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Here is something to ponder… how does one survive during a Great Depression? Well listen to someone who did… As you can tell, it was a lot slower time back then….. something I think we can all look forward to….
But below is a recipe which was carried on You Tube, for the dish pasta and peas….
Of course, the pleasure is in the telling….. as those who stick through the end will discover……
And then again, we will be happy just to have work, as this next episode describes… Oh the choice’s we’ll make……
(right click on image to enhance)
You may not like Hillary Clinton……perhaps her negatives are too high for you……but regardless of what you think of her personality and politics, she comes from New York. And that makes her something…………
You may think I came to praise her, but I am really going in the opposite direction and praising New York. What gives Hillary her credibility, is that some of the greatest people on earth chose her to be their Senator……
There is something different about New York. Not just the city, but the entire state has a distinctive unique characteristic. I guess it stems from the fact that no one, no one intimidates them. They don’t prance around Celia-like to politicians; they hold them accountable. Either the politician performs, or “he’s outta there.” ( The fact that a majority of them ‘dis Giuliani, speaks highly of them also. )
Today I got this snippet of news from the paper of a tiny little town near Minot…….It was an AP announcement that was deemed irrelevant every where but North Dakota……. It was an “A ha” moment, because it provides a solution that may have some bearing on Delmarva’s recalcitrance to “play ball by the rules.”
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating five major energy companies to determine if plans to create coal-fired power plants present an undisclosed financial risk to investors.
There are so many parallels to our situation. First both of our Attorney Generals are sons of famous political fathers. Second, if creating coal fired power plants presents an undisclosed financial risk to investors, what does that say about Delmarva, who is spurning Blue Water Wind, a triple A+ investment, for continuing to receive power from coal fired power plants, a triple F- investment?…….
Obviously New York is staging an “strong offense” as their primary “defense” to open the Long Island Sound Wind Farm. Should they succeed and open their wind farm before Delmarva allows us to open ours, we might as well turn all positive financial growth opportunities for this state, over to them………..
What is ironical is that their AG is suing the “old school” of power generation for the same reason Delmarva is suing to stop the “new school” of power generation.
As I mentioned in a comment over on Tommywonk, one option we have is for our AG to sue Delmarva Power for presenting an undisclosed risk to the people of Delaware by their not allowing us a healthy, environmentally friendly, and far cheaper electricity than we pay already……But ideally, taking the investors side of the equation would be much cleaner, easier to prosecute, and based on evidence found in Delawares blogs, and all over the internet, ….”a slam dunk.”
As I pointed out before, Delmarva bases their cost on figures consumers were paying BEFORE THE 60% RATE HIKES TOOK EFFECT IN MAY 2006. (All their calculations use 2005 numbers). They use these outdated cheap numbers to make their case that Delaware consumers will pay more if they go with Blue Water Wind.
Therefore they are misleading their investors. I am not a legal expert, but I believe there are laws against that? Duh! That should put them squarely in the same boat as Enron. And we know what happened to those cronies……….
Delaware needs to pursue the same strategy as New York. Why should they get all the glory. After all, compare their two AG’s! Only one has a father who has run for the Presidency…….. twice.
We have heard so often that the surge is working. Perhaps it is working far too well. Four arch-Conservative Congressional delegates flying out of Baghdad, came under fire just as their C130 lifted off from the Baghdad airport. Judging from the depth of the Pentagon’s reaction, it was a close call.
The C-130 cargo aircraft conducted evasive maneuvers after a nighttime takeoff from Baghdad, said Ken Lundberg, spokesman for Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, who was on the plane.
In addition to Martinez, the plane was carrying fellow Republican Sens. Richard Shelby of Alabama and James Inhofe of Oklahoma, and Alabama Rep. Robert “Bud” Cramer, a Democrat.
With the exception of Cramer the Blue Dog Democrat, all of the three republicans would be considered extremely conservative. Shelby, was the individual responsible for announcing that we had intercepted Osama bin Laden’s phone messages. Inhofe accused the Weather Channel of creating global warming. Martinez was in charge of Bush 2000’s Florida campaign, and we all know what happened there. In 2006, he helped craft the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 that would be referred to by much of his own party, as “amnesty”.
All three of these are extremely conservative; all three are potentially embarrassing to the future Republican party; all three have uttered controversial statements like this one…. by Inhofe:
“I am outraged by the ‘outrage’ over the revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib”, suggesting that liberals being outraged over Rumsfeld’s abusive tactics, were more of a outrage to American values, than the actual torture practiced on Iraqis by American servicemen.
Each of these Republicans has become and will be a future embarrassment to their party in the upcoming elections. Each of these statements will be pounded over the airwaves with undulating precision.
