Monday Musings. September 20, 2010

One of the things I love most about the change of season in autumn - and winter- is the rich collection of clouds we have here on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada. The Sierra Wave or Leewave type of  lenticular - or lens shaped cloud - is a beautiful product of fierce downslope winds of our area.

These are stacked lenticulars being formed by high winds aloft.

This is the southern half of a large Sierra Wave cloud that stretches north to the approximate location of Peavine Mountain, north of Reno, Nevada. It probably goes as far south as Minden, Nevada. This is a prime example of just why the Sierra Nevada poses very technical and challenging environments for both powered aircraft and ‘gliders’ ( this area is world reknowned for it’s great soaring). This particular cloud demonstrates that turbulent winds exist about 5 to 10 nautical miles off the actual lee slope of the mountains.

For this reason, I carry a camera most all winter when out and about.

This Sunday was the final farmers market of the season. Actually, I’m ready for it all to end. I’m still watering the tomatoes, but my heart isn’t in it the same way as it was back in May and June. This was a difficult growing season for everybody in the area. I was talking to the owner of Hungry Mother Organics, the organic farm down in Carson City, Nevada and he was heaving a few well deserved sighs that this season is almost history.

I didn’t realize that Hungry Mother Organics was supplying farm fresh eggs, with all their barnyard pecking goodness. They are. And you can also still avail yourself of pick-it-yourself veggies, in addition to a tool swap on September 25th, 10 to 2.

Hungry Mother Organics does more than simply supply us with simple honest food. They are also supplying inmates at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center with a learning experience that just might help these folks survive - via a sustainable green model - once back on the outside. This is a very worthy endeavor. Let’s all support local providers like Hungry Mother Organics - they are selling to the Great Basin Food Co-op in Reno right now ( you can get the eggs there, and HMO lettuce is amazing!). It’s good for them and good for us.

We watched a really excellent documentary last night on Netflix/BluRay.’ Maxed Out’ is what we all need to hear - and get our heads wrapped around about:

1- Just why we really need Elizabeth Warren as the ‘Advisor’ to the new the consumer protection agency mandated by the financial regulation bill. Bravo. Sic ‘em, girl.

2-How the Bush administration created and promoted this mess of consumer finance fraud and abuse. MBNA was one of ‘W’s’ biggest, if not the biggest, contributor to his campaigns. Another argument for campaign finance reform.

“MBNA was one of the companies mentioned on a 2004 Frontline PBS special about unfair business practices by credit card companies^[7]. Some industry practices which MBNA possibly engaged in previously^{[weasel words]} included doubling or tripling of interest rates, shifting billing due dates/payment cycles monthly, and raising rates for customers whose payments were a day or two late which earned it the sobriquet, Misrepresentation Bank of North America. MBNA have been found to be one of the leading implementors of Rate-Jacking or what has also been termed the “Great MBNA Interest Rate Escalator Trick”.” Wikipedia

3- Debt: the most profitable legal drug in America today, which is one reason the banks have fought oversight so hard.

The only criticism I had of the film was the ‘debt clock’ segment. This paints all debt as the same and equally bad - which it most certainly is not.  We all live in debt - unless you’re on the lam and living off the land on an Aryan Nations compound in northern Idaho. If you finance a car or a home or a college degree, you willing take on debt to acheive greater things. So too, does the state and national government.

What we really need to get a grip on - and here’s homework for Sharron Angle and the Tea Party - is that portion of the national debt that went for unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and massive military weapons systems that benefit nobody but the military-industrial complex. This is debt that has no constructive purpose. It’s not the kind of ‘beneficial’ debt that builds schools, roads, a modern electrical grid and infrastructure and so many of the other things that truly benefit society.

What Americans don’t need right now are a bunch of radical ‘Conservatives’ trying to pay off the debt they were happy to run up during the good times, now that times are hard. The Tea Party wants to cut the debt? That means cutting jobs when we can least afford it.

