Dear Friend,
Let me apologize for piling on. I will no longer inflict my conservative e-mails on you (or at least, I will do my best to remember not to do that - my capacity for remembering is somewhat diminished of late.) I would feel bad if you were offended by something I did or said.
And just for the record, I am also offended by the hypocrisy of the Republican Party - probably more so than you are - they really can't have it both ways. All of this deficit spending was just as bad when W Bush was doing it as it is now with Obama doing it - it's just that Obama is making Bush look conservative by contrast. And no conservative would ever be in favor of any bailout, nationalization, or abridgement of civil liberties, all of which proves that we have precious few conservatives in the Republican Party. In fact, the Republicans have NO claim on conservativism; and, as a conservative, I am shopping for a new party (and not finding one.)
I hope you will at least remember that while I am currently extremely unhappy with Obama and everything he is doing, I was equally unhappy with W Bush before him (see: http://powerletters.blogspot.com/2006/03/president-george-w-bush-and-iraq.html one of my first posts from back in 2006,) Clinton before that, and Bush and Reagan before that. Well, now that I think about it, I wasn't happy with Carter either. And since my first political memory is of Nixon resigning, I never really had a first-hand opinion of him, but in retrospect I don't like him at all - he was entirely too liberal (do the acronyms EPA and OSHA ring a bell?).
As far as I can tell, all of our presidents during my lifetime have been exactly the same - they just change party labels to make it sound like change is happening, just to make the voters feel like their opinions mean anything. Our political machines seem an awful lot like professional wrestling, where someone unseen behind the scenes is pre-determining who is going to win the match, while the match itself is just for show.
Can you tell that I'm disgusted with the whole thing? 8 years of W Bush were painful enough, and now Obama is just more of the same - a LOT more. Sorry to bother you with my politics - my wife gets tired of it too.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
My trip to New Orleans
I started my trip on Saturday the 14th of February (leaving my wife home with the girls for Valentine’s Day.) On Saturday afternoon I drove myself up to the airport here in St. George and caught a plane for New Orleans, via Salt Lake City. I traveled with management and directors from my co-op, as well as a bunch of other managers and directors from the other co-ops in Utah. We were in New Orleans for the Annual Meeting of our national organization; they hold it in a different major city each year (last year it was in Anaheim and the year before that it was in Las Vegas.) When we got in to our hotel late Saturday night we were informed that they’d overbooked their rooms, so we were all doubled up in rooms for one night. So I ended up bunking with our Board Chairman; we had separate bedrooms but shared a bathroom in a large suite.
On Sunday morning I got up and met with some salesmen for a breakfast meeting, and then headed over to the big Expo, where I spent four hours chatting with salesmen and checked out all the latest in the new technology. It was fun to chat with my buddies from Abilene, TX where I used to work back in the early 90's. While I was there I bumped in to my old colleague from Bolivia and chummed around with him for a couple of hours. We ate lunch with the group up from Guatemala; it was fun to reminisce with them about our project there back in 2000-01. One of the guys was from one of the towns for which I built power lines, so he was appreciative of my efforts. I also ran into my colleague who is currently managing the project in the Dominican Republic. It was lots of fun. You could tell that New Orleans was smack in the middle of Mardi Gras week because they had parade floats lined up all along the street outside our hotel on Sunday morning and ran parades all day that day. I didn’t see the parades because I was in the expo, but I assumed that I’d have lots of other chances to see parades because when I was last in New Orleans, back in 2004, they had parades through the French Quarter every night I was there. Unfortunately for me, I found out too late that after Sunday they weren’t going to have any more parades until the night after we left New Orleans. Oops. That evening our billing software vendor took us out to dinner; it was a pretty lame meal, which is especially sad considering that we were in New Orleans, which is famous for its great food. So after the disappointing dinner I went on a walkabout with my CEO and his wife; we strolled through the French Quarter and down Bourbon Street looking for souvenirs (I found my typical round of souvenirs.)
