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Today in “I don’t feel safer”

Today I went to the new post office for the first time. They closed the branch across the street, so I can’t just walk a block anymore. Now I have to drive a few miles. This is better somehow. And the hours are 9-4, you know, when all of us working stiffs can make it. I don’t use the USPS that much anyway, since their primary function is to deliver junk mail to my recycling bin, with me as the intermediary, same as the guys who go around putting home improvement flyers from contractors on the porch while I’m on a ladder painting the house. [1]

No line, which is good (see “hours” above). The one bored clerk was talking on the phone, so when she got done, I handed her my slim packages through an airlock in the inch of bullet-proof glass. That’s when I noticed the one-inch thick bullet-proof glass. One-inch thick bullet-proof glass? Huh?

Has there been some rash of shootings or bombings at post offices that I haven’t heard about? One that was not perpetrated by the poor souls behind the glass? “Going postal” refers to the post office workers gunning down their co-workers. Not the public.

Really? Armed robbers hitting the post office in the hours between 9-4 to get stamps? Al-queda blowing up Xmas presents?

So why the need for inch-thick bullet-proof glass to protect the nice lady behind the counter? From hard stares about lost packages? [2] [3]

This country has gone literally insane with fear. FDR could not get elected dog catcher. Fear is all there is, everywhere, all the time. Except there’s nothing to be afraid of. Crime is lower than ever. Highway deaths are down. Terrorist attacks are non-existent. Planes don’t crash anymore.

Except maybe, just maybe, the drone spying on you, and the USPS opening your packages and forwarding the contents to the CIA, and the NSA listening to your cell-phone conversations, and the FBI putting warrantless tracking devices on your car, and the library or ISP giving them a list of the books you checked out, or the emails, under an NSL that you’ll never ever know about and have no way to get rescinded. Because they hate our freedoms.

There is evil in the world, but most of it is on the non-citizen side of the bullet-proof glass.

The biggest thing I fear is my government.

And now there’s a ghetto bird circling above the neighborhood. Someone shoplifted from the Big Lots, no doubt. Or shone a laser pointer in the sky. This city has a love affair with helicopters. And traffic lights timed to make you stop at each and everyone. Because if you’re pissed about hitting every light red, maybe you’ll stop and go into the local stores and shop! After you pay the new meters. Where it used to be free to park. Helicopter fuel isn’t free. And neither is inch-thick bullet-proof glass.

[1] Whether the USPS should exist or not is another rant. Probably, as a firm believer in universal services (see also REA, and please give us universal access to internet). But the fact that they primarily exist to make, and their cash flow depends on encouraging, trash is problematic.

[2] And banks now too. I stopped going to my local branch because they have a person-sized air lock with an armed guard. They’ve never been robbed. I’m not particularly claustrophobic, but I’m not going into an airlock that I don’t control if I don’t have to. I do not like being treated as a potential, or worse, likely, criminal. But the next closest branch recently remodeled and now they have inch-thick bullet-proof glass. And they’ve never been robbed either. Just fear, completely unjustified fear. [4]

[3] The only expensive thing I’ve ever sent through the USPS is the only thing of mine they’ve ever lost. And as it was a bruxism guard, I doubt that it was stolen. Only of use to the person it was fitted for.

[4] At least based on actual events. Would that it were because the peasants had come to the banksters with pitchforks and torches…

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Worse than you think

Wyden and Udall say the Patriot Act is worse than they thought, and they voted for it.

I’m guessing it’s exactly as bad as I think.

There is no shortage of STEMs

Only a shortage of cheap STEMS (a tortured acronym meaning Science, Technology, Engineering, Math).

because they're smart

Why students don't study STEM anymore

they're just unemployed

Why there's no shortage of STEM graduates

Put the two together, and it’s easy to see

  • why students are too smart to go into a dying field
  • that there is a surplus of STEM people
  • so any calls for more H-1B visas is just an attempt to drive wages down further
  • which will result in fewer students yet going into these fields

 

Art Morimitsu

R.I.P.
Art Morimitsu (d. 14 March 2012) and his favorite crag dog, Hanchau (d. 2 July 2008), at the Old New, 1 April 2007

Can someone explain this to me?

Can someone explain to me this meme of “The government never created a single job”?

