Sunday Morning Coming Down

I'm letting this subscription lapse. But I must say the magazine has brought up some interesting nuggets to think about, and the latest issue is no exception. The magazine comments about the American use of the death penalty.  The statistics say executions are down and the public support for the death penalty is down as well. It might be a fitting punishment for the the worst murders, but does it make sense. Evidence that murders are down where murderers are subject to the death penalty doesn't fly. The death penalty does a poor job of deterring murders. Maybe a few murders are avoided, but its also possible that a few innocents can be convicted of murders and to execute them wrongly is a mistake that can't be corrected. The process to avoid mistakes is very expensive and drawn out over many years and the newer more "humane" executions might not be so humane if you are to believe those that are unsure about the use of drugs for executions. Even getting these...

There is a liquor store in Hialeah where you can buy flasks for cruises or trips to places where the price of drink might be pricey but you might want to fire up that Coke on the cheap. It's also a place of political comentary.  The sign along Le Juene Road says two mayors, the same crime, but only one will do time. The recent mayors of the City of Hialeah have been colorful characters.  The last two mayors may eventually proven to be loan sharks. Julio Robaina and his wife are on trial for tax evasion and possibly the current mayor may be similarly charged. Julio Robaina's wife it is reported to have being told to be on the lookout for an $800,000 payment that would be hitting their personnel account by her husband.  In court she said she had no idea where the money came from and what her husband did to earn it.  It has been determined that the payment was for lobbying an adjacent city about a major real estate project. The current mayor, Carlos Hernandez ad...

This is one of those thing that isn't really news but I guess that the Boston Marathon went well enough that folks with fake numbers were caught running in the race. Road Racing and especially big races are big business along with all the other things that jogging is or was.  I have run in probably one hundred races over the years. I finished the Orange Bowl Marathon in 1983. My time was 4:33.  I really don't remember how many people I beat in the race.  I didn't get a medal, I got a tee shirt. North Carolina Blue and the finish line was in the Orange Bowl. A victory lap after a lot of training. I still have the tee shirt. Lots of folks ran than in races unofficially without numbers. Rosie Ruiz took the subway in New York and made a name for herself that will live in infamy. I ran in the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta on July 4th a long time ago.  50,000+ runners/joggers and you qualified for a tee shirt if you ran the ran the race in less than an hour.  I...

A few months ago I started getting e-mails regarding houses for sale in Key West and the latest is doozy! $650,000 for a frame house in Old Town Key West.  Built in 1923 it's old and pictures of the inside look just as old and crappy as the outside.  At a little over $1,000 a square foot this fixer upper is just what I need.  527 square feet of Old Key West located in a wonderful neighborhood within walking distance of galleries, restaurants, schools, and churches. Then I remembered the last visit to Key West.  A long drive, pretty ocean views, an interesting place or two for a drink and some good seafood. A nice place to visit but living on the "rock" makes no sense.  832 Johnson Lane, Key West, Florida 33040, no thank you. Yesterday, I made a beer mistake.  Beer bottlers are following in the footsteps of the coffee packagers.  I think I'm going to stick with good old American brewers even if they are owned by multinational conglomerates.  ...

My experience of pay equity for women is a mixed bag.  Through a great deal of my time working for county government I had an immediate supervisor that was a women and during almost all that time my supervisor made more money than I did. Three times in a career of over thirty years, the executive director of the agency was a women. Twice during my career, women came from an outside agency and blocked promotion from inside the agency.  The nature of these appointments could be rationalized as political in nature as new mayors or county managers were hired and their people were located in our agency. Governmental work is pretty much cut and dried.  Job titles and salaries are related to educational background and experience and the minimums are established. There are always exceptions to the rule and it was interesting to watch the gyrations that would go on if "the boss" wanted to get approval for a new position, change somebodies job title to justify an increase in sa...

I just got done reading a Facebook posting about the time off teachers get and how they paid a 12 month salary and don't work twelve months.  They get a lot of time off during the summer and get breaks at Christmas and in the spring as well. The amount people get paid, how often they get, their hourly rate of pay, and how they are paid and much they pay in taxes is always in play and everyone has their opinion. I'm sure we all know someone who is overpaid, underpaid, doesn't pay enough in taxes, or charges a really obscene amount of money per hour. The school year now is a historical anomly based on our agrarian past.  A great teacher could probably make more money in another field.  Crappy teachers should be encouraged to look for another career.  Some really are job basis folks that work lots of hours beyond the time they spend in the classroom and others are just hourly folks and sadly not the professionals they think they are. The biggest question and it ...

