Bacon Hill Follies

No sooner did the mobsters in the House of unrepresentative Representatives on Bacon Hill vote to jack up the sales tax by 30%, but within less than a week they're already spending it to put stuff back IN to the budget that had previously been cut!

The senate still has to pass the sales tax increase, then the governor has said he's going to veto it, and then the Bacon Hill mob has to muster up the votes for an override...

Yet, these coke-sackers are already on an amending spree to SPEND THE EXTRA INCOME!!! One after another, both sides of the aisle are standing in line with their earmarks and porky picks...

It's such a feeding frenzy of snorting porkers crowding around that 30% pig trough they passed on Monday, that even George Peterson, (R) Grafton, is standing in line for $3 million in his corner, too. But I have to ask, Why does Tufts Veterinary School, a private institution, have to get state money just to survive?

Sorry boys, but the whole idea of voting against all incumbents in this state is now de rigeur for Massachusetts voters.

I Want One

I spotted this car on Highland Street this morning, and I thought, "What a nice toy!"

There have been some interesting and fun cars in my garage over the years, most notably the 1956 Thunderbird with the removable hardtop. What a chickmagnet THAT thing was! But it was a terrible car to have to drive any distance with. Geared low, and a very stiff ride, its only real utility was on the street.

I'd guess that the car in the picture isn't much good for anything but cruisin' around on nice days, either.

When the nice days suddenly arrive, though, a car like that is certainly worth it.

B.I.C. 8 - completed

It looks like this was a "quickie"...

Where they had the whole right lane blocked with trucks and a backhoe from Harrington Corner to Mechanics Street yesterday, the whole thing was all wrapped up today.

In the picture, you can (if you squint) see the guys working on the right. They were at the very beginning of Front Street today. Whatever they were doing, they only had to pull up the access cover. One of yesterday's trucks was parked on the opposite corner on the City Hall sidewalk, too.

I went through along Main Street earlier, and didn't notice any significant bumpiness beyond what was already there, so I guess we can give these guys a pass.

Bump Installation Festival

Inbound Southbridge Street at Lafayette had a detour sign up for anyone who wanted to take a right there this morning.

The other end of that section of Lafayette, at the intersection of Quinsigamond Ave, was closed off due to yet another hole being dug in the road.

There have been only three specific spots that I've had a chance to get any good pictures of, but at this point there has to be over a half a dozen holes that have been dug in the road, just in this one small block.

It's a regular Bump Installation Festival, the likes of which we haven't seen since the two year Festival at the intersection of Grafton and Franklin.

Of course, if you obeyed the detour sign at Lafayette and figured you could get onto Quinsigamond Ave a short block later, you were going to be sorely disappointed!

I came back through from Quinsig ave later on, and I couldn't figure out why they were being so adamant about keeping people from finding a way onto Quinsig ave from Southbridge Street.

But, y'know... these guys must have their reasons...

Heh.

Swine Flu - 2

Two boys in Lowell have tested positive for swine flu. The two children in Spencer, meanwhile, tested negative.

Maine now has three confirmed cases of swine flu. I have yet to find out if yesterday's "undisclosed number" of people in New Hampshire being tested has yielded any results, though.

Yesterday's announcements from the World Health Organization included reporting a total of 91 confirmed US cases of swine flu in 10 states, along with one death in Texas. As of yesterday's report in the Wall Street Journal, there are 2,498 suspected and 19 confirmed cases of swine flu in Mexico. Confirmed elsewhere: 13 in Canada; 14 in New Zealand; five in Britain; three in Germany; 10 in Spain; two in Israel; one in Austria; and one in Switzerland. In Mexico, 159 deaths have been reported but because of the extremely low standard of living and dearth of healthcare availability, only 7 have been officially confirmed by testing.

All this means is that those countries where medical availability is high will continue to report and handle accurate numbers in near real time, while countries with poor medical availability will see this epidemic run free and wild.

The response, dissed by some who think it's just a "panic tactic" to drum up revenue for the drug companies, spending on "preparedness", and excuses to mobilize government "emergency" measures, certainly can't be blamed for their refusal to fall into line and "be scared" about all of this hype.

But if this kind of response had been available back in the early 1980's when the "G.R.I.D." epidemic was first discovered by CDC to have an apparent 100% fatality rate, and if the Reagan administration hadn't completely refused to even acknowledge the disease, never mind refusing to put any resources into fighting it, the long and horrifying trail of human suffering that became the AIDS epidemic may well have taken a far less tragic course over the past thirty years.

This is a very dangerous and fast-moving epidemic, but it isn't anywhere near 100% fatal, and it's only at its very earliest possible stage: discovery.

We can always hope that it goes no further, and that the seemingly overblown response actually works to prevent it getting any worse. The real problem, however, is that it's already gone world-wide.

The swine flu incubation period from exposure to the appearance of symptoms is two to seven days. This means that the seemingly overblown response is already too late to contain it where it started.

The Stand

Jenn has spotted the beginning of the end!

Ford Fusion Hybrid - 81.5 Miles Per Gallon

The great mileage was achieved in a "hypermiling" publicity race, but even that caveat certainly doesn't mean much in the face of anyone being able to drive a Ford 1,445 miles on a single tank of gas.

B.I.C. 8

I mentioned this earlier, but here's a picture from just before noon today...

This is Harrington Corner, where there were three contractor trucks with three different names lined up along Main Street in front of WCCA-TV13 studios.

Earlier this morning, a guy jack-hammered out a trench next to the Dunkin' Donuts, right up against the curb.

It's a nice spot... It's exactly where Tim, the visually impaired newspaper guy, gets picked up to go home by taxi nearly every day around noon.

If anybody knows Tim, maybe they can ask him if he's found out what, exactly, they think they're doing disrupting his business like this.

Or maybe Mauro DePasquale has found out what all that jack-hammering noise was all about this morning. After all, the trucks were all lined up right outside the TV station window this morning...

I wonder if they had to postpone taping any shows because of all that noise?

Irving Street

They had the tail end of Irving Street (between Chandler and Wellington) blocked off again this afternoon.

It's not a very highly traveled street, but for people who live on Murray or Wellington and their parking lot is on it. I'm assuming they let those folks go in and out the other end, despite it being a one-way street.

Pedestrians

B.I.C. 7, cont'd

Here's a shot of inbound Pleasant Street at Hudson this morning, before they pulled up the steel plates and dove back in.

There were a few other spots getting dug up around town this morning, but I never got a chance to pull out my cellphone, put it into camera mode, and click away...

One of the places getting dug up is on Main Street, where three different vans with the names of three different contractors were lined up in front of WCCA-TV13 studios. One guy with a jackhammer was up against the curb by Dunkin' Donuts, biting into the pavement.

Telegram.com Placeholder, cont'd

I'm getting a re-direct to a placeholder for telegram.com again this morning (6 am), despite having had no problem with the site about an hour earlier.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one seeing this problem yesterday.

Around mid-morning yesterday, the placeholder re-direct was happening again. At that particular point in time, though, my wife was also online and had no problem bringing up the T&G website. Meanwhile, I still got the placeholder on my computer.

Things that make me go "hmmmm..."

