What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been

Greetings from Boise!

Some of my Facebook friends have heard parts of this already. However, I want to tie it up all neat with one little bow. Let’s start with a bunch of mixed metaphors. Atlas may have held the world on his shoulders, but when it came to the Wilsons, Atlas Van Lines assuredly dropped the ball, fumbling on their own five yard line. It was so bad that if they were in the NBA they would have been called for traveling. Do you know how bad you have to suck to get called for traveling in the NBA? Which is sort of ironic considering that traveling in a sense is what they are supposed to do, but in this case they kept tripping over their own feet. A journey of two thousand miles begins with a single step, except for these guys when it began by falling on their face.

Let’s start with Day 1, loading the truck on Friday, July 26. We have sold the house and must vacate by Sunday midnight, July 28. Atlas Van Lines is there and moving our stuff out of the house and into their truck with a delivery date to our new house in Boise of between Thursday Aug 1 and Monday Aug 5. We have a contract for all this for which we agree to pay the princely sum of almost $11,000.

With the truck half or possibly 2/3 loaded, the driver is taking inventory of remaining stuff in the basement. He moves a plastic container, which is sitting on top of another plastic container, both of which have probably not been moved in ten years. To his horror, he finds some dead bug bodies and one little brown bug crawling across the top of the bottom container.

“Bed Bugs!”

Trust him, he’s seen hundreds of them and there is no doubt. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this Mr. Wilson, but you have bed bugs and we can’t move your stuff. We are prohibited by law from transporting your infestation. We are going to have to unload the truck and disinfect it.”

WTF?

I can go on and on about the several discussions we had, but they boil down to one common theme.

Me: “How do you know they are bed bugs? Those things don’t live in basements; they need human blood to live and there are no indications of them in any of the living areas.”

HIM: “Trust me. I’ve seen them hundreds of times. You have Bed Bugs!”

ME: “But look at this picture on the internet of a Carpet Beetle. It looks a little bit like a bed bug and a lot like the bug you found, but likes basements because the stuff it likes to eat is there: wood, paper, wool. Let’s wait for the exterminator you said you are going to use on your truck. He will be here in a 3 hours and if they are bed bugs, then you can unload and disinfect.”

Him: “No.”

Atlas unloaded all the stuff they had spent much of the day loading. They just took it off the truck and piled it in our house wherever was the easiest space, mostly the garage at my urging. I was hoping they would be coming back soon and this would make the loading that much quicker.Then they were gone. At 6 pm the exterminator showed up and said, “You don’t have bed bugs, you have a few carpet beetles that probably came in through the basement window earlier this summer.”

It’s 6:00 pm on Friday night, and all of our stuff is still in our house and not on its way to Boise. Worse, we have to be out of the house by midnight on Sunday, because, you know, it’s not our house anymore. We sold it to a nice lady and her two kids. Did I mention that Atlas does not load or unload trucks on weekends?

Cheryl did her combo Mommy, Wife, Queen Bitch Thing (I love that one!) and tore into some Atlas people. Finally, some corporate dude in some far off out of state office promised that a truck would show up Saturday or Sunday with a crew to load it. Great. Except that instead of beginning our drive to Boise on Saturday, we will have to stick around in a hotel in Columbus for another day or two.

So the same driver shows up Sunday morning, but with a different crew. He apologized, of course, and we were gracious about it. He told Cheryl the original crew was too embarrassed to come back. They loaded the truck and off they went. But not before Cheryl asked when they were going to arrive in Boise, to which she was informed that this truck was not going to Idaho. They were going to their Columbus warehouse where they would unload the entire truck and a different truck would come along, reload our stuff and head for Boise.

That sounded like a lot of unnecessary work to us, not to mention increasing the possibility of breakage from the extra handling of loading, unloading, loading, unloading, loading and unloading again. Oh well, not our business, except it’s our stuff that could be broken.

When will that second truck get to Boise, we asked? Don’t know; we haven’t found you a truck or driver yet, they said. So you know where this is going right?  We were finally told we wouldn’t get our stuff until the very last day on the contract, Monday, Aug 5. Had to expect that, I guess, given all the loading, unloading, loading, unloading, loading and unloading again.

