Ya know that flight I wrote about yesterday...?
They ended up diverting to JFK! (Yep... Stewart International Airport... alternate landing site for the friggin' Space Shuttle... was deemed too risky to land at!)
What happened to the kid? His aunt ended up picking him up. Why? Apparently a soon-to-be 18 year old traveled absent enough money to deal with unforeseen problems.
The aunt had to drive from Katonah to JFK to Suffern and back to Katonah. (Now that's doing the kid a solid!)
Folks... let's stick to this situation for a moment. Tell me... am I too much of a hardass...?
The mom and dad are in Florida where they've bought a new home which they'll soon be moving to. There are two teenage sons (twins), one of whom will be attending college down in Florida next year while the other will be proudly serving our national as a member of the U.S. Air Force. The college bound son was in Florida on... er... pre-college business. The other son stayed home while his parents and brother took care of their perspective business.
I was asked to pick up the "traveling" kid at Stewart (25 minutes north of me) and drop him off at his house in Suffern (25 minutes south of me). No problem! My pleasure! (Heck... the parents even offered to pay - but they're friends of the family.) I figured that with the time the flight was (supposedly) coming in the other brother would have been either in school or working... which was why I was asked instead of brother picking up brother.
Anyway... when the mom called me on my cell to tell me about the diversion I told her what the deal was. I told her that the airline was responsible for getting the kid up to Stewart from JFK and that they'd either fly him (and the other waylaid passengers) or bus him. I warned her, however, that it could take some time for the airline to get their act together. I suggested the kid proactively ask for a voucher for a "limo" ride home (or close to home - the nearest commuter shuttle stop) or else that he simply hop on a shuttle bus to the city and from there take either a train or bus home. (This is when I was told the kid didn't have money with him...)
Folks... forgive me... but who lets their "kid" fly without money... or at least an "emergency use only" credit card? Is it me...???
Here's the thing, though; my feeling was that even if the kid had had a wallet stuffed with hundred dollar bills, the parents (at least the mother) wouldn't have been "comfortable" in letting this soon to be college student get home on his own.
Oh... but here's the key "rolling eyes" moment: When I repeated that they might as well just be patient and wait for Jet Blue to get the kid to Stewart if that was the only option offered they asked me if I'd still be able to go back to Stewart and ferry the kid down to Suffern... whenever Jet Blue got him to Stewart that is.
I told 'em I could if I had to... but I also asked if the brother might be available at that point. The mom's reaction? Absolute horror! Why... "he'd never been to Stewart!"
Folks... this woman is my best friend's sister... a friend of mine in her own right... but geezus... I would have loved to have been able to reach through cyberspace, grab her by the scruff of the neck, and shake her!
I mean... folks... we're talking asking the kid - who is going to be in the Air Force in a matter of months - to drive three exits north on the New York State Thruway and from there follow the signs for five minutes right to the main terminal of the airport! (And the mom was absolutely horrified that I'd even suggest such a thing!)
(And don't all these kids have "smart phones" with GPS anyway...?!?!)
It would have taken the brother the same amount of time to pick up his sibling and bring him home from Stewart as it would have taken me to drive north... then south... then north... all after I'd already made the trip north and south once already!
The aunt...??? Apparently it took her a good four hours (or more) all told from door to door to "rescue" her nephew at JFK.
So... question... is it me, folks? Am I too "demanding?" Am I too much of a hardass? Do I expect too much of 17-year-old young men bound for college and the Air Force respectively? Do I demand too much common sense - and trust - of their parents...?!?!
All I know is that when I was 17 going on 18...
(*SHRUG*)
8 comments:
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304680904579366903828260732
News organizations often disagree about what Americans need to know. MSNBC, for example, apparently believes that traffic in Fort Lee, N.J., is the crisis of our time. Fox News, on the other hand, chooses to cover the September 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi more heavily than other networks. The American people, for their part, disagree about what they want to watch.
But everyone should agree on this: The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.
Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission, where I am a commissioner, does not agree.
Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its "Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs," or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.
* WOW...
* I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST SUCH A STUDY - I'D ACTUALLY LIKE TO SEE ONE DONE - BUT NOT BY THE GOVERNMENT! BY A COLLEGE! BY ACADEMIC RESEARCHERS! DEFINITELY NOT BY GOVERNMENT...!!!
The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about "the process by which stories are selected" and how often stations cover "critical information needs," along with "perceived station bias" and "perceived responsiveness to underserved populations."
* THIS DOES NOT SOUND GOOD, FOLKS!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
How does the FCC plan to dig up all that information? First, the agency selected eight categories of "critical information" such as the "environment" and "economic opportunities," that it believes local newscasters should cover. It plans to ask station managers, news directors, journalists, television anchors and on-air reporters to tell the government about their "news philosophy" and how the station ensures that the community gets critical information.
