#386 Burn These Pants

#386 Burn These Pants

They came up with this great idea a few years ago. Pants that don't wrinkle and rarely stain. Wear 'em. Put 'em in the washing machine, put 'em in the dryer and presto! you have new-looking pants, pants that look like a tailor just pressed them. Marvelous. Perfect creases. Factory new.

Sounds like a dream for guys who want to dress well and can't iron.

Not exactly.

That "throw it into the washing machine part?" Baloney. You have to make sure the wash is warm and the rinse is either warm or cool, but not cold. You can't add softener. You have to put them in the dryer right away and you have to take them out the millisecond they're dry or they look like you slept in them for a week.

Nothing else gets washed like that. So you have to make a special wash day for your EZ care slacks.

Doesn't sound like much of a big deal, but it is. Especially when you have one of those new computerized washing machines. Used to be, you threw the stuff in, you threw in the detergent, you turned the thing on and walked away.

Now, you need to be a computer programmer to change your "default" washer settings.

Oh, and the dryer? Make sure it's on medium. If you have a new, computerized dryer, you have to program it. Not extra-dry or mostly dry or normal dry or sort of dry or damp dry, but medium. If your computerized dryer doesn't have a "medium," you have to call customer service for the appropriate setting equivalent. And then, you have to program it. (For the record, Sears has started putting "medium" on its computerized dryers, but hasn't yet been able to figure out what trouble code F45 means or how to fix it.)

After awhile, this chemical magic seems to wear off. Not all at once. But after 40 or 50 precisely calculated, warm, medium, softener and bleach-free washes, they start to look less perfect. Eventually, they start to look like rags, but without the fraying.

Try to iron these. They won't take it.

So what do you do? They're no longer good enough to donate to the Salvation Army or Good Will. Throwing them away requires a hazmat permit (they may no longer be wrinkle free and stain resistant, but they still have enough of whatever the manufacturer uses to make them to poison an entire landfill for 100,000 years.

So, there's only one reasonable solution: burn them.

To do this, of course, you have to follow the "care label." And it's almost as specific about burning as it is about washing and drying.

1. Set the furnace or barbecue to 375 degrees F.

2. Once the temperature has been reached, throw the pants in the fire for no longer than 30 seconds. If using a barbecue, have a fire extinguisher handy.

3. Remove the ashes promptly.

4. Do not use a kitchen stove without proper ventilation.

5. Manufacturer takes no responsibility for damage to your home or porch.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®
©WJR 2008

#385 Bleating Heart Conservatives

#385 Bleating Heart Conservatives

They want to turn you into a farm animal, and that's the entirety of what's behind their bleating and whining about small government, low taxes, and freedom, freedom, freedom. The arch-conservative right wingnuts want you to spend all of your waking hours on the mechanics of survival, because if they have their way (to coin a phrase,) that's what you're going to be doing, and it's ALL you're going to be doing.

You will spend every hour of every day foraging for food, fuel, a roof and walls. Gender neutral barefoot and pregnant.

The Bleaters are forever talking about "returning to the values..." of the country's founders. Well, those founders disagreed on an awful lot of things, but managed to compromise. There's a value. No question about returning to that one. The couldn't agree on the definition of a human being or an American (they settled on white males for the sake of getting past that sticky issue.) They COULD agree - at least implicitly - that said human being or American was essentially irrational when left to his own devices, and needed reigning in. After all, if they didn't, no government of any kind would be necessary.

The founders weren't called upon to define "country," either. It was axiomatic, they thought. But it isn't. They couldn't have foreseen the way America grew and changed and the complex ways that was to happen. So while some of their construction remains valid and universal, some of it.

So, adhering to the ideas of the founders is relatively reasonable policy, but adhering to all of the specifics and nothing else, is not.

If you want to freeze America in the 1700s, you get an America that's in the 1700s. This was an era without global trade, modern science, electricity, central heating and indoor plumbing. It was an era when you grew your own food and traded with your immediate neighbors for whatever else you needed. And it was an era when the ideas of modern medicine, insurance, and communication were unthought of.

Return to those times and you will be a plow horse or a seamstress.

The Bleaters are forever talking about small government. Small government's a great idea. Only problem is it doesn't prevent the kind of conflict in which large commerce can take place. It doesn't prevent poisoned dolls from killing your kids, it doesn't protect you against airplanes that fall out of the sky. It doesn't prevent you from the plague or aids or some guy coming over and shooting you for your unsafe SUV. Sure, there's waste. So?

Shrink the government and you're back plowing the back 40 -- unless your neighbors don't like the color of your skin, or that you don't go to church or they just decide they need more land and who cares about you?

Ah, you will argue, the founders wanted to protect property rights? Yeah. They did. But there were other rights they wanted to protect. Freedom of the press, freedom of and from religion, freedom of assembly. If you take those away, you take away the concept of all rights -- and property rights will fall to the greediest.

