Number Five

(Free range turkeys in the field. I can’t tell from this angle which one is #5.)

Number Five is the name Meg Campbell of Croftburn Farms attached to the bird that was purchased several weeks ago by the enormous person in overalls in line ahead of me. I was getting eggs and cheese, as is customary on the way down to Refuge Farm.

Croftburn Market is the family outlet that Meg’s son Andrew opened this year on Braggs Corner Road Bradford Road, just off Route 29. I was standing in a line of jumbo-sized customers, apparently picking up their Thanksgiving turkeys.

The mission statement of the Campbell clan is “to provide good, healthy food at a price that people can afford.” That would be on the high side of the sprawling Martin’s mega-market up the road, but worth it to support local food.

The large man in front of me gave his name to Meg at the register, and she called out to Andrew that #5 was there. It was an impressive bird, from what I would see of it peeking out of the white plastic bag.

The transaction was pre-paid, and I set the eggs on the counter as the man carried the bird away. “When was that turkey executed?” I asked. I made sure I smiled as I said it, to ensure that she knew I was not disapproving. “I was just wondering,” I said. “#5 was my number in land survival school in Warner Springs, California. They took away our names and gave us numbers for the simulated POW camp.”

“This Number Five was never in confinement,” she said, brushing a lock of dark hair back over her ear. “In fact, Croftburn Farm operates on a free range model, and I am confident that right up to the moment of his death, #5 was at least as happy as I am and possibly more. “

Croftburn would never sell a Twinky, for the record, not that there is going to be a lot of that going on since the Hostess company decided to throw in the towel.

Or the Ho Ho, which also died this week, and even the venerable Wonder Bread. That reminded me about bread, and I asked Meg to add one of the crisp baguettes to my tab.

Our relationship with food is an interesting thing. While the Twinky may have been invented in the 1930s (I suspect some are still around and as edible now as then) Meg says the hidden costs of cheap food results directly in lost flavor and health impacts.

“Everybody should be entitled to high quality food at a fair price,” she said, ringing up the eggs and cheese. “And they should have access to local food, so there is more of a connection between the farm and the producer and the consumer.”

It is a totally different sort of thing than the eternal Twinky. There is a lot of negative PR about how the union killed the Twinky, but it would be as fair to blame the protectionist policy on American sugar that artificially kept the price of ingredients high.

I can’t do a treatise on sugar this morning. I try to stay away form the stuff, and do not believe I have had a Twinky since the kids were little. The crisis came after the Teamsters came to the table and agreed to concessions. In final tense negotiations with the other major player, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) the union dug in its heels and stayed on the picket line.

Hostess management quit, and decided to fire-sale the assets of the enterprise. That will result in the lay-off of nearly 19,000 workers and the closure of 33 bakeries, 565 distribution centers, approximately 5,500 delivery routes and 570 outlet stores across the country.

Times have changed, and I don’t mind the loss of the gaily-decorated plastic wrappers of the Wonder Bread. That stuff was indeed a wonder. It had no taste that I can recall. We used to buy the long square loaves of spongy white bread and smoosh them flat so we could carry them more efficiently in our back-backs for hiking in the Uintas Primitive Area. You could then peel off a slice no thicker than the piece of cheese or bologna to make an efficient sandwich.

Not particularly nutritious, but certainly efficient.

(The famous Burning Bush at Refuge Farm, Thanksgiving week 2012. Photo Socotra.)

But anyway, when Dad got eased out of his job as CEO of Grand Rapids Manufacturing (he was too expensive), he was not ready to retire and wound up purchasing one of the firms that subcontracted the wire racks for the ovens his old company had produced under the Kelvinator (and other) brand names. Curtis Wire was the name of the concern, and it was located Up North, in Petoskey.

It being Michigan, the little manufacturing shop was organized by the UAW. Times being what they were in the early 1980s, jobs were migrating not overseas, but down south to non-union shops. People in Tennessee were happy to get the work, and Dad was finally in a position that he had to sit down with the Union guys and give it to them straight: either there would be wage concessions or the plant would close.

The UAW decided to commit seppuku and refused.

Dad closed the plant, reluctantly but finally and the jobs left town for good.

“A view of the Bay and half the pay,” went the old rhyme, and that is the way the jobs left Tennessee, too, when the time came, to migrate to Vietnam.

Me? I guess I am migrating to Culpeper. The eggs are better, for one thing, and a strong local food movement helps to keep the landscape bucolic and pleasant. I thanked Meg for her service to the community and she nodded. “Thanks for supporting local food. People need to invest in buying local, so we local farmers can stay here and continue to work the land, and share in the pleasure of living in a rural place.”

I did not think that #5 would necessarily agree, but his quality of life was probably a lot better than it could have been, and I hope that family that bought him cooks him well.

I got a note this morning just at press time that suggests a Mexican firm is interested in buying the Hostess brands. I am sure it will make it all much more affordable. Happy Thanksgiving.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

A Healthy Outlook

(Clear skies and good company at College Park. Photo Socotra.)

We were at the Florida State game yesterday, a delightful day spent drinking in the great out-of-doors. The Terps got their butts handed to them, and we only stayed in the seats on the fifty at Byrd Stadium for the first half and then repaired to the parking lot where we continued eating and drinking.

The Man Up guys were not there, though the ringleader appeared late in what probably was the fourth quarter, and a fine time was had by all.

I am going to mosey down to the farm later this morning when things have settled out a bit. There will be more clouds today than yesterday, but still in the low 50s and with that golden burnish to the fields as they appear once outside of the Beltway, where Blue NoVA transitions to Red Virginia.

(It was chill in the early morning, but the fire-log warmed things up nicely.)