We gave the kid a hug, who was headed for Michigan and then on to Baltimore to stay with his cousin, and pulled out of town headed west on Monday morning, July 29. Cheryl drove her mustang and I had the truck pulling the trailer and two motorcycles, and the cat in a rabbit cage in the back seat, not to mention all the stuff in the back of my truck and crammed onto the trailer that Atlas would not take. Stuff like aerosol cans, guns, ammo, propane tanks, our clothes, two fireproof safes with our personal papers, and so on. I was seriously overloaded in the truck and trailer. Still, we took it easy and with Cheryl doing a very credible job as wing man, we took four rather uneventful days to get here, arriving on Thursday evening, Aug 1.

Cheryl called Atlas to verify when they would arrive. Guess what? They hadn’t even left Columbus yet, so it would be like Wednesday, Aug 7. Remember that thing about a contract and they promised to deliver by Monday? That doesn’t seem to matter to them.  Cheryl called them on Monday, the 5^th, and guess what again? Still hadn’t left Columbus yet, so now delivery is set for Friday, Aug 7.

I won’t get into the whole thing about our extra expenses of trying to live without any furniture and most of our belongings, and trying to do everything on the cheap, which caused us some serious discomfort and hardship, because we have no confidence whatsoever that Atlas will ever pay us a dime for it. Several less than satisfactory telephone conversations and a look at the Atlas claim form in which they clearly say they ain’t promisin' nothin’ and may not pay if they don't feel like it, made it quite clear it is going to be fight to get anything out of them.  

The truck did arrive on Friday and the driver and crew were very nice and efficient. Perhaps a little too efficient. If you didn’t watch them carefully stuff would just get put in the place easiest for them to carry it to. Cheryl had every box labeled according to the room it went to, and each room was labeled with little signs, including a brief list of the stuff that was to go into each. We are still finding boxes labeled “Bedroom 1” or “Kitchen” stuck in a corner of the garage or next to the shed on the side of the house. One of the crew, probably carrying the patio heater, broke a brace holding a curtain for the patio; just left the rod and curtain lying there on the ground which we didn’t discover until after they were gone. Probably the same guy must have hit is head or a chair on the dining room hanging lamp, knocking the cover from the ceiling. Again, found that one after they were gone, too. I hope it was his head and it hurt.

And, stuff is broken. We are still assessing that. Cheryl’s grandmother’s china teapot is one example. It was wrapped in double bubble wrap in a box clearly labeled “fragile" and the box was just as clearly partially crushed. Lots of little things like that.  Just the thing you would expect with all that loading, unloading, loading, unloading, loading and unloading again. One of the little clauses in the contract says that they aren’t responsible for breakage of things in boxes if they didn’t pack the things into the boxes. We, that is to say Cheryl, packed our stuff. The cost to have them do it is uber prohibitive.

The claim we make to Atlas should be very interesting. For example, just because they didn’t pack the boxes, doesn’t mean they can crush one and break stuff in it. Add to that the breakage of the curtain and hanging light. And on top of that is our extra expenses directly related to them being 5 days late. I suspect that some of you are asking why we didn't just deduct what we think we are owed from the amount we pay them to do the move. Too bad it doesn't work that way. To get our stuff off the truck here in Boise we had to pay the driver right then and there. If we don't pay, he doesn't unload? No tickee, no laundry. So they have our money and now we are going to have to work to get some of it back. What they don’t understand is we know how this works, and we know what buttons to push and levers to pull.

Most importantly, Atlas seems to have forgotten that simple rule of business. Treat one customer right and he will tell three people. Treat him wrong and he will tell 20. Wait, that was the old rule. In the case of our modern telecommunication centric society, he can and will tell 200 or maybe even 200,000.

You have been told.

Last Ohio Rant

I didn’t want to do it, but I am forced to talk about certain recent events. Notably, I feel compelled to visit the IRS scandal and Obamacare. I know what you’re thinking: “Oh Lord, can’t we just get away from this stuff for a while?” Sorry. No.