I closed Firefox, went into command mode and flushed the DNS cache. I opened Firefox back up and then had no problem gettting onto the T&G website. All that means to me is the placeholder re-direct is somehow "sticky"...

This morning, that tactic didn't work. Also, when I clicked on some other site and Firefox started bringing it up, the placeholder kicked in another separate instance of Firefox with an ad and a popup. I can't reliably get that to occur consistently, though. I ran a malware and a virus check, just to be safe...

I checked using the laptop and also my wife's computer just now, though, and they both get the placeholder.

While looking through the site earlier, I tried to find some mention about yesterday's problems, but saw nothing. Maybe tomorrow, or whenever they get this problem nailed down and resolved, they'll offer an explanation.

Swine Flu

As if the winter flu season isn't bad enough for a cab driver, now we've got to deal with this?

Wintertime makes it especially difficult to guard against contracting any contagious seasonal flu or flu-like stuff that goes around, since we're inside a car with the windows closed. And everybody that gets into the cab is a "traveler".

Now that it's Spring, though, at least I can keep the windows open while sneezing, coughing passengers spray their germs all over the back seat.

Update: An undisclosed number of people in New Hampshire were tested for Swine Flu yesterday, and have voluntarily quarantined themselves at home while awaiting the test results.

F-Bomb Ruling

The Supreme Court has ruled that the FCC's policy reversal on "fleeting expletives" was justified, and that the broadcast networks can be fined for allowing them to be transmitted over public airwaves they are licensed to operate on.

This ruling doesn't really mean much, though... after all, who watches broadcast TV anymore, anyway? The "rules" for broadcasters don't apply to any of the cable channels, so broadcast has been losing audience share to them... and that's probably because television that isn't cramped by those rules is so much more entertaining to watch.

Worcester City Council Meeting Today

In the past when fines have been instituted or increased, the ostensible purpose has been to curb the activity being fined. But now that everybody is thoroughly infused with the dreaded sense of "economic downturn" everywhere you look, I guess the City Dictator feels it's perfectly okay to openly justify jacking up fines solely to generate more revenue.

To wit: tonight's City Council agenda item 7.34B is calling for a vote to increase parking fines, along with various fees. In the attachment, page 3, the only justification offered for the increase in parking fines is, "These increases are expected to generate $270,000 in revenues and allowed us to sustain 5 positions in DPW."

Item 7.42A is a transmittal of information from WRTA on proposed 2010 fiscal year budget cuts. The attachment includes this line from Stephen F. O'Neil, WRTA Administrator, "As I indicated at the meeting, these service cuts will be devastating to the WRTA riders who depend on the system, but need to be made since our state operating assistance is being reduced significantly." Naturally, the 30% increase in the state sales tax that the mobsters in the state House of unrepresentative Representatives just passed probably won't be used to fill this gap.

Item 7.42D is a transmittal of information regarding progress that the City Dictator has made in dealing with the city's unions. It's worth reading that attachment, simply for the fact that our city, unlike our state, has been addressing and obtaining SOME cost cutting measures prior to requests for increasing revenues anywhere. At least they've got that going for them...

Then there's item 10f... "Request City Manager report on the feasibility and costs/savings of merging the school department’s human resources department with the city’s human resources office." Heh. Where 7.43B hardly hides the purpose of raising fines to generate more revenue, this one can hardly be seen as a "cost saving" maneuver at this point in time.

I really have to say that my heart is greatly warmed by Gary Rosen's item 10h, requesting that the arrows painted in the road on May at Park, in both directions, be re-done... Maybe he read my rant.

And then there's item 19a... The entirety of the attachment reads as follows:
"AN ORDINANCE AMENDING THE PERMIT AND INSPECTION FEE ORDINANCE FOR THE CITYSQUARE PROJECT
Be it ordained by the City Council of the City of Worcester, as follows:
Section twenty-nine of Chapter two of the Revised Ordinances of 2008 is hereby amended by substituting the word "later" for the word "earlier" as it appears in subsections (c)(2) and (c)(3) thereof."

Huh?...

Try finding the relevant context of that one with the site's search tool... Heh... try finding ANYTHING with that search tool! Moreover, why is it okay for this material being submitted to the Council to NOT include the entirety of the relevant text that's being changed??? How can a Councilor vote on something like this without that information right there in front of them in the attachments?

Maybe this is what they mean when they say the word "transparency"... it's so transparent that you can't even see it.

You can watch the Council meeting here, beginning at 4 pm today.

You can also follow a blow by blow liveblog from Daily Worcesteria, as it's being posted, ...or just read the whole thing all at once tomorrow morning (like I'm gonna do).

Taxachusetts Reborn

The mobsters in the House of unrepresentative Representatives passed their measure to jack up the sales tax by 30%.

The rep for my district is Vincent Pedone. I've always voted for him because he's the ONLY politcian who has ever knocked on my door in the 17 years we've owned this house.

If he voted for this, and I'm assuming he did, then he just lost my vote forever.

Update: Sharilee posted "Bacon Hill Can’t Cut Spending, But Sure Knows How to Tax" this morning. I Googled "Bacon Hill" just now, and I don't think anyone has called the massachusetts mobsters' place of business that yet. I think Shari is the first. This is pure genius, and I really hope this handle catches on!

Telegram.com Placeholder

I usually see the T&G update their website's front page to the current date around 5 am every morning.

This morning, until around 4:50 am, yesterday's front page was up. But now, as I write this post, I get this URL placeholder.

Update: They have it fixed now (5:38 am).

Update2: OOPS! I spoke too soon. After reading Dianne Williamson's column and clicking the "all columnists" link, I got the placeholder again... (5:50 am).

Update3: They're back online now (7 am).

Not having the T&G online this morning is a taste of what would happen if (when?) the T&G ever closes up shop...

The immediate net result would be a vacuum. But vacuums don't last forever, even in a sinking economy. Wherever there is a demand, there will be an innovative supply showing up, sooner or later. As a matter of fact, in a sinking economy people are more motivated to find new and innovative ways to make money, so a sudden vacuum of local news reportage would be even more likely to pull in something to replace it.

The trouble is that I'm not able to imagine how this will happen, and I haven't heard of anyone else imagining how that would happen, either. And this is where the problem really lies...

Since nobody sees a vacuum of daily local news coverage right now, the only "innovative" replacement ideas anyone might currently think about would be the expansion of existing operations like WoMag, InCity Times, Vocero, Worcester Business Journal, and probably some other ad-rags that I don't know about. The current situation for all of them, however, is "content hunger"...

Finding "news" to fill the space in a periodical publication is something that would give me constant nightmares. A daily deadline? YUK! Days can go by when, literally, nothing of any note happens, whatsoever. This can be seen when you pick up the paper and just about everything "local" is nothing but drivel. I've referred to this before, and I call it "content starved"...

Basically, what we have always had for "local coverage" in Worcester is an entrenched glut. Imagine the T&G shutting down, however, and suddenly you're confronted with this theoretical vacuum of local news. Imagining how that vacuum would be filled is very difficult.

Without the actual vacuum, no "bright idea" to fill it can easily be predicted.