But if you look beyond the glossed over press reports there seems to be something deeper going on behind this incident. Perhaps it was more than just a close call?
For one, why would the C 130 fired upon as it left Baghdad, just happen to carry three of the most conservative members of Congress? Of course one option, and the first considered, is that it occurred randomly. However two other possibilities that could occur, are 1) either the Iraqi insurgents have remarkable intelligence capabilities, capable of communicating the precise moment the plane lets go its brakes to a position miles away, or……2) it was an inside job.
Was it random? At roughly 150 of these planes flying in and out of Baghdad on a daily basis, the odds at firing on this one randomly selected over the last five years, would be: 1 chance out of 273,750. That would be a 2737.5% chance of not happening. But anything is possible, right?
So let’s examine the logistics behind the alternatives. To fire upon this one plane, the enemy would need to know which plane out of the twenty five lined up on the tarmac awaiting takeoff, contained the conservative legislators. That means the insurgents would have had access to Baghdad military airport, in the heart of the super safe Green Zone.
If the enemy was this intelligent, they should know that killing four congressional legislators would not end the war. It would escalate it further. (To end the war they would need to kill liberals.) They would also know that creating martyrs out of the four most conservative Congressional members, would embolden a 9/11 response across this country. It would rally international support behind the US, now waning worldwide, and create an international environment more hostile to Al Qaeda. The insurgents would be foolish to fire upon that plane.
So who stands to gain if these men were shot down? Obviously those republicans waiting in the wings in their safe red districts, would benefit. So would the RNC. There would be NO chance of a blue taking any of these seats. Obviously the Republican party would be better off by not having their own comment blaming “the Weather Channel for creating global warming”, receiving international airplay. (They are so losing this next election; I hope that Mondale lives long enough to see his dubious record broken.) Obviously the next big republican scandal that will come out of Florida (Martinez), would be nice to nip in the bud. Furthermore anyone having a vendetta against that one single person responsible for leaking that nugget that we were listening to Osama’s phone calls just after 9/11, causing his GPS location to be lost to us forever, would rub their hands with revenge.
These shots fired, based on a cross reference of the press reports description and the Pentagon’s map of Baghdad, originated from an area safe from insurgents, and entrusted to private corporate mercenary services. The location of these shots makes it even more unlikely that an insurgent pulled the trigger. The odds that an operative of Al Qaeda, infiltrated a private security service such as Blackwater, was in real time informed as to when this very plane was taking off, and knew exactly when to pull the trigger seconds before he even saw or heard the plane, all without any experience of ever having done so before at this location…….. are impossible to calculate…………….
If this was an inside job, perhaps instead of an assassination, it was a mere attempt at a scare. They missed on purpose. For by instilling fear in some of the most conservative members of the Congress, one could continue to count firmly on their future loyalty and support. No doubt as they spoke before their respective branches of Congress, they could then be counted on to convey to others, that the threat was real.
For if on their return, had these four wavered and decided that all future expenditures were nothing but a massive waste of money, that the surge was not working, and that it was time to make a change in Iraq policy, then dreams of all neocons everywhere, would be nothing more than a wisp of gunsmoke……………
But such talk is just “hullabaloo” , really……… it was nothing more than a random event, a one in a 273,750 chance.
Recently I was privileged to sit in on a financial review session for a business here in Delaware. Here is how the conversation went.
Q: Your “utilities” are out the roof. What the hell are you doing?
A: Our rates increased 60% last May when Delmarva Power was deregulated.
Q: Bullshit. Why didn’t the other Delaware units show the same increase.
A: Both of them receive power through municipal coops. Those rates were settled by separate deals. We deal with Delmarva directly, and have no buffer.
Q: That’s crap. You are spending and not controlling energy costs. This summer, your costs are almost 40% higher than than anyone else in the company. We paid you to control this!
A. We have. Here is the proof. These are the bills from other stores. Here is ours. We use less kilowatt hours over each month than those other units. We have stretched our efficiency to as close to the theoretical, as is possible. You can see our price is higher, much higher, we have no control over that. But even though we use less energy than any other unit, we have to pay what we have to pay.
Q: Well if that’s the case then you need to find another $5,000 a month from somewhere else, to make up for pissing away good money.
A: The only option I have left is to NOT pay Delmarva the amount they ask, in other words, short the bill That option buys only 4 months until they shut us down. And then you will have to take the entire hit at one time. I say “you”, because if that is the move you ask me to make, then I won’t be here.
Q: You are damn right you won’t.
A: Be forewarned, it will cost you three times as much to find a replacement willing to deal with this kind of bullshit…….”
With that, the financial review was over.
