Thank You All For Being Polite

I just have to mention something. While this blog is moderated by me, I have only refused to post less than ten comments in 7 years. I will not post comments that use cuss words and have never received one like that. I will not post names of suspects unless it has been previously reported, I have had a couple like that. I will not allow comments that include racial slurs and have never received one. Don't you find that refreshing, I know I do.

A reader of this site can read any of the comments and not feel insulted. Even the comments that disagreed with me or questioned my reasons for writing were respectful. I guess jerks don't read this blog. My applause to the people who do. What a polite and intelligent bunch of people you are. Thank you for that.

If you would like to see how most sites are, read their comment sections, including those for newspapers. Horrible, rude and racist.

Thoughts at the end of a day

The Telegraph - Humans could download brains on to a computer and live forever. This Cambridge neuroscientist is claiming that we will be able to download our brains into computers. Now this is just one more moron that believes in transhumanism; but, it really does speak to how they view us. As nothing more than biological machines.

Discovery - Newly Created Fungus Is Part Human, Part Yeast. Did we really need to create a living thing, yeast, using human genes?

Forbes - Kentucky Fried Pensions. The article goes into how the same states that failed to make payments into their pension funds as required are the same ones that are utilizing crooked people to invest the pensions in "alternative investments".

Happy Memorial Day - Bits and Pieces

Medium.com - Self-Driving Trucks Are Going to Hit Us Like a Human-Driven Truck. Here is the first paragraph from the article.

"Late last year, I took a road trip with my partner from our home in New Orleans, Louisiana to Orlando, Florida and as we drove by town after town, we got to talking about the potential effects self-driving vehicle technology would have not only on truckers themselves, but on all the local economies dependent on trucker salaries. Once one starts wondering about this kind of one-two punch to America’s gut, one sees the prospects aren’t pretty."

I know I have been talking about this technology for years; but, it is on our roads now and people don't want to believe it is here or that it will be prevalent over the next few years. Truck Drivers account for 3.5 million jobs with 5.7 million involved in the industry. It is the number one job in 29 states including California and New York. What happens when those jobs go away or are replaced by people making minimum wage?

Yahoo - Reuters - Global banks admit guilt in forex probe, fined nearly $6 billion. How is it that these banks continue to admit to stealing from us; but, nobody goes to jail?

Yahoo - AP - Oregon to test pay-per-mile idea as replacement for gas tax. This program starts July 1st of this year.

Late Night Television

David Letterman has retired and people have made a big deal about it. The truth is that while Letterman has done well, he did not bring anything new to late night television. The person responsible for late night talk shows was Steve Allen, the original host of the Tonight Show and that was back in the 1950s. Letterman's place in history will be as the last standard bearer of true late night television.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s television stations used to sign off for the night, they were not broadcasting 24/7. The Tonight Show proved that people, working people, would stay up past 11:30. Late night television when there was any was stations showing old movies, no on air personalities. Steve Allen changed that and then Johnny Carson made it an institution.

Carson was successful because he tailored his show to the fact that it was late night. Others tried to compete by duplicating daytime television and failed miserably. If there was another person who understood the time it was Tom Snyder. Tom understood that there was a limited audience at that time of night and that the tone had to reflect the time of day.

In the late 70s I moved to Massachusetts and there was a show on called "Up All Night". They had one camera, a cheap set and whoever they could get as guests. It was real local television. It is also where I first saw Jay Leno. He was a local comedian at the time and just getting a foothold in the business. He was a guest on the show. You don't see that anymore, local shows at night that would give local talent a chance to be seen.

Back in the day there was no cable television and no internet. When the stations shut down for the night the only media you could get was radio. Now we have all these media outlets and that has killed local programming at night. What a shame.

CIM Group and Water - Still Thinking of You

I was worried that I had not written about the CIM Group in awhile and didn't want them to think that I had forgotten them, I haven't. In fact, I have been thinking and reading about them a lot lately. I will promise to write a lengthy post about them in the future and their link to Ares Management, Apollo Global, Elliot Broidy, Alfred J.R. Villalobos (recently deceased via suicide) and Federico Buenrostro Jr. Really, I haven't forgotten about you all. In the meantime I will just make this little post.

Back in 2009 a man named J. Ari Swiller (a friend and advisor to then Mayor Villaraigosa) and CIM Group partnered up and bought some land that the City's Department of Water and Power wanted to buy. The land was in Kern county and was supposedly wanted by DWP to build a solar plant. Anyways, it came out in the news and CIM sold the property to another city that paid about the same price as CIM paid. CIM kept the water rights though. It is assumed that the water writes are worth even more than the land rights were so they have already doubled their money on the deal.

In the scheme of things that deal was highly suspicious and as CIM is funded by public pensions, I question the conflict of interests; but, it is only one piece in a large tapestry so I rarely think of it, until I read an couple of things this week.

Alliance Resource Consulting - Job Announcement - General Manager, Antelope Valley Water Storage.

