Littlestuff Weekender-1-1-2011

Wow, double snake eyes!  1-1-11

Happy New Year, readers and patriots.

This past week I was doing some research on the “Littlestuff” site and discovered that we had readers from nine (9) countries. If I were multi-lingual, there could be more. I’m not, so there will not be.

As of now, we are supposed to replace our fast-starting brightly lit light bulbs with the toxic environmental nightmares that Fred Upton recommended and legislated. Now he’s the GOP chair of the committee that oversees this crap.

I love gold and soybeans because they both have futures (pork bellies, too). When you’re over 50, anything with a future is attractive.

This New Years I’m reminded that I rarely drink …because I rarely drink. One makes me happy and 2 make me stupid.

This 40 degree weather that we enjoyed for the past couple of days makes me yearn to begin gardening. I didn’t plant one last year because of the campaign. I am converting our little Pat-Ch of Paradise to organic, so I’m rather selective about what I plant. In February I’ll start seeds in the basement. I purchased some Heritage seeds because the seeds from the fruit can be saved and planted unlike many hybrids and GMO varieties. I will use rye grass as a buffer to minimize drift from neighbors who farm conventionally, but if we can increase our acreage, I’ll use switch grass then pelletize it to use for heat in the shop or greenhouse. Never thought that I’d see the day that I foraged on Craig’s List for “manure.”

If you’ve ever observed a cat and a dog eating, you’ll note that the cat takes dainty little bites, but the dog gobbles the food…”wolfs it down.” In Congress this year we need people with the dog’s attitude to attack and destroy the overwhelming number of noxious laws, rules and regulations that are strangling our economy and our liberty. My fear is that they may behave more like cats…kitty cats.

If any of you need a speaker sometime from January 24^th through February 3^rd, I am available as of today (1-1-2011). I have a presentation about the Fair Tax, or I can discuss nullification and a legislative strategy to achieve it. Just contact me at earl4sos@gmail.com .

Found a new author that I like, Pauline Maier, an historian who has written extensively about the Founding. I am anticipating reading all of her work.

It’s exciting. If I have calculated correctly, I will have all the Christmas leftovers consumed by bedtime tonight.

I resolutely resolve not to resolve any resolutions.

Liberty is tough to achieve, and even more difficult to maintain.

We have the I.Q. test to measure raw intelligence. What do we use to measure a person’s heart? How do we calculate compassion or courage?

The Buckeye Football team plays Tuesday night at 8:30pm versus Arkansas. It should be an interesting Sugar Bowl given all the uproar surrounding some of the team’s stars.

Note: In yesterday’s column I discussed the weakened dollar and inflation. An example is that it requires 50 cents to purchase today what cost 20 cents in 1980. Twenty cents…I guess we could call that a “Pair-a-Dime” shift.

May your 2011 exceed all your expectations. May the year be even better than you can imagine. Have a wonderful 2011!

Charlie

Comments: earl4sos@gmail.com or cearlwriting@hotmail.com

www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com

Over the Horizon

Because it is the last day of 2010, it’s time to look ahead. New Year’s Eve Day here in Ohio is usually cold and sometimes features nasty weather so it offers a perfect environment for reflection and hopeful thinking. A steaming cup of coffee (in my world it represents “hair of the dog”) and a bowl game on the telly provide the ideal background for looking…over the horizon. There are two main areas that I wish to examine although they are intertwined with one another and with other concerns. They are the economy and the world of domestic politics and governance. Certainly international affairs, domestic social policy and the global economy are important sectors worthy of consideration, but I am not Nostradamus so I will not overreach.

As an relatively small time investor- Buffet (neither Warren nor Jimmy) doesn’t call me for advice,- I’ve been struggling in recent months and years to develop a strategy for the forthcoming short ter. For a while I was torn between expecting radical deflation followed by streaking inflation, but it seems to me that for the short term, the deflationary movement has become less likely. Deflation will be hovering around, however as local communities, state governments and ultimately the federal government face the prospect of financial collapse…default and bankruptcy. The impact of such a scenario would be immense as thousands or hundreds of thousands of vendors and recipients receive no payment. But in the immediate future (indeed, it’s already begun), I anticipate a rather aggressive inflationary movement.