But, just like anything else that's either "too big to fail" or "how could we possibly let it die", it's the vacuum that would be created by its demise that would open the way for something new, something not thought of before, and something that, out of absolute necessity, would have to be viable.

Lafayette Street

This small section of Lafayette Street (from Southbridge Street to Quinsigamond Avenue) was closed off today, due to some more trenches in the road. It was closed off towards the end of last week, too, but open all weekend.

This one block has been full of Bump Installation crews for about a month: B.I.C. 2 was well underway on March 26th. B.I.C. 3 had also been ongoing for a while when I posted about it on March 27th. And B.I.C. 5 got its number on April 2nd.

I went through there on Saturday, and counted current and recently paved over holes that had been dug into the road... there were a lot more than the three I've noted so far. But I've been avoiding this block as much as I can, so keeping track of the Bump Installation Festival they're holding over there is difficult.

The Final Word on Torture

Right from the war criminal's mouth.

B.I.C. 7

This Bump Installation Crew has had a trench dug all the way across Pleasant Street for a while, now

They put steel plates over it when they're not working on it.

I remember last week, I couldn't get into Hudson Street at one point...

Now the only lane open is the outbound lane, so they have a police officer directing east and west traffic, one chunk at a time.

This police officer seems to have the drill down, though, because I didn't see any backups causing gridlock at Pleasant and Park this morning, despite the heavy morning commuter traffic that comes inbound.

Here's how it looked an hour later, around 9 am, going outbound.

It's not apparent who these guys work for, but I suspect this is involved with new construction and utilities hookups.

I wonder if they know how to "restore" the road surface?

Sam's Birthday

As a licensed amateur radio operator, the significance of the Google front page today was not lost on me.

Easter Bunny Revisited

A couple weeks ago, George Barnes wrote a column in the paper about pirates. I thought that it might have seen a more receptive audience back in my salad days, but in today's PC world of black and white, the only grey is on the heads of boomers. George got a bunch of negative feedback, and I wrote a post about it.

I didn't spot it on Saturday, but George wrote an apologia de resistance that's not often seen printed in newspapers. The first thing that came to mind as I read it was "beaten about the head and face"...

A few dozen commenters piled into the fray on his pirate column, mostly beating him up for not being politically correct. If I was in that position, my stock picture would've immediately been photoshopped to include a couple of band-aids and a black eye.

This just goes to show ya that if you're "well-adjusted" these days, then you're just not paying attention. It also demonstrates something very interesting about the English language...

One can never write a sentence in English that is impossible to misconstrue.

Not So Mean Streets

I got an e-mail from Livia Gershon at Worcester Business Journal at the end of last month, asking if I'd be interested in her interviewing me regarding the state of the taxi business here in Worcester.

I told her, essentially, that it wouldn't be right for me to "represent" somebody else's business like that, and made some suggestions.

She was just as understanding as Alan Fletcher, who e'd me once in January and again in February of last year to be the weekly interviewee in WoMag.

Dianne Williamson was a little more difficult to deal with, though, back in August of 2007 when she wanted to dig up something about why I had been taking drive-by photos of Gary Rosen campaigning on street corners so often. She played "e-mail tag" but explained in her final e-mail that she'd prefer I call her on the phone.

Ha. That'll be the day I talk on the phone to a reporter who's already got their story angle written. Especially when I already know that Gary Rosen is one of her favorite objects of ridicule.

Of course, she didn't really need my presence on the phone to quote me, because by that point in time I had already posted seven iterations of the "Rosen Spotting" meme... certainly more than enough material to glean one or two quotes from.

Basically, I don't trust reporters to present any slightest representation of facts or quotes in any light that I'd consider fair or balanced. If you've ever been quoted in the paper, then you already know what I'm talking about.

But, I digress...

When Livia's e-mail came in last month, I first told Bill Clark about it that same day. I told him that I didn't want to do any interviews because, simply, I don't want to be a spokesmodel for his or anyone else's business. He agreed that's the way he'd prefer it.

That Bill ended up being quoted in this week's Worcester Business Journal article on the taxi business in Worcester, however... well, I gotta tell ya: THAT is funny!

Pro-Torture Nemeth

I refuse to go all ad hominem on Robert Z. Nemeth... I would really like to, but I just can't believe that the pro-torture crowd is fully comprised of fringe lunatics. I can't believe that EVERYONE is as crazy as Peter Blute.

Robert Z. Nemeth's column in the paper today trails off at the end with the usual pro-torture talking points. It's bland, partisan and one-sided. But I have to assume that he's coming at this whole thing from a perspective that has excluded any reasonable dialog from the "other side" of, specifically, the issue of torture... y'know, the side that's been condemning torture of prisoners since before the OLC memos were released 10 days ago?... the side that began condemning torture with George Washington?... y'know, the father of our country?... One of history's most notable and noble figures because he refused to let British prisoners of war be tortured during the American Revolution?

That "side" of the "torture issue" has always been America... until this last administration.

America has been the unique champion of this cause in raising the bar for over two centuries. It has been one of the most significant foundations upon which our high moral ground was always based: "WE are not like them..."

It isn't that I can't understand the strategic significance of taking the offensive in the so-called Global War On Terror, a strategy the opposite of simply sitting back and being defensive. This posture of aggressive attack has been the signature of what could be called the Bush Doctrine, ostensibly in response to the 9-11 attacks. Those who support this apparent methodology can easily be excused for being frightened by seeing the political pendulum swing so far to the left over the course of the last two national elections.

But that huge swing to the left took place for a reason. The excesses of the Bush administration don't just center upon the illegal torture of prisoners, but it sure does cut to the heart the argument.

The rest of it is moot. How to make this adjustment away from having a government that sanctions the torture of prisoners and get back to where we once stood on this issue... this is a very complicated political process, to be sure. Anyone who thinks this should just be chopped away in one fell swoop is not recognizing the enormity of the illegal actions taken by the last administration.

This kind of thing has happened before. When leaders in government have to deal with something unforeseen, we can hardly expect that no-one will make mistakes, or choose an expeditious path that will later be struck down as illegal when cooler heads prevail.

Taking the argument into the realm of sanctioning the torture of prisoners, however, requires a particularly uninformed brand of extremely short-sighted, blind partisanship to support, especially at this point in America's history. Over two centuries of establishing the high moral ground of insisting upon humane treatment, even for the most vile and evil people in the world AFTER they have been imprisoned, ...this was simply erased by the Bush administration.

It was done illegally.

Massachusetts Healthcare Reform Backfires

The anonymous pontificator(s) have today offered up some sort of focus on the future of Massachusetts' Mandatory Healthcare Insurance Edict. They point out that the ostensible purpose of this legislation is not being achieved, but that it has, apparently, caused nearly the opposite.

If legislators had known when they crafted this law that it would cost the state $3009 per person, per year (and rising), to force residents to sign up for healthcare insurance, would they still have moved forward with it? So far, 432,000 people in Massachusetts have signed up, and the cost this year for the state will be $1.3 billion.