I am looking forward to the day- and nestling into a snug bed deep in the country, with the night sounds of the freight trains approaching the grade crossings on what had been the Alexandria and Orange railroad- the one my Irish ancestors helped to build in the 1850s as they headed south and then west to Tennessee.

I had every intention of going through the very strange tale of the impoundment of the Argentine warship in the African port of Tema while on a training cruise. The ARA Libertad, a tall sailing ship with a crew of more than 330, was detained in Ghana’s eastern port on Oct. 2 on a court order obtained by the American firm NML Capital Ltd, which claims Argentina owes it $300 million from defaulted bonds.

I was going to go through the machinations of malevolent capitalists, the American court system, and international law regarding the sovereignty of naval vessels. I got stopped in my tracks by a perceptive bit of analysis about the ponderous nature of the health care system with which we have been burdened.

One of my pals sent me an appreciation of what the Republican Governors were up to at their just-concluded convention in Vegas. There are more of them than there used to be, and they have a key role to play in the aftermath of the election that they thought they would not lose.

I know, what goes on in Vegas ought to stay there, but the position taken by the thirty Red Governors is worth considering. They apparently have made a collective decision to not establish state-level health insurance exchanges, forcing the burden on the dauntless bureaucrats in Washington.

I do not know what the impact of all this will be, and since it appears it is going to happen, ready or not, it is time to try to understand what it means on a personal level. I am not even going to try the Iranian A-Bomb, but you can put that in the same basket with the litany of things I hoped we would avoid.

I mentioned at the time the Affordable Health Care Act was jammed through that I was in favor of some universal, single-payer system. I mean, you have to accept the fact that it will be a crappy system like the one in the UK or Canada, and that at some point access to service will be rationed, and yes, that amounts to what has been demonized as “death panels.”

There has been a fair amount of death around me of late, and there is not enough in the way of medical personnel and resources to go around, so somehow it has to be contained- rationed, if you will.

My pal Mac knew that- he told me a few weeks before his death that there was no surgical option for people of his age, since the Docs were uniform in their view that the risk did not merit intervention.

I was healthy enough to eschew the company health care options up to this year. I bought into it when open season came along, hoping the augmentation to the TRICARE For Life program that came with my military service.

I had hoped that the company plan would provide coverage right here in Arlington, rather than having to drive to the nightmare that is the new Walter Reed, the hostile take-over of Bethesda by the United States Army.

It is pretty weird, and the clash of cultures at the former National Naval Medical Center is profound. The Navy still operates the equivalent of the 1MC with all sorts of announcements in Navy-speak, and the Army health care people say it is very difficult for them to go back to a pure Green Machine when their tours are done there.

Other than that, I don’t have much to do with health care, and I flat don’t know what the impact on people in my situation will be. I know vaguely that we transition from TRICARE to Medicare at the full retirement age, or thereabouts- I suppose I should pay more attention, but I have been content to sit on the sidelines and watch the implementation play out.

Now, the messy business is nearly upon us. I am fascinated by the intrinsic tension between the states and the Feds, and what is likely to happen. I presume the Old Dominion where I live will be one of the rejectionist front states, but beyond that I have no idea whether this will affect me or not in a personal manner, vice general, as 20% of the GDP is absorbed into the clutches of the Bureaucrats.

I worked at Health and Human Services in one of the stranger episodes in my military career, and interacted with the VA and Ag and the Public Health Service. It is a much different government than the one I knew in the IC or DoD. Much dumber, though, and with many more flacks and functionaries filling the halls of the Hubert Humphrey Building.

It appears that the Republicans are going to cave on many issues, the general theory being that they cannot stomach the notion that they are just the party of “No,” though of course that is just what we have elected them to do. I would have to go back and see what is going to happen to my paycheck, once they are done screwing around with the tax brackets.

I did not mind the taxes I paid prior to the Bush cuts- I think the difference amounted to a few hundred dollars every pay period.

Things have changed considerably since then, and I just do not know what it means, between death and taxes. I guess we will just have to deal with what is coming and figure it out as we go along.

Friday night at Willow an associate from my days in the Pentagon showed me the following video, which was quite liberating. I imagine we will survive, at least for a while. There has been a spate of deaths among the small circle of those I care about- the parent’s generation are fading fast, and there are some of our own cohort who have filed to the exits this year. The torrent will increase, since the failure rate of our frail vessels amounts to 100% over time, as noted by John Maynard Keynes. The inevitable got him, too.

So, considering the inescapable, it is worth a watch, to see such youth and talent.

Maybe this will all be OK. I doubt it, but you never know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0INlumRpL8

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

The Hottest Chief Executive

(President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina).

An open letter to long-suffering readers from the editorial board of the Daily Socotra:

I am running short on time. I did not write yesterday, or rather, I did not write for any distribution since the rant included some stuff that just isn’t that interesting, or maybe more interesting than I would care to admit.

The stuff I wanted to cover this morning is legion.

I mean really. The Hostess Corporation, home of the Twinky and the Ho Ho and that wonderful artificial Wonder Bread threw in the towel to the Baker’s Union and went out of business. I am hoping that something saves the Twinky brand for posterity, though since the things last forever, maybe enough of them have been made already.

Then, my pal Boats sent me an amazing account of Admiralty Law in action- you will see more about the World’s Hottest Chief Executive (no, not here) and the confiscation of a man o’ war by a rapacious venture capitalist. It is a fun story with outsized personalities interacting across three continents, but I am afraid that will have to wait until tomorrow. Too much nuance. Use the photo of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as a placehoder for tomorrow.

What a week. The Fiscal Cliff is looming, and the only thing certain is that taxes and death are still our eventual friends. That, and I am still weirded out by the end of General Petraeus and his public service.

It was an extraordinary career, and though I have no idea what exactly he told the closed session of the intelligence committees on the Hill yesterday, there are certain to be more revelations. And what on earth was the President’s closest advisor Valerie Jarrett doing in Tehran?

