Water is a big, big, issue in California. Agriculture and residential use have been battling for years. It takes a lot of water to make the desert bloom.
We no longer draw the water we used to from the Colorado river, and the snow pack in the Sierras has been declining. Reservoirs are frequently not getting refilled during the winter months. California does not have an endless supply of fresh water. Now there is another player in the game, and that is Hydraulic Fracturing.
Much of the truth of the damage caused by Fracking is hidden behind settlement agreements that forbid the victims from revealing the injuries to their property and their bodies. If you go here you can see quite a number of documented cases. While I would not Fracking anywhere near water I was going to use to drink, or that would be used to water crops, that is not the issue I am addressing here.
California simply cannot afford to divert their shirking water supply away from agriculture and human consumption. Much of California is in fact desert. So here is my suggestion.
We need a ballot initiative that fresh water may not be diverted for the purposes of Hydraulic Fracturing in the state of California. Any water used for that purpose must be desalinized sea water. I specify desalinized because we do not want all of that salt injected into our groundwater (the evidence is clear that the water does end up in people's wells, and the money they have paid out to shut people up should be enough proof to convince any sane person).
So if they want to Frack, let them get their own water. Simple.
Now, who knows how to get a measure like this on the ballot?
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Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Sunday, November 17, 2013
The 'Independent Contractor' scam and a return to 19th Century values
For better than 20 years I have been a one-man business. I have a corporation with one shareholder and one employee, and they are the same person. I sell my time by the hour and I have done quite well for myself.
My client writes a check to my company for my services. My company writes me a paycheck with all the appropriate taxes withheld. My current client has certain stipulations in their standard contract, requiring my company to pay any employees a living wage, to offer health insurance, the sorts of things that responsible companies do for their employees.
But there is a flip side to all this, another side of the 'independent contractor' world. That is the world where that label is used to absolve a business of any responsibility, pay a sub-minimum wage, and essentially treat the people who work for them, who are generating their income, as disposable pieces of equipment.
A number of years ago, we took in a foster child. He is 24 years old now, and has recently returned. He was out of work and we are letting him stay while he gets on his feet. He took a job for Postmates, a delivery service in San Francisco (and elsewhere). He delivers stuff all over the city on a bicycle. Except, it isn't exactly a job, he is considered and 'Independent Contractor'.
In order to work for them, you have to use their app. It only runs on the iPhone, so if you don't have one they will lease you one. They set the prices, not the riders. In order to get any work, you have to commit to specific times. If you have not committed to a specific time slot it is unlikely their software will offer you any deliveries. They, on the other hand make no commitment to you on any particular amount of work. His best days was a little over $129 working about 12 hours. His worst was a big zero.
Should you be injured on the job, well that's your problem. And if you should die at it (cyclists do get killed in the city), I am sure they will say all the right things as they wash their hands of the situation. You see, they expect loyalty, but that loyalty is one-sided.
Oh, and just to add insult to injury, they pay by EFT only, and then charge their riders for the transfer. Yes, it is a small charge, but if they were employees that would be illegal. At least in the state of California it would be, they also operate in a couple of other locations.
As I think about the arrangement, the working conditions of 19th century coal miners comes to mind. No they were not considered independent contractors, but the mine owners had the same level of concern for their employees, the same attitude, that this business model does. Management controls the working conditions, while the workers take the risks. Unlike the coal miners, their workers take both the physical risk, and the financial risk
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My client writes a check to my company for my services. My company writes me a paycheck with all the appropriate taxes withheld. My current client has certain stipulations in their standard contract, requiring my company to pay any employees a living wage, to offer health insurance, the sorts of things that responsible companies do for their employees.
But there is a flip side to all this, another side of the 'independent contractor' world. That is the world where that label is used to absolve a business of any responsibility, pay a sub-minimum wage, and essentially treat the people who work for them, who are generating their income, as disposable pieces of equipment.
A number of years ago, we took in a foster child. He is 24 years old now, and has recently returned. He was out of work and we are letting him stay while he gets on his feet. He took a job for Postmates, a delivery service in San Francisco (and elsewhere). He delivers stuff all over the city on a bicycle. Except, it isn't exactly a job, he is considered and 'Independent Contractor'.
In order to work for them, you have to use their app. It only runs on the iPhone, so if you don't have one they will lease you one. They set the prices, not the riders. In order to get any work, you have to commit to specific times. If you have not committed to a specific time slot it is unlikely their software will offer you any deliveries. They, on the other hand make no commitment to you on any particular amount of work. His best days was a little over $129 working about 12 hours. His worst was a big zero.
Should you be injured on the job, well that's your problem. And if you should die at it (cyclists do get killed in the city), I am sure they will say all the right things as they wash their hands of the situation. You see, they expect loyalty, but that loyalty is one-sided.
Oh, and just to add insult to injury, they pay by EFT only, and then charge their riders for the transfer. Yes, it is a small charge, but if they were employees that would be illegal. At least in the state of California it would be, they also operate in a couple of other locations.
As I think about the arrangement, the working conditions of 19th century coal miners comes to mind. No they were not considered independent contractors, but the mine owners had the same level of concern for their employees, the same attitude, that this business model does. Management controls the working conditions, while the workers take the risks. Unlike the coal miners, their workers take both the physical risk, and the financial risk
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Thursday, October 31, 2013
Small victories
I have written from time to time about driving the casual carpool. This happened yesterday.