"Oh," the Bleaters will bleat, "we don't want to take away those rights, we want to preserve them."

No. That's just window dressing. They don't care about your rights. That's why we have government. Does it grow? Sure, that's the American way. Grow profits, grow wheat, grow space, grow opportunities. Just don't grow government?

We're growth obsessed. But if you grow one thing, everything grows. Including government.

No growth? You're pulling that plow from sunrise to sunset.

The Bleaters are forever bleating about opportunities. There ARE no opportunities when you're busy pulling that plow seven days a week. All you can do is plow and rest. And it better be on Sunday, not Saturday.

Lower taxes, grow the economy? Nonsense. Supply side only works when you create demand for supplies and when you price supplies reasonably. It was a one-shot and maybe an accident in the two years it seemed to work. Even the people who invented the concept backed away from it, and pretty quickly at that. Check out the post-Reagan history of David Stockman if you want more grist.

Lower taxes to promote investment? What really happens when you lower taxes? Do people invest? Some do. Not enough, not widely enough, not often enough. People sit on the money. Buying a Lexus is not an investment.

The Bleaters are predatory closet anarchists. They want to eliminate your protection against them. They know more about you than you know about yourself.

They know you're not going to start a company or a farm or an airline. No. What they want is to incarcerate you. Not in a formal prison, but in the prison of having to use all of your physical and mental stamina just to get through the day. They want you tethered to the plow.

The White House, starting with Jimmy Carter, but not coming full flower until now, has been opposing regulation -- even regulation that's already in place, funded and staffed. This has brought us to chaos in airlines, media ownership, meat processing, grain, forrestroy.

What's the point of chaos? Turning you into a plow horse. Keeping you off balance, worried, a prisoner and paralyzed.

They want to dictate your every move. They want you as a wage slave. They want to make you beg for their largess, which includes your medicine, your electricity, your transportation, your communication your fuel and your food.

And all the while, when they're feeding you their poisonous ideas, you are pulling the plow and over your shoulder telling them you love it and "please, sir, may I have some more?"

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

#384 Don't Ask Don't Tell

#384 Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Wow, why didn't we think of this? Deregulate everything by regulating everything and then ignoring the regulations! Brilliant. Beautiful. And the greatest accomplishment of the outgoing White House.

Probably, they didn't want us to know about it. But we found out. Especially if we were potential passengers on American Airlines, which cancelled more than 2,000 flights to hold safety inspections -- inspections to discover whether their aircraft were airworthy. The Federal Aviation Administration cracked down after some unpatriotic whistleblowers blew their unpatriotic whistles.

Southwest Air has one of the best on-time records in the industry. One of the reasons for that is they never bothered inspecting their planes. A couple of FAA types figured this out, and started -- legally -- to demand the inspections. Southwest complained and tried to get the inspectors thrown off the job. It didn't work.

Then, and only then, did the FAA brass nose around to see who else wasn't getting inspected. And they only did that because the Southwest story got told. If no one had told the story, then no one would have been the wiser -- except, of course, if the landing gear fell off an incoming Southwest plane.

American Air is much bigger. Much MUCH bigger. And once the story was out, the inspectors had to ground a good chunk of the fleet and make sure all the wires were connected and un-frayed and didn't pass through places -- like fuel tanks -- where a spark can mean instant death to all aboard.

The problem, of course, is the media big mouths. If we only had just shut up and let Adam Smith's Invisible Hand take care of things, we'd all be better off.

If no one had reported the story, no one would be the wiser. They could carry on with existing inspection policies (i.e. don't ask, don't tell,) and everyone would be happy.

But what happened was everyone got stuck at the airport, waiting for American flight 2306 to East Nowhere.

The administration finds the perfect way to deregulate without the fuss, muss and bother of getting a law passed, thus avoiding gridlock and allowing the market to decide not only who got to what destination, but who lived and who died.

There's strong reason to believe such policy is active in the remaining few government regulatory agencies, like the Consumer Product Safety Commission (we don't need more inspectors, it would make things too complicated,) the Federal Communications Commission (who cares if you're broadcasting at 50% above licensed power,) the Federal Elections Commission (hanging chads be damned,) The Federal Highway Administration (Ralph Nader, where are you when we REALLY need you?)

Pass regulations for every industry, every profession, for education, for health care, for anything you like. Then ignore the regulations. Give the inspectors credit cards and tell them to spend their time spending budget excesses on iPods and internet dating sites.

The best of both worlds. Brilliant.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®
©2008 WJR

The Romance of AM Radio

#383 The Romance of AM Radio

Old radio hounds really like AM, which is a semi-dead medium unless you're a right wingnut talk show person. There's little or no music. There's static, and every time there's a thunderstorm, you get more snap, crackle and pop than a truckload of Rice Krispies. You get pops and scratches that are offend ears raised on digital recording. You get fade-ins and fade-outs and sometimes you get nothing at all if the radio's turned in the wrong direction.

