How dare they??

We’ve been sitting here today watching football, napping, and feeding the fire.  The Pats got kind of lucky; they didn’t look like a commanding presence on the field.  The Packers look like they are.  We predict an unfavorable playoff outcome for our New England team.

No matter the distractions available to us, including snuggling with the pups, we couldn’t seem to avoid thinking on the MSHA issue.  You know the posts we’ve published in recent days, and if you don’t, we’re not going to force them upon you now.

What really got to us as we tried to relax is the ‘how dare they’ aspect of this situation.

Here we have 140 plus bureaucrats, all of whom earn well above the average income for Maine residents, who have Cadillac benefits, and who have job security beyond the imaginating of all who don’t work for government.  And with all these advantages, they cloak themselves in the moral superiority of ‘public service.’

How dare they.

Even worse, they have the incredible arrogance to use their taxpayer funded web site to complain about their compensation.

How dare they, times two.

To make things worse, their so-called leaders are going public expressing umbrage over efforts to examine and rationalize their stewardship of vast sums of other people’s money.  They’ve been dispensing, by their own account, more than $1 Billion in federal funds per year. And spending who knows how much more on their operations and other expenses.

‘Witch hunt,’ they and their big government disciples, activists, and ‘non-profit’ crornies are quick to proclaim.  Their enablers in the mainstream media attack any such efforts as a war on the homeless.

How dare they, times ten. 

This whole snafu is a case study, nay, a poster child for what government by bleeding hearts and busybodies has given us in the way of ‘unsustainability.’

Personally, we don’t buy any of the rhetoric about cutting them some slack or claiming ‘we don’t understand'.’  We’ve had it up to here with the bloviation emanating from entrenched bureaucrats and career hacks.

For now, we’ll leave you with this previously posted, pithy essay that perfectly captures the attitudinal pathology at MSHA.

==========================================

Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.

Ever wonder about those stories of $600
hammers and $800 toilet seats that the
government sometimes buys? You could walk
the length and breadth of this land and not
find a soul who would say he’d gladly spend his
own money that way. And yet this waste often
occurs in government and occasionally in other
walks of life, too.

Why? Because invariably, the
spender is spending somebody else’s money.

Economist Milton Friedman elaborated
on this some time ago when he pointed
out that there are only four ways to spend
money.

When you spend your own money
on yourself, you make occasional mistakes,
but they’re few and far between. The
connection between the one who is earning
the money, the one who is spending it, and
the one who is reaping the final benefit is
pretty strong, direct and immediate.

When you use your money to buy someone
else a gift, you have some incentive to get
your money’s worth, but you might not
end up getting something the intended
recipient really needs or values.

When you use somebody else’s money to
buy something for yourself, such as lunch
on an expense account, you have some
incentive to get the right thing, but little
reason to economize.

Finally, when you spend other people’s
money to buy something for someone
else, the connection between the earner,
the spender and the recipient is the most
remote — and the potential for mischief
and waste is the greatest.

Think about it — somebody spending somebody else’s
money on yet somebody else. That’s what
government does all the time.

But this principle is not just a commentary
about government. I recall a time, back in the
1990s, when the Mackinac Center took a close
look at the Michigan Education Association’s
self-serving statement that it would oppose
any competitive contracting of any school
support service (like busing, food or custodial)
by any school district anytime, anywhere.

We discovered that at the MEA’s own posh,
sprawling East Lansing headquarters,
the union did not have its own full-time,
unionized workforce of janitors and food
service workers. It was contracting out all of
its cafeteria, custodial, security and mailing
duties to private companies, and three out of
four of them were nonunion!

So the MEA — the state’s largest union of
cooks, janitors, bus drivers and teachers —
was doing one thing with its own money and
calling for something very different with
regard to the public’s tax money.

Nobody — repeat, nobody — spends someone else’s
money as carefully as he spends his own.

==========================================

There you go.  And as we’ve seen on numerous bumper stickers on Subarus, Volvos, and Piouses around town over the years,

“If you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention.”

Which is just the way the ‘public servants’ at MSHA like it.

Technorati Tags: MsHA,State government,affordable housing,public service arrogance

More ‘firsts’ for Maine

Depending on how you define ‘first,’ that is, especially as it relates to whether you have the page right side up or upside down.

By now, you may already have heard about or seen the 2011 Forbes report on the best states for business and careers.  Just in case you haven’t, though, we want to pass it along.

We’ve got plenty of ‘don’t worry, be happy’ types around here, and in our state overall.  Fine.  But ignoring our systemic economic challenges, and that whether you like it or not, states are in competition with each other, is whistling past the ash heap of history.

So take a look at the data in this report.  Any such summary survey is bound to have margins of error, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pay attention to the outcomes, especially when they track pretty consistently with other sources and prior year results.

You can rationalize that your doctor or nurse didn’t take your blood pressure exactly by the book, but if the numbers are elevated year after year, you’d be a fool to ignore them, wouldn't you?  You can think of the numbers in the Forbes report as Maine’s annual checkup and go from there.

