One year ago today: February 10, 2015, blog #3643.
Five years ago today: February 10, 2011, a generic day.
Nine years ago today: February 10, 2007, we owe Mexico $40 billion?
Random years ago today: February 10, 2010, Governor of North Dakota.
MORNING
Aha, didn’t I say our man Shkreli would be the lightning rod for a his generation of entrepreneurs? Maybe no so strongly, but I did pick out the guy as the one who could stand up to Congress. I repeat, I have no affinity for people who view playing the system as a legitimate career, but I have also waited a lifetime for somebody to expose horrid corruption of outfits like Congress. Shkreli is emerging as somebody with the precise disposition that posturing political hacks detest. He’s cool under fire.
Shkreli is not falling for it. He seems completely aware of the biases and hidden agendas of those openly attacking him for personal gain through publicity. I’d like to see this taken to the situation where Shkreli destroys a few careers and maybe goes after a few of these members of Congress in civil court. These bastards have been arrogant for too long and deserve any hardships they bring upon themselves. I still don’t like Shkreli, but I have to admire his handling of these politically-motivated media attacks.
Without wanting to sound like I support Shkreli, I do feel that the media has done everything they can to cloud the issue that Shkreli has never been charged with raising prices. He is accused of securities fraud. I suggest if those charges had any merit, the media and his accusers would not be so intent on painting him as a bad guy who, even if innocent of fraud charges, still deserves punishment for killing AIDS victims. Allowing the press and non-elects to continually get away with that prank is plain bad for all of society.
Nor would you be out of place noticing that Shkreli’s new lawyer just got on television and made a speech parroting what I spelled out here some days ago.
The daily news reports that a smirking Shkreli infuriated Congress. Well, all I can say is that smirking is not against the law and those imbeciles in Congress, starting with Gromby and Cummings, need infuriating. Under the guise of “investigating”, they did nothing but ask Shkreli baiting questions about the wrong subject and make false inferences hoping to draw him into playing their little game. They insulted him and were completely off topic, showing they fully expect to do as they please with impunity. That is never right, allowing anyone to pick a fight without fear of consequences.
Especially Cummings, acting so humanitarian. My eye. They sit there while collecting a fat paycheck for doing nothing. Taking money for nothing is hardly civic-mindedness. These bastards sit there for years doing nothing of any note, then jump on the bandwagon to start tearing into any cause that brings them coverage for acting like they give a damn about the public. There have been glaring inequities in the system they’ve ignored for too many years, like NASA featherbedding and invasion of privacy, for them to even pretend they are some kind of adequate watchdogs.
Enrico Caruso.
NOON
While out in Winter Haven y’day, we looked at several properties, but there was one unusual unit. The roadway into it was blocked by construction barricades. First, we had a terrible time finding the place because all the maps were wrong. There is no Lake Myrtle Road, but there is a Lake Myrtle over in Auburndale. After paying a bunch of highway tolls and finding nothing, I suggested we take one more look in an area that I had seen in the satellites images.
This becomes important because for all I said about a place being inhabitable, there is more than on definition of that. One is to move in with a family and live there for twenty years. The other is a place that could be used for a few weeks or months per year without living like Crazy Dave, the Hermit. Or costing an arm and a leg.
The ad says the structure needs a new roof. But if you look at this photo, it is actually just the roof over the garage, which was walled in to make a third bedroom. We do not need that third room, at least not with hurry or necessity. The satellite best satellite photo has that stupid undeletable Millennial placemarker right over the building I want to see, but one can just make out the section covered with a tarp.
We need to see this place. It bugs me we were less than a quarter mile away and turned back. There is a large industrial building nearby, just finishing construction. We have already made plans to return this weekend, but this time, we know a whole new of batch of questions that need answering first. This one is on an acre and a half.
Agt. M dropped by, but I had to cancel the meeting. It is too cold and I again seem to have jet lag from that simple trip to Lakeland. Turns out the $1,000 bicycle we got “for free” requires between $350 and $500 in parts before it is a real electric bike. I knew somebody had stolen the battery, but it is also missing the controller. My hesitation is that if we rig the thing up, should anything go wrong, there will be nobody who can repair it easily.
That’s a matter for the next meeting. Maybe tomorrow, I just don’t necessarily regard plowing more than 20% of the price of a new article into fixing an old one as that much of a bargain. Ditto that when we are not certain all that may be wrong with the equipment.
Trivia. There is a school of thought that Enrico Caruso was the man responsible for making the phonograph (the record player) a success. Without him, it would have been another failed invention. Caruso was the first "million" record seller in 1902. And come on silver, it went up another 40 cents an ounce. Fifty dollars to go and I’m rich.