Maybe she should be SECSTATE after Hillary, though I suppose she would consider that a demotion.

I also got an analysis of what on earth has happened to the Golden State of California. It is a cautionary tale, and it turns out under the Government’s new analytic methodology, California is exactly as poverty-stricken as Mississippi.

They say the Left Coast is the bellweather for us all, and that bodes no good for any of us.

The reason for the chaos this morning is that it is the Last Game at College Park this morning- Florida State vs Maryland with a noon kick-off, and an early tailgate. I have a veggie platter and plenty of white wine, and the skies are clear if a bit cold.

I am replacing the back door at the farmhouse, though I am sure the football game will render me unsafe for the extended drive this afternoon after the game, so I will go down tomorrow and stick until Don-the-Builder’s guys are done on Monday.

Even though I could not share it, this week was a good drill, reality-wise. IIt featured a couple epiphanies. One of them includes the need to find a yoga program for crippled dummies. Talk to you tomorrow.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Insecurity

(The Department of Homeland Security. Really impressive, and just what we needed to keep the TSA under control. Hahaha. Image credit: Perkins+Will).

Well, I can’t sort it out, and that is making Plan B harder to figure out. The dust is starting to settle on the election; the triumphant rhetoric and recriminations are well in progress. The President held an infrequent press opportunity while my Colleague and I were screaming back and forth from the Agency on the wrong side of the Anacostia River.

The weather was cool but nice, and I have no idea why people were driving the way they were. The looming majesty of the new Headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security broods on the bluff above 270, where traffic was alternately crawling and spurting off in wild lane changes. I don’t know which is the greater threat.

I have come to accept the fact that I have to identify the jurisdiction of origin on the plate of the car ahead of me to know when I have to be ready for something stupid to happen.

I feel that way about a lot of the country these days. There are petitions to secede from the Union from several of the Red States, and I am inclined to let them go.

Anyway, the President seemed to indicate that the big solution to everything is to raise taxes, which comes as no surprise, though the math doesn’t seem to add up to that “Millionaires and Billionaires making more than $250,000 a year” thing.

I should say “meme,” since that is a cool word all the talking heads are using that none of the rest of us understands. I thought it was Marvel Marceau?

Anyway, I saw this analysis, and thought I would pass it along as part of the Plan B planning I am doing in case the Recession comes to Arlington.

“In case.” Hahaha. Talking to the bureaucrats at the Agency yesterday, we ain’t seen nothing in this industry yet. Oh well, it was a good run. Hence the “Plan B” drill for me. You can fact check it if you want- but it seems close enough for Government work:

“Q: Will increasing income taxes on families with incomes over $250,000 get the nation’s fiscal crisis under control?

A: Currently, the national debt exceeds $16 trillion. In fiscal year 2012, the administration added another $1.1 trillion to that debt. Most people who hear that raising taxes back to their Clinton-era levels would eliminate a good part, if not all, of the deficit. So what would happen if we returned the top marginal income tax rate from 35% to 39.6%, and the second marginal rate from 33% to 36%, as proposed?

Let’s note first that the top rate kicks in at a taxable income of $388,350 for a married couple, and the 33% rate at $178,650, so we are actually reaching deeper than the $250,000 level we have heard so much about.

The Joint Committee on Taxation claims raising the top two rates as proposed would increase revenue by $22.35 billion in FY 2013,assuming that no economic activity is deterred by the higher rates.

The higher taxes on the rich would cover around 2% of the current federal budget deficit, and would make no contribution at all toward dealing with our $16 trillion debt.”

I don’t know about that, since all the Keynesians keep telling us we will just grow out of it, like the Japanese thought 33 years ago. But let’s just say that it a popular approach to get even with those 1% bastards, even if it doesn’t actually fix much. It makes people feel better, and this is all about feeling good. Or better. Or something.

One of the important aspects of higher taxes is that there are internal feedback loops that go along with them. For example, a higher tax rate does not necessarily produce higher revenues to the government, since it stimulates tax avoidance.

I would never do anything like that. But I might quit working, if the recession comes to Arlington.

But that means looking at Plan B. I will leave you with this, just in case you are planning, too. Plan B might need a little work.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Bad News

I confess I do not know what to think about any of this latest exercise in public humiliation for some otherwise fairly good guys. You can balance that with the opinion of more than one female veteran of the gender wars that they are just pigs.

The count of “possibly inappropriate” messages is eye-popping. For context, though, I see that my “read” queue (past tense) on AOL stands at almost 78,000 emails. Now, that naturally includes all the crap and advertising that flows through the system, and I confess I quit trying to clean it all up- that last occurred a couple years ago, and with the dramatic increase in electromagnetic storage, has become a non-issue.

Of course, the contents of my “sent” file might be a more accurate indicator of whether I was forwarding dumb pictures or interacting with actual humans- since 2010 (the earliest “sent” that remains on the server) is a little over 13,000. That is still a lot of dumb pictures exchanged- and as you note, the 30,000 emails between the two figures in this puzzle seems a bit…well, excessive.

But passion knows no bounds, right? Women and men. It should be no mystery, since we are all one or the other of the two, but it certainly is a strange story. It could also- though this is by no means clear- link back to the unpleasant events in Benghazi, the depths of which have yet to be plumbed, a child custody case in Tampa, an FBI Special Agent with questionable cyber etiquette, and pass through Kabul and the long war in Afghanistan.

It is a circus, and the only way to characterize the mass of factoids that constitute the news business, though. I have several friends who are routinely outraged by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, whose saucy motto “Fair and Balanced” reporting makes them froth. The same could be said of my reaction to my old friends the New York Times, who have apparently unlocked the door in the firewall between “hard news” and OpEd.