In this case, instead of two numbers, there are six.  Rankings in business costs, labor supply, regulatory environment, economic climate, growth prospects, and quality of life.  These are combined to come up with an overall ranking for the 50 (or is it 57??) states.

Whoopee, Maine ranks first overall!  At least if you hold the page upside down.  If you don’t, we rank dead last.

Why?  Because we rank 44th in business costs; 28th in labor supply; 45th in regulatory environment; 42nd in economic climate; 50th in growth prospects; and 17th in quality of life.

Based on what we’ve observed in the way of public opinion over our years here, we’re confident that many area and state residents find the last place ranking overall, and the last place ranking in growth prospects, perfectly to their liking.

Why?  Because they can’t see beyond next year.  And they think that Maine’s ‘quality of place,’ touted by the anti-growth, anti free-market, big government crowd trumps every other consideration.

We assume they don’t have children and grandchildren they’d like to see stay here and build their futures where they were born and raised.  We also assume they are immune to the risks of high blood pressure.

We’ll close with this: ponder the difference between ‘quality of place’ and ‘quality of life.’  And what factors contribute to each. 

If you think they are the same thing, you probably don’t come here often. 

And you aren’t very good at remembering to take your blood pressure medicine, if you even have any.

Technorati Tags: Maine,state rankings,Forbes

Are you getting YOUR ‘fair share,’ fella?

Hey there, Bucky, this is the old Poppycock philosopher with some questions for you.

Assuming you’re still working, are you being paid enough?  Are you friend?

Look at that; almost everyone has their hand up!  Not much surprise there.

Next question: if you had control of your employer’s web site, would you proclaim on it, for all the world to see, how underpaid you are?

Well…what happened?  No hands up; you’re not so brave when it comes to criticizing your employer on his own web site, for all the world to see, are you?

Not everybody is as sheepish as you, friend, when it comes to speaking up. To prove the point, consider the Maine State Housing Authority, about which we’ve posted many times.

We hear a lot about not ‘paying our fair share’ these days, as the federal government tries to find a plausible excuse for spending way beyond their means.  But our friends at MSHA are out there publicly proclaiming that they aren’t getting their fair share, and they’re happy to tell you why.

Just visit this page at their web site.  You’ll find such as this:

The Maine Department of Labor published three salaries for each position: average, experienced, and those in the top 10% of the field. MaineHousing employees with less than 5 years experience in their position are compared with the average market salary, those with 5 to 20 years of experience in their position are compared to the experienced market salary, and those with more than 20 years experience in their position are compared to the top 10% of their field.

• MaineHousing salaries average 15% below the average market salaries for the same position. (The salaries for the 20 employees who were employed at MaineHousing for less than a year were not factored.)
• When experience is taken into account, MaineHousing salaries fall to 25.7% below the comparable market position with the same level of experience.

Note that what most would consider ‘entry level’ employees, those with less than 5 years experience, are compared with ‘average’ market salary.  No rigging the outcome here, right?

If you want position by position ‘proof,’ you can look at individual salaries.

What term is appropriate here: unmitigated gall?  Brass ones?  Big cajones?  The nerve of some people?

Polite language is ineffective at characterizing the chutzpah of government employees brash enough to complain about their compensation on their agency web site.  Where they gush about addressing the needs of the less fortunate. 

We bet those using the web site to find the help they need to get by are just thrilled to see the list of salaries used to emphasize staff complaints!  Great expression of compassion, folks.

This is the same MSHA whose compensation growth in recent years was publicized by the Maine Open Government activity at the Maine Heritage Policy Center, based on information provided by MSHA itself.  Staff compensation there has increased by 30% in the most recent five years:

Do you find this troubling, friend?  Well lift your head up high, and tell everyone you’ll never give up -- that ship!

But don’t expect those at MSHA to be troubled, because they’ll say you just don’t understand the difference between the public sector and the private sector.  That you don’t appreciate their sacrifice as ‘public servants.’

We don’t know about you, but the staff here at Side sure as hell doesn’t understand.

We don’t understand why those with all the benefits, job security, and absence of competition of government employment can grumble about their circumstances.

And we are pretty sure we never, ever will.

Technorati Tags: MSHA,fair share,compensation

The Ostrich: going “paper”- less

It’s been some time since we’ve had anything worthy of note to report about The Ostrich, or as it’s known locally, The Brunswick Bleep Bleep.

We’ve commented on their efforts in a number of posts over the years, and for those of you so inclined, you can catch up by going here.  The number of items may seem overwhelming, but their history is lengthy, and it takes this kind of coverage to document how much they’ve meant to us in recent years.

