The humble Farmer

Health Reform Myths by Paul Krugman

2010-03-12T13:29:00.000-05:00

humble says:

I don’t very often say anything of a political nature, but I’m going to do so now. I’m going to give you my definition of a democrat. A democrat is a nice guy who works hard to put a nice guy in office. And when the democrat’s candidate wins, he complains that the man he elected doesn’t have the chutzpah of a republican.

The humble Farmer

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Health Reform Myths

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: March 11, 2010

Health reform is back from the dead. Many Democrats have realized that their electoral prospects will be better if they can point to a real accomplishment. Polling on reform — which was never as negative as portrayed — shows signs of improving. And I’ve been really impressed by the passion and energy of this guy Barack Obama. Where was he last year?

But reform still has to run a gantlet of misinformation and outright lies. So let me address three big myths about the proposed reform, myths that are believed by many people who consider themselves well-informed, but who have actually fallen for deceptive spin.

The first of these myths, which has been all over the airwaves lately, is the claim that President Obama is proposing a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy, the share of G.D.P. currently spent on health.

Well, if having the government regulate and subsidize health insurance is a “takeover,” that takeover happened long ago. Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs already pay for almost half of American health care, while private insurance pays for barely more than a third (the rest is mostly out-of-pocket expenses). And the great bulk of that private insurance is provided via employee plans, which are both subsidized with tax exemptions and tightly regulated.

The only part of health care in which there isn’t already a lot of federal intervention is the market in which individuals who can’t get employment-based coverage buy their own insurance. And that market, in case you hadn’t noticed, is a disaster — no coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, coverage dropped when you get sick, and huge premium increases in the middle of an economic crisis. It’s this sector, plus the plight of Americans with no insurance at all, that reform aims to fix. What’s wrong with that?

The second myth is that the proposed reform does nothing to control costs. To support this claim, critics point to reports by the Medicare actuary, who predicts that total national health spending would be slightly higher in 2019 with reform than without it.

Even if this prediction were correct, it points to a pretty good bargain. The actuary’s assessment of the Senate bill, for example, finds that it would raise total health care spending by less than 1 percent, while extending coverage to 34 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured. That’s a large expansion in coverage at an essentially trivial cost.

And it gets better as we go further into the future: the Congressional Budget Office has just concluded, in a new report, that the arithmetic of reform will look better in its second decade than it did in its first.

Furthermore, there’s good reason to believe that all such estimates are too pessimistic. There are many cost-saving efforts in the proposed reform, but nobody knows how well any one of these efforts will work. And as a result, official estimates don’t give the plan much credit for any of them. What the actuary and the budget office do is a bit like looking at an oil company’s prospecting efforts, concluding that any individual test hole it drills will probably come up dry, and predicting as a consequence that the company won’t find any oil at all — when the odds are, in fact, that some of the test holes will pan out, and produce big payoffs. Realistically, health reform is likely to do much better at controlling costs than any of the official projections suggest.

Which brings me to the third myth: that health reform is fiscally irresponsible. How can people say this given Congressional Budget Office predictions — which, as I’ve already argued, are probably too pessimistic — that reform would actually reduce the deficit? Critics argue that we should ignore what’s actually in the legislation; when cost control actually starts to bite on Medicare, they insist, Congress will back down.

But this isn’t an argument against Obamacare, it’s a declaration that we can’t control Medicare costs no matter what. And it also flies in the face of history: contrary to legend, past efforts to limit Medicare spending have in fact “stuck,” rather than being withdrawn in the face of political pressure.

So what’s the reality of the proposed reform? Compared with the Platonic ideal of reform, Obamacare comes up short. If the votes were there, I would much prefer to see Medicare for all.

For a real piece of passable legislation, however, it looks very good. It wouldn’t transform our health care system; in fact, Americans whose jobs come with health coverage would see little effect. But it would make a huge difference to the less fortunate among us, even as it would do more to control costs than anything we’ve done before.

This is a reasonable, responsible plan. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The United States Is At War

2010-03-09T07:45:00.000-05:00

The Anti-Empire Report

March 8th, 2010

by William Blum

www.killinghope.org

Informed consent

About half the states in the US require that a woman seeking an abortion be told certain things before she can obtain the medical procedure. In South Dakota, for example, until a few months ago, staff was required to tell women: "The abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being"; the pregnant woman has "an existing relationship with that unborn human being," a relationship protected by the U.S. Constitution and the laws of South Dakota; and a "known medical risk" of abortion is an "increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide." A federal judge has now eliminated the second and third required assertions, calling them "untruthful and misleading."

