1542 They Can't Help Themselves

1542  They Can’t Help Themselves

Who can’t help what they are? Lots of people.  But since this is the political season (when isn’t it?) we can and should focus on politicians.

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.  Let’s say the politicians become politicians because they want to improve things… the country, state, city, county, village. Whatever.

Let’s also say that at root they’re no less intelligent or less rational than the average person.

But once they’ve mounted a successful campaign and taken office they are like drug addicts and serial killers:  they have to have more just to feel neutral.

What they do as politicos is less important than what they say about it.  And it’s the saying more than the doing that KOs them in the early rounds.

The most recent glaring example of this came from Republican-turned-Democrat Lincoln Chafee. At the very beginning of his appointment to the Senate, he told fellow debate participants and watchers that he voted to deregulate banks -- an error, he now says -- because it was his first vote and his father had just died. Guess he didn’t read the part of the New Senator’s Handbook that says you don’t have to vote on every bill.  Especially when you don’t know what your vote or the bill means.

But it came out sounding like “The dog ate my homework.”  And you can bet it will form the icing on his farewell cupcake, the one that’s 8.5 cm in diameter by 9 cm tall.

But this is just one example.  You need more? It’s easy enough to find. Here’s a start: Gary Hart, Ross Perot, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson.

People say dumb stuff all the time. Should we penalize them just for that?  In the case of politicians and corporate spinmeisters, yes, for sure.  Why?  Because these fakers have deep and long lasting influence on your life.

Looking at the current list of disabled presidential wannabes: Some people take Dr. Clueless seriously or at least more seriously than the previous Oreo because he’s a man of accomplishment… did something more than just building a chain of mediocre pizza joints.

Some people take the two women more seriously than in the past… one because she has a famous husband and did more as first lady than, say, Highway Beautification.  The other because she ran two major tech corporations into the ground, killed the stock and ruined the brands.  We like bad girls and Ronda Rousey isn’t old enough to run.

A northern governor who runs his state like it’s a backwater speed trap in Georgia. Two affirmative action Latinos with no experience and no grasp of reality.

A blowhard billionaire with an empire built like a house of cards and who has a pre-Christmas Ebenezer Scrooge chip on his shoulder.

A pathetic ex governor who fell from a famous family apple tree wormhole side up.  A couple of senators or ex senators caught wandering in the street and when ordered onto the sidewalk obeyed the cop and thus survived.

A dreamy hippie with a hunting rifle.  And possibly a likeable buffoon who can’t leave his foot out of his mouth for more than one consecutive sentence.

Fine lot you are, folks.  One of these people is going to be our president.  Heaven help us!

Where’s the ballot spot for “none of the above?”

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1541 The Nobel Prize in Economics

1541 The Nobel Prize in Economics

I’m going to nominate myself for the Nobel Prize in economics.  Given the workmanship that goes into the entries and results each year, it seems like an easy win.

This year’s prize, just announced, went to Scottish-born Princeton economist Angus Deaton for his work showing that how people live depends largely on what they can afford to buy.

Another way of putting that is “poor people are poor if they don’t have enough money.” And the way around that is to make sure they have more.

Brilliant.

The 2014 prize went to a guy who discovered that “it’s tough to say what should be regulated and what shouldn’t be.  Equally brilliant.

A selection of earlier winners:

2005: Psychology of traders influences trading and therefore market trends.

1995: Knowing about economics is necessary to set economic policy.

1985: Attitude and actions on personal savings can affect the global economy.

1975: Smart allocation of resources usually brings good results.

So, here is the winning entry for next year:

2016a: Reducing taxes on billionaires does not create jobs unless the billionaires use the money to employ people.

And if that’s not good enough for you…

2016b: States with small governments and low taxes receive more from the federal government than they pay.  Therefore they are welfare queens at the expense of states that don’t care about the size of government and which pay in more than they get back.

Economists are the best single players in the Arithmetic game.  It’s simple.  Wrap any idea in math and math- phobic America will buy it as truth.

Long complicated explanations and dense, unreadable prose make it even better.  And everyone knows if you spout equations or inequalities you must really know your stuff.

Throw in some computer printouts and you have it made.

