Economic Crisis Explained - part 10

This essay by Simon Johnson in the current issue of Atlantic is the most sobering and stark explanation yet. In fact, since October, I haven't found ANY explanations of the economic crisis that were even worth linking to. This one, however, strikes me as one of the more accurate assessments of not only what has happened, but of what actually needs to be done.

B.I.C. - 4

I just barely managed to fumble the cellphone into camera mode and snag this drive-by shot on Harrington Way this afternoon.

This Bump Installation Crew had the whole northbound lane blocked off, down near the Hamilton Street end... just in time for North High to be getting out of school, too.

If I can remember it, I'll take the long way to work tomorrow morning to see if they have, indeed, installed a new bump here.

Update: Well... I did forget to drive around that way this morning (4/1), but I did remember later on after work.

Yes, there is a bump here now.

It is, in fact, such an outrageously contrived bump that I'd call it unusually poor workmanship... even worse than a typical patch job done by boorish slobs with no slightest clue what the phrase "restore the road surface" might mean.

Much Anticipated

Honestly, if there was ever anything important to be announced and somebody in the press knew about it beforehand, you'd think they were gonna pee their pants if they didn't get a chance to spill at least a couple of the beans!

But you can't blame them, since this is all about the main event.

Songs like Carly Simon's "Anticipation" and Tom Petty's "The Waiting (is the Hardest Part)" would be appropriate at this particular juncture, wouldn't they?

Good timing, I'd have to say. I mean, the City Council meeting is tonight, and this big announcement is supposedly going to be made tomorrow.

Heh.

So far, the only real thing that the CitySquare project has consistently produced in this city over the past half-decade is premature ejaculations. So let's hope the boys down at City Hall can keep it in their pants until that day when the wrecking ball actually swings.

Let's face it, if we've learned anything in the past several years, it's that "announcements" don't mean squat when absolutely nothing happens afterwards.

(And, in case nobody has noticed, tomorrow is April Fool's Day.)

Where Was I?

Here are some shots taken around Worcester this morning.

If you want to take a guess at any (or all) of the locations, put your answers in the comments.

I'll post a comment tomorrow with the answers, whether anyone gets them right or not.

Sorry, no prizes for any of this, just a local trivia tickler...

Quote of the Week

"What’s really needed are prompt responses to neighbors’ complaints and firm enforcement of existing laws."

- Anonymous Pontificator(s) at the T&G

We know that all the City Councilors agree that "blogs don't matter", so it's great to see that SOMEONE at the T&G is squarely on message with this one.

Joke Du Jour

I wonder how much longer the Government Accounting Office will continue to have such free reign to investigate and reveal how corrupt and broken things like this really are?

Imaging Day

It's been eight months since I got my little wheelchair ride out of the hospital.

After they ran that thing (they took off my chest) through the lab, I found out that it was melanoma. That precipitated a nerve-wracking adventure that lasted through November.

But I came out of that phase of the thing cancer-free.

Today, I get to be imaged in the PETscan machine again.

Color me nervous and distracted...

Ashley Biden

According to the New York Post, someone's been shopping around a 43 minute long videotape purported to show Ashley Biden, Vice President Joe Biden's daughter, snorting cocaine.

This story has been running on the Post website since yesterday evening, and is now getting more traction... hitting The Times, and HuffPo.

The original Post story claimed the seller wanted $2 million, then slipped it down to $400k, but the latest figure being reported by the Times has it down to $250k.

Heh. At this rate, the whole video should be on YouTube by Wednesday.

Organic LED TV

I want one!

The Best Beer in America

Based on the number of awards by state, Massachusetts comes in at number 10.

Based on the number of awards per capita in each state, Massachusetts comes in at number 7.

I found this little gem at Strange Maps today, with a link to the Lyke 2 Drink blog.

Toxic Players in Worcester - episode 5

Today I have to vindicate Shaun Sutner. Today's article in the paper, Teacher hiring fallout, leads me to believe that the other shoe may, indeed, drop.

Co-written by Tom Caywood, the article does a lot to explain where certain things are landing, after it all hit the fan a week ago.

The single most revealing line in today's article comes from Cheryl A. DelSignore, leader of the city's teacher union, wherein she maintains that "...she heard last week from about six licensed job-seekers, including several trained in special education, who said they had applied recently for advertised special education jobs and received no phone calls back and no requests for interviews."

Well, golly-gee! Isn't that the single most important factor in this entire matter?

Let's compare that line to a line in last Sunday's article, the article that kicked off this whole thing last week: "Stacey DeBoise Luster, the school system’s human resources manager, defended Mrs. Byrnes’ hiring, in large part because special education teachers are, she said, “a critical shortage area” and school districts have trouble finding credentialed applicants."

In my eyes, if what Ms. DelSignore claims is true, then we're not dealing with a "mistake" here. Nor are we dealing with a matter of questionable ethics. This would be, instead, a fraudulent misappropriation of public funds... something that the city should bring criminal charges of fraud against the person or persons responsible.

Propaganda Techniques

Robert Stacy McCain posted a fairly detailed description of The Ransom Note Method yesterday. It's a good treatment on the subject of exactly how this particular aspect of propaganda is effected on both sides of the partisan fence, with a couple of examples. But this only lasts until the paragraph before the sub-head, "Opportunities for Opportunists", wherein he changes the subject completely.

He had me nodding my head in agreement until he came out with, "...a prominent conservative fighter like Limbaugh or Ann Coulter."

Demagogues like Limbaugh and Coulter are not "conservatives". Not unlike the one person McCain spends the bulk of that post demonizing, David Brooks, these media figures have no real ideology or agenda beyond their wallets.

It's the tragedy of the century that true conservatives have had their party hijacked by such loudmouthed jackals.

I, for one, would like to have a choice between conservative and liberal candidates in this country. Instead, every election is merely a choice between who might appear to be the least insane or corrupt...

Nonetheless, McCain's explanation of The Ransom Note Method is definitely worth understanding.

Hillary Clinton: Ignorant Twit

When Hillary presented the Peregruzka Button to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, it was too late for her to reconsider her flawed modus operandus in how she's briefed and prepared to meet foreign dignitaries. But you'd think this shallow excuse for a Secretary of State would have cleaned up her act immediately afterwards. Instead of utilizing the talents of actual diplomatic professionals, she's still obviously relying on her personal staff of sycophants to do the job of "preparing" her.

Typical of Hillary... that she would not realize an abundance of veteran staff with expert knowledge might have existed at the State Department before she got there.

She's still just the wife of Monica Lewinski's boyfriend in my eyes. Especially after this.

