Sunday Morning Coming Down

If you haven't watched old movies for a while maybe you should start by watching Casablanca.  Its a lot more than just a love triangle. Neutrality was not a very good strategy to fight the Nazis back then.  I doubt that ham handed executive orders will  work as good immigration policy either.  Occupied France wasn't very French and the United States would be ill advised to retreat to more isolationist policies. Casablanca was a city back then full of people who can't get where they want to go and for many it was a place where they must live as exiles or refugees.  Travel visas were hard to get, they often included murder, bribery, or money/luck.  Why are folks with valid visas being stopped.  This seems very arbitrary and illegal. Getting to America was a dream for many.  America was a safe harbor and a place to regroup and continue the fight.  I believe the United States must continue to be a place where people can come and live and en...

Ingi, Susan, Inga, Carlos(A), Diego, Antonio, Jose (A), Patria, Caroline,Wilfred, Illeana, Haydee, Patricia, Hoel, Juan, Manuel, Michael, Brigida, Paul, Alex, Toni, Jose(B), Jose(C), Mohammad, Joseph, Carmen, Oscar, Francisco, Ramon, Daryl and Dania, Marie, and Maria are members of my family and friends or coworkers that came from somewhere else to live in the United States as workers, refugees, residents, and then becoming citizens. These folks were masons, factory workers, inventors, office workers, greens keepers, accountants, jockeys.  This is only a small number of the folks I have worked with as they arrived in Miami, Florida or Bensenville, Illinois. There more than a few whose names I would have a hard time spelling or pronouncing and they got nicknames.  And there are probably others that came here a long time ago and their immigration status is unknown to me but their parents came to the United States like mine did just before the end of World War II. They are ...

A lot of this talk about illegal voting is  just talk about something that is very hypothetical.  It might happen but it doesn't happen very often and with folks looking over each others shoulders irregularities get caught before they get out of hand.  Yes, I guess folks should check citizenship when they are first registered to vote.  Is an oath swearing that one is a citizen enough to believe that one is a citizen for voting? I have personally registered many people to vote in Florida in years past.  The registration form only required the oath that they were a citizen, lived in Florida and eligible to vote in Florida.  Naturalized citizen often brought their naturalization certificate and were proud to have become citizens.  This happened during the 1970's.  When voting, if your name was on the voting roles you were able to vote and signed another oath about your continued eligibility to vote.  This was in the days before picture ids w...

I traveled to Homestead to see the rodeo.  $15 for a ticket and $5 to park, well worth the ride.  Family entertainment and the proceeds went to the participants and local groups that sold food and drinks. If the rodeo ever comes close to your house I would highly recommend attending.  The weather was good as expected for January in Florida.  There was a lot of local color as the folks came out to support a rodeo that has been around for almost seventy years.  Not surprisingly a lot of tourists from Europe, and throughout Latin America were there to catch some real "Americana". The events included bull riding, bronc riding, roping contests and barrel racing, along with lots of other folks on horse back.  The bull riders and the bronc riders are more than a little crazy, riding animals that preferred not to be ridden and getting bucked off before the eight second buzzer went off.  Where do those guys get their workers comp coverage I really liked t...

The front page story on the Miami Herald has a headline: "Many Dreamers Likely To Be Deported Soon".  An estimated 750,000 minors who were brought to this country by their parents without proper legal status could be deported soon if the new administration follows up on plans to increase enforcement of existing deportation orders and repeal DACA. The Obama policy of deferring deportation of "Childhood Arrivals" made sense when it was established.  If you arrived before 2007 and were 16 years old or younger, in school, had graduated from high school or were honorably discharged from the military, it was decided you could stay in the country as long as you continued your good behavior. It was thought that resources should be used to arrest and deport more aliens with serious criminal backgrounds. DACA made no promise of citizenship.  DACA required an application and payment of $495.00.  The policy helped youth continue their education, enter the labor force, wor...

