Call me Scrooge

For over 20 years I have awakened to the sounds of a certain radio station. At 6 a.m. they give a rundown of local news and generally they play Adult Contemporary music. It is a music mix that I enjoy. My alarm goes of just a moment or two before 6 a.m., so I usually hear a song before the news comes on. I like having time to hit the "off" button if I don't feel like listening to the woes first thing.

On Monday, the song that greeted me was a holiday tune. I knew immediately that the station had switched to its Christmas music mix - and it was only November 16. I grabbed my glasses and fumbled with the clock radio dial until I found NPR.

And there it will stay.

I have had it with this station. I love Christmas carols as much as the next person but not before Thanksgiving. That's just too soon. It's bad enough in the stores; I don't need it piped into my house, and I will not tolerate it.

How can a holiday be special if you celebrate it with so much crass commercialism? It's not like they're just playing O Holy Night the entire time, no. They are playing the whole mess, from Grandma Got Runned Over By a Reindeer to Holly Jolly Christmas. Christmas is about the birth of Christ, and the rest of it is just marketing.

But this is not the only reason I will no longer listen to this station. Their contests verge on mean sometimes. Their music has been steadily moving in a direction I don't care for. One of their morning DJs in particular has become so militant I can hardly stand to listen to him some days. So after 20 years, I am telling this radio station "good-bye" and I am moving on to something else.

While I like NPR, I don't particularly like waking up to it. It is nothing but news at that hour and I need a little while to get myself together before being bombarded with the latest crime wave or economic disaster or war or pandemic. So I am thinking now what I need is a whole new wake-up method. Maybe some kind of player for my IPod so I can wake up to something I actually want to hear.

Or maybe I'll just put my clock radio on the buzzer, and let that be my morning song.

A word to renters

In the local daily yesterday, the pet columnist wrote about getting her cat declawed. What irked me was her nonchalant attitude toward her landlord.

This "mean" landlord had a no pet policy so the writer was forced, she said, to get her cat declawed in hopes of keeping the landlord from finding out she had a pet.

What part of "no pets" do people not understand? How was her breaking the rules the landlord's fault? She obviously lied about the cat to get in the place and then was unhappy because the landlord eventually found out about the cat and asked her to leave, in spite of the declawing. I'd have asked her to leave, too.

I have been a landlord through no fault of my own for about 10 years now. It is not a job I am particularly happy to have, but I deal with it.

Being a landlord means dealing with people who have absolutely no concern for your property. This is the house I grew up in. It is a valuable asset. I don't want to see it destroyed.

When I say "no pets" or even "one outside pet" or no smoking or don't park your car atop the septic tank, it is said for a reason.

Pets are hard on a place. They pee on the floor, they scratch things. They stink. But most important for me, I am highly allergic to them and when a renter has a pet in there and leaves, I have to hire someone to clear the place out because it will make me sick. It costs me money.

People who rent seem to have no regard for their landlord. This is a generalized and sweeping statement, I know, but it has been the truth so far in my experience with renters. Either they let the place fall down around them and don't call if the roof leaks or they call every time they need a light bulb changed, and they do that at 11 p.m. at night.

I guess renters make generalized and sweeping statements about landlords, as in, they're all bad and it's okay to try to outsmart them. But this is untrue as well.

My little old farmhouse is currently available to rent. I am a good landlord. If something breaks, I fix it. I do that within days, not in months. If you're late on the rent, I'm understanding until it becomes a monthly habit. I pay to have the house sprayed for bugs and rodents to be sure you're living in a clean environment (if the renter is a pig who doesn't know what a trash can is for I can't do much about that except ask them to leave).

I do ask my renters not to smoke inside. I prefer no pets but have given up trying to enforce that policy so I will allow a small animal with a $200 non-refundable deposit. Actually, at the moment if a no-smoking, no pet person wanted to rent the house right now, I might even cut a little off the monthly rent.

But don't lie to me because I'm your landlord. Don't tell me you have no pets and then bring in a dog. And certainly, don't blame me because you disobey the rules and have your cat declawed. In no way is that the landlord's fault. Look at yourself for that, dearie.



This house is for rent. It can be your home for $750 a month. Wonderful, caring landlord comes free.

Corporate welfare

Ukrops in Roanoke is closing.

