What are they thinking?

I received an offer from, let's name names, Premier Bank today. They want me to become one of their VISA card customers. And, in many ways, it is a nice offer. Interest is down, potential credit line is up; all in all, it is not a bad offer...until you get to the fees in the small print (or in the initial 4 fees, not so small print): There are two one time fees--Account set up fee: $29.00 and Program fee: $95.00. Then there are two annual fees: The Annual Fee: $48.00 and the Participation Fee: $72.00 (billed at $6/month). So, if you accept this offer, before you charge a single thing, you owe these people over $200.00. And it gets worse.

If you want to use an outside Autodraft service to pay their bill every month, that will cost you another $11.00 per payment. However, it ain't that much cheaper to use their in-house service. Autodrafts requested through their automated systems "(i.e. Voice Response or Internet)are assessed at $7.00 per transaction." Then there is a $3.95 charge for Internet access. (I'm not sure if that is a per usage, a one-time or a monthly fee.) The thing is that, these days, I look to be able to pay my bills online without actually writing checks. A couple of minutes at the computer and the bill in question is paid--and the institution being paid gets their money faster.

This is what gets me. The sons-of-bitches who think up these schemes are looking to bleed the middle class of this country dry. At one time, the middle class was the strength of our society. That is changing. The middle class is being eroded away while the wealth it generates is being accumulated in fewer and fewer hands.

It's like this offer; I haven't sat down to run numbers, but I will bet that, by the time all those fees are figured in, the effective interest rate being paid will be up over 20%. As far as I'm concerned, that is usury. Or, to put it another way, when I was growing up, we locked people up as loan sharks for charging that much interest on "loans." We need to re-examine a lot in our society to determine what is actually good for the whole and what is good for only a very small part of the whole. Anything falling into the latter category needs to be examined with a microscope.

Aside: Don't jump in here with an impassioned attack on social welfare, either. Those programs are supposed to be for bringing people up to certain minimum living standards which the majority of us would consider actually rather grim. I'm talking about anything that makes that top 5-10% of us even richer and that widens the fissures in our social fabric.

So, you can be sure that this offer has already hit the paper shredder. In fact, one of our goals this year is to consolidate our debt into a fixed-rate home equity loan and eliminate all the high interest credit card debt we have accumulated in the past 15 years. We figure we can pay everything off, pay our share of the upcoming wedding and still have money left over for improvements to the house and an emergency fund while actually paying less per month than we are paying now. Then we use the plastic like cash; if you don't have the cash to pay off the card at the end of the month, you don't use the card. Period.

Testing, 1..2..3, testing.

<p>OK, this is a test, of sorts, of my new Blogger add-on. I’ve put a new toolbar in my Word which allows me to publish directly to my Blogger Blogs. Now, I have to try it out at least once to see if it works, eh? Now, having explained why this inane little bit is nestled in such erudite company (koff-koff), I will proceed to hit the publish button and see what transpires…</p>

An Open Letter to the Democrat Party

There was a time, only 30 years ago, when the Republicans were actually in danger of becoming a minor party in this country. After the Nixon/Watergate debacle, Republican candidates were virtually unelectable. The Republican leadership recognized this, and went to work with a single-minded focus to rebuild the party. Of course, it did help to have Ronald Reagan in their arsenal. Reagan was the consummate media manipulator, and the rest of the Republicans learned from him. The Republicans also learned that the very best defense is a good offense, and that is why, for the past 20 plus years, they have relied upon the politics of attack, confrontation and division to drown out any attempt at a “normal” political dialogue. In fact, the polarization of this country into the media driven “red/blue” classification system leaves little or no room for the political compromises that make true democracy viable.

The Democrat Party has to first and foremost stop the internecine warfare that erupts with every major race. Our internal debate needs to become centered upon the issues and not upon the personalities. And, once a candidate is decided upon, we all need to put away our differences and support that candidate—enthusiastically. Above all, Democrats need to understand that politics in a pluralistic democracy is all about compromise. It is rare that we will get all we want on any issue, but that is OK. It is better to take small steps in the right direction than to take no steps at all. That is the understanding we need to develop as Democrats. That is the lesson the left wing of our party truly needs to come to grips with.