The FCC also wants to wade into office politics. One question for reporters is: "Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers that was rejected by management?" Follow-up questions ask for specifics about how editorial discretion is exercised, as well as the reasoning behind the decisions.
* AGAIN... I'D LOVE TO SEE SURVEY RESULTS... BUT SUCH A SURVEY SHOULDN'T BE DONE BY GOVERNMENT - IT SHOULD BE DONE BY ACADEMIC RESEARCHERS AND/OR PRIVATE CONCERNS.
Participation in the Critical Information Needs study is voluntary — in theory. Unlike the opinion surveys that Americans see on a daily basis and either answer or not, as they wish, the FCC's queries may be hard for the broadcasters to ignore. They would be out of business without an FCC license, which must be renewed every eight years.
(*PURSED LIPS*) (*NOD*)
This is not the first time the agency has meddled in news coverage. Before Critical Information Needs, there was the FCC's now-defunct Fairness Doctrine, which began in 1949 and required equal time for contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues. Though the Fairness Doctrine ostensibly aimed to increase the diversity of thought on the airwaves, many stations simply chose to ignore controversial topics altogether, rather than air unwanted content that might cause listeners to change the channel. The Fairness Doctrine was controversial and led to lawsuits throughout the 1960s and '70s that argued it infringed upon the freedom of the press. The FCC finally stopped enforcing the policy in 1987, acknowledging that it did not serve the public interest. In 2011 the agency officially took it off the books. But the demise of the Fairness Doctrine has not deterred proponents of newsroom policing, and the CIN study is a first step down the same dangerous path.
* OH... AND P.S.:
Why does the CIN study include newspapers when the FCC has no authority to regulate print media?
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/19/troop-left-to-fend-for-themselves-after-army-was-w/?page=all#pagebreak
Army Senior Warrant Officer Russton B. Kramer, a 20-year Green Beret, has learned that if you want to improve your chances to survive, it’s best to personally make modifications to the Army’s primary rifle — the M4 carbine. “The reliability is not there,” Warrant Officer Kramer said of the standard-issue model. “I would prefer to use something else. If I could grab something else, I would.”
The warrant officer said he and fellow Special Forces soldiers have a trick to maintain the M4A1 — the commando version: They break the rules and buy off-the-shelf triggers and other components and overhaul the weapon themselves.
Documents obtained by The Washington Times show the Pentagon was warned before the Afghanistan and Iraq wars that the iterations of the M4 carbine were flawed and might jam or fail, especially in the harsh desert conditions that both wars inflicted. U.S. Special Operations Command in 2001 issued a damning private report that said the M4A1 was fundamentally flawed because the gun failed when called on to unleash rapid firing. In 2002, an internal report from the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey said the M4A1 was prone to overheating and “catastrophic barrel failure,” according to a copy obtained by The Times.
Critics say the SoCom and Army reports should have prompted the Army to pursue a better design in the early 2000s. The Army periodically improved the rifle, but did not conduct a comprehensive upgrade until a senator pressured the top brass years later.
Some of the problems uncovered in 2001 and 2002, such as stoppages or jamming, became evident in the conventional firearm, most infamously in the 2008 Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan in which nine U.S. troops lost their lives.“Realistically speaking, there’s been loss of life that is unneeded because there was a dumbing-down of the weapon system,” said Scott Traudt, who advised the Army on how to improve the M4 a decade ago.
In an independent overall survey of soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan, 20% reported that the M4 jammed during battle, and one-fifth of those said the stoppages made a “large impact.”
The M4 has brought consistent complaints about at least three shortfalls: it lacks range; its 5.56 mm round lacks killing power; and the gun requires constant maintenance — cleaning and lubricating — in sandy conditions or is prone to jamming. (Soldiers also complain that the magazine dents easily and the springs break.) in Afghanistan, its lack of range meant that the Taliban could operate at a safe distance.
There does not appear to be a comprehensive assessment of the M4 by any oversight agency — even though the weapon is the ground warrior’s most critical asset. The Government Accountability Office, Congress‘ auditor, has not assessed the M4 since it entered service in the mid-1990s. Likewise, the Pentagon’s top operational tester has not conducted live-fire tests of the M4 or the commando M4A1. The fact that M4s broke down at Wanat was not known publicly until Army historians chronicled the battle and released their narrative in 2010. Even the general in charge of buying the gun said he had not heard of the problems until the press reported on the Army history.
* FOLKS... THIS ISN'T CLINTON vs. BUSH vs. OBAMA... THIS IS WHAT YOU GET WITH BIG GOVERNMENT.
* FOLKS... I GET IT... THIS IS "INSIDE BASEBALL" STUFF. I FOUND IT INTERESTING SO I'M PASSING IT ON.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-02-20/housing-bubble-ii-what%E2%80%99s-ruining-home-sales-not-weather
Applications for mortgages to buy a home, not to refinance one, dropped 6% for the week, to the lowest level since September 2011, 17% below the same week last year... Not a one-week debacle: they’ve declined sharply year-over-year since fall.
