More on Detroit

    One of my first trips to Detroit was in 1986.  I was staying at the Pontchartrain Hotel, a hotel popular with American League baseball teams.  On this occasion I happened to be walking through the lobby when I noticed a group of young men huddled around an older man who seemed to be doing all the talking.  I immediately recognized him.  It was Johnny Pesky, the Red Sox icon I used to watch playing third base for the Sox back in the 50s.
    As I exited the hotel I couldn't help noticing a man standing outside leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette.  It was Don Baylor, a fine outfielder and one of the few black men on the team.  It struck me then that all the players inside listening to Pesky were white.  The Red Sox were the last major league team to integrate.  I guess integrating on the field didn't necessarily mean everywhere else.
    My wife and I lived in Rochester Hills, an up-scale neighborhood around 25 miles north of downtown Detroit.  It was all white except for one black family.  I got to know the dad who was a linesman for Big Ten football and a jazz lover.  I remember he was grateful when I shared a new recording of Gene Harris with him.
    I mention this as another example of the racial divide in Detroit.  The city's northern limit was 8 Mile Road.  Everywhere north was almost exclusively white. But cross 8 Mile Road and you were in a foreign country.  We never got off I-75 until we reached downtown.  Even back then Detroit was dying.  Whites had long ago left the squalor behind, and blacks who could afford it were now doing the same.  What they left were the unmistakable signs of dire poverty and drug infestation, empty hulls of abandoned buildings, boarded up homes, piled up trash, and block after block of weeds and ashes where human habitation was just a memory.
    Like so many others, my wife and I left Detroit.  And never went back.

Memories of Detroit

            I'm a diehard baseball fan.  Because my job had me travel to all parts of the country, I was fortunate enough over the years to watch major league baseball games in 22 different ballparks.  My favorite, of course, was Fenway Park, home of my team, the Red Sox.  But the best park for watching a game was Tiger Stadium in Detroit.  For the price of a grandstand seat and a $5 tip, I could move to an empty seat in the front row of the upper deck between home and third.  You couldn't get any closer to the action anywhere in the country.  When the game was over, I could walk to my car in the lot outside the gate, drive onto I-75 just around the corner, and be back in my living room chair in 45 minutes.  Great parking, great seats, great entertainment, easy drive home.  For a baseball fan it doesn't get any better than that.

            From 1989 to 2003 I lived in the Detroit suburbs around 25 miles from downtown. I liked Detroit for the many things it had to offer.  My wife and I enjoyed the great restaurants in Greek Town,  took in an occasional Red Wings hockey game at Joe Lois Arena, attended the annual International Auto Show, and saw musicals like Les Miserables and Mamma Mia in the theater district.  Detroit also had a fine art museum, an annual classic car parade down Woodward Avenue, and, toward the end of our stay, several new casinos (which we did not patronize).  In spite of all these advantages, the signs of Detroit's imminent demise were already there.
            The mayor of Detroit back then was Coleman Young, perhaps the most corrupt big city mayor    of all time.  He planted the seeds for Detroit's destruction with his cronyism, his union payoffs, his fat contracts with city employees, and all the rest. 
            Symbolic of the attitude of the people who lived within the city limits was Devil's Night.  On Halloween, a hundred of fires were set all over the city, mostly in abandoned houses.  Crowds gathered around these blazing bonfires, confident that no fire trucks would come.  Arsonists cheered at the destruction of their neighborhoods.  By the time we left Michigan, the only thing living among burned-out shells for entire blocks was overgrown grass.
            Detroit is now officially bankrupt, all but wiping out public pensions and bond-holder assets.  Once the country's fourth largest city and a show piece of industrial America, Detroit is ready for the bulldozer, both literally and figuratively. 
            I will always have fond memories of my Red Sox coming to town with Jim Rice, Carl Yastrzemski, and Roger Clemens battling the Tigers in that old ballpark.  How sad it is that my memories are all that remain of what once was a vibrant, industrious city with so much to offer.