Beyond their editorial bias, and their self-important conceit as ‘government watchdogs,’ we’ve been most interested in their failure to pay their ‘fair share’ in the form of assessed property taxes.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

We can only imagine what the consequences would be if we didn’t pay our property taxes on time, and we don’t intend to find out. We suppose that makes us wimpy suckers, at least compared to the owners of The Ostrich, who have continued to operate as the self-appointed conscience of the community, while being tens of thousands of dollars in arrears on their obligations. (We’ll research the latest figures, and report them when we get them.)

We should expect such forbearance from town officials for the local elites, of whom the Bleep Bleep is a charter member. The Bleep Bleep could slam the officials in print in a Brunswick minute if they were not given wide latitude in tax matters. 

Gotcha scoring favors the Bleep Bleep, especially since the town already owns one vacated newspaper facility. Owning two might set a world record, not to mention heaping shame on those involved.

We don’t need to remind you that we asked the Bleep Bleep to continue to deliver our paper on a daily basis, even though we had not renewed our subscription,  as a quid pro quo for us paying our property taxes on time and carrying them in their delinquency status. 

We could gloat and be petty about this.  As juvenile as such behavior would be, it is more than warranted in this case, so we’ll go with it.

Now the news.  It turns out that The Ostrich has decided to go with an on-line emphasis.  A few years back, they redesigned their web site to eliminate the most useful feature it had at that time: a several year deep archive feature, which made researching their coverage on local issues fairly convenient.  They ‘modernized’ by changing the archive feature to a two week history.

When they did, they kept the print edition pretty much as it was up to that time.  While we could no longer use their web site for any useful research purposes, we occasionally visited to see what their view of important local events was.  We could do this in a minute or two, given the shallowness of their coverage; but we could do it at no cost.

Well, friends and enemies, those days are coming to an end.  Today, The Ostrich announced that the on-line version of the Bleep Bleep will cost $89.95 a year to read, only slightly less than what they used to charge for a print subscription.  The good news is that the web version will be complete with advertisements,etc.  Good move on their part; consumers have been flocking to the web to pay for content, especially advertisements.

Why didn’t we think of that?

In their own words, here’s what your ninety bucks a year will buy:

The new design will expand options for readers and advertisers by providing all of the content from each day’s newspaper online — in a format easily accessible on home computers, mobile devices and tablets.
Every story, photo, advertisement, news brief, column, comic and feature that now appears in print will be available online daily, effective Dec. 15. Honor rolls, police logs and other items that previously only appeared in print — and which readers asked us to post online — will be fully available on the upgraded website.

We wish them the same success they’ve had recently with their print version.  We‘re confident they wish the same for us.

Our advice to you, just like it was some months ago, is that should you choose to sign up for the service, don’t pay for a year in advance.  Since they don’t pay their taxes on time, there’s no reason they should have your cold hard cash in advance.

And don’t believe the rumors that John Corzine reportedly contacted the Bleep Bleep to see if they are for sale.  Even he is bright enough, if not honest enough, to know their future is as solid as a snowflake’s.

Technorati Tags: Ostrich,property taxes,newspapers

Stew: the missing link

There’s nothing like a bubbling caldron of stew, especially now that winter is here, if not by the calendar, by the thermometer.

But dad-gummit, your reporter once again failed to include all the ingredients that prove the common links in the recipes described in our post just the other day.

While our efforts are usually flawless, at least in our opinion, we do have a persistent and maddening habit of coming up with more thoughts after posting an essay.  Sometimes minutes later, sometimes days later.  And here we come again.

We suggested that a ‘common theme’ united Betsy, the MSHA, and the federal government, making them ‘peas in a pod.’

We remain firm in that conviction; and to emphasize our point, add this common property: good intentions.  Nothing works so well to justify and rationalize otherwise absurd behavior, actions, spending, and programs as the tried and true ‘we care more’ shibboleth.

We’re sure Betsy believes that spending a quarter million or so on global and gender studies will help her make the world a better place, eliminating racism, class warfare, and human rights abuse.  And thereby justifying a claim on OPM to cover the costs of her ‘education.’

Good intentions, thy name is Betsy.

Moving on, is there any doubt that the 143 people working at MSHA have good intentions?  How could providing affordable housing for the needy, no matter how much it costs, be anything other than  a pure and noble pursuit?

Lastly, we turn to Washington.  As we all know, the federal government is motivated by fairness and economic and social justice.  Questioning the motives of our benevolent ruling class relegates one to the mean-spirited detention room.

The common attributes thus become clearer: spending OPM, lubricated by the moral superiority of good intentions.

The only open question at the moment is this: have you paid your fair share today? 

If you haven’t, we’d be happy to drop by and pick up your check.   You can make it out to ‘the greater good,’ a subsidiary of Poppycock Enterprises.

Technorati Tags: good intentions,OPM,government

Stewing, a la OPM

You know what stew is, we assume:  a slowly cooked mixture of various ingredients in which the individual components meld to create a blend of greater complexity and satisfying flavors.

Here at Side, we love the comforting aroma of simmering stew, and most of all, slurping down the final result.

