National Alabama Corporation

For the first time since the inception of the Barton Rail Car fiasco I am excited to be in the proximity of what is and will be a world class manufacturing facility reminiscent of the early days of Detroit. The combination of TVA, the Tennessee River. The rich unsung heritage of Barton/Cherokee can do nothing but prosper if the seeds already planted are allowed to sprout and grow. Heritage that includes the Natchez Trace Parkway, (I believe to be the worlds longest National Park), the home of Levi and George Colbert who signed for the forcible relocation of the Chickasaw, renamed themselves' Tharp then moved to Franklin county. The site of the Battle of Barton where SD Lee turned back the best and brightest of the Union Army in the great war of Northern Aggression. So many to recount.

Anyone with a brain can see that National Alabama Corporation, like TVA or any government held entity need not post 30% profits for the shareholders. It need not pay megamillions for a CEO. It only need bid lower than all the companies which have these overhead expenses. A no brainer for sure.

But one thing that is obvious to me is that the National Alabama plant at Barton needs insurance.

Fire and Casualty insurance, Health insurance for the employees separate from Peehip and the State insurance programs, retirement programs for the 1500 employees who are going to have to go to work making those expensive steel beauties in Barton. It is the nature of the State of Alabama to self insure its holdings. However, this particular building. The largest of its kind in the world. (Well the largest in Cherokee anyway) contains too many of the state eggs to keep in our own basket. The purpose of Insurance is to Spread the Risk. We need to spread some of it into another state. It only makes sense.

Not just any insurance company.

I recommend the Lizard.

That green guy who has his little three fingered hand prints all over the inside of my TV screen. I am sure that Allstate, State Farm, Progressive and all the others will whine and throw a fit but I believe that Bronner is smart enough to write a proposal that steers the needs for our insurance plan at Barton into the capable little green hands. I am sure that RSA can see the need for budgeting this expense. If we had good republicans at the helm in our State Senate offices I am sure they would see the need as well. Even if it has to be paid out of severance tax or in lieu of money. (Alas we work with what we have.)

Oh, and that lizard, he works for GEICO, a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, administered by Warren Buffett, who also co-incidentally owns and administers the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway - A five billion dollar rail operation. What am I suggesting here? A little three green fingered back scratching.

Noooo. Of course not!

I am just saying that a half billion dollar rail car plant is to big an investment to trust to the fates and finances of the State of Alabama.

Nothing more.

But if it happens that the well being of the Barton Rail Car facility should happen to overlap with the well being of Warren Buffett.. Well ... so be it.

Thanks to National Steel Car

Ask and ye shall receive.

Last night little man snuggled up in my lap in front of the Christmas tree and to my surprise, instead of reciting the usual list of things "I want for Christmas!" He put both hands on my cheeks and said "What do you want for Christmas?" A little surprised I said "I'd like a good little boy who goes to bed on time and does as he is told and doesn't write on the walls or jump on the bed." He puckered his face up and after a few thoughtful seconds, out of the corner of his eye, said

"Couldn't you rather have a book or a movie?"

Just goes to show you that sometimes the things we want are just out of reach.

But sometimes not.

Monday I asked Santa to make National Steel Car go away.

Friday I read that an agreement has been reached that would allow our Barton National Alabama Corporation to bid on a level playing field with other rail car manufacturers. This agreement, as I understand it puts the teachers retirement system in the manufacturing business in a really big way. And once again David Bronner is in a position to come out of a pool of poo smelling like a Bellingrath gardens gardenia.

Such is the problem of a prophet. He can never know if he just guessed right or somehow had a bit of influence in the overall otherworldly decision. No matter, National Alabama Corporation is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the RSA. It is now up to us, the people of Alabama and the Teachers Retirement System to get the prices low and sell some rail cars. At a loss if we have to but we have to get the bids and build a reputation as the first quality product available.

Griffin Wheel, a manufacturer of Rail Car Wheels announced a $45million investment in Jefferson County to reopen the Bessemer plant yesterday. This move in anticipation of the settlement between National Steel Car and National Alabama Corporation. Proof positive that the industry expects great things from the Barton facility.

So maybe, just maybe, I can get the spoiled kids in Cherokee to settle down and make some money for the Alabama tax base. Or maybe I will just get a movie. Who knows?


Merry Christmas

J

So Sue Me (or Another Christmas Gift Suggestion)

I notice that I get three hits from Hamilton Ontario every morning. I am sure they are disappointed in as much as I almost never mention National Steal Car. I can see the rail car plant from my house. Heck you can see it from outer space. I thought in reverence to my faithful CANADIAN readers I might send a little note.

I said to a group yesterday that anyone from Cherokee Alabama who didn't vote for me in the past election was a complete moron. Simply because I felt that if I spent the entire four years getting the problem at National Steal Car corrected it would be well worth my time and energy for the people of district six. Where there is one Restaurant now there would be ten. Where there is one hardware store now there would be ten. And where there are 800 houses now there would be 8000. Of course moron might be a little harsh if you own the only restaurant or the only hardware store. Maybe your little pond is quite comfortable.

Two of my heroes, Bob Martin consultant and politician on the republican side and David Bronner Chief of my retirement fund almost always disagree on state politics and finances but they agree on one thing. The $625 Million dollars spent on National Steal Car was a waste. But they are both wrong when they say that no one could anticipate the economy. They are both wrong when they blame the lack of sales at National Steal Car on the National Economic Scene.

The problem at .. .. well, the plant.. (you are tired of my little Steal Car joke) is not the national or local economy. Rail Cars are being built in North America, they are being built and sold in north (and south) America but for some reason they can't be built in Barton Alabama. I think I know why. The problem gentle reader, is the posse of illegal immigrants running the place.

I was unfortunate enough to share a space in said restaurant a few weeks ago with one of the blowhards and when we finished our most uncomfortable meal of the month, I walked to the car, asked my little wife "Do your ears hurt?" she said "Honey my whole head hurts!" An hour of listening to a loudmouth windbag spout engineering nonsense {inaccurate engineering nonsense all the worse} at 65 decibels while his troop of lackeys only had a few seconds to say "Yes sir" to as he refilled his enormous windbags to continue his nonstop diatribe. An abusive tirade that could have been summarized in one sentence -"I am richer and smarter than you- -you backwoods hillbilly!" It was like sitting with a crying baby and a fully loaded diaper.

The problem is not the economy, the problem is the Canadian profit margin. Just double down, take back the plant, fire everybody who makes over a thousand dollars a week and build rail cars at a lower price.

It doesn't matter if we lose money. The lack of return on our investment is going to give us (RSA) losses anyway. If we lose money on the rail cars produced $45,000 a day in local and state tax revenues should cover the state's losses quite nicely. One person said to me "but that would be stealing their plans" - so - Tit for Tat - I say.. take em and make em sue us .. Or take the plans out in the back yard and burn them. I believe our design technology department at the Junior College can CAD up some stinkin rail car plans for cryin out loud.

I understand that the Retirement system has already repossessed the building and is waiting for some miracle. The miracle might be the strategy the RSA used when the Jersey Crime bosses tried to squeeze Bronner out of the state investment in an office building in New York.

Double down and throw the bums out.

Another Christmas Gift Suggestion

When my grandfather died one of the things that fell into my possession was a box 2”X2” by 12” that came from Isom's general store. The box started life as a shipping container for thin black ties that everyone owned in the sixties for “Sunday go to meetin” day and the all to often fifties funeral.

It was a box of silver dollars, filled all the way down except for a bit of white tissue at the end. About 100 silver dollars in the blue flowered box would be my guess but I don't recall counting them.

Although I am sure I did count them and count them a thousand thousand times. They were left over from the fifties when his gin help expected to be paid on Friday. They expected to be paid in silver. By 1966 when Pop died silver was worth $1.25 per ounce and the coins contained an ounce of silver. So my inheritance was a couple hundred dollars at best.

By 2000 silver had rode the big bull and after going to $40 at one point in the Hunt Brothers years had settled to $6 each for a common date silver dollar.

Currently the cost of silver is about $14 and for all practical purposes a common date silver dollar is worth what one ounce of silver is worth.