I don’t think this is what a watch-dog press is supposed to do, and I don’t particularly mind the fact that the media I listen to seems to have a tiny bit of bias- but we can’t ignore them, can we? They select, massage and present the news we need. Or something.

Listening to NPR (and the contract BBC content that fills the evening void in NPR programming) to be a sort of open-source exercise in what the accepted Narrative of the moment might be. Perhaps this is just a feckless exercise in something that the legendary Satchel Paige called “angrifying the blood,” and I may have to walk away from it all.

Things that spark my passion this morning are a little further afield than the age-old interaction of the plurality of the various sexes that make up our species. The one that is not spread all over the Mainstream Media includes the outing of the “BBC 28,” or what wags in the climate wars are calling “28-Gate.” It is a fascinating list of individuals who have established the editorial policy of the storied network, which could be characterized (until recently, anyway) as the news outlet of record for the Globe.

The thing went down like this. Back in 2006 a meeting was held at Bush House to decided editorial policy. The result was the decision to block climate skeptics from appearing on the national taxpayer-subsidized network. The panel was composed of the  “best scientific experts” available, and was conducted as a “high-level seminar…(which) has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus [on anthropogenic climate change].”

Skeptics filed the British equivalent of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to find out who exactly the best scientific experts were. The Network declined to provide the names, and found a sympathetic judge to agree. The problem arose when an adept internet user harness technology through a thing called the “Wayback Machine,” and got the list of names that had been subsequently deleted.

That is technology Generals Petraeus and Allen probably should have known about, too, but they were too busy to know that privacy is a passé concept in the wired world.

As it turned out, the 28 “experts,” included exactly two who were actually associated with climate science. The other 26 members included BBC’s head of Comedy, two senior Greenpeace activists, charity fundraisers and lobbyists for environmental groups. The policy recommendations of the panel were implemented: the publicly-funded BBC has since effectively blocked airtime to climate skeptics and eliminated the requirement for anything resembling a “fair and balanced” approach to the issue.

Oh, a disclaimer, of course. I believe in climate change. That is a redundant phrase. That is what it does. To the best of my knowledge, the consensus is clear: global temperatures on the way out of the last ice age have indeed risen between a half and three quarters of a degree Celcious since 1840, but have stabilized or declined for the last sixteen years. It changes.

Further truth in advertising: I was once compensated for commentary that aired on the famed network, and thus I should have known that there was something fishy.

The old Russian aphorism seems appropriate, given the multiple revelations we are dealing with this week: “There is no news in Izvestia, and no truth in Pravda.”

Not that we didn’t know it, but the election dammed up a lot of strange facts and they had to be processed by the media machine so they could be ignored.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Tidal Wave

There is a tidal wave sweeping over me this morning, and a meeting with the good people of Lockheed-Martin in Springfield in one hour and three minutes. So, perforce, the usual smoothly-crafted story is going to have be traded for the shower and an exciting drive in the chill dank rain.

Between the disintegration of Generals Petreaus and Allen, the lunacy of the evil dwarf Bernanke at the Fed and the patently fallacious nature of the news itself I do not know what to think.

John Kerry as SECDEF? I thought we did this already. I could have as easily entitled this peeve as “Bad News.”

You may condemn Fox or MSNBC as shrilly partisan shills- I certainly do. But you may not have seen the revelation about the “BBC 28” this morning. It is the result of a perfectly legal internet research project that identified the members of  a conclave of alleged scientific experts who recommended that contrarian views about Anthropomorphic Global Warming not be broadcast because they were wrong, and not entitled to point-of-view representation on the highly respected global network.

At least it was highly respected. The Beeb is melting down these days over the matter of smearing public figures and covering up a serial pedophile as bad as that Jerry Sandusky creep at Penn State.

Oh, the panel of experts convened to advise broadcast policy were not actually scientists- they were activists, headed up by operatives of Green Peace, and the Church of England in unholy alliance. Plus the US Embassy, for some bizarre reason.

Just goes to show you can’t trust anything you hear, and you only know they are lying to you because their lips are moving.

My pal Boats and his talking Catfish are on to something profound- the tidal wave of oil and gas that will swamp local jurisidctions in the Red States where the stuff is located, the scramble of Washington to try to slice off as much of he pie as it can extort- the plain reality that future manufacturing is going to be all computer controlled and workers, per se, are going to be irrelevant.

That is a lot of people who are going to be underemployed and unhappy.

The business case for what is going on now is that there is plenty of stuff in the nation’s attic that has not been dragged out to put in the big Yard Sale that is America’s patrimony. This can go on for a while, but I am convinced this morning that the answer is to get away from all this. I don’t know where; Refuge Farm is as good an alternative as I have got, but that may not matter considering that we will have wheelbarrows of Bernanke Bucks to try to buy food.

Man, this is terrifying.

Me for the hills, or the shower. We can take a look at each of these astonishing developments in the days to come. I thought we would get a break after the election, but there was so much truth dammed up that the torrent is quite overwhelming.

Copyright 2012 Viv Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Passing Through

Things just take longer down on the farm. I enjoyed the extra day down in Culpeper immensely, and actually got some chores done.

(Re-cycling is an important civic duty. Here is the marshaling area for Veteran’s Day dead soldiers.)

Well, as you can see, there were some other activities besides “chores,” per se. Re-cycling among them, though I expect I will have to dig a trash pit when public services are interrupted. It is thirsty work emptying all those bottles, passing through the gentle and brilliant Fall afternoon.

My favorite chore was after the trip to the Lowe’s Big Box for one was attaching the Gadsden Flag to the main sheet below Old Glory. It made me feel good., and I resolved to look for a quality Jolly Roger pennant, just in case of the need to hoist one.

