More Snow Job Stories
In response to yesterday's post, "Can You Dig It?" a commentor filed a wonderful story of his own. Please read it. It's terrific.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
Can You DIg It?
On Saturday afternoon, my willfulness and stubborness reached its choking point, and I decided that I would dig my car out of the snow.
It was parked about two blocks away from my house.
"Enoough," I grumbled in my best Type A voice, as I set out with two shovels and steely determination.
O.K.
It only took half an hour and some nifty raised-on-the-prairies-nothing's-gonna-stop-me driving, but I did it.
Of course. Always knew I would, so there. Ha!
Swung onto the ruts of the street, promptly turned right up the next street so that I could then turn back down to the main road and go about my terribly important business. (I had to return three videos to a store many K. away.)
In less than a third of the way up the second street, I stalled and stuck.
My '93 Mazda, trusty as it is, has a low undercarriage and I was basically riding the snow tracks.
More shovelling, help from a stranger who lived on the street and half an hour later, nothing.
O.K.
So I walked back towards my house, knowing that I had now effectively blocked a residential street entirely and that if I phoned BCAA and if I ever got through, the wait would be about five hours.
BUT...
What do I find in the alleyway just a moment later?
But an entire family digging our their van.
O.K.
So I'll help you dig if you'll help me push.
Done and done.
But just as we start to push my car back, another five or six people come along and join in the fun.
Missions accomplished.
After I returned the videos and got some groceries, I headed back to the hood.
My car is now parked on a busy thoroughfare. I am hoping that it isn't snowplowed in this morning.
It was lovely to see people helping each other in these maddening conditions.
A World Gone Mad
In Victoria, the geniuses who oversee drug addiction problems have struck real gold.
For absurdity and sickness, that is.
Seems they had to close down their site for free needle exchanges for heroin addicts.
So for some time now they've been operating a mobile service.
i.e., Don't worry, Doper. We bring the needles to you.
Small problem.
That leaves thousands of dirty needles unaccounted for.
Which means that the very people who are charged with helping the situation are, in fact, making it worse.
But consider this more fundamental issue.
A man or woman who sincerely believes in his or her own little utterly misguided heart that he/she is doing some good in the world spends his/her day dashing about the city streets on foot or on bicycle trying to find an addict to whom he/she can give a clean needle.
Imagine instead that this same poor fool was scooping addicts off the street to take them to a clean and sober rehab environment.
Oh, what ever is the matter with me?
I forgot.
We don't want to do that.
We want to help people stay stupid and hopeless.
We have a name for this that make it an honorable approach. Harm reduction.
How sick is the delusional person who has this "job?"
The Wise Investor
“Prognostications 2009"
For Immediate Release
Vancouver, BC (December 29, 2009):
- The global recession will continue in all corners of the world. Even China can slide into a rough patch. Commodity prices, like oil, will gravitate to lower lows. Hefty corporate losses will continue.
- President elect, Barak Obama will inherit a mess. The expectations of him and his team are beyond reach. His approach will be different. Look for the “Obama bounce” in the markets. Reality will set in when investors realize he can only deliver partially.
- Lower prices and interest rates won’t be sufficient temptation for cashless consumers to loosen their purse strings and incur more debt. Big ticket items, like autos, will struggle heavily. Keep a keen eye on the viability of commercial real estate.
- Governments will spend more taxpayer money they don’t have on additional wasteful workouts, bailouts and other projects. Government deficits will balloon trying to shore up disappearing jobs.
- Get used to shrunken automakers. Before they do, they will ask for more assistance. Nobody should be surprised that the loans they’re getting won’t come back to taxpayer coffers.
- Corporate earnings will soften. The spectre of more layoffs, mortgage defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcies will fuel added turmoil. Weak US financials will continue on the ropes. Finding new capital to replenish their balance sheets will be job one.
- Conventional wisdom has the second half of 2009 getting better, but it may take longer. While stocks seem like screaming buys, cheap doesn’t always equal value. Watch for market rallies that don’t stick. Not everything is a golden opportunity.
- There is always an optimistic side to economics. For instance, housing affordability will continue to improve. At least, that will help first time buyers. Another is more responsible lending practises.
Stay simple. Cash will be king. Allocate it slowly and methodically within your well-designed game plan. Make decisions based on fact and reason. Never on emotion.
No investing strategy I know has you making all your moves in one year. So, keep your priorities straight. Remember that your investing is a marathon, not a sprint. Slow and steady gets you there.
