position. if POTUS cannot get allies to jump through hoops, how can anybody assume that POTUS can get adversaries to agree even to a small portion of a U.S. position?

I keep thinking the best course for all the governments that want peace and prosperity for all should be working through the U.N. a lot more.

Politics as game show

Maybe our problem is that the "debates" are not real debates like Lincoln-Douglas but game shows. And Trump understands this, but serious politicians don't.

My comment to Frank Bruni's "Trump's Ideology of Applause".

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/opinion/sunday/donald-trumps-ideology-of-applause.html?comments&_r=0#permid=19756890

I GO POGO!

Do you oldsters remember when Walt Kelly countered “I Like Ike” (Dwight D. Eisenhower’s slogan) with “I Go Pogo”.

Migosh, Eisenhower was a decent guy and the last decent Republican President.

I figure my only possible vote is for Hilary Clinton, even though I dislike dynasty politics and I figure there are many better possible candidates.

However, what if those of you who feel differently were to write in Pogo?  Would a couple hundred thousand votes for Pogo send a strong message to the politicians?  Remember that Pogo also said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Political sign thieves

My wife had put a lawn sign for Jennifer Schultz, our state representative.

I put out the lawn sign I mentioned in "Elections are not won!"
http://magree.blogspot.com/2016/06/elections-are-not-won.html

I modified it to be

THE ONLY WAY

YOU THROW YOUR VOTE AWAY

IS TO STAY AWAY!

And at my wife’s insistence, I added

ALWAYS VOTE!

Without that she thought I was encouraging people to not vote.

I ordered three in the expectation that either one would be stolen or somebody would ask for one.

Sure enough, about a week later my sign was gone.

And the next night the Schultz sign was stolen.

The Schultz campaign delivered another sign but they put it close to the house.

I haven’t put up a second sign yet, but I might do that next week.

If that one is stolen, then I’ll put the third up on election day.

The question is the sign thief doing it because he or she wants the sign or is the thief playing petty politics.

In praise of email

In today’s world, the most efficient means of one-on-one communication is email.  Texting follows if both parties have smart phones.

Email and texting allow senders to create the message at their convenience and the recipient to respond at their convenience.

Given Congresses disabling the Post Office, a letter can take two days in some locales to arrive its destination.  Congress’s putting such onerous pension requirements on the Post Office, requirements that many corporations don’t even come close to, has caused sorting facilities to be closed, such as in Duluth MN.  Now mail from Duluth to Duluth has to be trucked 300 miles round trip.

A phone call either is not returned or the caller is on hold for a long time, sometimes an expected wait time is periodically given, sometimes not.  Sometimes pleasant music is played, and sometime it is interested frequently by “Your call is important to us.”

Lots of companies only accept calls or offer chat rooms.  Both can involve indeterminate wait times.  The advantage of a chat room is that you often have a transcript of the chat.  With a call, most of us are scribbling just bits and pieces.

Email gets around these because you don’t have to wait by the phone for a response. The only problem is that some people are as bad about answering email as they are about returning calls.

This was triggered by our leasing a new car.  I tried to call the insurance agency, Otis-Magie, about the change.  Once upon a time the receptionist took the information and we were done with it.  This time my call was forwarded to an agent.  I got his voice mail.

That was over an hour ago.  I emailed the VINs of both cars to him.  Then I emailed my phone number just in case I had garbled it up with my voice message.

I have to go mow the lawn.  How can I hear my cell phone over the lawnmower?

Wouldn’t this all be easier and more convenient for all concerned if I could have done it all with email?

P.S. He did call back after an hour and a half.  He had to handle one call after another.  As I tell many people, you can only handle one customer at a time.  He did appreciate my mailing the VINs to him.

I have little control over ads on this site

After I posted “‘Left’ can also make distortions” and logged off I saw the entry as readers would see it.  What did I see but Donald Trump, not only once, but twice.  On the side bar was a call for an “urgent" poll of Illinois voters.

Trump must have money to burn if he has an ad on such an obscure site as this.  One with more viewers outside the U.S. than inside.

I suppose I could look up where I can turn off ads by type, but it hardly seems worth the effort.

