Sunday Morning Coming Down

I guess the criticism of healthcare reform as income redistribution was inevitable.  I'm sure the same thing was said about Social Security, Medicare, and every other social safety net program.  Charity is wealth redistribution too.  Volunteering, to the extent that it helps someone is also wealth redistribution.  I guess helping people live longer, healthier lives through insurance subsidies to the poor and middle class is not something we should strive for. If you have a crappy job and your employer doesn't provide health insurance and you have a low birth weight baby and get an astronomical bill, should the hospital keep your baby until you pay the bill, or refuse to provide care, and make the survival of the baby a problem. There will be winners and losers, I'm sure.  It took us a relatively long time to get to such an expensive system of health care and adding folks with preexisting conditions and providing reasonable basic levels of cove...

At the most simple level I feel it is better that the leaders of Iran and the United States are on speaking terms.  It is also better that there seems to have been progress in Syria related to chemical weapons. They are however still killing each other in Syria, Iraq may be returning to something like the civil war between the Shias and the Sunnis and from the last statistics I can find there were almost 31,000 gun related deaths in the United States of America.  Not much progress on that front either.  Afghanistan needs our help and money but can't stand us. I'm not sure how much absolute progress is possible. Saudi Arabia and Iran are still in a proxy war with serious religious overtones and Israel seems to be marching to the tune of its own drummer. Nobody said it was going to be easy and it isn't.  At least we are pumping more of our own oil but even that doesn't seem to be of much help. 

I got up early this morning.  The dry season is taking a little time off.  Rainy and gray, if this had been Chicago we would have digging out of a whole season's worth of snow.  About all I can complain about is mud on the backside and some pretty big puddles. Stolicknaya was out on the track this morning.  He looked really good and was really motoring through the finish line.  After he finished working I hung around to watch the clockers do their thing as about ten horses worked out and they tried to get the name of the horse and the time the horse ran right.  This seemingly simple task can be screwed up quite easily.  Most of the horses don't stick out in a crowd and identifying horses requires, the clockers, exercise riders, and trainers to cooperate.  There is little benefit for the connections to report a bullet workout unless the horse needs a published work to race. Back in the barn the horse looked good and the trainer complained ...

November 18, 2013,I'm now an official horseman at Hialeah Park.  It's kind of neat.  I paid for the Florida owners license a few weeks ago and yesterday I got a picture id.  Right now it is sort of like an all access pass and you can watch some real horsemen taking care of their horses.  It's a 24/7 job, new horses are arriving all the time and when the track is open early in the meet it can be busy with horses eating breakfast, working out on the track, practicing at the starting gate, getting bathed, groomed, and having their stalls cleaned, hay distributed and their feet checked out daily. After the morning rush, things slow down but there are still things to do.  The help and the horses all have their schedules.  Thunderstruck Stable has entered Stolicknaya in the Orange Blossom Stakes on November 29, 2013.  I'm doubtful he will make the race because he has only won a little over $20,000 in his lifetime and will be up against ...

I've spent a little time at Hialeah Park this weekend.  This isn't like hard time.  It isn't very much different than weekends in South Miami.  The venue is a little bit different, but there is beer, food and sports on multiple TVs.  There are also slot machines and backside of the race track is open and it's almost like the rodeo is in town.  Western shirts, worn blue denim and cowboy hats are very obvious signs that Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana and places out West are here and there will be races. This is also about logistics, communications, and animals.  The trainer said he is itching to get on the road.  The message was received on Friday morning.  Ocala is about 300 miles north of Miami.  The trainer also said he needs to make two trips to get set up at Hialeah.  One trip hauling the horses and stuff for racing, the other trip to bring the camper and get it set up. Like it or not this is a little bit complicated.  R...

I'll be frank this story is a few days old and it seemed so Miami that I did not pay much attention to it. Gerardo Nales boards a small aircraft at Tamiami airport, he and pilot, Felipe Fons fly out over the Biscayne Bay off Key Biscayne. The pilot tells investigators Nales opens the door of the plane and falls 2000 feet to his death. The police can't find the body.  The police won't say why the two were out flying, and as of this morning are unsure if a crime has been committed. This happened one other time.  A lady chartered an airplane and jumped out of the plane over her parents house in South Dade.  The pilot was quoted as saying "my passenger just left the airplane".

Ted Arison, the father of the owner of the Miami Heat and Carnival Cruise Line died a citizen of Israel after being born in Palestine, moving to the United States, becoming a U.S. citizen and making his fortune in two cruise lines, Norweigiean and Carnival Cruise Lines and then renouncing his citizenship to avoid estate taxes.  His daughter is the richest person in Israel and his son Mickey is the 73rd richest person in the U.S. and is a major owner in Carnival Cruise Line and and the Miami Heat. I'm in favor of creating jobs and the cruise industry is huge in Miami.  It is an affordable vacation option for a lot of Americans.  When things go well it can be a great experience.  If there are problems a refund of your ticket and a big discount on a future cruise may or may not make up for your discomfort. People have jobs in Miami selling cruises, taxis have passengers, hotels sell rooms while passengers wait for their cruises to start, and restaurants ha...