Something is wrong with the way the IRS evaluates its employees.  I'm sure I never asked any of the folks that I supervised if they had problems with the IRS.  I do know that one guy was seriously behind on some child support payments, but he was a good worker and screwing with his job would not have helped the situation as he was working on the problem and making regular payments to the court. But then again, I didn't work for the IRS. This might not be fair but I can say without a doubt that IRS employees with unpaid taxes need to be treated differently than other citizens.  And according to reports today, they shouldn't be eligible for bonuses until their tax issues are resolved.  Problems like these give everyone even more excuses than they already have about paying anything to the tax man. Something short of show trials and summary executions might not help the situation, but if this kind of punishment crosses my mind, as a card carrying liberal, I can ima...

There is a very low stakes game at the Moose Lodge in Hialeah on Monday and Thursday evenings.  I joined the lodge a few months ago because more than a few horsemen from Hialeah Park would have a beer there after the races. I started playing cards on Thursday nights a couple of months ago and it is a cheap way to spend an evening. The game is very low key and small stakes.  Everyone is friendly and the beers are cold and reasonably priced and there are snacks for sale. A few years ago I doubt I would have ever played cards at a lodge, joined a lodge, or stopped at a lodge for a beer or gone there for a fish fry or a steak dinner.  I never thought of myself as a joiner and from previous experience not exactly my thing. This lodge is sort of my speed and like I said very low key.  Grouch Marx said he would refuse to join any club that would have him as a member.  I understand the thought behind the comment but there are limits to being a GDI. There are thi...

Stolicknaya began his second career as a family pony.  I'm happy for him and hope the new owners send a Christmas Card. And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had another for desert. Had hoped for a race at Remington Park in Oklahoma City before his and my retirement.  When you are at distance you just have to trust your gut like Gibbs. The fork has been stuck in the road, and in more ways than I can count I've had the time of my life. The Beaver's win is on Q Racing, replays Hialeah Park December 8, 2013.  8th Race he's the 10 horse.

On one level the Christians, Jews, and the English Class system are broken down to individual performances at the Olympics in the 1981 movie. The characters and the story are based on fact leading up to the 1924 Paris Olympics.  The amateur ideals of the time were even then starting to be questioned.  I'm sure that Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams did not meet the usual gentlemanly standards of the day and the why they were running was also off the charts.  Using sports to promote ones beliefs as they were at the time was novel.  Professional sports were more or less in their infancy. College football and sports as practiced in the USA probably need a haircut.  Sports and games are helpful in providing an opportunity, discipline and an understanding of teamwork in schools but then there is the rest of the story. There are suggestions that college athletes  should be paid because college make so much money off of them.  I must ...

Easter Sunday is always an interesting proposition at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation I attend.  There aren't many "born" UU's and too much "Bible", and on the third day stuff can send some of the more "humanist" into a not very nice frenzy or maybe they take Easter Sunday off so they don't raise their blood pressure too much.  Lot's of our members come from different religious backgrounds and it is an ongoing dance to discus religious tolerance, when the person next to you on Sunday probably has a different take on things. A few days ago I got a slick postcard invitation to attend an obviously non denominational service in Miami. Hope is alive, fresh music, engaging, and special activities for kids. Then I see the website: cantstandchristians.com and realize these folks have theological issues that will be difficult to dance around.  I don't find can't stand Christians a very hopeful message at Easter or at any other ...

I'm not sure the Miami Dade County Elections Department has it right. I guess they think restricting folks from going to the bathroom while waiting in line to vote is a great victory for them.  Closing the bathrooms for everyone sure treats everyone equally, and especially the poor poll workers. Given the lines in the last presidential election, I think this policy is stupid and if they have to move some polls because they are worried about bathrooms being accessible, move the polling place.

I watched the BLM/Rancher standoff last night on TV.  It wasn't pretty.  It's also a little more complicated and kind of where old meets new. There are lots of federal lands that are parks and forests.  My father bought forty acres in the Big Cypress Swamp when we first came to Florida more than forty years ago.  Eventually he came to realize that access to the land was next to impossible without a swamp buggy and working with other owners in the area to build a road was like herding cats and really an expensive proposition.  The Feds wanted to buy the land for environmental reasons and secondarily to control sprawling development in Florida and he sold the land to the government. There were a group of folks back then that either thought the Feds were not offering enough for their land or that they had bought it and were never going to sell it period.  Those that didn't sell were offered life leases, where they could continue using and enjoying their pr...