This microcosm is currently taking place throughout every chain unit that pays Delmarva directly. There are two takeaways that come out of these experiences.
Businesses: if you are thinking of moving into Delaware……..don’t. You can’t afford it. Do not be misled by our state’s economic office. Look at the rates and do the math and see how much of your margin you give up! There are better places to invest than here in Delaware.
Others: You need to get off your asses and get this wind farm started now. The only way Delaware can remain competitive with any state, is to build the 600MW wind farm and use that 2.3 cent kilowatt hour to drive our energy prices down.
Even the tiniest amount of foot-dragging, will push this state over the edge.
The economy is a behemoth. How and in which way will you define such a broad term as the economy?
What tools will you use to determine if it is moving up or down. Stock markets are often used as a peg . But if only the wealthy participate, it is a poor device for measuring the well being of those who’s budgets are too stretched to participate. Poverty levels are also an indicator that measures how our lower class is doing, but does nothing for measuring the amounts needed to invest in growing businesses.
Whatever measure we choose, needs to be standardized, allowing both the growth of capital and the well being of Americans. An example of policy gone wrong is this. If you cut taxes and that cut leads to increased medical costs, energy costs, and raises the cost of insurance, so that citizens are paying out of pocket much more than they were before, that policy is not as helpful as it may seem at first glance.
There needs to be a way of measuring the well being of Americans. Setting a standard as having a place to live, two cars, taxes, insurance, enough to cover both energy costs and communication costs, would be a good indicator for someone in my age bracket. To someone older, adding medical costs might be considered. The income left following the deduction of these expenses, would measure the well being of America. A certain number of people would have incomes above this line, and others would find themselves below this line. This measure would go up and down as the economy rose and fell, and this measure would be an appropriate indicator. If energy prices spike, elected officials need to react. But if energy goes up, and say insurance rates go down, it would not have to move so readily.
Effective politics would achieve growth along this line. As more citizens increased their disposable incomes after necessary expenses were met, that would be a positive indicator reflecting a growing economy.
It would drive home the argument that all of us are threads in a tapestry. Each of has a responsibility to ourselves and immediate family, but our actions also have repercussions far removed from us locally due to the increasing complexity of today’s world.
This opens the door to a new way of looking at old problems. If paying more insurance, is offset by a matching reduction in taxes, then no one is worse off. And if paying more in taxes result in paying even less in energy costs , no one is worse off.
Fortunately due to the massive scale of the United States, the economies of scale have merit here. Just as Wal*Mart buys items at a lower cost than those mom and pop stores it puts out of business, the government can use economies of scale to do the same. It is far less costly to pay one contractor to build ten miles of road, than pay ten contractors to build one mile each. Thus if used properly, taxes can be a good thing. Like a growing government contract, they can pool resources and bring prices down by sheer numbers.
Especially in the medical field is this appropriate. If one pays less in taxes, and thus pays far more for prescriptions, he may be happy for a moment until he considers the reverse option, of investing in his taxes to drive down prescriptions and make them far less expensive. Whether this is a success or failure, is decided by whether that citizen’s finances are better off.
The cumulative effort of all individuals, determines whether this nation should keep or scrap a policy.. Ideology of grand sweeping ideas, of say “Big government versus. Small government:” should have little to do with policy. Does it work or not work; that is the question for which a majority of Americans need the answers.
Across this generation saving levels have dropped. Americans seem to be more secure in their future and would rather spend on “now” than save for tomorrow where truthfully, that money will probably go to someone else: a hospital, nursing home, etc, etc…..The brilliance of the Clinton economy was that costs were held low for what ever reason across the board, thereby freeing up excess money for more goods and services.
Recently I was reminded of what Martin Luther King stood for.
Quite often, as minorities protest and rant and rave at their inequalities, we tend, after a polite listening of their grievances, to acquiesce to their protests and give in. After all, we as Americans, believe that all should be treated fairly, for after all we feel that everyone has the same rights under our law. Right? So why are our prisons filled mostly with blacks? Why are the poorest sections of our cities inhabited mostly by blacks? Why do the rules of “Economics” as taught in our schools, not apply to our African American ghettos?
After all, does not the law guarantee everyone equal protection under the law? Of course it does.
Is it not criminal to show prejudice according to race in housing, in hiring, or in hitting, aka Rodney King? Of course it is. Everything that government stands for, is there to protect those rights. Lawyers (in need of work) are lined up, ready to defend those rights in any court found in this country. So why do Jesse Jackson and other followers of Martin Luther King still decry racism every time it seems like a black person gets to be on television? The laws are set in stone.