But you have to start small.  Simple.  Then get complicated by covering it over with bubble wrap and packing peanuts of figures, studies of questionable worth and put THIS SIDE UP on the paperwork.

Works every time.

Now in order to win, all I have to do is get some researchers to coat my ideas in numbers.

The spreadsheets will be dazzling.  The powerpoints will put Hollywood to shame.  And the unemployment rate among economic researchers will sink to the lowest level since Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen won the first Economics Nobel in 1969 for their work in developing “dynamic models” to analyze how the economy works.

The dynamic duo.

We can’t do with static models, now can we?

Shrapnel:

--A common comment from educated men caught with a copy of Playboy Magazine always has been “I read it for the articles,” which, of course is a lie, good as many of those articles are.  Starting next March it will probably be truer than it used to be as Playboy eliminates pictures of naked women. The internet has replaced the centerfold and you don’t have to hide it under the bed or in the closet.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1540 The First Scratch

1540 The First Scratch

Some old horse died in the Black Forest and got made into a windbreaker, which dad wore for something close to 50 years. At first sight, it was already battered to the point that the dead horse wouldn't recognize it.

He refused to part with it. "It was nice and shiny and deep brown when I first bought it," he said. But all those decades later, he insisted on wearing it. "It was fine after the first scratch," he said. After that first one, all the others felt -- and looked -- at home.

Same thing with the new car. Pristine on the showroom floor. Not so pristine after you pull into a parking space and Griselda in the mammoth SUV parked to your right swings a door too wide and puts in the first scratch.

Goldy the sportscaster had a leather satchel of a briefcase, probably made out of the same horse as dad's coat. He didn't much care about the way it was scratched. He didn't even seem to mind when your correspondent spilled a whole container of Pepsi on the thing. It was scratched to the point the horse wouldn't know it was him. It was like a leather portrait of a rat's nest. "The more, the better," Goldy said. Keep those battle scars coming.

So here's the next job: getting a job with the Fender guitar company. They keep cranking out the same stuff they’ve made in 1952. But now, they've added "distressed"models. These are new guitars that look like they've been on the road for half a century or more. They look it -- but they were made yesterday in the factory in California.

They have guys who wear them out as soon as they come off the production line. Those people scar them with matches and cigarettes. They scrape off pieces of the finish -- using knives and sandpaper and make the new guitars look like they've been on the road all this time. And they charge extra for "finishing" them as if they were 50 years old.

It's a job no guitar freak could resist. And since demand is so strong, maybe they're hiring.

If they aren't, maybe Michael Kors or Dooney and Bourke need handbag agers.

Or maybe Chrysler. Get one of those new "300s," and turn it into a rolling wreck. Then sell it as new -- but distressed and aged.

No one will care. The factory will have made the first scratch.

A 1955 "300" with "aging toner and some dents.

What a concept!

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1539 Sign Right Here Mrs. Clinton

1539 Sign Right Here Mrs. Clinton

Time for Hillary to sign the pledge.  If Trump can do it, so can she.  Here it is:

I, Hillary Rodham Clinton, seeking the Democratic Party nomination for president, pledge not to run as a third party candidate in the (unlikely) event you (fools) should (idiotically) fail to nominate me (even though it’s my turn.)  I further pledge to support the (obviously inferior) candidate of my party until (s)he’s elected.

Crazy, right?  Never happen that she’d run as an independent or form her own party in the first place.  So no need to sign such a pledge, right? Wrong.

She’s got the money to run “privately,” thus breaking the two party system. And what else is she going to do, go home to Armonk or wherever and actually become the grandma she plays on TV?

About that “two party system.”  It’s really not two parties, it’s one party and two half-parties with the same name, Republican.  One half is totally nuts. The other only mostly nuts.  It’s rare to see the dems as more unified and disciplined than the republicans.  But it’s happening before our very eyes.

So she gets shoved out of the limelight by, say, Bernie or Joe or the other two guys no one can remember (it’s on the tip of my tongue.  Governor… um… governor somebody and… and… that other guy.)  What’s to stop her herd of stupor PACs from channeling all that money into the Rodhamite Party and just continuing her brilliant campaign?

And there’s her personal fortune:  all those advances from publishers for books that no one even claims to have read. And those famously expensive speeches she gives.  Oh, and the foundation.  What’s it doing with all the cash it collected from those suddenly enlightened people and companies with absolutely no need for favors from the Secretary of State?