However, even if the Democrats do unite behind a candidate, or slate of candidates, the Opposition still has a weapon of surpassing power: the Neo-con talk show hosts. These people make their living by being as lurid and intransigent as humanly possible. They scream their attack rants and leave no room for reasoned discourse. Any disagreement, any hint at debate and they launch into another polemic about how libruls (sic) are anti-American and are destroying the country. The problem is that through showmanship and sheer volume, they grab the attention and the minds of many of our fellow citizens. Reasoned discourse, because it involves thought, will always lose to demagoguery, which bypasses the brain’s higher functions.

The year 2006 puts both the House and the Senate up for grabs. If the Democrats, if the people, are to limit the damage the Bushites are doing to our country and the world, the power of the demagogues will have to be broken. Either the Democratic vision will have be so strong and put forth with such a unified voice that it will be impossible to ignore, or the Bushite talking heads will have to be countered in their own style.

Once upon a time, our leaders lifted our hearts and eyes by giving us a vision of what could be. Franklin Roosevelt did this in 1932 and John Kennedy did this with his commitment to place a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. It is time for the Democrats to form a vision of what could be in 50 years, and then begin to work consistently towards that vision. The steps need not be big, but each and every thing done should move us incrementally towards the goals set forth in the vision statement.

Here’s a hypothetical example of how this would work. The majority of mainstream scientists now firmly believe that global warming is an incontrovertible fact. They also are in virtual unanimous agreement that human production of greenhouse gases is a significant contributor to this global phenomenon. We acknowledge that, as a major industrialized nation, the U.S. is a major contributor to the problem. Therefore, we commit to reducing our production of greenhouse gases by to 50% of our 2005 totals by the year 2055. To do this, we are going to have to change how we produce electricity and how we power our transport. In short, we are going to have to find alternatives to fossil fuels as our primary energy sources. Now, there are alternatives that could be harnessed and made competitive with fossil fuels over time.

The problem is that, initially, these alternatives are not economically competitive. They will have to be partially funded and subsidized by…us. Because that is, in essence, what the government is: the will and voice of the people. In time, these alternative sources of energy will become a robust and vital part of our economy if we authorize the government to act as midwife and nanny to them during their formative years. The benefits of doing this range from slowing/reversing global warming to balancing our trade to doing a little redistribution of wealth here at home. (And let us not forget that many of what are now “old” fortunes were built on this same principle. The railroads, as only one example, were built because the builders were given huge tracts of land which they sold for huge profits.)

This is the challenge: either establish a new vision for the country and begin to work towards that vision, or accept the Bush agenda which will lead to an entrenched aristocracy with most of the wealth and power in their few hands. Think of England in the 17th Century as the social model the Bushites are working towards. The major difference will be that there won’t be a New World for the oppressed and exploited to escape to. The choice is ours, and the time is now.

Traffic Rant

Every couple of months, I either have to vent or I will start carrying a .45 in the glove compartment. Not only is traffic getting heavier and heavier (both in numbers of private cars on the road and in actual physical size and weight of said private vehicles), but the people driving those cars seem to be losing any driving skills they may have once possessed.

Here in Central Joisey, we are blessed with a bit of traffic engineering known as "The Circle". Now, anyone with a modicum of intelligence and eye-hand coordination could figure out how to utilize such a traffic merging device with a few moments of reflection. Unfortunately, many of the drivers currently on the road apparently have neither. This past month, entering into one of these has been tantamount to joining a lottery. If you are lucky, you will not be whacked by some jerk who has no clue. However, the odds against getting through one of the busier traffic circles unscathed have been lengthening.

I go through the Somerville Circle something like 3-4 times a day, on average. In the past week I have been cut off, nearly broadsided (only avoided by some world class evasive driving on my part) and blocked by people who have no idea about how to use the three lanes available to them when they are trying to go west on either Rte. 202 or Rte. 28. During that same period of time, I have seen the aftermath of at least 6 accidents in the circle, and I figure the odds against me are lengthening.