There are three primary reasons and several ancillary ones for my expecting inflation in the near future. The first is the most obvious. The Federal Reserve Bank has indicated that it will be pursuing a modulated inflationary policy in the months ahead. One reason for this approach is that it allows the federal government and others to repay indebtedness with cheaper dollars which in turn may provide some easing in the GDP/debt ratio. A second reason that I expect marked inflation is the weakened dollar. The massive debt of the federal, state and local governments and the corresponding printing of dollars by the Fed have caused the value of each dollar to decline. As a result, it requires more dollars to purchase goods and services. The third primary impetus for an inflationary period is our nation’s misguided and radically stupid energy policy. Green solutions for our energy needs have not yet proven to be sufficient and efficient, yet we have ample resources of coal, oil and gas within our national boundaries. Misdirected environmental concerns have hamstrung our national energy production. Energy costs affect every transaction in our economy, and they will rise dramatically….and have a corollary impact on food prices.

Allow me to state here that I’m not antagonistic to the green movement or unconcerned about environmental issues. A growing vibrant economy provides the capital for research and development to find solutions for some hazards. I believe that petro chemicals are a reliable and efficient energy source, but I don’t want to spray them on my fields or my crops.

Politically speaking, there will be a few pitched battles between the President and the GOP. Those Congress watchers who anticipate a massive shift in attitude in D.C will be dismayed. There are just enough wobbly RINO’s in the Senate to blunt most of the House initiatives. I fully expect the Republican House to win a few early battles, but eventually the GOP Senators will beg for comity and compromise away more of our freedom. There will be hundreds of opportunities to advance the cause of freedom, and they will fail on most of them. The campaign for 2012 will begin in about three months (or fewer), and we will be back in the silly season again.

Comments: earl4sos@gmail.com or cearlwriting@hotmail.com

www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com

Flashback

In June I shall celebrate (?) my 65^th birthday. I can clearly recall the apprehensive times of the Cold War. I have some vague recollections of the Korean Conflict. The Vietnam Fiasco is current history for me, and the two Kennedy and King assassinations have been burned onto my memory banks. I vividly recall Disco and the Bee Gees as well as alternate day gasoline purchases. The high interest rates and rampant inflation during the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s are easily accessible from my pain-laden memory banks. I can still visualize the second aircraft turning into the Twin Towers while I watched from the safety of my daughter’s living room. The sense of horror and dread that I felt at that moment is still with me. It marked the beginning of a decade that has changed our nation forever.

As I reflect on the past nine and a quarter years, I can recall of no similar period in my lifetime that has been as unsettling for so long. Every decade had its lows and highs…its endings and fresh beginnings, but the first decade of the Twenty-first Century has been one of doubt, frustration, and, in some cases, fear. My fears are not based on the possibility of my family or me becoming victims of terrorism, nor do they arise from a morbid expectation of an environmental catastrophe. No, my fears are deep-seated and gnawing. They represent a sense of exaggerated uneasiness and discomfort.  My mind continues to protest that what is bad could be worse, and we can salvage our nation and make it better. My gut disagrees. Perhaps it is a product of my age, but I have this nagging sense that the sand is near the bottom of the hour glass…that our time is nearly gone. Oh, maybe we’ll survive as a nation, but we’ll have radical divisions among us…sometimes violent ones, and our once-upon-a-time economic powerhouse and living standard will compete with other nations in the Second World.

Now it’s not my intention to make this column into a hand-wringing tale of woe. It is merely a personal observation of my sense of our nation today. This past year (2010) has been the most difficult one of my life. Maybe my view is jaundiced because I drove more than 85,000 miles during a ten month campaign. Many of the events that I attended were exhilarating and fulfilling, but beneath the glad handing, the smiling and the speech making was an undercurrent of dismay. The people were valiantly attempting to forge on as if their lives were normal, but they appeared to be anxious. I drove past numerous closed plants and foreclosed homes. I visited convenience stores with empty dusty shelves. The overall mood that I witnessed was one of apprehension, but not yet despairing. A certain wariness seemed to have invaded the normally warm hearted Buckeyes. It was a cordial caution.

Normally I’m a rather upbeat fellow. I prefer to seek the silver lining when I encounter difficult times. The sense of foreboding that I have now is alien to my nature. I have a new appreciation for the Old Testament prophets who valiantly attempted to wake up the Children of Israel, and who were usually ignored or scorned. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t see myself as a spokesperson for God or the Founders, but I do understand their agony when their messages went unheeded. Also, I am aware that my concern and my fearfulness are not solely my own. There are many of you, warriors all, who have decided that it is time to draw the line and say, “NO MORE.”  I am heartened by your passion and your courage.