NIGHT
It won’t work, this crazy idea you got of getting rich without fudging the system. That’s a fact established long before the flood. When I said a million bucks isn’t really that much money anymore back when I was a teen, I was more than right. But I grew up in a world where the million was a magical number. Not only did accounting school and college confirm my theory, I happen to own a million toothpicks.
The Million Myth persists, so I was asked to calculate the return on a half-million recently. Strange, innit, that those who have that kind of money have to hire others to calculate for them. The most persistent kook idea is that annuity interest changes like bond interest. Nope. Annuities are locked, the current 30-year rate is around 2.5% annually, compounded monthly. Don’t bother with APR, my purpose is to show how little you make on it.
The return is a pittance, but the real problem is people with that kind of money “expect” to live better than those who do not. So, let’s take a look. Thirty years, 360 months, and your payout is $1,975.60 of equal monthly withdrawals. That is hardly living large, yet for most people, even a half-million is an unobtainable goal in their lifetime. And those who have it are going to quickly notice they are not that much better off than the welfare case down the road who takes home $20,000 a year in food stamps and entitlement money—and he doesn’t have to bother his head with the headaches of watching his investments dwindle.
As a teen, I pointed out getting rich and going on welfare were equally lucrative goals and the latter was far easier to achieve. True, we live in an area where teen dropouts get pregnant as a career move, but I said it long before that situation. My talk about the equivalency of rich and welfare was radical and highly outrageous for the time. I was punished for using the term “welfare case”. Yet nearly half the “poor” people in American on welfare own their own home. Do you? Who’s smarter now?
So a half-million nets you $450 a week. What is the solution to your woes? Well, you could thrive on that money if you had a free place to live and operated a reasonably priced vehicle, the two big money-chompers of American society. The trick is to do a Ben Franklin and live within your means, If you do so, you will have a better lifestyle than people with a condo in Cutler Ridge even if you live in a trailer court in Hollywood. And not only that, you will live well, which is a better deal than surviving in peasant-mode. You tell ‘em what I mean, Theresa.
The party was expecting I’d “calculate” them a better return. Wrong, and there is another almost spooky aspect to the situation. It is the skill sets necessary to be rich or be on welfare. Most people do not have what it takes to be rich and neither do I. But I’m one individual who can grasps both the difference and similarity of both extremes and thus, I have more ready cash than most rich kids. It was not JZ that came up on the spur of the moment for that trip to Winter Haven y’day.
And for me, this is whole concept nothing new. Let me explain something else. When I was a kid, I had a paper route and worked for my money. The other five children were given a “free” allowance so they would be “equal” to me. But the differences were already stark. Despite an identical income, I always rode a bike, had musical instruments, went to the movies every Saturday, and best of all, I hung out on the other side of the tracks. So by the time I was eight or nine, I didn’t even think the same way as poor people any longer.
That’s what I mean by skill set. Right now, if I had to, I could stand on the street corner with a guitar and handily make $50 a day. I don’t because I consider it demeaning—but if it came to that I would not hesitate for a moment to get out on the curb. Does my philosophy work? Well, I’ve been trying to answer that same question since the last day I worked back in 1981, because unlike welfare bums, I have never been a burden on the system. Right now, I’m going to make another cup of coffee and think about it some more.
Could it be maybe, like poor people love to tell their kids, that I am “rich in other ways?”
ADDENDUM
Ha, I mentioned that I learned to play the Can Can polka on the bass. What’s so funny that I laugh? Well, you see, this morning I noticed that the notes could be grouped into pairs rather than trying to play the continuous finger-stretching passages so dear to the local guitar teacher’s heart. Their rule is one finger per fret. And you know about me and the brand of rules that dodos obey.
Sadly, I can’t demonstrate in the blog, but can you imagine what I mean if I explain best I can? Factor in that I go out of my way to make something look impossible. What happened this time is I noticed the large number of same-note pairs in the Can Can, a tricky tune to play on stringed instruments. Ah, what if I played the first note with the “correct” finger, but changed fingers for the second note? Then I could “make ready” for the next pair.
And it looks like I am “hopping” around on the notes, like you see violin players do when they pluck. I doubt I invented this but I claim to be the first to do it on a bass in this part of the world. Tell you what, listen to this flute solo and you’ll hear note for note what I’m playing on the bass. You are listening for the parts with two consecutive eighth notes. This melody is full of them.
Last Laugh
‘Merica.
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