Link to new blog

Here is a link to my new blog about Alachua:

http://boycottalachuafl.blogspot.com/ 

Well, it has been a while, hasn't it? I am about to turn soixante-neuf (the only sexual position that can also be a birthday). And I got a ticket for allegedly running a red light in the small city of Alachua, FL 32615. This is a city of perhaps just over 10,000 population, which has THREE UNMARKED POLICE CRUISERS PLUS A MOTORCYCLE UNIT or two! These are used only for traffic enforcement. I have spent hundreds of dollars per month in this city for nearly nine years, and that is OVER! I am announcing a boycott of all merchants in the City of Alachua, Florida. The light was clearly yellow when I entered the intersection, and I see nothing in the law which states that you cannot enter an intersection on the yellow. I have been told by a couple of retired cops that when your front bumper is in the intersection before the light turns red, you have control over the intersection, and that seems to be supported by the laws I have read today, and I downloaded the full traffic law section for the state. I have also spoken with a local contractor/developer who claims to be a friend of the cop who gave me the ticket, and who says that cop interceded on his behalf with another cop who had stopped this contractor, and got the cop to give only a warning instead of a ticket. That shows that this guy is not impartially giving out tickets. I will be starting another blog specifically about this, and would like people to click through their favorite search engine to get to that site in order to raise the visibility of that site. Alachua is a city which hosts tourist events in order to draw people to the city, so that it can make money on traffic tickets. In fact, it is as bad as Waldo or Lawtey, except that, because they do not ticket for one or two mph over the speed limit, they avoid having to put signs at the edge of town that the speed limit will be strictly enforced. Please join with me, if you live locally, in boycotting the merchants of this town, and go somewhere else for July 4th fireworks and/or the Little League World Series.

Those republicans are at it again!

Well, people are saying that recent elections--particularly that of nude pinup model Scott Brown--have shown that republicans are going to win big in the next election. POPPYCOCK! It is still the republicans who are dragging down government at every level.

In particular, Scott Brown used a single issue to get elected, and it was something he could only have done in Massachusetts. Massachusetts, tired of the federal government not doing anything to reform healthcare, created health care reform on a state level, for the first time in this country. Since they already have health care, the citizens did not want to pay for this twice--once on the state level, and once on the federal level. That is how he got elected--not to mention that the Democratic candidate simply lost the election with a very poorly-run campaign.

Last I saw, 61% of the citizens wanted a public option in health care, 29% did not, and 10% were undecided. Splitting the undecided vote gives us almost exactly a 2:1 majority wanting a public option. Any republican who fights this should not be re-elected, period! For the republicans to claim that these recent elections mean that the public does not like Obama is sheer stupidity. He still has not pulled out of the problems left by the previous administration. And he can't do so quickly because they left us in such a precarious state. The ONLY way we can fix things is to get things back the way they were during the Clinton administration--ie, raise taxes on the wealthy. The best way to do this is to eliminate all of the ways that the wealthy people AVOID paying taxes. I hate to say it, but a flat tax, with a basic deduction for cost of living, and no other deductions, would go far to accomplish what we need to accomplish. Just making the rich people pay their fair share would help out this country a whole lot. I have no problem with a break for long-term capital gains, but I don't think that wealthy people actually do that much direct investment. Wealthy people have so many ways to avoid taxes that many of them actually pay NO taxes every year! That is simply not right!

Now we hear that the Greek government is in a sorry state, and needs to borrow money. This recession would seem to be never-ending, yet I work in retail, and we are beating last year's figures handily. Except for January, sales are not that bad.... If companies would just hire more people, I think they'd see sales go up.

