Shannon Love

UPS gets Lean

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I live in suburbia. Like most of suburbia, all the streets in my suburb curve or wind to slow down traffic and break up lines of sight. I live on a cul de sac.  It’s cozy and the kids can use the street at the “bottom of the bag” for football and other games without fear of being run over by through traffic.

I rather like it.

The people who don’t like it, are those who drive large service vehicles like the trash truck, the short school bus or delivery flat panel trucks. At least once a day, I am treated to the sight of large vehicle usually, a delivery truck, backing a filling several times to out of the cul de sac. When I hear air brakes and backup beeps and I know whats doing on. I’ve often wondered if there was a better vehicle to use, especially for the delivery trucks.

Yep, there is. While taking a constitutional down the street to the park, I saw one of these whizzing towards me full of packages. It turned into my cul de sac so I followed and asked the driver if she was UPS (because of her uniform.)

Yep, she was.

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John Kenneth Galbraith’s Ghost Stole My Last Twinkie

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Unfunded and seriously underfunded pensions are wrecking company after company (and local government after local government.)  The Hostess Company, the company who made the iconic Twinkie and other baked treats, was brought down by unfunded pension obligations  [h/t Instapundit] forced on the company by years of strikes and labor negotiations going back to before the 1950s. As matters stand now, everybody, both the venture capitalist who tried to save the company and the unionized workers, will lose their shirts. At best the union members will get to see a fraction of their pensions because the rest of us will have to pony up through the Federal government that “insures” the pensions.

All this raises the question of why the unions ever believed it a good idea to put all their pension eggs in one company basket. It seems stupid on its face not to significantly diversify. Everybody else does so, even the super wealthy. Why didn’t the unions think they needed to diversify?

They didn’t think it necessary because of a theory of corporations advanced by most left leaning Americans in the mid-20th century but best personified by economist and political theorist John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith looked around at the business world of 1940s, 50s and 60s and concluded that corporations had so much “power” that they could effectively set prices and maintain themselves forever. In short, Galbraith argued that corporations were eternal and would never really go out of business. At worst they would merge or buy each other out. The concept of the eternal corporation not only fully justified big compulsory unions and a big invasive government to act as “countervailing forces”  but it also meant that corporations could payout almost any level of wages, benefits and pensions and do so indefinitely. Galbraith gave the unions the pretext they needed to demand high future pensions while remaining calmly assured the companies would always be able to payout.

Sounds silly today, but Galbraith was writing in the 60s at the peak of American corporatism.

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We Will Cry Hot Tubs of Tears Over You, California

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With California circling the drain and the rest of us no doubt on the hook for all their idiocy, I think we should all expect to be crying over California a lot over the next few years.

So, I suggest learning this Austin Lounge Lizards song from the early 80s by heart. (Lyrics below video)

HOT TUBS OF TEARS
(By Austin Lounge Lizards, circa 1983)

 

Those California girls are best, they say,
That West Coast lifestyle steals your heart away,
But surfer girl, our love wiped out,
And now I’m so blue,
I cry hot tubs of tears over you.

 

Chorus:

I cry hot tubs of tears over you,

I can’t eat a bite of tofu;

I’ve given up tai chi and group therapy too,
I cry hot tubs of tears over you.

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Why Paris Hilton Makes a Poor Poster Child for the Death Tax

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From Instapundit:

“The idea behind the estate tax is to prevent the very wealthy among us from accumulating vast fortunes that they can pass along to the next generation,” said Patrick Lester, director of Federal Fiscal Policy with the progressive think tank — OMB Watch. “The poster child for the estate tax is Paris Hilton — the celebrity and hotel heiress. That’s who this is targeted at, not ordinary Americans.”[emp added]

This is just one problem with that little story:

Conrad Nicholson Hilton  (December 25, 1887 January 3, 1979) was an American hotelier. He is well known for being the founder of the  Hilton Hotels  chain.

…

In 1979, Hilton died of natural causes at the age of 91. He is interred at Calvary Hill Cemetery, a Catholic cemetery in  Dallas, Texas. He left $500,000 to each of his two surviving siblings and $10,000 to each of his nieces, nephews and to his daughter Francesca. The bulk of his estate was left to the  Conrad N. Hilton Foundation,[6]  which he established in 1944. His son,  Barron Hilton, who spent much of his career helping build the Hilton Hotels Corporation, contested the will, despite being left the company as acting President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of the Board of Directors. A settlement was reached and, as a result, Barron Hilton received 4 million shares of the hotel enterprise, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation received 3.5 million shares, and the remaining 6 million shares were placed in the W. Barron Hilton  Charitable Remainder Unitrust.[6]  Upon Barron Hilton’s death, Unitrust assets will be transferred to the Hilton Foundation[citation needed], of which Barron sits on the Board of Directors as Chairman.[7]

On December 25, 2007, Barron Hilton announced that he would leave about 97% of his fortune (estimated at $2.3 billion),[7]  to a charitable unitrust which would eventually be merged with the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.[8]  By leaving his estate to the Foundation, Barron not only donated the fortune he had amassed on his own, but also returned to the  Conrad N. Hilton Foundation  the Hilton family fortune amassed by his father, which otherwise would have been gone to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation 30 years previously had Barron not contested his father’s will.[emp added]

So, not only has Paris Hilton not inherited anything yet, because her grandfather is still alive, she won’t inherit anything major ever. It all goes to charity. Paris Hilton is a sleazoid, but she is a largely a self-made sleazoid. Her personal financial assets are almost entirely the result of her leveraging her, uh, other assets via secret sex tape into a bizarre celebrity career. She’s worth several hundred million now, none of it inherited.

Paris Hilton has been trotted out by Leftists for years as an example of the need for the death tax and yet apparently none of them bothered to actually check if she was actually an heiress. The elite Democrats who carefully construct the party’s talking points, don’t seem to even bother to check Wikipedia. (Or they do and just assume that the average Leftist voter won’t.)

The real point of interest here is not the inanity of the death tax, but rather the studied indifference of the Democrats and Leftists in general to actually studying the wealthy and telling the truth about them.

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Dude…Ever Notice How Much a Joint Looks Like a Ship Move-y Thingy?

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The brain is highly associative. It’s interesting how you suddenly make a connection.

So, I’m listening to my “Minnie the Moocher” channel on Pandora and up popped a Cab Calloway song I had never heard before, “Reefer man.” I was only listening with half an ear but the first verse triggered a connection.

“Man, what’s the matter with that cat there?”
“Must be full of reefer”
“Full of reefer?!”
“Yeah, man!”
“You mean that cat’s high?”
“Sailing!”
“Sailing!”
“Sailing lightly!”
“Get away from here!”
“Man is that the reefer man?”
“That’s the reefer man.”

When the call and reply got to “you mean that cat’s high…sailing, ” it clicked that in the days of sail that sails were “reefed” by pulling them into rolls. It was also sailor slang for a midshipmen or other novice.

The Online Etymology Dictionary confirmed that the marijuana “reefer” is probably related to the appearance of a reefed sail. It seems that way back in the day (1930s at least) the association with sailing was strong enough for “sailing” to be a synonym for “high”. I’m pretty sure “high” itself, as a term for doing or feeling well, most likely originated from the higher pay and status received by that sailers who worked as toppers high up on the masts. When a sailor was doing well professionally, he was “high.”

I’d never thought about the origin of the term “reefer” as slang for a  marijuana joint. Knowing as many stoners as I have, I just assumed it was, like everything else stoners do, somehow related to bong making.