The grocery chain, which I have visited approximately five times, was nice and all but since I did not shop it frequently (I live too far away), I had trouble finding the deals. To be honest, I stopped in there for one single item that I could not find elsewhere, and it is something I can live without.

What most folks don't know, since apparently few people read an article all the way through anymore, if they read it at all, is that the City of Roanoke gave the property developer many incentives to build Ivy Market (the name of the development) on this location. So let me remind you.

The deals cut for Ukrops/Ivy Market, a $20 million project, are thus (from The Roanoke Times archives):

$9 million package. "The agreement will allow Painter's development company, IMD Investment Group, to get a maximum $600,000 city grant annually for 15 years. The grants, or rebates, are to be based on the amount of revenue Ivy Market produces annually. The program will be administered through the city's Industrial Development Authority. None of the money will be paid to the developer upfront." - The Roanoke Times, December 19, 2004

According to this article, the developer told the city the project would bring in $1.4 million in annual tax revenue. That meant the city would still get $800,000 after it gave the developer $600,000. But the city's own analysis indicated the amounts actually would be more like $900,000. They went ahead with the deal anyway.

In the same article, which reviews emails, note this quote. "The chances of Ukrop's leaving during the next 15 years are extremely small," [Councilman Brian]Wishneff wrote. He is not a councilman anymore.

I call this largess with taxpayer money corporate welfare. It means the city is giving the developer back money because he decided to operate there. The city hopes to gain financially from their investment over time.

I also call it bullshit. If someone wants to develop something in a community, let them come, provided they meet the zoning, but why pay them? They take the taxpayer dollars and run. Botetourt County has offered incentives many times to businesses, and now we have big empty buildings. Was it really to the citizenry's advantage to make concessions, to offer tax breaks or money up front? Did the jobs stay forever? Did they even last 10 years?

Another instance of corporate welfare is federal agricultural subsidies. This is supposed to help small farmers, you know. We are small farmers. Do you know how much money we receive from the federal government?

ZERO. Not one single penny. Nada, nothing, zippo.

And every other small farmer I know, with the exception of a couple of local dairies, receives nothing, too. Guess who does get all of those millions? ConAgra, DuPont, Cargill, all of the big companies. The companies that don't need the money just to eat and be able to watch cable.

Walmart also receives federal dollars. As of 2004, the $256 billion company had received over $1 billion in state and local government subsidies. In the 1990s it received over $5 million from Roanoke City for its Valley View store. (The Roanoke Times, Dec. 19, 2004). No wonder it wants to put in more Walmarts here. Follow the money.

Here are some of Roanoke's other corporate welfare projects, from the same article:

1994 - First Union, $500,000, 200 new jobs
Early 1990s - Wal-Mart - $5 million for the Valley View store
Mid-1990s - Roanoke Electric Steel, $260,000 for a $14 million investment
1997 - Maple Leaf Bakery, $757,324 for a $20 million investment
1997 - First Citizens Bank, $25,000, 30 new jobs
1999 - Johnson Johnson Spectacle Lens Group, $9.17 million, $125 million investment
2000 - Precision Technology USA, $80,000 $2.2 million investment; 112 new jobs
2001 - Foot Levelers, $34,790, $3.3 million investment
2001 - The Roanoke Times, $600,100, $25 million minimum investment
2002 - Advance Auto, $1.13 million, $6.7 million investment; 168 new jobs
2003 - SEMCO, $150,000, $4 million minimum investment
2003 - Boxley Materials Co., $154,000, $2.5 million investment; 9 new jobs
2004 - Member One, $66,000, $6 million investment

And then you have something like Gander Mountain in northern Roanoke County, which is the only development I've ever heard of that actually turned down incentive money. Good for them. I try to shop there when I need something they sell.

This is our country. Corporate welfare is a plague. This kind of madness needs to stop. NOW. Make corporations work within their own budgets. That is what the rest of us. Why should a corporation be any different?

If wishes were dimes

There are 305 million people in the United States.

Let's say there are about 150 million households (I think it is a smaller number than that - more like 130 million - but I didn't feel like sifting through the Census Bureau website.).

It seems to me that if the government is giving away money, it would be easier, faster and cleaner just to send it to the households.

Let's skip the banks and all of this other stuff and let the people manage their own money.

If the government handed out $100,000 to 150 million households, that would $15 with 12 zeros after it. I think (hope?) that is $15 trillion.

