Thoughts Before The Alarm Sounds

      Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . United States Constitution – Amendment I       Is religious freedom passé in the United States? No, but it is facing a crucial test. First, a little history lesson.       Religious freedom had a rocky start in the early colonies. The Pilgrims arrived in 1620, and settled the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Denying the Scriptures was punishable by a public whipping. Failing to attend church, traveling or laboring on Sunday, or harboring a Quaker were punishable by fines.       During the 1630s the Puritans established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and set up a form of government based on the Old Testament. Included were laws against worshipping a God other than the God of the Old Testament, or cursing God. Both infractions were punishable by death. A Puritan woman,...

      Today’s blog again takes a look at some of the popular comic strips of the 1930s, 1940s and later. If you are a member of the post-youth set, see how many you can remember. If you belong to the younger set, perhaps you will enjoy seeing what your parents and grandparents thought was funny. Please keep in mind that those who remember these strips were struggling through the great depression. We took our humor where we could find it.       If you missed our first comic strip review, check the July 25th blog.       Blondie (1930 - ) was originally a flapper named Blondie Boopadoop. In 1933 she married Dagwood Bumstead, who was immediately disowned by his well-to-do family for marrying beneath his class. Almost overnight Blondie settled into the role of a housewife.       In 1934 Alexander, nee Baby Dumpling, was born, and a daughter, Cookie, was born in 1941. Both children were all...

      A Commerce Department report Friday showed that the economy grew at an annual rate of 2.4% after reporting 5.0% at the end of 2009, and 3.7% in the first quarter of the year. Meanwhile the Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting that there are five applicants for every job opening. Obviously the economy is slowing down.       But if that is true, manufacturers apparently are not aware of it. For the quarter, industrial spending for buildings, equipment and software increased at an annual rate of 17.0% compared with a 7.8% increase in the first quarter. If businesses are investing at an increasing rate, why are no more jobs available? There are several reasons why this is happening.      (1) Efficiency. If machines or computers can do the job that a human being was doing, that is one less worker for the same amount of production. The machine does not require a salary, payroll taxes (in many cases the manufactu...

      With 165 security TV cameras blanketing their streets, the people of Lancaster are the most closely watched group of citizens in the country, perhaps in the entire world.       However, this is just one example of how authorities are using technology to crack down on those who think they can ignore the law. A couple of examples follow:       The Associated Press reports that, as in most cities, Riverhead, NY requires citizens to get the usual inspections, permits, etc. before installing a backyard swimming pool. And also as in most cities, some people just don’t like to bother with all that red tape.     Now along comes Google Earth with its photographs of every hamlet, town or city imaginable. And the potential is not lost upon the city fathers. To date the town has located about 250 swimming pools whose owners have not filled out the required paperwork. As a result the city coffers have ...

      When it comes down to opinion versus facts in an argument, there are well-known tools available which opinion can use to overcome facts.       For example, if one is arguing against experts, persons who have devoted a major portion of their lives to understanding the subject under discussion, one can always find, or even create out of nothing (e.g., the Discovery Institute), a couple of renegades to dispute the majority. Then the opinionated one does not discuss the competing claims; instead he trumpets far and wide that “even among the experts there is disagreement on the subject.” The idea is to sell the imaginary controversy, not the facts. This is the method used in the case of evolution versus intelligent design. Hopefully this movement ended with the opinion in the Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District case.       Another tool of the opinionated is to take some statement or event out of context,...

      Today’s blog takes a look at some of the popular comic strips of the 1930s, 1940s and later. If you are a member of the post-youth set, see how many you can remember. If you belong to the younger set, perhaps you will enjoy seeing what your parents and grandparents thought was funny. Please keep in mind that those who remember these strips were struggling through the great depression. We took our humor where we could find it.        Alley Oop (1932 - ) was a stone age character, who along with his Friend, Foozy, and his girl friend, Ooola, rode around on his pet dinosaur, Dinny. In 1939 they were brought into the 20th century by virtue of a time machine invented by Dr. Wonmug. As to be expected, complications followed.       Bringing Up Father (1913 – 2000), the official name of this strip, was commonly called Jiggs and Maggie after the two main characters. They were immigrants from Ireland; Jigg...