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I personally would question even the first assertion about a fetus or an embryo being a human being, but that's not the point I wish to make here. I'd like to suggest that before a young American man or woman can enlist in the armed forces s/he must be told the following by the staff of the military recruitment office:

"The United States is at war [this statement is always factually correct]. You will likely be sent to a battlefield where you will be expected to do your best to terminate the lives of whole, separate, unique, living human beings you know nothing about and who have never done you or your country any harm. You may in the process lose an arm or a leg. Or your life. If you come home alive and with all your body parts intact there's a good chance you will be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Do not expect the government to provide you particularly good care for that, or any care at all. In any case, you may wind up physically abusing your spouse and children and/or others, killing various individuals, abusing drugs and/or alcohol, and having an increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide. No matter how bad a condition you may be in, the Pentagon may send you back to the battlefield for another tour of duty. They call this 'stop-loss'. Your only alternative may be to go AWOL. Do you have any friends in Canada? And don't ever ask any of your officers what we're fighting for. Even the generals don't know. In fact, the generals especially don't know. They would never have reached their high position if they had been able to go beyond the propaganda we're all fed, the same propaganda that has influenced you to come to this office."

Since for so many young people in recent years one of the determining factors in their enlistment has been the economy, this additional thought should be pointed out to them — "You are enlisting to fight, and perhaps die, for a country that can't even provide you with a decent job, or any job at all."

"I fear for us all, but I especially fear for those already poor. How much lower can they go without being cannon fodder or electric chair fodder or street litter or prison stuffing or just plain lonely suicide?"

– Carolyn Chute, novelist, Maine USA

Capitalism: A Love Story

2010-03-08T13:41:00.000-05:00

In his film Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore squares off with the free-market system for its role in leveraging the United States's wealth into the hands of a few.

But in one clip cut from the documentary -- which Moore provided exclusively to RAW STORY -- he interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, who explains how capitalism is actually contributing to the very downfall of the human race and the "degradation of the planet."

"All sorts of people who have spent their lives studying climate change, from Bill McKibben on down, have warned us that we don't have a lot of time left," Hedges said. "So it's not just that capitalism has destroyed our economic system and hijacked our political system, but it literally is extinguishing the system that sustains life. If that's not thwarted soon...then we will begin to see massive dislocations, environmental refugees, further depleting of natural resources. Overpopulation is also an issue. The UN estimates that by 2050 the size of the planet will double."

The very concept of capitalism, Moore declares in the film, is the problem because it inevitably leads to a system where the richest few control the means of production as well as the levers of power -- leading to a "plutonomy," a term used in a leaked Citigroup memo from 2005, in which the finance juggernaut concluded that the United States is no longer a democracy.

In the interview, Hedges decries America's turn toward supply-side economics over the last three decades as the cause of stagnating middle class incomes, contrasting it with the increasingly lavish fortunes of the wealthy and the aid they often receive from the government at the expense of working people

A Green Governor For Maine

2010-03-08T10:44:00.000-05:00

David Bright writes:

This weekend Jean and I spent a lot of time in Hancock County looking for members of the Maine Green Party to sign nomination papers for Lynne Williams.

At one point we ended up driving down this long dirt driveway to a small rural home where we were greeted by a couple of enthusiastic canines and their person, who wanted to know (the person, not the dogs) all about Lynne -- who she was, where she was from, what she did.

When I told him she was a lawyer he said "I don't like most most lawyers, and I don't like most politicians, especially those two woman we have in the U.S. Senate."

"Then, you'll like Lynne," I told him, "because she represents every person who gets arrested in Collins' or Snowe's office."

"Well if that's the case," the guy says, "how is she ever going to find enough time to be governor?"

An essay on Hoax Emails

2010-03-05T11:04:00.000-05:00

Because not a day goes by but what I receive a raft of hoax emails, and because I myself have written quite a bit about the great number of hoax emails and the unfortunate uneducated people who delight in sending them, I found the following article to be of interest.

It says:

That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously.

by Lori Robertson

March 18, 2008

I’ve noticed that chain e-mails, particularly those about politics, have a lot of things in common: urgent and frightening messages; spelling errors; a tendency to blame mainstream media for not telling the real story; and false, misleading, utterly bogus, and completely off-base claims.