True diplomatic expertise requires a helluva lot more than pasting a phony smile on your face and asking Msgr. Monroy "who painted" the second most popular Catholic shrine on the planet. This is such a profound level of ignorance and unpreparedness for the Secretary of State to the most powerful nation on Earth that, ...well, quite frankly, it leads me to believe, yet again, that I really have been somehow shifted into some kind of cruelly bizarre alternate universe.

Now... just consider what kind of a loose cannon this brainless, type-A know-it-all will be when she pays a critical visit to a country dominated by Islam, especially one that might play a crucial role in this country's foreign policy.

And when she finally does manage to gaffe her way out of the hearts of yet another one billion human beings on this planet, will the mainstream media completely ignore that, too?

Day Trippin'

Kathy and I took a meandering spin around town, then east in search of a new phone... our phone with the answering machine in it went the way of all electronics recently. People left messages, but the audio was so distorted they needn't have bothered.

This was the kind of "errand" that really didn't need a trip anywhere, but today is the first truly springlike day of spring. Today is so beautiful, that walking, running, or driving anywhere is all about simply being out in this FABULOUS WEATHER!

Our quest for a new phone ended in Westboro. As is our custom, one of us says, "Anywhere else you want to go before we go home?'

Lunch.

If you're in Westboro, and it's time to find a place for lunch, this is it.

I can't really speak for any of the places in Worcester that serve clam chowder, because none of them have ever impressed me beyond being simply adequate. When I feel like having clam chowder, and they have it on the menu, it doesn't have to be the best I've ever eaten. It just has to be satisfying.

The clam chowder at Harry's, though, is so freakin' good that I would go back just for that.

I would call that cup of clam chowder I had today the absolute best I've tasted in well over a decade.

If I had only known that Harry's serves the best clam chowder this side of the Cape Cod Canal, I would've been making regular trips out there long before this.

Is the Pope Catholic?

In one of the more ironic developments to happen during this past week, thousands of people have been loudly protesting the Pope for making an unscientific claim.

Fire at Stone Soup

I completely missed this news this morning.

Someone has uploaded a video clip of the fire to YouTube, as well:

Where's That List? - Bill found it!

When I posted Where's That List yesterday, I really didn't think there would be an actual list. But Bill found it today with a link to the city website pdf file entitled, "Worcester 2008: The Year In Review".

B.I.C. - 3

Bump Installation Crew number three was found this afternoon on Southbridge Street, right at the corner of Lafayette.

They dug a hole from the curb all the way across both inbound lanes.

With the amount of traffic that comes in on that section of road every morning, the patch they end up putting there to cover up the hole is going to have to be absolute superfection to not end up being a bump in a matter of hours.

Heh... do you think they'll install a bump or actually restore the road surface when they're done?

Not Allowed

I snapped this pic at City View School this morning as I was waiting for the parent of a small boy to finish talking to his teacher about getting him picked up by a school bus in the future.

Meanwhile, one of the school staff who had informed me that we aren't allowed to drive into this area was fretting and worrying about the fact that I had already driven in with the child and the parent when she wasn't paying attention, and I couldn't back out.

Since the school's parking lot and passenger discharge areas were all designed specifically to get children safely onto the school campus, off the street, so that they can be loaded or unloaded from cars and buses... I just can't figure out what pedantic, bubble-headed ideology has foisted this "Not Allowed" situation here at City View.

It's most assuredly not safer for kids to be discharged from vehicles outside of the campus on a city street. The school campus was designed to make it safer with the driveway area, plenty wide for pulling over and allowing other vehicles to get by and exit.

I can't count how many children are brought to and from school in this city by taxicab, with and without their parents coming along with them.

Ever since Doherty High was built with an off-street driveway to get the buses off the street and safely onto the campus before loading or unloading the children, every subsequent school in the city has been designed to do the same. Older schools such as Grafton Middle and Vernon Hill School on Providence street were built before this change, and the danger for the children is much MUCH greater at those schools.

Now, they don't want parents or taxicabs even entering the campus driveway AT ALL on the city's newest campus???

This goes beyond mere pedantry and enters squarely into the realm of total insanity.

Toxic Players in Worcester - episode 4

Mayor: F
City Councilors: F
School Committee: F
Interim Administrator: F
Worcester Public School System: F

The six day public conflagration set off by Shaun Sutner's adept smearing of Donna C. Byrnes in Sunday's paper has just as adeptly been given its quieting denouement by the anonymous pontificator(s) at the T&G today.

The net result has been the complete ruination of one comparatively innocent person's life. Mrs. Byrnes has been effectively turned into the sacrificial lamb for the toxic political machinery that, quite clearly now, pervades our city government from top to bottom.

She did not hire herself. And, more to the point, she did not fire herself. The toxic players within the city's bureaucracy did that with the easy, routine exercise of their corrupted power and authority within the system.

My goodness! How quickly they can get things done when their asses are on the line! Their lack of integrity is also clear, when they so willingly throw Mrs. Byrnes into the trash like this, just to avert the public's attention from their own culpability.

Suddenly, now that the fall guy has been so easily given up to the public's outrage, this same toxic system can hardly come up with any slightest hint of a responsible party for this perversion of public policy.

Suddenly, it's all so complicated and in such great need of careful, plodding, slow deliberations and "review"...

Is there no elected or appointed official in this city who isn't so full of utter cowardice that they won't speak out? Silence is complicity. So far, you have all utterly failed in this...

Links to previous posts about this shameful display of corruption in our city:
Prelude
episode 1
episode 2
episode 3

The Unemployment Numbers

This CNN article (and many others, as well) unambiguously states the number of people filing new unemployment claims last week. That number was 652,000.

It also clearly differentiates between the hard weekly figure and the four week rolling average, as well as explaining that there is a difference between these two numbers, and why they're important.

Finally, it states the hard number of people filing recurring claims last week. That number is 5,560,000.

If you divide the number of people who filed new claims last week into 5,560,000, you get eight and a half... That means last week's rate of new claims would rack up the total ongoing claims in about two months.

Enough people lost their jobs last week that, annualized, the number would represent ten percent of the entire population in this country.

The hard weekly numbers have been over a half a million every week since the beginning of November. That's well over ten million lost jobs at a half million a week, but steady rises in those weekly numbers makes it somewhere between 10 and 12 million.

So... I wonder... are the five and a half million missing unemployment claimants (recurring) simply finding new jobs right away? Is that why the recurring claims are only half what the weekly rate over the past 20 weeks would have added up to?

...That would be pretty good news, I should think.

B.I.C. - 2

These guys had broken through the pavement on Quinsigamond Ave this afternoon, between Endicott and Sigel, and blocked off all traffic in both directions.