I still think that Chrysler makes better cars than Ford or GM, and I base this on having owned four Chrysler products in the last decade or so, along with one Chevy, and a Mazda and a Volvo. Worst of the lot was the Mazda. These are not very current vehicles, ranging from 1986 to 1995 models, but I got to see two Caravans with 191,000 and 208,000 miles on them, and I now have a '95 Doddge Stratus with 112,500 miles on it, which beats the heck out of a Sentra or Corolla. It goes down the interstate far better than, say, a Hyundai Accent, handles well, rides well, and is quieter. Chrysler's cruise control is far better than the others, as well, beaten only in my experience by current Volvos. The new Avenger--which we are seeing used by many police departments--gets within a mile or two per gallon of the much-vaunted Malibu, and it is a noticeably larger car. You should look at Chrysler. Toyota, which I used to sell, and always respected, has lost my respect.

Gotta run....

It's those liars again!

I frequently fall asleep with the TV on, and then wake up listening to something I would not normally want to hear. Why my local channel--owned by a very progressive reform Jewish woman--would run wrong-wing xian broadcasting is beyond me, but there was Pastor Arnold Murray one day telling us that he and his ilk were going to vote out all of these liberal judges and put conservative ones in their places!

Arnold, of course, has no idea that the Court System was included in our government specifically to enforce the rights of minorities, and to overrule the tyranny of the majority! That is why we have a tripartite system of government. This country is not, and was never intended to be, a pure democracy!The legislative, executive, and judicial branches serve as a system of checks and balances against each other, per the intentions of our founding fathers!!!! Not to mention, of course, that all of that hyperbole about judges legislating from the bench, works both ways! When you have a justice--overruled by every other member of his court, who tries to rule that Congress does not have the right to regulate the sale of machine guns, that is precisely legislating from the bench! It is the very definition of that term.

Then another day, I awoke to the 700 Club intoning that the people of Spain had the right idea when they instituted the Siesta! Those idiots don't even realize that the siesta originated in Mexico, where virtually everyone is infected with mononucleosis, aka the sleeping disease. That causes people to fall asleep, particularly in bright sunshine and extreme heat. That is why they have the siesta. With more vitamin B-12 in their diet, they would not need a siesta! This refusal to check their supposed facts is also common with wrong-wing conservatives, and so their listeners go along thinking that things are established fact, when they are not, which then becomes part of the whole darned problem!!!!

The FCC ought to regulate statements made as fact which are not true, just as they regulate the statements of people who use banned words, and for much the same reason.

More on advertising

I've already said that I blame the advertising industry--and more recently the whole information industry--for the fact that Johnny can't read, but now we are seeing some interesting new twists.

Have you seen Kraft's new ad for American Cheese? "Only one country" can have this cheese, they tell us, "and that country is America!"

Say WHAAAAATTT?????

America is not a country folks, it is two continents full of countries! Canadians and Mexicans, and yes, Venezuelans and many others, all have as much right as citizens of the United States of America, to refer to themselves as Americans.

This is the sort of overstatement common to wrong-wing bigots.

Our country is not called America, it is called the United States of America, frequently shortened to the United States. This idea of considering our country to be the only one in the Americas, is all too common these days, and is what got us into the position we are now in, where many citizens in South America hate our guts as much as the citizens of many countries in Europe and Asia. Hopefully this new President will take steps to cure this, not only among world leaders, but among our own citizens as well.

And have you seen the latest trend in advertising? I might like to try that Contour belt, or the Ab Circle, to see if there really is an easy way to perk up one's muscles without doing all of those nasty exercises. But they are saying that I can try it in my home for 30 days for only $14.95 or $14.99 or whatever, but they might actually want me to pay shipping and handling as well, which is often far more than they should be charging for that. Face it; when I owned a photo studio in the 1970s, I was told that I should sell my photos for FIVE TIMES the actual cost of the prints to me. That same markup is the traditional markup for mail order products like these. They are not telling me what my final cost will be if I choose to purchase their product. Or are they actually just leasing it for, say, $29.99 per month? That could get really expensive.... And the S&H charges now clearly pay for not only shipping and handling, but also for the product as well, which is how they get you when they offer those free bonuses, and say "Just pay seperate shipping and handling." The USPS is now offering fixed rate shipping up to 70 lbs anywhere in the country--and it is well under $20 in most cases, and if the weight is under two pounds, it gets down around $6 total cost including the box. So the initial price they are quoting you is pure profit, and the shipping and handling they quote you may well include some profit as well.