It seems the only folks disappointed with the end of the Clinton policy of allowing Cubans who make it to the United States to stay are those that may be caught up in the shuffle when the policy changed rather suddenly about a week ago. According to reports there were thousands trying to beat what was thought to be the end of the policy, possibly as early as the first day after President Trump was sworn into office.  Senator Rublio and many others in the Cuban Community have spoken out against the policy primarily because it seems to help rather than hurt the current Castro regime. Others opposed the policy because it seemed to rather arbitrarily favor Cubans wanting to come to the United States over folks from other countries.  The Cuban American National Foundation purchased a full page ad in the Miami Herald indicating the policy had many shortcomings. The abrupt policy change by President Obama might have been to stop a Mariel type boatlift which could be risky for f...

The Republican Party of Lincoln had seventeen candidates to choose from and ended up nominating Donald Trump. The Democratic Party may have had a very qualified candidate in Hillary but she wasn't popular enough to get enough of her voters in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, or Florida out to vote or the Republicans would still be complaining about her. I did not like the tone of the President Elect's first Press Conference. I'm not sure that giving the management of your  businesses to your sons meets the ethical requirements that running for the office requires if one is to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interests.  The potential for self dealing is kind of hard to deal with. For example:  If you come in to office with an extreme amount of wealth and one of the first tax proposals you make is to abolish the Federal Estate Tax that you would be subject to and it affects only a small number of people, there will be issues and there is little do...

The Chicago Cubs will visit the White House on January 16th 2016.  I know the President says he is WHITE SOX fan but I hope all the Cub fans will give him a pass for reaching across the aisle and accepting a Cubs Jersey which he might never wear except for photos.

I've attended Illinois State University at Normal, Illinois.  Endowment $143,000,000 +/-                      University of Miami at Coral Gables, Florida. Endowment $1,600,000,000+/-                      West Virginia University at Morgantown, West Virginia. Endowment $650,000,000+/- The top ten university endowments are: Harvard $32,000,000,000                                                                 Yale       $20,000,000,000 ...

According to the Icelandic Review, Reykjavik, Iceland has the fourth highest use amphetamine use among 70 Euro peeing cities according to a new study by Arndís Sue-Ching Löve, PhD student at the University of Iceland Faculty of Medicine, Vísir reports.   "Waste water samples were collected over a period of one week in March 2016, in cooperation with Verkís engineering consultants and Veitur water and sewage service. Automatic sampling was used of what could be called a pooled community urine sample." This method of testing isn't intrusive.  Speaking of science, I wonder if it captured folks that relieved themselves in venues other than bathrooms. 

The Miami Herald had a great editorial this morning about lobbyists that local governments pay to represent them in Tallahassee (state government).  You might think that legislators from South Florida who we elect would be able to represent South Florida. Like maybe my representative would be able to convince enough folks that his ideas are good.  The issues of a small town might need to be addressed by the state.  Why do we elect legislators to go to Tallahassee, it isn't always clear. Government services are getting privatized in the name of efficiency.  If you look at things more closely it is expand the donor class.  Local governments can not make political contributions and individual contributions from government workers are very limited.  The power of their unions is hamstrung if the jobs get privatized and actually not all union folks vote as a block.  The public would revolt if you had to be a democrat or a republican to get your garbage p...

Why is it good for a CEO to have a contract, incentive pay, profit sharing or stock options, retention bonuses, and a retirement package but too expensive when it comes to workers. 1) Too many CEOS only have to respond to boards of directors that they got appointed to the board. 2) A lot of board members get paid to show up for meetings, don't do much, and rubber stamp whatever the CEO wants.  It's not a bad job, it's a plum. 3) How many CEOS ever get fired for screwing up? 4) Ask the Board of Directors who often serve on several boards how many times they have voted to fire a CEO.

 Scrubbing feed buckets, helping around the backside, trips to the racing secretary's office for the past performances and watching horses work and jockeys ride on cool mornings was a plan.  My jockey and trainer friends:  Shanley, Matt, Randy, Dale seemed happy almost every morning.  By the time I got to the track, there were horses out on the walkers, having a bath and some of the really early risers were already back in their stalls.  If possible I would try to arrive so I could see "our horses" out on the track.  I always took a little ribbing for sleeping in but if I brought doughnuts or bagels it was forgiven if not forgotten. By December most of the horses knew the routine, they had been to other tracks.  Hialeah was the last stop before most horses got a rest and the carnival went to Texas, Oklahoma, or Louisiana in March.  Walk quietly out to the track, warm up, gallop, or really run.  Come back to the winners circle stop and then ...