The most telling failure of this whole thing, however, is the fact that uninsured ER visits was the driving force behind this "healthcare reform". It was the main selling point, this idea that uninsured ER visits were driving up the cost of healthcare for everybody else. But now, after we've had a chance to see the actual fallout of this ill-advised legislation, we get the bad news: "Moreover, a report by the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy finds that outpatient emergency room visits and their costs have not declined, as the reform’s architects had envisioned, but increased — by 17 percent from 2005 to 2007, to nearly 2.5 million visits, with a price tag of $973 million."

The problem here isn't that poor people without health insurance "couldn't get the healthcare they needed", the problem was the whole idea of "healthcare" itself.

The two generations old marketing campaign for "healthcare" sells everyone on the idea that medicine can "prevent" anyone from getting sick. The "early detection" idea, marginally based in science, has been artfully twisted into generating millions of dollars of additional revenue monthly, all on the backs of people who not only aren't sick, but probably won't get sick anytime soon.

No-one can dispute the good idea that regular checkups and early detection helps people to live healthier, longer lives, least of all me. But this kind of spending on the absolute best regular medical attention for people who aren't sick costs a LOT of money.

The problem with medical insurance costs is medical insurance, itself. The only reason Massachusetts became the "leader" in "healthcare reform" is because the Massachusetts legislature has been bought and paid for by the insurance industry for decades.

That their legislation is now proving to make healthcare insurance even more expensive is certainly no surprise to me.

Out and About

How could we possibly sit in the house today?

With a tentative destination of the Clam Box in Brookfield, Kathy and I set out to enjoy the day by simply wandering off...

We hadn't even gotten out of the city when I spotted a familiar face.

Neil was out in the yard spreading mulch along the border of the yard outside the condos.

I certainly couldn't resist getting a picture of his mulch spreading prowess.

Crystal, meanwhile (according to Neil), was sunbathing on the roof while he toiled in the yard.

We chatted for a bit before Kathy and I headed off in a westerly direction. Ultimately, we did end up at the Clam Box. I enjoyed a really delicious fried clam dinner, while Kathy had a lobster roll that was just as great.

It actually got hot enough this afternoon to turn on the AC in the car. Even with the windows open, cars just end up being like greenhouses...

Of course, another way to keep cool on a hot day like today is to ride...

This was the only group of riders I got a decent picture of today. I took it as we were coming through the center of Spencer.

There were a lot of motorcycles everywhere we went, though. I also started counting convertibles, as well as antique cars.

We may be in a recession, but one sure-fire way to take the stress out of the week is to wander off like we did today and just burn up some 'oline...

Kathy and I were definitely not the only ones with this idea today.

Founding Bloggers v. CNN

Some analysis.

Afghanistan's First National Park

I had read and re-read this article a couple of times yesterday, and I read it again this morning in "slow mode" (where I read it at the much slower pace I would if I were reading it aloud), just to make sure I wasn't missing a fnord, or something...

Maybe later on I'll figure out why Obama wants to ramp up the Afghanistan war at the same time USAID is busy creating a national park system there.

The Signs Are Always There

I was just reading this story when my attention just went BLAT! About a quarter of the way into this fairly long article about the Bernie Madoff debacle, I hit this:

"Madoff was even more obsessed, if that's possible, with cleanliness. Even while he was responsible for billions of dollars, it was not uncommon to see him dusting his office or the two-foot sculpture of a screw behind his desk."

A two foot sculpture of a screw behind his desk?

A two foot sculpture of a SCREW?

You just can't make this stuff up!

Where Was I?

These five pictures were shot around Worcester over the past few days.

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 in the next day or so with the answers, whether anyone gets them right or not.

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

Worcester Pot-Holes

NECN has a video news report about the bone-jarring, bumpy road ahead.

A (lack of) money quote from Bob Moylan: "The perception that the roads aren't getting any better, they're getting worse... will become a reality."

Massachusetts Car Insurance Caveat

Now that car insurance in Massachusetts has been somewhat "de-regulated" and you can enjoy the benefits of some competitive pricing, there's the other side of the equation that's starting to pop up.

It's time to check and make sure I've got full coverage in the event of getting hit by somebody with no insurance.

Tractor Guy

While waiting for my next job this morning on Pleasant Street, this guy came by on the sidewalk in a John Deere lawn tractor.

He had a long-arm grabbing tool he was using to snatch litter and put it into the back of the tractor without getting out of his seat.

I can think of a few other public sidewalks in the city where we could use this guy's services.

Some Good News

Tomorrow, April 25th, the Worcester Tree Initiative will kick off at Burncoat High School from 9 am to 2 pm with 300 trees ready to be planted.

Here's an article in the paper today about it.

And now we can see where all those Dems were on Tea Party day...

A Few Bad Apples

I have to admit that I've been overwhelmed by all the various news and commentary coming out lately on the subject of torture. Here's another article that just floors me.

Sean made a comment to the previous post that pretty well sums up my view on whether torture worked: "Y'know what else worked pretty well? Slavery."

To be living under a government where this could have even happened at all has left me completely... utterly...

...I don't even have a word for it.

Update: Here's the torture timeline, beginning in August 2001.

It Worked?

The very idea of arguing in favor of torture because "it works" has been based upon the fabled Los Angeles attack that "was foiled". This has risen to "everybody knows" status amongst the fringe lunatics on the right who continue to argue in favor of torture. But those who argue that "torture works" obviously never bothered to discover that it never did.

Loyalty? Denial?

Dianne Williamson's column today stands in sharp contrast to the anonymous pontificator(s) studious rationalizations on the subject of torture.

Here's a quote from Dianne's piece: “It’s not that they’re in denial,” said criminologist James Alan Fox of Northeastern University. “It’s that the man they know isn’t like this. They have a different perspective and it’s not at all unusual. It’s loyalty, not denial.”

QED... the pontificators: "It is intellectually dishonest on the part of today’s leaders to second-guess the actions of men and women who acted in good faith and in accordance with legally developed procedures at that time."

Substituting the phrase "legally developed procedures" for the word "torture" is about as deeply into denial as you can get.

Wormtown TaxiCam

I dropped off my last fare today out near the end of June Street. I wanted to test out the long dormant taxicam, so I shot video nearly all the way to the Gulf Station at Southbridge and Hammond. I caught a couple of illegal "right on red " shots along the way.

Blute-o and Q

When I'm driving the taxi in the morning, I have to admit that hathos keeps driving me back to pushing that button on the AM radio, the one that tunes in 830 kHz on the dial.

Peter Blute continues to hammer away in his ardent support of torturing prisoners. This morning he got a phone call from "Q" (who, I'm assuming, is Steve Quist). Q absolutely refused to go along with Blute's insane position on torture. Neither, apparently, does co-host Hank Stolz.

You really have to search a long way out into the lunatic fringe to find someone who'll agree that America should torture prisoners. But, in the end, you can certainly find them. Y'know who apparently agreed all along that America should torture prisoners?...

"Most prominent among those briefed on waterboarding was Nancy Pelosi."

They say that politics makes strange bedfellows, ...but this is just going too far.

I am truly repulsed...

2009 Summer Nationals, cont'd

Since it's already established in today's paper that Worcester officials consider a mobster theme restaurant "fits exactly with the city's vision" (see previous post), it should come as no surprise that anybody who tries to do anything with stuff that "falls off a truck" without first getting permission from the local mobsters will find himself in trouble.