As a closet numismatist it has long interested me that in 1966 - 15,000 silver dollars would buy you a nice three bedroom brick house. And in 2010 the same 15,000 silver dollars will buy you a nice three bedroom brick house in the same neighborhood.

The value of the silver – Or the value of a similar new house hasn't changed much in real sweat value

What has changed, is that in 1966 the average income was $6900.

Today it is considerably more in dollars but considerably less in real buying power.

About 2 ½ years income for a home vs 3 ¾ years work for the same home in 2010.

The 2.5 to 3.75 ratio is almost exactly the amount of devaluation of the dollar experienced since 1972.

The current selling of dollars to buy T-bills has done the same devaluation again.

An additional devaluation of the dollar means an additional devaluation of your labor and skills.

Additional years to work and earn that house.

I recommend as a Christmas Gift for your loved ones the Morgan Silver Dollar - CC - mint if you can manage it. Buy perfect Grade MS 60 or better.

The ultimate MADE IN USA gift for Christmas.

{Buy a couple for yourself and put them in your bug out bag.}

Legislative Pay Raise

Many in Alabama are looking hard at the newly elected Republican Legislature and asking the question.

What's new?

My republican brothers made a lot of stink in the last election about our Democratic Alabama Legislature giving themselves a 62% pay raise, then tacking on an automatic COLA without taking it to a vote of the people. Even worse, the "Salary" of our legislators is $10 a day and the rest is "expenses" which essentially causes the three million dollars of your tax money they give themselves each year to be tax free.

Frankly, during the campaign I didn't make too much of the pay raise issue because if I had gotten elected - Due to State Board rulings and the Alabama Supreme court decision - I would have been forced to give up my day job.

I just might have needed the money.

Most, however, of your elected officials are not required by the Supreme Court to give up their day jobs.

And most don't need the money.

The TEA party, who had a great influence on the election, are waiting to see legislation creating jobs, cutting taxes, eliminating illegal immigration, and harsher rules about the "culture of corruption" in Montgomery. They would even like to see them take a stab at improving our schools and maybe allowing a prayer time or state help with homeschooling efforts.

December 8th is going to see a special session on ethics. Unfortunately you probably won't see any discussion of repealing the pay raise or taking it to a vote of the people. PAC to PAC transfers will be discussed but no real progress or changes made. The $250 per day per lobbyist that can be spent on your legislators will not be affected. You will not hear a word about "400" money, discretionary spending funds for legislators, severance tax accounts, or TVA in lieu of funds. -

This my friend is where the bodies are buried.


We will know by Christmas if the new boss is different from the old boss.

Christmas Time

I'd like to make a recommendation.

It will require some stickers and name tags for your gifts this Holiday Season.

Most of my readers (both in fact) are bored to tears about economics. Most of my readers (both in fact) would rather shoot themselves in the foot or snip off any other bit that sticks out of the trunk instead of looking at another demand curve.

However, they need to know that there is an economic fact that economist just won't share.

That fact is the "Science of Economics" is about "why".

I often tell my students, my children, and anyone else who will listen, that of the four dubbleyous; who, what, when, and why, the first three are facts. The last one is always an opinion.

So economics is not a fact, it is not a hard science about facts.

It is an opinion.

I often ponder why people who refuse the idea of a Creator and an unseen Heaven can believe in something as nefarious as "The Economy".

I don't.

Believe, in the economy that is.

I have spouted on my opinion about the Debt, our unending obligation that makes it so that every baby born on this Christmas day will carry home a present of over $40,000 of debt that they earned by just being born American.

I have mentioned my opinion about the deficit, our unwillingness to agree to spend less than we make. Both personally and as a State and Nation.

I may even have opined regarding the balance of trade. The ghost of Christmas past that any trained economist will deny as irrelevant since dollars spend always equals dollars bought.

I have even tread on the quicksand of making obtuse reference to the source of, and ultimately where the responsibility lies for all these "problems". The quicksand of which, when our the nations which host our debt grow tired of our greed, will make Ross Perot's giant sucking sound like a fart in a whirlwind compared to China selling a trillion dollars for euros at ten to one.

If you would like to do something semi-productive this Christmas then follow my lead.

When you shop look for a box of stickers with an American flag. Then print up some labels that say " This present brought to you by the workers of America"

(With an American made pencil please)

And by golly if it ain't made in the USA then don't give it.

It is, in fact, that simple.

This Christmas, if every person who gave a Christmas present gave a gift that said "Made in the USA" on it we could pay an extra twenty billion dollars on our balance of trade. If everyone did this every Christmas we wouldn't need to have fathers and mothers half the world away fighting and dying for sand and hot air.

Do it, just try to do it.

P.S.

"Care to guess what it says on the back of my Flag stickers?"

The Balance of Trade.

Money is funny, but nothing to laugh about.
Every country it seems has one. A currency that is. In fact it seems to be the defining characteristic of the thing we call country. In the early days of our on US of A the story goes that George Washington stole the silver out of the pantry to make the first "Disme" the country ever owned. Fortunately for George someone had the foresight to put Martha on the obverse to appease the woman now reduced to taking her English tea from a China cup.

Unfortunately John Harper choose a bad hair day for the first lady's portraiture. (The chicken on the back was having a bad day too)

So it is, or so it seems, that the concept of money is so common that we don't even think about it. We dive for a dollar lost in the parking lot with the expectation that it is more than a piece of paper but indeed, in the big picture anyway, it is no more than a check from Uncle Sam's checkbook.

This is where the economist seem to lose their way. Stories of bags of hundred dollar bills in Afghanistan and the fourteen truck loads of hundred dollar bills spirited out of Iraq into Syria in the first hours of the second gulf war. These stories lose sight of the fact that they are in fact checks. Checks with check numbers that can be just canceled if we choose to do so.

According to the economists the balance of trade has no meaning. Because these dollars are in fact "checks" they must be cashed at the Federal Reserve Bank. Even though one might take these dollars in Syria and move them to Germany then to France, ultimately they must come back home. Home where they are traded for American Goods.

This theory might be alright if it were not for the funny money economy that drives the US government. If we printed checks that say Redeemable in bushels of wheat, or pork bellies ,or even in socks and jeans, we might have something. But we don't. We have checks that are redeemable in T-Bills. Debt of the US government. Now all this gets esoteric pretty fast. And it should hurt your head. Write a bad check at the X-mart - no problem just drop by and write another check to pick it up.

Do you remember a few years ago when some of the richest nations of the Middle East Decided to buy the US ports? We finally decided it was a bad idea to have the Muslim Nations doing our national security checks but that underscores the problem. Nations who sell us oil, for example end up with an obscene number of our checks. Then they can't always buy what they want with them. Making them less desirable that maybe checks from, say, Russia. (They can apparently buy congressmen but that's another blog). We have the same trouble with Chindia. The sell us whtchacallimits and dollars accumulate in Chindia in absolutely obscene quantities. And they don't buy goods from us. They buy our debt.

You begin to see the issue.

If one day China or India or Abu`Dabu decides that the checks are no good and she says "Hey Russia, what will you give me for these." "I want to buy Euros." - I will sell these useless checks for a disme on the dollar.

What happens then?

What happens then - is just exactly what is happening now.

The US Treasury franicks and pannics and starts buying its own T-Bills with its own bad checks to shore up the market.

The slide has started ..

Six months from now your dollars will be worth-less - And exponentially less as every year passes until your standard of living is a memory.

The only thing you can do to save yourself is what Gandhi implored his people to do when they wanted freedom from the English.

Make it yourself, buy less, and buy local.

Oh and worry.. worry a lot...

The summer of magic fish

In the summer of my seventh year, a hundred, inch long shiny silver minnows fell from the sky, they flopped and gasped for air and soon died. I gathered a few in my hands and carried them to Pallie at the cookstove. "Grandma it's raining fish." Without looking at me or my tiny cargo she forced a sad smile and continued to push at the biscuit dough...

“Sometimes that happens”

Archie got the breast, Pallie got the thigh and I got the leg. This was a system that worked. Worked extremely well unless company came and my chicken leg got to be a little drumette from the wing.

Still there was always food. Not much by todays standards but enough to make sure Pallie was always having to make bigger dresses.. That flap of angel skin below her forearm that sloshed back and forth like milk in a pail as she pushed biscuit dough.

