Month: March 2018

Donald Trump has been President for fourteen months now, and I am utterly astonished that he hasn’t been run out of town by now. With every passing day, the man further debases himself and the country he was elected to lead.

Amazingly, the United States of America has a leader who doesn’t believe in democracy and seems to be doing everything in his power to destroy it.

Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt (both of them!) would be appalled.

In the latest news from the three-ring circus that we know as Washington D.C.:

“Rocket Man”

For an inexplicable reason, the President seems to want to bully this despotic nation into submission. The North Koreans now have nuclear weapons and are proud of that; Trump wants them to give them up.

Of course, Trump hasn’t made the same demand of other despotic nations like Russia or China, and is similarly giving a free pass to other fellow members of the nuclear club: Israel, Pakistan, India, England, and France. The President thinks that he is going to have a personal sit-down with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un and talk him into dismantling his nuclear program. Of course, this is the same guy that the President ridiculed publicly a few months ago.

Zoltar predicts that this effort will fail and that the President of the United States will be lucky if he isn’t publicly humiliated by the North Korean dictator.

Second Amendment

After much confusion via-Twitter, the President has, predictably, revealed himself to be safely ensconced in the pocket of National Rifle Association Executive Director Wayne LaPierre, along with virtually every GOP Senator and Congressman.

Enraged by the lack of response to the recent spate of armed attacks on school campuses, huge protests occurred in many American cities last week. By and large, the protesters were young, and were joined by politicians and celebrities. The crowd in Washington D.C. was estimated at 800,000.

I repeat: this is THE ISSUE OF OUR TIME. Unlimited access to guns by all segments of society is passe; something needs to be done. And, just as with the Vietnam War, our young people are leading the way.

Trump and the GOP are on the wrong side of this issue, and they will pay the price.

Stormy Weather

Some nasty storm clouds have been circling Washington D.C. in recent months.

Of course, Americans have known for decades that Donald Trump is a major league sleazeball when it comes to women. His in-your-face public comments (bragging about his Tom Cat nature), his “locker room talk” about grabbing women by the pussy, and his marriage failures due to infidelity are all public knowledge. The guy’s a bum, and every woman knows it.

Surprisingly (or, to me, not so surprisingly), the so-called Moral Majority of right-thinking, God-fearing Christian folk in the Bible Belt have given the President a free-pass on his chronic, lecherous behavior. Almost 63 million Americans voted for the douchebag, so evidently they are OK with sin…as long as it’s the Republican variety.

As a by-product of the “Me Too” movement,  several women have come forward to note, for the record, that the President of the United States deserves at least an Honorable Mention ribbon for his sleazy acts…while his newly married bride, Melania, was carrying his son-to-be Baron. Now, that’s pretty classy.

One of the ladies who slept with Trump was porn star Stormy Daniels, and another was Karen McDougal, a former Playboy Playmate. They both indicated that their affairs with Donald Trump were consensual.

The President’s attorneys have been doing legal gymnastics during the past several months, attempting to silence the blabbermouths.

In fact, threats to enforce “non-disclosure” pacts with these women have been bandied about on behalf of the President…who, all the while, professes that these women are lying about his infidelity. Logical question: If nothing happened, then why did Trump’s attorneys pay these gals money not to disclose?

Prior to, and during, the election, 16 women came forward to publicly claim that, in years past, Trump made unsolicited, unwanted sexual advances toward them. (One of them claimed that he raped her when she was 13 years old.)

If this pervert was a big shot in Hollywood, he would be out of work by now.

The big loser in all of this is the poor First Lady, who is publicly humiliated every time one of her husband’s former flings details some of his lascivious, adulterous behavior.

You’d think son Baron would be embarrassed.  However, “cheating” on spouses is in the Trump DNA. His half-brother Donald Jr.‘s wife Vanessa recently announced her intent to divorce her husband of 12 years. A main cause: infidelity…a fling with former “Apprentice” contestant Aubrey O’Day.

Here’s the proud husband and daddy in happier times. What could that doofus have been thinking!

The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.

From Russia With Love

The investigation into Russian meddling with the 2016 elections seems to be proceeding right along; seemingly, every week the headlines reveal some new twist to the diabolical plot.

Now we learn that Facebook was used by some sinister folks to feed Russian propaganda favoring Donald Trump into the “smart phones” of millions of U.S. citizens. This particular scandal has flummoxed billionaire founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, who will soon be testifying before Congress (and, probably, Special Counsel Robert Mueller).

For goodness sake, it also appears that Russian money funded some National Rifle Association campaign ads supporting Trump. I though these red-blooded guys in the camos were patriotic. If you can’t trust a Redneck, who can you trust?

The F.B.I. investigation is in full swing, with no sign of let-up. The President still continues to proclaim that his campaign had clean hands, but it is beginning to look like his campaign director, Paul Manafort, and his deputy, Robert Gates, were no-goodniks in cahoots with Russian operatives.

Mr. Trump’s continuous pronouncements of “no collusion” with the Russians sound a lot like his “never happened” denials of sexual escapades with the 16 whistle-blowing victims, Stormy Daniels, and Karen McDougal.

And then there are the too-often-to-be-a-coincidence fawning statements by our President over Russian President-for-Life Vladimir Putin. The latest Valentine from our Commander-in-Chief was a congratulatory message to Putin for his recent landslide election (that every knowledgeable Kremlin watcher agrees was rigged). Gee, and I thought Donald Trump hated rigged elections…

As the saying goes, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”.

It seems to me that there’s plenty of evidence that something pretty fishy happened in the 2016 elections. And all evidence trails seem to be heading back to the same place.

It seems that the President is stacking his advisory deck with yes-men, in the hopes that one will find some excuse for shutting down the Russia-gate investigation before the posse arrives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. GOP leaders are being cagey about what they might do if this occurred. Based upon their Jello-like backbone of late, one can only imagine. But, Mueller is getting their “thoughts and prayers”.

The Prez and his cronies in Congress have tried like Hell to besmirch the F.B.I. and, by association, the Special Counsel. But, no dice…as of yet. Trump being Trump, he will probably decide one morning, while sitting on the crapper Tweeting, to invite Mr. Mueller into the Oval Office for a man-to-man conversation.

Then, again, there’s always Plan B.

The Carousel

When Donald Trump was elected, he promised not only to “drain the swamp” but also to bring the highest quality individuals  into his Administration…a private industry all-star team, as it were.

The President quickly reversed his campaign promise to “drain the swamp” and seeded his Administration with big-time lobbyists from every conceivable major American corporation.

(And, then, he and the GOP gave those same corporations a hefty tax break, financed by debt that will be paid by our children and grandchildren.)

The quality of Trump’s all-star team has been lacking a bit. We know this because the Prez has been firing them weekly. A lot of other “stars” that he brought onto his team have upped and quit.

Recently, the President fired his National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and replaced him with John R. Bolton, a hawkish, nut-job, Fox News commentator whose claim to fame is that he was one of the Bush Administration honks for war against Iraq because they were hoarding “weapons of mass destruction”. Yeah, he helped talk us into that one.

Evidently ex-Three Star General McMaster wasn’t hawkish enough for the President’s taste. Bolton, on the other hand, has publicly advocated preemptive nuclear strikes against Iran and North Korea. He likes wars.

Trump also doubled-down on war-like behavior by nominating Gina Haspel to replace outgoing CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Earlier in her CIA career, Ms. Haspel distinguished herself by being chief of a black ops site in Thailand where the United States tortured prisoners of war. She has been condemned by human rights organizations as a “war criminal”. Her appointment would be totally in line with Mr. Trump’s campaign assertions that he supports torturing captured combatants…something that our government and the Geneva Convention says is illegal.

Not coincidentally, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, John Dowd, resigned last week. Talk about seeing the handwriting on the wall…

For some reason, the President has had a tough time convincing top-flight lawyers to join his legal defense team.

Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated that she “had no reason to believe” that the President had lost confidence in his Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs David Shulkin, head honcho of the VA’s $198 billion organization.

Today, the President fired Shulkin…

…and replaced him with his personal doctor “Ronnie” Jackson (I’m not making this stuff up!) who has no organizational management experience.