Yesterday, my paying job got done at about 5:00 pm.  I started early as usual but got distracted by life, like eating breakfast, buying gasoline, going to atm to get cash and making a return trip to the homestead.  Usually I do some of Thursday deliveries on Wednesday but picking up Lisvey after school kind of put a wrench into that and a late start did not help either.  So the long march on the Thursday was about an hour longer than usual.  The math lesson was a little bit geometry and a little bit multiplication and not much more than checking homework.  I'm thankful for that.  I'm also thankful for the Internet.  One forgotten assignment was retrieved through a text message regarding vocabulary words for a civics class.  I'm still not sure if  Lisvey remembers who Joe Biden is or who the other senator from Florida is. Sometimes I even forget about Bill Nelson. Last Sunday, the Miami Herald had a front page story about...

Usually they insist we deliver stuff faster, and closer to the front door and that it never get wet.  I'm getting too old to run and making sure it is hung on the door knob slows things down as well, and sometimes it rains so hard and there is so much lightning they would prefer you to find a coffee shop to wait out the storm. The Miami Herald moved to the suburbs away from their old building and the transition hasn't been smooth.  Almost weekly they have been having issues bagging the "product" and this causes problems with timely delivery of advertising materials that are time sensitive.  Today we got word of even a more serious delay.  The product did not arrive at the warehouse until late Tuesday and won't be ready for delivery until ??? My life is simpler when I am working now.  The weather is cooler and has been less rainy and the pedometer reading of 28,000 steps means I'll get a good nights sleep. Others, will need to scramble.  Th...

I read just about any newspaper I can get my hands on.  This is one of the fringe benefits of where I work.  The Miami Herald distributes not only the local fish wrap but a Spanish language version of the Herald which seems actually quite different editorially, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Business Journal, El Pais, Diario Las Americas, the Sun Sentinel, the New York Post, and the NY Daily News.  I can usually find a copy of one of these papers in the warehouse before they get recycled when I go to work. Yesterday, while reading some articles from USA Today I came across an story about a comedian who was starting pop up churches for atheists. Locally, I attend the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Miami.  My Dad was a Unitarian, my Mom seemed like a Unitarian but she liked praying and taking communion and enjoyed going to church on Sunday. My religious epiphany came when I realized that if there w...

From personal experience I've had at least one person without health insurance living in my house for too long a period.  It's a drag to listen to a person complain about pains and then not have enough money to pay for a trip to the doctor and complain about that as well.  Organic food does not completely stop the ravages of time. From personal experience I get my medical care either on campus at the University of Miami or Jackson Memorial Hospital.  I rarely have long waits and my insurance coverage seems to be adequate and I have been lucky to avoid expensive medications.  There has been much published about the difficulties of maintaining yourself in the middle class. These days, the price of food, gasoline, health insurance, education, college tuition all seem to go up and where I work, people on staff continue to be furloughed for an extra two weeks and they accept the situation because the job market in Miami is still lousy and people now get thei...

Today they will be running in the 36th Lighthouse Run on Key Biscayne.  Actually the race is probably over by now. Almost thirty two years ago I started jogging with friends on Saturday mornings  Training runs began at 7:00am at the Parrot Jungle and we ran through one of the nicest neighborhoods in Miami past houses where the richest people in town lived.  Times have changed and I'm not sure we could run the same route we used to run.  The folks across from Fairchild Gardens like their privacy and it looks like gates exist to keep the runners out so the landscaping people can work without distraction on the weekends. Labor Day began the "fall racing season", their would be 10k races every weekend until Memorial Day.  There were between 500 to 1500 runners each week at the races.  I became on of the committed who ran a lot and my knees and joints remind me regularly.  T-shirts, a beer truck, or if the race was a big one even Ben&Jerry's sent ...

I've lived in Florida for my entire adult life.  Some things I take for granted.  The summers are uncomfortably hot and by August I wish I lived somewhere else.  It is no surprise that the North Carolina is a popular place for those that can afford to escape the tropics for a while. Another thing I take for granted are low taxes.  There are no state income taxes. The state sales tax has a lot of exemptions and the real estate property tax levy has a hefty homestead exemption where the valuation of property a state resident lives in is kept lower than it should be and property appraisers and review boards that make points by keeping official valuations low also. Miami Dade County and the State of Florida and the Miami Dade School Board levy ad valorem based on the value of real estate.  It can be a very significant tax if you live in a wealthy neighborhood, in a big house.  In more rural areas where a retiree might live in a trailer, ...

The fact that there are insurance companies wrote insurance policies that are both cheap and don't cover much is not big news. Back in the 1980's there was something similar happening in the Medi Gap insurance market.  Senior citizens bought policies that they thought would pay the rest of the bills that Medicare did not cover.  They realized that Medicare would not pay for everything and the policies were popular.  According to the Inquirer back in 1987 about 80% of those over 65 had Medi Gap policies. Insurance experts back then realized that most Medi Gap policies were a bad deal, costing too much and paying out too little.  The companies made money, the agents made big commissions and the customers were left holding the bag.  Less than 60 cents was being paid out for each dollar received in premiums.  Good health insurance should pay out at least 85 cents per premium dollar. Claude Red Pepper a really old guy in congress fought the insur...

I wish they had replays of the World Series Games during the afternoons.  This year I found myself falling asleep listening to the games on the radio. Country music has some very interesting song titles.  I think the best I've heard lately is "Sleeping With Some Stranger's Wife/Husband". When is the elevator in the Big Bang Building going to be fixed? I doubt that winning the lottery is a practical retirement plan. Health care reform is an idea whose time has come.  And sadly I think it is also the beginning of an ugly inter generational struggle.  Congress and the processes it follows needs reform even more than the country needs health care reform.