These statements were made during hearings of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, September 30, 1941. Members of the Federal Reserve Board call themselves “Governors.” *Governor Marriner Eccles - a true conservative, was Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board at the time of these hearings:

Congressman Patman: “How did you get the money to buy those two billion dollars worth of Government securities in 1933?”
Governor Eccles: “Out of the right to issue credit money.”
Patman: “And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our Government’s credit?”
Eccles: “That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.”
Congressman Fletcher: “Chairman Eccles, when do you think there is a possibility of returning to a free and open market, instead of this pegged and artificially controlled financial market we now have?”
Governor Eccles: “Never, not in your lifetime or mine.”

I won’t spend a lot of time on this here, but you might want to read Depression Economics on ZFacts - and really see how all this works. It’s accurate and highly informative.

Oh, one of the other things that caught me by surprise watching Maxed Out was the fact that Wells Fargo and  couple other big banks are fronting all these Pay Day Check stores that dot the Nevada landscape like a social disease. A lot of other states are mad as hell, and are busy putting on the brakes to stop their abuses, but of course, not Nevada. Needless to say, perhaps, but I don’t do business with Wells Fargo. We only deal with credit unions.

Here’s another great resource: Americans for Fairness in Lending. If you - or someone you know is tempted to try a ‘payday’ loan, then direct them to this website, where they can better understand just why ‘payday’ loans should be the loan of absolute last resort, and that there are probably better solutions at hand.

Payday loans are symptomatic of a society that is, essentially, feeding on itself.

Mr. Maven said something interesting today - that Nevada should either get over the grand idea of bringing ‘industry’ to Nevada or send the gaming industry packing. He’s right. ‘Industry’ doesn’t want to be located in a state where their employees will be subjected to the negatives of the 24/7 gaming ‘lifestyle’. That said, it’s time to make ‘gaming’ - gambling - pay it’s fair share.

So now, Sharron Angle has a new lie about Harry Reid. Sigh.

“Illegals sneaking across our border, putting Americans’ safety and jobs at risk,” the ad narrator says as images show people crossing the border.

Yup. Cutting Americans out of those lawn clipping jobs that they’re standing in line for.

But let’s Fact Check the claims, which are based on immigration reform votes back in 2006 and 2007 by looking at what others are saying.

The St. Petersburg Times (hardly a ‘liberal’ newspaper) said:

“So, how persuasive are these four examples of Reid voting “to give special tax breaks to illegal aliens”? They didn’t persuade us.

We’ll agree that it’s fair for Angle to paint Reid as something less than Draconian in his stance toward former illegal immigrants. However, we find little to support the charge that Reid voted to “give special tax breaks to illegal aliens.” Most of the Angle camp’s cited votes were actually aimed at people in the U.S. legally (even though they may formerly have been illegal), and in at least two cases, we disagree that what was being voted on represented a “special tax break” at all. The combination of these concerns lead us to rate this claim False.”

You can read their entire analysis of the bogus Sharron Angle ad about Harry Reid’s stance on illegal immgrants by clicking  here.

If Angle is going to hold Harry Reid to the fire over some marginally relevant votes back in ‘06 and ‘07, then we really ought to take a second look at her past record - and that of Christine O’Donnell, the witchcraft dabbling Tea Party candidate from Delaware who can’t quite keep her finances on the up-and-up.

Reno’s KRNV also put Angle’s ad to the ‘truth’ test and it earned an ‘F’.

I got rather behind the power-curve today with blog posts. I have several I wanted to work on, but spent that time instead on Tech Support with Adobe Photoshop. Yup, I knows the difference between operator error ( moi ) and a real, live software bug when I sees it.

This one was one for their books - and bug log - it was truly ‘novel’, and took a couple hours to work through.

At any rate, check back through the week, cause I have good stuff planned.

* Marriner Stoddard Eccles was a Mormon, a graduate of BYU, an extremely wealthy and successful banker (First Security Bank of Utah) and businessman. He was an early Keynesian. Hardly a ‘Liberal’ or Socialist, he also would have been appalled at the antics of modern so-called ‘conservatives’ and the Tea Party.

I suggest that you read his testimony before Congress, February 13 to 28, 1933. If you didn’t know who was speaking, you might mistake him for a Paul Krugman or Robert Reich.