“Left” can also make distortions

The Huffington Post had an article entitled “Bill Nye Rips CNN For Having 'Climate Change Denier Meteorologist’”.

The headline readers are going to repeat that.  However, some of the meteorologist’s tweets are quoted near the end of the article:

“Moved to climate change in 2009,” he wrote in one tweet.

“A scientist can be swayed by data and I was,” he added in another.

What Main Stream Media bias really means

So many comments that I see on New York Time articles are complaints of media bias against Donald Trump.

Let's see, if Donald Trump makes a foolish comment and the media reports it at is, then the media is biased.

On the other hand, if the media chooses not to report the foolish comment, then the media is biased.

Gosh, there is no pleasing some people.

Hey folks, the major job of the mainstream media is to report that the emperor has no clothes! 

Conservatives conserve what?

This entry was triggered by Ross Douthat’s “Trumponomics Is Reform Conservatism’s Evil Twin”, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/opinion/campaign-stops/trumponomics-is-reform-conservatisms-evil-twin.html, New York Times, 2016-08-10.

Once again, a commentator uses “free market” without clearly defining what it means.  And of course, they really never define what is being conserved.

“Free markets’ generally mean that corporations are free to do what they please, no government regulation, no interference from shareholders, and no unions.

The Constitution states that Congress has the power to regulate commerce among the  states.  Isn’t contamination of rivers that flow into other states “commerce among the states”.  Isn’t the smokestack pollution that goes into neighboring states “commerce among the states”.

But those conservatives who are so quick on the “patriotism” of
"limited government” quickly ignore the conservatism of carefully reading the Constitution.  The Constitution has lots of checks and balances to have a fair government for all, but these “conservatives” only note those that fit their agenda.  For example, they want legislators to attend “prayer breakfasts”.  But isn’t the political pressure to attend a “prayer breakfast” a religious test for office, a test prohibited by the Constitution?

Thoughts on police violence

See https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/07/11/is-philando-castile-the-ultimate-casualty-of-driving-while-black.

See “Minnesota Police Officer’s ‘Bulletproof Warrior’ Training Is Questioned”. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/15/us/minnesota-police-officers-bulletproof-warrior-training-is-questioned.

I do know personally that expectations of what someone might say can lead to a gross misunderstanding of what a person actually said.

Between my junior and senior years in college, I took a job at Ohio Oil in Findlay, Ohio.  My intention was to learn more about computers.

Unfortunately, I had a difficult time finding a room for the whole summer.  I stayed in two or three private houses before I found an apartment above the bank that owned the whole building.  About a week or so after occupying the apartment the bank asked me if I would swap my apartment for a smaller one occupied by a couple.

I left word at the bank president’s office that I had moved enough for the summer and would stay put until school started.

A day or two later, the bank president knocked on my door.  He was somewhat of a curmudgeon and I expected a bit of chewing out.  The first words I heard from him were “How’s the bastard doing?”  This from a pillar of his church!  I said, “Excuse me?” and I heard him say again, “How’s the bastard doing?”  I said “Excuse me?" again.  This time I clearly heard him say, “How’s the bachelor doing?”

Now we had a friendly discussion about my staying put and he accepted my wish.

How often do people in tense situations completely misunderstand what another person is saying?

I speculate that Philandro Castile simply said in a normal voice, “I have a gun.”  He was stating a fact to avoid conflict.  Officer Jeronimo Yanez, pumped up from his “Bulletproof Warrior” class, heard, “I HAVE A GUN!”

I do hope many police departments are seriously thinking about paying for their officers’ training at for-profit classes that have no accountability to either the government or the general public.

Every killing diminishes all of us, whether it is terrorists who think a whole class of people should be killed, whether it is a government that drops bombs the kill innocents, whether it is madmen that shoot indiscriminately into crowded venues, or whether it is a hyped-up police officer with an itchy finger..

See also “Quote on violence” http://magree.blogspot.com/2016/07/quote-on-violence.html.

Trump to stop immigration from Italy?