Of course, the only difference between a 1930's style capo regime and today's "government officials" is that the old way of sending some muscle to break the guy's legs for not paying up on time has evolved into a much more effective method...

Today, they just issue a press release.

Heh. Other than that, though, I can hardly tell the difference.

Fagetaboutit

You talkin' t'me? Fagetaboutit. Let's go t'Luciano's...

(Lucky) Luciano's Cafe, (John) Dillinger's outdoor barbecue patio cafe, and (Al) Capone's Cafe... it's all coming to Gus Giordano's new restaurant in Union Station.

“Gus’ vision of new Union Station fits exactly with the city’s vision,” said assistant city manager Julie A. Jacobson.

Really?

Heh. I've heard rumors that Nicholas Pileggi has been spotted around town, doing research on his next novel.

B.I.C. 2 - finis

The trench they dug all the way across Quinsig Ave (between Endicott and Sigel) nearly a month ago, was still not completely finished yesterday. It had been filled in, and there was a layer of new asphalt down, but it was one of those two-stage jobs where they let everybody drive over a one to two inch drop for anywhere from a day to ten years before finally making some sort of attempt to smooth it over...

In this case, it was only a few days of hitting that bone-jarring bump, because sometime between yesterday and this afternoon it was finished off.

Not a bad job, either!

That's two potential Bump Installations, within a block of each other, that have ended up being fairly good jobs of restoring the road surface. If I really wanted to make a wild guess, I'd say that maybe Bob Moylan laid off only those guys who didn't know how to restore road surfaces...

I ran into Mr. Moylan one morning last week on Shrewsbury Street. I had stopped at the McDonald's for a quick snack, and when I left he was standing outside the entrance waiting for someone. I introduced myself and we chatted briefly, and I handed him my card. Ever since, I've kept thinking that if the DPW Commissioner is having his breakfast meetings with employees at McDonald's, then it's a sure bet that he's not squandering money anywhere else, either.

The trouble is, I'm not sure whether the Quinsig Ave trench was a city job or not... If there were DPW trucks at either this one or the one at the Corner of Southbridge and Lafayette (BIC 3), then I missed 'em.

So, maybe they were, maybe they weren't... I figure I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

Live From the ER?

Things that make you go, "hmmmm..."

This Worcesteria post flashed across the virtual landscape yesterday evening with a timestamp of 8 pm. But the aggregator link on the Real Worcester site shows that it was removed.

Scariest Interactive Map

Over at Slate, they have the scariest interactive map I've ever clicked on. It shows job gains and job losses nationwide from January of '07 through February of '09.

Clicking on this link is not for the faint of heart!

Alarming Medicare Stats?

Why is this alarming?

There's really nothing alarming about this at all.

What's surprising to me is that the "re-hospitalization rate" of people who are eligible for medicare is only one in five after 30 days, and only one in three after 90 days! The study is of people who are not only eligible for medicare, but who are obviously already enrolled in medicare.

Consequently, what we have here is a study of people who are, exclusively, all either over 65 or permanently disabled or chronically ill to begin with!...

What's so freakin' alarming about anyone getting sick after being in the hospital, anyway? Hospitals make enough people sick or sicker every year to rival highway death statistics. That the oldest and most infirm demographic in the country shows a higher rate than younger, healthier people certainly doesn't bowl me over as being alarming at all.

No School

Worcester Public Schools are out for vacation this week, so that means a sharp decrease in the traffic...

Here's a shot of Chandler Street between King and Queen this morning, looking inbound.

On a school day at the same time of morning, this would have traffic backed up to Foley Stadium

This is a taste of what it's going to be like during summer, here in Worcester. The only difference is that not only do the public schools deliver huge volumes of traffic every morning and afternoon, but 30,000 college students also have a very significant impact on life here in the city.

All of that disappears in the summer.

This is why I've always wondered why anyone would ever think of Worcester as anything but a "college town" or maybe a "school town". Even the City Council treats the whole summer as a "vacation" by only meeting twice during July and August. Isn't that a trademark of people who live their whole lives within the fold of academia?...

Yard Waste?

Ya gotta love it!

This brush pile near the beginning of Aetna Street has a nice big Christmas tree on top of it, dead these 4-1/2 months, but alive enough to have recently made it's way out into the street...

I'm not sure, but I think Aetna may have already been swept. They're still sweeping streets in the area, though, so this may actually get taken away.

On my street, though, there are two brush and yard waste piles that appeared on either side of the street, almost directly across from each other, within a day after the street had been swept. So, they'll be there all season... unless, of course, the people who put them there remove that stuff themselves.

The same thing happened a couple of years ago, about three doors up the street. They made a massive pile about eight feet high on the side of the street about two days after the fall sweeping had been done. The pile was there all winter, and ended up being a point around which snow was piled on top of it to make it look like the Matterhorn...

Why does anyone expect the city to remove this stuff?

B.I.C. 3 - finis

It looks like they're done with the bump installation work at the corner of Southbridge and Lafayette.

Not much of a bump means they get a good mark for this one, though.

You can hardly notice the road patch when driving over either the right turn lane, or the left (straight through) lane, so some praise is in order for the guys who took the time to make a relatively decent restoration of the road surface here.

Good work, guys! I wish they were all as good!

Worcester Road Construction Season Begins

With the project to widen the intersection at Southbridge and Cambridge Streets, and the project to replace a main sewer line on Route 9 in front of UMass, we can look forward to a summer of rush hour traffic that's anything but smooth.

The Four Corners project is a badly needed one, for the simple fact of trailer trucks having taken down light poles, over and over again, just trying to make a turn. And the level of traffic that's been going through that intersection since the reconfiguration of Brosnihan Square has increased dramatically.

Unfortunately, any lane shutdowns on Southbridge or Cambridge Streets at or near that intersection during construction will make this section of town a parking lot in every direction during commuting times. This is the morning "bailout route" whenever eastbound I-290 backs up west of college square. They'll most likely have police officers directing traffic, and anyone who's ever seen how that's done will know... this is an intersection that you'll want to avoid during certain times of the day until the work is done.

But the Four Corners traffic will hardly seem like a traffic jam at all when compared to the Belmont Street sewer project this summer. They're looking at possibly shutting one whole side of route 9 while work is being done, and using the remaining three lanes on the other side of the median to share east and westbound traffic... from Lake Avenue to Shrewsbury Street...

Can you say "YIKES!!!"

Rush hour traffic along that section of six lane divided highway is already at, and quite often just beyond the capacity of the road when all the lanes are open. Eastbound traffic already sees an inordinate number of vehicles that need to take a left onto Plantation Street every morning. Consequently, the left turn lane backs up into the intersection of Belmont and Shrewsbury causing gridlock. The traffic piles up on the bridge into Shrewsbury, and then backs up all the way up the hill.

Afternoons are just as bad... and that's with all the lanes open. The worst traffic jams in that area have lately been caused by merely having one single lane blocked. A breakdown, a work crew, or even three or more cars that have decided to make a left, it just makes the three lane flow into a three lane parking lot in a matter of a minute.

Take away HALF the lanes available, and what we'll have over there is a section of road that everyone will want to avoid like the plague. It'll then be a real trick to figure out what alternate routes aren't ALSO backed up by everyone who thought it would be better...