Sorry, I got distracted. I will return to the water thing. You know, how do two friends from Israel get Visas and permanent status in the United States at the same time. I mean Walter O'Brien (the guy the show Scorpion is based on with a purported IQ of 197) had to get a an E11 visa. An E11 is for people with unusual skills of value to this country. How did Mr. Kuba and Mr. Shemesh get into this country in the first place? What are the rules for being given billions of dollars in public pension funds to companies owned by foreigners? Never mind, they must be citizens by now and that means that they had to apply for their visas and citizenship under a determined criteria. I bet that is public record. Do you have to report if you were in a foreign nations military to be allowed in this country or become a citizen?

That is right, we were talking about water. CIM bought land in the Antelope Valley and apparently the write to provide water storage for the area to the tune of 500,000 acres of underground water storage. The job description makes it clear that they will charge everytime an organization stores water with them, they overlook the water and another fee for when you ask for your water back. This is what happened after energy deregulation, it is how Enron made it's money, by controlling the supply chain. A market is being made for water that closely resembles other recent innovations in market creation. There is a name for that; but, I will remember and write about it later. Peace.

A Meaning of Currency

Fox - AP - Latest self-driving Google car heading to public streets. In the article it says that one of Googles cars paused while driving because it saw chairs sitting next to one another. What would be the safest type of road markings (lines and cross walks) for these cars to navigate around? Do you think European style crosswalks (like you see on the cover of Abbey Road) or old style American single line crosswalks would be more effective? What about to protect bicyclists? Wouldn't they need road markings to protect them? Maybe that is why we are seeing these things done in the United States already.

Huffington Post - Raven-Symoné Suggests Rosa Parks, Instead Of Harriet Tubman, Should Be On The $20 Bill. They claim that there is a discussion regarding whether or not a woman should be on the face of the $20 bill and some survey suggested Harriet Tubman (a famous black women who helped hide escaping slaves headed to the north). Ms Raven-Symone disagrees (she is also a black woman), and thinks Rosa Parks should be on the $20. While it is sad that there are no females on any of our bills (Lady Liberty was on many coins over the years), it sort of misses the point of currency design in the United States. We put Presidents on our paper currency or at least Benjamin Franklin who signed the Declaration of Independence. I can think of many famous men who deserve to be on our currency, how about Thomas Edison or Henry Ford or Albert Einstein (hey if any non representative of the government person deserves his own bill he would have to be it).

The images on the front of our money represent not just famous people; but, people who represented our government not society at large. A few people on a talk shows opinion is no more important than anyone else's and a survey doesn't do it. If we are going to let anyone be on our currency then lets vote on each bill. If we are not going to vote on it then we need a guideline and we have one, what guideline would you choose? Heck, I could understand President Obama on the $20 more than Harriet Tubman. He was the first black president after all, doesn't that count for something? What about putting Franklin D Roosevelt on it, is he not deserving, he did have more years in as President than anyone else in history and he has never had his own bill. In the end the question is not whether or not we should have a black person or a woman on our currency, the question is how should we decide what goes on our currency.

Now personally, I don't really care what we put on our currency; but, there should be some rules if we all have to use it or at least one person deciding. It is real expensive to replace currency. Then again the whole argument is pointless as we are headed to all electronic currencies. I should also point out that governments have put their leaders on coins forever, it was to show you who owned you. That is why the Queen of England is on the currency of so many nations that still owe allegiance to England. In the bible Jesus was asked about a government tax, he told his questioners to take out a coin and asked him who's representation was on the coin. The person told Jesus that it was Caesar's and Jesus said to give to Caesar what was Caesars. Even though we use Federal Reserve Notes, in the end it belongs to "The United States of America".

Cashless Societies, Welfare Costs and Public Pensions

The Telegraph - How to end boom and bust: make cash illegal . A proposed new law in Denmark would basically make it impossible to pay in cash and require you to go all electronic with the government being the bank. Now I could talk about how I am for or against this law; but, in the end it doesn't really matter. The world is going cashless. The question is who will keep the tally, who will keep count of how much money you have? Do you trust JP Morgan Chase, they have been caught manipulating markets and stealing your money and even after having paid over $29 Billion in fines are still not done paying fines. Do you trust the Federal Reserve or do you want it to be government?

Business Cheat Sheet - How Much Do Welfare Programs Cost the U.S.? More Than You Ever Thought. Just so you know the number is $158 Billion. Sounds like a lot until you consider that we have spent TRILLIONS fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. An aircraft carrier costs about $13 Billion to build, the planes it carries cost almost as much if not more, the personnel and expenses are also in the hundreds of millions a year. About 75% of the families on welfare have people working; but, the minimum wage is so low that they need government subsidies to survive. Maybe we should be concerned more about taking care of our own people and spend less time killing people in foreign countries, just a thought.

Yahoo - Reuters - San Bernardino bankruptcy plan: bondholders hammered while pensions kept whole. The City of San Bernardino filed for bankruptcy protection. The article claims that the city wants to pay it's pension debt more than it's bondholders. This is insincere. The City of San Bernardino attempted to avoid their pension obligations and Calpers investigated finding that the city was hiding the money that would have allowed them to make their mandatory contributions. Imagine a company telling the Federal Government that they are not going to pay the employees Social Security money that has already been removed from your paycheck in private industry. Same thing.