Donald Trump wants to stop immigration of “terrorists" from Muslim countries and stop immigration of “rapists" from Mexico.  Why not stop the immigration of leg-breaking mobsters from Itaiy?  See “46 alleged East Coast mobsters indicted”, John Riley, Newsday, reprinted in Duluth News Tribune, 2016-08-05 at http://www3.forumnewspaper.com/olive/Tablet/DNT/SharedArticle.aspx?href=DNT%2F2016%2F08%2F05&id=Ar00501.

Guess who stopped them?  Immigrants!  The U.S. Attorney is Preet Bharara, born in India.  The head of the New York FBI office is Diego Rodriguez, born in Columbia.

Russians go away!

Page views of this blog have been dominated by Russians, over four times as many as Americans.  I can’t believe that there is more interest in this blog from Russia than from the U.S.

I am probably writing to the air, but I would rather know how many readers I have who are interested in what I write than how many are tempting me to go to some spam page.

Awful Motors has introduced “new, improved” wheel design

Awful Motors has introduced square wheels, a cool new feature on all of its models.  Awful Motors stated in its introduction that round wheels were boring, they just went around and around.

This just in, after thousands of complaints of Awful Motors’ square wheels, the company has announced that by popular demand it will replace the square wheels with octagonal wheels, providing a significantly smoother ride.

Far-fetched?  This is not far from the abrupt changes that so many software designers put into their products.  A feature was working fine for millions of users, and then some designer has a “better idea”.

Some bothersome changes I’ve found recently are Yahoo! Finance’ rework of its pages and the Star Tribune’s changing relatively simple software to move between the print edition and an expanded article to cluttered software that never seems to work as one would wish.  I have no idea how other readers perceive the changes to the Star Tribune, but Yahoo had a page for comments.  These comments were almost all negative.

Google once had a simple way of moving from blog authoring to statistics without signing in again.  Now one has to log in over and over again and there are several clutter pages between authoring, feed analysis, and income review.

Apple, once the computer for the rest of us, has morphed into guess how this cool new feature works.  In the first few years of the Macintosh I was eager for a new version when real advances were made - hard drives, color, drag and drop, and on and on.  Now, I update to a major new release only when I buy a new device.

Often I think these changes are not for the benefit of the uses but the employment prospects of the designers.

2016: The first Presidential election where we have only one choice

Donald Trump keeps digging himself in a bigger and bigger hole.  The latest being his fight with the Khan family over the patriotism of Muslims.  Attacking a Gold Star mother: how low can you get?

He keeps changing his tune on this issue as he has so many times before.  Is a man who can get angry at a small slight a person whose finger we want on the nuclear button?

Hillary Clinton is not my favorite possible person for President, but she now stands as the only possible choice for President.  I don't like dynastic politics, but we have to consider all the government experience that she has had compared to that of Donald Trump.

Staying away is not an option.  If you stay away, you might give the election to Trump.  There are too many people that live in his fantasy world that will be voting.

In addition to voting for Clinton, you can hold her feet to the fire by reminding her of her vision with her 1969 Wellesley College commencement address.  See http://www.ttbook.org/book/hillarys-first-speech-historic-1969-audio-reveals-blueprint-her-life.  Warning, you'll have to listen to a lot of commentary before you get the speech in its entirety. 

Parallel to unfairness of open primaries

I have long thought it was unfair for the general public to select a political party's candidates, people who have never given time nor a dime to that party.  Neither Sanders nor Trump are party members, but they both presumed a right to run in party primaries.

Arthur C. Brooks gave a great parallel in his conversation with Gail Collins.  See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/29/opinion/the-democrats-nailed-it-does-it-matter.html.

"It amazes me how we have come to see democracy in all matters, public and private, as our natural right. Can you imagine if The New York Times had a policy of letting the readers unilaterally decide who writes for the Op-Ed page? It would make the paper into an ideological fever swamp."

Who decides radical design change?

After the dust for "Seamless" settled, I went to the Star Tribune web edition, expecting to see the usual facsimile edition.  Instead I found a clutter with a page occupying less of the screen than before.

Why do management and designers make radical changes that maybe only a few want?  Many users like the way things work and only want tweaks to fix a few things that don't work well.

