Views from Eagle Peak

What President is this? Shut down medical marijuana dispensaries?

Jack — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 22:10:34 +0000

Who is this man in the White House who has replaced the guy I voted for?! Was Obama secretly replaced by a right-wing fundamentalist? Shut down medical marijuana dispensaries? Adverse IRS rulings on deductibility of expenses. ATF prohibitions on gun purchases by medical marijuana recipients. I have sent a letter to the White House today urging the President to come to his senses. If, like me, you smoked marijuana years ago, you KNOW it poses a minute percentage of detrimental effects compared to the very legal drugs of alcohol and tobacco. Not only that, but it also provides well-documented beneficial effects for those suffering from a variety of medical conditions. I hope you too will contact the White House to reverse these outrageous actions more remiscent of the socalled war on drugs by Republican administrations.

Clueless Cain; Brainless Bank of America

Jack — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:48:39 +0000

Cain thinks the Wall Street protestors are jealous or envious of the successful bankers, et al of Wall Street. He says the latter create the jobs and those protestors should go out and get one. Hahahaha! No, the protestors are not envious, they are angry–just like the Tea Partiers on the other side of the political spectrum. The Street, the bankers and big business have created jobs, just not many lately. The banks are loath to lend money to consumers or to business to get the economy humming, because they are “uncertain” about the future. When the wacky wizards of Wall Street were busy creating and selling derivatives, they weren’t creating jobs, they were just skimming money on transaction costs. When the bankers were giving large loans to home buyers who could walk or be rolled into a bank, sign their names or an X on an application with little or no credit worthiness, those uncertain bankers had no doubts about the rosy future (at least in the short run). Meanwhile, they were all bailed out by the government. We don’t have a purely capitalist economy as Cain should well know, we have a mixed economy with the Federal (and state/local) governments involved in pumping dollars into it. Those protestors are angry at Wall Street and the bankers for continuing to profit (not the plebian lower-level employees but the high level analysts and the executives) handsomely regardless of which direction the economy or the value of shares in their companies goes–while failing to either share the wealth or create jobs.

Bank of America will impose a five dollar charge per month for using your own money, that customers have deposited with them. Of course, BoA is making much less interest on the funds people deposit, so they feel justified in charging customers to make up for it. Well, I for one have voted with my pocket book, closing my account with them three days ago. Banks pushed debit cards so hard for the last ten years that they have now grown to be the preferred means of payment over credit cards. To be sure, it forces those consumers who otherwise might incur overly large credit card debt to live within their means. But why should you or I be responsible for the profitability of BoA? We can choose to pay cash, switch to another bank, or use credit. For years, I have chose credit. I pay the balance off every month and get cash back. Of course now that will be more difficult now that Chase, my MasterCard company has converted my card to this very complex reward system–but that is a topic for another post.

Class Warfare?

Jack — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 21:36:44 +0000

The GOP says Obama’s plan to impose a minimum tax on those earning more than a $million each year constitutes “class warfare.” To which I respond, “and your point?” Or in other words, if so, so what? Let’s get real here, the reason this is so abhorrent a position to those of the Republican persuasion in Congress is that it is those very same million plus earners on whom those elected officials rely for the very large campaign donations required to get elected. Those contributors expect something in return. Not to mention that those elected officials themselves, with possibly a few exceptions, belong to that same “class” they object to Obama “warring” against. Is it really only personal wealth that creates jobs? I doubt it. That was another claim; that Obama’s proposal will stagnate job creation. Oh sure, the GOP wants everyone to believe it is the small (unincorporated) business that creates all the jobs. Oh really? Prove it! Meanwhile, I am with Warren Buffet–make those million and billionaires pay their fair share. It’s not class warfare, it’s class fairness!

Windows 7–Not So Bad After All

Jack — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:16:57 +0000

Ok, enough time has elapsed since replacing the external hard drive. No more freezes, hangs or other mishaps with Windows Explorer. Strange that the drive, which generally did work, would evidently cause so much of a problem. So I will have to eat my words of condemnation; Windows 7 does NOT suck.

Remembering 9/11

Jack — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 20:04:39 +0000

I was in my cubicle, in the Fairfax County Government Center, 30 miles from the Pentagon. I was hard at work on the FY 2003 budget for my agency, the Division of Solid Waste, Collection and Recycling. Then came news of the first attack. Only nobody knew it was an attack when the first plane hit. Only after the second came, did that become clear. The director was out of the office so somebody turned on the TV in his office (there for viewing Board of Supervisor meetings, etc., not for soaps). I wandered in and out, while others spent much time in there. Then came news of the other hijacked plane, heading for a destination unknown, but in the DC area. I went back to work; the budget had a deadline and it was my job. Then came the blast at the Pentagon. Right where my wife of nearly 21 years would have been working had she got the promotion she bitterly resented not getting a few years before. She worked with many of the people in the section that took the brunt of the damage. The man who got the job she missed, died in the attack. Karma is unfathomable. It seemed at the time, when she lost out on the job, that she got screwed. In the end, it turns out she had other tasks to accomplish–a mission still to unfold. We credit our Buddhist practice for the result.