This is the second Bump Installation Crew I ran into in one day.

I mean, when these hordes all appear in town each spring, it's the same each year... all of a sudden, BOOM! and they're everywhere! It's almost as if someone fired a starting pistol over on East Worcester Street...

Honestly, what's the deal here? Why March 26th?...

Sidewalk Surfin'

I took a picture of this public sidewalk on Davis Street four months ago.

Today's picture shows the view of downtown that you can get from here.

It's such a great view for far away, but up close it's quite gruesome looking, isn't it?

I wonder if Babs Haller has seen this sidewalk? She only lives about a block away, after all.

If they let the overgrowth go through this whole upcoming season, the sidewalk underneath (which you can barely even see now) will probably just disappear completely...

Out of sight, out of mind, eh?

Glaciation

I spotted this mini-glacier at the corner of Coolidge and Coombs this morning.

Since it's only March, there's nothing remarkable about it other than it being somewhat of a rarity. It seems that there's been a relatively low amount of leftover mini-glaciation this year.

There have been years when these residual snow piles have persisted well into the month of May, and in some rare locations that are well shaded all day long, right into summer.

I haven't found any particularly large ones left over this spring, though.

B.I.C. - numero uno

This is the first official Bump Installation Crew I've spotted for the new season.

Nice reflection of the sun on the backhoe's window, eh?

These guys were working on a hole in the middle of Park Ave this morning, around 9:15.

Located just north of the May Street intersection, the hole they've made in the road is big enough to swallow at least one Nano.

As the premiere road surface breakage this season, I'll have to keep an eye on it to see if they actually do install a new bump here.

It may well turn out that some 20th century technology might finally be employed to restore the road surface after they're done. They tend to employ 2nd century technology, more often than not, ...hence this ongoing seasonal meme.

We'll just have to be patient... wait and see...

Parking Is Not A Problem

This is the No Parking sign for the short turnout that was made directly in front of the new courthouse.

It's a short, scooped out section that allows people to pull in out of traffic so that they can load or discharge passengers at the courthouse.

The sign clearly says, "NO PARKING - Passenger Zone".

Since there's only one lane of traffic on that side of Main Street, cars parked inside the passenger zone make it dangerous and obstructive for anyone who needs to load or discharge passengers.

And the worst scenario of all, when someone calls a taxi to pick them up at the courthouse and we have to wait for them to see us, wait for them to come out of the building and walk to the edge of the street, and get into the cab... All the while, blocking traffic...

All three vehicles parked there this morning at 8:30 had those blue Massachusetts Official license plates on them.

Obviously, they can park wherever they want.

So, yes, we can certainly say that parking is not a problem at the courthouse... for some people.

Where's That List?

In today's T&G article on the issue of the dual tax rate, I see this thing printed yet again: "...the city manager has reported 75 new businesses opened in Worcester last year."

Does anybody know where I can find that list of the 75 new businesses that have opened in Worcester "last year"?

The only list of businesses I know of so far is Bill Randell's informal list of places that have closed or moved out of Worcester, which he started last year.

If the City Dictator's claim is true, and 75 new businesses HAVE started up in the past year, then I guess we could definitely say there's been a net gain of 23, eh?

Toxic Players in Worcester - episode 3

Talk about throwing someone to the wolves! Donna C. Byrnes' head can now be mounted on Shaun Sutner's wall, since it looks like the people who run the school department aren't going to be rolling anyone else's head down Main Street, now.

Did Mrs. Byrnes somehow manage to hire herself?

From the way this is going, the toxicity of "the process" that got Mrs. Byrnes her job will simply be put into committee for long term submergence from any further public outrage. Throwing Mrs. Byrnes out into the street seems to be perfectly okay in the eyes of the people running the school department, and whose only real motivation now is that firmly entrenched policy of CYA.

Now that Shaun Sutner has utterly destroyed Donna C. Byrnes' life, maybe he might think about redeeming himself by turning that powerful pen against someone who actually deserves to be hung by the neck until dead.

What an outrageous travesty this whole thing is turning out to be!

Pollution Theory

The theory is that due to the long term effects of pollutants in the water and the soil and the air, and their constant, steady buildup throughout the food chain, humans will slowly go insane. But they won't know that they're going insane, because everyone will be getting just as crazy as everyone else over very long periods of time... over the course of generations.

One indication of this is that really old folks are prone to say "the world is going completely insane." Try this on the oldest person you know. Just casually say, "well, the world sure has gone nuts, hasn't it?" And they will simply nod in agreement. It's just the way it looks to them, having personally observed the change over the course of decades.

But this won't necessarily be the case with younger people. The younger you are, the more the world appears to simply be the way it probably was before you were born. There's no earlier experience to compare it to.

As a theory, however, the whole idea is difficult to support in any serious, scientific way. It could more appropriately be classified as conjecture... but I think it's a great meme!

No matter how accurate the theory is, though, the pollution side of it, that the entire food chain on the whole planet is being polluted, of course, has never been in doubt.

How Privatization Works

Heh.

Idle Time

This is a picture of idle time...

I sit. I wait for my next call...

This is the time of year when idle time in the taxi slowly rears its ugly head. As the weather gets nicer and nicer, the level of business slowly decreases. By the time school is out for the summer, taxi business is typically down by around 1/3 of what it was during the winter.

Since business during this past winter was already down, though, this summer threatens to be a truly grueling experience with more idle time than ever...

I took the picture on the outbound side of Pleasant Street, roughly across from Tu Moda.

RojasGate - 40 Days and Waiting

I shouldn't be calling this "RojasGate" anymore... it should be called "RedactionGate" to reflect the true villains in this whole thing: the Opacity Lovers down at City Hall.

It's been 40 days since the T&G published an article saying, "It’s not clear when the judge will make his decision."

Sheesh!

It becoming less and less clear by the minute, now, isn't it? Frankly, I consider this egregious delay to be even more scandalous than the goddam redactions!

Obama fail

UB snags a revealing development.

WooTown Bloggah Brunch - reset

A change of date...

Toxic Players in Worcester, cont'd

We're slowly building up a list of suspects in the possible chain of authorization at the Worcester Public Schools, as of this morning's latest article in the paper.

Yesterday, they mentioned the Human Resources Manager, Stacey DeBoise Luster, for a second time, and whose previous quotes in the Sunday article certainly were supportive of the decision to make this hire... quite effusively defensive, in fact. But in yesterday's mention of her, she was suddenly unavailable for comment.