I had a full car, and was on the carpool only on-ramp. A few car lengths ahead I saw someone stop, and try to force themselves into the left hand (the on-ramp has two lanes, that merge at the very top) lane. It held up traffic for a bit, until the driver managed to stick his nose between two cars, and make everyone wait until the lane change was accomplished.
There is no good reason to be changing lanes there, they are going to merge soon anyway. Except, it was a solo driver on the carpool on-ramp, and a highway patrolman was parked near the top of the ramp. The driver was trying to make it more difficult to be seen.
Shortly after, the highway patrolman was walking between the lanes of traffic. This was not a dangerous maneuver, the traffic was stop and go. He signaled to the right hand lane to stop, creating a gap. He pointed to the solo driver, signaling for him to turn into the hole created by the stopped traffic, and pull over.
We passed the car as the patrolman was at the car window, explaining to the driver the error of his ways. We all cheered as we drove by.
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I had a full car, and was on the carpool only on-ramp. A few car lengths ahead I saw someone stop, and try to force themselves into the left hand (the on-ramp has two lanes, that merge at the very top) lane. It held up traffic for a bit, until the driver managed to stick his nose between two cars, and make everyone wait until the lane change was accomplished.
There is no good reason to be changing lanes there, they are going to merge soon anyway. Except, it was a solo driver on the carpool on-ramp, and a highway patrolman was parked near the top of the ramp. The driver was trying to make it more difficult to be seen.
Shortly after, the highway patrolman was walking between the lanes of traffic. This was not a dangerous maneuver, the traffic was stop and go. He signaled to the right hand lane to stop, creating a gap. He pointed to the solo driver, signaling for him to turn into the hole created by the stopped traffic, and pull over.
We passed the car as the patrolman was at the car window, explaining to the driver the error of his ways. We all cheered as we drove by.
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Monday, October 14, 2013
A perfectly good electric motor
We use airbeds in our home. I don't sleep on one, but we do keep two or three around.
Between children and grandchildren, family gatherings can be a lot of people. More people than we have beds and couches for. I think for a few days in late spring there were twelve or thirteen extra people in the house. So out come the airbeds.
I have successfully patched airbeds with a leak, but kids just seem to have this deep seated need to make new leaks. I have one of those right next to me. It is fully inflated, standing up against a wall, unwilling to reveal where the latest (I have patched it twice previously) leak might be. I think this one is toast.
And that brings me back to the question I have been pondering. What to do with the pump?
It is a perfectly good pump, probably designed to last much longer than bed itself. It seems like there should be something to be done with it, that it could be re-purposed is some way.
I have a treasure chest full of cables and electronic components of one sort or another that I keep, I suppose it could go in there. But everything in there I have an idea of what I could use it for. The pump? Not a clue.
I have tried a few different google searches, and so far all the results have been about the PVC that most airbeds are made from, and the difficulty of recycling that. It seems like there should be some useful purpose for a perfectly goods electric pump.
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Between children and grandchildren, family gatherings can be a lot of people. More people than we have beds and couches for. I think for a few days in late spring there were twelve or thirteen extra people in the house. So out come the airbeds.
I have successfully patched airbeds with a leak, but kids just seem to have this deep seated need to make new leaks. I have one of those right next to me. It is fully inflated, standing up against a wall, unwilling to reveal where the latest (I have patched it twice previously) leak might be. I think this one is toast.
And that brings me back to the question I have been pondering. What to do with the pump?
It is a perfectly good pump, probably designed to last much longer than bed itself. It seems like there should be something to be done with it, that it could be re-purposed is some way.
I have a treasure chest full of cables and electronic components of one sort or another that I keep, I suppose it could go in there. But everything in there I have an idea of what I could use it for. The pump? Not a clue.
I have tried a few different google searches, and so far all the results have been about the PVC that most airbeds are made from, and the difficulty of recycling that. It seems like there should be some useful purpose for a perfectly goods electric pump.
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Sunday, September 15, 2013
There is something you can do
When I commute into the city, I drive the casual carpool. I pick up riders at the Park and Ride in the morning, and on Beal Street in the afternoon. On the return trip I use the carpool on ramp, and it is one of those ramps with two lanes that merge into one. It also has three lanes feeding into two at the beginning of the ramp. So those of us coming from the Beal Street pickup point have to merge twice.
Every now and then some asshole in the lane to my right will tailgate the car in front of him, making the merge impossible. They refuse to let a car merge in front of them. Yes, this is rude behavior, and I try to never reward rude behavior, but in these circumstances there is nothing I can do. The key word of the phrase is 'I', there is nothing that I can do. That does not mean there is nothing to be done.
As we were approaching the entrance to the freeway, I noticed it happening again. Not to me this time, but to the car to my left. The car following me was right on my ass, doing everything they could to prevent the car in the other lane from merging. So I did something about it.
Although the white line was gone, the lane was still wide enough for two cars. I moved to the right, as far as I could. I slowed down (hard to slow down much more, it was stop and go already). I did that until the car on my left realized I was making space for them, and they pulled up beside me.
They were not even with me, they were about a third of a way from parallel. It was enough. I slipped in front of them and they followed me onto the freeway. There was nothing that they could have done about it, but there was something I could. So I did.
You could too.