Which now that we read our own words, makes this introduction of our thesis tortured to say the least, and absurd at the worst.  Oh well, everyone should do what they do best, and we do stupid metaphors as well as anyone.

So let’s segue into the meat of the matter on our cutting board.  We’ve been stewing for several days on the subjects of MSHA, the youth that supposedly comprise our future, our unmanageable public debt, and the reckless deficit spending in spite of it.

We find them all to be harmonious ingredients, united by a common theme.  Let us explain.

Let us begin with Betsy, exemplar of our future, as described in this prior post.  We cited this Coastal Journal passage:

For Betsy (redacted,) who is from Brunswick and is studying global and gender issues at New York City's New School, the Occupy movement goes beyond economic frustration. Like a lot of college students and graduates, she and her mother are deep in debt to financial institutions that funded her education. She (sic) believes, however, the Occupy movement also involves human rights issues, class warfare, and racism. She has participated in Occupy protests in New York.

We looked into the details, and learned that tuition alone at The New School is $35,000 a year.  Add living and eating in New York, plus all the party expenses, and you’re probably looking at close to $50,000 a year, or $200,000 for a degree, unless you go the 5 year route, in which case you’re staring at a cool quarter million.

All so Betsy can study pointless prattle like this:

Gender's meaning changes. In other words, the culturally constructed idea of what sex difference means is unstable and is often renegotiated over time and from place to place. To study gender is to study a central category of identity that shapes basic structures such as:

• divisions of public and private
• the distribution of wealth and patterns of labor
• the ways in which gender is represented in art, literature, and popular culture
• how sexuality and the body are understood
• definitions of sickness and health
• the creation of norms for public life and the state
• the production of knowledge itself

Courses in Gender Studies are one way to understand the ideologies, social patterns, and images that shape the changing world in which we live. Gender Studies raises questions about how the gender divide is formed and maintained, and how it is often resisted or undermined. Students explore gender scholarship from the last four decades in the United States and rest of the world. It includes courses about the history of feminist thought and action; men’s studies; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender studies; and queer theory. Working in conjunction with the program on Race and Ethnicity, these programs explore the many intersections among race, class, and gender.

Imagine spending and borrowing more than the median price of a home in Maine to immerse yourself in studies that prepare you for nothing other than teaching the same twaddle to those as gullible as you.  (Need we remind you the word gullible is not in the dictionary?)

We are convinced that Betsy and her mother, considering the other ‘affordable’ options they had, signed up for this crushing debt in the belief that the tooth fairy, or perhaps the fairy godmother, would come to their rescue.  We expect they hold a tacit belief the government should pay for her education, and that a benevolent agent of hope will ride to their rescue and bail them out with, you guessed it: OPM.

Strange as this may sound, the Maine State Housing Authority is known to spend more than this on an ‘affordable housing’ apartment.  So it’s all relative when it comes to borrowing, government, and the thirst for knowledge, useless or otherwise, and the pursuit of the common good.  They all are addicted to the drug  of choice: OPM.  Say it slowly; Oh-Pi-M.

Is there any doubt that if Betsy gets to Congress one day, she’ll support borrowing the country into oblivion because ‘it’s the right thing to do?’  What other choice could she make if she doesn’t have enough common sense in her young adult years to avoid chaining herself down with unmanageable debt, with the support of her mother?  Unless they expect someone else to bail her out?

Which brings us to the third corner of this triangulation scheme: the federal government itself.  High on their own self-importance and lust for remaining in power, our so called leaders are busy spending over 60% more than they have in revenue, making up the difference with Monopoly money and debt we will never be able to repay.  In the process, they are driving us down a greased death spiral that leads to almost certain collapse for the American experiment in liberty, self-determination, and self-government.

Coming full circle from our silly introduction, we arrive at a conclusion that Betsy, the MSHA, and our federal government are all alike.  They are ‘peas in a pod,’ to extend our original thought.

Which doesn’t make for a very tasty stew, unless you can compel other people to give whatever they have to bail out your supper.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the society in which he lives. It is easy enough, and always profitable, to rail away at national enemies beyond the sea, at foreign powers beyond our borders who question the prevailing order. But the moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home; to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own culture. If the writer is unwilling to fill this part, then the writer should abandon pretense and find another line of work: become a shoe repairman, a brain surgeon, a janitor, a cowboy, a nuclear physicist, a bus driver. -Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)

Our choices are pretty clear, according to Mr. Abbey.  But we can’t help wondering why he didn’t mention the option of becoming a chef.

 

Technorati Tags: youth,our future,MSHA,government

The Disability Business, and Maine

Little more than a week ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article about apparent hanky-panky on the part of an administrative judge in the Social Security Administration.  You can find it here.

(We apologize for not being able to link you to the complete article; the link worked fine several days ago, but now only gives the abbreviated version.  We’ll keep working to find the full item for readers.)