So, the temperature was warm enough that I thought about shorts, briefly, though I did not don them. The Semi-trailer arrived at nine, sharp. There is something blessed about Refuge Farm. People cannot seem to find it. My cell went off with that irritating tocsin  and the driver complained that I was invisible. I asked him where he was, and opened the window. Sure enough, I could hear the rumble of his diesel engine out there on the County Road, and I walked out of the house and onto the public right of way where he could see me.

I marveled at the skill required to back the rig up the hill, raking the pine boughs all along its path. He got the trailer positioned across my driveway- there was no way he was going to be able to get the truck down to the barn. That began the delicate dance.

Matt-the-Driver did not have a crew with him. He had loaded all the crap from storage in Petoskey on his own, and with two other partial loads, plied the same interstates I used to drive so often over the last five years. His tattoos were impressive- he was from Massachusetts someplace, had a delivery to VA Beach, and then last delivery in New Hampshire some place.

“Life on the road,” I said.

“Ain’t no life,” he said, laconically. The doors to the truck were not going to come open until he had his check for the $2,745.93 for cartage. I was a little woozy still from the Russian Operas we had been singing the night before, but I was game. I pulled out my checkbook and that is where the fun began.

“Can’t take a personal check,” he said. “Didn’t they tell you?”

“OK. Not a problem. Can you do a credit card.”

“Nope. Don’t have a machine. They could do it tomorrow, at Stevens Moving, but I would have to come back.”

“OK, let me check something out.”

I went to Wells Fargo on the internet and was apprised that there was an outlet at the Food Lion on the main road in town. It seemed to me that there was some sort of banking service at the WalMart as well, though God knows I hate to set foot in that chain. Several uncomfortable minutes went by as I tried to figure out how I could get my hands on cash or negotiable financial instrument at nine o’clock on a holiday Sunday morning.

I bade Matt farewell and told him I would be back in a while, and roared out of the driveway once he pulled the truck forward far enough to permit the Panzer to scrape by. I wondered how the horse trailers were going to get by on the County Road, and a mild feeling of surreal desperation swept over me. No local bank. Wouldn’t matter, since I could not get enough cash to meet the requirement based on the daily maximum withdrawal from the ATM.

I won’t bore you with the mundane details- I tried Target and they regretfully informed me they did not do money orders- although the dreaded WalMart did.

“I don’t want to go there,” I told the pert African American Lady. “I hate the place.”

“I hear that a lot,” she said, “Sorry.”

Which is how I found myself at the Returns-Adjustments-Financial Services Counter of the WalMart just up the road, on the other side of the Agricultural Supply complex with its silos and conveyer belts. The sign in front advertised Culpeper as one of the best ten small towns in America.

I decided to defer judgment on that, but I must tell you Mike that we live in an era of miracles.

I have to say that the WalMart is an alien place, and not that everyone there is undocumented. There were a couple Hispanic families, a dozen kids, a guy in a truckers cap with some batteries and an electronic game and a little girl who did not want to leave her mother, who was starting the shift.

It was precisely like visiting the DMV- a place where all the American Public must go, regardless of the ability to be someplace else.

The lady behind the counter was suspicious initially but became a co-conspirator once I explained the situation: I had a ton and a half of family crap on a semi-trailer in front of my farm, and I had to have the money. The thousand dollar limit on transactions? No problem. We will do three checks, at a net cost of .70 cents per transaction- a considerably better deal that Western Union, which would have cost hundreds in service charges.

The deed could only be done with a debit card, BTW, something I do not carry routinely but which my banker Ivan had prevailed upon me to accept in the interest of higher…interest. I had the card in the dozens in my wallet. In ten minutes I had my three official-looking pieces of paper and was on the road back to the farm.

I also found a branch of the very same Too-Big-to-Fail bank that allowed me to overdraft a grand to complete the transaction on the corner, so I have a local financial institution here. I felt like a real member of the Chamber of Commerce as I flew by in the brilliant sunshine in a powerful German SUV. Life is good.

(This is about a quarter of what came off the truck. Not shown is the refrigerator or the entire contents of Great Aunt Bly’s trousseau.)

Once I was back at the house and the paperwork was spread across the dining table in order, Matt opened the doors to the jumble in the trailer. As it turns out, he is not obligated to carry anything more than 300 feet from the truck to satisfy his contract.

I am still hobbling and weak on the leg, so this was going to be problematic. A flash of inspiration occurred while I was limping down to I used the World’s Fastest Production Pick Up truck to ferry the goods down to the barn.

Matt was flexible. I tipped him $40 bucks for his trouble, and then thought about having the Russians over for a glass of wine.

When the big semi pulled away from my drive I looked at the jumble in the office and the garage.

I gave a low whistle, and realized I am done with Michigan. That part of my life is now in my barn, and Petoskey is only a sentimental destination, not a place with loose ends. I may go back, and I will always love it, but it will only be passing through.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Long May She Wave

It is a huge Veterans Day down at the farm. Thanks for your service, Vets. You, and the long line of citizen soldiers have kept us free: Marines, Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, have kept us free.

Not that one Vet didn’t tweak me first thing, but I will get to that in a minute.

I had been shooting for the big erection by this holiday. No, no, not that. I felt it was time for Refuge Farm to stand up and be counted. In order to do so, I got a quote from Don-The-Builder and commissioned the planting of a flagpole at the front end of the driveway.

Here is how it looked last week:

(A good solid base, two feet deep with partly cured concrete. Photo Socotra.)

I was hoping the storms and all that rain would not preclude a good set to the gray mud, since the pole itself was no flimsy tube. This one is a hefty industrial grade pole:

(The pole rests on blocks in the garage. It is similar to the way the 16” replacement barrels for the guns on the Iowa-class Battleships were stored in rows at Subic Bay in the RP. Photo Socotra.)