On Monday morning we started our main meetings; it was a bit discouraging to hear from our national organization that “resistance is futile” and that there WILL be a carbon tax imposed on electric utilities this year. No surprise there since the democrats, who swept the elections this past fall, all come from states that will be the least impacted by the carbon tax, so it’s the best way for them to poke us in the eye here in Utah and around the west (except the left coast.) On a positive note: I ran into a gaggle of my buddies from the international program at the main meeting, including my pals from Yemen, Sudan/Nigeria, the DR, the Philippines, Guatemala, and from Afghanistan (but no one from Bangladesh.) I also met the two new engineers that they’ve hired for the main office, who both told me that they “knew” me from having to study the manuals that I’d written on how to do international rural electrification projects. That evening I met my buddy Eric for dinner. He’s honchoing the new big project in Yemen for which I did the feasibility study. That night we went to one of the restaurants recommended in my Lonely Planet guidebook and the food was wonderful.
On Tuesday we had more of our big meetings, and again we were told that we just had to reconcile ourselves to the impending carbon tax and that the best we could hope for was to get some funding from Obama’s $3T “stimulus” package; sad days – they’re trying to nationalize the utilities, like they have the banks and auto manufacturers. Around mid-day I went with my CEO and his wife out to the lower 9th ward, the area that was devastated in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina. We asked the clerk at the front desk of our hotel if she could give us an address in the flooded area and she gave us her own home address. She also told us that she was neither helped out by her insurance company nor any governmental agency. So we plugged her address into our GPS and drove out there; we found her home still ruined (see attached photo,) along with most of her neighborhood. There were very few homes that have been fixed in the four years since the big flood, but I’m not sure why anyone would fix their home in an area that has proven to be a flood hazard. We stopped for a yummy lunch a Cuban place, also recommended in my guidebook. That afternoon I didn’t have any meetings to go to, so I wandered up the neighborhood to check out the Civil War museum, but it was closed. So I toddled back over to the French Quarter and checked out Royal Street and the “Historic Voodoo Museum”; Royal Street was very pretty, but the museum was disappointing – two small rooms of dusty junk and a few pictures on the wall. That night a group of eight of us from our co-op went out to dinner together to one of New Orleans’s famous restaurants (the chef has a famous TV show;) the food was very good, although the dessert was bland.
On Wednesday we wrapped up our conference on a high note: our final speaker was Chris Gardner, the subject of Will Smith’s movie “Pursuit of Happyness.” He spoke to us for an hour or so and it was very enjoyable. So I bought his book and a video and had him autograph it. I’m looking forward to reading the book and seeing the video (not of the movie – I think it’s a video of his lecture.) After that talk we all headed back to the hotel to check out and mosey over to the airport. From New Orleans we flew to Salt Lake City via Atlanta GA; we had to make a big detour around an active storm front. We were fortunate – the other group from Utah, which were on the later flight, got stuck in Atlanta for the night when the storm blew into town and stuck around for a while. And yes, a week in New Orleans saw me put on three new pounds.
On Sunday morning I got up and met with some salesmen for a breakfast meeting, and then headed over to the big Expo, where I spent four hours chatting with salesmen and checked out all the latest in the new technology. It was fun to chat with my buddies from Abilene, TX where I used to work back in the early 90's. While I was there I bumped in to my old colleague from Bolivia and chummed around with him for a couple of hours. We ate lunch with the group up from Guatemala; it was fun to reminisce with them about our project there back in 2000-01. One of the guys was from one of the towns for which I built power lines, so he was appreciative of my efforts. I also ran into my colleague who is currently managing the project in the Dominican Republic. It was lots of fun. You could tell that New Orleans was smack in the middle of Mardi Gras week because they had parade floats lined up all along the street outside our hotel on Sunday morning and ran parades all day that day. I didn’t see the parades because I was in the expo, but I assumed that I’d have lots of other chances to see parades because when I was last in New Orleans, back in 2004, they had parades through the French Quarter every night I was there. Unfortunately for me, I found out too late that after Sunday they weren’t going to have any more parades until the night after we left New Orleans. Oops. That evening our billing software vendor took us out to dinner; it was a pretty lame meal, which is especially sad considering that we were in New Orleans, which is famous for its great food. So after the disappointing dinner I went on a walkabout with my CEO and his wife; we strolled through the French Quarter and down Bourbon Street looking for souvenirs (I found my typical round of souvenirs.)