Today, we have the Interim Superintendent Deirdre Loughlin, whose quotes in the paper appear to be designed to take her somewhat out of the suspicious category. They imply that the Interim Superintendent's signature isn't required as the ultimate OK in "the process" of hiring completely unqualified personnel, and overpaying them by nearly 100%. And Mrs. Loughlin did say, “I was the one who brought her over..." to the next link in the chain, a Mr. Mark T. Brophy, the district’s staffing/mentor coordinator.

Mrs. Loughlin has also offered up the last link (apparently) in the chain: "Both the human resources department and the principal of Chandler Elementary Community School, Mark Berthiaume, would have had a role in Mrs. Byrnes’ hiring, Mrs. Loughlin said."

The question that needs to answered here is who was it? Who had the ultimate authority to accept or reject this staffing decision? Who made the final decision that put Mrs. Byrnes on the payroll?

I can tell you without any slightest doubt who DIDN'T have the final authority to fill this position: Donna C. Byrnes. She certainly didn't hire herself, now, did she?

And, frankly, if the guilty party in all of this had simply approved Mrs. Byrnes position at the starting rate of $40,378, where would this whole thing be right now? Would the whole city be up in arms over this? Would Mrs. Byrnes now be looking at Friday as her last day of employment?

That she's now going to be thrown out on the street after 15 years of employment with the city says to me that she's definitely being heartily crucified in order to take the heat off the real problem in all of this.

That problem is squarely in the Mayor's lap at this point, in my view. Responsible political leadership would not be allowing this scapegoat to be tarred and feathered while the REAL guilty party gets to remain in the Worcester Public School system and continue in a position of authority to waste taxpayer money like this.

Every day that passes in this present course of making Mrs. Byrnes the fall guy pushes the stink of corruption closer and closer to the Mayor's office. If the highest elected official in this city can't effectively excise this stench of corruption in the city, then who can?

Link to pt 1.

The Day the World Changed

If you really want to find out where the financial meltdown started, then you have to go back ten years and read this news story.

Money Quote: "The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system."

Hudson and Townsend

I took this picture today from the top deck of the parking garage at 255 Park Ave.

This is the aftermath of the fire that destroyed two buildings almost a year ago.

I had first noticed something was going on out there as I was waiting in the exam room at a doctor visit this morning. They were sifting through the remaining wreckage to salvage metal and scrap wood, apparently. I tried to take a picture from inside the building, but the sun was shining from the wrong direction.

After the doctor visit, I went to retrieve my car from the top floor of the parking garage, when I remembered the cleanup activity and saw that I could get decent picture from that angle.

Subsequent T&G articles on the fire can be found here and here.

Hathos Award

I think a Hathos Award should be given to Jim O'C for posting this a couple days ago.

Heh.

Really, if you can watch that whole video all the way through, then it has to go way beyond mere hathos and into full-blown masochism! Honestly, I've tried more than once since he first posted it on Sunday, and I just can't do it!

But let's face it, hathos is a key element in the overall psychological profile of Worcester, generally. I mean, for instance, watching a whole City Council meeting on TV is a very difficult thing to explain unless the true meaning of hathos is understood...

Toxic Players in Worcester

Forget about the oxymoronic "toxic assets" baloney... "assets" don't make decisions, people do.

We have a proliferation of toxic players, nationwide, who have yet to be unmasked and hung by the neck until dead. Major players like Bernie Madoff and a tiny handful of others have gone to jail. But the major players in the unraveling of our nation's financial soundness continue to interact and roll dice on our nation's financial future.

The saying goes that all politics is local. So, too, is the toxic mindset that if you can get away with it, then it's okay.

Here in Worcester we have a current situation with Donna C. Byrnes having been established in a teaching position that she's not only unqualified for, but was also being grossly overpaid for. This revelation on Sunday in Shaun Sutner's smear article resulted in a large outcry that moved our Mayor cum School Committee Chair to set the bureaucratic wheels in motion to immediately undo this.

In this morning's paper, however, we find that the key toxic player in this fiasco has yet to be demonstrably unmasked. The article does manage to begin smearing yet another person, Stacy DeBoise Luster, the human resources manager for the Worcester Public School system. But I see no quotes from the Mayor about putting Luster's head on a pike. In fact, the sense I get from today's article is that only Mrs. Byrnes will be the fall guy in all of this.

What a travesty if that should be the only outcome.

What the Mayor needs to do here is not just undo Donna C. Byrnes' outrageous handling by "the system" inside Worcester Public Schools, but to unravel the responsibility for how it happened in the first place. At least one more head needs to roll here: ...the person who is ultimately responsible for approving this kind of thing.

Until the key toxic player in this outrage has been summarily removed without any "safety net", without any "retirement package" and without any other reward for their utter incompetence, the job of Mayor and School Committee Chair will not have been served.

“We didn’t know the level of compensation or the process that was used to fill the spot. Second, we didn’t know she didn’t have any teaching experience,” Mrs. Lukes said. This, unfortunately, isn't what we need to find out from the Mayor. Clearly, no-one can micro-manage from the Mayor's position, but the Mayor should, and probably does know exactly who the key toxic player in this little drama really is.

But let's face it, if the highest elected official in the city is oblivious to WHO this person (or persons) actually is, especially at this point, then we need a regime change this fall. I would find it very difficult to believe that she's that unplugged from the political grapevine in this city, however.

Consequently, it only remains to be seen whether she "plays ball" and goes along with protecting those who are ultimately responsible in this situation, or if she does something to effectively unravel this toxic, unethical, hemorrhaging of public revenue into the cash cow that our school system has obviously become for some select few.

The Power of the Press

Good timing (current, nationwide AIG outrage), a professional spin (Shaun Sutner smears way more cleverly than even Howie Carr), and a cushy rescue net is turned upside down by the madding crowd in a single day.

Honestly, though, I feel sorry for the lady. You think you've led a decent life, and suddenly everybody hates your guts just because you've been kissing the right asses for forty years.

Mrs. Byrnes isn't the bad guy here. Whoever made the decision, THAT is the bad guy everybody should be out to lynch! It's the enabler, the one with the power to make this shit happen ALL THE TIME!

Who the hell is THAT person, and why hasn't Shaun Sutner bothered to smear THEM?

Southbridge and Madison

Around noon today, I made the mistake of taking Beacon Street to Madison Street.

I usually don't go this way during certain times of the day unless it's absolutely necessary. But, for whatever whim that took me on this route, this is where I ended up.

Traffic was backing up past the beginning of Madison and gridlocking Main at Chandler.

It was backing up to Gold Street on Madison in the other direction, too, as well as Southbridge Street outbound...

The problem was lane closures in both directions on that same section of Madison Street that I posted about last Monday. Only this time, the National Grid guys also gobbled up one of the outbound lanes on Southbridge Street, too.