I really like the idea of equal pay for equal work but it can be a tough concept to wrap your arms around and complicated.  The bigger issue is that the whole process of compensation is very opaque at best. Why should one left fielder for the Cubs get paid more than the second baseman.  Why don't they just set a number and divide it by the number of players on the team as a base figure and then give bonuses for wins, and various other categories like innings played, innings pitched, singles, doubles, triples, home runs... It isn't done like this. Authors get paid for books that they sell, but it is hard to get the first one sold, and after that the idea of quality can go out the window and you may be getting paid for what you did, rather than what you do today. I remember an accountant friend that once said over beers that it had been quite a while since he had done any accounting work of any substance and that he was pretty much a rainmaker and a very well paid one. His...

The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services is scheduled to resign this morning according to news reports.  This was inevitable.  The roll out of the ACA Website was a disaster of the first order. Back in August 1974, I remember seeing President Nixon's resignation letter that was sent to the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.  Short and to me sweet. I imagine she will be happy to return to Kansas until she can set up some kind of an income stream from her latest job.  The task of implementing something this controversial in the atmosphere she was handed was probably impossible.  Legislative roadblocks and the scope of the task guaranteed problems even though there seemed to be plenty of time before the law would take effect. In contrast, I was able to apply for for Social Security Retirement Benefits online, swiftly, after an abortive visit to a local Social Security Office, which was not necessary.  Shortly after applying, I recei...

Lexi Thompson, 19 years old, won the Kraft Nabisco Championship (LPGA) on Sunday in California.  Lexi is from South Florida and has been around golf her entire life.  "This is what I've worked my whole life for and practiced my butt off for.  She qualified for the Women's USGA Open at age 12. She was paired with Michelle Wie, 24, another golf prodigy from 2000, when she became the youngest player to qualify for the Public Links Championship at the ripe old age of 10. Both players have made millions on the professional golf tour, have endorsements from major companies and are seemingly set for life financially. I hope they are also getting ready for phase two in their lives, whatever that might be.  There is a great deal of truth in the aphorism, "Be careful what you ask for, you might get it". I wonder how many people reach their life goals before they are old enough to vote and how that works out them.  Let's hope this is still a work in progress.

The Miami Herald reports that Monroe County, home of the Florida Keys leads the state in "binge drinking" and excessive drinking, with 28% hitting that mark. Binge drinking is considered 4-5 alcoholic drinks in one setting at least once per month. Alrighty!  Excessive drinking is considered 1-2 drinks almost every day. This isn't an absolutely funny topic.  Almost 40% of the fatal car accidents are linked to alcohol according to the article. On the good side almost everyone in the county has access to exercise opportunities and the county has fewer obese folks than you might imagine.  I guess riding your bicycle to the local watering hole or convenience store is a twofer of sorts. I imagine that more than a few folks make a valiant effort to make a six pack last a week in Key West.  If you have a boat or do any amount of fishing it's a fool's errand. This is definitely not news in the Keys, but it probably makes folks that live elsewhere in the state fee...

It's been reported that Hobby Lobby owns stock in companies that are involved with making birth control pills, providing insurance to cover the costs for abortions and god knows what else as part of mutual funds in their retirement programs offers its employees. Yesterday, President Obama took what was reported as a victory lap for the start of the Affordable Care Act. Whoa!  If you live in Florida, the medicaid expansion is on hold and there are folks that won't get any benefit from the new law. I think the position that the Hobby Lobby is in is at best ironic and at worst hypocritical. It's quite possible that this may President Obama's "Mission Accomplished" moment.  Unless the amount of money we spend on health care is reduced significantly, the health care system as we know it is still in trouble.

I just saw a story about a guy who got fired because his boss was late to work and did not call him and so he locked the doors posted a note on the door bitching out his boss and left.  Makes sense to me.  I'm positive everybody has been put in a bad place through no fault of their own and usually folks just suck it up and go on. I don't think the guy who posted the note was courageous and the boss has probably been guilty of similar stupid behavior before this.  It would be enlightening to know if the boss had a boss. Not much to think about here except that phones have cameras and this the way things roll. I don't think the note should be anything famous, a call with a voice mail or a text message might have saved the job but obviously that does apply in this case. "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." Kris Kristofferson.