The article included a US map, in which the percentage of disability recipients by state is shown:

Of note is the fact that Maine is in the top rank of states when it comes to recipients.  This comports well with personal but unscientific observations on a day to day basis.  These include our visits to the SSA office in Portland to sign up for Medicare a few years back.  On both trips, we were surprised to find the majority of clients in the office were not seniors like us.  And to the eye, they virtually all appeared able-bodied.

What really is galling in the subject article is the record of one particular judge, and one particular attorney he seemed to enjoy “working with:”

……….In 2010, he awarded benefits in all but four of 1,284 decisions. In 2011, before he was put on leave, Mr. Daugherty awarded benefits in all but two of the 1,003 cases he decided. Typically, judges award benefits in about 60% of their cases.

……….about Mr. Daugherty's high award rates and the number of cases he would assign himself from a Kentucky attorney, Eric C. Conn. The Social Security Administration in 2010 paid Mr. Conn $3.8 million in fees for winning benefits for his clients…..

Not bad money for appearing before a judge who seemed predisposed to find in your client’s favor virtually all the time.  We don’t mean to disparage disabled folks who qualify for and deserve the benefits.  But we’ve long believed that if there is a large, and virtually unlimited vault full of public money accessible to the citizenry, eventually careers will be built and people will get very rich raiding the kitty.

In this particular case, if you grab a pencil and paper and look at the numbers, you conclude that the judge and his attorney friend were making disposition of 4, 5 or maybe even more cases per day, depending on how many days they actually processed cases.

Result: Judge finds for the applicant. Attorney collects oh, say $3,000 for 2 or 3 hours of his work, and 6 hours of paralegal staff work.  A person could make a living doing this!

Is this typical?  We can’t say, but it does demonstrate how easy it apparently is to work the system while seemingly doing good.  And there simply aren’t enough auditors and other investigators to monitor the perhaps millions of transactions that take place each day in which funds from the public treasury are sought for a bewildering and overwhelming collection of purposes and clients.  It’s what we get when we allow government to grow more or less without limits.

A bit of looking into things gives a hint at how the system is biased.  We found this on an SSA web site:

Disability is something most people do not like to think about. But the chances that you will become disabled probably are greater than you realize. Studies show that a 20-year-old worker has a 3 in 10 chance of becoming disabled before reaching full retirement age.

IN other words, the government is biased towards an expectation that 30% of the public will eventually collect disability.  If you dig a little further, you’ll find the list of impairments that will qualify one for disability.  This reads like they are encouraging everyone to consider applying for benefits

It's hard to imagine that an attorney who specializes in such matters would have a hard time finding something under which his client should qualify, and easily send his government administrator into a kerfuffle of confusion. Especially if the burden is on a civil servant to prove that an applicant has not a single one of the listed impairments sufficient to qualify.

Wonder why we have government employment growing steadily while the private sector is struggling?  Wonder why government spending and public debt are at unsustainable levels and growing like uncontrolled wild fires?

Wonder no more, mon amis.  The answer lies ‘not in the stars, but in ourselves,’ to borrow a famous passage.

 

Technorati Tags: Maine,disability,social security administration

Friday Frivolities, Part Deux

You can file this addendum in the stuff file cabinet, under PSMIS.

That stands for “Please, Someone, Make It Stop!”  And put it in the Bowdoin College sub-folder.

Some of you know that we publish here as ‘P. C. Poppycock.’  P. C., as it turns out, are this reporter’s real first initials.  They also stand for politically correct, a pox upon our land.  Poppycock means nonsense, and its synonyms include:

babble, balderdash, baloney, bull*, bunk, drivel, empty talk, foolery, foolishness, gibberish, hogwash, hooey, hot air, jive, malarkey, mumbo jumbo, palaver, prattle, rubbish, silliness, trash.

Hence our nom-de-plume is part eponymous and part pseudonymous.

P. C. Poppycock is exactly what came to mind as we glanced at today’s Bowdoin Orient, the campus student newspaper.  Page 1 features an article titled Sexual assault allegations stir Colby, no doubt published with considerable glee by Orient staff.

There are some telling, to say the least, pronouncements by Colby officials in the article (emphasis ours):

The allegations have sparked dialogue across Colby's campus. Colby President William Adams wrote to the student body in an email, "These are deeply troubling allegations that have far-reaching impacts on our community. And I know we are all concerned about whether the campus climate encourages or excuses behaviors that are antithetical to our community values."

Antithetical to our community values??? It takes the unmitigated gall to say this that only a modern day liberal academic could possess. As anyone familiar with campus culture these days knows, college community values are sex any time, all the time, with anyone, no questions asked, no gooey relationships needed. Preferably with copious amounts of 'substances' as lubrication.

And then there’s this:

The dialogue continued at a large event held in Colby's Page Commons on November 15. A notice from Colby's Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students James Terhune explained that the purpose of the event was exploring "how Colby deals with sexual misconduct."