The President has also publicly floated the idea of nominating his personal pilot, John Dunkin, to head up the Federal Aviation Authority and its $16 billion bureaucracy. (I repeat: I’m not making this up, folks.) I’m sure John is a fine pilot, but he has no organizational management experience.

I think you get the idea: Trump wants to staff his Administration with toadies, bootlickers, and turd polishers…like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for example.

The President is now pulling third-stringers off the bench, which is pretty thin after all the attrition. These scabs will be rank amateurs, getting on-the-job experience while directing massive governmental organizations. Expertise is not required…as long as you can say “Yes” to the Prez.

The inmates are officially running the asylum.

Say It Ain’t So: It is being rumored that the next head to fall will be Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who’s been in Trump’s cross hairs for months…because he wasn’t bootlicking well enough.

No problem: the President has already got another TV personality lined-up for the top law enforcement job in America.

Is The Apocalypse Upon Us?

It’s getting pretty chaotic in D.C. Pretty much anything could happen at any time. We need to keep our fingers crossed that the President takes all of his meds at night.

The good news is that the 2018 midterm elections are approaching. Every member of Congress is up for reelection…except those who’ve thrown in the towel in disgust. Thirty-one Republican Congressmen have seen the light.

Historically, the party that is not in power (i.e. the Democrats, this time) makes substantial inroads from midterm elections. Of the several special elections that have taken place since Donald Trump’s election, I believe that the Democrats have won them all.

I think the President needs Vladimir Putin’s help now more than ever.

Tim is our oldest son; he’s about 53 years young. He’s a good guy, too.

Here’s the old “greybeard” giving his daughter Jessica away at her wedding in 2017.

Tim’s been through a lot, and he’s put us through a lot, as well. There have been plenty of ups and downs in his life trajectory, but he’s persevered and right now, in his early Fifties, Tim can see some light at the end of the tunnel.

He has a great wife and excellent kids…a lot to be proud of.

Tim’s probably my best friend among the sons, only because we see each other a lot, we talk, and have some common interests, like politics, sports, raising kids, and laughing about stupid shit (like the Trump presidency).

The poor bastard has my sense of humor.

Luckily for us, Tim is a Realtor, in addition to his full-time job as a manager at Idexx, one of the largest veterinary labs in Southern California. Tim sold real estate in Murrieta and here in Bear Creek for a number of years, and was real good at it (until the economy tanked). His real estate experience is going to help us sell our home here in Murrieta as soon as we skeedaddle north in our RV on April 30th.

We’re in the process of packing up our personal crap and deciding what to take on the road in the RV and what to store in “Pods” until we take possession of our new home in Mesquite (Oct/Nov?). It’s a big job; we’ve got a lot of junk.

I talked to Tim today about the house sale plan of attack. Although no house on our cul-de-sac has sold for over $470K, he is pretty confident that we can list it at $519K, hold some open houses, and find a buyer. He’s confident of this because: our home model is the largest square footage; the interior plan is the most desirable; we have the longest driveway; we have the best exposure to the sun (i.e. not facing it as it sets!); we have two backyard patios; our backyard view is the best (we’re on a promontory, looking out at lots of trees); every room has been upgraded; and, we’ve nicely staged the home with art and furnishings.

I hope Tim is right and our digs sell fast. We leave on April 30th, he’ll do open houses starting the next weekend, and we’re hoping that a deal can be had before the end of May. Depending upon the length of escrow, we may have to re-jigger our RV travel itinerary in June or July. I hope not.

(Normally, we spend September and October at the beach in Southern California, at Paradise by the Sea. We may have to curtail some/most of that this year, as our Mesquite home will be approaching the finished stage. I hate the thought, but we may have to RV camp in hot Nevada in late September in order to attend walk-thru, etc. Or, maybe we’ll leave the rig at Oceanside, have our sons use it (and watch the dogs), allowing Charlie and I to drive up and do the walk-thru.)

Like everything else this year, we’ll have to play it by ear.

 

Our son Jonathan visited us this past week. Actually, for the first few days of his visit, he babysat the dogs while we cavorted in Nevada. At the same time, he dismantled Charlie’s office (which he built for us years ago) so that it could be re-floored. And, then re-assembled it by the time we had returned.

What a guy!

He actually is a Hell of a son, to be honest. He’s smart, hard-working, a good husband, and a fun guy to be around. And, he loves us. What more could we ask for?

Jonathan is taking over Charlie’s bookkeeping business. He’s been “apprenticing” for at least eight years (maybe ten?)…ever since his cabinetry business hit the skids during the Great Recession. Of all the kids and acquaintances that Charlie tried to get interested in her business, Jonathan was/is the only one who really took the bit in his mouth and ran with it.

It took Jonathan awhile to become professionally conscientious, but he’s a journeyman bookkeeper now, and he knows what he’s doing. Occasionally, he will “school” Charlie, who has been plying her trade for decades. Jonathan has a knack for numbers, he’s less confused than my wife (she’s old!), and is much more computer-savvy. He’s going to do a great job carrying on the legacy of Charlie Manning Bookkeeping.

Our son is a physical wreck, though. He’s got a bad back and painful hips (from accidents and years of hard, physical work), and it’s hard for him to get his 48 year-old body moving in the morning. But, despite the pain, he soldiers through, not complaining. He’s a man.

Charlie and I were packing up stuff for “the move” this week while Jonathan was here. Luckily, my son and I are about the same size (he’s a bit heavier), and I gave him a bunch of clothes to take home that he can really use in Montana…like cowboy boots and hats, long-sleeve shirts, an expensive cowboy belt, and other stuff that I haven’t used in awhile. All he needs now is a horse and a beat-up pick-up truck.

Charlie and Jonathan will be working closely (figuratively) for the next two years as the transition to 100-percent Jonathan moves forward. They will be on the phone (and Face-time) a lot, and occasionally Jonathan will come down to So Cal to meet with clients or to Mesquite to get some lessons from Charlie. We are going to keep half of our new garage clear so that our son can park his extra car there. At least for awhile…

Jonathan’s wife Misty is also hard-working; she’s got two or three jobs up in Whitefish/Kalispell. I don’t know when she sleeps. The two of them are trying to purchase their own home, too. If everything goes right, they may reach that goal within 12 months. I hope so, because they deserve it.

Our son flew home this morning. I hope he has a great return trip and is greeted with hugs and kisses. He deserves them.

 

Charlie and I took a three-day trip up to Sin City last week to celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary.

We stayed for two nights at Caesar’s Palace. Gee, that place has sure changed over the years; I recall when Evel Knievel kinda “jumped” his motorcycle over the fountain out front…and broke his body up pretty bad. (It seems that guy was famous for not succeeding…like his Snake River rocket launch failure. What a doofus!”

I’ve been coming to Vegas since the late Fifties. My parents used to go up there from time to time, back when visitors actually got dressed up for shows and such. (Nowadays, people walk into casinos in their bathing suits or with baggy pants hanging half-way to their knees. Bright and gaudy, but not as classy.)

My parents would stay at an off-Strip motel (with pool!), which my brother Terry and I liked a lot. They would leave us to babysit ourselves while they enjoyed an evening show and gambled a bit. Occasionally, they would take us to dinner at the El Cortez, and (as juveniles) we’d be frog-marched from the casino front door right to the restaurant…no wandering allowed…because the casinos were quite anal about non-21 individuals roaming the gambling floor. It was fun, anyway. That downtown neon was cool.

That was back in (probably) 1958, way before Caesar’s was built. The original casinos were on the Strip: Flamingo, Sands, Desert Inn, Frontier, etc., and there was also the “Downtown” area, with the old, seedy gambling joints. Back in those days, the headliner acts were folks like Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Dean Martin, etc.

My parents liked comedians like Shecky Greene and Shelly Berman (who later found fame as a chronically-confused Superior Court judge on “Boston Legal”).

Anyway, Caesar’s didn’t open until 1966. The day it opened, it was better than any other casino/hotel.