Butter beans were my favorite. I don't like the big silver dollar beans today ..I don't know if I liked them then. But I planted them and I picked them and I liked to see a big pile on my plate. Tomatoes, cabbage, corn. And we had grapes. Some of them were turning now.

The picking would be soon enough but for now they were just in bunches with an occasional purple prize for the youngster small enough to see them from below. The only other interested party being the black and yellow wasps that one at a time were not such a threat but in mass could set the strongest man a'weeping.

That summer the rain fell so straight and cool that you could walk into the dirt road and stand, one arm in the rain and the other foot kicking dust in the unpaved road that overflowed with six inch long black Texas grasshoppers. They were Japanese Ebony black with a blood red band below their wings that flashed like fire in the summer sun. They were so big that when they messed with the occasional automobile on our dirt road they left a goo that might have been unfortunate roadkill but for the telltale green insides.

Pallie said the grasshoppers came in a casket from Texas after the great war when one of the local confederate boys shipped home.-“ When they opened the casket they had eaten every stitch of clothes and crawled out of every hole in his body.” she said in deadpan.

Hogs will eat you too you know, At least they ate uncle john, Celie's husband over at lost John's grocery. Cellie was Pallies sister, so John technically was my great uncle. Cellie's story was that John went to the spring and the Indians got him.. Pallie just snorted “there t'wern't no Indians.. The hogs ate him”..

I think maybe he just ran away.

She also said the racers, black snakes with cool black bodies like fresh asphalt, could take their tails in their mouth and roll after a boy faster than he could run. When they caught 'em they would wrap around them and whip stripes on their legs. I often saw bigger boys who had stripes on their legs so I knew this was true.

We read the Bible at night and with it open in her lap she said “I knew of a boy once who stole a cantaloupe and hid from his grandmother and ate the whole thing. Ate it all at one time.” She closed the bible and turned it in her hands “But he couldn't go squat for three weeks and died in the outhouse”. A little grin slid across her eyes, but she managed to bring the point home with a faraway look of feigned sadness. I never stole another cantaloupe.

Rainbows formed in the east as sunsets in the west painted gold and orange over a dozen shades of green. Nights so dark that I often got out of bed and felt my way to the window to see a tiny red lamp on the radio tower ten miles away to reassure myself that I had not gone blind in the night. In the daytime butterbean hulls dried and curled around bits of leaves from the pecan tree. Ants pushed inside the hulls and carried out a treasure much larger than themselves. On this day a raindrop the size of a silver dollar plopped in the dust at my feet then another and another... Big cold drops from a cloud so high that it didn't’ cast a shadow on the house or fields around. Then the fish. Falling among the curled butterbean hulls like little silver winged angels one here and there. Hundreds of tiny Angels .

The fish fell on a summer day at the exact moment when I realized that I could not remember my fathers face. I squinted hard my memory and tried to remember any detail. The stubble of his face in the afternoon. The smell of his aftershave.. The deep brown of his eyes or the thin hair of his ever widening forehead. I could describe it in words but I could not see it. How many months had it been. I was near panic when I remembered that I had a small picture in the house. I ran inside and pried open the round tin box that held my worldly treasure. As I fingered the two inch square I tried again to remember his face. I could see the picture clearly but I knew the images that I held of him were gone forever. Even today my memory of my dad is not my dad but the face on that two inch photograph. That summer I saw lots of grasshoppers, cantaloupes, lots of hungry hogs, lots of black racers. Although I never saw one with its tail in its mouth. I am sure it was all true.

Forty years later, at the exact moment I was recalling the the picture of my father, those days on that farm, my own seven year old came running into the house as excited as a child on Christmas morning...

“Dad its raining fish”...

I smiled and tried as hard as I could to keep him from seeing me cry.

“Yeah -sometimes that happens”

Forget your wives and daughters, lock up your credit cards!

Well it is that time of year again.

The most revered religious holiday of North America.

That time when we attend our hundred acre temples of worship.

We go on Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday to see if the Mall Gods have left us any "Bargains".

Yes, it is the most revered of all capitalist holidays...

Shopping season.

Thirty one days till Christmas..

Or should I say christmas.
Or maybe just Xmas..
As in X marks the spot like on some Captain Kidd treasure map.

Time to go over that list of people who sent you a Christmas card to make sure you give them one this year. And mark off the deadbeats who left you hanging last year.

Go over that gift list and check it twice.
Make sure you don't leave out one you owe.
Or send one you don't.

As an amateur economist some things just make me go "huh?" Like the fact that most retail stores make all their profit on the two weeks before Christmas. Some chalking up as much in sales in those two weeks as they do in the entire fifty weeks previous.

And all the while the elected leaders, head in hand, say "But if the people don't load up those credit cards the economy will collapse."


Don't get me wrong, many, even most, of the people elbowing that little old woman in the eye for the last Alabama Snuggie are religious believers and for about ten minutes after the turkey and ham is all gone will have a devout religious experience.

Some will even cry out to Jesus late on Christmas Eve after the toys are put together and Santa has left the building.

I hope my cynicism hasn't come through. I really did look forward to Christmas as a kid. I want my kids to feel the same feelings about it. But it was the joy of the season and the surprise of it all that left me in wonder an awe.

That Lionel was still the greatest thing I have ever seen,

But today it is hard to get a gift that impresses a kid that has two PSP consoles, one for each car.

Yesterday I met a man and two kids picking up cans along highway 72.

I remain ashamed that I couldn't do more. I am reminded that my Lord said that whatever you do to the least of men ~ something or other. I drove away knowing full well that on judgment day I will have to answer the question - "Uh let me get this straight - you left me and two kids on the side of the road hungry and you gave us three bucks and a plastic bottle of water?"

The optimistic among you may say that he was probably just out cleaning the highway. That his wife was home cooking a good meal for those kids and they were just passing the time till dinner.

Maybe, but I doubt it.

Yes it is that time. Like "Carnaval" when we wallow in excess while our brothers suffer. It makes us feel better somehow to get it out of our system.

Those less industrious than my friend on 72 rob stores and houses - " 'Cause that's where the money is" In order to get presents. Home break ins and "snatch and grab" is up one thousand percent and will go up again as the season heats up. One man in Muscle Shoals already gave his life for it.

They want their kids to go to school and show their new "stuff" too!

Lets just say it's a good time to be in the pawn business.

Meanwhile the rich kids are playing around the tree with the box the expensive stuff came in.

My holiday prayer?

"Jesus, let this temple fall"

The debt, the deficit, and the balance of trade

I heard a recording of some lawmakers on Capitol Hill this morning discussing the financial crisis and became aware of the fact the people driving this bus don't know there front end from the back up gear. This of course comes as no surprise to you. How many of our lawmakers know the difference between the debt and the deficit? How many of our voters who vote them in? And more importantly, how many Americans know the relationship between the debt, the deficit, and the balance of trade.

As a good republican I am not allowed to speak kindly of anyone named Clinton. However, in the Clinton years I agreed with the man on a couple of things. One was that we should not spend more than we take in. Granted, it was because of what has come to be called the "Clinton TAX" but it is a fact that during the second term of the Clinton budget our deficit actually went down.

This has been the battle cry of the TEA party. Spend no more than you earn. Of course, they (I) want to reduce taxes but doing so without reducing spending is a problem. A fifteen Trillion Dollar problem.

Which brings us to the point of this Blog. The current "debt limit' for the US of A is 14. 3 trillion dollars. We are fast approaching that number with the expected cost of the foreign wars we cant win and the domestic programs we can't afford scheduled to push Uncle Sam's credit card debt beyond Fifteen Trillion Dollars.

This coupled with the funny way we calculate gross domestic product. ( Katrina boosted our GDP by $20 Billion) means we now owe seventy five time the amount of goods we actually produce in the US of A.

I remind my gentle reader that gross product includes things like selling a mule to your neighbor and then buying it back next week when you need to plow is putting the price of the mule into GDP twice. In reality only the plowing is value added production!

And that only in the fall when the Punkins are ready for the pickin.

If we put every punkin we can produce into the pot for the next 75 years we can't pay the debt.

This should be heavy on our mind if we allow our lawmakers to raise that debt limit again when Congress Reconvenes next year.