When I wheeled the Panzer in off the county road, I saw that Don’s guys had completed the job, and the pole was ready to fly Old Glory, the 5x8FT trophy flag I bought at Hillary Clinton’s former campaign HQ in Arlington when she quit the race against President Obama in 2007.

There was quite a ceremony in honor of the day. I found the clips on the rope, attached the top one to the grommet on the blue field with stars, and wrapped the foot of the banner around my shoulder to ensure it did not touch the ground. I raised it enough to get the lower grommet attached, and made an adjustment to the span between them on the main sheet.

Then, up she went.

(Hillary’s Flag is a little large for the 18Ft of pole, but it radiates serenity.)

I stepped back and looked at the physical manifestation of devotion to country and service as it tossed limply in the nearly still air and country quiet. Then I went and got a glass of wine.

Sure, sure, I know there are deficiencies. For the present, I will have to have an evening retreat since I have not figured out how to illuminate it for night-time display. But I will get around to it.

Anyway, the formal retreat happened sometime around cocktail hour, and the Russians were over in augmented numbers with one of the daughters, a neat kid, and there was plenty of local food cooked by an almost local, and plenty of laughter.

The flag went back up at the Dawn’s Early Light in honor of the day and then I cruised through the mail that had piled up over night.

The first one I saw was a brain-teaser and I had not consumed enough coffee to be poked like that. Here it is, see if you can identify these familiar concepts:

Subject: Who’s platform/concept is this?

“The key planks of the Share The Wealth platform included:

No person would be allowed to accumulate a personal net worth of more than 300 times the average family fortune, which would limit personal assets to between $5 million and $8 million.

A graduated capital levy tax would be assessed on all persons with a net worth exceeding $1 million.

Annual incomes would be limited to $1 million and inheritances would be capped at $5 million.

Every family was to be furnished with a homestead allowance of not less than one-third the average family wealth of the country. Every family was to be guaranteed an annual family income of at least $2,000 to $2,500, or not less than one-third of the average annual family income in the United States. Yearly income, however, cannot exceed more than 300 times the size of the average family income.

An old-age pension would be made available for all persons over 60.

To balance agricultural production, the government would preserve/store surplus goods, abolishing the practice of destroying surplus food and other necessities due to lack of purchasing power.

Veterans would be paid what they were owed (a pension and healthcare benefits).

Free education and training for all students to have equal opportunities in all schools, colleges, universities, and other institutions for training in the professions and vocations of life.

The raising of revenue and taxes for the support of this program was to come from the reduction of swollen fortunes from the top, as well as for the support of public works to give employment whenever there may be any slackening necessary in private enterprise.”

Like I said, I was in no mood to be trifled with, so I copied the name of the platform and Googled it. You will not be surprised to see that it was the campaign plan of Huey “My Man” Long, the Original Kingfish.
He was a chicken in every pot sort of guy, the legendary Louisiana Popullist Governor was. He was going to run for President against FDR on this plan, but was gunned down in 1935 at the age of 42. I sent the answer back over the airwaves via the satellite and moved on.

(The Kingfish on the stump in 1935. Photo Bettman Archives.)

Forty-two. Damn, I thought. Such a short time to be on the planet.

The numbers alone should have been a dead giveaway, dating it to the Great Depression.  The clause that specified “Every family to be guaranteed an annual family income of at least $2,000 to $2,500” should have precluded the need to aid my failing memory with the search engine.

Imagine $2,500 smackers of 1934 dollars as a base income, adjusted in constant dollars. According to my CPI calculator, which works even down on the farm, one greenback in 1934 had the equivalent buying power of $17.27 today- and God knows what it will be worth in a couple minutes when Ben Bernanke gets done printing off this weekend’s new $40B backed by nothing but happy thoughts and unicorns.

That is around $43,000 bucks, today for that promised government pension, or just about dead on the American average income of $45,000 to sit around on your fat butt.

Which I have to say, given the times and my failing faculties, I think I would. Or will.

Anyway, I thank my dyspeptic pal for sending it along. It is great to see all the progress we have made in eighty years. Forward!

Or something. I am happy to be at the farm, where now Old Glory flies, and long may she wave.

Happy Veterans Day.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Plus ça Change

(General Dave Petraeus in happier times testifying before the House Armed Services Committee. Photo AP.)

I was going to explore the wonderful, magical world that is about to come with you this morning. It is part of what my pal the economist calls “the business cycle,” and the coming boom in oil and gas. It comes with new technology that will enable a new world. The idea of Three Dimensional Printing has been around for a while, like most transformative technologies, but is just on the verge of altering everything about how things are produced.

3D printing will end China’s run as the number one manufacturing economy. It is flat out amazing as an application: the new “printers” are nothing of the sort. They are actually CAD-to-object manufacturing machines which create layers at the molecular level to create finished objects. This will eliminate the waste of milling and machining to create working products.

As the Giant Catfish Namazu says on his blog at http://americanadmiraltybooks.blogspot.com/

“In short you are looking at the arrival of the STAR TREK replicator.”

Unfortunately, reality gets in the way of a good story, and 3D printing is going to be with us for a very long time. I heartily recommend checking out Namazu’s blog site. It is worth the time.

But overnight the story of the downfall of our most famous modern General spread and this morning people are talking.

I am taking great pains to be optimistic about the next four years. The coming boom in oil and gas is one thing to be positive about, along with the enabling technology that will free us from the old-style factory floor. Just in time, since that business model doesn’t work against global competition.

It is ruthless, just like the roar of the re-invigorated Administration. Time’s awastin,’ after all. There are a lot of left over issues that had to be kept in the closet until Tuesday was done.

Like yesterday’s end-of-cycle news. In an attempt to shut down the coming boom in oil, 1.6 million acres of Western public lands have been put off limits by the Interior Department. There is a lot of product located under private lands, and the boom is going to happen anyway. That strange international treaty about weapons trafficking is back on the menu- and don’t think people haven’t noticed.

