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Bloviating Zeppelin: October 2011

Bloviating Zeppelin

(in-ep-toc'-ra-cy) - a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Monday: Leaving Behind The Ocean

Ft Bragg fishing vessel Northern Light approaching the Noyo Harbor inlet.
Northern Light on approach to Noyo Harbor. Taken in almost literal darkness.
Fresh water pond just inland from the ocean, north of Ft. Bragg.
The ocean territory near Glass Beach.
In perfect timing for Halloween, the Six Cormorant Coven convenes whilst waves cascade about.
Big rocks in the MacKerricher Beach area north of Ft. Bragg, Fornicalia.
MacKerricher Beach bay, in the state park area.
Huge buoys, red and green, split by a smaller fishing boat out of Noyo Harbor.
Sailing vessel in -- the Isis out of Seattle, Washington -- passed by a local and much faster fishing boat.
The crook in Noyo Harbor, taken from Carine's Restaurant. Mama Carine still works her business at 78, after the passing of her husband four years ago.
An upper tidal pool, only flooded at high tide.
Lunch at the Mendocino Motel.
The Mendocino Hotel lobby bar. Beautiful oval stained glass ceiling with major history over said bar.

Cascading ocean. Makes me think of:



If these ocean photographs weren't perfect, it was Nobody's Fault But Mine:



I'm driving home from the Fornicalia Coast even as you read and download this post.

BZ

P.S.
If I don't make it back to work it's only because I'm Sick Again:



NOTE: CLICK ON EACH PHOTOGRAPH TO ENLARGE.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Gingrich: A Reminder of How We Got Here



Former Speaker Newt Gingrich is absolutely correct: "for twenty-five years we've lived a lie." In terms of housing, our jobs, our finances, our possessions, we wanted what we wanted when we wanted it.

It takes two to tango. Once many Americans discovered they could acquire their own piece of the McMansion Pie, they stepped up and took advantage of same, frequently re-financing in order to acquire the new pool, the new boat, the new RV, the new vacation home. Both ends of the equation got greedy.

Mr Gingrich is also correct when he says:

The entirely economic problem we have right now is a cultural problem. We don't want to reward saving and investing, we don't want to reward working, we don't want to encourage being prudent, we don't want to want to tell the truth about your finances, we don't want to make you a responsible adult -- and you think you can run a country this way?"

Gingrich is obviously an historian, so please note the most important words extant:
This is precisely what Madison and Jefferson wrote in The Federalist Papers: that any time the weakest of the three branches [Legislative, Executive, Judicial. -BZ] takes on the two elected branches, if the two elected branches are serious, they will in fact guarantee the defeat of the Judicial Branch."

PRECISELY.

BZ

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Rep. Tom McClintock: "Principles of Plenty"


[From Mr McClintock's speech to the California Independent Automobile Dealer's Association, sent to myself, a copy of which does not yet exist on Mr McClintock's site. As always, the speech will be well worth your time to read in its entirety, as reproduced here, from beginning to end. -BZ]

PRINCIPLES of PLENTY

We are in the third year of policies predicated on the assumption that if Government just injects enough money into the economy, it can jump start consumer spending and therefore, economic growth.

For three years, this administration has squandered more than a trillion dollars of the nation’s wealth in pursuit of this assumption.

In so doing, it has incurred a debt greater than that acquired by this nation from the first day of the George Washington administration to the last day of the George H.W. Bush administration.

It has cost our nation its triple-A credit rating and it now threatens to bankrupt our country.

And not only have its policies not worked, but they have needlessly prolonged and deepened our economic suffering.

These policies have not worked because they CANNOT work. Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy until it has first taken that dollar out of the very same economy.

It is true that if I take a dollar from Peter and give it to Paul, Paul’s going to have an extra dollar to spend. He is going to take that dollar into a local shop – maybe a car dealership – and buy something. The shopkeeper is going to order more inventory, the manufacturer is going to order more resources, and that dollar will, indeed, ripple through the economy.

The problem is that they completely ignore the other half of the equation – Peter now has one LESS dollar to spend in that very same economy – one less dollar to ripple along.