Some fiction litae'

“You look like you just lost your best friend”

Said the voice I almost heard.

The instrument technician repeated himself.


I almost heard it again.

Thirty years before my dad and Leon Sr were friends. Leon and Loyce.

They had grown up as friends in the days when entertainment was taking a few guys down to Russelville and whipping up a good fist fight in the A&P parking lot. Our best guy against their best. A few dollars held on the side. Bare knuckles, Mano-e-Mano..

Leon placed the bets and my father was the one in the ring.

It was a time of leather football helmets and uniforms sewed by your mother. Then they got married and had a kid or two and jobs. Leon went with the phone company, my father stayed with grandpa's gin. much to smart and good looking to climb poles for a living. And so by the time Leon Jr. and I were born they were two up and coming young men building lives for themselves in the new space age.

Leon Jr and I literally grew up in the same playpen. We became men, and took wives, and got jobs. Leon was more like my father in that he was the talented one, the one much to smart and good looking to get a real job.

As kids we used to walk at night across town between our houses, slipping between the chain link wire at a slit in the hole at the town cemetery. “This is creepy” I always said as we slipped inside. and Leon always replied “Those folks are the least likely to bother you as anybody” and laugh at my big eyes and ashen face.

I can't drive by the place today without hearing his voice repeat those words.

Every time I say to myself “ no Junior.. you are wrong.

There is one guy in there that bothers me.

Bothers me a lot”

As we got older I flew into my work. Leon flew into his guitar and girls and drugs sometimes he would call but the voice on the other end was almost like a radio show. I couldn't call him. Even minor show people have people who build walls. He often sang “Desperado” in his stage show and when he looked at me I knew he knew he was singing about himself. He knew even then where this would end.

The voice on the lab phone said “Have you heard about Leon?" ..

“If you are calling me at three am I guess he is either in jail or dead”

I replied in a quiet calm.

“Dead”

The voice replied.

I slipped the phone into the cradle. The earth voice became clear. “ I said – you look like you just lost your best friend” Repeated Max for the third time..

“I did” I replied. but it was a long time ago... “lets get to those instruments”

The gravity of discontent always pulls to the right

In my travels I note what people say.

The most common phrase before the election was "Vote'm all out".

The Republicans all revel in the fact that most of the newly elected were of their party but fail to note that the tide was not necessarily anti-party. It was anti-incumbent. The post election phrase seems to be "Lets see if the new crop does any better". The TEA party does the "eyes on you!" two finger move to the newly elected.

As they should.

Skepticism seems to be the order of the day.

One distinguished gentleman sat quietly humming the ancient tune made popular by The Who "Won't Get Fooled Again" which ends with the line "Meet the new boss/ Same as the old boss"

Look up the lyrics if you have time.

People have been conditioned to believe that the job of the elected official is to bring home Pork. No matter who I talk to or what the topic the phrase " Brings us almost all our tax dollars home" comes up.

Like the parable of the man Jesus spoke of who buried his one talent in the ground.

WWJD with these elected officials?

The Republican shield will not save them if they keep taxing the people then using the money to make little girls and old firefighters fight like squealing piglets at the feeding faucet.

It will not save them if they "bring back almost all the money. "

I scratch my head in bewilderment.

Bewildered because any tax should be considered an investment. Any investor will tell you that when you make an investment you should get an return "of " your investment and a return "on" your investment. In real estate it is getting back the cost of the property, plus additions before you count your profit. In loans it is principal and interest. In public taxation it is the visible asset that we bought, the overpass, or the school, and the benefit to the public that we get from having that asset.

Many times we see a new building going up, or a get a grant for a new rug for our office and never once ask, "Is this a good deal?"- " Is this the way public money should be spent?"

Of course the benefit is sometime hard to see. Especially things like PreK and first grade textbooks because the benefit is somewhere in the far future when that child becomes the new rocket scientist. (Some of you are saying - "What benefit to me is a rocket scientist?)" If our new crop is to be returned to office in four years they must invest our tax dollars for a return of our investment and a return on our investment.

Like most of the things we rant on as citizens. The burden ultimately falls on us, the blame squarely at our feet. If your politicians misbehave then try to remember that you elected them. And if they are not the people you voted for then you had a chance to shake the bushes and put out the signs and attend the meetings that I am sure the winners of the contest did attend.

Sorry, the first step in change is to accept personal responsibility for the way things are. Then and only then can you believe that you have the power to change things for the better.

It's up to you.

World Trade 102

Both of my readers have pointed out that my last blog threw us into deep water without much explanation.

I just assume that everyone is as attuned to current events as I .

The 600 billion the fed "infused" into the economy was different from the previous two bailouts in that the Bush bailout was essentially loans to companies backed by the sale of Treasury Bills. The second was gifts to banks of your tax dollars backed by the sale of Treasury Bills. Both were, as it were, "checks" written on money in the bank back in DC. It was also different in that it did not require a vote of the US Congress.

The FED infusion was something else entirely. It was a printing of money to buy T-Bills. The exact opposite of selling T-Bills to raise money. I don't know if there is a lay person analogy. At least not a legal one. But our system is built around a balanced bookkeeping system that requires that money spent must be matched by a like amount of money raised, by taxes or by sale of T-Bills, .. which is like .. humm... borrowing money on your signature at the credit union. This new infusion is the same except you don't have to pay it back.

Kinda like counterfeiting.

Well -Actually a lot like counterfeiting.

What this has done is allow the Federal Government to spend more than it has and more than it can borrow by simply printing more money.

I am not sure what this will do to our Uncle's credit score.

Take a look at the triangle above. If the imaginary part is small, that is to say that if the real economy is 200 billion dollars and we infuse, say 2 billion, then the real line and the apparent line are very close to the same amount. But if the infusion is close to the real economy it becomes a 45 degree angle and the apparent line is larger by almost half again.

The real danger is when the real becomes smaller than the imaginary. Road and pyramid builders will tell you that if the angle is greater than 45 degrees she will come down.

And my reference to the WTO .. Well check out this NPR story where they explain why we pay Brazil not to grow cotton.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/11/09/131192182/cotton

If China gets wind of this she will want to be paid not to grow cotton too. After all they have more land and more people. China could not grow a lot more cotton than Brazil doesn't.

Maybe the WTO should be called the WTF.

Fed Kites 600 Billion. (if you are a math atheist skip this blog)

The Official US GDP is currently 15 Trillion dollars.


One can immediately cut that in half because if I buy a car from you and you sell a car to me the price of the car shows up twice in the GDP. So on the high end we can say the actual Gross Domestic Product is 7.5 Trillion dollars.

Now to take a lesson from the Economics textbook the ratio of "real" dollars to "apparent" dollars. {i.e. reference the electricity textbook AC Trig section} is defined by the ratio of the federal reserve to lending.


The amount of a deposit that a bank is not allowed to re-lend. This amount was 20% in 1970 but a sheaf of laws and special exceptions has lowered that to an average of 3% {best I can tell}

This means the apparent dollars in the economy is somewhat larger than the real dollars. 7.5 Trillion times 3% is 225 billion.

Compare this to 1970 when the GDP crossed one trillion for the first time with a 20% reserve and we see the real dollars in 1970 to be about $100 billion dollars. (1/2 of one Trillion times 20%)

Adjusting using the BMI {big mac index} the popular sandwich cost $1.70 in 1970 and $3.19 in 2010. Giving us a real dollar inflation figure of 1.9 so 100 Billion times one point nine is $190 Billion dollars..

So we are looking at a low end estimate of $200 Billion dollars of "real" GDP.

If it feels like you are treading water there is a reason.

What all this means if you care to look at it is that we have a real economy of about 200 Billion dollars in this country and we always have had. If you throw a 600 Billion dollar "infusion" it can have no effect except to drive the value of the dollar to 1/3 of its previous value.

33 cents for 2014 dollars vs 2010 dollars.

Now to make you feel better the stock prices will go up .. Possibly even double. The ignorant and uninformed will look at that newspaper and say wow! I doubled my money in that GM stock! (well GM may be a bad example now that China is buying most of the IPO.) But, fail to notice that the electric bill has gone from $300 to $900 and the cost of a big mac is now near $9.