I’ll try to make this short.

On the issue of Obamacare, the recent announcement by the Executive branch that they will delay enforcement of the Employee Mandate for at least a year certainly raised a lot of eyebrows, including mine.  The idea that the President can on his own authority decide not to enforce a specific law is quite astounding. I know he has done similar things before: selectively ignoring enforcement of immigration laws, failing to prosecute favored groups (think Black Panther voter intimidation or John Corzine). Yet, the Employee Mandate is an issue on a whole new level above anything else so far.

And then it just gets juicier.

The House of Representatives very soon after introduced and passed two bills. One would delay the Employer Mandate by one year according to law, not Presidential whim. The other would delay the Individual Mandate for the same time.  This is entirely logical in that the Individual Mandate requires the Employer Mandate and vice versa for the whole Obamacare scheme to have any chance of working. It is also a matter of fairness. Why should businesses and corporations get off the hook but individuals do not?

So what was Obama’s immediate reaction? He said he would veto both bills if they passed the Senate.

It boggles. Seriously, it does.

This President would veto a bill extending the time for implementation of the Employer Mandate that would allow him to do legally what he is willing to do illegally. After all, he is bound by the Constitution and his oath of office to enforce all laws, and failure to do so, by definition, is not legal. By what possible calculus does he conclude that he would rather delay the mandate illegally than legally? From what I have seen, there are no hidden strings, no poison pills in the two bills. They simply delay the implementation of the two mandates for the time the President already announced.

The only possible explanation is that this is pure politics, nothing else. There is no care for the good of the nation; no thought to the well being of the people; no sense of responsibility to govern according to the rule of law and the framework of the Constitution; no weighing of what is right and wrong. This is simply partisan and political.

If you were looking for an example of just how morally and ethically corrupt this administration is, you need look no further.

Speaking of corruptness, how about that IRS, heh?

So a lot of people are convinced that the IRS was doing the President’s bidding in singling out Tea Party and conservative groups and politicians for denial of tax exempt status or for subjection to special and improper audits. Recent Congressional hearings have made it clear that this was not the work of a few “rogue agents” in Cincinnati. Rather, we know now that Lois Lerner was deeply involved, as was William Wilkins, IRS Special Counsel and one of the Presidents two political appointees to the IRS. The big question is how high up did the decision making go, possibly all the way to the Oval Office?

I know a lot of people are hoping that it does lead right to the President, because that creates a scandal even bigger than Watergate and probably with the same final result. Obama is so disliked by so many that anything that takes him down is something to be hoped for.

I too hope it leads high up the political food chain but I sincerely hope that it is not shown to be the result of direction by the President or his close advisers. That may sound odd given my dislike of Obama and the liberal/progressive crowd, and I do pretty much loathe them. I do not want to see the President impeached or forced to resign from all this. I want this to be political, and it would be pretty good if a bunch of Dems got their panties all twisted up, but I don't want to see the whole Monty. In short, I want it political as opposed to a Federal agency out of control, but not so high it takes the President all the way down.

Let me explain.

If Obama goes, who are we left with? Biden. I shudder at the thought.

Consider also that if this is not at the direction of political operatives, and if this is just a federal agency out of control, what does that mean?  As we see one IRS official after another stonewall, express ignorance, lie and/or plead the fifth, and none of them so far held accountable for any of it, it means that the bureaucracy has grown so huge and so independent and so insulated that it can no longer be controlled by its political masters. It means that we are officially now working for the IRS and not the other way around.

We can fix a corrupt politician. Ultimately our votes put them out of office and out of our misery. But you can’t vote out the IRS, or the EPA, or the NLRB. Not directly. All you can do is vote for politicians who say they will control the bureaucrats. If the politicians have completely lost control, then we as a constitutional republic are doomed.

We need to reign in this bureaucratic monster somehow. How?

This is my last rant from Columbus, Ohio. My next one will come to you from Boise, Idaho, where the lovely Miss Cheryl and I are moving the week of July 29. Perhaps the new clime will improve my outlook if not my ranting ability.