Exploring how you deal with sexual misconduct? What is this, a safari?  Or a first in history occurrence?  Pure academic psycho-babble that fully exhibits why we have the culture we do; so called leaders are at the bleeding edge of societal dumbing down through language abuse heaped on top of all the other forms of intellectual abuse present on our campuses.

Both, we submit, are fine examples of P. C. Poppycock.  But that’s just us, although we have little choice in who to be.

As a second addendum candidate, we noted a Security Report in the Orient that perfectly illustrates, in our opinion, the thoughts we expressed on college students in our post earlier today.  Unfortunately, we can’t find it on the web version of the paper.  If we did, it would help you end your day with a laugh followed by a moment of somber reflection.

Since we can’t give you the whole article, we’ll just offer a few prize-winners; keep in mind these are items officially reported to and by the Bowdoin Office of Safety and Security:

- An intoxicated student vandalized the paper towel and soap dispensers in a Smith Union men’s room.

- A student was escorted to Parkview Adventist Medical Center after he slipped on a wet floor in Coles Tower and cut his eyebrow.  (Couldn’t he had waited until the next day to trim his eyebrow?)

- A student at Stowe Inn reported being disturbed by noise from a nearby room.

Surely there’s a cause for protest or cries for social injustice somewhere in these reports.

One thing’s for sure; this ain’t your father’s college campus. 

And you know what?  It ain’t mine either. 

We conclude with a burning question: the next time our grandkids visit, can we call the Brunswick ‘campus’ police to report being “disturbed by noise from a nearby room?”

 

Technorati Tags: Bowdoin College,college kids,political correctness,balderdash

Friday Frivolities

A Frosty’s Return: Could it be???

As we strolled the ample sidewalks of downtown Brunswick on our way to lunch today, we noted, surprise of surprises, an ‘under contract’ sign in the window of the long closed Frosty’s Donut Shop.

This matches up with something we heard from a ‘little bird’ who visits the Other Side ‘feeder’ from time to time for a few grains of corn and other tasty offerings.  The ‘bird’ says the sales contract reportedly calls for the current shop owner to teach the buyer how to make classic Frosty’s offerings, for which we have long pined.

Could it be true?  Could we be noshing on twists or cinnamon swirl coffee buns or jelly donuts in mere weeks or months?  You can count on us to keep an eye out on your behalf, and report to you as soon as something tangible occurs.  And don’t worry; if the shop does reopen, we’ll put our eye back in.

Given our years of loyalty to the shop while it was open, we wouldn’t be surprised if we detect the aroma of dough frying in hot oil before any other indication.

Even if we do live four or five miles away.  Our schnozola has been well trained for just such purposes.

Local Occupiers: the past and the ‘future’ on display

In keeping with our usual habit, we surveyed the latest print media offerings as we chomped away on our Big Top lunch.

The lead article ‘above the fold’ in this week’s Coastal Journal is about ‘Occupiers’ in our local area.  In our view, the top level message in the article is that the well-known and oft-seen peace and anti-war groups in our area, largely composed of those in the older generations, are attempting to ride the latest media white horse by claiming ‘solidarity’ with the mostly younger ‘occupiers.’

Many of the local occupiers are stumbling all over themselves in their nearby encampments, embarrassing the concept of ‘protest.’  Public drunks, dopers, and common criminals don’t seem like the best choices for our local sign carriers, dialoguers, and face painters to align with, given that your friends say an awful lot about you.  But the usual suspects aren’t given to circumspection in such matters, are they?

Marching on, a few specific passages in the article (besides the oh so tired and typical BIW Destroyer comments) particularly tweaked our usually well controlled cynicism, and we are compelled to pass them along for your consideration and reflection.

Brunswick resident Joe (redacted) said that while Americans are typically greedy, he thinks people deserve a lot in life they can't get.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over.  That’s either one of the most inscrutable comments we’ve read in a long time, or an example of incompetent reporting and editing.  Or, more likely, a combination of both, considering those involved.

Here’s another telling example:

Dan (redacted) is Mike's son, and is a graduate student at the University of Maine studying peace and reconciliation.

“All of these issues are connected,” he said, referencing Mahatma Ghandi, who spoke of economic violence and of his studies. “The one percent on top of the hierarchy exploits everyone else.”

We can’t help but wonder what the job prospects for young Dan will be upon graduation, other than carrying signs at protests.  Joblessness stemming from poor choices would, however, put him in real solidarity with the occupiers.  Unless that is, he intends to exploit everyone else by charging for his counsel.

Here’s another example of a total lack of common sense, or if you prefer, cluelessness amidst our current generation of college students:

For Betsy (redacted,) who is from Brunswick and is studying global and gender issues at New York City's New School, the Occupy movement goes beyond economic frustration. Like a lot of college students and graduates, she and her mother are deep in debt to financial institutions that funded her education. She (sic) believes, however, the Occupy movement also involves human rights issues, class warfare, and racism. She has participated in Occupy protests in New York.