And, in my opinion, it has remained atop the heap for the past 52 years. Every time some new upstart comes up with a splashy new idea, Caesar’s will one-up them, and then some. The place seems to be ever-expanding, like the universe, and always has top-notch entertainment like Celine Dion, Elton John, etc. The headline act at the Forum this week was “Reba McEntire/Brooks and Dunn”.

When we checked-out last week, a nice black gentleman named “Isaiah” or “Israel” took our bags from our room, and we walked with him through the massive complex to the Valet parking area. On the way, he told us that he’d worked there for 42 years! And, that he’d met all sorts of famous folks like Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Cher, Elton John, Frank Sinatra, Tiger Woods…you name it, he met them. And, of course, he’d seen all of the changes to Caesar’s and to the Strip…”mind-boggling”. When we got to the Valet, and our car was delivered, our new friend introduced us to our car-jockey (I forget his name), and we found out that this senior citizen had been parking cars for Caesar’s since it opened…52 years!!! Without a promotion, ha ha.

We had a nice time at Caesar’s. We ate at the Trevi Fountain restaurant (in the Forum Shops) on our first night…the food was mediocre, the drinks were crappy, and the bill was pricey, but it was nice to rest our buns after a long ride in from So Cal.

We wandered around the Forum Shops, I bought Charlie a doggie purse at Brighton…

 …and ogled the fancy merchandise and artsy stuff. Gee, I wish I was rich like the folks who could actually purchase some of this stuff!

Here’s what every woman needs…a dress made out of maple wood.

Guess what? Charlie didn’t get the dress.

But, I did buy her a house.

Yep, our main purpose of the visit to Vegas was to surveill the Del Webb community up in Mesquite, which is about 70 miles north. It’s a small community of about 20,000 people with a few old casinos and a lot of developeable land up on Flat Top Mesa. Del Webb (aka, Pulte Development) has been building homes up there since 2007. The master-planned community surrounds the Conestoga Golf Club, and is designed and zoned for adults 55+ in age.

We found a nice corner lot on a street called Buggy Whip. The lot is deep and has a 12′ lava rock retaining wall to the rear, which means that the folks behind us will be looking over the top of our roof…so, there will be great privacy in our large backyard. And, our front view looks across the valley toward some mountains.

We looked at six home models, the cheapest “starting at” $211K, with the most expensive at $349K. They all looked nice, but we wanted about the same square footage as our previous home (without the stairs, of course!!!), so we ended up selecting the Serenity model. (It measures out at 2,337 s.f.)

Our consultant “Danelle” worked with us to select the basic structural options that we wanted: a “suite” for guests; a bay window at the kitchen cafe; a cart garage; a storage room within the 2-car garage; a den in lieu of a 3rd bedroom (which we will use as an office); a courtyard wall in the front entryway; French doors at the den and between the “gathering room” and the outdoor patio; pavers for the driveway, walkway, and outdoor patio; etc.

The “starting at” price of the Serenity model was $329K. With our selected structural options, we’re now at around $400K…and counting. That’s because the next phase is the interior “finishes” design, which we will do on April 6th. This will be Charlie’s day, where she decides how she wants her new home to look inside. Hopefully, we can do that within a $50K budget, so that our finished price will be about $450K.

Between mortgage payments, H.O.A. dues, and State income taxes (Nevada has none!), we should save at least $1,500 per month from what we are paying now in So Cal.

(BTW, we probably would not have purchased this home if it weren’t for the funds that my parents left me in their Living Trust. My Mom, who recently passed, was SO PROUD that she could pass on a legacy to her kids…the fruits of 50 years of hard work and persistence by two lovers and great parents. I wish she could see our Mesquite home.)

This is the beginning of Charlie and I’s last great adventure. We are going to create a “nest” where we (and the doggies) can retreat to after our annual RV road trip. The idea is that we will spend the super-hot Nevada summer months in cooler climes, and utilize the Mesquite digs in the Fall, Winter and Spring.

I’m anticipating that this adventure will be “Bear Creek, Version 2”; i.e. new life, new friends, something for “retired” Charlie to get excited about. We anticipate meeting a lot of folks in Sun City who share our interests. Charlie is a very social animal, so I’m sure that we’ll hook-up with some very nice people to do things with there in Mesquite and, maybe, to RV with on our journeys. In addition, we will only be a stone’s throw from the Virgin River Gorge (beautiful!), and 1-1/2 hours drive to Zion National Park, my favorite hiking place.

The plan (per Pulte) is for the home to be completed by November. This means that we may be modifying our Fall RV schedule a bit so that we can be in Mesquite for the walk-thrus and such. We anticipate selling our home here in Murrieta early in the Summer. Depending upon the closing of that sale, we also may have to modify our early season RV schedule a bit, so that we can put all of our household stuff into storage.

It’s going to be an interesting and stressful year.

 

 

 

 

Former Prussian statesman and Chancellor of the German Empire from 1871 to 1890 famously said, “Politics is the art of the possible”.

What this means is that politics is not about what is right or what’s best; it’s about what you can actually get done.  Otherwise known as Realpolitik, it’s a political philosophy that recognizes the waste of waste of time and resources attempting, repeatedly, to pound a square peg into a round hole.

Realpolitik seems to have fallen out of favor since I was young. Modern American politicians, of both Democratic and Republican parties and the liberal and conservative fringe groups, have succeeded in polarizing politics to the point that nothing is expected of them because their positions are ideologically set in concrete. Each side refuses to budge, so nothing gets done. Period.

Politics has become the art of the impossible.

Elected officials used to be regular guys (and women!) who wanted to help govern, and went off to their legislative jobs with the idea of helping to brainstorm ideas and move the Ship of State in a positive direction. “Finding common ground” was a key requisite to success; in other words, compromise was the key driver of forward momentum toward important goals.

Compromise has become a dirty word in national politics. Why is that?

I recall the days when I worked for the County of Riverside. When I started there, our county was rural in nature but immediately adjacent to super-fast growing areas in Southern California. In the mid-70’s, a growth boom hit Riverside County like a sledgehammer. Our elected officials (Board of Supervisors) reflected mainly farming interests, and they (and the government that they were elected to run) were pretty unsophisticated when it came to managing rapid land development.

Land developers descended upon Riverside County like locusts, and they dispensed a steady stream of gaudy visions, promises, and bribes to the yahoos in our cow county. Good men on the Board of Supervisors succumbed to this attention, and our land use plans and ordinances were dumbed-down to the point that just about any type of development would be OK’d. Houses, commercial strips, and industrial projects sprang up all over the place, and western Riverside County became a hot mess…lots of people putting up with sub-standard infrastructure (i.e. not enough roads, bridges, traffic signals, parks, schools, etc.). Quality of life was crappy.

As the county rapidly grew, its stature grew, as well. Our Board of Supervisors liked that, as well as the increasing tax base, and the fact that they were being courted by important regional players. They were, after all , politicians, and politicians have egos. Each Supervisor had a lot of clout in their separate District, and they loved their individual discretion “play God” on a small scale.

One of the tasks that  I had, as a staffer over the many years with the County, was to help convince them, bit by bit, to relinquish some of that power, for the good of the whole. In the beginning, land developers would “divide and conquer”; i.e. suck up to an individual Supervisor, make all sorts of promises (and, bribes?) regarding a proposed project in his District. At that time, Supervisors had a hands-off understanding in place, where they would not interfered in another Supervisor’s District. It was my job, along with others, to convince all of the Supervisors that this approach was not a good one…in terms of meeting long-term overall objectives, like improving quality of life.

The Supervisors eventually agreed to work as a group, presenting a united front to development interests, and we were able to put in place a long-term infrastructure development plan which was/is paid for by property development.

Prior to this agreement, both sides, the Supervisors, individually, and the Building Industry Association, were ideologically opposed to “impact fees”.

In this instance, the seemingly impossible goal was realized when the Supervisors compromised by relinquishing some of their individual powers to the group. Also, the Building Industry Association compromised by modifying their traditional opposition to impact fee assessments, realizing that the higher level of infrastructure funded by the plan would help to market their product.

Riverside County has since become 10th most populous county in the United States.