      Dreams can take us to magical places and into seemingly impossible situations. In a dream we may walk out of our front door into a new and strange, even scary, landscape. We may be transported into a strange and nightmarish land of fantasy. There appears to be no limit to the range of our dreams.       But a limit does exist. All dreams are personal, and both research and common sense indicate that one can only dream of things that one knows about. That is not to say that one needs to actually experience dizzying heights or fierce dragons, but a person who has never heard of a dragon will not dream of one.       Dreams are usually triggered by an event which has occurred while one is awake: a problem that is being worked on, a traumatic event, or even something as innocuous as a scene in a book, or a song being played in the background. While one is asleep, the mind tries not only to file the memory of th...

      The Senate is set to vote on the 2,300 page Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act , designed to establish much needed reform in the financial services industry. Supposedly the bill will monitor the types of transactions which led to the recent recession. With the announcement that Republican Senators Collins and Snowe of Maine, and Brown of Massachusetts would support the bill, the required 60 aye votes on Thursday seems assured. But as usual with the Senate, anything can happen.       The bill establishes a number of new government departments (Surprise! surprise!) to implement and maintain its regulations.       The new independent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be housed at the Federal Reserve, and will be responsible for ensuring that consumers get all pertinent information when shopping for mortgages, credit cards and other financial products. It will protect them from...

      There is a saying that the success of a business is dependent upon three things: location, location, location, and for many businesses that is true. For example, if you are managing a restaurant or a retail store, your establishment needs to be located where customers can easily find it.       But no matter what your business, whether you are a drug dealer, an aircraft manufacturer, or anything in between, there are three things even more important than location: customers, customers, customers. Especially with the increasing use of online buying, if you have a good delivery service available, your business could be located way back in the mountains. But without customers, you may as well be selling buggy whip sockets or antimacassars (look it up).       There are very few people who can afford to be a customer without having a job. So it is extremely important for the economy to include a large number of...

     It seems to be a rather widespread notion these days that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion,” and on the face of it, I agree. But behind this notion lurks the further belief that all opinions are equal, mine is as good as yours, and I can easily dismiss yours with, “That’s just your opinion.” And on this point, I could not disagree more.       In some cases, one’s opinion really doesn’t matter to anyone else. In my opinion corn is much tastier than carrots, but with the exception of my wife who does the grocery shopping, or my restaurateur when I order a side dish, no one cares. However, if I keep insisting to my circle of friends that corn is definitely better than carrots, I soon find the circle getting very small.       How can two opinions be compared? Perhaps by their truth value. If two people arrive at opposite conclusions from the same set of public facts, at least one of them must be wrong. If m...

      I don’t want to bore you with a recap of my activities during the past ten days, so I will try to keep it short.       For several years my legs have been getting weaker and my balance has been deteriorating, and the doctors finally decided it was due to a pinched nerve in my back. So I decided to go ahead with an operation to relieve the pressure.       It worked great – I have had very little pain, and although I have not been able to navigate too well since the operation, it is due to “complications” which seem to accompany much surgery, especially for post-youths such as me. If I had known about them, I might not have gone through with it.       Anyway, the night of the operation, my bladder refused to cooperate. After a night of really, really, really bad pain, they finally got around to relieving the problem, at least temporarily.       I promised ...

      I had a minor operation on Thursday, and have to take it easy for a few days. Anything I write will be short. I will be back next week some time. Please bear with me. Thanks.

      If a water pipe bursts inside your house, whom do you call, your plumber or your pastor? As ridiculous as this question sounds, it is a metaphor for the problem facing President Obama at this time. I am afraid he is going to call the pastor.       We are in the midst of a partial recovery from a reasonably deep recession, and the question for him is from whom to get advice - economists or ideologues. Should he seek advice from men who have devoted a lifetime to studying economics, or from conservative Democrats, Republicans, Tea Partiers and others who got us into this position during the reign of King George (2001-2009)? Should he trust the guidance of pilots who know the waters, or should he let the ones who steered us unto a sandbar take a second run at the beach?       In 1929 the economy was bustling along, and the Gross domestic Product value was at an all time high of $103.6 billion. Then the depre...

      My late mother-in-law was a sweet lady, and I loved her. She always gave lip service to the belief that a variety of people was a good thing, but I know that deep down she disapproved, at least slightly, of those whose lifestyle differed from hers. How do I know? The compression of the lips, or a slight shake of the head was a dead giveaway. After much thinking about it, I have concluded that we all have a similar unstated bias.       Semanticists have long known that we process reality through an unconscious filter: a dynamic pattern of attitudes, habits, internalized values, and modes of thinking. It is through this process that we relate ourselves to the world of things and people, observe and judge them, and express ourselves.       Some of the contents of this filter we receive at birth - certain talents or handicaps; others from our culture – vocabularies, games, dances, greetings ,etc. As a result,...