Online Limbo

Ever since the J. Peterman Catalog took over WoMag, the online upgrade site has been sitting in limbo for about the same amount of time that Worcester's Funniest Blog has been around.

Coincidence? I think not. Here's another online limbo site: Rick Rushton's Blog, where the last entry is from the same month (last August).

The last post on My Neighborhood is NOT Your Trash Can was made a couple months earlier, though, so I can't attribute this sudden cessation of local online activity to the naming of Sarah Palin as a candidate for Vice President at the end of last August... Besides, Mike Benedetti's Blog didn't slip into limbo until right after the City Council meetings went online in January.

Mike O'Risal's blog, Hyphoid Logic, slipped into limbo about a month earlier.

The Renegade Blogger had disappeared completely at one point, but now it's back.

The Yes To Worcester blog has not seen a new post for almost a year, though.

Worcesteristas has seen only three posts so far this year, the last one at the end of February.

Wormtown Curmudgeon made three posts on four successive days in January, but that's it so far.

Truman's blog (a dog's blog, actually) saw 8 posts last year, the last showing up at the beginning of October. Maybe Truman has run out of gas...

And then there's the Wormtown Spy, last updated (according to the little note at the top of the page) on "January 21"... this could be 2009, 2008, or maybe even 1999, though... kinda hard to tell, since this website has always been (for me, anyway) a demonstration of total online chaos... maybe they're anarchists?

All things considered, I'm somewhat saddened when locally focused or originated sites are launched and then either atrophy or die. The more the merrier is the way I like to see our locally generated content grow, here in the Worcester area.

Too Funny

RoasterBoy, aka Karl Hakkarainen, had apparently wanted to keep an eye on the Worcester Tea Party website. So, he subscribed to the RSS feed... ya gotta check out what he posted about an hour ago.

Church Sign Generator

Heh.

CNN Abuse of Copyright

CNN apparently can't take the same kind of heat it dishes out.

Buds

I noticed this morning that the buds on our maple tree in the front yard were just beginning to bust out all over.

I took several pictures, and decided that this one was the best.

Then it occurred to me to search back on the blog for "buds" and discovered that it was exactly one year ago, on April 19th 2008, that the buds on this tree were at this exact stage last year, too.

Who needs clocks and calendars when nature is this precise?

The Looming Healthcare Boondoggle

As I've attempted to point out several times, the solution to rising healthcare costs is not to "insure everybody" like they've forced everyone to pay for by law here in Massachusetts.

It's not that people are uninsured, it's that nobody except the fabulously wealthy can afford to pay for the real costs of the absolute best medical care. And there's a very difficult problem that's simply not being addressed when requiring everyone to have "insurance" ...healthcare providers simply opt out.

I honestly don't have any idea what the answers should be in all of this, but the one aspect of medical treatment that has always bothered me has been its marriage to the "free market" ideology. The idea of squeezing out huge profits on the backs of sick people is, in a word, sick.

Worcester Tea Party Videos

State Rep (R) George Peterson:



George's speech is the only one I wanted to embed here, because I really like the guy. We both grew up in the center of Grafton, our homes about a half a mile from each other. George is a year or two younger than me, but I knew him well enough as one of the many kids in our neighborhood. If I currently lived one block to the south, here in Worcester, he would be my state rep and I'd be voting for him every time he ran.

I'd like to see George unseat Jim McGovern, quite frankly... and not just because he's bald.

Other video clips that got posted to YouTube yesterday include speeches by State Sen (R) Scott Brown, State Rep (R) Lew Evangelidis, State Rep (R) Paul Frost, and Assistant Director of the Citizens for Limited Taxation, Chip Faulkner.

Inexplicably, the videographer/editor(s) of these clips chose not to show Sharilee Worthington at all, despite her having introduced all these guys. (What's up with that???)

There is absolutely nothing about these speeches that I have any slightest problem with. Massachusetts is a one party malaise of corruption, and these Republicans are saying everything that needs to be said by Republicans here in this bluest of blue states.

But to call this a "non-partisan" rally is such utter baloney...

Proxy Democracy

There's a short article in the "money" section of today's paper that covers the question of why anyone should ever fill out and send in shareholder ballots. There's also a non-link in the text to Proxy Democracy, which I had stumbled onto before.

What isn't covered at all in the article is the way that precedents in corporate law have skewed all liability in favor of stockholder interests over the years. Here's an explanation of the most famous precedent.

This defines "corporate responsibility" versus "social responsibility" in this country, and it explains why banks and investment companies would gamble for the absolute highest returns: they were just looking out for their stockholders, as required by current law. It's not a choice that the officers of public corporations have, whether to be socially responsible and decide on a slightly lower profit in any given accounting period, or not. There is only the highest yield for the stockholder that matters in corporate law.

Consequently, the angry protest of even ONE stockholder is cause for concern in boardrooms, but only when it's the possibility of a lawsuit over some decision that, had it been otherwise, could have given the stockholder a higher yield.

Michael Moore's first documentary, Roger & Me, never even came close to presenting a case for the overhaul of America's corporate law. He obviously never bothered to research the decision to close the car factory in his home town, or find out what really needed to be done to have prevented this mass exodus of manufacturing out of America. He never came close to presenting the facts at all.

The simple fact is that if Roger Smith had chosen to be socially responsible and keep the Flint, Michigan factory open, all it would have taken is ONE stockholder with a single share of GM stock to file suit in court to get that factory shut down.

Conversely, the ONLY way that factory could've been kept open any longer than it was would have been for a majority of GM stockholders to vote in replacement candidates on the board whose positions clearly stood for keeping the factory open. The really insane part of all this, however, is that after all that organizing and politicking and voting had finally been accomplished... all it would have taken to reverse the whole thing would, again, have been ONE stockholder with just one share in GM stock to bring suit on the complaint that this decision to keep the factory open cost them money.

Corporate law in America is what closed the Flint, Michigan GM plant and plunged that whole town into poverty during a period in which GM was enjoying its highest profits in the history of the company. Roger Smith had nothing to do with it.

There's something very wrong with this lopsided situation in corporate law when even a majority of stockholders in a business risk losing in court over their choice to be socially responsible and maybe make a little less money in the bargain. Until corporate law is overhauled in this country, there really is no such thing as "proxy democracy" at all.

Republican Stamp on Worcester Tea Party

I have a great deal of respect for Sharilee Worthington. She's an active Republican in the Worcester area who posts regularly on the Worcester County Republican Club Blog. She's also the Worcester Ward 5 Republican Committee Chair, and an active participant in organizing Wednesday's Tea Party rally in Lincoln Square.

I didn't attend the Tea Party, but I saw pictures of Sharilee speaking at the podium.

Sharilee works hard, she works at all the elections, and I do respect her very much...

That's why a post from Sharilee on Hub Politics today, that talks about what a success the Worcester Tea Party was, disappoints me so much. Yet again, she's touting the ostensibly non-partisan nature of the local organizing effort by claiming to have invited people from across the political spectrum to come and speak at the event. She writes, "A number of Democratic officials had been invited, including Congressmen Jim McGovern. But they either ignored our invite or were conveniently busy elsewhere."