Apple is notorious for this.  What worked one way well suddenly works in a completely different way.   Way back in the first decade of the Mac, I looked forward to updates, especially new levels.  Now, I won't touch a new level unless I buy a new gadget.  And many times, I wish I had stuck with the old gadget even if the newer is faster and has more data capacity.

I think the problem is "focus groups".  Management pays a few selected participants to attend a meeting while management watches behind one-way glass.  The moderator works and works to get the participants to agree to management's proposal.  Only when the participants agree to management's proposal do they get their honorarium and get to go home.

I know!  I was in a focus group to approve "Comfort Systems" for the Duluth gas and water department.  Few of us were happy with "Comfort Systems".  We didn't know until later who the entity was; we assumed it was a private utility.

Back to technology: "New and Exciting" may mean "Frustrating and Buggy".

To add insult to injury, Google won't let me scroll the text I pasted here.  It moves the window as a block instead of the text in the frame.  It didn't do that for the last post!!!

“Seamless" came apart at the seams

At about three last night, I was woken by constant thunder and lightning.  It was continuous, more continuous than I have ever heard in my life.  Then strong winds and heavy rain were added.

Fortunately, we only had one set of windows open and I was able to close them before much rain came in.

Then the lighted clock went dark.

I tried to sleep, but the light of every lightning bolt went right through my eyelids.  I laid on my stomach and hid my face in the pillow.

I don’t know how long it took the storm to pass, but it did.

At about seven, I woke up and checked Duluth news on my iPhone.  It was quite a wide ranging storm causing outages and deaths.  Trees were toppled blocking roads and damaging houses.  No travel was advised.

All day our cell phone service has been erratic.  Sometimes our phones work, sometimes we can’t even get a signal.

I can see a cell phone pole from our house, but I can’t remember if it had visible equipment at the top or not.

My wife couldn’t even call on her phone.  The call could not be completed.

The strength of signal was one bar most of the day; my phone is now up to four.  But instead of 4G or LTE service, it only shows E, whatever that means.

I was able to get websites, now loading some of them gets stuck.  I wonder how much local data there is.  Just now I could not load Yahoo! Finance, but I could get most of the New York Times.  But going to a different article is going very slow, but maybe that is because convention news is so popular.  On the other hand, the online banking page of my bank is not making any progress loading on my iPhone.  Meanwhile, I started and finished reading a convention article.

So much for the seamless, at-our-fingertips operation of our gadgets we rely so much on.  We are retired and it is only a nuisance.  But there are many people who depend on these gadgets to do their work.

Now, how long will this take to post?  Essentially, quite a while.  As soon as I typed the first sentence, I tried loading blogger.com.  Firefox could not find the page!

Finally!  At 4:30 pm the web seems back to normal.  I have five dots and LTE on my cellphone and Yahoo! Finance came right up!

Can our electricity be far behind?

Is Donald Trump the ISIS candidate?

No, I don't mean that Donald Trump is a supporter of ISIS.  But he is certainly doing just what ISIS wants.  His attacks on Muslims bolsters ISIS's claim that the West is at war with Islam.  The more Trump rails against Muslims in general, he helps recruit disillusioned or disaffected Muslims to join ISIS or to carry out attacks in the West.  The more attacks, the more people like Donald Trump will over-react.  The more over-reaction, the more recruits and the more attacks.

The only counter to a vicious cycle is a virtuous cycle.  Probably the best tactic is to out-Qur'an ISIS, especially considering some of their camps don't even have copies of the Qur-an.  Consider that few in ISIS even know "...and you should forgive and overlook: Do you not like God to forgive you?” (Qur’an: Surah 24, v. 22)

Quote of the day: divisive categorizations

"Dehumanisation is a choice. Calling a police officer a ‘pig' or reducing any population to a ‘threat' not only perpetuates stereotypes, it does nothing to temper discontent.”

-Morwari Zafar, Al Jazeera, 2016-07-14, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/07/real-reason-nice-lorry-massacre-160717112202209.html

EU Vote and markets: false linkage

Phil Anderson wrote an interesting article in the Duluth Reader about the linkage between the Brexit vote and the reactions of stock markets.  See
http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/07/06/7525_speculating_on_the_eu_vote.