Okay, that's a lot. And it's out of the $800 billion range, so let's make it $10,000. That's $15 with 11 zeros after it, and I think that is $150 billion dollars. That would leave $650 billion out of the $800 billion stimulus fiasco which I think should go toward building infrastructure and doing only things that are job related. It should not go to banks and financial institutions, even though my bank is one of the banks apparently gaining windfalls from tax dollars these days.

A lot of people are going to save that $10,000, you know. That's money in the bank. Some will spend it, but others will pay off credit cards, maybe catch up on those delinquent mortgages. The banks would get their share that way. Good banks would benefit the most, if the market theories are correct.

If necessary, somebody correct my math if it is in error, please, because I majored in English and not math.

My point is, whatever the numbers, couldn't the populace do a lot of economic stimulating itself if we had the money? If you're going to throw away dollars, why not give it to the people who actually need it?

Couldn't every household use $10,000?

I don't have a problem with the government stepping in to help. Government should do that. I just wish it would step in and help the people who really could use the help, and not the high rollers and the folks who created the problem in the first place.

Here We Go Again - Up in the Air

Two hot air balloons flew over our house this morning around 9 a.m.

The cows stampeded to the other end of the farm.

The balloonists were flying too low. They are supposed to be a certain height over the area and these fliers were not.

It is the "whoosh" of the propane gas burners that scares the cows. This noise like a dragon sets them off and they will run from one end of the farm and through the fence in order to get away from it.

My husband ran outside and began calling the cows to try to calm them. "Whooo cow... Whooo" he cried.

They were not reassured. They ran off like they had Satan on their heels. I took pictures of the low-flying hot air balloons which I will deliver to the Commonwealth's Attorney's office on Monday.

We also yelled at the balloonists. The balloon operators hit their burners and quickly went higher (where they should have been to begin with) and then the wind currents took them in another direction.

I know they heard us because I went up in a hot air balloon once. You can hear everything on the ground, even conversation at normal volume. Sound apparently travels up.

My husband jumped in the truck and went after the cows. They were on the other side of the farm, huddled in the corner at the fence. He had to fire up the tractor and take them a large round bale of hay to coax them out.

After my husband calmed the cows, we called the sheriff.

If the cows go through the fence or if one breaks a leg while running away from these balloons, we are the ones incurring the loss. Not these hot air balloonists. As it was it cost us time, gasoline and a bale of hay that we can ill afford in these times of drought.

Cows are not cheap. We have many thousands of dollars invested in these animals. I understand horses also go nuts at the sound of a hot balloon. I was told last year that one horse badly injured himself trying to jump out of its stall when a balloon went over.

One of the reasons this is so vexing is that if these people would go just 10 more minutes down the road, they could fly over thousands of acres of public National Forest land and not disturb anyone. With all of that National Forest you'd think they could find some place down that way to take off and land that did not inconvenience others. Not all of the National Forest is wooded; there are open fields.

This is the problem with the world today. Everyone is "hooray for me" and "screw you." I don't think for a moment that these balloonists care that they cost my husband an hour of his morning or that he is very upset.

We have had problems with a balloonist in the past. So this is not new, nor is this the first time we've filed a report. We know the drill and that is how I know to take my photos to the Commonwealth's Attorney.

If I were a hot air balloonist and I knew I had people yelling at me, when I landed and was able to locate a computer with the county's GIS on it, I would figure out who those landowners were and I would contact them and apologize. Even if I had to make several calls to get the right farmer.

However we have never had any contact with any of these balloonists and of course we don't have any way to know who they are. I think one of them operates a ballooning business here but I have never seen the multi-colored balloon before.

I wish people would think about their actions. Hot air balloons are lovely but like everything they have their place.

And that is not over a farm full of scared and frightened cattle.

Let's Have a Dialogue

One of my readers left a long answer about issues with health care and then deleted the comment. I received it anyway as an email.

I will respect the author's anonymity because I enjoy his/her blog and I am not out to make enemies. That's easy enough to do when you're not trying.

But I would like to make note of two of the writer's points.

One - Medicare (along with the insurance industry) is the real root of the problem. Medicare only pays a fraction of the actual cost of service, so charges must be made elsewhere to compensate.

Two - many people have no insurance and cannot pay. They fall under charity care because they haven't the funds to properly pay their medical bills.