If there was ever a case where readers should apply a guilty-until-proven-innocent standard, this is it. We at FactCheck.org ask the public to be skeptical about politicians’ claims. With these e-mails, outright cynicism is justified. Assume all such messages are wrong, and you’ll be right most of the time.

Yes, there are a few chain e-mails floating around the Web that are actually true – but not many. And when it comes to messages about the top presidential contenders, truth in e-mail is an elusive quality. In our Ask FactCheck feature, launched late last year, we’ve looked into several e-mails our readers have sent to us. We’re just getting started, but overwhelmingly they have turned out to be false. Snopes.com has been investigating e-mail and other urban legends since 1995, and the site’s founders, Barbara and David Mikkelson, have written articles about 31 e-mails about Barack Obama and Hillary (and Bill) Clinton. Only two e-mails were completely accurate. While a handful had elements of truth in them or couldn’t be verified, the vast majority were flat-out false.

Another writer who debunks rumor and lore is David Emery, author of About.com’s Urban Legends page. He lists seven e-mails about Hillary Clinton and five about Barack Obama. His verdict: 12 false and misleading, 0 true.

We have yet to see e-mails about John McCain, and Emery notes a decidedly anti-Democrat tilt to the bulk of the e-mail chatter. But there’s still plenty of time before the election. In 2004, a left-leaning e-mail claimed the Bush administration was quietly pushing legislation to reinstate the military draft. The claim was bogus, but the e-mail prompted such paranoia that a GOP-controlled House overwhelmingly voted down a bill to reinstate the draft just to show that it rejected the measure. Snopes has chronicled two claims about McCain – both were true, and one was a positive story.

In an e-mail to FactCheck.org, Emery says in 10 years of this line of work, he has looked into a thousand or so e-mails. Pressed to give a ballpark figure for how many are true, he responds: "I’d venture to say that less than a tenth of what’s circulating out there at any given time turns out to be 100% true. A substantially larger portion – maybe around half of all the emails or a little more – contain a mixture of facts and falsehoods." Then, there’s a little thing called "spin." "You can take a string of incontrovertible facts and present them in such a way that they point to a false conclusion."

As for e-mails with political themes, Emery, who has been at this longer than we have, says the phenomenon has increased greatly in recent years, with a marked surge in 2004 with attacks on John Kerry. "I’m tempted to say that Internet rumor-mongering has become, for lack of a better word, ‘integral’ to the political process over the past few election cycles." Internet-fueled innuendo has prompted stronger and quicker responses from the candidates, says Emery, who adds that it’s unclear whether or not any of these e-mails were written by political staffers themselves. "It’s possible, and I think even likely, that at least a few of these rumors were started by political operatives, but I’m not aware of any hard evidence of that."

More Popular = More Likely to Be Bogus

We’ve noticed that the more times something is forwarded, the more likely it is to be false. We suggested this perverse theory when we threw cold water on the claim that the United Kingdom, or the University of Kentucky, had stopped teaching about the Holocaust. E-mails about Obama, for instance, have been particularly popular – they now rank as No. 3 on Snopes.com’s list of the 25 Hottest Urban Legends and one rumor holds the No. 1 spot in Emery’s top 25. But only one of the e-mails these sites have examined is true – and actually only a certain version of it passes the truth test.

This is the one claiming that Obama didn’t put his hand over his heart while the Star Spangled Banner played. That specific allegation is correct, as documented in a photo of presidential candidates at an Iowa steak fry. But it’s false, as some versions of the e-mail said, that he "will NOT recite the Pledge of Allegiance nor will he show any reverence for our flag." We debunked this and other legends about Obama early this year after receiving a rush of questions about them. Again, for the record, he is not a Muslim, his middle name is not Mohammed, and he placed his hand on a Bible when he was sworn into the Senate. And he puts his hand over his heart when he says the Pledge of Allegiance. We even have pictures to prove it.

Still, two months after we wrote that story, we continue to get messages from readers asking about his patriotism, his religion, his church and whether he’ll take the presidential oath with the Quran.

Often, the message itself includes major red flags that should alert readers that the author is not to be trusted. Here are just a few of what we’ll call Key Characteristics of Bogusness:
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The author is anonymous. Practically all e-mails we see fall into this category, and anytime an author is unnamed, the public should be skeptical. If the story were true, why would the author not put his or her name on it?