In some ways, this is counter-intuitive, because we can SEE the job that is saved or created when the government puts that dollar back into the economy. What we can’t see as clearly are the jobs that are destroyed or prevented from forming because government has first taken that dollar OUT of the economy. After all, you can’t see something that doesn’t exist. But we do see those millions of lost jobs in a chronic unemployment rate and a stagnating economy.

Much of the money for this folly is borrowed – as if somehow that has no detriment to the current economy. But where does that borrowed money come from? It doesn’t magically materialize as a gift from the future – it comes from the same capital pool that would otherwise have been available to loan to small businesses seeking to expand, or to homebuyers seeking to re-enter the housing market or to consumers seeking to make consumer purchases.

We all know from our personal experience, that when you borrow money, the people you borrow it from generally like for you to pay it back. In fact, in my experience, they insist on it.

Thus, as a matter of inescapable reality, if you live beyond your means today, you will have to live below your means tomorrow. That is the tomorrow that we are creating for our posterity. In a very real sense, we are witnessing the biggest intergenerational transfer of wealth in our nation’s history, deliberately impoverishing our children and grandchildren to pay for our own folly.

Economists tell us that income transfers always, ever, and in all cases will produce zero economic growth in theory.

In practice, such income transfers net to much LESS than zero economic growth – because we are transferring huge amounts of capital from investments that would have been made by investors calculated strictly on economic return to politicians calculated strictly on political return.

Government cannot create jobs, because government cannot create wealth.

Government can transfer jobs from the productive sector to the government sector by taking capital from one and giving it to the other. It can transfer jobs from losers to winners in the market by taking capital from one and giving it to another.

Solyndra, for example, created 1,100 jobs as it was raking in a half-billion dollars of taxpayer money. Eleven hundred jobs for half a billion dollars. That was $450,000 for every job. Of course, when the money ran out, those 1,100 Solyndra jobs ran out too – and at the end of the day we are a half-billion dollars poorer as a nation and those same people are once again out of work.

And Solyndra is not alone. Evergreen Solar, a stimulus contract recipient, declared bankruptcy in May. Spectra Watt, a stimulus contract recipient, declared bankruptcy in August. EVP Solar declared bankruptcy in February. BP solar and Solon North America both closed major facilities. I don’t know how many millions of dollars each of them took out of job formation. I know this: the government claimed it was saving or creating jobs with this money. Now the money is gone and so are the jobs.

Allow me to give you another example, closer to home: “Cash for Clunkers,” the $3 billion program to pay people to buy new cars and to destroy the used cars.

How did that one work out?

Economists at Edmunds.com asked that very question. And they discovered that of the 690,000 cars sold under “Cash for Clunkers,” 565,000 sales would have happened anyway. That means that the taxpayers ended up paying $24,000 for every genuine sale it actually “stimulated.”

It gets worse. All that the program accomplished was to entice people to move up their purchase decisions by a few months – which then caused below-normal sales in the months that followed. In other words, Congress spent $3 billion creating a car bubble.

And by destroying 690,000 used cars, they artificially drove prices higher for the hundreds of thousands of lower-income buyers who would have otherwise purchased those cars, along with all the transactions that would have created.

It was recently calculated that if the economy had taken the same path as it did after Ronald Reagan inherited even worse unemployment from Jimmy Carter, 15 million more Americans would be working today and per capita income would be $4,000 higher than it is today.

Government cannot create jobs. But it can create the conditions in which jobs either flourish or whither.

It is freedom and freedom only that creates jobs.

It works the same whether it’s a multi-million dollar business deal or simply purchasing a cup of coffee.

What happens in that transaction?

When I hand you a dollar for a cup of coffee – I’m telling you that your cup of coffee is worth more to me than my dollar. And at the very same time, you’re telling me that my dollar is worth more to you than your cup of coffee. We make that exchange, and both of us go away richer than we were – both of us go away with something of greater value than we brought.