The “art of the possible” is on display in Southwest Riverside County in an area known as Temecula Valley Wine Country. It is a well-known tourist area, reminiscent of Napa Valley, but on a smaller scale. There are lots of wineries, tasting rooms, restaurants, and a few hotels. It’s a very pleasant place to visit, but it wasn’t always that way.

Back in 1980, the area was just developing with vineyards. The Cilurzos had been there since 1968, but Callaway, which opened its winery in 1974, made some national splash with its first Chardonnay. At that time, there were maybe about a dozen vineyards out in the hilly, rural area. Probably because of Callaway’s success, many more entrepreneurs got into the act, buying acreage and building homes, farms, and planting vines. Initially, they loved living out in the country…it was, and is, a beautiful area.

And, then, it rained.

That beautiful country Eden became a mess, and the newly-minted country folk became enraged, because they couldn’t get in our out of their properties via the muddy, washed-out, farm-to-market dirt roads that provided them access. This is “unacceptable”, they screamed. What is the County going to do about it? “We want paved roads”, they cried.

Unfortunately for them, the County’s hands were tied. Rural areas that are subdivided by parcel-mapping have no development standards with regard to street improvements; right-of-way for future paved access is dedicated, but the County cannot accept the road into the Maintained System (i.e. with gas tax) until the dirt road is brought up to County Standards.

As it came to pass, the Supervisor for that area got together with the irate residents and worked out a deal: we will help you bring those roads into the County Maintained System over a period of time, during which you (property owners) will cooperatively plan and fund the road improvements. I know about this compromise deal because I managed it: I was the guy running Special Assessment Districts out of the Executive Office.

So, a local Advisory Committee was appointed by the County Supervisor, and we met once a month at the Callaway Winery to develop and implement the Road Improvement Plan. The winery district became Assessment District 149, as I recall. (Note: I was running over 100 special districts at the time.) The property owners agreed to a modest annual assessment (a couple hundred bucks, as I recall), which would be pooled and applied to the highest priority road need, per their long-range Road Improvement Plan. The road improvements were managed by my staff, coordinated with the County Road Department, and, when the road, or portion thereof, was brought up to standard, it was accepted into the County system.

It was a slow process, but the property owners could see their taxes at work benefiting them directly. Occasionally, some of the Supervisor’s discretionary funding (HUD grants, special State grants, etc.) would be thrown into the pot to help out. In the end, the hodgepodge of rural dirt roads became a system of paved streets, making the overall Wine Country a pleasant place to live in and visit.

This was a case of compromise in action: angry residents demanding action; County Supervisors unwilling/unable to satisfy them with an immediate remedy; and, a solution being worked up by both sides to accomplish “the impossible” and move the region forward.

The Temecula Valley Wine Country now has 33,000 acres of vineyards, forty wineries offering public wine tasting, bed and breakfast, weddings, hot air balloon rides, etc. It is a huge tourist destination on weekends.

I mention these examples of political endeavor which exemplify Realpolitik: the art of the possible. It is what government is supposed to be about: problem-solving, and doing what it takes to achieve that end goal.

We used to elect earnest individuals to “go to Washington” and help things get done.

Then, we elected people who promised to get things done.

Then, we elected people who said they would try to get things done.

Now, we are electing politicians who don’t even attempt to try to accomplish anything in Washington D.C.; they blame the other guy.

How did government become so useless to its citizenry? And, why have we accepted this?

It is a puzzler to me.

I rant and rave about Donald Trump, but he is not so different from all of the rest of the scumbags who occupy important chairs in our Nation’s capital. They all seem to want to make a bunch of speeches to their partisan constituents, live the good life off the public trough, help out some buddies, and line their pockets. Both parties are the same, to me: they show no interest in the “public interest”. Instead, they are ideologically indebted to those who fund their elections, and they play to that crowd…the public be damned.

This is populism, when a politician tells a crowd whatever they want to hear…and having no intention to really do anything about it.

Why? Because that would take initiative and compromise, and…blaming others for lack of progress is a lot easier. Let’s blame our problems on the blacks, the Jews, the immigrants, etc. “I’d love to help you, but those damned Liberals just won’t cooperate!”

I am very disillusioned about the state of government in these United States of America. How we could let this happen…we’re the Greatest Nation on Earth, for Heaven’s Sake!…just puzzles the crap out of me. That the average citizen seems to be OK with this charade…baffles and disgusts me.

We are rotting from within…politically. First, the political parties are useless appendages anymore, having no moral character and/or interest in serving all Americans. Second, the process of electing public officials is broken, and no one seems to care. As a result, it is possible to see elected as President an individual who is as unfit for office as he is uninterested in helping all Americans work toward common goals.

Now I can appreciate how the Roman Empire collapsed.

 

Charlie and I are into full “house dreaming” mode now.

We’ll be putting our existing home up for sale on April 30th, the same day that we leave on our 2018 Road Trip in the motor home. Presumably, our home will sell within a month or two.

Where will we go from there?

We’ve pretty much decided that we want a “nest” somewhere in the Las Vegas area. It’s close enough to Southern California, so we can see our kids and friends, and it’s in Nevada, so we will save at least $500 per month (because Nevada has no state income tax). It’s hotter than blazes in Las Vegas, but we don’t plan to be there in the really hot months; the rest of the year will be mild, relatively speaking.

I’ve done a lot of research in the past few weeks on homes for sale in Las Vegas and also new homes under construction. Vegas is a big place, and some neighborhoods are not so good. Plus, Charlie and I are not interested in living in a neighborhood where there are a lot of kids playing and teenagers cruising the streets looking for some kind of trouble to get into.

For that reason, we are considering the Del Webb “Sun City Mesquite” retirement community. It is about 80 minutes drive north of Las Vegas on Interstate 15. That would put it about 1-1/2 hours drive to McCarran Airport in Vegas, and about 350 miles (6 hours?) from So Cal. Also, it would put us in a great jumping-off point for RV travels to Arizona, Utah, Colorado, etc.

The Mesquite development is much like the Bear Creek master planned community that we’ve lived in for the past 30 years. The main difference is that it has a 55+ age minimum, which means that there will be no “kids” issues, and the various activities within the community will be geared to old farts like us.

We will have a house built to order. The model that we’ve homed in on is called “Serenity”. It will be a 3 bedroom, 2-1/2 bath single-story home with approximately 2,340 square feet of living space.

The model is priced “from $329K”. However, by the time Charlie and I get done tricking-out the design specs the finished product will probably cost around $400K. That is roughly comparable to value of the tri-level home we have here in Bear Creek.

So, we will be getting a newly-built modern home, with more square footage, no stairs to climb, no state sales tax, and we will save an additional $400 on monthly H.O.A. costs. Put it all together, and we will save approximately $2,200 per month by moving to Sun City Mesquite. That amount will pay for our RV travel during the hot months.

It’s a no-brainer.

Of course, all of this presupposes that our marriage will survive the new home design process. We’re going to have to find a way to agree on the exterior look, interior wall colors, flooring, kitchen finishes, hardware, lighting, appliances, and which of the many available options that we just can’t live without.

We’ll also have to figure out how much of our current inventory of furniture, art, and doo-dads will  “work” in the new home. I tend to be pretty tight with the pocketbook, while Charlie is more of an impulsive spender when it comes to things like this. I foresee some arguments down the road. (She’ll win, of course. A happy wife means a happy life, right?)

Anyway, we’re getting pretty excited about this new adventure. In a couple of weeks, we’ll be celebrating 44 years of marriage. We’ve had a lot of adventures…that’s what keeps things interesting, in my opinion. It will be a new phase of our life together, and the move to Mesquite will definitely cement Charlie’s retirement from her bookkeeping business.

Our son Jonathan is doing great taking over Charlie’s business and within a few years he should be completely on his own. In the meanwhile, Charlie will be meeting a whole bunch of new friends, getting involved in community activities, and settling into the relaxing retirement that she so deserves.

 

Gary Cohn called it quits yesterday. (“So what! Who’s he anyway?!”)

Mr. Cohn stepped down from his post as Director of the National Economic Council. As such, he was President Trump’s top economic advisor.

