Across the Great Divide

Distraction or Inspiration?

Yes, I've been working on a novel and yesterday was asked, do you have trouble getting distracted and staying disciplined?

For readers of the shrunken blog, the answer may seem like no. After all, I've severely curtailed posting and reading material that would send me wandering off in some new, brain-sapping direction.

But there are other perils.

Like this morning, for instance.

I'm writing about a youth pastor in 1979 who gets a new washing machine and illustrates his homily using the minor miracle that brought it to him.

Since I'm writing on a computer, it's a simple matter to pause and check out what the control panel of a 1979 model would look like.

What I didn't anticipate was this — an entire subculture of people who videotape their washers. There's even a site dedicated to automatic washers and the collectors who love them.

Look out, it's a rabbit hole!

Gotta go.

Charming Tom Emmer: Sense or Nonsense?

First post back in Minnesota now that I'm reading local news more closely... Let's be brief, starting with this tidbit from Doug Grow, covering filing day and the differing public personalities of the major party nominees.

"We've got four agencies that deal with water," [GOP candidate for governor Tom] Emmer said. "Health, DNR, PCA, BOWSER [sic] … Does that make sense? So much duplication."

For the next five months, Emmer is going to drop a lot nonsense like this and pretend he's talking sense

Is there duplication among those agencies? Maybe some, but Emmer doesn't cite facts to show there's a problem. Nor does he pose a solution. He just leaves it to the listener's imagination and limited attention span to figure it out.

Consider this: The Health Department, Minnesota Department of Education's Food and Nutrition Service, Department of Agriculture and Human Services all deal with food.

The Pollution Control Agency, Health Department, Department of Public Safety and Air National Guard all deal with air. (So do welders, scuba instructors and symphony orchestras.)

The point is not how many agencies touch a broad area, but whether they overlap in expertise, mission, services, etc.

So back to Emmer's quip. Will he put the Health guys in charge of the fish or the fish guys in charge of pollution? How would it work to consolidate agencies — and how much money would it save?

We won't get that kind of thinking from Emmer on this or any subject unless he is repeatedly called on it by opponents, journalists and citizens.

And even then, I'm going to bet he just turns on the charm.

Warming Up for the Apocalypse.

Can't say I'm making a comeback, since I still have a book to write. Novelist and blogger don't mix, but:

1. Slept out on the porch the other night, but did not bring in my stuff. Today the wind from No Thoroughfare Canyon, over a three foot wall,  has: a) Blown two interlocking rubber pads into the desert, one found, one not; b) Dropped a 4-inch-thick Cornelius Vanderbilt bio to the floor and sent its dust jacket to parts unknown; c) Folded up the three-part foam sleeper cushion and even closed the velcro clasp. Screw the melting ice cap — climate change is making my sleep outs untenable!
2. Rand Paul and Libertarians are a distraction, and this helps me ignore them: "never, and I mean never, has there been capitalist enterprise that wasn't ultimately underwritten by the state."
3. I'm wrapping up my volunteer gig with the homeless in Colorado as I head back to Minnesota. A few weeks ago, some local cops trashed a homeless encampment. One letter writer said, who cares? I said, some of us do. I believe the chief of police is going to do the right thing.
4. I continue to dip my toe in the voter ID discussion. Dann Dobson has a pretty good summary of why the move to require government IDs in order to vote is a subtle form of vote suppression.

Shelter Report: The Man With the Gold Nugget and Rose Colored Glasses.

When guests sign in for the Day Center, they tell us what services they are here for:

• Laundry
• Shower
• Phone
• Coffee
• Storage
• Messages
• Mail
• Nurse

That's the standard menu. However, our guests may also be here to:

• Use the bathroom
• Borrow a guitar
• Find something to read
• Have a conversation
• Consume massive amounts of sugar and creamer in a weak coffee solution
• Borrow some money
• Collect a debt
• Take a nap
• Bum a smoke
• Satisfy a community service obligation
• Complain about a) the Police; b) Social Security; c) Department of Human Services; d) Slumlords; e) Whoever is monitoring their thoughts

This week, I was able to offer a new service: Precious metals market quotations.

A fellow about my age, wearing camos with a floppy hat and Grizzly Adams beard, brought me a newspaper and asked if I could find the metal prices for him. The type was too small for him to read.

I mentioned that we might still have some of the reading glasses I brought in last week (the supermarket was closing them out for $2 apiece), and he was welcome to have a pair.

Which metals do you want, I asked, and he said, gold and silver. Gold was selling for about $1222 an ounce thanks to stock market jitters and silver was around $19 and a quarter.

He whistled and told me he'd come to town with a gold nugget he found the day before on his claim near Nucla — a remote mining town about 50 miles south of Grand Junction. He was paid $555 for it, he said. But he was also bringing his dog in to the vet for some ailment and ended up paying a $467 bill.

Well, someone's looking out for your dog, I said.

He went over to the window where we dispense towels and toiletries for the showers, as well as socks and reading glasses when we have them.

He came back with a pair of rose colored frames — probably the last ones — that were likely designed for women. He perched them on his nose and asked, are these me?

They work for me, I said.

We both laughed and he sat down to finish the paper.

Sin Taxes to Balance Budget: Same Old Story.