I’ve often wondered how the stock markets could turn on a dime based on some event or another.  It seems more that commentators need to justify their salaries rather than provide insight for investors.  Oops!  That should be traders!  Anderson describes investors those who are in for the long haul.  Traders now will sell stocks within seconds of buying them.

I remember crossing the old Broadway bridge over the Mississippi River in the late ‘70s when the market news was a new high on the New York Stock Exchange of 54 million shares.  Today, 2016-07-13, the NYSE volume was 836,762,854 shares; a week ago it was 1,050,701,150 (Wall St. Journal, http://www.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3021-tradingdiary2.html).  That’s about 20 times what it was over 30 years ago.  Probably the big difference is online trading, then you had to call your broker who then placed the order on a teletype.

Still, I agree with Phil Anderson, how can so many people be in lockstep because of certain events?

The bogey man of Sharia law

A letter writer to the Duluth News Tribune claimed that the mayor of London, a Muslim, was banning “the use of women in public advertising.  See “US following England into Sharia law, http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/opinion/readers-views/4066431-readers-view-us-following-england-rule-sharia-law.

This seemed far-fetched to me and I tracked down the article about the London mayor’s action.  it was far different than the comments to a small snippet of the article that was published on a “conservative” web site.  All the commenters assumed the mayor was acting for far different reasons than plain, old-fashioned, everyday good taste.

You can find my response at http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/opinion/readers-views/4072831-readers-view-sharia-law-claims-dont-pass-fact-check

BTW, how many of you are old enough when many “Christians” wanted Playboy banned from newsstands?

Quote on voting

"And those not planning to vote, heed the lyrics of the old Rush song: 'If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.'”
Dale Harris, Judge in 6th Judicial District of Minnesota, Duluth News Tribune, 2016-07-11

Judge Harris was writing about not ignoring the judicial candidates in the August primaries, but his words apply to any election: from president to city councilor.

I hope you will pass on my voting mantra:

The only way
You throw your vote away
Is to stay away.

Quote on violence

"The moment any person comes to accept as justifiable an act of violence upon another — whether physical, spiritual or otherwise — that person has already lost the moral battle, even if he is currently winning the somatic one."

Charles M. Blow, New York Times, 2016-07-10
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/11/opinion/a-week-from-hell.html

My comment: Several years ago I gave a ski lesson to a retired English policeman.  He told me that in over twenty years he never drew his gun.

What kind of society are we that police in any given U.S. city draw their guns more often than this Brit did in twenty years as a municipal police officer.

Corporate inefficiency

“Conservative” politicians and billionaires keep touting corporate “efficiency”, but I keep finding case after case where they are efficient is inefficiently interacting with their customers.  How many times have you received a satisfactory answer with your first call or email?

I dropped my Republic Bank accounts (including VISA) last year because they blamed Consumer Cellular for the errors I received trying to access my Republic account through my iPhone: both the app and the online account.  Republic said the problem was with Consumer Cellular.  Consumer Cellular said the problem was with the bank.  Neither seemed really interested in pinpointing the problem.

My wife had no problem accessing Pioneer National Bank through her Consumer Cellular phone.

After I opened my Pioneer accounts, I transferred all my funds from Republic Bank to Pioneer.  I wrote Republic to close all my accounts including my VISA account.  I no longer receive monthly statements from Republic.

However, this week I received a notice of a statement from VISA for my Republic card.  Oh, boy!  Did I forget to notify somebody that automatic payments should no longer go to Republic VISA?

When I finally looked at the statement, it was to notify me of my renewal fee!  $0.00!!

I did find a “Contact Us” button that allowed me to call this unneeded statement to somebody’s attention.  I also stated that I had requested Republic Bank to close my VISA account.

Earlier in the week I received from AT&T “Exciting news - your wireless bill from AT&T is now on video.”  Who is it exciting new?  The producers of the video and the advertising department.  It was just a bother to me.  The email didn’t say whether the data for the video was to be charged to my account or was free.  I didn’t bother to find out.

However, I did open up MyATT account, saw the current bill, and paid it, also asking that all future bills be automatically be billed to my credit card.