The result of course is all those plastic whitchamcallets you buy at Wal-Mart will now cost three times as much imported from China which should make our American products more competitive.

Provided of course that labor can be held to current levels with prices at three times the 2010 levels.

But the end result .. International goods .. ( energy is an international good) will triple in price. Domestic goods .. (homes and land are domestic goods) - will remain stable in inflated dollars.

In my humble estimation monied nations and individuals will seek the shelter of hard currency forcing gold to stabilize at $2000 USD and Platinum at $3000 (2014 dollars.)

The same result could be achieved by simply withdrawing from the WTO and putting huge levies on imports forcing Americans to buy American. Without all the inflation and drama. And, with the pleasant side effect of eliminating the federal income tax.

Of course the American public could just choose to buy American but that would be asking too much.

The election is at an end. Unfortunately I will likely have to return that $2 check and the forever remember the grip of the gentleman in Fayette who asked "Can I trust you?" ..

I suppose so.

One or both of us will likely to be dead before a perfect storm comes like this again.

I haven't called to congratulate Roger. After all we were running for different jobs, I ran for district wide economic developer, he, for chief sports commentator and your tax money distributor.

As it turns out, I may have gotten my job.

I don't think he got his.

Perhaps I should offer condolences.

I had no way of knowing that the newly elected Senate leadership would be so heavy republican. No, that is not right, I should have known - I should have been more articulate to the voters of Franklin County that without me the key jobs in pork packaging and distribution would be to our South Alabama Senators.

That district six would remain barefoot and pregnant for another four years. Had I paid attention to the screaming crystal ball and seen the future I would have tried harder to make sure the people of Russellville understood that the days of backing a truck up to the field house to hand out cheerleader uniforms were over.

With me or without me.

However, as I expressed to the new Goat Hill leadership on Monday night;

"With your help there is little or no reason that I cannot do what I set out to do from my present State Office just as well as I could from the State House in Montgomery."

After all my goal was to get a highway from Barton to Tuscaloosa and industry, jobs and careers into district six.

Although district six has no representation interested in real economic development, our new Governor has made a pledge to not take a salary until Alabama reaches 5.2% unemployment.

It works in our favor that District six has counties what have the highest level of unemployment - by extension we will be the first counties considered by the Governor for real planned job growth.

$100million dollars for a highway project is not out of the question. $12 million for a Chinese lighting facility is not out of the question. $50million for a 2.5 million square foot solar power plant, a green diesel assembly plant and an electrical generation plant is not out of the question.

Repeal of the severance tax and the associated pork handouts is not completely off the table.

Heck .. a Browns Ferry sized Nuclear plant is even on the table.

So the electing the new leadership, of which I was not in a small way responsible may in fact lead to something good for Fayette, Winfield, Sulligent, Haleyville or Hamilton Alabama and maybe even a road tying those cities to Corrordor X.

As one gentleman from the State Republican Executive Committee said to me, "Son you didn't win your battle - but you certainly helped us win our war."

Change is coming to parts of District six, but if you live in Russellville Alabama, don't wait up.

The Alabama Legislature

As the leaves turn yellow/brown most of the smells and sights of winter/fall seem to mix the reality of the present with the memory of the past. The afternoon chill and rustle of the leaves turning in the wind as if making music to the great unseen conductor bring a feeling of nostalgia to me.

This feeling slips through me almost as a TV which can't quite decide what channel it wants to present. Present/Past fades in and out.

I choose to rotate the antenna toward the past for a clearer picture.

This picture is from 1961. My mother and her friend take us to the movies at the Norwood theater in Florence to see "Breakfast at Tiffany's". For company I invite my friend Leon and we take to the balcony as my mother and Jackie settle in to watch the movie directly below us.

Most of the movie was pretty boring to a couple of eight year olds but I recall spitting peanut hulls over the balcony rail without any thought of the people below. I recall the Tahitian Treat machine, the only talent of which was to take your nickle, dispense liquid directly into the drain then offer an empty four ounce paper cup. I put my nickle in and Leon laughed as my drink went down the drain. Then he put his nickle in and it did the same thing. I, standing there with an empty cup in my hands while Leon's red sugar water flowed down the drain. Leon immediately burst into uproarious laughter knowing his cup was to fall out after the fact. That is what I loved about Leon, his sense of irony was such that a good joke, even on himself, was always better than a cold drink.

Myself not so much.

We ran back upstairs looking for some string or ribbon to make a bit of use of our expensive paper cups and watched as the subtle nuance of Tracy Hepburn taking money from dirty old men in her apartment was completely lost upon us.

But not upon my mother.

The ride home was pretty quiet, Leon and I working out how we would use the treasured T-T cups and my mother's dry wit about it raining peanuts inside the theater. I do recall her saying that It was a pretty rough movie for us to be watching. Prostitutes and thieves - hummmp. Of course that caused Leon to burst into another fit of uncontrollable laughter.

It would be many years before I would learn that the film was written by Truman Capote about his own prostitute mother and the thief and charlatan transient that was his father. I suppose to spin something good from an otherwise intolerable childhood.

Turns out mother was right. Holly Golightly had to do some nasty off screen stuff for those fifty dollar tips. If in real life Holly the hooker had married Paul the thief/rentaboy, if in fact John McGiver had truly engraved their love on a plastic ring, what would their offspring have been?

Alabama Legislators?

Leon is rolling in his grave.

French sign painter.

Once upon a time a man was trying to sell his house close to the interstate highway in a very depressed real estate market.

A Frenchman came by one day and said:

" I tin'k if I paint the house she will sell"

(add your own French accent) ..

So the homeowner said "how much?

" .. "$5000" was the reply.

Five thousand dollars!

I can get it done for half that by a real contractor!

Wii (or whatever Frenchmen say) but she will not sell!

We will see about that! The homeowner replied, and slammed the door in a huff.

So he contracts the house painted with a reputable contractor for $3000.

Weeks go buy and the house still doesn't sell.

After a couple of months the Frenchman drops by and says..

She does not sell? Yes?

No she does not sell, the exasperated homeowner replies.

Ok .. the Frenchman replies. I paint the house.

If she sell I get $5000,

She no sell I get nothing..

Well Ok.. the exasperated man replies. "what have I got to lose"

The Frenchman waddles to his truck
(he looks a lot like the Penguin in the movie Batman)
Takes out a single can of paint and a huge brush..

Walks to the end of the house and paints:

"FOR SALE" In four foot high letters on the side of the house facing the interstate.

The moral of this story?

I'll tell you Wednesday after we find out if the house sells.

Representitive Needs Golf Lessons

A recent story caught my eye regarding a State Legislator who said he's not sure he overreacted when he brandished a golf club at a student journalist asking him questions about a golf outing during a National Conference of State Legislatures meeting this summer in Jamaica NY.

Representative McCampbell, D-Linden, first waved off the reporter, Dan Lieberman working on a project for ABC News, who asked why McCampbell was out golfing instead of attending the conference.

McCampbell said he was golfing with a U.S. Steel official but he was unsure who paid for the outing.

Unofficially, I believe I heard him say; " If you don't back off I am going to whack your head up in the clubhouse with this five iron"

He should have known better.

Nobody can make that shot with a five iron.

Once again the Alabama Legislature makes us proud as McCampbell repeated of his boondoggle vacation at lobbyist expense.

"I'm not sure who paid for this event" - Oh yeah?

And the event topic McCampbell was skipping out on to play Golf.

Ethics reform.

Press Release

The office of Jim Bonner - Campaign for State Senate -

Response to the gambling indictments.

For Immediate Release.

Recently, eleven people were indicted related to Alabama gambling legislation.

Four of them are elected legislators who swore an oath to serve the public.

While everyone is assumed innocent until found guilty, the grand jury heard evidence that indicates Senator Roger Bedford may be serving someone besides the public.

It serves no one to speculate on guilt or innocence but if the newspapers in Marion County and Florence are accurately reporting this story, then we need new leadership for District 6.

If you elect me, I promise to uphold the trust of the citizens of District 6 by faithfully carrying-out my sworn duties and exhibiting the impeccable behavior you deserve.

I will come to you individually, and in the press about matters which affect you and especially those that affect your pocketbook before any vote comes to the floor.

I am Jim Bonner and I need your help.