His exit from the Administration comes less than a week after President Trump unilaterally announced that he was going to authorize heavy tariffs against foreign-produced steel and aluminum. Gary Cohn, along with virtually every top economist in the country, plus the leaders of Mr. Trump’s own Republican Party, had strongly opposed this move.

Mr. Cohn is a pretty smart guy. Before joining the Trump Administration, he was President of Goldman, Sachs & Company, the nation’s largest and most prestigious investment banking firm. He knows a bit about economics, foreign trade, currencies, and what makes the needle move on Wall Street. And, he knows what bad fish smells like.

Last week, in announcing the proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum, the President tweeted, “Trade wars are good and easy to win.” Virtually every responsible economist in the world disagrees with Trump’s statement: trade wars are bad, and there are no winners.

Mr. Cohn told the President the same thing: “Don’t do it.” He was wasting his breath.

Wall Street took the tariff and Trump’s naive comments badly, and the Dow Jones Index dropped 500 points. When Cohn resigned, the reality sunk in that the President was “winging it” with the economy, the DJI dropped another 300 points.

Trump’s provocative action regarding international trade could be just the beginning of something very bad for our country.

Donald Trump is the only President ever elected despite having no military or governmental experience. His background is, essentially, as a real estate developer and salesman. Trump’s understanding of economics, global trade, and international relations is limited to his real estate ventures and advice he gets from a circle of nationalist kooks, Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh. He pays more attention to Tweeters than he does his Cabinet.

The President’s chief tactics in his private sector career include bluster, bullying opponents, and screwing business partners, investors, and vendors: whoever’s standing at the end “wins” no matter how that was accomplished. This is apparently his mindset when he views any problem.

These traits might work some of the time in real estate, where “one-off” deals are common (i.e. you may never do business with that person, company, or community again). Then, again, Trump’s business history includes many spectacular failures, bankruptcies, and a rather poor reputation in his chosen industry. He lost the Presidential vote in New York, where people know him pretty well, by 2 million votes. In-state he’s known as a general douchebag.

International  relations is a whole different animal than simple one-on-one real estate deals because the people that you do business with today will be back next week or next year. The idea of “winning” deals takes on a totally different meaning, because of the geopolitical stakes and the need of America to develop and maintain alliances.

Not that I’m a big fan of this, but, for “strategic reasons”, the United States has 800 military bases scattered around the world in 70 host countries like England, Germany, Spain, Japan, South Korea, and cooperative base-sharing agreements with others like Canada. Those countries (our “allies”) are not obligated to host America’s military wherewithal. Trade relations are a part of the quid pro quo. Protectionist moves, like instituting tariffs which punish those strategic partners, are bad statecraft.

This is something that the Secretary of Defense Mattis and Secretary of State reminded the President before he ignored them last week and threw his international trade tomahawk.

Virtually all economists agree that free trade promotes economic expansion, which promotes development of smaller countries, and their improved quality of life means the ability to purchase more goods, hence enhancing trade opportunities for all nations. It is sometimes in America’s interest to make trade agreements that are negative in the short-term but enhance American export markets in the long-run. More customers mean more business.

The President doesn’t seem to understand this. He thinks that any trade deal in which the U.S. comes out in second place is bad, even if, in the long run, we prosper economically and in stature.

America (hence, Donald Trump) needs to focus on the “big picture”, the way we did after World War II when the United States was the driving force in shaping the current world economy. Our main emphasis was developing other countries’ economies so they could buy American goods. The United States now has 4.4 percent of the world’s population but 24.3 percent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product. That’s pretty good by any measure.

Protectionist moves, like slapping a tariff on importation of a particular foreign-made product to assist domestic suppliers of the same product, is typically a bad idea. The short term benefits might be saving a few local jobs and breathing some air into a struggling industry. But, in many cases, that industry is struggling because its labor costs are high and/or it is using old technology (making it non-competitive). Or, worse, it’s becoming obsolete.

A tariff which protects an struggling industry like this allows it to remain complacent and ignore the reality. Tariffs stave off decision-making and innovation, creating less incentive for a business to pull itself up by its own bootstraps. And, the workers are lulled into a false sense of security, not realizing that the trap door is about to open under their feet, and giving them no time to re-train in a more viable industry.

And, of course, tariffs introduce barriers to trade, not to mention increasing  costs to American consumers.

The General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade in 1947, and the World Trade Organization in 1995, are the result of the open, rules-based system of international free trade that the United States helped  to create in order to foster democracy, international law and collective security. That system is designed to minimize the imposition of tariffs, particularly spurious ones enacted for limited, local political purposes.

The politically-inspired steel and aluminum tariffs proposed by President Trump, to “protect” American workers in those industries, fly in the face of the internationally-accepted norms. In particular, because the Trump Administration is justifying the tariffs on the basis of national security, which everyone in the world knows is a sham excuse. Even Secretary of Defense Mattis said so.

If enacted, the proposed tariffs will be met with retaliatory measures from other countries. This will likely generate counter-measures from the Trump Administration, and it is possible that the “trade war” that the President covets could crater the international free trade system.

As (Republican) Senate Majority Leader McConnell said yesterday, he has a “high level of concern and fear” that these proposed tariffs “could metastasize into a larger trade war”.

(Republican) Speaker of the House Ryan is also quite concerned about the “unintended consequences” of Trump’s proposed tariffs.

The No. 2 Senate Republican, John Cornyn, is concerned about this move “jeopardizing the economy”.

A Wall Street Journal editorial called the tariffs Trump’s “biggest policy blunder”.

That last one is a significant comment, considering the steady stream of economic nonsense coming out of the White House for the past 14 months.

Mr. Trump seems hell bent on goosing the American economy to its absolute productive capacity. First, he got Congress to pass a large tax cut (financed by borrowing). Second, his budget goal is to increase government spending ($1.5 trillion), again with borrowed money. Third, he’s doing his damnedest to reduce government regulations, making it easier to begin new investment and construction projects. Fourth, Trump is exhausting every “protectionist” tool in his arsenal to limit competition from foreign workers and businesses by restricting immigration and imports.

The collective impact of these policies is to super-stimulate demand and shrink supply.

There were attempts in the 60’s and 70’s to stimulate a “hot” or “high-pressure” economy like the one Trump seems to want to emulate. They failed miserably, generating double-digit inflation, frequent recessions and public demoralization. In the decade of the 70’s, the total inflation was 103 percent…prices doubled. It was not a happy time for Joe Sixpack…the kind of guy who voted for Donald Trump.

The President seems oblivious of this. Or, maybe with his ego, he feels that they will now work because he is Donald Trump.

The target countries of Trump’s recently-announced tariffs (on washing machines, steel, aluminum, solar panels) are quite attuned to American politics, our key leaders, and the politics that got them elected. European Union leadership, incensed at the proposed tariffs, have announced that they are looking into retaliatory tariffs on Harley-Davidson motorcycles (Speaker of the House Ryan), Jack Daniels whiskey (Majority Leader McConnell), agricultural products from the Midwest and the South (home of Trump’s political base).

Of course, foreign government pissed at our President could hurt retaliate where it will really hurt Donald Trump: in his own pocketbook.

If we have learned anything from the Russian meddling into the 2016 elections, it would be that foreign governments understand how to manipulate U.S. voters. Strategic retaliatory tariffs could very quickly deflate any Trump claim of a trade war “win”.

And, as if the President doesn’t have enough to worry about, one of the European Union’s economic leaders mentioned yesterday that “You keep those dossiers in the top drawer for a rainy day. We know where the bodies are buried.” That would be a not-so-subtle reference to the “Steele Dossier” which was compiled by a British ex-MI6 operative and has identified a bunch of potentially damaging matters of political embarrassment to President Trump. It is very likely that the intelligence agencies of our erstwhile “allies” have similar file folders on The Donald’s many escapades over the years.

The various potential retaliatory actions of our “allies” might pale in comparison to anything that our actual “enemies” might come up with. China, the second greatest superpower in the world, is a primary target of Donald Trump’s nationalistic trade rhetoric, and was targeted with Trump’s earlier tariffs against solar panels and washing machines. Russia has been in the U.S. doghouse for some while and is presently subject to economic sanctions which inhibit their economic growth.