Good luck, Betsy, on finding a job as a global gender specialist, or analyst, or whatever (hamburger flipper?) once you graduate.  That’s a fine choice of major, right up there with pursuing government dependency studies.  Perhaps you’re minoring in the latter, since we have a hunch you believe that other people (id est, taxpayers) should be funding your education, even though there were a lot less expensive options open to you, and majors that might actually prepare you to make your own way after graduation.

Call us unjust and insensitive, but we don’t have a bit of sympathy to spare on those who have allowed themselves to be sent down the primrose path of aimlessness, often with the encouragement of their parents.

While we’re snickering a bit as we write this, sadness is overwhelming our funny bone.  You’ll come to your own conclusions, but ours is that we are melting down as a culture and society. Those carrying the heat guns are ‘the children’ who are being deluded and misguided by many of our ‘elders’ in the attitude formation and ‘helping’ fields, especially our government schools and academia. 

If these ‘children’ are ‘our future,’ as Yogi Berra famously said, ‘the future ain’t what it used to be.’  And you can take that any way you damn well want to; we doubt you’ll have any questions about how we mean it.

Technorati Tags: occupiers,joblessness,protesters,college students,donuts

Thanksgiving Weekend Diversions…

Side’s recent publishing slowdown stems from the fact that your correspondent and his frau traipsed off to points south for the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend.  We departed on an inconveniently snowy morning, but soon escaped that and enjoyed a relatively mild several days in the greater New York City area, most of which was at our daughter’s house in North Jersey, not far from where we were conceived, delivered, and reared.

The first part of our trip was taking in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Mrs. P wisely elected not to come along, as we were joining in with 3 million or so others who had the same idea.  We were coached by a high school classmate of ours on how to go about things.

We met her and her family members at 56th and 7th Avenue, well before the parade began, and only after enduring a ‘train’ ride and a ‘subway’ ride in which the dominant sensation was that of being a sardine.  Us ‘seniors’ tried as best we could to coordinate via cell phone, and were left wondering how the modern generation can manage to talk clearly in raucous urban circumstances.

Here we offer two snaps of the famous balloons making their way south along 7th Avenue.  They move surprisingly fast, and it’s amazing to note how much preparation takes place, including rotating all the traffic signal arms out of the way, of which there must be thousands.  In both photos, the building in the background on the right, behind the ‘Muni-Meter’ sign, is Carnegie Hall.

You know the old joke:

Q: “how do you get to Carnegie Hall?'”

A: “Practice, practice, practice.”

 

We’re glad we made the effort, and we look forward to enjoying other delights of Manhattan on upcoming trips.  Being in the midst of residents of the area, to put it mildly, is ‘entertainment’ in its own right.

Further, we’re resolute in our belief that attending this parade is something best done no more than once, like attending the Rose Bowl.  Standing motionless for 3 or more hours, bracketed by high energy commuter trips, left us pretty well wrung out.  Enough so that we deferred the gala family turkey feast to the following day.  More on that in a subsequent post.

On Saturday of the weekend, we went off in search of an Italian Bakery/Deli we had been given a lead on by a friend here in Brunswick who grew up in North Jersey.  It’s called Lotito’s, in Ramsey, just a few miles from the New York State border.

It’s one of those places that you walk into and feel transported – back to your growing up days, and into a world where ethnic ambience and specialties overwhelm you.  It’s hard to describe; you really need to experience and wallow in it.  Think The Sopranos, combined with Wild Oats, combined with Micucci’s, and that only hints at the pleasure of such places. 

Oh how we wish that Maine, and Brunswick in particular, could host and make such places a facet of our ordinary daily lives.  Sadly, we don’t have whatever it takes to make it so.  We could muse at length at what ‘it takes,’ without ever making sense, so we won’t bother.

Instead, we’ll just make sure we enjoy such places every time we’re down in the land of our youth, to which we feel an increasing connection as the months and years go by.  Perhaps you feel the same about where you grew up.

We hope so; feeling this connection has been a great pleasure for us.

Here our some views of what we enjoyed:

We’re tempted to say “eat your heart out,” but we’re worried our Doctors would not take such words in the sense they are intended.

So be it, dear readers.

Technorati Tags: gusto,ethnicity,culture watch

Amtrak Foot Warmer?

You may have noted when driving by Maine Street Station in recent weeks that concrete work for the boarding platform is under way.  Here are a couple of views we took on a recent journey past the area.

There are two widely separated ramps already poured, setting the stage for a rather long spanning platform to accommodate the 100 or so passengers projected to arrive every day by the consultants we use to justify otherwise unjustifiable spending, or more appropriately, speculation with other people’s money. 

Whether it’s five trains a day with 20 passengers each, or two trains a day with 50 passengers each, who knows?  And whose counting anyway when the funding is ‘free?’

We heard recently that the ramp will be 400 feet long (think a football field plus end zones.)  That’s why it’s virtually impossible to capture the grandeur of the entire structure in a single view.  Imagine a world class Olympic sprinter needing something like 10 seconds to dash from one end to the other.