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Every now and then some asshole in the lane to my right will tailgate the car in front of him, making the merge impossible. They refuse to let a car merge in front of them. Yes, this is rude behavior, and I try to never reward rude behavior, but in these circumstances there is nothing I can do. The key word of the phrase is 'I', there is nothing that I can do. That does not mean there is nothing to be done.
As we were approaching the entrance to the freeway, I noticed it happening again. Not to me this time, but to the car to my left. The car following me was right on my ass, doing everything they could to prevent the car in the other lane from merging. So I did something about it.
Although the white line was gone, the lane was still wide enough for two cars. I moved to the right, as far as I could. I slowed down (hard to slow down much more, it was stop and go already). I did that until the car on my left realized I was making space for them, and they pulled up beside me.
They were not even with me, they were about a third of a way from parallel. It was enough. I slipped in front of them and they followed me onto the freeway. There was nothing that they could have done about it, but there was something I could. So I did.
You could too.
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Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Brief thoughts on SNAP
There are a lot of people who work full time, but qualify for food stamps. That, all by itself, is a damning indictment of their employers, and our society at large. And there are others (Walmart comes to mind) who intentionally hire multiple part time employees to fill a single full time position, in order to avoid having to treat those employees as human beings.
So the business model is to pay wages that nobody can live on, and let the taxpayer pick up the tab for the difference. And we do, with food stamps, WICK, section 8 housing, and the rest of the taxpayer funded safety net.
And the right (particularly those who suck their livings off the public tit) has be demonizing these people as somehow less moral, less deserving, less human, than the rest of us, because their employer is an asshole. To some degree this works, a lot of people buy into the 'welfare queen' fiction. But too many still notice that is the employer who denies people a living wage who is really at fault.
Of course the moral solution is to raise the minimum wage, and to enforce that labor laws for businesses like Walmart, so that the employees are actually able to organize without retaliation and intimidation. The right of course would never buy into that, because their constituency does not include people who do actual work.
But fear not, they do have a solution! Kick people off SNAP! Sure their children will be even more malnourished than they are now, but the workers will not be living on the public safety net. No more evil employers!
Don't you wish you had thought of this?
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So the business model is to pay wages that nobody can live on, and let the taxpayer pick up the tab for the difference. And we do, with food stamps, WICK, section 8 housing, and the rest of the taxpayer funded safety net.
And the right (particularly those who suck their livings off the public tit) has be demonizing these people as somehow less moral, less deserving, less human, than the rest of us, because their employer is an asshole. To some degree this works, a lot of people buy into the 'welfare queen' fiction. But too many still notice that is the employer who denies people a living wage who is really at fault.
Of course the moral solution is to raise the minimum wage, and to enforce that labor laws for businesses like Walmart, so that the employees are actually able to organize without retaliation and intimidation. The right of course would never buy into that, because their constituency does not include people who do actual work.
But fear not, they do have a solution! Kick people off SNAP! Sure their children will be even more malnourished than they are now, but the workers will not be living on the public safety net. No more evil employers!
Don't you wish you had thought of this?
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Friday, August 23, 2013
I was reminded today...
why it is, I will almost never yield the right-of-way to a taxi.
I was driving down Mission Street during rush hour. Traffic was not awful, but it was not light either. I was stopped at a traffic light. The cross street was a two way street, I think it was 4th but it could have been 5th or 3rd. It was a block from the Metreon.
A taxi was approaching in the right lane, and as the car in front of me was not tailgating, he managed to wedge his nose into the space between him and the car in front of him. When the light changed and the lead car entered the intersection, the taxi finished pulling into the lane and promptly signaled for a left turn.
Of course, nobody else made the light. This is Mission Street at rush hour, the taxi was not going to be able to make the turn until the light changed. I knew it, the driver in front of me knew it, the taxi driver knew it.
So he knew before he did that he was not going to make his turn any faster, but he would block anyone else from making the light. There was nobody behind me when he got there, he could have easily pulled in there. But that did not give him the opportunity to be an asshole.
What can we do about it, other than encourage everyone to tailgate? How about this.
If you are in a taxi, and the driver does something like that, something rude and completely unnecessary. Don't give him a tip. And then, when you pay him, tell him why you didn't give him a tip.
A long time ago, I read a quote from Larry Ellison. I do not know if it was a real quote, or something made up by someone who didn't like him. The quote was, "It is not enough to win, somebody has to lose". But my point is that there are enough people with that attitude, that taxi drivers will still get tips from people who think being an asshole is manly. So maybe it will not change anything.
But wouldn't it feel great?
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I was driving down Mission Street during rush hour. Traffic was not awful, but it was not light either. I was stopped at a traffic light. The cross street was a two way street, I think it was 4th but it could have been 5th or 3rd. It was a block from the Metreon.
A taxi was approaching in the right lane, and as the car in front of me was not tailgating, he managed to wedge his nose into the space between him and the car in front of him. When the light changed and the lead car entered the intersection, the taxi finished pulling into the lane and promptly signaled for a left turn.
Of course, nobody else made the light. This is Mission Street at rush hour, the taxi was not going to be able to make the turn until the light changed. I knew it, the driver in front of me knew it, the taxi driver knew it.
So he knew before he did that he was not going to make his turn any faster, but he would block anyone else from making the light. There was nobody behind me when he got there, he could have easily pulled in there. But that did not give him the opportunity to be an asshole.