Using trade as a weapon of statecraft can sometimes have severe repercussions. World War II began with a “currency war” among European nations following WWI in an effort to enhance each nation’s trade balances. A global “trade war” followed that, initiated by the Smoot-Hawley tariffs (by the U.S.) and followed by retaliatory tariffs of U.S. trading partners. Adolph Hitler made political hay in Germany denouncing the various efforts of other countries to depress the German economy. The Japanese had territorial goals in the Far East that were stymied when the United States led an embargo of strategic materials (oil and steel, primarily) to stifle the Japanese economy. What then followed was a “shooting war”.

(Pandora’s Box : a currency war was initiated by the Obama Administration in 2011, and other nations retaliated; and, a trade war is now brewing between the U.S. and (seemingly) any country with whom we have a perceived trade deficit. Let’s hope that there isn’t a rush to the bottom, or we may find ourselves facing off against formidable opponents in another shooting war.)

Why the tariffs in the first place, you may ask? Well, Donald Trump made campaign promises to a variety of Rust Belt voters in the 2016 election. He said that he would save their jobs and resurrect their steel and aluminum production industries. His tariffs on foreign-produced steel would presumably help 140,000 American steel workers by making foreign-produced steel more expensive. So, chalk up a “win” for MAGA, right?

Probably not. Approximately 6.5 million Americans work in steel-using industries. The cost of raw materials to these manufacturing companies will increase because of the tariffs, which will result in higher prices and less demand for their products. Auto manufacturers, airplane manufacturers, construction companies, and defense contractors are among the companies particularly vulnerable to higher input costs. Canned goods manufacturers will also face rising costs.

Consumers are likely to pay higher prices as a result, with the tariffs serving as a “tax” on consumers. Overall, a tariff such as this is inflationary.

The bottom line is that many jobs will be lost. In 2002, President George W. Bush imposed similar steel tariffs, and estimates suggest that the resulting higher steel prices led to 200,000 lost jobs and $4 billion in lost wages in a ten-month period.

So, in protecting some of his base political supporters, the President would be injuring many other Americans. And, that’s the rosy outlook. If the protected steel-makers get smart and decide to put their improved business profits into automation instead of re-hiring employees or giving them raises, then Trump’s political base gets nothing while the rest of the Nation gets screwed.

Myopia like this is inexcusable. President Trump seems incapable of learning anything from history or take advice from real experts. His obsessive need to win “battles” overwhelms any sense of duty to carefully consider the consequences of losing the “war”.

Donald Trump has expressed his protectionist opinions often over the past two decades. However, the world economy has changed a bit since 2000. At that time, China (the main villain in his view) exported more than 40 percent of its goods to the United States. Since that time, however, the Chinese economy has grown substantially thanks to the international free trade model. Now, only 25 percent of its exports land in American ports.

China is now the world’s largest steel exporter. However, it only supplies 3 percent of America’s steel needs. Trump’s tariff on Chinese steel is, therefore, just “for show”; it will look bold, to his political base, but have no significant impact on steel making here in the U.S.

(Because of goofy foreign policy blunders since Trump took office, China is reaping a foreign relations windfall, particularly in the Pacific Rim, quickly closing trade deals with every country it can. The “Open for Business” sign is openly displayed by China, while the U.S. is, seemingly, turning inward.)

What should really concern Mr. Trump is the fact that China holds more than $1 trillion in U.S. debt. We’ve borrowed more from China to support our governmental endeavors (deficit-financed budgets!) than from any other country. Trump’s recent tax plan will produce another $1.5 trillion in debt over ten years, and the proposed budget expenditures are also set to increase by $440 billion in 2018, not offset by cuts or additional revenue. So, President Trump and Congress are embarking on an unprecedented spending spree, planning on using the corporate credit card: U.S. bonds.

The question is: Who’ll buy them? Probably not China, the obvious target of President Trump’s “trade war”.

Other targets of the President’s ire include Canada and Mexico. He’s not happy with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), so he’s trying in every way to arm-wrestle our neighbors into concessions in a new deal. Probably the main loser in the announced proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum is Canada: it is the top exporter to U.S. markets of both steel and aluminum. Simultaneously, Canada is the biggest importer of U.S. steel and aluminum.

As with tariffs of any kind, there would be repercussions if Canada really had to absorb this blow to their economy. However, the overall impact to U.S. steel-using manufacturers would be higher costs, and this tariff might actually cause a number of steel- and aluminum-using American manufacturers to relocate their plants north of the border. Thus, Trump’s “job creation” initiative might end up causing the loss of thousands of U.S. jobs.

That’s how the “Law of Unintended Consequences” works.

The whole trade deficit “enemies” bogeyman that Trump is fixated on, i.e. that we should punish countries that don’t export to us as much as we import from them, is pretty silly on its face. We are the richest country in the world, with the biggest economy. Our manufacturers and consumers buy a lot more goods, and we produce more, than any other country. So, it stands to reason that we would be in a trade deficit position with just about any country…and that’s not a bad thing. It means that our economy is humming along pretty good and we’re prosperous. We should be happy to be in this position; almost every other country would be/is envious. “Count your blessings!”

Free trade pacts over the past 70 years have got us to this exalted position.

Greed seems to be the only motivation to “rub it in” to the other, less fortunate countries. Rather than “noblesse oblige”, Trump opts for nationalistic chest-thumping and strong-arm tactics. “Let them eat cake”, he says.

The President and his buddies should be very careful about pushing all their chips to the middle of the table right now. Economic “recessions”, i.e. when the gross economic product recedes, have occurred in America on the average of once every ten years since 1970. The last one was the “Great Recession” which started in 2008; it was a whopper, and negatively impacted every American.

The economy has been growing since that time. Investor confidence is reflected in the Dow Jones Index. Until January of 2018, it was on a 100-month continuous upward climb. Since January, it has declined…something not seen in 9-plus years.

We are due, maybe overdue, for an adjustment. Virtually every economist agrees that stocks, bonds, and credit are in a “bubble” right now. In other words, ripe for a significant downward adjustment.

Of all times that a government would want to re-experiment with failed ideas to super-charge an economy, this is probably the worst. Folks with all of their retirement savings in the stock market would be well-advised to cash-out a portion, because…an adjustment will be forthcoming.

It’s a scary time right now in Washington D.C. The sharpest advisors that President Trump could recruit are jumping ship, because he won’t take serious advice. Responsible “experts” won’t return his calls. Thus, Trump will be bringing on lesser talents and outright kooks to replace them.

Heaven forbid that his unprovoked trade war turns into a shooting war; who knows what this mentally unbalanced idiot would do.

UPDATE (3/15/18): President Trump bragged at a fundraiser about misleading a close ally, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Canada would be the most aggrieved victim of Trump’s recently-announced steel and aluminum tariffs. In a man-to-man conversation, Trump (according to himself) told Trudeau that America has a trade deficit with Canada, even while Trudeau was attempting to correct him. Trump admitted that he didn’t know, for sure, but told Trudeau, “You’re wrong, Justin.” In a tweet on Thursday, Trump repeated the falsehood that the U.S. has a trade deficit with Canada.

In fact (not that our President cares about those), in 2016 the United States exported $12.5 billion more in goods and services than it imported from Canada, leading to a trade surplus, not a deficit.

We all know that our President is a liar, as embarrassing as that is, but to lie to a long-time ally is unacceptable behavior for a chief of state. To top that, though, it appears that Trump’s basis for imposing steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada (supposedly to correct a trade deficit) is factually incorrect…and he seems to be proud of the fact that he’s punishing Canada for no purpose.

What in the Hell is wrong with this man? Maybe it’s time for him to get a mental exam?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was awakened at around 5 a.m. this morning by my son Jeff, calling to inform me that my grandson Dakota had “broken his jaw”. He needed some pain medicine until the pharmacy opened later in the day. I said, “Sure”.

They came over in my son’s car. Dakota said that he’d fallen.  I felt bad for him, gave him some pills, and went back to bed.

I’ve been thinking about my grandson all morning.  The lad can’t seem to catch a break…there’s always some disaster that sets him back.