• The author is supposedly a famous person. Of course, e-mails that are attributed to legitimate people turn out to be false as well. Those popular messages about a Jay Leno essay and Andy Rooney’s political views are both baloney. And we found that some oft-quoted words attributed to Abraham Lincoln were not his words at all.

• There’s a reference to a legitimate source that completely contradicts the information in the e-mail. Some e-mails will implore readers to check out the claims, even providing a link to a respected source. We’re not sure why some people don’t click on the link, but we implore you to do so. Go ahead, take the challenge. See if the information you find actually backs up the e-mail. We’ve examined three such e-mails in which the back-up material clearly debunks the e-mail itself. One message provided a link to the Tax Foundation, but anyone who followed it would have found an article saying the e-mail’s figures were all wrong. Another boasted that Snopes.com had verified the e-mail, but Snopes actually said it was false.

• The message is riddled with spelling errors. Ask yourself, why should you trust an author who is not only anonymous but partially illiterate?

• The author just loves using exclamation points. If the author had a truthful point to make, he or she wouldn’t need to put two, three, even five exclamation points after every other sentence. In fact, we’re developing another theory here: The more exclamation points used in an e-mail, the less true it actually is. (Ditto for excessive use of capital letters.)

• The message argues that it is NOT false. This tip comes from Emery, who advises skepticism for any message that says, "This is NOT a hoax!"

• There’s math involved. Check it. One message that falsely claimed more soldiers died during Bill Clinton’s term than during George W. Bush’s urged, "You do the Math!" We did. It’s wrong.

We hope that by writing about some of these messages we can enlighten a few readers and arm some of them with ammunition against their e-mail-forwarding friends. But clearly our battle against the viral e-mail monster has just begun. Months after debunking a popular piece of rubbish about Nancy Pelosi’s plan to tax your retirement savings and give the revenue to illegal immigrants, we’re still getting questions about whether it could possibly be true. Let me repeat: It’s not.

In another item on a common falsehood (but not yet, as far as we know, an e-mail legend), we suggested that a reader try ridiculing his friends to dispel their apocryphal beliefs. And we were serious. If the cold hard truth – or even an ounce of common sense – isn’t an effective weapon in combating a bogus notion, what is?
It seems that no matter the facts, the desire to believe some of this stuff is just too strong. Emery, too, has come to believe that there’s not enough proof in the world to stop certain political propaganda. "I have come to the conclusion that especially where political rumors are concerned, most people are so locked into a particular world view that they tend to reject any information, no matter how well supported, that contradicts their cherished assumptions," he says. "It’s scary, actually how polarized we have become."

In a 2004 report on this topic, our director, Brooks Jackson, called for an end to the e-mail madness, saying, "This cyber-sickness should stop. All it takes is a little bit of common sense and skepticism, some curiosity and a few keystrokes. Nailing these lies can even be fun."

Apparently, lots of Americans didn’t heed the call. If you don’t find checking out these e-mails to be fun, or just don’t have time, I suggest an easier alternative: a healthy use of the delete key.

The Case for Single Payer Health Insurance

2010-03-01T15:24:00.000-05:00

The insurance companies pay a lot to control the debate in this country. That means you are paying it in your premiums. Anthem wants to go up 23% in Maine. They gotta cover their advertising and political contributions (now unlimited). When they compare us to Canada they like to focus on certain things and ignore others. They live four years longer than we do.

Canadians strongly support the health system's public rather than for-profit private basis, and a 2009 poll by Nanos Research found 86.2% of Canadians surveyed supported or strongly supported "public solutions to make our public health care stronger."

A 2009 Harris/Decima poll found 82% of Canadians preferred their healthcare system to the one in the United States, more than ten times as many as the 8% stating a preference for a US-style health care system for Canada[7] while a Strategic Counsel survey in 2008 found 91% of Canadians preferring their healthcare system to that of the U.S.[8][9]. In the same poll, when asked “overall the Canadian health care system was performing very well, fairly well, not very well or not at all?” 70% of Canadians rated their system as working either "well" or "very well".[citation needed] A 2003 Gallup poll found only 25% of Americans are either "very" or "somewhat" satisfied with "the availability of affordable healthcare in the nation," versus 50% of those in the UK and 57% of Canadians. Those "very dissatisfied" made up 44% of Americans, 25% of respondents of Britons, and 17% of Canadians

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Robert Kuttner

Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American Prospect

Posted: February 28, 2010 10:21 PM

The Cure That Dares Not Speak Its Name

In all of the debates about health care reform, one of the stubborn realities is that neither the Obama plan, nor any of the Republican alternatives, will seriously alter the trajectory of relentless cost-escalation in health care. If you look at the Administration's own projections of federal deficits in the next decade and after 2020, virtually all of the alarming growth in deficit spending is Medicare and Medicaid.