What can we do about it, other than encourage everyone to tailgate? How about this.
If you are in a taxi, and the driver does something like that, something rude and completely unnecessary. Don't give him a tip. And then, when you pay him, tell him why you didn't give him a tip.
A long time ago, I read a quote from Larry Ellison. I do not know if it was a real quote, or something made up by someone who didn't like him. The quote was, "It is not enough to win, somebody has to lose". But my point is that there are enough people with that attitude, that taxi drivers will still get tips from people who think being an asshole is manly. So maybe it will not change anything.
But wouldn't it feel great?
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Thursday, August 8, 2013
The other shoe
So now we know that the target was not only terrorism. It may have started that way in the minds of some., but that NSA data is finding it's way into other hands.
The DEA and the IRS are getting this stuff. Does anyone care to wager that this is not the last recipient that we will find out about.
To paint a broad brush that everyone is a potential terrorist, and therefore all of their electronic communications are fair game, but only for 'national security' of course, was already a stretch. But of course it was never going to stop there.
And of course it will not stop with the DEA and the IRS either. We are all suspects now, and for the moment it is about whether or not we may be committing a crime. The more people get there hand on this information, it will be used for more and different purposes.
Just the way San Diego Mayor Bob Filner used information he gained as a member of congress to target women who had been victims of sexual harassment and rape, to help select his own targets, so you will find others with access to the NSA data using it for their own purposes.
Got any secrets? Not anymore!
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The DEA and the IRS are getting this stuff. Does anyone care to wager that this is not the last recipient that we will find out about.
To paint a broad brush that everyone is a potential terrorist, and therefore all of their electronic communications are fair game, but only for 'national security' of course, was already a stretch. But of course it was never going to stop there.
And of course it will not stop with the DEA and the IRS either. We are all suspects now, and for the moment it is about whether or not we may be committing a crime. The more people get there hand on this information, it will be used for more and different purposes.
Just the way San Diego Mayor Bob Filner used information he gained as a member of congress to target women who had been victims of sexual harassment and rape, to help select his own targets, so you will find others with access to the NSA data using it for their own purposes.
Got any secrets? Not anymore!
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Sunday, June 2, 2013
Who stood up for you, who stood up for the corporations
There has been a lot written about the Monsanto Protection Act, that was slipped into Farm Bill in a house committee before passage. If you don't know much about it, you can read about it here, here, and here. Opposition has appeared from both the left and the right on this one, but that has not stopped Republicans from lining up to support it.
When Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced an amendment to strip that from the bill in the Senate, it was blocked by Ayotte (R-NH), Burr (R-NC), Coburn (R-OK), Crapo (R-ID), Cruz (R-TX), Enzi (R-WY), Fischer (R-NE), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Heller (R-NV), Inhofe (R-OK), Johnson (R-WI), Kirk (R-IL), Lee (R-UT), McCain (R-AZ), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Rubio (R-FL), Scott (R-SC), Tester (D-MT), Toomey (R-PA), Vitter (R-LA), Flake (R-AZ),and Moran (R-KS). Yes, there was one Democrat on the list too.
There was another attempt to amend the bill, one that would have allowed individual states to have GMO labeling requirements. This amendment (refer to SEC. 12213 on this page) would protect states from being sued for enacting DMO labeling laws. The amendment was resoundingly defeated, and the opposition included a number of surprising names.
Voting against were Alexander (R-TN), Ayotte (R-NH), Baldwin (D-WI), Barrasso (R-WY), Baucus (D-MT), Blunt (R-MO), Boozman (R-AR), Brown (D-OH), Burr (R-NC), Carper (D-DE), Casey (D-PA), Chambliss (R-GA), Coats (R-IN), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Collins (R-ME), Coons (D-DE), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Cowan (D-MA), Crapo (R-ID), Cruz (R-TX), Donnelly (D-IN), Durbin (D-IL), Enzi (R-WY), Fischer (R-NE), Franken (D-MN), Gillibrand (D-NY), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Hagan (D-NC), Harkin (D-IA), Hatch (R-UT), Heitkamp (D-ND), Heller (R-NV), Hoeven (R-ND), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Johnson (D-SD), Johnson (R-WI), Kaine (D-VA), Kirk (R-IL), Klobuchar (D-MN), Landrieu (D-LA), Lee (R-UT), Levin (D-MI), McCain (R-AZ), McCaskill (D-MO), McConnell (R-KY), Menendez (D-NJ), Moran (R-KS), Nelson (D-FL), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Pryor (D-AR), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Rubio (R-FL), Scott (R-SC), Sessions (R-AL), Shaheen (D-NH), Shelby (R-AL), Stabenow (D-MI), Thune (R-SD), Toomey (R-PA), Udall (D-CO), Vitter (R-LA), Warner (D-VA), Warren (D-MA), Wicker (R-MS).
Now the bill has not yet cleared the Senate, it will be taken up again after the June recess. You know who they are now, time to hold their feet to the fire.
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When Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced an amendment to strip that from the bill in the Senate, it was blocked by Ayotte (R-NH), Burr (R-NC), Coburn (R-OK), Crapo (R-ID), Cruz (R-TX), Enzi (R-WY), Fischer (R-NE), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Heller (R-NV), Inhofe (R-OK), Johnson (R-WI), Kirk (R-IL), Lee (R-UT), McCain (R-AZ), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Rubio (R-FL), Scott (R-SC), Tester (D-MT), Toomey (R-PA), Vitter (R-LA), Flake (R-AZ),and Moran (R-KS). Yes, there was one Democrat on the list too.