To be really honest, though, most of Dakota’s troubles that he’s experienced in the past ten years have been self-generated. He’s a pretty good kid, but he’s found a way to get arrested for juvenile shit, have car accidents, earn a D.U.I, and lose his driver’s license. And, that’s just the stuff I know about.

He told me just yesterday that he’d finally gotten his license back: he was quite happy. So was I, not only for him, but for us. Dakota is working with our son Jonathan, learning the bookkeeping trade…so that Charlie can really retire.

The fact that Dakota’s latest setback happened in the wee hours reminded me of the old saying, “NOTHING GOOD HAPPENS AFTER MIDNIGHT”.

That seems to be the time when young people like to blow off steam, hang out, or “chill” with friends.

I am reminded of the Eric Clapton song, “After Midnight”.

Included in the song’s lyrics are:

We gonna chugalug and shout

     …gonna stimulate some action

     …gonna get some satisfaction

     …gonna cause talk and suspicion

     …gonna give an exhibition

     …gonna find out what it’s all about

We gonna let it all hang down

Yep, that sounds about right. Go out, get blitzed, make a fool of yourself, and then see what develops…after midnight.

I’m not an expert on this (although I did work in emergency rooms for a number of years), but it seems to me that an inordinate number of bad things happen in the wee hours. I’m talking about people driving their car off of cliffs or into trees, drunk drivers causing horrible accidents, and rowdiness at bars, among other things.

Booze and fractures seem to go hand in hand. A “boxer’s fracture” is a broken finger that is caused when someone throws a punch without properly making a fist. We used to see a lot of them each New Year’s Eve, for some reason. Also, broken tailbones. This occurs when someone, usually half-ploughed, would have their feet fly out from under them when, in the pitch dark, they stepped onto a slick sidewalk covered with black ice. Another New Year’s Eve Special, particularly on the East Coast.

Broken jaws are rare. It takes some force to break the mandible; just falling down won’t normally do the job, unless it’s out of a multi-story building, and other things would be broken in that event. Walking into a baseball bat would do it. But, most broken jaws that we saw in the E.R. were the result of some guy catching an uppercut during a bar fight.

So, you’ve got your alcohol and darkness as contributors to unfortunate wee hours incidents.

Guys trying to be macho in front of the ladies (and other wanna-be macho guys) have a bad habit of taking guns to nightclubs. It’s almost a weekly occurrence that some professional athlete or entertainer (or their entourage) gets involved in an early a.m. skirmish at a downtown bar, nightclub, or strip joint. Sometimes there’s multiple guns involved, and a bunch of innocent folks, just out having fun, get sprayed with lead.

Then, there’s the really bad stuff that happens after midnight because…there aren’t as many prying eyes around. Let’s face it: working stiffs and their children are in bed because they’ve got to get up early, and old farts like me have been asleep for hours when midnight rolls around.

Criminals prefer to do their thing when there aren’t a lot of witnesses around. At least, the smart ones think that way. The dumb ones don’t care, they’re probably hopped up on something, anyway, and they’re looking to take advantage of other stupid people.  A lot of their peers are hanging out after midnight, so there is a good quantity of dumb-on-dumb shit going on like muggings, drug deals, and liquor store robberies.

Stupid juveniles like to prowl the city in the wee hours doing things like breaking into businesses, stealing cars, attempting to hijack ATMs, and robbing people’s homes.

Because seemingly no one is looking, things like joyriding, graffiti tagging, and vandalism of all types are ways for young morons to impress and amuse each other.

Really sick guys prowl the streets after midnight. Charlie and I watch a lot of crime docudramas on TV, and there seems to be no end to the number of murders and rapes that happen to drunk folks coming home from a night out or prostitutes working the dark streets.

Those individuals are easy prey for an experienced pervert or serial killer. Conversely, relatively few serial murder victims are hauled out of their beds by a maniac stranger.

For all of these reasons, I think that it is best for the wife and I to be snugly tucked away in bed in the wee hours, resting up for the next day’s adventures.

It would be very hard, laying supine on our Sleep Number bed, for one of us to fall down or walk into someone’s haymaker.

 

 

 

 

 

The financial meltdown of 2008 was caused, basically, by the greed of the nation’s big banks, the complicity of the Wall Street bond rating firms, and the malfeasance of Federal regulators. All of the Big Boys were in on it, the mortgage industry imploded, and the American Taxpayer had to bail out the perpetrators to the tune of $7oo billion.

The entire U.S. economy took a shot to the groin, and it took almost ten years to recover.

And, yet…none of the culprits were punished, despite the corporate criminal behavior. In essence, the greedy super-banks (like Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, etc.) and complicit Wall Street brokerages were considered “too big to fail”, so government prosecutors conveniently looked the other way. The big shots who orchestrated the catastrophe continued to enjoy their mansions, yachts, mistresses, and $100 cigars.

Charlie and I saw a PBS documentary last night about the slimy effort of a New York District Attorney named Cyrus Vance Jr. to make political hay off of the scandal.

Vance, of course, wouldn’t offend his Wall Street buddies by taking them to task, so, like a schoolyard bully, he picked on the smallest target he could: a mom-and-pop savings and loan in Chinatown.

He and his staff of prosecutors drummed up a list of 80 charges against the Abacus Federal Savings Bank, basically accusing them of phonying-up mortgage applications in order to qualify customers for home loans.

This would be a serious charge, if true, I suppose. But, considering the fact that the nation’s largest banks had been given a free pass (by Mr. Vance’s office) on a massive scale for exactly the same thing, the question was obvious: Why was the District Attorney picking on these small fry?

Because they probably couldn’t fight back, I guess, and he wanted New York voters to think he was a crusader for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

Mr. Dudley Do-Right picked the wrong people to bully.  Probably the only reason that Abacus didn’t fold to the pressure was that its founder, and three of his four daughters, were smart, tenacious attorneys.

And, they knew, as did the Chinatown community, that their bank was being railroaded. And, the jury agreed. After five years of effort, costing taxpayers $10 million, Abacus Federal Savings Bank was vindicated of all 80 charges.

I felt sorry for Chinese-American family that owned the small bank. The needless trial consumed five years of their life, nearly bankrupted them, soiled their reputation in the community, and humiliated some of the employees, who had done no wrong.

The whole unnecessary drama was engineered by a hypocritical political hack, trying to look like a hero; a guy too timid to confront the real crooks.

Amazingly, Cyrus Vance Jr. is still the incumbent Manhattan District Attorney.

And, he continues his cozy/sleazy dealings with New York big shots. Mr. Vance has been publicly criticized for not pressing criminal charges against famous New Yorkers accused of crimes, including serial pervert Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump Jr., and his sister, Ivanka Trump…after which he received campaign contributions from their attorneys.

Vance’s father, a former Secretary of the Army, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State, would be ashamed of his son, I’m sure, if he were still alive.

That’s not to say, of course, that D.A. Vance’s political star is dimmed in any way. American voters love hypocritical sleazeballs, particularly big, flashy ones from New York City.

 

 

 

I got a Princess Cruises brochure in the mail yesterday, offering “free gratuities” if I book a cruise now.

Wow, I thought, that’s a nice deal…it could probably save me several hundred bucks on a 7-day cruise.

But, then, I got to thinking about the concept of free tipping, and something in me was repulsed by the idea. There’s a fly in this ointment, I thought.

The whole tipping thing is cockamamie, of course. I think that, way back when, a gratuity was a voluntary “thank you” for exceptional service or assistance rendered. The person receiving the tip didn’t necessarily expect it, or count on it, so it motivated personal  service that was beyond normal. A tippee remembered the tipper, for sure, and could hardly wait to serve that guy again.

Typically, tipping occurred in restaurants, where up-close-and-personal, thoughtful assistance was evident. Most people either have served in that capacity, or have a relative or friend who serves people, and so they know that these folk don’t make a lot of money and that tips are really appreciated. So, a gratuity was a nice way to reward and encourage exceptional service.

Average or sub-par service resulted in low or no tips; a penny tip was very in-your-face customer feedback that the service was crappy.