But now suppose some third party butts its nose into this transaction. “The coffee must be served between 100 and 130 degrees; it must be in a biodegradable container; condiments must be available within ten feet of the point of sale, it must be covered if it is to be consumed more than 25 feet from the point of sale or the point of condiment dispensing, whichever is farther,” and on and on.

Every one of these restrictions will reduce the value of that transaction for one or both parties until the value is gone and the transaction no longer takes place.

Freedom creates jobs: the ability of two individuals to make exchanges that benefit both. When that freedom is suffocated by an avalanche of regulations, jobs disappear. That’s what we’re watching in real time: thousands of pages of new regulations from Obamacare, from Dodd-Frank, from the EPA stifling American jobs.

The congressional budget office estimates that Obamacare by itself will cost the economy a net loss of 800,000 jobs and the Medicare actuary estimates it will cost us $300 billion more than we would otherwise spend.

A few weeks ago, the Natural Resources committee received testimony that just by getting out of the way and opening up American oil and gas resources to development, the government could generate 700,000 jobs and $600 billion of revenues to the national treasury, along with $60 billion to state governments.

Repeal Obamacare and open up American oil and gas resources – there’s 1.5 million jobs right there – not only does that not cost the government a penny – it saves consumers $300 billion in health care costs and generates $660 billion of state and federal tax revenues without raising taxes.

It’s no secret why business isn’t expanding – just ask a businessman.

They’re scared to death of the additional taxes and regulations they may be facing in the next few years and are pulling back to see what happens. Ask bankers why they’re not lending and you’ll hear the same answer.

And the real danger is this: History offers us not a single example of a nation that has ever spent and borrowed and taxed its way to economic prosperity. But it offers us many, many examples of nations that have spent and borrowed and taxed their way to economic ruin and bankruptcy.

And today, history is screaming this warning at us: “Nations that bankrupt themselves aren’t around very long.” Because before you can provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty – you have to be able to pay for them – and the ability of our nation to do so is now coming into grave question.

Here’s the good news, and there’s a lot of it.

We know how to revive an economy – because we’ve done it many times before.

When people say this is the worst economy since the depression, I remember a time when we not only had double-digit unemployment but double-digit inflation, mile-long lines around gas stations and interest rates at 21 ½ percent.

Maybe we don’t remember those times as vividly because they didn’t last very long. That was the end of the Carter administration. We had just elected Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan diagnosed the nation’s problems very differently than the current administration. In his inaugural address, Reagan declared, “In this economic crisis, government is not the solution to our problems, government IS the problem.

He reduced the tax and regulatory burdens that were crushing the economy and produced one of the biggest economic expansions in American history.

There wasn’t anything new in this. John F. Kennedy did the same thing in the early 1960’s, with the same result. Warren Harding did the same thing in the early 1920’s, with the same result.

In 1945, Harry S. Truman abolished the excess profits tax. He slashed federal income taxes. In Fiscal Year 1946, Truman cut federal spending from $85 billion to $30 billion in a single year. He fired ten million federal employees. (It was called war demobilization). The Keynesians at the time predicted 25 percent unemployment and a second great depression. Instead, we had the post-war economic boom that produced unprecedented prosperity for America’s middle and working classes.

When Bill Clinton received an election drubbing in 1994, he proclaimed that “the era of big government is over.” He reduced federal spending by a miraculous three percent of GDP. He attacked entitlement spending and abolished the open-ended welfare system of the time. He signed what amounted to the biggest capital gains tax cut in American history. He turned in the only four budget surpluses in 40 years and produced a prolonged era of economic expansion.

Clinton was followed by George W. Bush. Bush increased federal spending by a full 2 percent of GDP. He approved the biggest expansion of entitlement spending since the Great Society. He turned in record budget deficits and began the era of stimulus spending in the spring of 2008 that was supposed to jump-start the economy. And he presided over an unprecedented era of government intervention in the housing and financial markets that created the massive housing bubble and the bailouts that followed.

That’s the flip-side. We also know what doesn’t work. The problem is, that’s what we keep doing.