The Star Tribune suggests that a return to sin taxes might provide a way out of Minnesota's budget problems.

Funny. It worked the other way before Prohibition. In 1910, 30%  of the government's revenue came from taxes on alcohol. The federal income tax introduced in 1913 was used as a justification for lost revenues from banning booze in 1919.

Taxes on cigarettes and liquor would make Minnesota's tax system more regressive — unlike the proposed fourth tier income tax rate, which would pull tax revenue  from the state's top earners.

Opponents of the income tax hike persist in claiming that such an increase would hurt "small businesses." In debate on the measure, Rep. Paul Kohls went so far as to say 40,000 small businesses would be affected by the tax increase.

I haven't reviewed the tax proposal in detail, but I know when we analyzed a similar fourth tier proposal last year, the best estimate was about 30,000 taxpayers had some income that could be categorized as coming from ownership in a business.

But most of the businesses that are profitable enough to put owners in the top tax bracket have multiple shareholders and tend to be larger than what most consider "small." (The Small Business Administration generally classifies small businesses [PDF] as having 500 employees, although the range is from 100 to 1500.)

A better estimate might be 10,000 businesses affected.

Of course, the GOP position and the Strib's compromise come down to: let the little guys pay.

Seminars are Filling Fast!

A local business ran an ad in today's paper. Can you guess what Strategy Resource International does? I had to go the website, www.happinesswarehouse.com, to get the whole picture.

The balance of Kindness and Professionalism is what makes us different.  We put kindness and the legitimate understanding of your goals first.  We follow up with true professionalism that makes you feel comfortable as you receive high quality attention in the area it is needed.

Guy's experiences across America, Israel, India, Sigapore, Thailand, England, Scotland, Whales...Offers you a rarely valuable, truly international, quality of insight and opportunity to apply many of the very best strategy sources available to any area of your life and work.

I'm not sure what a "rarely valuable" quality of insight might be, but the company has a pretty interesting mashup of offerings.  Guy sounds like a combo of Tony Robbins, Joel Osteen and Winston Wolfe. 

Here are just a couple:

Devotion Defense - When faith leads to firearms, Graceful Guns by Strategy Resource International is the answer for the training you need to be safe and effective.  Called to carry?  Special training for firearm students working to satisfy scriptural injunction or direct summons.  The different quality of respect wherein we operate offers an important difference to the person required to satisfy divine compulsion.

Graphic Design & Concept Development.  "Marksman for Justice by Design." True Blue Branding is a widely applicable function of S.R.I..  When you can't quite get other designers to do justice to your cause, give us a shot. 

"Watchdog" Johnson Annoys the Neighbors.

I continue to believe Hennepin County Commission Jeff Johnson is a smart guy. He just plays a fool in his Hennepin County Taxpayer Watchdog blog.

Watchdogs, of course, bark at everything that moves. The mailman, the little kid across the street, an ice cream truck, another dog. Everything except their master.

If you live in a remote area beset by cross-country drug runners (or are Rep. Steve Drazcowski), you may want to have a watchdog in the yard. But in the Metro area, you're mostly going to annoy your neighbors.

Commissioner Johnson looks at a county report on federal stimulus funds and concludes the $718 million in Recovery Act dollars have so far translated "to a little over $276,000 per job created or retained."

Johnson claims the spending is a failure because the funded infrastructure projects are supposed to be judged by the number of jobs directly created.

Apparently, all the bricks and mortar and public assets being built don't count. According to watchdog math, all that money went just to create jobs.

The county budget people must love it when Johnson starts woofing at their work. But try talking sense to a watchdog.

Shelter Report: If You Love Me, Send Money.

Sandi came in early today, looking for her mail. Her man Skip is in jail and writes to her regularly — which is not always the case with incarcerated boy friends.

When Sandi gets mail from Skip, she tends to be demonstrative. Everyone in the front half of the Day Center is likely to hear about it, as she clutches the letters and proclaims this latest evidence of his devotion.

Today, she had two letters from Skip, and in the middle of her ecstacy, she showed me his picture. It portrayed a shirtless young man with long hair, not bad looking, but not trustworthy looking, either. (Skip is being held without bond for trespassing and a pending warrant in California.)

The picture was black-and-white, indistinctly reproduced on thin, creased paper, as if it were a photocopy from a newspaper story about a missing hiker.

One letter was sealed with Xs and Os, but the other distressed her. On the flap, Skip wrote: "This is the last letter you will receive from me unless I have some money put in my account."

Inside, more reason for wailing. Skip is reevaluating their relationship. Maybe he won't marry her when he gets out, because he is not sure of her love. If she doesn't put money in his account — which is used for prisoner personal spending — he will know she doesn't love him.

And that will be the end of that.

By this time, some of the men in the vicinity are shaking their heads. They have seen this game played before and maybe even have played it themselves. But it's not their place to offer an opinion when Sandi isn't asking for one.

Skip, she points out to me, has a bed and three meals a day, while she is living in a shelter, without a job, and just barely making it. His demand doesn't seem fair to her, but neither does it seem to strike her as manipulative.

She heads out shortly afterward, complaining about all kinds of injustice, and presumably looking for a way to come up with a few dollars for the man she imagines loves her.