Somewhere along the line tipping became expected; it was just another part of a server’s income, a way for the employer to pay lower wages. A “recommended” gratuity came with the check at the end of a meal. Guests at a table having separate checks, or splitting a check, were made to feel like cheapskates and misanthropes if they didn’t leave a 10 or 15 percent gratuity, even if service was subpar. At that point, tipping lost its purpose.

Then, we found out about “pooled” tips; all the house’s tips were aggregated and split by the servers. I guess that the idea was to protect the waitress who was “stiffed” by some creep, particularly when that guy is paying for a large party which required a lot of service. Also, pooling would even out server income; some folks tip big, others small, and only chance dictates which waitress or waiter is lucky to draw Mr. Big Tipper.

Some people are averse to tipping for the simple reason that they never got tipped in their line of work. For example, one wouldn’t normally leave a gratuity for a pipe-fitter, a heavy-equipment operator or some stiff working behind a desk.

I was a public employee: like the stiffs above, I never got tipped.  Luckily, I was self-motivated. But, the point is that some folks feel offended by the social requirement to tip a person to receive good service, because, as hard as they may work, they can’t earn extra money through tips.

An unfortunate by-product of the “recommended” and “pooled” gratuity schemes is that there becomes little extra incentive for good service. An employee who just puts in a shift and goes through the motions is going to collect gratuities for uninspired service on top of their hourly pay which should cover minimal effort.

Which brings up the question: What are these employees being paid for? Is the base pay earned by just showing up, and the gratuity earned by smiling?

A further complication is the tactic that some business owners utilize wherein they take a management cut of the pooled tips. Supposedly, that money is to reward other staff in the establishment (like the hostess, the cook, the janitor, etc.) for their excellent customer service. But, what if they are just average (or worse) clock-watchers, doing the minimum to keep from getting fired? The customer (the tipper) has no way of knowing whether the janitor used chlorox to clean the restroom or just plain water. But, this guy is theoretically getting some of the pooled gratuities.

And, of course, how much of the pooled tips are actually getting to the workers; only the owner knows, and we all know how he feels about the bottom line.

My granddaughter works as a server in a restaurant. Her boss is one of those guys who rakes half of the gratuities. (Of course, who knows how much the aggregate pool of tips is? He could under-report the total, and put some extra cash in his pocket before dividing in half the “management” and “employee” portions. The feeling is that he, in fact, does this.)

(The boss only knows about credit card tips, though. So, an employee counter-measure is to under-report cash tips. Tit for tat.)

All of this fiddle-faddle brings me back to the Princess Cruises special offer of “free gratuities” if I book a cruise now.

In the old days, let’s say 40 years ago, tipping on a cruise ship was very personal. A passenger could elect to, or not to, give a gratuity. An amount was “recommended” for a week’s services of the Cabin Attendant, and your dining room Waiter and Bus Boy, and an offering was suggested for the Head Waiter and Wine Steward if they had extended to you some exceptional service. During the cruise, or usually at the end, the passenger would personally hand the gratuity envelope to these people. And, I’m here to say…that business model generated across-the-board exceptional service…at least in our experience (many cruises).

It’s not that way anymore.

Most cruise lines have gone to pooled gratuities, with the exception that a flat 15 percent tip is tacked on to all bar service. Also, it has become commonplace for the cruise line to automatically add the “recommended” pooled gratuities to your cruise bill. It then takes a positive action on the part of the guest to alter or disapprove of the gratuity total when the tab must be paid at the end of the trip. Your “servers” on the journey have no way of knowing if you tipped large or small.

(Mr. Skinflint has the theoretical ability to deny paying any gratuities at journey’s end. However, he’d probably have a tough time getting off the boat in one piece, with his luggage…as he would be a marked man. An accident might befall him…like having a large suitcase fall on his as he walks down the gangplank. Things happen.)

(So, it’s really an involuntary “voluntary” tipping program. Much like the Goodfella’s would use back in Philly: pay us our gratuity, each month, or your business might burn down.

Or, the New York cop who is simultaneously “on the job” and “on the take”, expecting an envelope of gratuities from restaurant owners each month to make sure that the Health Inspector doesn’t drop by.)

I would call this the in-advance involuntary gratuity. I’m not a big fan.

Now, in Mexico City, you can park your car illegally on a sidewalk if you’ve tipped the nearest policeman: the practice is called “La Mordida”, and results in excellent customer service. This would be the voluntary in-advance tipping model. You can use it or walk 1/2 mile to get to your restaurant.

Back to the cruise line scheme: Management asks that travelers fill out an extensive “rating” questionnaire at the end of the cruise. This is, presumably, where stand-out employees will surface, actually earning the tips that they’ve received. If a passenger uses the questionnaire to stick the shiv into an employee who came up short…well, maybe that guy gets docked a few bills from the pooled gratuities. Who knows how it works?

Upon reflection, I guess I’m not in favor of mandatory tipping in any of its forms: it doesn’t seem American.

As I looked at the fine print of the Princess Cruises offer, I noticed that this “deal” was only available if one booked a Mini-Suite on a cruise of 14 or more days. So, as I see it, those well-heeled travelers, who can best afford to pay gratuities, have no obligation to do so. Conversely, the run-of-the-mill vacationers, in the small, crowded interior cabins serviced by inferior staff, will end up paying a larger proportion of the overall gratuity pool…thereby subsidizing Princess Cruises’ generous special offer to up-scale travelers.

There we go again: subsidizing those One Percenters!

In the end, most of the cruisers will plunk $300 or so into the gratuity pool whether the service was good, average, or crappy.  Of course, the well-heeled travelers in their luxury suites will pay nothing but will, believe me, demand (and receive) top notch service.

Again, something about this seems wrong to me. Involuntary tips, thrown into a pool, management rakes off its share, then the rest is divided and distributed to every joker on the payroll, even if they provided crappy service…and, even if the travelers that they served didn’t kick in to the gratuity pool.

I like the old ways better; you could see what you were paying for.

My Dad showed me the ropes, in Las Vegas. If we were going to a “show” in the casino, my father would stall around until most of the customers had filed into the showroom and there was just a little time before the curtain went up. He would go to the blackjack table, ask for $100 in chips, gather us up (Mom, Charlie and I) and head up to the Showroom. There we would be met by a greasy usher in a fancy suit.

Mr. Joey “Two Times” Scallopini would look out into the room full of choice, empty seats, seemingly trying hard to find something to meet our needs, with his right hand casually dropped by his side, with cupped hand facing backward. Mr. Scallopini’s eyes would be straining, as if he were trying to find an honest man at political convention. At the same time, my Dad would be noisily shuffling $10 chips, and would say, “It’s my wife’s birthday” or some other lie.

Miraculously, the greaseball’s eyesight would improve. “Oh, I think we might have one good one left!”, and he would escort us to our choice table and receive a chip or two in his slimy palm.

Now, that’s what I’m talking about!

(I’ve been to Vegas shows when this technique wasn’t employed, and we ended up sitting at a cramped table with a bunch of noisy, fat corncobs from Iowa in a spot where it was difficult to even see the faces of the showgirls… let alone their fake breasts.)

Needless to say, the gratuity, as properly used in the Las Vegas business model, works very well: there is a direct relation to the tip and the service rendered. “No tickee, no washee.”

Speaking of Vegas (as it was back in the mobbed-up days) and the art of tipping reminds me of the excellent Steve Martin film, “My Blue Heaven”. In this movie, the hero was a wiseguy guy turned snitch, currently in witness protection, hiding out in suburban Arizona. He was a fish out of water…wearing his sharkskin suits in a retirement community, trying to live life large but having trouble fitting in among the old gray-haired farts.

But, one of his characteristics, from his Mafia days, was the habit of over-tipping everyone out of his ever-present wad of cash. It seemed, and it was, over-the-top behavior for Sun Belt living, giving some gal a $100 tip for a $50 meal, but it was his style. He was paying-it-forward, before that term became common. Predictably, people would fall over themselves providing him service; he was a local god.

In the end, all of the folks whom he had tipped extravagantly came to his rescue when he needed them most.

This is how gratuities are supposed to work.