There was another attempt to amend the bill, one that would have allowed individual states to have GMO labeling requirements. This amendment (refer to SEC. 12213 on this page) would protect states from being sued for enacting DMO labeling laws. The amendment was resoundingly defeated, and the opposition included a number of surprising names.
Voting against were Alexander (R-TN), Ayotte (R-NH), Baldwin (D-WI), Barrasso (R-WY), Baucus (D-MT), Blunt (R-MO), Boozman (R-AR), Brown (D-OH), Burr (R-NC), Carper (D-DE), Casey (D-PA), Chambliss (R-GA), Coats (R-IN), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Collins (R-ME), Coons (D-DE), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Cowan (D-MA), Crapo (R-ID), Cruz (R-TX), Donnelly (D-IN), Durbin (D-IL), Enzi (R-WY), Fischer (R-NE), Franken (D-MN), Gillibrand (D-NY), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Hagan (D-NC), Harkin (D-IA), Hatch (R-UT), Heitkamp (D-ND), Heller (R-NV), Hoeven (R-ND), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Johnson (D-SD), Johnson (R-WI), Kaine (D-VA), Kirk (R-IL), Klobuchar (D-MN), Landrieu (D-LA), Lee (R-UT), Levin (D-MI), McCain (R-AZ), McCaskill (D-MO), McConnell (R-KY), Menendez (D-NJ), Moran (R-KS), Nelson (D-FL), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Pryor (D-AR), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Rubio (R-FL), Scott (R-SC), Sessions (R-AL), Shaheen (D-NH), Shelby (R-AL), Stabenow (D-MI), Thune (R-SD), Toomey (R-PA), Udall (D-CO), Vitter (R-LA), Warner (D-VA), Warren (D-MA), Wicker (R-MS).
Now the bill has not yet cleared the Senate, it will be taken up again after the June recess. You know who they are now, time to hold their feet to the fire.
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Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Try this and watch Corporate America run away from Citizens United
OK, I know Americans have short attention spans so here is a brief recap.
A little after 6 in the evening, on September 9th, 2010, there was an explosion in the California city of San Bruno. A gas line exploded, killing 8 people and destroying 38 homes. The owner of the was pipeline was Pacific Gas and Electric. It was later revealed that 100 million dollars that was supposed to be used for safety operations was diverted to executive pay, including bonuses.
The California Public Utilities Commission is considering levying a 2.25 billion dollar fine against Pacific Gas and Electric. That is exactly the wrong thing to do.
They correct thing to do? Charge Pacific Gas and Electric with negligent homicide, or even first degree murder.
The Citizen's United decision says corporations are people. If people commit murder, they go to jail, even face the death penalty. Here is the perfect case to put a lie to that.
The San Bruno district attorney should be filing murder changers against Pacific Gas and Electric. It was their job to ensure the safety of the pipeline, they had the money to do it, they used the money for something else.
When people are killed in a bank robbery, it is first degree murder. It does not matter if the robbers planned to kill someone. They walked into a bank with guns prepared to kill someone.
This is the same. The corporation stole money, and in the process, and as a consequence, people died. If a corporation is a person then that corporation must face the same penalties as any other person would face.
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A little after 6 in the evening, on September 9th, 2010, there was an explosion in the California city of San Bruno. A gas line exploded, killing 8 people and destroying 38 homes. The owner of the was pipeline was Pacific Gas and Electric. It was later revealed that 100 million dollars that was supposed to be used for safety operations was diverted to executive pay, including bonuses.
The California Public Utilities Commission is considering levying a 2.25 billion dollar fine against Pacific Gas and Electric. That is exactly the wrong thing to do.
They correct thing to do? Charge Pacific Gas and Electric with negligent homicide, or even first degree murder.
The Citizen's United decision says corporations are people. If people commit murder, they go to jail, even face the death penalty. Here is the perfect case to put a lie to that.
The San Bruno district attorney should be filing murder changers against Pacific Gas and Electric. It was their job to ensure the safety of the pipeline, they had the money to do it, they used the money for something else.
When people are killed in a bank robbery, it is first degree murder. It does not matter if the robbers planned to kill someone. They walked into a bank with guns prepared to kill someone.
This is the same. The corporation stole money, and in the process, and as a consequence, people died. If a corporation is a person then that corporation must face the same penalties as any other person would face.
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Nostalgia for the days of dial-up
Remember 2400 baud modems? Many of you, of course, will not. But even so, you are experiencing the same thing we did back then. I am talking about waiting for pages to load.
As bandwidth has grown, so has the density of pages. Many pages have far more advertisement density than content density. So much so that it takes as much time to load the pages as it did back in the days of 2400 baud.
I think that Yahoo email is a perfect example. Try opening their latest and greatest email without at least a T1 line. More than three quarters of the time I try it, the page gets so bogged down in loading flashy ads that the messenger app never does load. Or the the inbox only half loads. You can see the emails but you cannot select them.
And I do not mean to single out poor Yahoo as the only culprit. There seem to be more offenders than not these days. How many articles never get read because we just get tired of waiting for the damned page to load and so we close the window and move on?