To the Ball!

I recently read about how our American society can be described as being composed of three basic groups of people. Each of us falls into one of these groups. We are a SHEEP, or a WOLF, or a SHEEPDOG.

The Wolf is all those who for one reason or another, prey on the rest of us. They could be psychotics, like the guy who killed all those kids in Newtown. Or, they could be Jihadists who believe that all they have to do is kill enough of the unbelievers to make us believe like them. Or, they could be the common bad guys who take from others; the burglars, drug dealers, pimps, rapists and the like. The common thread is Sheep are prey for Wolves.

The Sheepdog, on the other hand, is neither taken from or a taker; it is a protector. The Sheepdog protects the Sheep from the Wolves. Most Firemen and Police are Sheepdogs, though some are Wolves. The Army, Navy and Marines, at least at the enlisted level, are mostly sheepdogs. Any mother who stands in harm’s way to protect her children is a Sheepdog. You get the idea.

I buy into this concept. But, lately, I have been having a different take on it.

Forget about the Sheep, Wolf and Sheepdog. Let’s think instead about Sardines and their Predators. Imagine a giant bait ball of sardines in the ocean surrounded by sailfish, barracuda, porpoise, tuna and marlin.

The bait ball is thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of fish, clustered together, swimming as close as they can to each other, each fish hugging the fish next to him, constantly shifting directions to desperately evade the predators slashing through their ranks.

A sailfish darts through the edges of the group and grabs a sardine. Oh well, there are still thousands of us left who haven’t been eaten. No matter how many predators show up, and even though some of the school will be eaten, the ball will go on.

The bait ball is marvelously effective at protecting the species, but is not so good at keeping the individual safe. The guys on the outside of the ball sacrifice their all for the good of those who happen to be on the inside. All you have to do to greatly increase your chances of survival is be on the inside of the bait ball whenever the predators show up.

So after thinking about this for a while, I have concluded that our society is not based on the Sheep analogy at all. We are, in fact, a society of Sardines. We would rather huddle together, like sardines in a ball, and let a few sacrifice themselves for our continued living benefit, than step out as individuals and defend ourselves. If you step out and leave the ball behind, what happens? You get eaten for sure.

At least that is what all those on the inside of the ball tell us. Guess who in our society is on the inside of the ball?

You guessed it: Politicians.

And Rich People.  Yes.

And Famous people.  And Movie Stars.

And Liberal Progressives.

Wait!  All Liberal Progressives?

Well, no. Just those that are in Government, or are Rich, or Famous, or are Movie Stars, or sycophantic hangers on to those others, and like that.

Every Day Common, not Rich, Famous or Governmental Progressives don’t automatically get a place in the middle of the ball.

Are there actually any real Every Day Common, not Rich, Famous or Governmental Progressives?

Well, yes, sadly, there are. They are most shocked to find out that their children were on the outside of the bait ball and were killed by a lunatic in their school. Or, that the real cool marathon that they wanted to run or attend also turned out to be on the outside of the ball and could be targeted by a bomber. Or, they were on an airplane going somewhere to do something and ended being flown into a building. 

Outside. Of. The. Ball.

Please, don’t think of this as a criticism of the individuals or a comment on their lives or life styles. It is not that at all.

They were all really good fish, I’m sure, loving of the rest of the school and devoted to all their fellow fish. They tried to give back to the bait ball, and were very generous and kind to their neighbors. Model sardines, in all respects.

We are hearing a lot of sardines on the inside of the ball saying things like "We need more gun control!"Apparently the thinking goes that if we all give up our guns the predators won’t have any either and would not be able to eat us so easily! If we make nice with the jihadists, they will make nice back and won’t eat us. Those of us who find ourselves on the outside of the ball are willing to try anything that sounds like it might work, no matter how stupid and desperate it is. After all, we are on the outside and don't have many prospects of getting on the inside.

Why is it that those of us on the outside of the ball keep listening to those who are on the inside, telling us to keep together, stay the course, as a school we will come through?