And wonder of wonders, we understand that a portion of it will be heated, no doubt to melt snow and prevent ice build-up.

So if you should find yourself in town this winter, and need to get your tootsies nice and toasty, you’ll be able to head on over to the station platform and get them as warm as roasted chestnuts.

For those of you who support the Amtrak ‘experiment’ because it will save the earth by reducing the number of cars on the road, please make sure you revise your calculations to include the energy costs of heating the platform.  It might help remind you of why you don’t have a heated driveway to deal with snow and ice.

Here at Side, we’ve had ‘cold feet’ about the whole train thing since it began, convinced it will be a forever subsidized sop to the local constituency, suitable for self-serving publicity events, photos, and grandiose campaign statements, but not much else. 

And if you think about it, another income redistribution scheme.  Which to many, makes it a wonder of wonders.  You know; social and economic justice and all that.

Go figure.

Technorati Tags: Brunswick,Amtrak,trains

MSHA: assorted foot (-in mouth?) notes

We just can’t stop our trailing thoughts on this subject, so while they are ‘top of mind,’ we’ll expunge them from our troubled braincase by passing them along.  Let’s set the stage for today’s commentary with this gem;

It's often the case that when a critic uses an embarrassingly accurate term to describe what a wrong-doer is doing, the wrong-doer protests: "Why don't you use my white-washed, conscience-soothing euphemism?" Such euphemisms, they claim, help promote "civilized debate."

- Steve Kangas

Let’s be honest with each other; the activity we’re discussing isn’t ‘affordable housing’ any more than a ‘free lunch’ is free.  In plain and simple English, which is rare these days, we’re talking about government subsidized housing.  No more, no less. 

Calling it affordable housing is a ‘white washed, conscience-soothing, euphemism,’ and carries the added benefit of making lots of bureaucrats and social justice advocates feel good about themselves, if not morally superior to the realists among us.

In objective economic terms, many of the projects that fall under this heading are actually unaffordable in real market terms.  If you’ve ever owned free market rental property, like we have, you know that the operative equation is whether the property can ‘carry itself’ at the very least, and hopefully provide a real return on investment.

In our simple way of thinking, there are three parties involved in this ‘affordable housing’ game (we had to bite our tongue more than once to avoid using the word ‘racket.’)  One party is the government, acting as proxy for taxpayers. This party doesn’t particularly care about rational concepts of ‘affordability,’ or return on investment, since it can compel whatever revenue it needs to make the deal work by force of law from we taxpayers.

The second party is a contractor/developer/property manager who decides to enter the ‘affordable housing’ sector as a business opportunity.  Think Rosa Scarcelli and Stanford Management, for example, who we referenced in recent posts.  As a side-note, they/she ‘have’ three properties right here in Brunswick.

Those who operate such properties are freed from the economic realities of open market, competitively priced rental properties in the region of interest.  They know they have a captive, targeted, government subsidized rental client base. If they are developers as well, construction costs are similarly distorted by government involvement and override of market reality, plus various and assorted tax credits, etc.

The third party is the client or tenant, to whom the housing is affordable in relative terms, but only because other persons (taxpayers) subsidize it, no matter how unaffordable it may be in real economic terms.

So why don’t we just call it government subsidized housing?  See the quote we opened with above.  Some will call us insensitive or impolite for suggesting such a thing.  Poppycock; PC terminology like ‘affordable housing’ is insensitive, impolite, and far worse. It disguises the insidious and widespread use of government power to insinuate itself into every aspect of our daily lives, and every square mile of our local landscape.  Signs in front of such housing seem benign and vaguely uplifting, instead of reminding us that the heavy hand of government is involved.

Not only that, but it sets the stage for capitol cronyism by which those with the ‘right’ connections can become wealthy without suffering the uncertainties of free markets; perhaps even wealthy enough to finance their own campaigns for high political office.

Wow; we’ve exceeded the expectations we had for ourselves as we began this post, so we need to head for the exit.  As we do, we’ll leave you with media coverage of yesterday’s meeting:

Then you can go to this item, which has a link to an audio only report on the meeting.

In one final thought, we can’t help but marvel at the irony that Dale McCormick, MSHA Director since 2005, was formerly Maine State Treasurer for 8 years or so.  This is the very same position now held by Bruce Poliquin, who is leading the way in demanding accountability from quasi-governmental ‘authorities’ who manage huge sums of taxpayer funds with virtually no oversight.

If you think the election a year ago didn’t make any difference, you haven’t been paying attention.  And it’s time you do, because ‘sunlight,’ even in the dead of winter, is illuminating all sorts of interesting things.  Many of which haven’t had to wear sunscreen for decades.

Maybe you should make sure you have a good pair of sunglasses handy, so that when unexpected glare occurs, your ‘eyes’ are protected.

Technorati Tags: MSHA,affordable housing,capitol cronyism