But still, if one looks at the entire African American segment of the population, one sees some progressive movement, but more than likely, there are still areas as impoverished as they were in the nineteen seventies. I remember the 2nd Watts conflagrations, after Rodney King was beaten by police chief Gate’s henchman. It cost Bush his presidency. When looking at it on television, it was obvious that nothing had changed in twenty years. Twenty years! Except that Korean shopowners lost everything instead of the whites…….
Today we find guidance in King’s own words:
“I have a dream that one day, the Negro will be judged, not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.”
Are there perhaps more blacks in prison because they do more crimes? Are there perhaps more blacks in ghettos because they pissed away their right to education and now cannot find meaningful employment? Are there perhaps more blacks being smacked around by bigoted cops because they are more mouthy and more inclined to piss cops off? Do I know the answers to these questions? No, that is why I posed them rhetorically.
The key to this puzzle lies in this phrase: “judged by the content of their character.” If one sends their child to school and tells him not to listen to “authority”, then races down to the school office threatening and waving their hands when that student is disciplined for insubordination, then one’s character sucks. There is no other way around it: one’s character sucks.
If one breaks into a house, rapes and kills a minor: one’s character sucks. There is no other way around it.
If one finally gets a job, then calls out repeatedly, drinks on the job, and basically tries to show his independence from his employer by civil disobedience, and is then fired: one’s character sucks.
If one fathers a child and has nothing to do with it forever, it is undeniable: one’s character sucks.
No matter what the color of one’s skin…………………………………..
All of us are individuals. It is time we make Martin Luther Kings vision real, and stop treating people by class distinctions. There is no limit to what the African American individual can do. If there is a problem, it lies with those who provide a psychic crutch for such a large segment of the population, and conjole them that they will never amount to anything until “whitey” gives then “his”.
I will tell you flat-out that there is no reason every black child in our cities cannot be a doctor. I have seen it. They all have the potential. They all have it within their character. They just need it developed. How can I say this? Because I know I could never find the courage to march over that bridge in Selma. They did.
They had character then. They still have it now. Now today, like then, they need to look towards themselves, and not wait for a handout that realistically will never come………. And we, the rest of us, need to stand ready to help those who want to help themselves…..
If we could just unlock the potential buried in our cities, this country would be greater yet…….
It is important for all to know what is going on in their State Legislature. The link to Delaware’s is posted to the left side of my blog, if you wish to access it.
I accessed it and was surprised to see that several bills have been offered this first week. I was most impressed by the “Poop” bill, originated by Booth and co-sponsored by Senator Adams.
This poop bill insures that when you go into a retail outlet, that they will let you use the employee’s bathroom if you ask. For if they refuse you twice, they can be fined up to $100.
At first glance, one says “fine, stick it to ’em. Those high tootin’ retailers have gotten too uppity lately.” How dare they deny me access to their bathrooms. But as you start looking at its “cons”, this “poop” bill has some serious implications, some so severe, that only someone who has never run a business could consider this bill seriously.
Let’s start with this scenario. In you home, you hear a knock, and at your door is a smelly man or woman, unkempt, asking if he could come in and use your bathroom.
“No, sorry can’t do it.” The answers are obvious as to why. So why does a retailer, have to allow a stranger into his inner sanctum? Because Booth and Adams want it so?
These two “Poop” sponsors need to address these issues or their bill will be laughed off the floor, if it get’s laughed out of the House Administration Committee.
Issues that need to be addressed:
Retailers security: with back of house access to anyone, how does one protect his assets from a “poop”er with a gun?
Retailers reputation: with the possibility of a “poop”er showing up, extra care must be made to protect the retailer from liability. Boxes on the floor during deliveries, areas that are safe for employees with special non skid shoes, may be quite dangerous to casual “poop” candidates.
Retailers employees: quite often, personal effects are stored in and around employee restroom area. Who will patrol the area while the “pooper” does his deed?
Who cleans up the mess? I won’t go into detail, but…………….has anyone else walked into a “public” restroom stall and gone “eughhh………….”? Is the boss responsible or can he mandate to a retail specialist, hired to sell, that she needs to clean the mess, with what,…………..does he even carry gloves?
All I know, is if I am a competitor, and I need to get some “soft” intelligence on my competition, I just have to feign menstral cramps and I am in.
Now if Britney Spears asked to use my bathroom, I would say “sure”, even if it went against my better judgement. I don’t know why I would let her, I just know I would. But should Donald Rumsfeld stop by, provided he wasn’t escorting Britney Spears, I would say “no”, and we all know why.
Who we let into our private areas is our most private choice. It is probably one that the two “poop” legislators, should leave alone.
But, in both of their defense, with all the serious shit floating around government these days, it is nice to know that there is someone who actively cares and is legislating against those retailers who are “poop” party poopers. Our tax dollars are finally paying off.
kavips 