These are critical issues but I think they go much deeper than just health care. This is a very wealthy country but there an amazing amount of people can barely scrap by. An amazing number of folks sleep on sidewalks or roam the streets of the city because they have nowhere else to go.

There are oodles of people living in substandard housing, living with a leaking roof and shivering in the cold because they can't pay their bills. I know because I have been in some of those homes.

The real issue, to me, isn't health care but this dual standard of living. We have the very rich and the middle class. Then there's this ghost poor who no one talks about and addresses accept to acknowledge that they are a drain on the system.

I think it's time we try to do something to help these people. What would this entail? Would we ask the churches to stop building larger buildings and instead tend to the needy? Would that become a mandate?

Would we increase the funds from Social Security and other government entitlement monies to increase the standard of living from barely there to maybe having a little something? If we do that, how do we pay for it? Do we stop fighting wars and train those funds on the poor? Do we stop paying for public education? Do we raise taxes on those who can pay? And then how do we define who can pay? Just folks making over XXX dollars? Folks who manage to live within their means?

This country needs a major conversation on very important issues just like what I've described above. We don't need to talk about who's daughter is pregnant, which church someone does or does not attend and what Britney Spears has had to drink today. None of that matters to the nation. It shouldn't matter to anyone but the parties involved.

How we handle our less fortunate has a big impact on the country. FDR managed to bring an entire class out of a state of drowning by creating jobs - upgrades to infrastructure that are now today badly in need of repair. In Virginia alone we need millions and millions of dollars of road work that the state is unwilling to pay for.

There are sewer lines to be laid and water lines to be put down. Bridges need repairing. If we put people back to work - real work - imagine how different it might be. Folks could pay their E.R. bill, maybe.

Instead of tossing out $600 stimulus checks that do little, why not set up another Civilian Conservation Corps? Why not let people have a little pride and go about helping their country while they are also economically sustaining it?

It's time for talking about this sort of thing, folks. We need a plan. And then we need action. We need to find our footing again so we can all stand up proud, healthy and strong - each and every one.

Swing Vote

Last weekend we saw the movie Swing Vote with Kevin Costner.

The movie basically is about a down-and-out divorced father who works in a egg factory (and gets fired during the movie). Through some twisted logic, he becomes the key vote during the presidential elections.

The presidential candidates then via for his vote.

That's the plot, but the movie is quite a commentary on our society. It is billed as a comedy but I cried throughout much of the show.

The movie highlighted the people that don't seem to matter in this country, at least not to the media and not to the government. Costner's character was one of those folks who have given up and lost hope of ever doing anything with his life. Why should he bother voting, much less trying to understand the issues, when so little of it pertains to his life?

He doesn't care about abortion or stem cell research or the War in Iraq, except that its taken some his drinking buddies away from town. He does care about high prices, gassing up his truck, feeding his daughter and making sure she gets to school.

The presidential candidates swoop into town to convince this uneducated bumpkin to vote for their side. It doesn't really matter what they stand for or if they are right or left in their politics; if Costner's character said he liked purple and the polka that is all that mattered.

Finally Costner's daughter forced him to understand the importance of his decision. He read letters that folks just like himself sent to him, hoping he would make a difference. He asked for a debate between the two candidates. One of the letters asked why, in a nation so rich, is there so little for those who have the least?

It is a good question and the movie did not answer it. That's because the answers are multiple and singular. I can name it in one word: greed.

The concept of the Greater Good has vanished. People do not care about one another. If I know you I might care about you but otherwise, I have no need or desire to see that you are safe and fed. That is how people think, with their eyes and hearts completely closed.

Politicians listen only to whiny self-inflated egoists who sit in their McMansions boo-hooing because they might have to pay another $100 a year in taxes. Those crybabies never think that their money might feed another person, or fix a road so that their best friend's cousin doesn't get killed in the bad curve, or pay for health care for an elderly mother who just had a stroke. All they think about is their tightly closed pocketbook.

The politicians (or the McMansion crowd) don't hear the cries of the waitress trying to raise her daughter on $18,000 a year. Or the sounds of a family of four trying to get back on $24,000 a year. They don't realize that there is no blame - not everyone can come out on top. Despite the rhetoric, we can't all be president or run corporations or make a million dollars. There just isn't enough time or space.