Herbert Hoover responded to the recession of 1929 with massive government intervention, starting with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, a steep tax on some 20,000 imported items. He increased federal spending by 60 percent in just four years. He increased federal income taxes from 25 percent to 63 percent.

And he managed to turn the recession of 1929 into the depression of the 1930’s.

Franklin Roosevelt simply doubled down and amplified on those mistakes.

After nearly a decade of Keynesian experiments with massive deficits and unprecedented stimulus spending, unemployment stubbornly hovered above 17 percent.

On May 9, 1939, Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, made an anguished and heart-felt admission during a meeting with Democratic Members of the House Ways and Means Committee.

He said, “No gentlemen, we have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong as far as I am concerned, somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... And an enormous debt to boot!"

Benjamin Franklin once observed that experience keeps a dear school but fools will learn in no other. The last few years in Washington have proved that there are some people who can’t even learn from experience.

Fortunately, the American people have learned, and from the decisions they made last year and will make again next year, we may yet avert the tragedy of another Treasury Secretary admitting mistakes that cost America a completely avoidable decade of distress.

I agree with President Obama on one thing: 13 months is a long time to wait for relief. But unless and until he reverses his policies, I’m afraid that’s the immediate future for our country.

The last thing we should do is to take his advice and massively increase taxes on 88 percent of small business net income – which is at the core of his so-called jobs bill – at just the time when we’re depending on small businesses to produce 2/3 of the new jobs in this economy. To massively raise their taxes and expect them to respond with an explosion of new jobs is simply insane.

Lincoln put it best when he said, “the voters are everything. If the voters get their backsides too close to the fire, they’ll just have to sit on the blisters a while.”

It’s a painful experience – but it’s a learning experience. And at the end of that process, we emerge sadder and wiser.

And that’s what we must constantly bear in mind – that our nation hasn’t been struck down by some mysterious act of God. These are all acts of government and are fully within our power as a people to change.

We have already seen the results of that awakening last November in one of the greatest watershed elections in American history. In that single night, the nation saw a net shift of 63 U.S. House seats from Democrat to Republican, 6 U.S. Senate seats, 19 state legislatures, 6 governors and more than 680 state legislative seats.

But, for some very good reasons, our constitutional system is specifically designed NOT to turn on a single election, but on a series of elections.

The last election, despite its dramatic results, only changed one half of one third of the decision making apparatus of the federal government.

The next election is 13 months away, and upon the outcome of that election depends the future of our nation and the prosperity of our people.

The good news is that that day is coming, and the economy is very dynamic. For good or ill, it responds rapidly to changes in public policy.

So I must tell you that I cannot offer you a great deal of optimism over the next year, because of the policies now in place. I think it will be difficult.

But I have great faith in our political institutions, in the judgment of our people when they are paying rapt attention to events – as they now are – and in the resilience of a free economy.

Two years from now- I believe we will be able not just to tell our children what it feels like when it is morning again in America – but to be able to show them.

NOTE: Congressman Tom McClintock is my Fornicalia 4th District representative, and I'm lucky to have him. His budgetary genius and insight doesn't always translate well into the three-second Meaningless Soundbite Drabble proffered by the DEM/MSM. Fornicalia won't ever elect him as Governor; the state is ideologically too far Left and too far down the drain. If, however, Mr McClintock were to run for a higher federal office, the entire nation would benefit from his training, education and experience.

BZ

P.S.
Another view of Mr McClintock in action, on this same topic:

Thursday, October 27, 2011

The WORST Cop Car Ever Made


So there I was, on my Wednesday post, when one commenter, DMurray, happened to mention the Dodge St. Regis as a cop car. And years of Memories Past came flooding back in all their horror.

I associate two things with 1979 (its introductory year):

1. The incredibly-Leftist California Rose Bird Supreme Court, and
2. The incredibly-ridiculous Dodge St. Regis cop cars

Rose Bird was bad enough. She was literally removed from office in a November 4th, 1986 voting mandate because she was such an incredible tweak. Rose Bird was actually too "over-the-top" for Fornicalia. (Luckily, she passed away in 1999. I normally don't write those things. For her, I make an exception.) Imagine that.