[P]urchases by first-time home buyers – the crux of the housing market – dropped to just 27% of all purchases in December, from 28% in November, from 30% in December 2012, and from the 30-year average of 40%.
First-time buyers have been pushed out not by bad weather but by higher home prices, higher mortgage rates, and a flood of cash buyers – 62.5% of all buyers in Florida – many of whom are investors. [T]he largest drop occurred in the sub-index for the West, including the West Coast where most of the West’s construction takes place, a region that was cursed with more sunny weather instead of much needed rain: home builder confidence plunged 14 points!
(Blaming the weather is convenient. OK, I get it. Life-threatening cold temperatures, polar vortices, and snow mayhem can put a damper on home construction. But housing starts also plummeted 17% in the West, including on the populous West Coast where the weather has been gorgeous.)
[S]oaring prices and higher interest rates [have] pushed homes once again beyond the reach of many hardworking Americans.
The “potent combination of rapidly rising home prices” and “significant uptick in interest rates in the second half of 2013 caused the monthly cost of owning a home using traditional financing to jump substantially in many markets over the last year,” said Daren Blomquist, VP of RealtyTrac, whose housing affordability analysis has just been released. The monthly cost of owning a home was becoming “dangerously disconnected,” he said. On one side, “still-stagnant median incomes”; on the other, prices that had been driven up “by investors and other cash buyers who are not tethered to the typical affordability constraints.”
The monthly cost of a median-priced three-bedroom home purchased in the fourth quarter of 2013 rose on average 21% from a year earlier in the 325 counties included in RealtyTrac’s analysis. (But in the 15 most populous counties in the study, the monthly cost jumped 34%!)
In my beloved and crazy San Francisco, the median home price finally hit a cool $1,000,000, up 9% year over year. With the higher mortgage rates, the estimated monthly payment for that home increased 21% to $4,762.
(In the same vein, monthly payments soared 39% in Riverside County, 40% in Los Angeles County, 43% in San Bernardino County, 46% in Alameda County, 50% in Solano County, 53% in Sacramento County, and 56% in Contra Cost County. In just one year!)
Nationwide, a similar scenario played out. Dekalb County, Georgia, won the race. Monthly payments for a median home skyrocketed last year by 62%. Which raises some thorny economic issues:
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
In Los Angeles County, the median household income is $53,001, but it takes $95,389 in qualifying income to buy a median home.
In Santa Clara County, the median income is $91,425, but it takes $149,389 to buy a median home.
In Alameda County, $70,500 vs. $114,284; in Contra Costa County $74,177 vs. $84,647; in San Mateo County, the heart of Silicon Valley, $81,609 vs. $170,284. And in San Francisco, the king of the hill, the median household income is $73,012, but it takes $228,569 in qualifying household income to buy a median home.
So who the heck can afford to buy these median homes? In 29 of the largest counties where 20% of the population of the 325 counties in the study live, the monthly cost of owning a home now exceeds the costs of renting an equivalent home. Despite gravity-defying rents! Housing Bubble II has pushed home prices out of reach for the hardworking strung-out median American household.
It’s called the “wealth effect.” The Fed’s ingenious invention. It has kicked in gloriously. After five years of money-printing and bond-buying with the express purpose to inflate stocks, derivatives, mortgage-backed securities, farmland, housing, bank balance sheets, and what not, and after blowing the largest credit bubble in history, the Fed has succeeded in creating a situation where, increasingly, buying a median home is something only the wealthy can do.
But that’s where the economics of the ingenious wealth effect fall apart. There aren’t that many wealthy people to buy all these median homes. And wealthy people don’t want to buy median homes. Hence, cratering sales. Forget the weather. The problem is, as Blomquist put it, “the disconnect between prices and incomes.”
* WHICH IS WHAT I'VE ALWAYS PREACHED!
Ha, we knew that from Housing Bubble I, which blew up in 2007.
And first-time buyers, in addition to the price having moved beyond their reach, are struggling with a particularly tough handicap: ballooning student loans.
(*NOD*)
Total student loan balances have quadrupled since 2003. An immense burden on the fragile shoulders of young people. They’re already having trouble servicing their student loan debt, with delinquency rates spiraling elegantly out of control.
“This is a huge issue for us,” admitted Mortgage Bankers Association CEO David H. Stevens. “Student debt trumps all other consumer debt. It’s going to have an extraordinary dampening effect on young peoples’ ability to borrow for a home, and that’s going to impact the housing market and the economy at large.”
* DUH! (LIKE I ALWAYS SAY, FOLKS... FOLLOW THE DOTS... CONNECT THE DOTS... IGNORANCE MAY BE BLISS - BUT DOES THIS SITUATION SOUND "BLISSFUL" TO YOU?
