Monthly Archives: October 2019

Small Increase

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That’s what an oblivious press has termed Chile’s attempted 4% increase in the cost of a ride on the subway. Chile, especially its capital, Santiago, has been in an uproar over that increase for the last several days, and the protests have expanded to address “social/economic inequality” in general.

The turmoil was triggered by a small increase in metro fairs in the capital….

Here are some round numbers, used for illustration, that compare a poor man and a rich man, one needing to use the subway to get to work or to get to market to buy other necessities and the other on a strictly occasional basis (he has personal transportation).  Subway use absorbs 40% of the poor man’s income, 4% of the rich man’s. Whom do you suppose that 4% increase hits the hardest? For whom is the increase just another coin in his pocket?

There may be good reasons for the fare increase, but not understanding the situation isn’t one of them.  (I’m ignoring, too, the relative impacts of a free market economy vs a centrally directed one, and separately, who should be making the fare decisions.)

And not too tangentially (excuse the opening ad)….

Winning

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My new mystery novel, and my first foray into fiction is out and available here in Kindle format.

Peter Hunt says he’s the best Private Investigator in the area. He is one of the most financially secure PIs in the area—his manager, Rachel Wellington-Smythe—Rick—has seen to that.

Then Sally Dickerson walked into his business, and his life, one morning. She was a senior executive at Watermark, Inc, which her father owned and was the President of.  Now he was laid up in the hospital, the victim of a hit-and-run accident. Only Sally didn’t think it was an accident, she didn’t think the police were investigating with enough enthusiasm to suit her, and she wanted Hunt to get on the matter. Now.

Sally had learned her aggressiveness from her father, who’d taught her that winning was All That Mattered, because he wanted her equipped to take care of herself and his company after he was gone.

The cost of All That Mattered would become apparent to Sally, to her father, and to Hunt.

‘Twas a Famous Victory

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The UAW is touting its strike resolution with GM as a victory and a model to be used against [sic] Ford and Fiat-Chrysler. A letter writer to The Wall Street Journal has pointed out some other aspects of the union’s most famous victory.

For every GM employee at an assembly plant, there are at least 30 working at suppliers providing parts, materials, and services to those plants.
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During the strike almost all the tier suppliers were forced to shut down or seriously curtail their operations, meaning layoffs (union and nonunion alike). Many of those employees must seek other employment….
…
the [suppliers’] employees who do go back to their jobs will simply go back to work with accrued lost wages and benefits incurred during the layoffs. Those suppliers will also have to go out, recruit and train new employees to replace those who left and don’t return, adding to their costs.

But, hey, UAW management got theirs.

The Doings of a Star Chamber

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Here are some, from the House Intelligence Committee’s canonical Star Chamber, chaired by Congressman and Intell Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D, CA):

a single, printed transcript of every interview…of its impeachment inquiry. Only members of the three committees…allowed to view that printout, and only in the presence of a Democratic staffer

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R, NY) has the right of this one:

Ms Stefanik—an elected member of Congress who sits on the Intelligence Committee—will be babysat while reading by an unelected employee of the Democrats.
“It’s outrageous, and it’s an abuse of power,” Ms Stefanik said in an interview. “Every constituent across this country deserves to have their members have access to all the facts.”

Here’re more of Schiff’s Star Chamber rules:

  • witnesses locked behind secure doors
  • shield the whistleblower who prompted this “impeachment” proceeding from cross- much less direct examination
  • public, press, representatives of his selection barred from secret, though unclassified, hearings
  • carefully scripted and executed leaks and accusations
  • Progressive-Democratic staff supervision of Republican members
  • bar Republicans from calling opposing witnesses
  • withhold official documents including nearly two dozen letters from the committee…that had not been uploaded to the committee repository
  • Republicans not allowed to know the questions Schiff is asking
  • refuse to allow White House counsel in the room to hear the accusations against the president

This is what we can look forward to under a Progressive-Democratic Party reign.

Gasoline Prices and California

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California has the highest pump-price of gasoline in the nation now.  That raises some related questions in my pea brain:

What’s the per centage of all-electric vehicles in California’s government car and truck fleet (no one is producing serious electric/hybrid heavy equipment)?

What’s the per centage of hybrid vehicles in their fleet?

I suspect there are more than zero in each category: what’s the carbon footprint of the energy used to charge those vehicles’ batteries?