And that's only the public part of the health care bill. In 2009, total health care costs increased to 17.3 percent of GDP, with escalating premiums eating into both corporate profits and worker take home pay. The consensus among the usual policy experts is that there is no good solution. The march of technology and demography will just continue to raise health costs.

But you can reach that conclusion only by ignoring how the rest of the club of affluent countries manages to insure everyone for 9 or 10 percent of GDP, and have a healthier and longer-lived population, to boot. They do it, of course, through universal, socialized insurance.

There is no single formula. The Canadians do it with a single payer system for the insurance part, but physicians are private. The Brits have an integrated National Health Service. The Germans achieve near-universal coverage through a system of nonprofit health insurance plans.

What every other nation has in common is that they have taken the commercialism out of their health systems. As a consequence, they can direct health spending to areas of medical need rather than letting the market direct health dollars to areas of greatest profit. And with everyone covered, they can use highly cost-effective strategies for prevention, wellness, and public health. That's how you cover everyone for ten percent of GDP.

Our one island of single-payer medicine, Medicare, is phenomenally popular -- so popular that the Republicans' most effective attack on the Obama plan is that it would divert some money from Medicare. The Republicans, on the one hand, fiercely attack "government-run health insurance," while on the other they defend Medicare (which they would just as soon privatize).

But most Democratic politicians and policy wonks behave as if the option of a national health plan simply did not exist. These blinders are the result of the immense power of the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance complex combined with a failure of political leadership. Sooner or later, mainstream politicians will stumble their way to some form of single payer because there are no good alternatives unless we want to spend half of our GDP on health care.

In that regard, the best things about the still inconclusive end-game of Obama's efforts to enact his plan are that (1) the administration finally broke with the insurance industry, and (2) Obama is starting to get over the delusion of bipartisanship. So if we don't need either Harry and Louise, or John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, as part of the health-reform coalition, we might as well do it right.

With Obama's health summit behind us, there will now be a mad scramble for Democratic votes in the House and Senate to pursue the strategy that Obama should have used all along -- a Democrats-only bill relying on 51 votes in the Senate via the reconciliation procedure.

The problem is that Obama may have missed the moment. The prolonged, enervating battle for health reform, using a badly flawed bill, has scared off both conservative and liberal Democrats in both houses. The bill is politically toxic to legislators facing re-election, for good reason. The original formula, designed to enlist insurance industry allies, required a mandate to purchase insurance, diversion of Medicare funds, and unpopular taxes. Now that Obama has broken with the industry, an entirely different formula should be possible.

Alas, we are too far down the present road to advance single-payer in this legislative session. The president has done nothing to move public opinion in that direction, and has backed away even from the truncated version of it, the so-called public option.

I would put the odds at about one in three of Obama succeeding. Several Democrats who voted for the House-passed bill in November by the narrow margin of 220-215 have now defected, and several more are increasingly gun-shy. I don't much like this bill, but I still hope it passes so that the Republicans don't get rewarded for their relentless obstructionism.

Win or lose, the next great push should be for single-payer, assuming Democrats have a working majority again in foreseeable future. Given the collateral damage of Obama's strategy, that could be a long time coming.

Single Payer Universal Health Care

2010-02-25T14:00:00.001-05:00

R. B. MD, Writes on February 25, 2010:
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I've worked as a doctor for over thirty years now. As well as seeing patients with every insurance to no insurance and paying for health insurance for my family and employees I have come to the conclusion that a Medicare like health coverage for all is the way to go. Ask anyone over 65 if Medicare works for them and the answer is always yes. Yes, one buys supplemental, and that could, and perhaps should continue and/or medical savings account that could also be allowed.

Medicare insures the worse population.......the older folks and most certainly the ones who will pass away while under that coverage and spend a lot of money in the process. Best way to "spread the risk"...insure the young as well as the old.