For a brief time the events of 9/11 forged a more compassionate, a more cooperative spirit among Americans. The honeymoon lasted only a short while. Given a broad mandate to retaliate and to impose draconian security measures in an attempt to protect the nation, George W. Bush made the lasting impressions on our country. We endure ever more intrusive inspections in order to be permitted to fly. Thousands of patriotic young men and women quickly volunteered for military service. Many of them have died and others continue to die in a ten-year old war in Afghanistan–initiated to locate and kill Osama Bin Laden, which wound up taking almost all of those years. It didn’t help that resources were diverted to also fight in Iraq, a handy way to take attention away from the fact that Bin Laden could not be found. If enemy number 1 could not be dealt with, at least we could rid the world of another evil man. Then there was the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist. All of which also cost many American lives and many American dollars–which, along with across the board tax cuts (especially for the ultra-wealthy), have major responsibility for our present financial straits. So, while Bin Laden succeeded in killing several thousand people in those attacks 10 years ago, his and George W’s legacy has had a much more serious, long-lasting and continuing legacy than either could have imagined at the time.

More than ever, we all need to remember the sacrifices of those who died on 9/11 and as a result of the aftermath. More than that, we need to rekindle the compassion and cooperation that briefly enveloped America. While I may (rightly, I believe) point fingers at Bush, that won’t make life in America any better for me or anyone else. What is needed is tolerance and understanding. Tolerance of those whose religion, whose culture, whose values differ from our own. Understanding that the security of the nation lies not in more onerous invasions of privacy but in more openness to alternatives in religion and politics. For myself, praying every day for the peace and security of the land, as Nichiren Daishonin admonished 750 years ago, in a letter to the regent of Japan.

Capital One–Cute Commercials; No Conscience

Jack — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 17:02:40 +0000

I try not to pry into my “kids’” business. After all, they are in their 20s. So I really didn’t know what a porking he was taking from Capital One. Turns out for a low-limit card, which he doesn’t really use, they have been charging him a $5.99 monthly fee for payment protection. If you are not using the card, you don’t need payment protection. A relatively inexpensive lesson for most, but not so cheap for someone currently unemployed. Hey, they are running a profit-making venture, so why should they avoid milking everybody for all they can pay, if they don’t know any better. He will know better now, of course, since I told him. Still, the point of pushing a product like this on a low-limit card to a low-income person seems rather conscienceless to me. So maybe their commercials are cute; their business practices aren’t.

Windows 7 and Spam Free WordPress

Jack — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:02:31 +0000

Maybe I was hasty; maybe it was the old Seagate FreeAgent external hard drive causing the problems with hangups or freezes on Windows 7. Just replaced it yesterday, so it is too soon to tell. If I have no further problems over the next several days, I will revise my rant on Win 7.

No question about Spam Free WordPress–it works! Zero spam comments since installing it. If you are blogging on WordPress, get it and use it.

Norway’s Massacre

Jack — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 21:01:13 +0000

It’s been a month now, and a memorial service held. Too late to comment much, except to echo the comments of the Prime Minister from a month ago–and I paraphrase, keep Norway open. In other words, no draconian security measures to be imposed. No restrictions on the borders to keep out Muslims, as the right-wing killer wished in his opposition to multiculturalsim. It is uncomfortable, disconcerting and difficult to deal with those who are “different.” Different in the way they dress, speak, worship, etc. But keeping them out–out of sight and out of mind won’t make any country, any locale, a safer or better place. I had intended to contrast the Scandinavian approach to the American approach, but will save that for another time.

Preliminary Verdict: Windows 7 Sucks

Jack — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:15:58 +0000

At least once a day, every day, Windows Explorer locks up. Not responding, “Windows is checking for a solution.” Of course it finds none. Click to close the task? Doesn’t work. Go to Task Manager to end the task–nope, won’t do it; it just hangs. The only solution, forced shutdown and reboot. Meanwhile, I keep puttering away. I will get to some other, more interesting stuff. Oh, and I forgot to mention–coding bloat. With 8 gigs of memory and no apps running, the PC is using as much as 20% of the memory. Fortunately the price of chips and hardware keeps going down; it has too, with each successive edition of Windows the amount of memory required to run the operating system grows and grows. Sloppy and incompetent! How does Microsoft maintain market share? Why hasn’t Linux or at least Apple taken over? Probably because most people don’t have either the inclination or the time to become geeks.

Upcoming Posts

Jack — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:30:29 +0000

A brief intermission while I set up a new computer. Upon my return, I will belatedly comment on the recent Norway bombing, the decline in rural population in America and will finally get to SGI President Daisaku Ikeda’s 2011 Peace Proposal. Later, an update on the progress (proceeding ponderously slowly) toward a dream home in New Mexico.