But to be forced to drive a Dodge St. Regis barge which was the size of an aircraft carrier, powered by a Fornicalia-mandated 318-CID? That was beyond embarrassing.

Let me make this plain: the Dodge St. Regis was the worst cop car I ever drove. Period. And I'm still a cop, driving CVPI's. All 250-hp of them. [Less hp than my 2007 Toyota RAV-4 Limited V6, which is chipped up to 300 hp from 269 hp and still runs on regular unleaded.]

The California Highway Patrol used the St. Regis in 1979 with the 190 hp 360 CID (cubic inch displacement) four-barrel V8 and it was deemed "acceptable" for patrol use. Think about that for a moment: a 360-CID V8, four-barrel carburetor, only producing 190 hp! Anyone besides me saying: horribly "detuned"? Hello?

In my department, 1980 heralded the California 155 hp 318 CID engine, 4 bbl V8 with the California emissions package, mandated by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). That was also the version CHP was forced to purchase as well. In a Dodge St. Regis.

[In terms of reference, my 2008 Toyota Corolla LE makes an issued-from-the-factory 125 hp. A Corolla!]

In 1979, CHP anticipated its 1980 cop car bid under the Dodge St. Regis. CHP EVOC instructors at the academy in Bryte were beside themselves. The car proffered times and handling similar to a 1960 Nash Metropolitan.

CHP cut its bid for the 1980 Dodge St. Regis by half. Meaning that a surcharge of previously-ordered CHP-spec'd cars were available for purchase by local agencies. At something of a discount, shall we say.

And so my department made such an attachment bid. Therefore, instead of driving our normal green-and-white cars, we drove CHP-colored black-and-whites.

Because CHP absolutely detested the 1980 Dodge St. Regis.

Three things I can recall about the St. Slow-gis:

1. I backed into a pole in 1979 whilst taking a 488 PC report at the Shell gas station on Arden Way. I didn't report it. The car was a piece of crap anyway. No one cared.
2. The CHP-ordered St. Regis had the first generation of electric windows, adjustable electric seats (NEVER before experienced in my department!) and a great air conditioner!
3. Heading EOW in 1980, I decided to "floor" my St. Regis on I-80 towards the Madison Avenue exit, in order to head to the North Station. You can see I exhibited the word "floor" in quotes. Because, on its "CERTIFIED" speedometer, it reached a grand total of 79 mph.

And I'm not kidding.

BZ

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Io Sono Fuori In Vacanza

That's "I'm away on vacation" in Italian.

I left late Saturday for the Fornicalia coast with my beautimous wife. We stopped in Williams, Fornicalia, for a ton of garlic.

This is our view, now, out the patio door:


We'll be here for about ten days. During that time I'll be blogging as well, because the internet connection in the room is decent. I won't be thinking about work at all. I decided (though I am conflicted) not to answer work e-mails off-duty any more. Nada. Finito. Done. Zip. Zero. The Null Set.

In the meantime, as I was driving about whilst my beautimous wife tanned and got even darker, I chanced upon a new boat in the latter phase of construction adjacent Noyo Harbor; see the photographs at the very bottom of this post (click to make them much larger).

This area is home to the Van Peer Boatworks (which, sadly, has no official website). Chris Van Peer has been building and registering boats since 1978 (see the chart).

Van Peer Boatworks, Fort Bragg CA

Most recent update: September 12, 2011.


Van Peer Boatworks is one of the leaders on the West Coast in fishing vessel construction. The shipyard does not have a web site. You can see it from the air on Google here, although it's a bit fuzzy.