Use of money for health and illness care really should not be thought of as insurance. Insurance is something you hope you don't use and insures against risk, like getting into a car wreck, or hitting a deer or moose, or having your dog bite the meter man. Everyone uses, or should use some health dollars, for preventive care, immunizations, having babies. We should think of having health coverage (and paying for it), as well as insurance to the catastrophic unanticipated events, like hitting a moose or being the meter man who gets bitten.

So what does health insurance cost now? Well, here in Michigan I have a Blue Cross Policy for my wife and me, a reduced policy from what I had two years ago, because I couldn't afford that one anymore. Now I have $8,000 deductible, which I fund through a medical savings account (allowed in this state), and then pay $1000 a month for "catastrophic" coverage, up from about $700/month just last year.

Now, instead of paying Blue Cross $12,000/year, how would I feel about payroll deduction of about $5,000-$8,000/year for my wife and me that went for Medicare like coverage. Pretty good. I believe Medicare is better run than many private insurance companies, has less administrative costs, does not have to pay expensive executives, does not have to create reserves. I believe all should contribute through payroll deduction, amount of which can be "means" tested and dependent on factors such as age, income, and perhaps life-style (smokers should pay more). The insurance should cover certain valuable preventive care fully, and have some copays or deductibles on other care. Medical savings accounts should be allowed to build up as savings over many years and be used for supplemental care, the deductibles and copays.

Here's another problem many of the public don't understand. Doctors and hospitals bill maximum for everything in order to capture every insurance dollar. But most accept insurance as full payment. Thus there may be a $300 doctor bill but the doctor accepts $150 from insurance. Or the Hospital bill $20,000 but accepts $10,000. It is illegal to bill lower to the self pay or uninsured or underinsured. So if you don't have insurance you have to pay much more. It would be much better for all if the "billing" side was appropriate and fair, and that the full amount was paid by all. Right now if doctors or hospitals or pharmacies lower their fees, insurance is likely to pay them even less.

So who would lose out on this? The insurance companies? No..claims processing would still be needed so I think those jobs would be preserved. The highly paid execs? Probably. Okay by me.

Doctors and hospitals? No matter what, they are needed and must be paid appropriately to stay in business and keep health care the best and available. Reductions in payment on the high end would likely be compensated by receiving payment for all, whereas now there is still lots of free and underinsured care given in ER's, doctor's offices and hospitals.

I don't think a government administered plan would fail. All Americans would have a stake in it.

Lastly, there is medicare, medicaid and other insurance fraud and abuse. Some real teeth have to be put into saving those lost dollars, and such savings would benefit all.

Skog....keep up the good work. What is really needed for most of our problems is education about the problem. Too often emotion, false beliefs, politics obscure and distort reality and the correct path to solutions. If you got this far, accept my thanks for listening. R B , MD

Paul Krugman

2010-02-08T10:47:00.000-05:00

Paul Krugman.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesPaul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Mr. Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he became the Ford International Professor of Economics.

Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the "new trade theory," a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to "that economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge." Mr. Krugman's current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises.

At the same time, Mr. Krugman has written extensively for a broader public audience. Some of his recent articles on economic issues, originally published in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American and other journals, are reprinted in Pop Internationalism and The Accidental Theorist.

On October 13, 2008, it was announced that Mr. Krugman would receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.

It’s so bad that I miss Newt Gingrich

2010-02-08T10:40:00.000-05:00

America Is Not Yet Lost

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 7, 2010

We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.

What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.

A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.

Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.
Last week, after nine months, the Senate finally approved Martha Johnson to head the General Services Administration, which runs government buildings and purchases supplies. It’s an essentially nonpolitical position, and nobody questioned Ms. Johnson’s qualifications: she was approved by a vote of 94 to 2. But Senator Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, had put a “hold” on her appointment to pressure the government into approving a building project in Kansas City.

This dubious achievement may have inspired Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama. In any case, Mr. Shelby has now placed a hold on all outstanding Obama administration nominations — about 70 high-level government positions — until his state gets a tanker contract and a counterterrorism center.