On Monday morning we started our main meetings; it was a bit discouraging to hear from our national organization that “resistance is futile” and that there WILL be a carbon tax imposed on electric utilities this year. No surprise there since the democrats, who swept the elections this past fall, all come from states that will be the least impacted by the carbon tax, so it’s the best way for them to poke us in the eye here in Utah and around the west (except the left coast.) On a positive note: I ran into a gaggle of my buddies from the international program at the main meeting, including my pals from Yemen, Sudan/Nigeria, the DR, the Philippines, Guatemala, and from Afghanistan (but no one from Bangladesh.) I also met the two new engineers that they’ve hired for the main office, who both told me that they “knew” me from having to study the manuals that I’d written on how to do international rural electrification projects. That evening I met my buddy Eric for dinner. He’s honchoing the new big project in Yemen for which I did the feasibility study. That night we went to one of the restaurants recommended in my Lonely Planet guidebook and the food was wonderful.
On Tuesday we had more of our big meetings, and again we were told that we just had to reconcile ourselves to the impending carbon tax and that the best we could hope for was to get some funding from Obama’s $3T “stimulus” package; sad days – they’re trying to nationalize the utilities, like they have the banks and auto manufacturers. Around mid-day I went with my CEO and his wife out to the lower 9th ward, the area that was devastated in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina. We asked the clerk at the front desk of our hotel if she could give us an address in the flooded area and she gave us her own home address. She also told us that she was neither helped out by her insurance company nor any governmental agency. So we plugged her address into our GPS and drove out there; we found her home still ruined (see attached photo,) along with most of her neighborhood. There were very few homes that have been fixed in the four years since the big flood, but I’m not sure why anyone would fix their home in an area that has proven to be a flood hazard. We stopped for a yummy lunch a Cuban place, also recommended in my guidebook. That afternoon I didn’t have any meetings to go to, so I wandered up the neighborhood to check out the Civil War museum, but it was closed. So I toddled back over to the French Quarter and checked out Royal Street and the “Historic Voodoo Museum”; Royal Street was very pretty, but the museum was disappointing – two small rooms of dusty junk and a few pictures on the wall. That night a group of eight of us from our co-op went out to dinner together to one of New Orleans’s famous restaurants (the chef has a famous TV show;) the food was very good, although the dessert was bland.
On Wednesday we wrapped up our conference on a high note: our final speaker was Chris Gardner, the subject of Will Smith’s movie “Pursuit of Happyness.” He spoke to us for an hour or so and it was very enjoyable. So I bought his book and a video and had him autograph it. I’m looking forward to reading the book and seeing the video (not of the movie – I think it’s a video of his lecture.) After that talk we all headed back to the hotel to check out and mosey over to the airport. From New Orleans we flew to Salt Lake City via Atlanta GA; we had to make a big detour around an active storm front. We were fortunate – the other group from Utah, which were on the later flight, got stuck in Atlanta for the night when the storm blew into town and stuck around for a while. And yes, a week in New Orleans saw me put on three new pounds.
Friday, February 06, 2009
The official party line
After hearing time and time again that my friends and colleagues were being forbidden to talk to me any longer, I've decided to publish the "official" party line.
Repeat after me:
“Everything is fine. The bailout will work. Buy lots of stocks. Do NOT store food, fuel, clothing, ammo, or gold. Go back to watching TV. These are NOT the droids you’re looking for…”
Keep chanting that until you believe it.