But come to think of it, once I’m on the inside of the ball, then maybe it is a good idea to have lots of others on the outside. Isn’t it in my best interest, being on the inside, to make sure there are always those on the outside, as a buffer between me and the big bad shark?

Furthermore, it might not be such a good idea to make it harder for the predators to eat those on the outside of the ball. If the outside is not easy to eat, maybe they will find a way to get to the inside instead? 

Changing metaphors briefly, think about the antelope waking up in the morning to find the Cheetah stalking the herd. From me the Antelope’s perspective, all I have to do is outrun the slowest Antelope in the herd to avoid getting eaten by the Cheetah. Another way to look at it is I don’t have to be the fastest Antelope; I just have to make sure I’m not the slowest. Take it one more step and realize that if I can somehow contrive to make sure there are always slower antelope around, my survival chances are much improved.

Back to Sardines, all I have to do is make sure there are plenty of suckers willing to swim on the outside of the ball.

Now how do I do that?

 

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

I wanted to reprise something I did back in the 90’s. I lived in California at the time. In a short period of time in California, like a year, several children were killed by playing with their parent’s guns. I don’t remember how many but it was no more that 2 to 4. I believe all the cases involved one child accidentally shooting another.  Of course it was a great tragedy. Many people in the goofy state of Cally, including the LA Times and other BS rags, predictably had a completely illogical and asinine reaction.

Their reaction was to introduce a bill to make it a felony whenever a child gained access to an adult's gun and hurt or killed himself or another child, even if it was an accident. In other words, and they specifically intended this, they wanted to send Mom or Dad or both to jail if their child found the family gun and some child was shot with it. Their reasoning was that the owners of the gun had a duty to keep the weapon secured in such a way that a child could not ever access it. The real intent was that just owning the gun was prima fascia evidence of guilt if a child was shot with it.

The editors of the LA Times published an editorial supporting the bill and urging everyone to get behind it. The basic argument, the same one they always use, was to challenge the readers to think of the children. If we save just one child’s life it’s worth it. Who knows that life we save may one day invent the cure for all cancer. Blah Blah, Blather, Blather, Blah. It was, and still is so much bullshit, as you will see.

Anyway, I did a little snooping around on the Center for Disease Control internet site. The internet was in its infancy then, and the CDC site was little more than a list of text files available as ftp downloads; no pictures, no fancy graphics, no charts. Still, they had scads of data on causes of death.  I worked through the data and then fired off a letter to the LA Times. In it I argued that the law they supported was a really bad idea for a number of reasons. One reason was they wanted to criminalize the parents for something the child did. Daddy goes to jail and Mommy is left to raise the child in a fatherless household. The child grows up feeling guilty not only for killing his friend but for making Daddy go away. I suggested there could be no better recipe for disaster for the child, not to mention the parents, and ultimately all the rest of us in society. 

It was easy to conclude that the bills supporters were either stupid or were such rabid anti-gun nuts they were willing to utterly destroy whole families for their cause.

I went further in the letter to basically call the editors a bunch of hypocrites, and that the arguments in favor of the bill were specious and disingenuous. If, I asked, they were really just concerned about children’s lives and safety, and that sending Mom or Dad to jail was the best way to prevent kids deaths by guns, then we had better start building a lot more jails. I trotted out statistics on children’s accidental deaths, ones that were preventable in most cases by exerting the maximum possible parental care.  I pointed out motor vehicle accidents hugely outnumbered guns as a cause of death for kids.  Drowning also caused more deaths than guns. We should, I suggested, investigate each of these deaths and if they were preventable by the parents in any way, then Mom or Dad should go to jail for failing to prevent the accident. Certainly if this was going to be an effective savior of lives regarding guns, it would work even better to save even more children from accidental death, right?

The letter was never published by the LA Times. Imagine that.

The recent hyperventilating and running around with hair on fire prompted me to revisit causes of death. Again, I visited the CDC site, which is not much easier to use now than it was then. And, again I come away with the inescapable conclusion that we are surrounded by bunch of screaming hypocrites. Let’s have some fun with numbers, shall we. And, we shall also be mindful of Benjamin Disraeli’s observation that: “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Here are some causes of death for kids ages 1-14 from 1999 to 2010, or the last 10 years. I have eliminated diseases, which are the major cause of death. Also not shown are specific causes with low occurrence rates for this age group, like falls and suicide. 