I got a tweet from the shooting range at NRA headquarters out in Fairfax, saying my informant had never seen things so busy. The wife of a friend of mine was out all day withdrawing money from banks and purchasing ammunition.

I would prefer to just be optimistic. But the startling resignation of the Director of Central Intelligence has caused us all to run off in another direction this morning.

So back to General David Petraeus. There are conflicting reports this morning about his extramarital affair- the General was the most visible and popular military man of his generation, and his abrupt departure over the matter has everyone abuzz- at least for this news cycle.

There are conflicting accounts this morning, and his paramour has been named. She is a stone fox, just like Ike’s driver, Kay Summersby.

(Kay was a fair Irish lass who met, married and divorced a man by the name of Summersby. She later became engaged to an American colonel who was killed in Tunisia during the beginning of the American involvement in World War II. Subsequently, she met and became the personal driver and confidential secretary to Ike Eisenhower, from 1942 to 1945, while he was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe. Ike was under considerable stress at the time, and considered divorcing his wife Mamie to marry Summersby. General of the Army George C. Marshall did not fire Ike when he learned of it, but instead counseled him not to do that, since it would cost him his career. Kate went on to marry a man named Morgan and lived out the rest of her life in Southampton, New York. Ike decided to be a two-term and epoch-defining President of the United States.)

Note the contrast to what happened to Dave Petraeus.

(Paula Broadwell. She has an impressive resume of achievement. Look it up.).

Apparently Paula did the General’s biography, and things being what they are in wartime a long way from home, one thing apparently led to another. If I was a paragon of virtue I might say something disparaging, but I am thoroughly human, and don’t think it is anyone’s business except theirs, and of course Dave’s wife of 37 years.

The interesting thing is the context for the revelation and the repercussions.

One version of the story says that the background vetting of the General prior to his appointment as the CIA Director would have been thorough enough for the Administration to have known; maybe that is true and maybe it isn’t. I have passed all my background investigations, and all they have proven is that I am not a Soviet Agent.

This morning, the news cycle is spewing the inevitable: this is all more fall-out from the election, which appears to be a gift that just keeps on giving.

Apparently, the FBI had been investigating Dave for months, long before his appointment to CIA. Apparently the probe began when American intelligence mistook an email Dave sent to his Paula as a reference to corruption. Now, exactly who was reviewing the Commander of ISAF’s gmail account is sort of interesting, considering Dave was then commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, and it led directly to the FBI poring over his emails in the ensuing months.

That is really weird, but that is the world we live in.

Given his top secret clearance and the fact that Petraeus is a married man, the FBI continued to investigate and intercept email exchanges between Dave and Paula, which include some graphic and unmistakable references to intimacy.

The sanctimonious media is cluck-clucking about that, saying that the “relationship (wa)s a breach of top secret security requirements and could have compromised the General.”

Paula was on active duty as an Army Major at the time, so I am not completely sure about that. When I was working for the Other Government Agency, the thinking was that if employees were hitting the sack with one another, at least that was more acceptable than fooling around with people who have not been investigated.

That is where this gets stranger. With all that, it is apparent that the Administration knew of the vulnerability before they nominated Dave for the Directorship.

Right before the election, Petraeus made an effort to support his people. He announced that neither he nor anyone else in the Agency was involved in standing down a rescue attempt to save Ambassador Stevens at the facility in Benghazi.

Politics is a ruthless business, but this is a pretty graphic example of how the game is played. I suspect the White House wanted the General gone before the House Intel committee got their teeth into him. Now, humiliated, even if Dave goes rogue now that that he is free, his credibility is trashed.

Dwight would not have survived this. It is a new world. Thank god we have 3D printing and plenty of oil. Otherwise this would look pretty bleak. The more things change, the more they stay the same, you know?

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Morning in America

I was going to tell you about CHAMP this morning, and the implications of one of the more intriguing horrors to pop out of the old National Security apparatus, but there are a couple topics we really need to discuss at the end of this astonishing week. It is morning in America again.

Everything is going to be OK. Really.

Some of my pals are in the dumps. Others are ecstatic. I will take comfort in some things while others continue to fill me with dread. Like how on earth we are going to pay for all this. At the moment, we are borrowing nearly half of the outlays from the Federal Treasury. That can’t go on, but apparently it will.

That is why my pal Boats buoyed my spirits yesterday, and maybe it will for you, too. His news comes with challenges, to be sure, but it is the good kind.

Boats is a refugee from the Homeland Security State. As a retired Master Chief, he brought an enormous body of maritime experience to the Department of Homeland Security. Regrettably, that proved to be a liability to the policymakers at the Department, since he kept confusing them with facts, and in the end he and his bride fled back to his beloved Louisiana.

He is an indefatigable Bo’sun, though and he had to work. Over the summer he launched an ambitious attempt to join the fast-paced world of opinion blogging. This rarified pastime is practiced at last count by everyone in America except that irritating ex-brother in law of mine, and I understand he is thinking about it, too.

Any way, opinions are like assholes, and everyone has one. There is a critical difference with Boats, though, since he actually knows what he is talking about. That is what got him eased out of Government, but there is a distinct advantage to it over in the private sector.

Boats has adopted the famed Japanese icon of the psyche, Namazu the Giant Catfish whose trembling causes the world to quake in response. The Giant Catfish is a useful construct, and Boats was off on a tear. His whole argument is contained at the Admiralty Books website in a thing called “Namazu Fully Loaded: The Future of America.” I highly recommend it for a read, since the news electrified me.

http://americanadmiraltybooks.blogspot.com/2012_11_01_archive.html

Let me summarize a very witty and wise Cajun approach to what is coming. It is in two parts: the first is an explosion in gas and oil production on private land in the Continental United States, and the three-dimensional printer that will change manufacturing forever. Here is how Namazu’s wild ride commences:

“CHA CHING! BIG RECOVERY COMING NO MATTER WHO IS IN THE WHITE HOUSE!”