Schoolteachers, police, and fire departments spring to mind, as do interstate highways, the USPS, the Army, water purification plants, Navy, aquaducts, Lockheed-Martin, and the REA. You can argue that it’s private citizens tax money that pays for those, but that’s why we have governments. We agree to do some things collectively because no individual could afford them, or it just makes sense. And et voila! Jobs!

Austerity

What Atrios said:

[…]it’s weird that Keynes is invoked sort of like he dabbled in arcane voodoo. If you implement policies that lay off a big chunk of your population and destroy functioning civil society, the consequences shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

It’s not like it’s hard to explain, or understand. Yes, excess government spending can cause inflation. But that hasn’t happened, so it isn’t excessive. Yes, the central banks should be able to lower interest rates and stimulate the economy, but we’re at the zero bound. Interest rates are effectively zero (if you’re a big bank or a government). Banks aren’t loaning the money they’re getting at zero percent — they’re paying themselves bonuses. So it makes a lot of sense for governments to borrow lots of money, lock in long-term low interest rates on that money, fix infrastructure that’s been neglected for years, do a lot of long term R&D (both practical, like sustainable energy, and impractical, like discovering the secrets of the universe), and employ a lot of people in the process. Those people will eat, make babies, and buy homes. And iPads. Even the scientists will figure out how to make babies. Well, how to get laid, which in the end leads to the same thing. It just takes them longer.

And so what if there’s a bit of inflation? That makes the low-interest debt cost even less. It’s how we paid the debt from WWII (the big one). We didn’t pay it so much as inflation and low interest rates ate it away. If you have a mortgage, or student loans, a little bit of inflation is not a bad thing.

Austerity — having more people out of work, not getting the infrastructure rebuilt, and destroying a generation of people — seems like the wrong way to go.

I’m sure Keynes said this better, as he was a pithy author, but as it’s time for me to go work, I don’t have time to dig up the quotation. Like Marx [1], most of the people who use his name as an epithet have never bothered to read him.

[1] Predictively and descriptively, Marx about nailed capitalism and it’s path. Proscriptively, well, not so good.

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Critters

I’ve been shaking out my shoes before I put them on since back on the ranch.  You live in the desert, creepy crawlies are just part of the deal.  It’s just what you do.  But honestly, I’ve only ever gotten a few bugs.  Mostly leaves, stones.  No snakes, scorpions, centipedes, spiders.  Before Monday.  Monday I shook out a black widow.  So I guess it’s been worth it.

Smarter than the average bear

Bears use tools. Dolphins exchange names (obSimpsons: Treehouse of Horror – Night of the Dolphins).

Humans had a good run but it’s over.

Seriously, no one had ever seen a bear use a tool before? I personally witnessed a bear using a rock to break a lock off a bear box 15 years ago. And I’ve seen them pop the top off a beer bottle and drink the contents. So bears have been this smart for a while. But I suppose it’s a big step in evolution from drinking and B&E to metrosexual.

Picture of the day, 4 March 2012

Incentives

If I were to do something so illegal as to download it from some site, I wouldn’t have to watch five minutes of unskippable commercials and FBI warnings in order to watch this movie.

I want to watch this movie; I want to pay for it. Why are the movie companies punishing me for trying to give them money, instead of getting it for free? I think of incentives when I train my dogs — what incentives are the movie companies trying to reinforce?

It’s as though they’re having a sale on pitchforks and torches…

and they want us to know where to go first.

I doubt that these guys are looking for coupons for Wheat Chex, so maybe unindicted criminals are a better place to start than with mere whingers.

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Picture of the day, 29 February 2012 (Happy Leap Day!)

“Adventure” pass tossed out

The hated “Adventure” Pass has been largely overruled. I don’t have my stack of tickets anymore, though at one point I got one with the number 100 circled in red on it, my 100th citation, I suppose. And I can’t count the number of times I argued with a ranger about these, and had them tell me about all the good the money was doing. Yet Williamson is still closed. And I know of someone who got tooled and cuffed because of the “Adventure” pass, even though he was on private land at the time. Just another excuse for LEO to tool you.

The last few times I checked the USFS budget, the fees just about paid the additional costs of paying people to hand out tickets.

So, fuck you, lying, duplicitous USFS. About damn time.

Thank you, 9th Circuit, best of all federal courts.

Picture of the day, 28 February 2012

Statement of the obvious, or command. Either way, here you go.

Quote of the day, 25 February 2012

“The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.”
–Miller, Repo Man, 1984