We have all this bandwidth band but we are still waiting for pages to load. If you want your content to draw eyeballs to the ads, then build your pages so the content loads first! Because if all I see are ads and the content still hasn't loaded, I'm leaving.
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As bandwidth has grown, so has the density of pages. Many pages have far more advertisement density than content density. So much so that it takes as much time to load the pages as it did back in the days of 2400 baud.
I think that Yahoo email is a perfect example. Try opening their latest and greatest email without at least a T1 line. More than three quarters of the time I try it, the page gets so bogged down in loading flashy ads that the messenger app never does load. Or the the inbox only half loads. You can see the emails but you cannot select them.
And I do not mean to single out poor Yahoo as the only culprit. There seem to be more offenders than not these days. How many articles never get read because we just get tired of waiting for the damned page to load and so we close the window and move on?
We have all this bandwidth band but we are still waiting for pages to load. If you want your content to draw eyeballs to the ads, then build your pages so the content loads first! Because if all I see are ads and the content still hasn't loaded, I'm leaving.
Tweet
Friday, March 15, 2013
Yes, he really is that evil
I just got through watching the Showtime documentary The world according to Dick Cheney. It reaffirmed every bad thing that I ever thought about him. He really was a Svengali, leading the hapless Bush around by the nose for his entire first term. But what is worse is, he remains happy in the damage he inflicted upon the United States.
He fundamentally changed this country from one where the rule of law mattered, to one where only expediency matters. It know longer matters whether we are the good guys or the bad guys, as long as we win, within his warped definition of winning. That Iran has become the major power in the region as a result of our crippling the only nation strong enough to counter them? When asked about regrets, he said he would do it all over again. While that was never addressed in the interviews, I am sure his solution would be still another war.
That he squandered all the sympathy and good will we had acquired after the September 11th attacks, creating a whole new generation of enemies? Apparently no regrets there either. He turned the United States from the beacon of hope we have tried to represent to the world to the school bully shaking down the other kids for their lunch money. The concept that his actions created more danger in the world, not less, is beyond his understanding.
He set a standard, a tone, that still exists. Laws are for the little people to follow, the lash that keeps them behind the plow, while the powerful may ignore them with impunity. That is true in this country which has become a Security State, and it is true in how this country behaves in relation to it's international obligations.
He argued with Bush for Scooter Libby to be pardoned, but he would never come clean, that Libby was only trying to protect him. His loyalty only goes so far. A Chicken Hawk to the end.
While the program presented some opposing thoughts to a number of Cheney's views, there were very few tough questions asked, and few challenges to his assertions. Yet despite the kid gloves with which the former vice president was handled, he still came off as an soulless ideologue who was uninterested in any fact which might conflict with what he had made up his mind he wanted to do.
It appears to me that in many ways he accomplished his main goal, which was to mold the United States into his own image. He removed morality and justice from the equation, making us mirror images of the evil we found ourselves confronted with back on September 11th. Will we ever recover?
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He fundamentally changed this country from one where the rule of law mattered, to one where only expediency matters. It know longer matters whether we are the good guys or the bad guys, as long as we win, within his warped definition of winning. That Iran has become the major power in the region as a result of our crippling the only nation strong enough to counter them? When asked about regrets, he said he would do it all over again. While that was never addressed in the interviews, I am sure his solution would be still another war.
That he squandered all the sympathy and good will we had acquired after the September 11th attacks, creating a whole new generation of enemies? Apparently no regrets there either. He turned the United States from the beacon of hope we have tried to represent to the world to the school bully shaking down the other kids for their lunch money. The concept that his actions created more danger in the world, not less, is beyond his understanding.
He set a standard, a tone, that still exists. Laws are for the little people to follow, the lash that keeps them behind the plow, while the powerful may ignore them with impunity. That is true in this country which has become a Security State, and it is true in how this country behaves in relation to it's international obligations.
He argued with Bush for Scooter Libby to be pardoned, but he would never come clean, that Libby was only trying to protect him. His loyalty only goes so far. A Chicken Hawk to the end.
While the program presented some opposing thoughts to a number of Cheney's views, there were very few tough questions asked, and few challenges to his assertions. Yet despite the kid gloves with which the former vice president was handled, he still came off as an soulless ideologue who was uninterested in any fact which might conflict with what he had made up his mind he wanted to do.
It appears to me that in many ways he accomplished his main goal, which was to mold the United States into his own image. He removed morality and justice from the equation, making us mirror images of the evil we found ourselves confronted with back on September 11th. Will we ever recover?
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Sunday, March 10, 2013
You'd think I could just leave it alone
I really should stop myself, but I was reading another one of those absurd Yahoo news reports. This one was in their Finance section, talking about Social Security. The news stories themselves are usually pretty innocuous stuff. Nothing that took too much thinking to compose, but if the author stays away from trying to interpret the facts they have copied from Wikipedia then mostly harmless. It is the moronic comments that get my blood pressure going.
Now the idiots who simply make fun of the the left, or the right for that matter, I can just gloss over. It is the ones who parrot solutions that they have no comprehension of that I find most irritating. You know the old adage. better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and confirm it.
And the one 'solution' that I keep reading is to privatize Social Security. I wonder how many of them (those not being paid by Karl Rove and his ilk) have any idea what that really means.