Be on the lookout for market sentiment to change one day. I can’t tell when, but until then, tread carefully. Very carefully.
Your comments are welcome.
Adrian Mastracci
Portfolio Manager, R.F.P.
KCM Wealth Management Inc.
"Fee-Only" Portfolio Managers & Financial Advisors
Suite 1500, Box 1078, 885 West Georgia Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6C 3E8
Tel: (604) 739-4500 Fax: (604) 739-0234
E-mail: kcm@kcmwealth.com Website:
Voices From the American Front Lines
The following is taken from "Crooks & Liars," a website which I peruse every morning. The text itself originated on a blog...follow the trail here...
I do not live or work in the USA.
I have had a ringside seat to the economic downturn this year. It is not an abstraction to me. The folks at the bottom are always the first to feel the pinch, when it comes. Clients of the agency I work at come through our doors every day requesting assistance with basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter and medications. As the year has progressed and New York State has chosen to repeatedly victimize its most vulnerable citizens, it has become more difficult to help people meet these needs. I have visited food banks with empty shelves, been told clients were ineligible for help when I knew they were and had to challenge these decisions. I have sat with clients while their applications for public assistance were reviewed by fraud investigators at social services. Our local social services department actually hired fraud investigators at the same time that it was laying off child protective workers demonstrating conclusively where our values lie and how genuinely mean spirited we are as a people. At the federal level Social Security routinely denies people eligible for benefits in the hopes that they will not reapply. Many people who receive benefits must hire a lawyer before social security will concede that they are indeed eligible. As the resources have become more limited, the level of scrutiny and inhumanity has risen accordingly.
I have, of course read about the rising unemployment numbers and the ensuing uptick in applicants for public assistance and food stamps nationwide like everyone else. It seems the chickens of Bill Clinton's (Best moderate Republican president ever)welfare reform are finally coming home to roost. We always knew that the flaw of his plan was an economy without jobs and here we are. The reform has no provision for an unemployment rate like we are experiencing now. Once again, our policy in practice serves to punish most harshly children and the elderly. Perhaps, it is time to repeal the child labor laws and begin allowing them to work 12 hour days again.
For nearly 30 years we have done our best to dismantle the safety net for the poor and struggling among us. I keep praying that we have reached the end of this folly. At 42, these policies are what I have known my entire work life. I dream about social service programs and rules that would treat people like human beings, rather than as an undesirable applicant to be culled out. I want so badly for us as a nation to stop punishing people for being poor, or elderly or a child of poor people. This holiday season was hellish as I watched scores of our clients navigate the realities of a holiday with nothing but further grinding poverty. Some days I am just weary from the strain of witnessing the suffering that goes on around me. It takes a toll that is more than physical, it eats away at the soul to see people ask for so little and receive far less.
As I contemplate how to pry a few dollars from these systems designed to humiliate and degrade my clients, already struggling with being social outcasts, chronic illness, drug addiction and mental illness I sigh audibly. I read of billion dollar bailouts and disappearing pallettes of cash as I ponder how to help a family with $400.00 so they will not be homeless in three days. I am so very tired.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
The Prosecco Wars
I love prosecco. (Pro-say-co)
And that's saying a mouthful, because I am basically a non-drinker. Can't get through a glass of beer or wine. Never drink hard liquor.
But, ah, prosecco...
Prosecco is that sparkling champagne-like drink from Venice that begins almost every evening in Venice. It is inexpensive (Here in Vancouver, you might pay as much as $16 for a bottle.), doesn't leave you with a champagne headache and magically makes everything seem alright.
I know I sound like a true junkie. But understand that I may drink this elixir once every three months and I certainly don't drink enough to become even mildly intoxicated.
Now, prosecco is in an authenticity battle.
People all over the world are making variations of it and marketing it in the strangest ways.
Check out the NY Times story this morning, and then buy a bottle FROM VENICE ONLY and enjoy with friends and loved ones over dinner.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Snowed In - Fed Up
Let's admit it.
The one good thing about this weather is the quiet.
Trudge through the sludge and snow to your nearest shopping district, as I have every day this week, and you hear........ well, almost nothing.
It's quite wonderful.
Very few cars or buses, just the usual crazy with no lights and a big American car with rear-wheel drive and summer tires. Don't you love it?
Everything else about this weather is tiresome and downright scary.
Will my pipes freeze? Will the roof or skylights collapse? Will I be killed or knocked out by falling snow, ice or tree limbs? Two very large branches of the pine tree in my front yard are already down.