In return, you can count on me after we win this election.

-30-

For Sold.. Your vote.

I wish this campaign could be about something else. I wish it could be about the difference I would make by using the office of senate to create jobs, spur development, make sure our kids have schoolbooks. Maybe even get that long promised highway from the bridge to nowhere across 72 at Barton to the new stadium in Tuscaloosa.

I wish.

One friend said yesterday, It is all out here now, The people know.

If they vote the (blank's) back in then they get what they deserve.

I am tempted to agree.

Tempted, but I cannot.

For three reasons. A slip of blue paper and two pink love stamps from the 80's

On Thursday, I drove down to my campaign mailbox in Haleyville, walked past the crumbling seventies Federal project construction and slid the key into that ornate style brass mailbox door the Post Office has been using for a hundred years or more.

Inside, the usual assortment of letters. - Covering everything from mule breeders to brew masters asking for my position on their particular issue. A few returned letters with bad addresses. Something else from Newt Gingrich and the National.

And a letter.

Light blue in color, adorned with two 25 cent "Love" stamps, each with a pink rose.

Jimmy;

the letter began,

The handwriting a shaky prose that I immediately recognized as a woman likely in her eighties.

Written on a five inch bit of blue, lightly faded around the edges.

"Thank you" She began, "For doing this for us... we all are so proud of you. I know your mother would be too."

My right hand began to tremble. I knew what was coming next, the tri-folded check was already in my left hand.

She went on to write that we need someone to change things in Alabama.
That the corruption and the lately news articles was embarrassing to her and all Alabama.

She said it had been that way for her whole life, and thanked me again.

The letter closed with the statement:

" You know I am on a fixed income and I can't do much. I wanted you to know that our prayers are with you. I want to send you a little something to help with your campaign."


Two dollars.


I know the woman. The story of the widows mite came to me and I lost it right there in the post office.

I said I wish the campaign could be about something else.

I wish I could agree that the people deserve what they get.

But it can't be about something else.
The campaign won't let me.
This letter won't let me.

I will not cash this check, I will have it framed, along with the letter.

I will put in on my office wall in Montgomery,

And when Milton and the other mob goons come in and try to buy my vote I'll just have to say

"Sorry guys, -It is already sold, to a little old lady in Phil Campbell"

She outbid you big time, with a currency you cannot understand.

Bingo was his name o

Hello, My name is Jim Bonner and I am a candidate for State Senate District 6.

My opponent is a 25 year incumbent trial lawyer.

I guess it is time to make some kind of response to the debacle.

I would direct you to a comment from Doc's Political parlor regarding the indictment and arrest of 11 people on bribery and conspiracy charges :

Thinking it Over

October 5th, 2010 at 8:30 pm

Hardworking state senator? More like foul-mouthed, corruption-ridden, Milton McGregor-colluding state senator. Check out this bombshell from the federal prosecutor’s indictment in the McGregor Scandal, paragraph 58 on page 18:

“Toward the end of the day on or about March 2, 2010, the sponsor of SB380 asked MCGREGOR for permission to retaliate against Legislator 2 and other legislators who did not support the bill. During the conversation, the legislator stated, ‘I want your authority…I mean, the collective authority…to say if you f**kers f**k us on this [legislation]…there will be no peace…We’re coming after your a**.’ MCGREGOR responded, “Big man, let me tell you, I don’t even have to think about it. You’ve got mine…” The sponsor continued, reiterating, “I want the authority to say this is your vote, you vote yes or no and this is what we’re going to judge you by.’ Again, MCGREGOR affirmed that he was ‘110% on board with that.’”

The aforementioned sponsor of SB380, the Senate bill calling for a statewide referendum on the legalization of gambling? None other than your hardworking state senator, Roger Bedford.

Now a lot of people are aghast that our hard working state senator might use such language. I am not shocked. In fact I have long suspected such language existed on Goat Hill. It may have even existed before Roger Bedford was born. I am shocked however at what the words mean if you just remove the expletives and examine the content.

Look it over with me and take a look at the parts I take some issue with.

1) "I want your authority"... Our state Senator, speaking with our elected voice, asking a person like Milton McGregor for permission to do anything is offensive to me. The only person our elected officials have to ask permission of is us, the electorate. Nuff said.

2) "I mean, the collective authority"... Now I won't suggest what this means because I need to get some sleep tonight instead of sitting up in a chair by the window with a gun (again). But remember he is talking to a powerful Nevada Gambling interest. Who, in your best recollection is "The Collective" in Nevada?

3) there will be no peace…We’re coming after your a**. Well he said Ass .. We can say ass here I think. But this statement means different things coming from different people. If I hear it from my kids I think they maybe want to borrow the mule. If I hear it from my wife another thing altogether. But If I hear it in this context I get visions of Nicky Santoro and his baseball bat in the Lefty Rosenthal Biopic "Casino"

Lanny A. Breuer of the FBI’s Criminal Division said the accused are charged “to have formed a corrupt network whose aim was to buy and sell votes in the Alabama Legislature. They also tell us there is more to come. They tell us that there will be indictments, and if not, I will be very disappointed.

But if i had a copy of the FBI tape I could take it to our local DA and get a warrant. This is conspiracy to make threats to an elected official. A Federal Crime.

I spoke to a group last night and I mirrored the words of our State Chairman Mike Hubbard when he said he considered Montgomery a “culture of corruption.” He stated, “The ongoing investigation and subsequent arrests should serve as a referendum on the culture of corruption that has been prevalent in Montgomery for far too long,”

I couldn't agree more.

But, I know that Mike has a bigger picture at stake. He sees it from a Statewide perspective. I however, see it from the perspective of District 6.

A district in which the Culture of Corruption has a name.

The name is Roger Bedford.

Bluegrass in the Hills

I had the opportunity to speak to a group of folks gathered in the sandy backwoods of Franklin County last week. I shook hands, handed out cards, and asked each of them for their vote. One very distinguished very gray haired lady sat, arms folded, and deliberately looked at the wall as I passed by. At first I thought it was a teasing slight.

But as I stood there it became apparent that it was not teasing. I politely moved on. As the night progressed and the time came near for my five minutes of fame I thought of her and slipped my prepared remarks in the bib of my over'alls.

I took the mic and said " I have no idea what I am about to say, but I want to mention a little about who I am before I go into the political rhetoric that I know you are all tired of anyway "

"You see" I proceeded, " I was born a few miles over, but fifty years ago next month I came to visit a house less than three miles from where we stand. I came here to pick cotton with my mother, for Sam Adams, my daddy gone to Memphis. We hadn't been here a week when Mr Green came knocking in the night to say that my daddy was dead. I didn't leave that place for two more years"

I went on to tell them about the day grandpa gave me the first and only honest to goodness country whipping I ever had, The cool water from the well and hot days in the garden, and the 36 biscuits my grandmother cooked every morning in the wood cook stove. An eight year old boy lyin' in the the fall fields of sage grass on that sandy hillside below the the two room house. The color of the sky and the feel of the clouds falling into space. Just an eight year old boy and his own private universe.


I went on to talk about job creation, the need to raise incomes instead of income taxes. I said that I had not considered myself a republican before this election and that although the circumstances choose me rather than the other way round, I was running on the Republican ticket but for my money they could vote them all out.

I went on for a while, then the band started to suit up again and I stepped off the stage. I shook some hands. I had more than one tell me that I was going to force them to vote a split ticket this time and thanked me for my talk. Then as I was slipping for the door, a graceful hand caught my arm. She said with a genuine smile. " Before you go, I'd like to dance with a man who picked cotton for Sam Adams".

I still don't know how she's going to vote, but she's a dang fine dancer.

summer of '69

Had to make a long tiresome trip yesterday.

All the way up I65 to drop off my little man to visit with his grandparents.

Somewhere in Kentuk, Little man asleep in the car seat next to me, near the Corvette Museum my car began to shake. The rumble concerned me at first. A vibration and rumble is not a sound one hears, even at 80, in a Toyota Prius. Then I caught them in the rear view mirror. Yellow bumble bee color, Silver hood latches gleaming in the sun, Raised breather on the intake, Convertible with the top down. The driver, a man with long gray hair blowing in the wind.