 

Freedom from Regulations

            The Libertarian side of me resents a government that insists on telling me what I can and can't do.  When I owned a motorcycle I didn't wear a helmet on short hops where local traffic didn't pose any threats.  I  wore a helmet  on long trips because I felt it was the safe thing to do, not because the government told me I had to.  I based my decision on my own risk analysis, to use a fashionable term.   I feel much the same about seat belts today.  If I want to ride around without one, I should not feel threatened by "Click It or Ticket" laws.  I might be stupid for not wearing a seat belt, but at least it would be my stupid decision.  It's a matter of freedom.  I want to be the one to decide what's good for me, not Mayor Bloomberg or Michelle Obama.

            One of the biggest problems with expansive government is its penchant for regulating every aspect of our lives.  Just the other day I read that magicians must now carry written contingency plans for protecting their rabbits in case of a natural or man-made disaster.  If there's a ranking for the most ridiculous regulation ever devised by government, this one has to be right up there.
            The worst part of government regulations is that they are issued most often without any consideration for the costs they impose.  Ask any small business owner how much time and money is spent on filling out paperwork required by various federal, state, and local agencies.  Such costs are hard to measure, but they are real.
            Speaking of real costs, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) estimates that measurable costs of new regulations issued in 2012 amounted to $23.5 billion.  Of course, that doesn't include the costs of on-going regulations issued in prior years.  For example, EPA regulations issued in the last four years alone total almost $40 billion.   Rules in the pipeline to control ozone emissions, if  not blocked by Congress, are projected to cost $90 billion annually and eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs.  Future auto fuel economy standards will cost $10.8 billion annually, and car buyers will have to fork over an average of $1,800 a vehicle to pay for mandated add-ons. 
            Most maddening for me is the fact that there is no regulatory accountability or transparency.  The Administration ignores the law that requires it to issue regulatory plans and to describe rules that are likely to have a significant economic impact.  Worse, it never gives the public the opportunity to comment on regulations that hinder job creation and innovation and undermine our fundamental freedoms. 
            With every rule and regulation our personal liberty is diminished.  This is not what our Founders envisioned for us in the Land of the Free.           

Bugs, Anyone?

My wife has 34 cookbooks on a shelf in our kitchen.  That may not be enough, because she doesn't have one on edible insects, like David George Gordon's Eat a Bug Cookbook.  Yuck!  Why should she?

Well, according to what I've read, eating insects is becoming increasingly popular all over the world.  It seems that insects are full of protein, but much lower in fat, calories, and cholesterol.  Moreover, cultivation of insects takes little space, feed, or water, and produces no methane.  Compare that to raising cattle which requires lots of space and enormous quantities of feed and water.  Besides, bovine flatulence, according to some (although I don't know how you measure it), produces more greenhouse gases than all the cars on the road.

So get ready for the future: bread made from crickets instead of whole wheat flour; a diet of locusts, grasshoppers and mantises; plates of barbecued larvae and grilled tarantulas already favored in several Asian and South American countries.

Exotic foods are already here.  Gene Rurka, a chef from New Jersey, offers a menu of teriyaki cockroaches, baked worms, banana canapés topped with maggot pupae, and baked scorpion atop a slice of cucumber topped with herbed cream cheese.

Let's face it. Exploding populations around the world someday will not be able to get their protein from steaks and hamburgers.  Maybe Michelle Obama is right.  It's time for us to turn to healthier foods.  Bugs, anyone?

Obama's Energy Policies

            The majority of Americans, it seems to me, don't care about what's going on in Washington.  The IRS scandal does not affect them directly, the Benghazi scandal is old news, the Justice department's violation of the First Amendment affects somebody else, and the NSA is looking for terrorists, not them.  The suits lie, make promises they can't keep, and only care about votes.  Isn't that the way it's always been inside the Beltway?  So why should we care?