And the last piled up section of road to get any relief was this particular spot I chose for entering into this mess.

There were two police officers directing traffic at Southbridge and Madison, and they were only letting one piece of the puzzle go at a time. Whenever they let the section of Madison Street in front of me go, nobody would let any of us coming out of Beacon Street into the mix.

So, I have to do this. I have to mention that I was a real aggressive butter-inner this morning, as I mentioned in an earlier post, ...so now we have to bring up the subject of Highway Karma.

Highway Karma is swift and precise. The paybacks are pure tit for tat. If, for instance, somebody pulls out in front you so that you've got to slam on your brakes... don't let it bother you. It's just payback for your having pissed somebody off at some point before that, whether you even knew you did it or not. You don't need to even let the idiot in front of you know how dangerous their maneuver was because, if you just give it chance, you'll see that somebody else will pull out in front of them within minutes...

Today it took about an hour for the Highway Karma to slap me back in the face, though. And, I gotta tell ya: ...the wait on Beacon Street felt agonizingly long.

By the time we finally got onto Madison, the computer sent me another address to pick up. And, as Murphy's Law would seem to dictate, I was just inches past the point where I could've made a turn and gotten to the address right away when the address actually showed up on the screen!

Without getting into the specific nanosecond by nanosecond series of decisions and counter-decisions that I went through to get to this point, let's just say that trying to take a left over there, beside the white truck in the left side of the picture, where I had been positioned only a minute before, would have probably pissed off the traffic officer...

But whether it was to avoid getting yelled at by a police officer, or whether it was simply pain avoidance of having to drive another mile just to get back to where I needed to go, where I ended up is where I shot the picture from.

The job I had gotten on the computer was a pickup at 600 Main Street, which necessitated my somehow maneuvering my way back over to the other side of Main Street, and a hop up to Austin and Irving for a U-turn to get back onto that tiny sliver of Austin Street at the corner of Main, in front of the door. All things considered, the five minutes I spent between waiting on Beacon Street and finally picking up the customer seemed like a half an hour.

But I guess that's the whole point of a Highway Karma payback, isn't it? It just feels like an hours long delay, even when it's only five minutes.

Christopher Walken on Twitter

Twitter was invented for Christopher Walken... Can you imagine if Henny Youngman was still alive?

Where Was I?

Here are some shots taken around Worcester this morning.

If you want to take a guess at any (or all) of the locations, put your answers in the comments.

I'll post a comment tomorrow with the answers, whether anyone gets them right or not.

Sorry, no prizes for any of this, just a local trivia tickler...

Pile-Up on Summer Street

I didn't have a chance to find out what these ladies were passing out to people at the Summer Street entrance to St. Vincent's Hospital this morning...

But I did have to wait through the pile-up they were causing on Summer Street, before I got this quick drive-by picture.

My passenger was already nervous about making it on time for an appointment at the hospital. So when we came out MLK Blvd to Summer Street and found the intersection gridlocked, he got even more nervous.

Our only lucky break was that our right turn onto Summer Street was in the same lane, so that I could aggressively worm my way into the line of stacked up cars waiting to go into the hospital entrance.

I really don't like to drive that aggressively, but when the meter's running I feel that I owe it to my passengers to not pussyfoot around like some Kourtesy Klown, letting everyone in in front of us.

By the way the traffic was all piled up, though, you'd think those ladies were passing out $100 bills...

Update: A tip of the hat to Carri Saari for calling our attention to the first entry in the Sunday Telegram's Backup Files, which explains what's going on at St Vincent's hospital.

No News Monday

Today can't really be called "news free Monday" because I've already succumbed to the addiction, read all sorts of news, and it just can't be undone...

But this particular story certainly isn't news.

Obviously, campaign season has begun with these announcements from three incumbents on the City Council that they will be voting for the lowest possible residential tax rate. Political platform announcements we could call them, but it sure isn't news.

Another story in today's paper that doesn't appear to be news is this one. I'd call it an in-depth analysis of a snit, maybe... or possibly a plot description for an episode of some soap opera... definitely not news, though.

I like this article that gives some more background on the fire that destroyed 167 Pleasant Street a little over three weeks ago. But I can't see how it would qualify as "news", frankly.

And there's a decent local-spin background article on Obama's decision to extend Liberian nationals' legal residency status for another year, although the "news" here is something that broke on Friday ...and even the Providence Journal managed to cover it within a few hours.

Granted, it's all adequate fodder for the local news junkie that I am, and I have to admit that it's sufficed in giving me my morning "fix" with enough content to satisfy my addiction. But it's days like this when the local newspaper isn't reporting much of anything happening in Worcester at all that I wonder if anything really didn't happen, or if they just take the weekend off at the T&G now.

Population Control

The Australian government's internet experiment in population control has backfired somewhat with the publication of their secret "forbidden websites" list by Wikileaks. What's even more troubling is that the link to the Wikileaks page with the leaked list is currently unavailable.

Parking is Not a Problem

As Nick says today, the impending Unum deal with Berkeley to commit to leasing up to 175,000 square feet at CitySquare would be reason to celebrate, "...the problem, though, is that we’ve heard that mantra many times before..."

Only the people doing the negotiations between Unum and Berkeley know what details are being focused on, so all anyone else can do is look at the available information, sparse as it is, and try to draw somewhat speculative conclusions...

And that's right up my alley!

Every time I drive past Unum's current digs, I can't help but make note of all the parking lots filled with Unum employees' cars, spread across several blocks around the Chestnut Street area. And the thought occurs to me that if they move to CitySquare, where are all those people going to park? And even more perplexing would be where they'd all park before the underground garage part of the CitySquare development was finished.

Just as a ballpark figure, I'd guesstimate the potential monthly parking rate revenue for around 500 cars to run somewhere in the half a million bucks per year range. That's a serious chunk of change... And let's not forget that one of the key elements of the CitySquare project is tearing down the majority of the current parking garage, and extending Front Street through to Washington Square.

And if development does take off from a "trigger tenant" at CitySquare, it won't only be Unum employees looking for a place to park in the middle of downtown every day. Let's not forget the 64 potential occupants of 48 Water Street, only a few blocks away, who won't have any on-site parking at all. In fact, judging by the number of rental, lease, condo, etc. residential units either current or on the drawing board within the downtown area, the whole idea of even owning a car is basically a problem of where to park it.

Just take that one section between the 20th Century Publishing Museum at 20 Franklin Street and the library... how many thousands of square feet are sitting there waiting for the gentry to move in?

Right now, parking is not a problem downtown. But I'd bet dollars to donuts that it's one of the items on the table in the Unum/Berkeley negotiations. You don't have to make any guesses about how much of a problem parking would become, however, if these downtown projects succeed.