Just how stupid do these people think we are????

More on health care and other topics

One great benefit of my plan is that the startup costs would be considerable--buying up failed hospitals and updating them, or building new infrastructure always is. But it could be spread out over time, and it would put millions of Americans back to work in the meantime! The boost that gives to the economy would spurt other businesses, which could then continue employing the people who built the infrastructure, and so on. You cannot generate this kind of stimulus without spending money. A lot of people certainly criticized FDR when he did it, though few people now would try to propose that the country would be better off had he not done so....

I notice that the US Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring anti-health-reform advertising on TV. When I owned a computer store, I was a member of the local Chamber of Commerce and the Better Business Bureau, which is sponsored by the Chamber. Their current ads shock me! They do not speak for me. Were I to open another small business, I would want a public option so that I would not have to go broke offering health insurance to my employees. I dare say that the vast majority of Chamber members are small enough to agree with me on this, and that only the few very wealthy companies who belong to that organization would be in sync with the ads they are currently running!

When I go to the V.A. Medical Center these days, I see a whole lot of folks in power chairs, and a lot of new Escalades in the parking lots. They come there because they trust the Government when it comes to health care, even though they could afford private care. There are also people like myself who drive cars that are old enough to drink, (or drive us to it). We go there because we simply cannot afford any other choice in health care. I do have to admit that my new conveyance is a mere youngster of 14 years, and 106,000 miles plus a few.... But the last three-and-a-half years were spent driving a 1986 Volvo with about 350,000 miles on it, until I let some idiot do some welding on it, and he wound up tweaking the tranny out of line, and the rear wheels locked up between a forward and reverse gear on my way to work one day. I had very little more than my $250 economic stimulus payment to put down, though I wound up writing a check for more than $600--something I could not do today! Even at that rate, only one buy-here/pay-here dealer would talk to me, in part because I had already bought three cars from him, two of which were swapped for computers when I owned the computer store. I wound up paying about $1000 over Edmund's non-dealer-retail price for the car (their dealer price assumes not a buy-here/pay-here, but a new car dealer for the brand in question who can put a meaningful warranty on it), and it took the dealer three tries to get me into a decent car. I now have a 1995 Dodge Stratus. That and two of the Dodge Caravans I had a few years ago, (one of which had over 200,000 miles on it, and the other of which was over 190,000 when a shade tree mechanic stole it from me, though it still ran very well, and the only failed part was an AAMCO transmission rebuild) have convinced me that Chrysler builds the best cars made in the USA. I did a lot of hitch-hiking for a while, and I can tell you that GM rear suspensions have not been any good over the past couple of decades, and I just don't like Fords, never have, probably never will. Owned one of those things, a 1977 Pinto Cruising Wagon, only because nobody else came close to building something that fit my needs like that one did. But I was never happy with the car, and at some point, the dealer told me to bring it in for a "silent warranty" repair. That is, only people who had complained about engine noise, were getting new pistons, rods, rings, and bearings from Ford. I had not complained about noise particularly, but the dealer wanted to do the work to get service income, and I was complaining about rough running and other such problems, and he figured that was close enough. Seems some Ford engineer convinced them that they could save a nickel an engine by not drilling the holes in the top of the connecting rods, that lubricate the lower ends of the cylinder walls and pistons. The repairs, of course, cost Ford about $400 per engine back in those days! Some savings! Anyway, my new Dodge is a lot larger than the Nissan Sentra I started out with from this deal, and a whole lot more comfortable, it runs like a top with only the tachometer not functioning, and it has worked a couple of times, leading me to believe that it only needs a a connection cleaned. And it gets me 24-25 MPG, in spite of relatively hard driving. Much of its time is spent at 80mph on the cruise control, and even on back roads I frequently set the cruise control for 70 mph. And I'm a biker, so I am used to feeling decent acceleration. I always exceed half the redline when taking off from a stop sign or light, for instance, at well over half throttle--and it is not uncommon to hear the front tires chirp. One downside of this car is that I had bought a scanner that only read OBD2 cars, and this car is OBD1. So I had to return the Innova unit, which I really liked, and purchase a much more expensive Craftsman unit that came with cables for at least three OBD1 cars. It also supports live data, and has other advantages, and folks, it is on sale at Sears now for $199.99--a full hundred dollars below retail. Not sure when that sale is over, so if you want a bargain on a top-of-the-line unit, hurry to Sears, now!