Put simply, the goal of Social Security is to replace some subset of your income when you are no longer able to work. It does that by levying a tax on both employers and employees, and investing the money in US government debt. That is nowhere near the highest possible return on the money, but it is the safest. The cost of overhead is somewhere between 0.7% and 1.0% (I have seen figures quoted in that range from a number of sources). How would you replace that.
Tell everyone you're on your own? That's like telling everyone that they have to be their own doctor! Imagine a minimum wage cashier in 7-11 being told to invest this money for their retirement. Stock market, gold futures, mutual funds, or any Ponzi scheme that comes along, it is all up to him.
I do invest for my retirement, and doing so intelligently is not an easy thing. I pay for advise not because I am stupid but because I am not a professional investor. I maintain a diversified portfolio of stocks and mutual funds. The older I get the less time I would have to replace this money. And if the market should tank, just before I have to retire, I am screwed. But I would still survive. If I were on the bottom rung of society, without the other assets I have accumulated in my life, it would mean homelessness.
How about government approved mutual funds? In order to be eligible for investment, they would need to meet certain criteria. We have seen just how well that has worked in the veterans benefits and student loan industry. For profit colleges with absurdly low graduation rates, who exist only to suck students dry and then throw them away have been running rampant for years now. Can you imagine the next time the debate for funding the people who would police these funds came around?
The people who are in favor of privatizing Social Security are the same ones who think we spend too much on food inspectors and who try to hamstring any attempt to rein in rampant abuses of consumers. They continue to block the appointment of anyone to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because they consider such things as contracts written in plain English to be an unfair burden on business. You really think they will regulate the investment vehicles for Social Security?
Privatizing Social Security is just code for taking the money and turning it into additional bonuses for investment bankers. People like me, who can afford to pay for professional advise, and have the education and the time to devote to monitoring their investments, will do OK. The people for who Social Security will be the difference between a modest retirement and living in a cardboard box, those are the ones that would suffer.
And the ones who are pushing these concept? They know that too.
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Now the idiots who simply make fun of the the left, or the right for that matter, I can just gloss over. It is the ones who parrot solutions that they have no comprehension of that I find most irritating. You know the old adage. better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and confirm it.
And the one 'solution' that I keep reading is to privatize Social Security. I wonder how many of them (those not being paid by Karl Rove and his ilk) have any idea what that really means.
Put simply, the goal of Social Security is to replace some subset of your income when you are no longer able to work. It does that by levying a tax on both employers and employees, and investing the money in US government debt. That is nowhere near the highest possible return on the money, but it is the safest. The cost of overhead is somewhere between 0.7% and 1.0% (I have seen figures quoted in that range from a number of sources). How would you replace that.
Tell everyone you're on your own? That's like telling everyone that they have to be their own doctor! Imagine a minimum wage cashier in 7-11 being told to invest this money for their retirement. Stock market, gold futures, mutual funds, or any Ponzi scheme that comes along, it is all up to him.
I do invest for my retirement, and doing so intelligently is not an easy thing. I pay for advise not because I am stupid but because I am not a professional investor. I maintain a diversified portfolio of stocks and mutual funds. The older I get the less time I would have to replace this money. And if the market should tank, just before I have to retire, I am screwed. But I would still survive. If I were on the bottom rung of society, without the other assets I have accumulated in my life, it would mean homelessness.
How about government approved mutual funds? In order to be eligible for investment, they would need to meet certain criteria. We have seen just how well that has worked in the veterans benefits and student loan industry. For profit colleges with absurdly low graduation rates, who exist only to suck students dry and then throw them away have been running rampant for years now. Can you imagine the next time the debate for funding the people who would police these funds came around?
The people who are in favor of privatizing Social Security are the same ones who think we spend too much on food inspectors and who try to hamstring any attempt to rein in rampant abuses of consumers. They continue to block the appointment of anyone to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because they consider such things as contracts written in plain English to be an unfair burden on business. You really think they will regulate the investment vehicles for Social Security?
Privatizing Social Security is just code for taking the money and turning it into additional bonuses for investment bankers. People like me, who can afford to pay for professional advise, and have the education and the time to devote to monitoring their investments, will do OK. The people for who Social Security will be the difference between a modest retirement and living in a cardboard box, those are the ones that would suffer.
And the ones who are pushing these concept? They know that too.
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Friday, January 25, 2013
The effect wears off after a while
Each work day morning I stop at the Park and Ride. If there are a line of cars waiting for riders I pick up two riders. If there are line of riders waiting for cars I pick up three. I drop them on Howard, before proceeding to my parking garage on Polk.
In the afternoon I stop on Beal Street and repeat the process. Two riders when there are more cars than riders, and three riders where there are more riders than cars. The on ramp I use is the last east bound entrance on the south side of the bridge. During commute hours, it for is trucks and carpools only. Except that lately, that has not been true.
Every now and then, one or two CHP cruisers will stake out the on ramp, directing drivers off to the side and issuing tickets for those using the ramp without at least three (two for two-seater vehicles) occupants. The tickets are not cheap, they are going to cost something move than $300. An afternoon of catching HOV cheaters could put someone through one of our state colleges.
It has been a long time since I saw anyone on that on ramp writing tickets, and apparently the lesson needs reinforcing. Today as I got onto the bridge, traffic was very slow, so I looked around a little. The car in front of me, and the three cars to the left of me (it is a two lane on ramp for most of the length, so the one next to me and the ones in front and behind the one next to me) all had single occupants. And none were 'exceptions', with the HOV lane stickers.