The "parking problem" and downtown's potential success are, let's face it, inversely proportional.

Worcester News Tonight

I've been meaning to start a pre-ranting buildup of noise about Charter TV-3 for a while... Actually, I've been thinking about this more and more, ever since the Government channel (Channel 12) started live streaming and archiving City Council Meetings. Every once in a while, I've been revisiting Charter's TV-3 home page and browsing around to see if they will ever start streaming, or even just archiving the Worcester News Tonight show.

The Worcester access channel, WCCA-TV13 has been live streaming for longer than I ever knew about it, and their store of archived shows is now 55 pages long, going back to 2006. And now, as I said, the government channel is also doing it.

So why is it that the city's only consumer broadband ISP can't live stream or archive their own shows from their own dinky TV channel? You can't tell me that they can't foot the bill, since any and all PEG media in the city (three separate channels) is funded entirely by them, and two of those have no trouble figuring out how to do it.

Oh, sure, they do provide three links on this Worcester News Tonight Video page, but those links only send you off-site to NECN, which is another cable company, entirely (Comcast).

Have you ever watched the NECN version of "Worcester" News Tonight? Well, if you haven't, don't bother. They toss in one, maybe two pieces done out of the back yard on Higgins Street, and every once in a while a location shot, but the bulk of the show is just a re-hash of NECN's news that, quite often, doesn't even have anything to do with New England, never mind Worcester.

With the exception of the NECN link, though, the locally originated content on channel 3 is only available as archived material in the "on demand" part of the cable TV side of the operation, where it disappears into oblivion after four weeks (news) and immediately when new episodes of other shows come up.

Since Charter has gone into chapter 11, we can now assume that the business has gone the way of all large corporations that merely "acquired" their way into the big time by turning their local facilities into cash cows, sacrificing the possibility of any future innovation or decent re-investment into better service for their customers. This possibility only became evident to me, though, way back with the launch of the "digital tier" when I saw evidence of jitter induced artifacts on my TV screen on many channels, quite often a chronic situation that persists even now, ...and none of the service people I showed it to even knew what a false sync pulse was. Even when I showed them what these false sync pulses in the cable box's video output looked like on the oscilloscope, all I ever got was a blank look on their faces...

How do you explain jitter to a cable TV technician who doesn't know what a false sync pulse is? Well, here's one description of jitter: "Waveforms, which should intrinsically be regularly spaced, are displaced as a result of equipment interference or long transmission lines. This aberration on the time axis is called jitter. Bit errors are more liable to occur as the amount of jitter increases." One common cause of jitter is imperfectly polished fiberoptic connectors.

I won't spend all day on this subject of jitter, but suffice it say that the whole fiber system in the city is prone to it wherever there's a scratch on the end of a connector. With the analog converter boxes which (because of bizarre legal requirements for copy protection) will always pass false sync pulses (they are actually used as part of certain copy protection schemes), this garbage comes through on some analog TV's as unwanted artifacts on the screen.

Anyway... well, it does look like I managed to spill over into a bit of a rant, after all...

I'll keep checking back to see if the Charter TV-3 website gets any kind of streaming and archiving up and running, which I sincerely hope they will do. But so far, they haven't impressed me at all.

Air Quality

If you've ever seen this installation on Summer Street and wondered what it was, it's an air quality monitoring station.

The unit, maintained by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, is located on a chunk of land bordered by Asylum Street, Summer Street, the expressway entrance, and the expressway.

The readings taken regularly from this unit contribute to air quality reports that can be found here and here.

Generally, I don't concern myself too much about air quality during the cold winter months. But as we get into the warmer part of the year, I know that up to date air quality reports and forecasts can be very important for many people.

Kitty TV

Smudge, the great and all-powerful feline conqueror of the known universe, is shown here watching his own special version of TV...

One of the items on my morning list of immediate tasks is to raise the blinds for the cat to keep an eye on the bird feeder outside.

It's been one week short of four months since we rescued this cat from the shelter and brought him home.

He's proven to be a rare find.

Where Was I?

After yesterday's stumper, I guess an easier shot would be more appropriate today...

If you think you know where in Worcester this picture was taken, make a guess in the comments. There are no prizes for getting it right, but it's fun to see how well you know the city.

I'll post the answer in the comments tomorrow, whether anyone guesses it right or not.

Department of WTF

It doesn't matter, apparently, that the US government is now an 80% owner of AIG... that hasn't stopped AIG from suing the US government.

And then there's this... and this... and this...

Sometimes you just have to stand back and go, "WTF?"

Of course, if you hunt around long enough, you can begin to find little bits of information that come at all this stuff from a different angle. Here's an interesting piece by, of all people, Eliot Spitzer.

If anybody knows how dangerous these financial wizards are, it's Eliot Spitzer... the artfully disgraced NY Governor who, as attorney general of the state of New York, went after these scumbags long ago.

For me, it all boils down to who the criminals in this society really are. Are they the ugly guys who pay hookers for sex, or are they the crooked bankers and scam artists in high places that ugly guys like Eliot Spitzer try to put in jail?

Possible Violation of Posse Comitatus

They came, they directed traffic and secured a crime scene, and then they left.

Suddenly, nobody knows who requested their presence or gave them their orders.

People in some quarters are claiming that we should get used to this kind of thing. But I still find it impossible to "get used to" illegal acts committed by our federal government... y'know, stuff like torture, warrantless eavesdropping, suspension of Habeas Corpus...

Using a standing army for law enforcement activities within US borders is about as sickening as this could ever get, though.

Heh... maybe this a "test case". And, if you think about it, because of the innocuous nature of the actual event, they might even be able to set a precedent.

The AIG Solution

Instead of just handing another $30 billion to AIG, Dr. Jekyll (or is it Mr. Hyde) will punish them for the bonuses by only handing them $29.835 billion.

AIG? Fannie & Freddie, too?

This stuff is like a plague infecting the entire upper crust of our financial sector. The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonus situation doesn't seem to have quite sunk in yet, ...what with the media whipping frenzy over AIG still in full swing.

But just when you think it can't get any worse, there's this on the horizon.

Where Was I?

This one is a little different, since we can obviously see that the location is Bigelow-Davis Parkway.

It's in Worcester, and it's at the intersection of two other very well-known streets. But you won't find it listed on Google Maps or Map Quest, even though the city has had this sign there for over a year... I would guess that it's been more like two or three years, actually.

So if you think you know where it is, make a guess in the comments as to what the names of the two other streets are at this intersection. There are no prizes for getting it right, but it's fun to see how well you know the city.