Cause of Death Ages 1-14	Deaths	Rate Per 100K Population
Motor vehicle accidents	24,076	3.5
Accidental drowning	8,974	1.3
Assault (homicide) not by firearms	6,018	0.9
Accidental exposure to smoke, fire	5,155	0.8
Accidental poisoning of all kinds	1,139	0.2
Assault (homicide) by firearm	2,855	0.4
Accidental discharge of firearms	789	0.1
Discharge of firearms, unknown intent	134	0.0
All Firearms- not  suicide	3,778	0.6

The way to read the data above is to understand that for every one hundred thousand kids ages 1 through 14, 3.5 of them were killed in a motor vehicle accident. You can see that only 0.6 died from gun discharges of all types, including accidents and murder. Another way to think about it is to understand that more than twice as many kids drowned as were killed by guns, 8,974 versus 3,778. 23% more children were accidentally poisoned to death than were accidentally shot (not murdered), 1,139 versus 923. More than twice as many were murdered by a means other than a firearm as were murdered with firearms, 6,018 versus 2,855.

Where is the outrage about swimming pools and unsupervised bathing? Or about the many unsupervised children who got into substances that poisoned them to death?

How about motor vehicles? Should we be outraged? One can reasonably argue that the motor vehicle is so necessary to our economy, way of life, and the needs of a modern society, that we must accept that some deaths will occur. Arguably, these losses are acceptable given the benefits we all enjoy as part of an active motor vehicle society. However, if we accept this argument, doesn’t that pretty much invalidate the one that starts with “if we can save just one life”?

Let’s not stop at children. Below are some selected statistics for the entire US population from 1999 to 2010. Again, I left out diseases and some causes that were miniscule in comparison to others.

So what do we find? Again, motor vehicle accidents kill nearly 15 people out of every 100,000. Non transportation related deaths are a very broad category that includes accidents of all kinds, including falls, poisonings, and, yes, gun accidents, but does not include motor vehicle accidents. Non transportation accidents make up 34.7 deaths out of 100,000; or looked at another way by taking firearms accidents out of  this category, 34.3 deaths are by accidents not including motor vehicles or guns.

Of those 34.3 non transportation/non gun deaths, you can see that poisoning kills 9 out of 100,000, while falls kill a bit more than 8. Indeed, you are almost 4 times more likely to die from falling or being poisoned than being killed by a gun (17.3 per 100K versus 4.4).

More people kill themselves by suicide without the use of firearms (5.4) than kill other people with firearms (4.0). Of course, more kill themselves with firearms (208,923 or 5.9 per 100K) as kill others with firearms (141,165 or 4.0 per 100K) as well. On the face of it, that means people are more dangerous to themselves with a gun than they are to the rest of us.

Cause of Death All Ares	Deaths	Rate Per 100K Population
Nontransport accidents	1,226,909	34.7
Motor vehicle accidents	519,177	14.7
Accidental poisoning of all kinds	316,834	9.0
Falls	293,041	8.3
Suicide by discharge of firearms	208,923	5.9
Suicide not including firearms	190,708	5.4
Assault (homicide) not by firearms	74,561	2.1
Assault (homicide) by firearms	141,165	4.0
Accidental discharge of firearms	8,842	0.3
Discharge of firearms, unkown intent	3,035	0.1
All Firearm deaths but not  suicide	153,042	4.4

The point here is that if 0.6 deaths by firearms of children age 14 and under, and indeed 4.4 deaths out of 100,000 for the entire population regardless of age, are enough for us to seriously consider throwing out the 2^nd Amendment to the Constitution, sending parents to jail, and making decent law abiding citizens defenseless in the face of criminals and others, then what more dramatic, draconian, and drastic steps must we take to deflate Poisonings, Falls, and the like?

After all, if we can save just one life…