Perhaps the only reason Jim McGovern chose not to positively respond to her invitation might've had something to do with her highly negative, highly partisan posts about him on the Republican Club Blog in April, in May, or maybe in October?

[beginning of short rant]
I'm no big fan of Jim McGovern, myself, especially after having done some research and finding out that he voted "yes" to the 1999 legislation that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Glass-Steagall was the set of regulations basically disallowing banks to engage in the kind of gambling that not only precipitated the crash of 1929, but now, a mere ten years after its repeal, the crash of 2008... Y'know, the crash that's still crashing right now?

Hey! Thanks a lot for all your "help" Jim! Both you and the majority of bought and paid for politicians on BOTH sides the aisle who voted to let the banks crash our economy have certainly done your job for all your campaign contributors from the financial industry.
[end of short rant]

But I can't imagine McGovern being at all eager to accept any invitations from Sharilee. I can only ask whether she might have ever invited him (or any other Democrat) to speak at any other function she's been heavily involved in before, ...ever.

Meanwhile, just in front of the part about some vague "number of Democratic officials" who "had been invited" she lists the political figures who did accept their invitation to speak: "State Senator Scott Brown (Wrentham), and Reps. George Peterson (Grafton), Paul Frost (Auburn), Karyn Polito (Shrewsbury), and Lew Evangelidis (Holden)."

I mean, aside from Republican Scott Brown from the senate, isn't that pretty much the entire contingent of Worcester County's Republican state reps who still have a willingness to actually speak in public?

So, although I really can't get at all annoyed about the participants who came from a wide range of the political spectrum (other than the fact that they obviously fell for the "non-partisan" hype), Sharilee's continued propaganda about the non-partisan nature of HER involvement irks me to no end!

Why keep trumpeting this Orwellian distortion of the highly partisan Republican stamp on all of this, Sharilee? Why can't you be up front about it and say something like, "We are Republicans who officially support the Tea Party"? Why keep pretending this "non-partisan" crap? Do you really think it's necessary to sneak into peoples' heads like this?

If this baloney hadn't been going on from the start, I would've been very much in attendance on Wednesday. I would've loved to have participated in a truly non-partisan protest against this general malaise in our government.

A parade of incumbent Republican politicians speaking at the podium just isn't gonna do it for me, though.

Quite frankly, I'd be interested in seeing Republicans stand up and be proud of their conservatism by divorcing themselves from the political radicals, those lunatic war criminals that spent the last eight years cheering on the shredding the Constitution and the looting the treasury. Instead, they rail against the release of the OLC memos and even now continue to scream and rant, loud and long, in support of torture the same way that Peter Blute (yet another speaker at Wednesday's rally) did on WCRN just yesterday! [Update: I had been told Blute was there, but according to the emcee for the rally, he was not.]

What's wrong with these talk show people who keep insisting that they're "conservatives" when they're actually way out there on the lunatic fringe, supporting the kind of rigidly divisive behavior and rhetoric that has become no different than that of the enemy we originally rallied against here in America to fight after 9-11?

Yes, the Tea Party movement is definitely being hijacked, even here in Worcester.

2009 Summer Nationals

According to the website, the 2009 Summer Nationals will held in Worcester from July 2 through July 5th.

If Bob Moscoffian has a good sense of humor, he might think about slicing off a chunk of the money he makes on this event by serving free lobsters.

Dino's

Kathy and I went to Dino's last night with a couple dozen relatives.

Jeff's memory has been interfered with by wine, however...

I know I had an absolutely delicious lasagna, and I remember meeting a whole bunch of really nice people from Pennsylvania, and that they're my wife's cousins.

This all took place in the downstairs function room at Dino's, which I've only been in one time before. The upstairs main dining room I've been in many times, though.

The food here is excellent.

Honestly, though, this morning I feel like an empty toothpaste tube. Three of us shared two bottles of wine. For me, that's like going on a drinking binge... I remember telling my brother in law last night that the last glass of wine I had was at Carmella's, when a bunch of us had gotten together last month. And I remember him saying that I have to "get into shape" which has always meant (to me, anyway) making a point of drinking a lot, drinking regularly, and getting accustomed to the effects... just so that, at something like this, I don't go unconscious right around the time that everybody else is just getting into it.

Well, I didn't go unconscious. But I do remember towards the end of the evening, after having a few bites of my wife's tiramasu (which tasted like a forbidden delicacy stolen from the gods), that I was feeling pretty tired at that point. I had been up since about 19 hours before, and it was WAY past the point where I could use, at the very least, a good nap.

In a 100% positive way, though, I had a great time last night. It's just that my memory of it seems very compacted. It's kinda like the movie only runs at a very sped up rate. I wonder if that still happens if you're "in shape"?

Peter Blute - Torture Advocate

While listening to Peter Blute on WCRN this morning, ranting against the release of the OLC memos and defending the use of torture on prisoners, I heard him come out with this line, "These are techniques that work."

Perhaps Peter is unaware of how the whole concept of the humane treatment of prisoners began in this country. It began with the father of our country, George Washington. Despite the barbarity of the British in killing non-combatants in the American Revolution, despite the torturing and murdering of American prisoners by the British, despite the cold blooded murdering of civilians, women and children by the British, General George Washington not only refused to torture British prisoners of war, he absolutely forbid anyone else to.

This is the moral high ground that helped America to be born as a new nation, and made the father of our country one of the noblest and most respected figures in history. The whole point was that we could be better than the barbarians we were fighting against. To be on the undisputed side of what is right and fair and humane in this world, this is what America was founded on. To not only obey the Golden Rule of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," but to also enshrine this high moral principle in secular laws forbidding the torture of prisoners... THIS is what has made America the shining example of what we'd like the rest of the world to become.

The Bush administration's authorization of the use of torture was not only a clear violation of this core principle of what had made America the greatest country in the world, but also a clear violation of international laws that America championed, as well as domestic laws that had never been questioned until the Bush administration arrived.

While I can defend Peter Blute's right to voice his pro-torture stance, I could never bring myself to attend a rally where this un-American idiot holds center stage for even a nanosecond.

National Tea Party Turnout Numbers

This page at North Shore Journal shows a graph of national estimates from four different sources, along with the Simmons/Collier breakdowns by state.

Bus Cuts Coming

Being able to predict that a needed mode of transportation will continue into the foreseeable future is an absolute necessity for anyone who has to get to and from a job.

You can't do that when it comes to bus service in Worcester.

This is great news for the taxi and livery businesses, here in Worcester. As long as the people running the bus company keep to focusing on "saving money" by shrinking service, it will continue to result in a growing number of regular customers for private transportation businesses.

The Torture Memos

The OLC memos have been released.

This is the text of Obama's speech regarding the release.

Here is a link to the ACLU site hosting download links for the memos.

And here is Andrew Sullivan's summation of the situation.

Jordan Levy Post Title

Heh. First was the suggestion for "Teabagging the President" and now Jordan Levy has produced this classy blog title: "They Came….And Came…And Came…"

You just can't make this stuff up.