Getting larger in the mirror and the resonant rumble in the car getting to the level that I was concerned that my passenger might awake. They pulled alongside. I saw her.

But for the gray in her hair and the lines in her face the couple might have been on their way to the drug store for a soda or the drive-in movie.

The Homecoming queen and the quarterback, 90 miles per hour on Highway 65 in a bumble bee yellow SS396.

Fifty years late for the senior prom.

Some things change. Some never do.

As the car passed and disappeared out of sight I thought about letting the hammer down and showing him what an electric car can do. Out of concern for my passenger I let it go. I am much too mature for that sort of thing.

I did notice as he passed that the trunk didn't fit just right. Nothing wrong with it. Just like a thousand that I have seen before. Came from the factory like that. Like so many things in '69 they looked better than they really were. Mismatched colors, cracks in the paint, tears in the fabric.

And I am not talking about the cars.

But in some ways 1969 was the pinnacle of civilization. The couple likely lay in the back of that car listening to Moody Blues or Janis Joplin with the top down. They watched the moon as Neal Armstrong landed in the moondust and the owner of that Chevy took a giant leap for mankind.

Today they are just going north on 65 on a sweet September day. The rumble of the exhaust raising memories of a better time deep inside them both.

1969, Prettiest boy in school married the most handsome young woman in the county. Likely worked a lifetime, raised the kids and retired. Fifty years and the payoff is a road trip to Canada with the top down. One more trip as summer turns into fall.

And I am not talking about the trees.

Ain't it the Truth?

Ain't it the Truth.

I have noticed a cloud of dumbfog rolling in around our country. It seems to be around the media flowing from the cities to the country like a morning dew. " Good Morning" has been replaced by "Duh" in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This article ain't going where you think it is.

A few years ago a guy named James Fry wrote a book about his experience with drug addiction. He got on Oprah. She made it a book of the month club selection and he sold a million volumes. I read the book. It is really good. Then some pointy headed intellectuals started digging around and found that Mr. Fry's prison experience was actually a couple days in the county jail. William Bastone with "The Smoking Gun" wrote an expose' that eventually got Fry back on Oprah to "Apologize" for misleading the public. 2000 people asked for and got their money back from publisher Random House because Oprah told them what to think.

What is missing from all this hoopla is the book is the best account of the devastation of alcohol and drug abuse that I have ever read. Literalismist (e.g. people who study literature as science) say that the lack of quotation marks in Fry's remarks indicate an artistic license to move freely from his internal and external discourse. This is Acadam'e talk for what we used to call fiction. If it don't have quotes it is not literal. Not intended to be.

However, when the mind is involved. Particularly a troubled drug and disease ravaged mind, the internal prose can be a more accurate window into the suffering of a person than "The Truth".

When I saw all this I thought of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues, and Bill Wilson and the Big Book. Neither were under oath when they penned their work. Neither were filled with facts. But both were filled with immense truth.

One wonders if writers like Thomas Pynchon, Robert Bly, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S Thompson, or even Kahlil Gibran could have survived the Oprah expose'

I personally doubt it. But I wasn't covered by the cloud of dumbfog. I read, enjoyed, and forgot Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Da Vinci Code and, Catcher in the Rye without once considering if the fact was more important than the truth the volumes contained.

Can you Imagine a Sixty Minutes team outside Kurt Vonnegut's house demanding the "truth". I think they might have met a double barreled shotgun. " I got your truth right here buddy".

NPR recently ran an article on Carlos Castaneda. It seems that currently there are many young doctoral students working on a thesis to disprove and discredit Castaneda's work. These young academics are setting out to prove that Castaneda was not entirely honest when he said that he could shapeshift into other animals, fly like the crow or teleport to any place in the universe with the power of his mind. On his Time cover he was listed as "An Enigma wrapped in a Mystery" Which is also acadam'e talk for the byproducts of male bovine digestion.

I read the books, saw the movie, and never once shapeshifted. I immediately brought to mind a toothless old gentleman from Phil Campbell who once told me "I ain't say'n it happened, I'm just saying I seen it."

Never mind the facts - this gentleman knew the truth. Be on the lookout for it.

The 300 at Thermopylae

All my readers are aware of the battle of Thermopylae. The younger set know of the place from the powerful semi-animated film of 2007 titled The 300. The older set, sat in awe in the 1962 version of Richard Egan facing Xerxes at The pass called Thermopylae.

Two or three might even have paid attention in ninth grade history class. But the quick and dirty synopsis is that 300 Spartans held the pass for 48 hours against an omnipotent army of Persians set upon destroying government by the people, for the people. For all time.

Had the Persians succeeded we would likely not be having this discussion about free elections today.

In the movie versions they all died of course.

I really hope a better outcome for the three hundred volunteers that I solicit today.

I stand hat in hand asking for your help. Not just support. Not just money. Not only your vote. Although I do need all that.

I have to figure out a way to organize a campaign that can put the will of the people back into the Senate Six seat and set corruption and mismanagement of your tax dollars on the back row.

No, I am in a political contest against the most powerful and best funded political opponent since the sixties. An opponent who raised over a million dollars in the last election- with no opposition.

The State of Alabama is a ten billion dollar business and it has been controlled by my opponent and his cohort for 25 years. A cohort which can raise another million any time of the day or night with a single phone call. They can probably do it every day for a year.

After all ten billion dollars of your money is at stake - Every year for the next four years.

Yes friends I have stuck my neck out. Way out. Like the turtle, the only way to make progress. Unfortunately that is also the way to start turtle soup. Also unfortunately- divisions within our State Republican Party have, for the time being, left my reinforcements behind in Greece.

So let’s review a couple of things. First and foremost, the thing on my mind is how I can bring about some prosperity brought by jobs and careers with paychecks which will support a hard-working family. That’s my first priority. To put paychecks in the hands of the people instead of government handouts. Then to lower your taxes and put groceries on your table.

And so I’m about to do the hardest thing I’ve had to do in this campaign: ask you to consider joining the club of 300 volunteers who can steer the direction of Alabama.

I need 300 people who will put their name on a paper and publicly state that they are ready to retire the 25 year term of our sitting senator in district 6.

300 people, brave enough, who will stand and agree that 136 years of a Democratic party controlled legislature in Alabama is long enough.

And from each of you I need skin in the game.

A Check. Not cash - A check.

A contribution so I can bring you the representation you deserve.

I am not asking the moon.

Just one check for $25.

Now if you are that man in the back of the room who can write a check for $25,000, don't go away, I need to talk to you later. But for now I am talking about the people who can afford to give Sunday dinner money.

Give so that I can take a box of checks to the party headquarters and dump them on the desk and say to them "These are the people who want and deserve a real change in the way we do business in Alabama."

These checks have intrinsic and extrinsic value. These checks were not just money pressed into a palm. These checks have an address and a signature and most of all they come with a face. A person. A family to whom I have made a commitment to better their lives. A concrete symbol to convince the "Authoriti" that we want and deserve a different outcome.


Please understand that this is not about the money. At least not entirely. The campaign takes money for sure, but it is about showing the party that I have people who want this to happen. If enough people will take this message to heart. Truly take it to heart. we can move our message to a lot of people and alter the outcome in November.

My most recent FCPA showed a cash balance of $159. My most recent poll showed me at 48% district wide. But yesterday Google said that 533 people read my blog. Now assuming that half are supporters that is 267 of the 300. I think I have a dozen already in my shoebox. We can win. with your help we can win.

Like the 300 at Thermopylae we stand against some long odds.

But this time we have an even chance.

Paid Political advertisement

Please make your check to
Jim Bonner Campaign account
15865 Mt Hester Road
Cherokee Alabama. 35616

Textbooks and bad pork.

I am told the Buddha died from a bit of bad pork. I suppose I lack enlightenment to understand why Buddha didn't know in advance the pork was bad. Maybe he did and ate it anyway.

But I direct the gentle reader to a couple of published news tidbits today. One article, from the Marion County Journal Record by Tracy Estes titled: State textbook funding falls by 90% over last 3 years and the other from a set of twits and tweets from my twenty five year democratic incumbent in the Senate Six race, that's if you give a toot.

In the first story, Tracy recounts the history of the Marion County School Board budget of $750,000 in fiscal 2008 and a current budget of $57,889 for textbooks for the upcoming school year.