Of course, I have a solution for all of this. To reduce the number of vehicles on the road and to reduce the danger we face every day due to people who are bad drivers, simply raise the bar on the driver's exams. First time drivers need to pass a competition type driving test. And the written test should be geared toward testing things like who yields when two roads intersect without visible signage and not how many feet it takes to stop a car. Stopping distances should be tested during the road test. Fail either test and you get to retake it...in 12 months. And to keep the driving public alert, this test should be mandatory every 20 years until age 60, and then its every 7 years. To pay for all of this, the annual cost of a driver's license would need to go up -- a couple hundred dollars a year sounds about right (that gets another shitload of drivers off the road.) Since this would mean that a lot of people who now have licenses would not, the state would need to provide 1)an inexpensive state ID card (which requires the same burden of proof of identity that the current driver's license requires) and 2)decent mass transit so people could still get to work and to shopping etc.. God knows that the day I can't pass that sort of test is the day I want somebody to take my license away.

Anyhow...think about it....

Oops...found a really cool site out there...

OK, the site is Ars Technica, and it has some really relevant posts for PC users. I, personally, have had it up to my eyeballs with the greedy suits from the RIAA and similar (can we say "Sony"?) institutions, so articles like this article about a new Firefox plugin are of interest to me. However, they also cover other areas of interest to PC users. Check it out, I think you'll bookmark it for future reference...

The War on Christmas...not!!

There seems to be a major push by the talking heads on the Fox News Network and certain conservative fundamentalist Christian leaders to convince the country that there is a concerted effort by the hated liberals and ACLU to eliminate Christmas from the nation's vocabulary. First of all, this is total bullshit since the practice of giving gifts at this time of year drives about 35% of our economy. Second, I could be wrong, but I seem to remember that our Constitution prohibits the establishment of a state supported religion/church. We are a pluralist society in that our significant numbers or our fellow citizens practice almost every religious faith extant in the world today other than Christianity. Sure, the majority of us still claim to be at least nominal Christians, but it is not the same as it was 100 years ago.

Way back when, there were only two major religions represented in any numbers in this country: Judaism and Christianity. All other religious faiths were either confined to ethnic ghettos (like Chinatowns) or had so few adherents as to be effectively invisible. Therefore, it was not inappropriate for towns to set up Christmas decorations. After all, most of the tax money which supported those displays came from those same nominal Christians. However, today a significant percentage of those taxes now comes from people who do not have the same attachment to Christmas. It is time, therefore, to let the public sector put up non-sectarian Winter Holiday decorations, and to let the churches and private citizens exercise their rights by setting up Christmas displays on church grounds and other private properties.

We all know that businesses, especially retail businesses that are owned or run by non-Christians, will always support this major holiday in December. After all, the few weeks between Thanksgiving and December 25th traditionally comprises about 35% of most major retailers' annual revenue. In the past, non-Christian retailers happily promoted the season since it was in their economic interest to do so. And that has not changed. Muslims, Hindus, Jews and followers of a host of other religions are happy to take Christian's money...and they are equally happy to encourage others to find reasons to exchange gifts as well.

So, no, there is no "War on Christmas". There is only a pluralist society trying to find a way for all its members to enjoy the beginning of winter. If you want to insist upon wishing a turbaned Sikh or an obviously Hassidic Jew "Merry Christmas", then it is your right to show your boorishness and general lack of sensitivity. OTOH, if you say it with warmth and a genuine desire to say something nice to people, as opposed to a militant "in your face" delivery, I think "Merry Christmas" is appropriate in the same way "shalom" or (I think this is correct) "salam" is coming from members of those cultures/religions.

So, to all I send wishes for a Merry Christmas meaning may the beginning of winter be filled with friends, family and Peace on Earth, goodwill towards all mankind.

Ocean Power Delivery Limited

Now, this is cool. One has to wonder why it is a Scottish company that is leading the field, or, more to the point, why there is (as far as I know) no American presence here at all. Over 50% of the world's population lives within 100 miles of a coast line, and that means that this form of power generation could supply a significant portion of the world's electric power needs. The more of these machines built, the greater the economies of scale and the lower the cost per kilowatt/hour of generated power. There is literally no pollution and especially no generation of greenhouse gases, and, when one of these tubes reaches the end of its useful life, they can be recycled. As far as I'm concerned, it is a no-brainer. All we have to do is be willing to subsidize the initial couple of thousand tubes to bring the cost per unit down to a point where they are competitive with fossil fuels power plants. Once they become a primary source of power, they will no longer need to be subsidized.