Friday, January 30, 2009
The Fate of Paper Money
As time goes by, the past becomes clearer than it was when it was still the future. What I am seeing now is that the government is not going to allow Social Security to go broke, nor will they allow lines of credit to close – instead, our government has decided that they have NO spending limits. So if I were you, I wouldn’t worry about losing Social Security benefits nor your house – there appears to be no need nor benefit to pay off any debts early – in fact, it looks like there is a real possibility that the government will start paying off people’s mortgages and credit cards. Clearly, our government has decided that there’s no limit on their spending; if Ronald Reagan broke the bank with $8 billion for the S&L crisis, then what did George Bush Jr. do with $800 billion for the banking crisis? And Obama seems to be just getting warmed up as he blows through his first trillion dollars in his first month. With our runaway spending I can only see two potential outcomes three or four years down the road:
Option 1. Hyperinflation ala post-WWI Germany where the mark shot up from 4 marks to US$1 to 4 trillion marks to US$1, which makes all of our life savings, IRA’s, 401k’s, stocks, and bonds worth less than a slice of bread. In that eventuality only our year’s supply will have any value.
Or… Option 2. The government corrects their mistake by taking all of our money out of our accounts, like Argentina did back in 2001 – I remember it well since I was working with a semi-retired Argentine man on our Nicaragua project when it happened. The Argentine government had been cut off from too much credit by the World Bank and so resorted to printing money with no backing (like Germany did post-WWI or like the US is going to do later this year.) But Argentina didn’t want to go into hyper inflation, like Germany had, so they froze everyone’s bank accounts mid-week and no one could use the bank, write a check, tap their ATM, or anything until the next Monday morning. In the meantime the government divided everyone’s bank balance by the amount that the country was overdrawn (I don’t remember if it was by 10 or 20 or what – I should look that up.) So, a semi-retired man like my buddy Aldo, with whom I was working in Nicaragua, might have enough money to retire on in the bank one day, and then suddenly wake up the next day with a tenth or twentieth of that amount.
One of those two options seems to me to be the only possible outcome of our unrestrained spending. Unless, of course, George Bush and Obama are correct and there really is unlimited money for the US government to spend.
And just for fun, I’m attaching a photo of my Argentine buddy, Aldo, on the left, along with my other colleague and friend, Daniel, on the right, from NM. We got one day off during one of my stints in Nicaragua and so rented a car for the day and drove down the coast and found a little local seaside resort where we played in the surf for a while and then enjoyed a lovely lunch of fresh lobster.
Anyway, so what am I going to do? My plan is that I’m going to temporarily suspend my 401k contributions. That frees up $16,000/year to put toward a new house, new cars, more years’ supply items, and my kids’ college education. Then, when we have things in stock that we’d need in the case of either outcomes 1 or 2 above, then if things still haven’t come clear apart, then I’ll return to my regularly scheduled budget of maxing out my 401k and investing in the stock market. But for now my overarching strategy is to ask myself: “If all of my electronic assets suddenly became worthless, what will I wish I had bought when I still had money?”
So, for what it’s worth, that’s what I’m doing. I’m not recommending my strategy, but it’s what I think will work for me.
Option 1. Hyperinflation ala post-WWI Germany where the mark shot up from 4 marks to US$1 to 4 trillion marks to US$1, which makes all of our life savings, IRA’s, 401k’s, stocks, and bonds worth less than a slice of bread. In that eventuality only our year’s supply will have any value.
Or… Option 2. The government corrects their mistake by taking all of our money out of our accounts, like Argentina did back in 2001 – I remember it well since I was working with a semi-retired Argentine man on our Nicaragua project when it happened. The Argentine government had been cut off from too much credit by the World Bank and so resorted to printing money with no backing (like Germany did post-WWI or like the US is going to do later this year.) But Argentina didn’t want to go into hyper inflation, like Germany had, so they froze everyone’s bank accounts mid-week and no one could use the bank, write a check, tap their ATM, or anything until the next Monday morning. In the meantime the government divided everyone’s bank balance by the amount that the country was overdrawn (I don’t remember if it was by 10 or 20 or what – I should look that up.) So, a semi-retired man like my buddy Aldo, with whom I was working in Nicaragua, might have enough money to retire on in the bank one day, and then suddenly wake up the next day with a tenth or twentieth of that amount.