Sears also has Craftsman Club, which gives you special deals on tools, and now includes Craftsman Rewards, which gives you back 2-4% on your Craftsman purchases toward other Craftsman products in the future. Even old Craftsman Club members have to sign up for this new Reward, so check it out. I should note that I work for Sears, although I am looking for full-time work, and they are not hiring full-timers now, at least not in any numbers, so we will have to see how long I stay there. Maybe I can get two part-time jobs or something.... I also collect Social Security, and I am about five years away from full retirement, when my new home is paid off....

I'm also looking for another motorcycle, preferably a Moto Guzzi Breva, for the ride to my 50th class reunion next year. I will ride approximately 4000 miles in two weeks. Can't say that I will be able to afford such luxury, and I might have to resurrect the same old Shadow that carried me 3500 miles in ten days nine years ago! I sure do like riding long distances! I'll hit everything from Deals Gap to Rip Van Winkle country along the way. Highway 209 runs from Scranton, PA up into upstate New York, and is another nifty road to ride. Even I-87 in PA is one of the most scenic interstates you could ever take on a bike. I'll need a new camera so that I can have digital photos of the journey, as well. Last time I bought a 3X Zoom film camera at Wally World for my photos, and it was very good, but very limited. Either that or I break out the Nikkormat EL or the Nikon F2, and a whole bunch of lenses, and that stuff does not travel well on a bike! A Kodak Z1015 would be my choice, I guess, among the stuff I have seen recently.... I currently have a Kodak Z712, which is fine except that the rubber eyepiece fell off, and I can't figure out how to get it back in place! And at 7 megapixels, not worth the cost of getting it fixed. I'd rather spend the money getting my old Contax repaired, if it came down to it! Okay, so I have an impressive camera collection, some bits of which may be older than I am! Oh, I know, I'll just load up the Mamiyaflex C220 and three or four lenses for that! (No way in hell would I do that!)

Well, I guess I got a bit far afield on this post, but now you know a lot more about me than I intended to publish when I started this. Of course, that was back in the GWB administration, when I did not want them to be able to find me.... Cheney is still saying scary stuff, isn't he? And Obama is not nearly far enough to the left to satisfy me, either!

The liars are at it again

Well, I still am represented in Congress by an idiot who claims to favor the military establishment and veterans, but will not support a single-payer solution to the health crisis. Why can't we simply give every American the same sort of health care that we give to our veterans? I would not want the VA to make live-or-die decisions for me when that time arrives, but until then I get first-rate health care at virtually no cost to me. Sure, they use interns, but these guys are hardly clueless, after all. Once I had a knife-happy surgeon anxious to try a new technique offer to do a second procedure while I was under general anesthesia, and he did one side better than the other, but it turned out okay, and I am less at risk for something I considered myself at high risk for previously. I can't complain about much at all, and when I did have a problem, someone directed me to the patient advocate's office, and they were able to arrange an overnight stay which averted the procedural complication. VA medical care is a lot better than what most uninsured people can obtain.

And the VA is very strong about checking on your insurance, and collecting from your insurer where appropriate. Since many Americans who would take advantage of this medical care DO carry insurance, the government could charge them at prevailing for-profit rates and thus pay a portion of the cost of caring for the uninsured.

This is a win-win situation, and too important for us to forego a single-payer solution that would guarantee uniform medical care for all Americans, at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayers. Remember, the name GEICO stands for Government Employees Insurance Company. This was a government-controlled private company that expanded their coverage in order to broaden the risk and reduce cost for their services to government employees. We can do the same thing with health care!