Posts Made By: James Brown

With momma!

Hey Ray:

You left off some of the "good" stuff:

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today." T.R. 1906

Unlike some, I can not resist the siren call of commenting when I post. I admire T.R. A lot. And yes, Ray; I learned about him from a history book.

In particular I admire and am grateful for his preservation of the lion's share of our National Forest lands in the face of insurmountable congressional opposition. He practiced heroic in-your-face governance at it's finest. (IMHO)

Trust busting was the necessary thing in T.R.'s place and time. Hence the quote above. I personally don't think that T.R.'s trust busting sentiment has anywhere near the relevance today that it did in 1906.

- Jim -

Wow. Amazing color and detail Oren! I think that is a little gal by the way, And the last thing one would want to be (literally) is her boyfriend.

Jim

This anecdote about Gen. Pershing is probably not true. There is a pretty good discussion here:

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pershing.htm

In addition, if this is a true anecdote, how many of you believe that the 50 men rounded up were actually terrorists? My guess is that these would be a mix of the usual suspects and maybe some bona-fide terrorists. If I am right, the ends do not justify the means.

- Jim -

This is the opposite corner of our porch eve. A matching bat as you might expect.... But this one keeps a pet beetle instead....

- Jim -

My "house" bats are getting friendly. I wonder if we'll be hearing the pitter patter of little wings soon? 8)

- Jim -

Nice try Richard. Your post in its entirety was:

"Just curious Jim. How many members of your family are fighting in Iraq?"

Rich Dodson

If there is no implicit confrontational message in your post, given the context of Jim's post, then I am a monkey's uncle. You will note that James, Jim himself and Jarno drew the same conclusion about the meaning of your post, and we are persons from all over the political spectrum.

Perhaps you don't follow this forum regularly. But surely you have seen this very same question leveled at the president by his political opponents because his daughters are not fighting in Iraq? By the way, I did not know that Jim Babcock had relatives in the military, it has never come up.

Why didn't you ask Jim how many of his family members work at Wal-mart?

- Jim -

p.s.

This shouldn't come as a shock to you Richard, since my posts are all readily available, but I am rarely, and I might add decreasingly confrontational. Ask Russell. I will rise up when I see someone playing semantic games. That is my favorite sport.

- Jim -

Maurice Clark said:

Just saw this on the BBC news.

"There were 37 million people living in poverty in 2004, up 12.7% from the previous year."

Not a particularly encouraging statistic.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4198668.stm

Cheers,

Maurice

Well I guess the annual poverty report isn't "encouraging" but things aren't so bad, if one has the desire to dig a bit deeper than the BBC headline.

For instance, the official poverty threshold jumped from $18,400.00 for a family of four in 2003 to $19,307.00 in 2004. This is a 5% increase, but U.S. inflation over this time period was approximately 0% (Or 2.7% I get different figures from different sources).

http://www.gpec.org/InfoCenter/Topics/Economy/USInflation.html

Also, the real median income remained unchanged over the 2003-2004 time period. ("Real" means adjusted for inflation)

The number of persons in "poverty" as defined by the Census bureau rose from 12.5% in 2003 to 12.7% in 2004. That is a statistically insignificant number, and might be explained by the increased poverty threshold in a time of low inflation.

I reality, the picture painted by the detailed report is that poverty in the U.S. was flat between '03 and '04. Yes, this is not good news.

Still, the BBC headline writer has presented the picture as negatively as possible. this is not surprising. Bad news sells, and what non-U.S. citizen can resist a little gloat at our expense....

- Jim -

p.s. The whole report is here:

http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p60-229.pdf

Maurice:

I will admit that I have been reading about poverty in Oz for the last 15 minutes. You piqued my curiosity.

I don't doubt for a minute that Australia is a wonderful place with an excellent social infrastructure. All developed economies are going to have some poverty though. The question is where do we draw the poverty line. I saw published statistics indicating that 10% to 20% 8O of the entire population of Australia purportedly is living in poverty over some time frame within the last 10 years. Obviously the higher numbers are silly. It all depends on where you draw the line.

I really like the following quote. I think that it is as applicable to the U.S.A. as Oz:

"Of course, many Australian families
struggle to get by on low incomes. That
does not mean they are in poverty. Poverty
has a clear and accepted meaning
to ordinary folk—not being able to afford
the basic necessities of life.
The overstatement of poverty is
largely a result of a basic misrepresentation.
The Henderson Poverty Line
(HPL)—which is the main measurement
of poverty in Australia—is a relative
index based on a fixed share of average
per capita household disposable
income. It is not, and never has been,
linked in any way to the actual cost of
basic necessities."

http://www.ipa.org.au/files/review51-2%20From%20the%20Exec%20Dirc.pdf

Jim

Well for my family it's a yes and no answer. My wife and I still commute with cars. But her minivan was traded 6 months ago for a sensible Honda CRV and my Pathfinder was traded a year ago for a sensible Subaru. Gas prices (last year) were part of this decision, but not all of it.

We moved a year ago too. The newer home is much more energy efficient than our old home. Both are heated with natural gas, and we saved many hundreds of dollars last winter in fuel costs. Also the newer home has all-natural "landscaping" (high prairie and rocks) while the old home had big blue grass lawns from the 60's. We use 1000's of gallons less water now which saves plenty of treatment energy.

The semi-rural location of our newer home makes mass transit or biking to work not feasible. So we've done some, but not a lot for the net energy balance.

I would not be willing to move into an urban apartment under any circumstance, so I will continue to use plenty of fossil fuel. Guilt free by the way, since I am (of course) a Bush-loving selfish right-wing neo-con pig.

- Jim -