I'll post the answer in the comments tomorrow, whether anyone guesses it right or not.

Lane Blockage

These guys were working in the right lane on outbound Belmont Street at Lake this morning.

That's the lane people take to make a right onto Lake Ave, so it was somewhat clumped up with impatient folks who are much too accustomed to taking a right on red there.

I'd call it a Bump Installation Crew, but it looked they were actually reworking the culvert drain at that spot. Besides, it's still one day before the season starts...

And I'm sure I'll get plenty of chances over the next few days to find out if they actually do install a brand-new bump there.

More Housing

When they get this project finished, they can put a billboard on the roof facing the westbound I-290 traffic that says, "If you lived here, you'd be home by now!"

Of course, since half of it will be "low income" they'll have to find people who can't afford to own a car.

Veterans' Healthcare Decision

As an update to a post on healthcare yesterday, I had linked to this story as a sickening footnote.

Today, I found this story in the NY Times that says the President has reconsidered and won't be going this route.

[Update: Heh... the anonymous pontificators have a timely message this morning.]

This kind of thing is indicative of the major difference between Bush and Obama. For eight years, this nation suffered the flawed logic of a very stupid man, a simpleton who was incapable of believing that he could be wrong about anything. The nation and the whole world has been damaged to such a magnitude by this that it's hard to comprehend just how long it will take to repair it.

The most striking difference with Obama is that he has the intellectual capacity to recognize when he is headed in the wrong direction. Brick wall, ideologically handicapped Repugnicans like to call this "flip-flopping". But it's simply a level of intelligence they can't comprehend.

To quote Keynes, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

Chuck & Mud - Happy 30th

If you speak the name "Marie Anne" with an old-timer's French accent, it will sound like "Muddy Anne".

...and that is the genesis of half the duo's "my name is Mud" situation.

When I saw that a couple of videos had shown up in today's T&G (here and here), I remembered that I had some video of them opening for the Zonkaraz reunion concert last November at the Hanover Theater. This one is my favorite:



Embedding it here really doesn't do justice to the clip, though, and I would recommend viewing in High Definition on YouTube (press the HD button when you get there) if you have a high speed internet connection.

Nancy Sheehan also wrote a nice T&G article about them, and the benefit concert they'll be hosting this Saturday.

The line-up for the 8 pm concert looks like it'll be a really memorable show!

Economic Indicators

This article includes a chart that is one of the best pieces of good news about our economy that I've seen yet.

Massachusetts Healthcare Crisis

Reihan Salam weighs in on Massachusetts' experiment in "universal" healthcare. It's more fishing around for the "silver bullet" that will "cure" any problems, though.

Our insurance requirement here in Massachusetts is hardly a "system", it's merely an add-on to an existing problem that plagues the United States: treating sick people for profit.

I'm not a socialist, and I don't advocate for a "healthcare system" run by the government. I believe that, first and foremost, the entire "problem" has been completely mis-defined. Most analyses make fundamental, tacit assumptions about "healthcare", the first of which is that "healthcare" is a word that actually means anything.

Heh... If it means anything at all, then it could more accurately be described as treating people who are NOT sick until they are.

The current "system" is anything but. It's a patchwork anarchy of profit making enterprises that all fuel the added burden of profit upon anyone getting sick. The burden of profit, laid so heavily upon the treatment of human ills is the most insane mis-application of "enlightened self-interest" that the world has ever seen.

We should no more condone this development in unbridled profit-making on sick people than we would condone such outrageous profit-making on the extinguishing of fires. But we do ignore this fundamental flaw in the evolution of our current methods of caring for the sick. It has spun so wildly out of control that, here in Massachusetts, it is now illegal to NOT be insured by a profit making insurance company, whether you are ill or healthy.

When Kathy and I were both temporarily unemployed last year, this legal requirement forced us into a year end situation of having to fork out more money for COBRA payments each month than all of our other monthly bills combined!

That is certainly not the kind of "healthcare reform" we need in this country.

My primary care physician has told me that, here in Massachusetts, there is currently a shortage of people who are going to become primary care physicians. The cost of schooling makes going that route completely unviable, as they will never be able to pay off their education as primary care physicians. This is endemic to the whole system, nationwide, but it is much more pronounced here in Massachusetts with the "universal" health insurance requirement. When anyone signs onto this insane "system", they must choose a PCP that they would otherwise never have had to. The result is PCP's in Massachusetts getting saturated with more regular patients than they can handle, and who can no longer accept new patients.

In the universe of unintended consequences, the primary care physician shortage in Massachusetts is merely the tip of an iceberg of insolvency that is simply unsustainable.

Update: as a thoroughly sickening footnote, take a gander at what the Obama administration has proposed for veterans.

Bored to Tears

I watched the most boring weekly series on TV last night... the City Council meeting.

I learned two things.

One is that the skating rink behind City Hall, according to Gary Rosen, is now being called "The Performance Oval."

The other is that Rick Rushton doesn't know how to say, "impetuous"... it came out as "impeStuous".

Aside from those two moderately amusing moments, though, the rest of the blather turned out to be better than a sleeping pill for me.

Honestly, I don't know how Scott can remain conscious through those meetings, week after week, or even retain any level of lucidity... but he does.

Affordable Foreclosures, cont'd

Bill Randell couldn't help but spot this chicanery, either.

There is no hard number definition of "Low Income Family" or "Middle Income Family" in all of this, nor is there any reasonable definition of "affordable".

The hard numbers from the 2000 census are the only thing that might lend a hint along this line. Those numbers for "median income" hovered around $65k for households in single family, owner occupied dwellings in Worcester. But when you take the residence caveat out of the picture, the "median household income" in Worcester was about half of that, according to the 2000 census. Now, nine years later, those numbers can only be approximated.

Some people will want to approximate that real income has gone up, others will contend that it has gone down. Who knows? It's all part and parcel with being able to fudge the numbers so that SOMEBODY can keep scooping up serious money through various manipulations and transfers on all of this so-called "affordable housing" business.

Applying those numbers to the word "affordable" gets even muddier, of course, since any formula for "affordable" comes out of what someone makes annually. Once you've got some formula out there at the high end of the bell curve, then you can apply it to "approximated" median household income figures and dream up the new definition of "affordable"... A figure up around a quarter of a million dollars!!!

Since when is a quarter million dollar condo or house "affordable" for a household with an annual income of $65k???

Something really stinks in all of this, because this "affordable housing" business has been pushed like the greatest panacea in history over the past ten years, and it shows no slightest signs of abating. And yet, the ability of low and median income families to find places to live only gets more and more difficult with every passing day.