One of those two options seems to me to be the only possible outcome of our unrestrained spending. Unless, of course, George Bush and Obama are correct and there really is unlimited money for the US government to spend.
And just for fun, I’m attaching a photo of my Argentine buddy, Aldo, on the left, along with my other colleague and friend, Daniel, on the right, from NM. We got one day off during one of my stints in Nicaragua and so rented a car for the day and drove down the coast and found a little local seaside resort where we played in the surf for a while and then enjoyed a lovely lunch of fresh lobster.
Anyway, so what am I going to do? My plan is that I’m going to temporarily suspend my 401k contributions. That frees up $16,000/year to put toward a new house, new cars, more years’ supply items, and my kids’ college education. Then, when we have things in stock that we’d need in the case of either outcomes 1 or 2 above, then if things still haven’t come clear apart, then I’ll return to my regularly scheduled budget of maxing out my 401k and investing in the stock market. But for now my overarching strategy is to ask myself: “If all of my electronic assets suddenly became worthless, what will I wish I had bought when I still had money?”
So, for what it’s worth, that’s what I’m doing. I’m not recommending my strategy, but it’s what I think will work for me.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Whites need not apply
I guess it’s official now – I have lost all hope for the future of America: it is obvious that white people are no longer welcome here now that we have a black president. Obama and his minions exposed their divisiveness and belied their promises of unity and hope. See the video from the inauguration yesterday here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRf4tOP05fA. I knew that these people were flaming racist fascist socialists, but I didn’t think their ideologies would be so flagrant in the inauguration bacchanal – I had expected that they would ease their way into their party line. I assume that this means that they don’t need or want my tax dollars, because I’m guilty of being white and can see no solution to my transgression.
But wait, there's more: this administration just keeps getting better and better – at this rate we’ll only have to tolerate them for four (very long) years – this great and Obama-nable farce keeps rolling along, stream roller-ing everyone who is not a minority. I was shocked and appalled, but not surprised, to hear Obama’s chief economic advisor say out loud and for the CSPAN cameras (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opxuUj6vFa4) that he doesn’t want skilled, white, male construction workers building any of the bridges or power lines in Obama’s infrastructure stimulus plan – he wants those projects to be built only by the unskilled, chronically unemployed. Boy, that’s what I want – to drive my family across bridges built by people who never wanted to work a day in their lives. I hope they label them clearly so we can make an informed decision before driving our car across them. At least this is likely to stimulate the ferry industry in our county – we’ll have to hire some ferry experts from Bangladesh, where they also don’t have bridges. Bangladesh also doesn’t have electricity for large spans of time each day – something else to which we can look forward – I’m glad I had a few years living in Bangladesh to get used to that, because that’s our future.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Hobgoblin, again
Saturday, January 17th, was an all day 4-wheeler excursion to the “Hobgoblin” down in Nevada. We’d been there once before in December of 2006 (see: http://powerletters.blogspot.com/2006/12/trip-to-hobgoblin.html.) It was fun; it was a gorgeous sunny day, with temperatures ranging somewhere between 60 and 70F all day. All together we were 13 people on nine 4-wheelers. Our 4-wheeler ride started out at “Whitney Pockets” in Nevada, about 30 miles from Mesquite on a barely paved road; one of our new riding buddies was the grandson of the rancher who settled all of that land. We found many of the trails that we’d taken a little over two years ago now blocked off by the BLM which claims to be restoring the land. I’ve attached a photo of the group of us on a rock formation.
That night we got home just in the nick of time to change out of our dusty clothes, shower, get dressed, and dash up to Desert Hills H.S. to watch Kat play in the County-wide Honors Orchestra. She said that it was way fun to play in an orchestra that was really good.
That night we got home just in the nick of time to change out of our dusty clothes, shower, get dressed, and dash up to Desert Hills H.S. to watch Kat play in the County-wide Honors Orchestra. She said that it was way fun to play in an orchestra that was really good.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