      Whenever a catastrophe occurs, people in high places are cast into the limelight, some unwillingly, and others because they want to beat everyone else to their fifteen minutes of fame. When that happens, they often come out with pearls of “wisdom,” sometimes speaking with insufficient information; at other times engaging their mouths before their brains are in gear. A classic example, of course, is the well publicized Bushism,…”Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill is no exception. Here are a few examples: Tony Hayward, BP CEO: "What the hell have we done to deserve this?" (Is he kidding?) “I'd like my life back.” (So would thousands of Gulf Coast residents who depend on the Gulf for their livelihoods.) After arguing that safety has always been his top priority, “…that is why I am so devastated with this accident.” (BP has had 760 safety violations in the past five years, and paid $373 million in fines.) Carl-Hen...

      Those zany California voters have done it again. Back in 1978 they sowed the seeds of their present horrendous budget deficit by passing Proposition 13, the People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation . Among other things, the proposition lowered property taxes by rolling back property values to their 1975 value, and restricted annual increases in assessed value of real property to an inflation factor, not to exceed 2% per year. It also prohibited reassessment of a new base year value except upon (a) change in ownership or (b) completion of new construction.       Because I had bought my property in 1973, I benefitted immensely from the proposition. When I sold it in 2004 the property taxes were approximately $700; in 2008 they were over $4000. The voters had successfully capped property taxes for long term residents and had made sure that tax revenues were well below the inflation rate. It was not the only factor that put Cali...

      The calamity in the Gulf of Mexico is putting strains on the relationship between the USA and the UK. I can see both sides of the problem, but I think we have the better argument.       The British object to President Obama’s calling the bad guy in the Gulf “British Petroleum” instead of “BP.” (In 1998 British Petroleum merged with Amoco and became BP Amoco. In 2001 it formally renamed itself BP, and adopted the tag line “Beyond Petroleum”). They claim it is making the whole British Empire look bad.       I understand the British reluctance to having aspersions cast upon BP; stock price is affected by rumors or bad reputations of any company. Since the explosion of April 20th, BP’s stock price has dropped 50%, or about $90 billion dollars.       As Britain’s largest corporation, BP stock is held by almost every pension plan in the country; BP pays about 1/7 of all dividends paid ...

      tradition, n. the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc., from generation to generation, esp. by work of mouth, or by practice. Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary.       In 1750 the ship Nancy arrived in Philadelphia carrying Henry William Stiegel, a German glassmaker and ironmaster. He was an active lay Lutheran and associate of Henry Muhlenberg, who is considered to be the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in the United States.       In 1772 Stiegel donated the land on which the Lutheran church in Manheim, Pennsylvania is now built. The deed stipulated that the cost of the land was “five shillings and ‘in the month of June yearly forever hereafter the rent on One Red Rose if the same shall be lawfully demanded.’”       It is doubtful whether the rose was actually paid to Stiegel, but in 1892, one hundred and twenty years after the de...

      When I was a working accountant, there was one comment which I heard time after time, not only in the business world, but in other settings as well, e.g., church councils, civic organizations, etc., and it irritated me every time I heard it: “We never did it that way before.” I always thought that if we had some system going for, say, five years, it may not need to be upgraded, but we should certainly consider that possibility.       Even before discussing any changes, the person who made that remark usually came up with several reasons why a new system would not work.       Today we often hear the catchphrase “think outside the box,” meaning to be creative. If Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, et. al. had not heeded that advice, I would not be writing this because no one would ever have heard of a blog. Of course, I also need to give credit to the inventor of the internet, Al Gore(?)     ...

      On June 2nd, umpire Jim Joyce called Cleveland Indians’ runner Jason Donald safe when almost everyone in the stadium, as well as the entire TV viewing audience, knew he was really out by at least a full step. The exceptions were Joyce and Detroit Tigers’ pitcher Armando Galarraga, who was covering first base on the play. Joyce was wrong and Galarraga wasn’t sure. He had been called up from minor league team Toledo only 16 days earlier.       It was a bad call, but it would probably not have been the object of undo excitement if it had happened in another game; they happen all the time. But this game was special, the call cost Galarraga a perfect game – 27 batters and 27 outs.       In the entire history of major league baseball, there have been only 20 perfect games. Even Nolan Ryan, who threw seven no hit-no run games, never pitched a perfect game. Unbelievably, two of them occurred earlier this season. ...