            The indifferent and the apathetic go on with their daily  lives oblivious to how incompetent, abusive, and corrupt government affects them.  They will continue in blissful ignorance until the day the cost of their medical insurance goes through the roof or their electricity bills skyrocket.  By then it will be too late.
            The Obamacare train wreck is so complex, not even the people who wrote it can understand it, much less make it work.  So let's take a the much simpler example of President Obama's energy policy.  This one is not hard to understand.
            Let's be clear about the president's lofty goals:  he wants to control the climate, to protect the ozone, and to prevent the oceans from rising.  It matters little that earth's natural cycles have something to say about it.  He has the solution: clean energy.  Windmills and solar panels are better than coal and oil, and electric cars don't pollute the atmosphere like gasoline-powered automobiles. 
            But there's a problem here.  The president bases his entire energy agenda on global warming and climate change caused by human beings.  Both are lies.  Global warming is a hoax refuted by the facts:  there hasn't been global warming in 100 years, and there is no chance that the low-lying areas around the world will be inundated as the result of ice melt.  Another ice age is more likely.
            The big culprit according to Obama is carbon dioxide that threatens the protective ozone layer.  Since CO2 emissions are caused by fossil fuels, especially coal, we must eliminate them.  This is an even bigger lie than global warming.  The fact is that CO2 is absolutely essential to life.  Without CO2 being converted to oxygen, life on earth would not be possible.  In addition, the claim that man is producing too much CO2 is nonsense:  volcanic eruptions  around the world produce massive amounts of CO2, far more than man ever could.  Yet, the world's atmosphere is not affected by them.
            Unfortunately, facts don't count when Obama has an agenda.  He is sending his "enviro-socialists"  in the EPA and the departments of Energy and Interior to prevent oil exploration on public lands, to find fault with fracking, and, most egregiously, to kill the coal industry.  EPA regulations already prevent construction of new coal-fired plants, and its newest regulations will in the end close all coal plants and put an end to coal mining. 
            The president doesn't care that coal is the source of nearly half of the electrical energy Americans consume.  He doesn't care that his policies will result in tens of thousands of workers losing their jobs (500,00 by 2030 according to the Heritage Foundation) and that coal-dependent states like West Virginia will be impoverished.  He surely doesn't care that all Americans will see their electric bill skyrocket. After all, he predicted as much during his presidential campaign.
            It is high time we realize that in waging war on fossil fuels Obama is waging war on us.

           

The New King George

             As I reread the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, I was struck by the similarities between so many of Thomas Jefferson's enumerated "oppressions" of King George's tyranny and President Obama's growing list of unconstitutional mandates and executive orders.  Let's just take a few examples.  For the sake of brevity, I have shortened quotes from the Declaration of Independence.

            "He [King George] has refused his Assent to Laws..."  Remember how  Obama overrode Arizona's laws to control illegal aliens?

            "He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws..."  Obamacare is just one example of the Federal Government usurping the states' prerogatives.

            "He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly..."  Obama cannot dissolve the House, but he has bypassed it repeatedly with legislation of his own.  His EPA mandates, for example, skirt Congressional decisions on "Cap and Trade."

            "He has obstructed the Administration of Justice..."  What better example do we have than his invoking executive privilege to prevent facts from coming out on "Fast and Furious."

Obama's MO is to obstruct, delay, and stonewall until every scandal goes away.

            "He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone..."  Instead of "Judges" substitute Eric Holder's and his sycophantic compliance with Obama's wishes,  no matter how extra-legal.

            "He has erected a multitude of new Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people..."  How many tsars has Obama created?  Does the IRS harass his political enemies?

            "He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution..."  The most recent example is Obama's support of the UN's arms control treaty to supersede the 2nd Amendment.

            "For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us..."  In this day and age that's not necessary.  All you need are drones overhead and the NSA checking phone records and reading our emails.  Does the Associated Press and James Rosen ring a bell?

            "By imposing Taxes on us without our consent."  Consider Obamacare's mandate on obligatory  health insurance, which the Supreme Court defined as a tax.

            "For...altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments."   Obama's stated purpose is to fundamentally alter the nature of our government.  He is well on his way to making the United States a Socialist country.

            Let's note that as part of the Declaration's conclusion, it says, "A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant,  is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." 

Jefferson was referring to King George, of course, but how much of King George would  Jefferson see in Barack Obama if the author of the Declaration of Independence were alive today?