Will the floods be inevitable?
Will the power be knocked out, thus making my home a dark icicle?
So far, so good.... so far...
As for the people who are rushing up to Grouse Mountain, well, I can't even get my car out from the snow-plowed little home its adopted two blocks away.
And the thousands stranded at Metrotown, who asked you to go shopping? Who asked you to leave home?
Yesterday, I saw two guts with shovels working diligently on clearing their car from its igloo and I thought, "Where are you going?"
Huddling, cuddling, cacooning...
Having said that, today, after a hearty breakfast, I will actually attempt to rescue my car and return the three movies I rented from the store that is about five kilometres from here.
As for the new Batman movie that I rented last night from the local video shop, I am returning it half watched. Puleeeze...Quel Dreque!
Boxing Day
By the way and apropos of absolutely nothing, I caught a few moments of the late night news on two local television channels.
Both carried stories about all the lovely people who lined up at midnight on a cold, snowy Christmas night and waited until the stores opened to buy handbags or whatever at Boxing Day sale prices.
Are there folks anywhere on earth dumber, more pitiable than these?
Outside of Fendi or D&G, do these sorry excuses have a life?
This is what universal education hath wrought?
Yikes.
Back to my tree.
Warm House, No Heating Bill!
Further to the post below on Walt Patterson's essay on "Managing Energy Wrong," read this exciting piece in today's NY Times about managing energy right!
How would you like - especially on a day like today - to live in a house with no heating system?
And stay warm and cozy!
When do we start building these here?
Managing Energy Wrong
My good friend of some 47 years now, Walt Patterson, is a renowned scientist, who writes and lectures world-wide on Energy and its managment.
I direct you to his website to learn a little more about him, but in particular to draw you to read his latest piece (among many, many books and countless articles and papers over the years), called, "Managing Energy Wrong."
In this essay, Walt has nailed perfectly, and in detail, the way governments and investors, looking always for the Big Solution, the Silver Bullet, create Top Down policies that don't work, when they should be looking to the field for Bottom Up answers that are more complex and that take more effort, but do work.
Read it and comment here please.
Victor on Eyeless in Gaza
You need spend only a few days almost anywhere in Europe to sense how deeply the media there have demonized Israel. Here is Victor's response to the latest hate literature that passes for journalism.
Victor is not a Jew.
The Israeli raids on Gaza top the newscasts. I have listened to two
reports this morning which inevitably add that some of the dead
"include children." Like we couldn't assume that.
In the last war with Hamas in Lebanon, Israel made a foolish mistake
and appears to have learned from it. The mistake was assuming that
careful, so-called surgical strikes would win media support on the
basis that civilian targets were sparred. Instead, Reuters performed
their time worn tactic of paying kids to pose as rock throwers and
then sent these cliched photos to a Pavlovian world media. Agence
France Presse photographed the same wailing Lebanese woman at three
separate sites. Hamas declared a pr victory. Enraptured Lebanese
awarded heroic Hamas with parliamentary seats.
This time, Israel has dumped the failed surgical strike strategy and
bombed Hamas mercilessly in their own back yard. It is doubtful that
Hamas rocketeers are looking heroic to citizens who have seen a living
hell brought to their neighbourhoods thanks to the the deadly games of
militants. Yes, the world community (read feckless Europeans) will
condemn Israel but they would have done the same thing had Israel
dropped food baskets and accidently killed a donkey.
I also think this is a message to Obama. People have assumed that
because he has hired a pro-Israeli psychopath, Rahm Emanuel, as his
Chief of Staff, that this signals a pro Israeli bias in Obama's
administration. That would require classic ignorance of the American
media (Israel' s arch enemy and Obama's fan club) not to mention the
deep anti-Jewish currents among segments of Obama's followers. ( Jesse
Jackson's son was Obama's co-campaign manager and as we all know,
Jesse is the black equivalent of Michael Richards when it comes to
anti-Jewish rants.)
None of which is to celebrate violence. Violence is a vile certainty
of the human condition. It is, I fear, a permanent reality in the
middle east. It will not disappear with lofty Presidential speeches,
UN calls for restraint or yet another photo op cease fire. It is an
endless blood war between two deeply disparate cultures.
Victor Godin
Friday, December 26, 2008
Gutter Play
If you thought Prime Minister Stephen Harper's attempt to remove government financing for political parties was ugly and entirely partisan, then what do you make of Premier Gordon Campbell's new law restricting political advertising?