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/andrew-p-napolitano/is-the-president-a-dictator/
The political philosopher Edmund Burke once remarked that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good folks to do nothing. A glaring example of the impending triumph of a constitutional evil that could be stopped by folks who have been largely silent is the tyranny coming from the White House. And the folks who can stop this and are doing nothing about it are our elected representatives in Congress.
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It established the three branches of government, and it delegated “all legislative powers” to Congress. American law rarely uses the word “all.” Yet the Framers chose that word precisely to confine law writing to Congress and to prevent a president from altering federal law by the selective manner of his enforcement of it and thereby effectively rewriting it.
The same Framers sought to guard against the same evils by compelling the president to swear at the commencement of his terms in office that he will “faithfully” enforce the laws. The use of the word “faithfully,” like the use of the word “all,” is intended to assure voters that they can count on a president who will do the job they hired him to do by enforcing federal laws, not evading them, and by enforcing them as Congress has written them, not as the president might wish them to be.
To be fair, many presidents, from the sainted Thomas Jefferson to the tyrannical FDR, put their own spin on federal law. Jefferson pardoned all those convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts because he hated a statute that punished free speech and he boasted that he would not enforce that part of the acts (they expired under his watch). And FDR when barely two weeks in office issued an executive order criminalizing the possession of gold because he foolishly thought it would stabilize the banks, until an adviser reminded him that only Congress can write criminal laws (which he then persuaded Congress to do). Yet in President Obama we have a president whose personal interferences in the enforcement of federal laws reveal his view that he can rewrite them and even nullify them.
Presidential law writing violates the presidential oath of office, steals power from Congress, disrespects an equal branch of the government and, when unchecked, accumulates such power in the executive branch that it effectively transforms the president into a menacing tyrant who rejects his constitutional obligations and limitations.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
Obama bombed Libya without a declaration of war from Congress. This arguably brought down the Gadhafi government, which led to the current state of lawlessness there, which produced the environment in which our ambassador was murdered in Benghazi in 2012 and established a dangerous precedent because Congress remained officially silent.
He has told the 11 million illegal immigrants who are here and subject to deportation that if they comply with a new set of rules they will not be deported. The constitutional problem is that the president wrote those rules. Only Congress can craft such rules, and by the president’s doing so, he has schooled immigrants in how to avoid compliance with federal law.
The president has used drones to kill Americans, but claims he has done so lawfully because he complied with secret rules that he crafted. Under the Constitution, if the president wants someone dead, he must afford the person due process or ask Congress to declare war on the country housing the person. No worries, he says — he has followed the secret rules that he wrote to govern himself when deciding whom to kill.
The president’s agents now acknowledge that they spy on all of us all the time, including members of the judiciary and Congress. This, too, was done pursuant to a secret presidential directive, secretly approved by judges acting as clerks and not under the Constitution, and by a dozen members of Congress sworn to secrecy. No law authorized this, and the president won’t discuss it meaningfully, except to condemn its revelation.
And in a series of salvos that hit home, the president has "modified" the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) 29 times, by changing its various dates of effectiveness for some but not for others, by changing the meanings of terms for some but not for others, and even by diluting the signature obligation we all have to obtain the platinum insurance policies it commands for some and not for others. He has done all of this on his own, with no input from Congress. He has even threatened to veto any congressional effort to enact into law the very changes he alone has made.
His latest assault on the Constitution consists of a plan by the Department of Homeland Security, revealed earlier this week, effectively to follow us as we drive on public roads by photographing the license plate of all motor vehicles. This, too, was formulated without congressional approval or constitutional authority.
And while all of this is going on, Congress largely sits as a potted plant.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
In the Senate, Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have complained long and loud, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will not permit legislation to address presidential lawlessness to reach the Senate floor.
A few dozen Republicans in the House have complained, but Speaker John Boehner will not permit the House to address corrective legislation.
Institutionally and officially, Congress is sleeping.
Can you imagine how a Democratic Congress would have reacted if Ronald Reagan had instructed the IRS to cease collecting capital gains taxes so as to spur economic activity; or how a Republican Congress would have reacted if Bill Clinton had instructed the IRS to add a 1% rate increase to the tax bills of billionaires so as to close a budget gap?
These are dangerous times because this is a lawless presidency and a pliant Congress. The president’s willingness to violate the Constitution publicly calls into question his fitness for office. And that deafening silence from Capitol Hill manifests a spineless refusal to preserve constitutional government.
The whole purpose of dividing and separating governmental powers is the preservation of personal liberty by preventing the accumulation of too much power in one branch or, heaven forbid, in one person. Whoever permits this to take place lacks fidelity to the Constitution, is unworthy of holding governmental power in a free society and should be removed from office.
Post a Comment