“There is a massive and rapid economic recovery coming to be followed by a relatively prolonged period of rising American Prosperity. This recovery/ restoration will be fully manifested within 42 months, possibly as early as 36 months and the first signs that the national media will be able to read are just around the corner.”

Now, come on, what is not to like about that? I will grant you the EPA is probably not going to be nuts about it, but absent a full-out regulatory assault like they have unleashed against the coal industry, it is going to happen whether that agency likes it or not.

I am a sucker for this stuff- I was chatting with a nice Nigerian man who swore he had several million dollars he needed to get out of the country, and I could have it if I just gave him my personal information and bank account number.

But look at this objectively if you have a minute. We are on the brink of actually being able to pay for health care and enhanced entitlements. No kidding.

Boats knows his oil and gas. He has been dealing with offshore drilling all of his professional life. Here is what he says is just around the corner:

“China’s rise is cruising for a bruising. The U.S. is poised to once again to emerge as the World’s only full service super power.”

I think that is good, even if I would have considered it unlikely earlier this week. “Two things are about to curb China’s growth,” he writes, “their dependency on import hydrocarbon energy, and new technological developments that will render the type of manufacturing that grew their economy, obsolete and not cost effective.”

I needed a dose of optimism this week as I approach my dotage, so I was naturally interested in how he came to his conclusions. Boats masks his pronouncements in the guise of the Giant Catfish, and he channels Namazu the Earth Shaker unchained.

The premise is something you already know. Americans have tapped into natural gas in a big way lately. Where the nation was not long ago the major importer of liquefied natural gas, we are now more than self-sufficient and starting to export. The price of natural gas is dropping. “The U.S. is trying to use as much as it can rapidly converting electricity production over from coal to natural gas. People are converting from electricity to natural gas for heating and cooking and bypassing electricity no matter how it is generated.”

The desire to export natural gas by the American producers is nothing short of urgent. The price for natural gas is too low in America due to the glut, but there is a demand for it globally. But America has hardly begun to tap it’s potential as a net exporter, just when the Chinese need it. The biggest obstruction to natural gas export is the fact that all but one of our LNG marine terminals were developed as import terminals.

Namazu makes the case that we just were not thinking things through. The facilities can be easily be back-engineered to become export hubs, though of course that will require the Government to issue permits for conversion. Here is why that is going to happen: The holders of these permits are going to be rich, and that is going to offer the opportunity for the System to cut off a fat slice. It is the Chicago way, and I think the logic is inescapable.

When the permits are issued and gravy spread around, the United States will jump practically over night to the number one exporter of liquefied natural gas to the world.

Coupled with the astonishing development that excess refining capabilities have already made us a net exporter of refined petroleum product. Namazu predicts that that “Not only will the United States be self sufficient in oil, if America wanted to export crude stock , soon U.S. crude stock available for export will exceed Saudi Arabia.”

The Cat Fish thinks that both candidates knew this, going into the endless election. I don’t know about that, but someone who understands what is going on underground must have laid the cards on the table.

(This is an LNG tanker. There is going to be a need for many of these and other tankers as the United States comes back on line as the world’s major petrochemical and natural gas producer).

Naturally, the news about new gas production in the Gulf is tinged with the recollection of the awful spill from the Deepwater Horizon well in 2010. The submarine finds by the oil companies- including villain BP- have been making muted headlines ever since, but the real news is that the same formations identified underwater are also onshore, and in the hands of private industry.

Namazu points out that one of the new geologic formations that technology has made possible to exploit in Texas has more reserves than all of Saudi Arabia. So far, we know of about three more such formations in the United States, but like the guy on television says, wait, there’s more!

There is a belt of oil reserves in the SE United States that arcs from Alabama through parts of Mississippi and into parts of what the Cajuns call their “Florida Parishes.” Proven reserves in this formation alone dwarf those of Saudi Arabia.

There is more to the story, of course. Speculators have known about this for years, but the product locked in the formation is laced with hydrogen sulfide, complicating recovery. A sudden spike in exploration activity causes Namazu to speculate that insiders are aware of new technology that is going to make these reserves safe and economical to produce.

I know a lot of folks are going to squirm about the news of what is happening. There has to be an impact on whatever that climate thing is that is going on.

Look for a battle royal on that one. Namazu knows exactly what is going on, and the show-down between industry and government is going to be spectacular. Suddenly, it appears there is no end to U.S. crude oil reserves.

The old Catfish knows human nature, though. You will not have heard much about all this, since the political process of obtaining the necessary permits will set off a political feeding frenzy from the Red-State county supervisors up through the halls of Congress to the White House.

This is going to be entertaining, and the economy is going to roar out of recession.

The returned Obama Administration is being poked to clamp down on the boom, slowing it with the same permit games that shut down the northern path of the Keystone Pipeline. But in the end, this cannot be stopped and her’s why: the jobs that will be created by the private sector will be largely high wage blue collar related to oil drilling, refining, and transport.

Namazu estimates that an instrument technician in an oil refinery requires about six months of vocational technical training and starts near $60,000 a year in compensation. It is exactly what both candidates were promising, and it is going to be too tempting to pass up.

Stand by for good times to come back. It is going to happen regardless of what the government does to try to slow it down.

The deal with 3-D printing is the other half of the Namazu argument. I will get to the impact of that tomorrow. This is another of those disruptive technologies that has been around for a while, but is on the cusp of changing the world as we knew it. Who would have figured that it was Morning in America again?

Trust me, I know. I heard it from a Catfish.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com