Hull # Original Name Original Owner Type GT Built Disposition
1





2





3





4 Jersey Girl Ingman, M. Fishing Vessel 39 1978

Active

5





6





7






Capella Caldwell Enterprises Fishing Vessel 49 1979

Active

8 Blackhawk Ponts, C.J. Fishing Vessel 52 1980

Active

9 Lady Launa
Fishing Vessel 109 1981

Now "Star of the Sea"

10 Reality Curry, John H., Jr. Fishing Vessel 71 1982

Active

11 Island Pride Haltiner, D.R. Fishing Vessel 68 1982

Active

12 Sleep Robber Escolar, W.N., Jr. Fishing Vessel 17 1983

Active

13 Silver Express Akers, F.J. Fishing Vessel 17 1983

Active

14 Southeast Evens, R.N. Fishing Vessel 107 1986 Active
15 Rose Lee Eide, M.L. Fishing Vessel 59 1988

Active

16 Jeanine Kathleen Ingman, R.L. Fishing Vessel 85 1990

Active

17





18





19





20





21 Chasina Bay Haynes, H.C. Fishing Vessel 118 1994

Active

22 Infinity Melling, D.L. Fishing Vessel 111 1995

Active

23





24 Anna Lee Giannini, J. Fishing Vessel 93 1996

Now "Spectre"

25 Stella Stella Fishing Vessel 116 1998 Active
26





27 Jes An Estes Fisheries Fishing Vessel 123 2005 Active
28 Fierce Leader Fierce Leader, Inc. Fishing Vessel 124 2007 Active
29 Chasina Bay Harold C. Haynes Fishing Vessel 97 2010 Active
30 Brooke Michelle Brooke Michelle LLC Fishing Vessel 109 2011 Active

I wrote about his most recent boat, the Chasina Bay, in February of 2010:

I went to the indicated website, Chasina Bay Charters, and discovered that this boat is set to launch in May of this year (2010), and is the featured vessel in the Chasina Bay Charters company.

According to the website, the vessel is a 75-foot expedition yacht that will ply the waters in and around Ketchikan, Alaska. One planned itinerary includes 8 days of crabbing, whale watching, kayaking, fishing, nature viewing, beach combing and hiking.

Sounds great, doesn't it? With one small caveat: click on the tab that indicates "rates & reservations." Booking the boat, which can berth 8 persons, is $22,000 for the first four days, and $4,800 each additional day thereafter.

Let's see: for that 8-day trip I mentioned above, your tab would be $41,200.

Nice work if you can get it -- and nice cash, if you can afford it in this economy.

The Chasina Bay did in fact launch from Noyo Harbor in Ft Bragg, as documented on video here:



That said, there's a new boat in town.

I don't know its name, I don't know its potential buyer, but I know that it's being built by the Van Peer Boatworks much closer to Noyo Harbor than before (as opposed to half a mile farther away on Highway 20). As in: let's not have to travel so far to launch and float this boat.

Fishing vessels, and other boats, are frequently like icebergs: much of their bulk lies hidden beneath the water line. As you can see above, the draft of this boat (the measurement of how far the boat's hull will extend underwater) appears to be huge -- at least to the untrained non-boat-builder's eye like mine. An excellent article on determining a boat's draft can be found here.


In this view, you can see the vessel under construction directly adjacent South Harbor Drive off of Highway 20, on the south side of Noyo Harbor itself. Here one can access the Harbormaster and the Coast Guard. Click on the photograph to enlarge it, and notice the size of the boat as compared to the red pickup truck on the left.

It's my understanding that the bulbous nose at the bow of boats and ships helps to reduce drag, increase speed and stability, which also helps with fuel economy. Technically, it is called a "bulbous bow." The fishing vessel Time Bandit on Deadliest Catch, for example, acquired a bulbous bow refit in 2008. Captain Andy Hillstrand said that the new nose also adds roughly 20,000 pounds of lift to the bow.


Here is a satellite view of Noyo Harbor and its area.

The weather should be quite nice during our stay, with some clouds and fog but, according to the weather, no rain. And with that, I bid thee adieu.

"Fair skies and favoring winds" to you.

BZ

P.S.
I just visited the Chasina Bay Charters website, where one can rent that 75-foot custom-built yacht as it plies Alaskan waters and noticed -- at the very bottom of the site -- that the Chasina Bay (admittedly, a beautifully-appointed boat) is for sale after only a little over one year in service. At $41,000 for an eight-person, eight-day trip, I can understand why.