The politicians just hear Halliburton's cries for more cash and Exxon's demands for lower pollution controls. Big business rules. Hail the corporations!

This movie pointed out what is wrong and sad about this country and about the pitiful and sick election process that we undergo every four years.

It made some members of the audience uncomfortable and it made me cry. I wish everyone would watch this flick and understand, if only for a moment, the absolute unfairness of our capitalistic system and just how undemocratic our so-called democracy really is.

Not Worth the Money

I recently (as in, last night) purchased a harlot red little Gateway laptop from one of our local electronic stories (the initials are CC).

The laptop itself so far seems fine, although I haven't had a chance to use it much. I think I got it at a decent price.

I enjoyed my experience at the store. I felt like the salesman was listening and I didn't have to pay the sales tax and they matched an ad for MS Office 2007. The computer was already on sale, $90 off. It seemed like a good deal.

What wasn't a good deal was the $70 I paid to CC for software installation and something called "quickstart".

As explained to me at the point of sale, the tech would remove extraneous advertising that comes on new PCs and make sure everything was updated and properly installed so that when I came home I could boot the system and vrooom .... I could get straight to it.

I have always done this myself for new computer purchases, but my husband said, "Go on, let them take care of it. It's a new operating system (Windows Vista, which I haven't used) and I know that takes you a lot of time."

He has listened to me voice expletives before as I sweated over a new computer set-up. This is my second laptop and I've had a number of desktops (2 HPs, 2 Gateways, 1 made for me, 1 Radio Shack, 1 Tandy, and 1 Commodore 64, 1 Vic 20 ... not counting the Toshiba laptop and now this new Gateway. I think that is all of them but I may be missing one in there somewhere.).

So I agreed and we spent $70 for this service, $29.99 for software installation and $39.99 for this quickstart set up. CC called late last night, about 2 hours after the purchase, and said the laptop was ready.

I had a hair appointment in Roanoke anyway this morning, so I went and picked it up. It is not like the store is next door; it's a 40 minute drive.

Upon my return home, I turned the thing on and after it connected to my wireless connection on my home network, the computer started downloading upgrades for Vista.

I was not happy about this. While it's something that, knowing Microsoft, will continue from now until the end of time, the fact is I shouldn't have turned the thing on and had that occur since I'd paid $39.99 just so that would not happen.

I called CC and was shuffled around and eventually told I got what I'd paid for. Essentially I was patted on the head and told to be a good girl and go away and leave the boys to their toys.

It's only $40, I know. But that is a tank of gas or a week's worth of food for us. I feel like I wasted that money and I will not purchase this kind of service from CC or anyone else ever again.

I would advise anyone who has even a small amount of computer knowledge to keep their money and do the initial set up themselves. If nothing else you'll learn from the process and still be able to buy gas.

Gestapo Land

I feel like I have fallen into Gestapo Land.

Just a few more hours and you'll have to salute simply to cross various borders.

Papers please.

The Word is "Joint"

Last night while watching a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concert on TV, I noticed the interesting censorship that is going on this silly country.

In the song You Don't Know How It Feels, they messed with this line:

Let's get to the point. Let's roll another ????

WTF? (They do it on the video I linked to above, also.
Here's an uncensored version of the song.)

The censured word is joint. As in a marijuana cigarette. I am about 1000 percent sure that when this song was released in 1994 that the word joint was NOT censured. I wonder if it's censured these days on the radio, too. Maybe they just don't play it anymore.

Let's get to the point. Let's roll another joint.

And what doesn't get censured? What objectionable things did I hear Tom Petty sing about last night that wasn't bleeped out?

How about ... drinking booze and getting into a woman's jeans? It's not okay to roll a joint ... but it's okay to mess around and possibly impregnate a woman. And it's okay to get drunk.

I am so glad we have our priorities straight in this country. (That was sarcasm in case you missed it.)

I suppose this is part of the war on drugs. Another government initiative that has never made sense to me.

No, I don't use drugs but I think the policy of locking up someone for smoking MJ is ridiculous. Europe treats drugs as a health issue, not a criminal one, and I think that is the better way to go about this.

Obviously our way isn't working, so it's time to look to something that seems to be modestly successful.

In the meantime, government and TV and everyone else who thinks they know what is good for me, stop censuring my art. And everything else. What are we, a bunch of wilted flowers?

I hate censorship.