Tomorrow I will look to the days and years ahead, and will try not to be so morose. Allow me to close by stating that I’m relieved that 2010 is nearly over…mere hours remain of what, for me, has been a dreadful year.

Comment: earl4sos@gmail.com  or cearlwriting@hotmail.com

www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com

U.S. Grant-Time to Retire

Read any Sunday paper and the odds are you’ll find a “help wanted” ad for a grant writer. So who awards those grants? Where does the money come from? Except for a few foundations, most of the grants are given by governments. Grant writers are needed because either the grant process is a competitive one or certain criteria must be met and/or bureaucratic hoops must be jumped before the recipient is deemed to have qualified. So, for the taxpayer it’s a double whammy. Sacrifice some your labor or profits to fund the grant, and forfeit more of your sweat equity to underwrite the grant writer.


My personal view is that grant writers represent B.S. artists who are savvy in the world of bureaucratic minutiae. They appear to be experts at generalized obfuscation, “i-dotting” and “t-crossing.” Although I am certain that someone at one time offered a reasonably valid justification for the entire grant process, I suspect that like every other Big Government function or process, it has morphed into a ludicrous exercise with minimal value that has scant constitutional purpose. The entire grant system is a sham. The feds or the states pretend to acknowledge the priorities set by the local government while, at the same time, the locals can boast about receiving “state” or “federal” funds. In Ohio, for example, Butler County officials could rejoice about their receiving federal money for a new updated recycling center. The County would be responsible for the 70% that the grant would not cover as well as any unanticipated costs, but the people should be happy because the 30% would be coming from the federal government. Maybe we should ask the folks in Warren County or Hamilton County if they wish to pay for some other county’s recycling center. What would the folks in Indiana or Kentucky say if they had been asked? This scenario is one that I have created to illustrate the folly of the grant writing shell game.

The entire process is merely the moving of taxpayer dollars from one community or state to another while providing the illusion that the locality is getting something for nothing. A recent example is the $400 million dollar grant awarded to Ohio for startup and design of a “so-called” high speed rail system. After the November election, Governor-elect Kasich declined to accept the federal funds, and Big Brother (aka Sec’y Ray LaHood) immediately offered the funds to Florida or California. These events suggest that the need for the funds in Ohio was not a burning priority, and that the federal government will continue to irresponsibly spend borrowed money even when facing a fiscal crisis.

If you employ a competent grant writer, then you can locate the moving pea under the shell. A community can take momentary advantage of a system that takes money from others, but eventually all will pay and pay dearly. Oh yes, don’t forget to include the cost of the grant writer. Remember to include salary, benefits, supplies, space, furniture and utilities, and maybe this time, local government, you can find the pea.

Comment: earl4sos@gmail.com or cearlwriting@hotmail.com

www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com

The Ohio Plan-the seed

This entry will be rather short for two reasons. The first is that this plan requires further development before it can be successfully implemented, and I wanted some feedback from you about its potential efficacy. The second impetus for this abbreviated column is that we are developing a new format for “Littlestuff-minoosha” that will feature an executive summary at the beginning that will be followed by the “fleshed out” portion. Symbols and words have meaning. In our efforts to communicate concepts and ideas, we often rely on symbols to capture the essence of our thought processes. Symbolic action serves a similar purpose. When undertaken free of cynicism or hypocrisy, a symbolic gesture can create a tone or provide a worthy example for those who observe it.

One of our more recent examples of symbolic action would be when the President of the United States jets overnight to serve a holiday meal to our troops in harm’s way. The action itself has no intrinsic value because there are military professionals who can do a much better job of carving turkey or ladling gravy. The value lies in the symbolic nature of the President’s empathy for the troops in the field. We know it’s stupid. We know that it is unnecessarily costly. We know that at its base, it is a meaningless endeavor, but, nevertheless, we experience an element of “feel good” that the leader of our nation engaged in the symbolic action.

This lengthy preamble is the “set up” for my germinating idea that members of the Ohio General Assembly must take the lead for restoring liberty and fiscal sanity to our state. My nearly two-year old grandson has provided me with some valuable insights about human nature. When there is limited structure, his curious mind and busy hands will seek something to explore. Legislators are similar. They will continually search for little problems-real or imaginary- to be solved. “Idle hands are the Devil’s tools.’ Personally, I believe that the expansion of the Buckeye version of Big Brother coincided with the “need” for a “full-time” General Assembly. If we are ever to put the bloated monster back into its rightful place, then let’s begin by placing the Legislature back on a “part-time” basis.