Then there is an additional benefit for these things. They could be built in places where one does not have a lot of boat traffic and used to generate hydrogen through electrolysis. An installation of sufficient size could both generate the hydrogen and provide the power needed to run the terminal. Can we think of how this would impact the oil industry? The possibilities boggle the mind!

So, I took my wife to the ER today. She woke up feeling like the Wrath of God, and went downhill from there. The cough she had been practicing for the past two weeks had finally decided to play for bigger stakes. Anyhow, by 11:30 we were off to the ER to see just what was going on. About 12:30 I called into the store to inform them that I would not be there for the start of my shift, and possibly would not be there at all (Turned out to be the latter: it counts as a sick day, though, since I spent it at the sick people place...) Going to the ER was the right thing to do. They found pneumonia in her right lung and decided to keep her there at least overnight.

Well, it's now Monday and they finally found her a room last night. It took a while. I have to say the Somerset Medical Center is a nice hospital. The people are at once very professional and yet very warm, sympathetic and friendly. They know that, on the whole, you'd "rather be in Philadelphia" than in their fine facility, so they try to make things as comfortable and unintrusive as possible. I spent the day trying to be a quiet as possible by not coughing too much. What sort of worried me was that most of her symptoms, both the ones she had and a few of the ones she didn't, also applied to me at various times over the past two weeks. I don't know, every now and then I think of Jim Henson and understand how he could have put off going to the hospital until it was too late. I will bend heaven and earth to avoid trips to doctors, dentists and most especially hospitals.

Nope...no hospitals for me until/unless I am so sick I can barely move. And now I have to wander over to SMC to see when they are going to spring herself. I'm pretty sure we're going to have to cancel Thanksgiving at this house. We could be moving the feast up to my Mom's, but only if she gets some help in the kitchen. Cooking and cleaning up at her place is not the easiest. Face it, she's been living in that house for forty years as of next spring, and the kitchen is unchanged except for a new oven and a newish dishwasher. Pretty much everything about her kitchen, while it was once the absolute cutting edge, is now...old. And badly lit. However, even from her sick-bed, mi esposa has made it clear that we will be cooking the Turkey here. She wants to make the stuffing and control the cooking process. (she has not a great deal of trust in my Mom's ability to deal with a 26 pound bird. I have to say that I agree with her on this.)

Fire it up....

This blog has been inactive for the past year. I'm pretty sure that virtually nobody has its URL, and, therefore, am reasonably confident that my children won't stumble across this. So, I think it is time to resurrect this blog and let Marking(s) of Zorro lie fallow for a bit. Actually, I think that bloggers should reinvent themselves every so often. (Except that I'm not going to come up with a new online personna: I will stay "the old fox" as a way to connect back to the very first screen name I had online.

Yep, I've been around for a really, really long time as far as cyberspace goes. My first taste of being connected to "others" was almost 16 years ago. I joined Compuserve and stumbled across The Point. This was one of the precursors to what we now know as chatrooms and forums. While it didn't have the immediacy of the realtime chatroom, it was more than just a forum. Anyhow, one of the moderators of the Point went by the screen name of "Fox". As a goof, I adopted the Spanish variant, and we all got along famously. Well, after a while Compuserve and I parted way, and I moved over to Delphi (in part because of they were dabbling with the Delphi Pool) where I stumbled across a forum group called Our Lost Tribe (OLT). When I joined OLT, I stayed with the Zorro handle, but added the Viejo part just to distance myself from the cinematic Zorro. Through the ensuing years I have maintained my elzorroviejo personna, and I don't intend to let it go now. The interesting thing is that a Google search on "elzorroviejo" finds me in a lot of different places...except here. This doesn't show up...at least not yet.

So, I'm going to reactivate this Blog and see if it doesn't unblock me a little. Time will tell.

The one shining light from the Tuesday Massacre

The one shining light is that we elected three (count 'em, three) Democrats to the town council. This means, I think, that the Dems now either have a majority or at least parity on the town's governing body. I am thrilled about this. My only hope is that bush is egregiously bad over the next two years that the country finally wakes up and gives at least control of the legislature back to the Dems. The make up of Congress now scares the Bejezus outta me.