You’ve gone from coronation and inevitability to likely, to “I’m going to hold my nose and vote for you” in a big hurry.  But that hasn’t dampened your ambition, though it should have.

Both Republican parties hate you.  That’s reason to fight back. But your own party finds you barely tolerable.  And that could mean the next step is an independent candidacy.  If you do it, you’ll help elect some schlub like Fiorina or -- heaven have mercy -- Bush.

Of course, there are those who say Bush has already dropped out, he just doesn’t know it.

So please, Madam Secretary, Madam Senator, Madam First Lady, please sign the pledge and mean it.

Shrapnel:

--RIP Paul Prudhomme who made Creole food into a national treasure and who died yesterday at age 75 of a brief but unspecified illness.  With all his fame and fortune, he never lost his bayou country charm and earthy enthusiasm.  And although he never made a penny from it, he was probably also the man who made electric mobility scooters popular.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1538 Stirring Occassionally

1538 Stirring Occasionally

It’s on every box of dry pasta, no matter the brand, country of origin, shape or ingredients.  

Boil the water. Put in the pasta.  Cook for X minutes (al dente) or longer (not al dente,) stirring occasionally.

What is occasionally?

It’s not like they mean keep it boiling until, say, Lincoln’s birthday.  Or Christmas. Or the wedding reception for your cousin Daisy with that guy Henry.  (Or in certain locales your cousin Daisy with your cousin Henry.)

So they probably don’t mean a special occasion.  Maybe they mean a “normal” occasion.  Like Tuesday. Or an un-special occasion. Like when you ran that red light last month and got caught and ticketed.

In the case of pasta, some people think every minute  is an occasion. So they stir every minute the pot is on the stove.

Others think stirring occasionally is when it’s about half done cooking.  

Don’t you wish they’d be more specific?

“Stir once every three minutes, give or take” or anything like it would be a welcome change in the directions. If you can actually find the directions in fine print buried among yummy recipes for things you’re never going to cook and a history of the manufacturer which started in a little storefront in Punto Orgolioso, Italy or some other town you never heard of.

The pasta in this house generally comes from Harrisburg, PA.  That’s because the company that bought the company that bought the company that bought the Ronzoni factory in Queens moved it to Harrisburg.  Without changing the wheat. But not without changing the water.

So the little storefront over in Punto Orgolioso doesn’t mean a whole lot.  We’re not gourmets. And we’re not historians, particularly ethnic food historians.

Sometimes we slip in a box of the supermarket store brand along with the Ronzoni.  Who’s going to find out or taste the difference?

And note that not all one pound boxes of pasta still contain a full pound.  The new standard is 13-point-something ounces and shrinking.  But I digress.

When income is good some months, and we’re feeling flush, we do switch from Ronzoni and the occasionally stirring inferior “house brand” to Barrilla. But that’s only occasionally.

Like for Lincoln’s birthday.  Or the cousins’ marriage.  

Shrapnel:

--Congrats to the National Football League.  September, 2015 marked the first month since 2009 that no active NFL player was arrested for anything.  Now THAT’s an… occasion!

--People who investigate shipwrecks are still wondering what happened to the freighter lost at sea during hurricane Joaquin. It was a ship caught in a category four hurricane. Ya think that might have had something to do with it?

--Fifty-seven degrees of separation? Cosby has been given that many honorary degrees.  Now the colleges who were so free with their sheepskins are debating whether to rescind them.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1537 Droning On About Drones

1537 Droning On about Drones

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird… it’s a plane… it’s a drone… and it’s heading right for one of the props on that Bell Ranger helicopter the police department is using in a search for a missing kid.

If the drone hits right, they’ll widen the search for cops missing in a helicopter crash.  You wouldn’t want that, would you?

Oh, wait. Sure you would.  You’re waiting for your same day delivery of Wolfgang Flaymeril’s “50 Prize Winning Turnip Recipe’s.”  Can’t let a police helicopter stand in your way.  After all, you have dinner guests coming over soon and you wouldn’t want to disappoint them with, say, an ordinary turnip recipe.

Given what the instruments are, drone pipes and strings are fine on bagpipes and banjos.  In the sky, they’re menaces.