But in a country that's becoming more homogenized by the minute -- a McDonald's and a Star Bucks on every corner, and every newspaper looks like USA Today or the New York Post -- there's something you get with AM radio that you get nowhere else. Distance.

Yes, because of peculiarities of transmission, reception and atmospheric conditions, sometimes you can bring in programs from a zillion miles away. And while satellite radio gives you the same mileage, it doesn't give you the same romance, because the signal is the same from Los Angeles to Bangor to Miami.

One morning, years ago, the manager of WOR, New York, walked into the newsroom and said "I heard the 4am newscast. Why ever do you give the weather from Newfoundland?" Good question. WOR, Jersey-centric as it was at that time, served New York and vicinity. Newfoundland is not in its orbit.

Here's the answer: "The Newfies called a few months ago. They said ours is the only signal they can get at that time of day and they'd like to know what the weather will be like."

And it was true. The station's big signal reached Newfoundland at that hour of the day. So, why not serve the audience.

In that same newsroom, we regularly fielded listener calls from places like St. Louis and Kansas City. Oh, and Nicaragua.

Roaming around the hills of Central Pennsylvania, it's easy to hear WCBS, New York at night. The traffic report is no longer of any big interest. But the local news IS.

Want country music? It's no trick to pull in WSM most nights. Nashville's not exactly around the corner. We have a fine country radio station in town. But it's not the same.

It's tough to find any other music on the AM band. That's a shame. These old ears don't care about digital high fidelity. Wasn't there when the listening started, never cared one way or the other when they invented the thing.

Not in the mood for country? There's a fine station on 740 in Toronto and they play nice music and talk softly. And you can hear them from sundown to sunrise, and sometimes earlier and sometimes later.

It's better than having to listen to Rush and Savage and O'Reilly hour after hour. And it's WAY better than listening to the local rockers that all play the same incomprehensible noise.

they've written the obituary for radio since the widespread use of television in 1947. Fifty one years later, the patient is still on a death bed, to stupid or stubborn to die.

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

©WJR 2008

The Mid Town Toll

#382 The Midtown Toll

Mayor Bloomberg of New York has come a step closer to charging you a few bucks for the privilege of driving into midtown, more than a few if you're in a truck. The City Council has okayed the plan, and the rest is up to the state legislature.

Eight bucks to get to Times Square? With gasoline at nearly four dollars a gallon? With parking garages charging the kind of money you used to pay for a medium size diamond or a studio apartment?

This is not going to reduce traffic. It's going to make traffic ten times worse during the pre dawn hours. After six or seven or whenever the tolls kick in, there will be four fewer cars and three fewer trucks. Going to raise a whole lot of money for road improvements. Maybe they'll even fix an extra pot hole, although that's unlikely, because the traffic control people, con ed, phone and sewer crews get so many laughs over people breaking axles and dropping drive shafts, and we want to keep those guys happy, after all.

So, a modest proposal. Toll the pedestrians instead. It's much easier, there are many more of them than drivers and they're far easier to push around.

Make it a reasonable toll -- less than a bus or subway fare. That way, no one will be tempted to go around the toll collector in a bus. Charge 'em maybe a buck or two. Put homeless people on collection duty. Let 'em earn commission. No salary, no benefits, no health insurance, plenty of money for everyone.

We're pretty used to the request for "spare change." So why not institutionalize it? And you don't even have to bother with badges and uniforms. Just give each collector a day-glow orange vest with an official looking sign on it.

If you run out of homeless (you won't,) you can always get those welfare kings and queens as a backup. It's well known that every other New Yorker's on the dole. And if you need backup for your backup, go to any playground and round up half a dozen hooky players on any given school day. Hold the basketball for ransom. Offer them leniency on the drug charges. Offer them "social promotions" or better grades in school. Solves a whole lot of problems.

Ah, you're saying, can't trust those shiftless homeless, welfare cheats and hooky playing middle-schoolers. They'll skim the pot.

Nonsense. You have the cameras up, use 'em.

And offer bonuses for specially able collectors.

Booze, pot, extra money, whatever. There's plenty to go around. You'll raise all the money you need for filling any but the recreational potholes and you might even be able to give the 59th St. Bridge the paint it's been needing for the past 15 years.

Tolling cars doesn't make any sense. Cars don't pay tolls, people do.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®
©WJR 2008

Privatize This

#381 Privatize This

The Jersey Turnpike, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the coal industry, the steel industry. In the US and Britain, they're still looking to shove unprofitable or costly municipal or federal assets to private enterprise. These are the kinds of deals that make money for middlemen and brokers and analysts and consultants, a whole category of people brought into existence to bring down the criminal population, un-clog the courts and slow the overcrowding of prisons.