Bill recently calculated how much each "affordable housing" unit will end up costing in the City of Worcester. Simply put, $300,000 is not an affordable place to live unless you make at least $150,000 a year.

So, why aren't all those folks who are on the big list of earners in the City of Worcester lining up to live in all of this "affordable housing"? They are, after all, the only income bracket that CAN afford them.

That the majority of the "affordable housing" units remain unoccupied belies the success of the ostensible purpose for all this baloney. Somewhere along the line of property transfer between non-profit to profit making entities, back and forth, along with fee and tax waivers and all that massive funding, SOMEBODY is most assuredly making a great big windfall every time.

That, of course, is the only reason this horseshit continues.

Dirty Wattah

More Noise about WCCA-TV13

Clive's column about WCCA yesterday seems to talk all around the variously postured crypto-ideological differences that certain people in City Hall seem to have with the operation and, let's face it, the very existence of the public access channel here in Worcester.

I'd be hard pressed to believe, for instance, that Joe Petty and the Heartbreakers are devoted fans of Democracy Now. And since it's not locally produced, the way to get rid of things like this on the access channel is to write it into the contract. As Clive puts it, this is the "most troubling part" of the new contract.

Of course, no matter how "troubling" the re-definitition of programming might be now, the contract has apparently been signed. And no matter how much extra work the station has to do in order to make a full accounting for transparency in the disbursement of their funding, ...the contract has apparently been signed.

The dastardly deed has been done.

Affordable Foreclosures

Somehow, I suspect that there will never be anything "affordable" coming out of this.

SECOIEA Savings and Investment Tips

Just in time to avoid being totally wiped out!

We got our federal tax refund check today, and along with it we got this insert from the Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of Investor Education and Advocacy.

Heh. Here's some timely and important information...

For instance, did you know that "Simply paying off your high-interest debt may be your best investment strategy"?

This one's even better: "Many experts recommend keeping about six months of expenses in a federally insured account to cover an emergency, like sudden unemployment."

It's all so simple and easy!

More Mystery Work

I took this picture at ten past one this afternoon.

This is on Madison at Beacon, looking towards Main.

These are National Grid guys, and they've been occasionally in and out of access holes at odd times here on this small stretch of street for what seems like a couple of weeks... maybe even more. I would guess that the reawakening of the Burwick building might have something to do with this, but who knows?

When I see this stuff, I often wonder what, exactly, it is that they're doing under there. Maybe I'm just overly curious... but the thing of it is that the more inured to unanswered, unexplained, everyday mysteries you get, the more likely you can be persuaded to give up trying to find out about other things, as well. It's not a hot button issue, to be sure, but I never stop wondering.

About four carlengths closer to Main Street, we had this National Grid truck in the other lane.

It raised hell with the traffic.

But the slowed down progress through here made it easy to snap and save more than one picture.

Looking at the two pictures after the fact, I would guess that they were threading through a new section of power line wire.

That they've been under there before, more than once in the days and weeks before today, though, tends to make me wonder all the more.

I was driving someone over to the June/Mill area at the time, and that was my last customer of the day, so I came back through here on my way to the Gulf station on Southbridge Street.

Much to my amazement, they had completely disappeared.

It was only 21 minutes later, too.

Infrastructuring

These Verizon guys have been working underneath Vernon Street, on and off, for what seems like several days, now.

And although it isn't standing out in the picture, the second truck after the cruiser has a very large boom thingy with a large pulley at the bottom...

Elsewhere over the last few days, I've spotted some big reels of cable being worked with by other Verizon guys around town. I didn't have a chance to gawk when I went by these guys on Vernon street, but the boom with the pulley did appear to be some kind of cable-handling specialty equipment to me.

All I'm taking this to mean is that there's a significant amount of work involving large cables of either wire or fiberoptic cable being threaded underneath Worcester streets, lately.

I'm sure that there's a news story there, but... of course... today IS "news free monday".

The News Effect

The addictive nature of what passes for "news" these days only becomes apparent when you consciously attempt to steer clear of it.

At the core of the addiction is this sense of not wanting to miss anything. Y'know, something might happen, and you might miss it.

But take the events of 9-11-01, for instance. I was in a meeting when the story broke, and it wasn't until after both planes had struck, after all air traffic had been ordered down, and after every news outlet in the world had been covering it for at least an hour... I came out of the meeting and we were all immediately told by one guy that something really terrible had happened.

So, I missed it... so to speak. But it really didn't matter that I didn't happen to be watching TV right at the moment when the story first broke, or that I hadn't been listening to the radio right at the beginning. You just can't have something of that magnitude occur without finding out about it.

Maybe we can all agree that something really awful could happen at any moment. But I don't think I need to monitor the news like an addict, just in case...

The effect that "news" has on us is quite detrimental. It lowers your threshold for pain. It infuses you with worry about things that quite easily could never even affect you. And it fosters a chronic sense of fear that runs like an undercurrent, everywhere you go. Separating yourself from it, making a concerted effort to not be exposed to any of it for a whole day, will reveal the depth of your addiction to it.

At any rate, I'll be the first to admit it... this exercise of doing "News Free Monday" has been driving me absolutely bonkers!... and it isn't even noon yet!

Skating Rink

Here on News Free Monday, I was looking around the city this morning to see what I could take a picture of that wasn't news.

The skating rink behind City Hall qualifies, doesn't it?

Although, it does have that newsy malaise about it, having generated so much commentary...

Maybe they could get some of the Worcester Snarks to attend the grand opening?

News Free Monday

Last Monday's news free day worked out quite well for me. By that evening I felt much more relaxed about the state of things in the world. Call it denial or call it rehabilitation, feeling better isn't a problem for me.

Yes, things happened all over the world yesterday that are being reported in this morning's noose-papers. But so are things that happened the day before and the week before. In fact, there are stories being reported this morning that, as written, probably didn't even happen at all.

Most of the idea for a news free day every week is because of the implosion of the noose-paper business, and the ever growing list of obituaries that this phenomenon has produced. Along with it, there's at least one deconstruction done every week. Here's another one.

The idea of having a news free day every week is to get used to it, because in some towns the local paper has already died a very painful death. None of the analyses of why has yet to convince me that the reasons aren't much simpler and basic, however.

In a free market system running upon the paradigm of enlightened self-interest, the economic collapse has simply demonstrated who, specifically, has been lacking in the enlightened part of that equation. And, like so many other failing sectors of the economy, the entire so-called "news" business has simply engaged in adding less and less value to the system, in exchange for the value that it's been taking out of it.

And they wonder why their revenues have fallen...

What Bailouts Pay For

Just in case you might have wondered what TARP funds were used for...