The other story from the hand of the 'hard' working Senator himself titled: Roger Bedford Great Day in District and Handed out 14 different grants in Franklin tonight ! Headed to Kennedy and Fayette to give out more Grants in AM ! Gotta fight for your people !

Now gentle reader, therein lies the problem. Why are we allowing the blatant shorting schools money to buy textbooks and handing it out like water to people to buy votes? Do other States allow this?

One might suspect the books from last year would be fine. One might guess that second, third and fourth grade math books are the same and have been for a hundred years. One would guess wrong.

In the computer age kids are expected to learn how to to the three R's plus one. Radix. The little dot between the dollars and cents on your bank statement is no longer the decimal point. It is now the Radix Point. And among a lot of other things the State Board of Education expects your kid to know that. No child left behind expects your child to know that. And most importantly the people who design the test by which you school will be ranked for funding and possible takeover by the State expect your kids to know that.

Children as early as second grade are expected to know binary, hex and octal numbers. No Alice, this is not your fathers math book these kids don't have.

One of my campaign staffers has a dream.

A vision if you will, of a youtube video of the Russellville stadium Jumbotron and a bewildered candidate for State Senate looking at the expensive monitor, the expansive stands, pan to the underground bunkers for the massive baseball stadium, then to our twenty five year incumbent handing out grant checks to the un-needy and un-entitled. Cut to a group of tattered grammar school students in Marion County working around a table with one borrowed book.

And the Caption... Roger, you should be Ashamed!

This my friends and readers, is bad pork.

And now you can't say you weren't enlightened.

Prognostications

Prognostication

The United States has three likely possibilities before us today given the level of the Debt, Deficit and Balance of Trade.

One - Become the old Soviet Union. Remove all freedoms and require everyone to work in state jobs and live in state housing and join the state party.

Two - Allow the Union of the Americas to collapse under the weight of its own debt and make every State a sovereign nation.

Three - Allow runaway inflation to lower the value of the dollar on the international market and thus pay back these trillion dollar debts with new billion dollar bills.

This is why I entered the senate race, because I think we need some people in Montgomery who understand the situation if the worst case happens.

All of these are terrifying scenarios to me.

All of these reduce the standing of America in the world market and limit the one thing that is important to me. The future of my children and grandchildren.

There might be a fourth option. An option where we bite the bullet and begin to concentrate on the issues at hand. Jobs that create wealth instead of just passing money between Jack's and McDonald's, Set right the balance of trade, lower the debt and eliminate the deficit. This will require a work ethic that does not include one in five of our population drawing a government check and Drug laws that stop the personal and economic waste of our young people.

That will only happen if we elect people who are at least sensitive to the problem instead of people of wealth and privilege who have their golden parachutes and really feel above it all.

(A little knee mail to God on the matter wouldn't hurt either.)

Nonsense

Pallie was born in the last score of years before the turn of the century, in a world of milkcows, wood cookstoves and the daily work of a child that would make Cinderella tired.

Her father Atwood was a stern man who believed that one should take very seriously the passage of the bible about rods and children. His sister Aretha had married a Thompson man who ran a dry goods store in Tuscumbia.. A Hard days wagon ride from their home in Waco Alabama..

But the Mid South State Fair had come to Lauderdale County. A short spell from Tuscumbia if the Tennessee was down. Atwood, Pallie, Mary, Mattie and Celie rode to Tuscumbia to see the lights and rides and hucksters of the MidSouth Fair and stay with sister Aretha in the two story house on Water street.

The Fair had electric lights.. A Merry Go Round with a steam whistle and a Ferris wheel run by electric motors. A tiny train that took children around the fairgrounds and everybody got a roll of double tickets as big as a baseball with the price of admission. Tickets that could be torn off in pairs to ride and purchase sweets and drinks that foamed and tickled.

At the gate was a simple stage and wind up RCA record player, Deep Mahogany wood with gold gilded handles that stood a full four feet tall .. It was open and the Golden Speaker Horn was playing music of a band from a thousand miles away.

It was the most impressive thing Pallie Bishop had ever seen. The Huckster was crying "ten cents - for ten cents purchase a chance to win this beautiful RCA Victor Talking Machine"..Lesser prizes were to be given away with your ticket stub for admission but the grand prize raffle was purchased separately. Pallie looked at the coins in her purse.- She slid a dime into the man's hand.

The fair was the same as the fair today. Designed to splash color and move cotton picking money from your pocket into the pockets of itinerants who would be long gone in a week. Itinerants who knew and cared little of the sweat by which that money was earned. Pallie and the girls had what was known in the day as “a time “. They watched the displays of farm goods and prizes and local musicians and an artist who would paint your portrait while you waited if you had the money.

Pallie did not.

As night fell the drawing for the Victrola loomed near. Pallie made her way back to to the grandstand with Celie to watch the face of the lucky winner of the talking machine. The lesser prizes were drawn and Celie and the girls became more dejected as each prize was held up and lucky winner came forth to claim his or her prize. Then as the grand prize was being drawn the girls turned to walk away, Palie hesitated, and then heard her name.

At first she though it was Atwood, but realized it was coming from the other direction. it was coming from the grandstand. The man was calling Pallie Bishop. She screamed "Cellie, Get Pap!" and ran toward the stage and ran her hand over the polished wood.. Atwood came in a minute as the excited announcer tried to keep some interest in the crowd who had begun to mill away. "Here she is, all yours he said to Atwood, no cost to you at all but 15 cents each for a handful of recordings to play in your home!".. “15 Cents Bellowed Atwood! “ I wouldn't give fifteen cents for this thing for firewood.."

Pallie's world fell apart.. She began to cry. Then she got angry.. She screamed at her father "its mine”.. “I won it " take it home " .. "No! was the reply", his face redder by the minute at the insolent child embarrassing him on the grandstand stage. He did the only thing a man of his breeding could do. He took the pointer rod from the hands of he barker and began to bring blood from the legs of the almost woman child .. For a time she stood her ground. For the first, and last, time in her life she challenged her father.

They didn't take the Victrola home,

And things would never be right between them again.

Pallie saw eleven children. Buried four. Won and lost so many things so many times, and never in her life had a piece of furniture in her home so nice as a 1902 Victrola.. ..

And there in that hospital bed. 75 years later..on the last day of her life.

She sighed..

and smiled a weak smile.

And in that brief microsecond I knew her mind.

I knew that right now, she and Celie and Atwood and Mary and Mattie were loading up the Victrola.

Tonite, she would take the Victrola home.

Death is a mystery, the obvious and observable end of life that forces us to wish, or hope, or believe that there is something more.

Elementary logic says that there is not, yet a more complex evaluation makes us ask “ if there is no more then why are we here?”..

To ask “ if there is no God then we must be the most intelligent beings in the universe.?”

Now that is a scary thought.

More so than death itself.

There is a trigger within us that makes us fear death in our youth more so than in old age.

Perhaps an anticipation of things to come but more likely just an internal lethargy that comes with bewilderment that all the things we worked so hard to accomplish, struggled so hard to keep, will pass away like the dust in our bones, if it hasn't already.

My father, mother, grandfathers on both sides, my maternal grandmother, my best friend, a first girlfriend. All haunt my dreams from the other side. My aunts and uncles, most dear, some not so much, fade in and out of my conscious and unconscious thought. It is a frightening thing the day you realize that you have more friends below ground that above it.

So what is the point? Uncle Bartow, who left town to escape a murderous jilted lover. Said that life was about realizing that today might be your last day and living it thus.

Not always easy to do.. many people may not share your laze-fare attitude and require funds that require work which requires... Well you know.

Doctors are mostly religious but I often wonder how funeral home workers view the human condition. They say the right things but if you work on cars all day is it normal or abnormal to suspect the automotive souls go to a better place after the engine throws a rod.

I spend most nights studying the moons of Jupiter.. Any amateur astronomer knows where they will be and there are much better telescopes out there than what I might find on my shelf. But I feel a need to check and make sure they are where they are supposed to be. Somehow it is reassuring to know that something is more permanent than my physical self.

That they might appear to shift a little to the left or right is in some way proof that Palie is out there. Peeping around one of those celestial orbs.