Pilots of commercial and private aircraft get distracted.  There’s always a chance one will be sucked into the business end of a jet.

Sometimes, the drones stall in midair and crash.

Governor Brown (D-CA) recently vetoed bills that would have prohibited drones in certain air spaces. He did so for good reason.  There already are laws like that in California.  Not that they’re followed or their violators prosecuted.

We’re not talking here about unmanned military planes that can do what military planes do without putting crew lives at risk. We’re talking about the little toy-like ones that everyone and his great grandmother are buying instead of radio controlled aircraft which are much cruder.

We’re not even talking about drones that work sky- high construction sites.

By one estimate, sales of the toys and other small drones will reach ten billion dollars a year soon.  We’re talking about stuff that costs from about $50 to maybe a grand or two each.

If the sales projection is accurate, our sky will soon look like a bat blackout.

Except the bats eventually go away. On their own.  And they have radar. And they don’t crash to earth.

Meantime, you could have ordered the Wolfgang book a few days early, saved a bundle on shipping cost and saved those poor rescuers from sudden and horrible deaths.

You feel you must be in control of something? And the kids won’t listen. The dog won’t listen, the parrot talks back, the computer has a mind of its own then get yourself a radio controlled toy car.  Or even better, exercise your fingers with the TV remote. It will listen and obey.

Shrapnel:

--San Francisco’s last remaining gun nuts are in mourning because San Francisco’s last remaining gun store is closing.  It isn’t for lack of sales, though. It’s because a new law would require them to video record every transaction and report ammo sales to the cops every week.

--They record us everywhere else.  In the supermarket, on the highway, in the bank, probably in the bedroom for all we know. So why not the gun store?

--The murder rate in Ireland and Northern Ireland appears to be rising.  Could that signal an end to the end of “the troubles?” These things never really go away.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1536 Y2K 2.0

1536 Y2K 2.0

Remember all the fuss about how the world of computing was going to end in 2000?

The prophets of doom were out in force, although WestraDamus the non- prophet was right for a change. Nothing of the sort happened.

The world didn’t come to the kind of stop you get with ABS brakes.  The markets didn’t crash. Your medical records, such as were computerized back in ancient days were not destroyed.  Your credit cards worked. So did the toe-in-water on line banking you did.

Recently, the doomsayers were back in force.  Yesterday was the day everyone who accepted credit and debit cards had to be prepared to use the new “RFID” chips.  RFID means radio frequency identification.

If you shop at a place that’s not in compliance, they, not you, bear the burden of any fraud costs.

The new chips will make using a card simpler or more complex, depending.  Sometimes you’ll simply have to stick the card in a hard- to- notice slot near the bottom of a store’s reader.  But in some cases, you’ll then have to do that and then swipe the card as you normally do.

Shopping tip: If you have a choice of lines, don’t pick the ones where us tech- fumbling seniors dominate. The ones with young, computer savvy young customers and young computer savvy young cashiers are going to move faster

All this is someone’s brilliant idea about improving security.

Right.

Except for the really computer savvy geeks who sometimes read the chip by remote control.  Yes, there have been stories about card readers that in effect pick your pocket without actually touching you.

A whole industry has grown up over this fear.  It makes little envelopes with wire laced fabric that blocks the remote readers, thus protecting your information.  Supposedly.

How serious is the threat?  That’s hard to say.  But we haven’t had a tech scare with the heft and reach of Y2K since Y2K.  So let’s panic.

Shrapnel:

--Speaking of radio chips, did you know that your smartphone has a built in FM receiver but in most cases you can’t use it.  Carriers don’t activate them… because they don’t have to.  But some are starting to and that means you’ll be able plug in your headset and use it as an antenna… and that goes for all ten of you who still listen to traditional radio.

--Chick fil-a is opening its first full service store at 37th and 6th and most New Yorkers have heard of the franchise fast food shop only because of a years- ago flap about its anti- gay rights stand.  Success or failure will not depend on its in-your-face religion, but on the taste and price of the food.  It tastes just like chicken with a hint of steel belted radials.

--Is Syria’s Assad the new Saddam? Or Ho Chi Minh? Or any other head of state we’ve tried oh so successfully to replace?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

Or not.

© WJR 2015