Imagine my surprise to receive an email today that my bill was ready!  i double checked and the online balance was zero.

I tried to send a message to AT&T and found a page:

Contact Us
AT&T Support - quick & easy support is available 24/7.

I looked and looked for an email form, but I only found two choices: call an 800 number or Online Chat.  I don’t want to wait for “the next available operator",  and I don’t want to wait for the next chat person, type what I noticed, and “hang up”.

I wonder if AT&T uses one of the reputation services, and if so, will the service find this blog post and will AT&T act on it.

Don’t stay tuned!  We may never know if AT&T even read this post.

I think it was the New York Times that had an article this past week that said most telecommunications companies really don’t want to solve your problems: just pass you from one person to another.

“Hello, Melvyn Magree.  My name is ______ and I will be glad to assist you.”  This is generally followed by some generalized gibberish that doesn’t even address the problem, like completely reset your device.

An exception that we’ve found is Apple if you have a device under an Apple Care warranty.  My wife’s iPhone either wouldn’t come on at all or would only get up to 30% charge.  A search of the Apple Support Community came up with over 23,000 topics on this problem.  The only advice seems to be to hold the home and lock buttons together for quite a long time.  For us and others, this did and did not work.

The 23,000 figure does not indicate an efficient corporation, especially when the number of users who have this problem could be ten or more times greater!!

Fortunately my wife’s IPhone was still under warranty.  The Apple Care people walked us through a few steps, and it would work for a while.  After a few calls, they sent us a new phone.  Of course, we didn’t have a backup and had to manually enter phone addresses.  I did manage to print a list from the old phone before we sent it back.

Oh!  And we could never erase the old phone.  It kept asking for a re-something passcode.  It would never accept the phone passcode and we could find no workable answer in the Apple Support Community.  We had to return the problem phone with only the assurance that Apple would erase the data.

How did we get into this mess?  I remember when it was a big deal to have direct-dial long-distance.

What true patriotism is

I’m sitting at my computer listening to all the fireworks, both public at the Bayfront Festival Park and private.  We can see some of the Bayfront fireworks if we look out our front upstairs window at the right angle.  But is enjoying fireworks patriotism?  People all over the world enjoy fireworks.

Is patriotism pledging allegiance to the flag or singing the Star-Spangled Banner.  Anybody can do these as a rote exercise.  In fact, it seems that the more flags behind a political candidate, the more “patriotic” they are.

Is patriotism “supporting our troops” wherever they are fighting at the behest of our politicians?  Many of those wars have led to further wars.

Maybe patriotism is saying that a war is immoral and unwinnable.  Remember also that those on the other side think they are being patriotic to their country or cause.

True patriotism is obeying the laws, paying taxes, voting, and speaking your mind about how government is acting.  Given these guidelines anybody can be a patriot whether they are Republican or Democrat, “conservative” or “liberal”, or none of the above.

Quote of the day: Real Cause of "voter fraud"

"Yet, in many jurisdictions politicians cry potential fraud... when the fault actually lies with underfunded and poorly constructed registration and voting systems."

- "Electoral Dysfunction", Victoria Bassetti, p.138

Could lower taxes be a ploy to discredit voting so that only the chosen few will run the country to the benefit of large corporations?

Republicans are undemocratic?

Republicans claim to believe in democracy, but they seem to be doing everything possible to limit democracy to only those who have their views.

They want voter restrictions or oppose making it easier to vote because there will be more Democrats voters.

If they restrict voting because more people might vote against them, are not the Republicans opposed to democracy?

What do conservatives conserve?

It seems to me that they only want to conserve two things; their view of the world and the power of large corporations.

They don’t want to conserve resources including clean air and water, the right of people to have needed information, and good, free education for all.

Once upon a time conservatives were those who carefully considered any change but didn’t stand in the way of change.  And there were many flavors of conservatism.

Now, “conservatives” must be in lock step on all issues and cannot question any of the official stances.

Ironically, these “conservatives” are liberal with funds for the military and are liberal with sending people to fight all over the world without any understanding of the countries they are sent to.  A real conservative would be cautious about military engagement and strive to know what the risks are.