But when it comes to privatizing something that it makes SENSE to privatize, the Great Capitalists are unready to move.

Here's a fine example: The surge is working. Not the surge in Iraq, the surge in fuel prices. Gasoline, oil, corn, wheat, and anything else that can be burned in an internal combustion engine is approaching the edge between the earth's atmosphere and the beginnings of outer space.

So what fuel is cheap and plentiful? The engineers and utility companies insist it's atomic energy. And to a certain extent, they're right. While Three Mile Island and Chernobyl pretty much vaccinated us against the widespread use of nuclear fuel, technical advances have overcome the kinds of problems that caused the two most famous nuclear failures in history. The problem with atomic energy is two-fold. First, they build the plants on the cheap. Billions may not seem cheap, but it is. The main problem with nuclear plants today is plumbing. Plumbers are expensive, so they often bring in temps, Hells Angels, vagabonds, odd jobbers and workfare victims. And they tend to do a lousy job. Doing a lousy plumbing job is an inconvenience in your bathroom or kitchen and a disruption in your basement. In a nuke plant, it's a disaster.

So, bring in certified construction plumbing foremen and plumbers, people who've had to deal with real plumbing in real buildings in real places where you can't bribe the city inspector to look the other way while you put in a solder joint where four are specified and six makes more sense. Problem solved.

But then, there's nuclear waste. When atomic fuel is "spent" in a reactor, it's still radioactive and therefore dangerous.

One plan is to rocket the stuff into outer space, where another few trillion Curie of radiation won't make much of a difference.

It's a pretty good idea, but NASA appears to busy to do it. So here's a suggestion.

Let's get FedEx, UPS and DHL to build unmanned rockets, and ship the stuff off into the wild blue yonder.

Look at it this way: the FedEx driver pulls up to the nuke plant, dons his hazmat suit, loads up the truck, and the next thing you know, the stuff's on a rocket heading for Andromeda III or the Siamese Squid Nebula.

It would take some doing. Maybe even a tax break or two. But once on board and out of the atmosphere, no worries.

The package people do a pretty good job when it absolutely positively has to get there on time, so why not when there's no particular hurry?


I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®
©WJR 2008

Star Wars

#380 Star Wars

Glossary:
AFTRA: American Federation of Radio & Television Artists. A union representing radio and television performers, news men and women, some producers, some editors. Has jurisdiction over taped and live programs.

SAG: The Screen Actors Guild. A union representing television and motion picture leading and supporting performers. Has jurisdiction over filmed TV programs.

PUTZ: Producers United To Zcrewus, representing management and ownership.

------------------------
PUTZ doesn't really exist, at least not officially or formally. I made that up. The rest of this is real. Many of us who are members of one of the legit organizations are members of both. But SAG's population is about twice that of AFTRA's. So, it's logical that since they represent about the same types of workers (a loose term, admittedly,) it's kind of natural that they negotiate agreements jointly.

In fact, there's been a move afoot for 30 years or so to merge the two unions into one. But what keeps happening is that SAG members approve merger and AFTRA members reject it. Thirty years ago, when the most recent wave of merger talks began to get teeth, your correspondent served on a minor committee exploring the mechanics and was a vigorous supporter of getting together. After all, went the reasoning, more members means more clout. Plus SAG is harder to join, those of us already in AFTRA would have an easy time of it (easy to the point of automatic,) and would thus benefit from increased work opportunities.

But over time, it seemed like the SAG folks were not trying to merge, but to acquire. And that made no sense, especially since AFTRA's Health and Welfare operation as it was then called, was solvent and SAG's wasn't.

Elected and hired leadership of both unions continued to favor and recommend approval. Hasn't yet happened. But all along, the two groups have negotiated their network contracts as one. Until now.

AFTRA withdrew from the coalition and is negotiating with PUTZ on its own. SAG is ballistic about that. And the net result could be that AFTRA negotiates a contract before the expiration and SAG doesn't, plunging TV back into the same morass as when the Writers Guild struck for something like 100 days.

This makes for difficulty.

Actors mostly based on the west coast are battling with actors mostly based on the east coast. Star Wars.

So, why should you, probably not a member of any of the three groups, care?

Because you remain glued to the tube.

And if this thing plays out wrong, you're going to be in for yet another seasons of useless and boring "reality" shows, fewer pilots, fewer scripted dramas, and endless re-runs and "Dateline" extras.

If PUTZ doesn't come up with a decent contract for both groups, it's going to take another big blow and heads will roll right off the corporate Gulfstreams. The writers will be back on the street. So will many of the stage hands, electricians, digital editors, catering truck operators and manufacturers of film.

You might be so bored with the "Law & Order" re-runs you might be tempted to vote for Fred Thompson if he should run for anything again.

And you might even have to (perish forbid!) read and converse.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®
©WJR 2008