Modern technology has provided the means for State House members and State Senators to “stay home” while fulfilling their legislative duties. They can be gainfully employed in the private sector while using the technology to complete their legislative tasks. In my view they should be limited to one week per month, and nine months per year of assembly in Columbus. The remainder of the time could be spent in their districts with the electronic umbilical cords uniting them in common purpose (geesh!). Clearly, some constitutional and legal hurdles must be overcome, but the welfare of our state is at stake.

In addition to encouraging them to communicate electronically, I would reduce their pay from the current $60,584 per year to $24,000 annually. As each member is elected and assumes office, the taxpayers would provide her or him with the $5000 package of technology and software to allow them to function. Just on the salaries alone minus the start-up costs, the savings would approach $9million every two years. This is without adjusting the benefit packages and the mileage reimbursements. Admittedly, $9 million is peanuts, but the symbol would be priceless. The greatest advantage, though, is the dispersal of the legislative body from the central location where they are accessible to lobbyists and other entities who survive on the government teat. This is merely a seed of thought and requires more development, but check the link for the current pay scale and mileage reimbursement.

An Ohio Plan.docx

Comments: earl4sos@gmail.com or cearlwriting@hotmail.com

www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com

We Need a Law

We need a law that bans new laws. In my view six of the most dangerous words in our language are “there ought to be a law.” Every time a legislator, a regulator, a public interest group or a powerful corporate entity has a brain fart, they seek to enact a law that enhances their position or makes life more difficult for their opposition or competitors. As a result, we have laws upon laws upon laws. We have been outlawed. "The essence of fascism is to make laws forbidding everything and then enforce them selectively against your enemies." We are all aware of instances where our governments have current laws that are not enforced while they continue to pass new ones.


In a December 12th article in the “Washington Post,” Philip K. Howard bemoaned that proliferation of laws in the United States. He declared, “Once a law is in place in the United States, it’s almost impossible to dislodge.” Citing the debate over the “temporary” Bush tax cuts, he illustrated that even temporary laws are often embedded in our Federal Code into perpetuity. Add to the proliferation of laws the concept that many of them have no Constitutional justification, and we find ourselves on the path to tyranny. Too many laws, too many unconstitutional laws, overregulation, whimsical rulemaking by bureaucrats seeking to justify their positions and their budgets, and we have a sure fire formula for abuse. Although Congresspersons are the elected representatives of the people, we all know that many of them lose their local, down home perspective and fall in love with the trappings of power.

The imperial attitudes of our elected leaders is often matched by the various agencies and departments who interpret and execute the laws, rules and regulations given to them by our peerless all-knowing “public servants.” The result is that we have a myriad of interlocking, overlapping and redundant proscriptions that make it impossible for the typical law abiding citizen to be fully aware of every action that may affect him or her. It’s similar to the death by a thousand cuts. Every action or movement by a citizen could potentially be an infraction of some sort. It seems possible that as this madness continues, many citizens will simply withdraw…lose their initiative and cease their efforts for creative enterprises and solutions. The overabundance of laws and regulations will have an effect similar to throwing sand in a gearbox. The great engine of ingenuity and energy that has been the historic legacy of our people will grind to a halt.

We are being smothered by an avalanche of lawmaking and rulemaking. The “promote the general welfare” clause in the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States was clearly designed to limit the federal government enactments to those issues that affect EVERYONE in the nation. A cursory reading of the Federalist papers or ratification documents will endorse that view. Can any Member of Congress or Executive branch appointee honestly attest that every one of the multiple thousands of laws, regulations and rules directly impacts every citizen and promotes the general welfare? They may try, but they cannot do so reasonably and truthfully.

Our legal landscape is like a beach that has been mined. We citizens are the ones who are attempting to cross the beach to safety on the solid land. The mines represent the legal and regulatory traps that may blow up in our faces as we seek to navigate through the treacherous sand. Each of us, as we move to safety, will face a different set of mines than our colleagues whose paths are somewhat different. The bloated, self-important government may claim that the general welfare necessity is satisfied because all of us must tread through the minefield, but the fact that each of us encounters different mines blows up the government’s argument and its legitimacy. Too many laws, too many regulations, too many rules, too many bureaucrats, and certainly, we have too much government and too little liberty.

Comment: earl4sos@gmail.com or cearlwriting@hotmail.com

www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com