This is transparently aimed at unions, who actually have war chests available and at the ready for the May 12th election.
The problem is that TV campaigns have to be planned months in advance and nobody knows this better than Campbell.
I am no fan of the BCTF, but I must give them full credit for challenging this law in court and for getting to the press to keep this issue before the public.
The BC Supreme Court is taking its royal time on this attempt by the unions to have the law declared unconstitutional and its very delay aids and abets what should be seen as a Campbell law bordering itself on criminality.
The law is an offense to common sense and democratic process.
I don't care how many photo ops the premier takes of himself hugging bantam hockey players, he's a thug.
Wrong Question
A man dressed as Santa Claus knocks on the door of a house in Covina, California on Christmas Eve. When a young girl answers the door, the man shoots her in the face. He walks into a large family gathering and begins shooting indiscriminately. He then sets fire to the house and leaves.
By the time he is finished, he has killed eight people.
Finally, he drives to another location and kills himself.
Now...
The young CNN reporter, putting on as grave a mask as he can muster, desperately trying to hide his overwhelming excitement that he is at last on network television and that it took nine deaths to get him there, intones deeply, "But the real question, Robin, is 'Why?'"
No it isn't.
Why is that the real question?
Let's suppose we learn the why? What will we know? What can we do about it?
The man lost his job. He had a sore tummy. His girl friend wouldn't fellate him. Wal-Mart wouldn't cash his pay check.
We could do something about this?
Psychiatrists would help him in weekly anger management courses?
The Why is completely irrelevant and serves only to help the writers for the back story they will need when they make the soon-to-be-released TV Mini-Drama, "Santa Rampage."
No.
There is only one useful question here and it is the one that will not be addressed.
Why is it so easy for Americans to buy guns?
Go Explain
NASHVILLE — Although the number of uninsured and the cost of coverage have ballooned under his watch, President Bush leaves office with a health care legacy in bricks and mortar: he has doubled federal financing for community health centers, enabling the creation or expansion of 1,297 clinics in medically underserved areas.
That's the first paragraph from a NY Times story this morning.
Now, read the rest to see the challenges facing the Obama watch and millions of Americans.
Then, get down in the snow and thank the Great Flake for our flawed but wonderful health care program here in Canerda.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Slick... and Obscene
There are several conceits at the center of Mike Nichol’s movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War,” that border on the obscene.
The first is that one America man sees human suffering and thus infuses the hardships of others with meaning. Without his personal “moment,” the cruelties of the world are mute and moot.
Specifically, Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) visits Afghanistan, which is being pummeled by Soviet airships. Then he visits the refugee camps, talks to the limbless children and witnesses first hand the horrors of real life away from the flesh pits of Washington and Houston.
But it is not the wounded and impoverished Afghanis for whom we are asked to shed a tear.
Here is the first conceit. It is the now ennobled Yankee we are encouraged to champion. We can tell that this is our mission because the orchestra swells in rising crescendos of hope and glory, and the congressman covers his eyes in empathetic pain. This is an obscenity.
The second is that music score.
The next time the trumpets blare and the holy choirs rise on high, honorable Afghani peasants, armed now with covertly supplied Israeli anti-helicopter and anti-tank weapons, slaughter Soviet soldiers with the same relentless efficiency that the Soviets had previously mowed down the women and children of Afghanistan. Were we supposed to cheer?
The last time the music score offends is in the crowning moments of the film, when the good Congressman is being given a medal. His co-plotters, a wealthy Texas woman (Julia Roberts) and a CIA/FBI operative (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), look on in teary co-conspirator admiration.
The music here and the moment are pure “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” I fully expected Hanks to melt into Richard Dreyfus, much like John Travolta and Nicholas Cage kept doing in “Face Off,” until you couldn’t tell – or care – who was blowing up whom.
And care is important here.
In spite of terrific work from three terrific actors and Hollywood mega-stars, and direction from the legendary Nichols (“The Graduate,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff?” and “Catch-22”), there is nothing one can possibly care about in this flick.
The script and dialogue (Aaron Sorkin) is very fast and clever and witty and fast and clever and witty.
Now, if you want an experience even more execrable than watching the movie, try sitting through the "special features" on the DVD and listening to the actors discussing how great they all are and how important this trifle really is meant to be.
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, the great British playwright, actor, screen writer and director has died. He was 78, and a Nobel prize winner.
The rich and extensive NY Times bio can be read here.
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