So, if any CHP read this blog, it is time to get back there and start writing tickets.
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In the afternoon I stop on Beal Street and repeat the process. Two riders when there are more cars than riders, and three riders where there are more riders than cars. The on ramp I use is the last east bound entrance on the south side of the bridge. During commute hours, it for is trucks and carpools only. Except that lately, that has not been true.
Every now and then, one or two CHP cruisers will stake out the on ramp, directing drivers off to the side and issuing tickets for those using the ramp without at least three (two for two-seater vehicles) occupants. The tickets are not cheap, they are going to cost something move than $300. An afternoon of catching HOV cheaters could put someone through one of our state colleges.
It has been a long time since I saw anyone on that on ramp writing tickets, and apparently the lesson needs reinforcing. Today as I got onto the bridge, traffic was very slow, so I looked around a little. The car in front of me, and the three cars to the left of me (it is a two lane on ramp for most of the length, so the one next to me and the ones in front and behind the one next to me) all had single occupants. And none were 'exceptions', with the HOV lane stickers.
So, if any CHP read this blog, it is time to get back there and start writing tickets.
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Sunday, January 6, 2013
Gateway Drug, a personal story
It started just about 6 years ago, when I was shopping for a new car. I had in my mind certain characteristics I wanted the car to have, certain features. The car that we finally settled on did not have exactly everything I was looking for. And it had several features that were not things I particularly cared about. One of those was satellite radio. That was where it all started.
For the most part I only listened to two radio stations. One of them I listened to for music and the other to listen to the San Francisco Giants baseball games. My wife and I approach new gadgets differently. I tend to learn just enough to start using the thing as quickly as possible. She, on the other hand, is more likely to read the manual from cover to cover. So on a short time we had about thirty preset stations, both satellite and ground stations.
Now that might have been the end of it had I continued to commute to work everyday on the ferry. But rising prices and a diminished schedule led me to try the casual carpool.
For a while I was a casual carpool rider. I would catch a ride into the city in the morning, usually within 10 minutes of arriving at the park and ride. In the afternoons I would join the long line of people waiting to snag a ride back. The wait there was frequently over half an hour.
Now the addiction really began around this time. Even though I was not driving every day into the city, I was was making that drive every Saturday that the weather was good to play softball. From my house to the fields where we played was about an hour. So there was a couple of hours I was exploring all of these channels, all of this music I had never heard before.
And then there was the online music. It seems that the same stations available in my car were also available online, at no additional cost. So I would frequently listen at work too.
Finally, the afternoon wait became too inconvenient for me, and I began to drive instead of ride the casual carpool. Now I was listen to the music six days a week. That was when I moved past the gateway drug and expanded into others.
I was hearing artists that I had never heard before, but usually only one or two songs, I needed more. One day, after playing softball, I went to Amoeba Records in the Haight. I bought two CDs. Over the months that followed, this addiction only grew. There was a Rasputin Music store near my house and I started to go there too.
When Rachael Yamagata's breakthrough album Chesapeake came out, I had to have it. And when I heard that she was coming to San Francisco, to a little place called The Independent, I had to go, even though the show was the night before I was flying out on vacation.
I looked all over the place for Audra Mae and the Almighty Sound before finally ordering it at Rasputin's. They had never heard of it, but they found it for me. With that action, my decent into addiction was complete.
And it was all because I bought a new car, with a feature I never wanted.
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For the most part I only listened to two radio stations. One of them I listened to for music and the other to listen to the San Francisco Giants baseball games. My wife and I approach new gadgets differently. I tend to learn just enough to start using the thing as quickly as possible. She, on the other hand, is more likely to read the manual from cover to cover. So on a short time we had about thirty preset stations, both satellite and ground stations.
Now that might have been the end of it had I continued to commute to work everyday on the ferry. But rising prices and a diminished schedule led me to try the casual carpool.
For a while I was a casual carpool rider. I would catch a ride into the city in the morning, usually within 10 minutes of arriving at the park and ride. In the afternoons I would join the long line of people waiting to snag a ride back. The wait there was frequently over half an hour.
Now the addiction really began around this time. Even though I was not driving every day into the city, I was was making that drive every Saturday that the weather was good to play softball. From my house to the fields where we played was about an hour. So there was a couple of hours I was exploring all of these channels, all of this music I had never heard before.
And then there was the online music. It seems that the same stations available in my car were also available online, at no additional cost. So I would frequently listen at work too.
Finally, the afternoon wait became too inconvenient for me, and I began to drive instead of ride the casual carpool. Now I was listen to the music six days a week. That was when I moved past the gateway drug and expanded into others.
I was hearing artists that I had never heard before, but usually only one or two songs, I needed more. One day, after playing softball, I went to Amoeba Records in the Haight. I bought two CDs. Over the months that followed, this addiction only grew. There was a Rasputin Music store near my house and I started to go there too.
When Rachael Yamagata's breakthrough album Chesapeake came out, I had to have it. And when I heard that she was coming to San Francisco, to a little place called The Independent, I had to go, even though the show was the night before I was flying out on vacation.
I looked all over the place for Audra Mae and the Almighty Sound before finally ordering it at Rasputin's. They had never heard of it, but they found it for me. With that action, my decent into addiction was complete.
And it was all because I bought a new car, with a feature I never wanted.
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