Worcester vs Massachusetts

Greater Worcester may have been named by Forbes Magazine as the ninth best place to live in the nation, but the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council has ranked Massachusetts as number 10 amongst the ten worst state tax systems in the nation.

Tip of the hat to Worcester Business Journal.

Theatrics vs Political Discourse

This is theatrics from a third of a century ago:



This is theatrics from the last few weeks:



(I tried to find one of Keith Olbermann's totally insane rants from the last two years of the Bush administration, because I would have included that, too.)

If you can't tell the difference between theatrics and civilized political discourse, then you're watching too much television, listening to too much talk radio, and letting them distort your view of the real world that exists in real life, ...all of that comparatively boring stuff that's actually happening all around you at any given moment. Y'know, ...the stuff that you see with your own eyes? The stuff that you hear with your own ears? The first-hand experiences of day to day life?

Selling the House

I was sitting at the traffic light to exit the Stop and Shop parking lot on West Boylston Street this morning, across from that house for sale... I snapped the picture just as the light turned green.

The house is sandwiched in between a new commercial edifice being constructed next door to the right, and the new Walgreens next door to the left. Then, with the Stop and Shop across the street, I pictured this slow buildup that has happened all around this one house.

This used to be a relatively quiet, residential neighborhood at one time, years ago.

There's probably a story here. I mean, I can imagine the former occupants holding out from selling because, after all, this was their home. They may have raised a family here, lived there for decades. Who knows?

Now it's definitely a fairly well positioned commercial location, and the house is definitely for sale (big sign on the front)...

But now there's a huge recession in the economy.

I'm sure there's a story here...

Worcester Schools Hiring Scandal Widens

Okay, I was wrong.

In my desire to defend someone I viewed as an unfairly targetted individual (Donna Byrnes), I was obviously ignorant of the wider scope involved in all of this. She's collateral damage, now. In my own defense, I can only say that I can't think outside the box if I'm an insider... which I refuse to become.

And then there's Shaun Sutner, whose article today in the T&G blows the corset off the Worcester Public School system's big, fat, dirty underbelly a lot further than the Byrnes embroglio did. I apologize for any negative impressions I conveyed about Shaun's unique style of smearing. Just as Worcester needs tough cops who sometimes go too far, the T&G needs unscrupulous reporters like Shaun to dive into the sewer and come back to tell the rest of us what kind of ugly stuff is floating around down there.

Shaun is obviously the right tool for this job. And he got the absolutely best quote for this story today from Mayor Konnie Lukes, "“Do we need a crisis or negative publicity before anything happens?"

Yes, Konnie, as a matter of fact this is the ONLY THING that can ever get you guys to actually do something about it. Any attempt to calmly explain the need for full transparency in our local government is a totally ineffective course of action.

Tea Party Coverage

Although it's pretty early in the morning as I write this, coverage of yesterday's TeaBagger rallies across the country are showing up online. I'm not surprised at how the coverage is falling into distinctly partisan spins in the major media, though. The Associated Press (via Yahoo) story, for instance, spins their coverage with downplaying language on the turnout, nationwide, saying, "tens of thousands of protesters staged 'tea parties' around the country Wednesday..."

The Beantown Glob, that embattled ivory tower of dusty old entrenched spinners, was said to have no interest in reporting the story at all (I forget where I read that, sorry...), but has apparently decided to reprint the AP story.

The first coverage of the Worcester rally, of course, came from Worcesteria last night, and the commenters provide some links to not only the AP story in the Globe, but also some pictures that went up yesterday on the WTAG site and an NECN "Worcester News Tonight" video.

Curiously enough, the NECN video spliced in a bunch of video with Jim McGovern (US Rep, D, Mass) defending the current spending spree in DC, as if the guy was right there at the rally making these assertions. It's a distinctly partisan spin, including the "upwards of a thousand" crowd estimate.

Heh... If Jim McGovern had been there in Lincoln Square yesterday, it's possible the rally could've turned ugly. McGovern, I should note, was one of the lawmakers in DC who voted to repeal Glass-Steagall, the core regulatory act limiting banks to banking, and which had stood since enacted in 1933. A mere decade later, the very debacle that Glass-Steagall was designed to prevent has, indeed, come to pass. Thanks for all your "help" Jim...

Meanwhile, over at the T&G, there's a fairly written (by Martin Luttrell) account of the Worcester TeaBagger rally, giving an estimated crowd size of 1500.

Last, but by no means least, Sharilee Worthington's pictures of the rally that she posted on PhotoBucket tends to be the slideshow worth looking at. Where a picture is worth a thousand words, these also tell the story more clearly than any slanted news article can. I have to say that it looks like Worcester Republicans have been more clearly focused in this whole thing than anywhere else in the country.

Tax History

Since today is the deadline for filing income taxes, I've been surfing around for various stuff related to that. I found this interesting collection at the Tax History Project, which is a chronological list of pdf links for federal income tax forms dating back to 1913.

I printed out the 1913 tax forms and figured the Federal Income tax for $35,000 annual gross income (Worcester median, circa 2000) with deductions for other taxes and for interest on all debts. This easily knocks the $35k down to under $25k for anyone ensnared by a deck of credit cards, placing the net income within the 1% tax bracket.

Imagine that? One percent!

Even if NO deductions are taken, however, anything under $50k net was all taxed at only 1% back then. 1913 income tax on 50k net? A whopping five hundred bucks!

Guess what the highest tax bracket was?... SIX percent for anything over a half a million!

Next, I went over to the Inflation Calculator that I found a couple of weeks ago on the Department of Labor website, and found out that 50,000 US dollars in 1913 was the equivalent of $1,074,288 today!

That means that anything UNDER the equivalent of a million bucks in 2009 dollars was taxed at one percent in 1913, back when my Great Grandfather had to pay income taxes.

Four generations later, there really are people in this country who are unaware of this long, slow growth of the federal government. It's quite possible that a significant percentage of them are down at Lincoln Square as I write this, joining that eclectic congregation in search of a preacher... Perhaps they went because they really do believe this all happened in the first 100 days of Obama's Presidency?

Maybe you'll notice from the timestamp on this post that I didn't go to the local TeaBagger rally at Lincoln Square today. That's because the Tea Party rallying and promotional noise has all been about ranting and emotionalism from right wing media enteratainers, even our local morning radio guys have been venting endlessly on all of this. Meanwhile, none of this ranting and raving has yet to produce any solutions that I can identify, other than burning all the brainwashing books.

But maybe something positive will come out of this whole TeaBagger thing after a while. As I've said before, I'd really like to see the Republican Party shed the loonies and come up with some sane, conservative leaders.

Wind Power

I dropped a passenger off at Holy Name High this morning, and as I was driving out, I noticed how the light was hitting the wind generator.

I think the clouds look interesting in this shot, too.

Monday evening just before 8 o'clock the power went out here. I stepped out into the yard and everything in the neighborhood was dark. It looked like it was out over a fairly large area, although I can't see down into the center of town from here, so I couldn't see if power was out there, too.

But the one place where there was plenty of light was to my south, about a mile away on the hill where the Holy Name Wind Generator was turning away in the gentle evening breeze. It was a very striking sight, seeing the whole area plunged into darkness, but for this one spot where the night lighting for the school blazed away.