What gives individual senators this kind of power? Much of the Senate’s business relies on unanimous consent: it’s difficult to get anything done unless everyone agrees on procedure. And a tradition has grown up under which senators, in return for not gumming up everything, get the right to block nominees they don’t like.
In the past, holds were used sparingly. That’s because, as a Congressional Research Service report on the practice says, the Senate used to be ruled by “traditions of comity, courtesy, reciprocity, and accommodation.” But that was then. Rules that used to be workable have become crippling now that one of the nation’s major political parties has descended into nihilism, seeing no harm — in fact, political dividends — in making the nation ungovernable.

How bad is it? It’s so bad that I miss Newt Gingrich.

Readers may recall that in 1995 Mr. Gingrich, then speaker of the House, cut off the federal government’s funding and forced a temporary government shutdown. It was ugly and extreme, but at least Mr. Gingrich had specific demands: he wanted Bill Clinton to agree to sharp cuts in Medicare.

Today, by contrast, the Republican leaders refuse to offer any specific proposals. They inveigh against the deficit — and last month their senators voted in lockstep against any increase in the federal debt limit, a move that would have precipitated another government shutdown if Democrats hadn’t had 60 votes. But they also denounce anything that might actually reduce the deficit, including, ironically, any effort to spend Medicare funds more wisely.

And with the national G.O.P. having abdicated any responsibility for making things work, it’s only natural that individual senators should feel free to take the nation hostage until they get their pet projects funded.

The truth is that given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government. Senators themselves should recognize this fact and push through changes in those rules, including eliminating or at least limiting the filibuster. This is something they could and should do, by majority vote, on the first day of the next Senate session.

Don’t hold your breath. As it is, Democrats don’t even seem able to score political points by highlighting their opponents’ obstructionism.

It should be a simple message (and it should have been the central message in Massachusetts): a vote for a Republican, no matter what you think of him as a person, is a vote for paralysis. But by now, we know how the Obama administration deals with those who would destroy it: it goes straight for the capillaries. Sure enough, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, accused Mr. Shelby of “silliness.” Yep, that will really resonate with voters.

After the dissolution of Poland, a Polish officer serving under Napoleon penned a song that eventually — after the country’s post-World War I resurrection — became the country’s national anthem. It begins, “Poland is not yet lost.”

Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it.

move on EliPariser

2010-01-28T14:01:00.000-05:00

I really don't think big money can be stopped. You and I have well educated friends who share that opinion. Fascism is a fact of life here in these present United States. If I were as young as Eli Pariser, I'd move to some country in Northern Europe. In retrospect, one wonders why the Jews didn't get out of Germany when they could. The fascists simply shut off my radio microphone. Ten years from now they'll be secure enough to shoot similar sinners and say they're doing it to protect the people.

The good thing about the recent Supreme Court decision is that now corporate dollars will buy legislators from both parties. Because everyone will be on the same side it will save hours of quibbling on the floor of Congress and expedite legislation. With all votes a foregone conclusion, legislators will no longer need to assemble but will simply push a button from wherever they happen to be vacationing.

The humble Farmer

The following By ELI PARISER who I understand was one of my wife's students in Lincolnville, Maine.

Here's the lesson of 2009: Washington's problems go deeper than George W. Bush.

That's not to say that Mr. Bush was anything but a terrible president. He launched us into a disastrous and unnecessary war, ran up the federal deficit and nearly imperiled Social Security by investing it in the stock market. He prioritized politics over policy and ideology over reality. And with Dick Cheney's help, he cultivated a national atmosphere of paranoia not seen since McCarthy.

All of that made it easy to pin our nation's problems on our president. For eight years, "Stop Bush" was a simple and morally compelling rallying cry. It united the progressive and Democratic tribes with a simple praxis: To solve the problem of a bad president, a) block his proposals in Congress and b) replace him.

One year into the Obama administration, it's clear that changing presidents isn't enough. Pundits who argue over how progressive Mr. Obama really is or how well he played his cards miss the larger point. Our problem isn't just leadership, it's also the system we ask our leaders to maneuver. Corporate interests and their lobbyists have hamstrung our politics, making it difficult or impossible to make the change our country needs. Unless we confront this oversized influence directly, it will stymie our best chance in a generation for progress and reform.

The Democratic energy bill is larded with giveaways to the oil and coal industries. Health-insurance companies have declared "we won" on key pieces of health-care reform. And perhaps most infuriating, after nearly wrecking the global economy, the financial industry is poised to kill any hope of fundamental financial reform. Most economic experts believe we're no better equipped now to deal with financial crises without spending billions of tax dollars and creating massive moral hazard than we were before the crash of '08.

Yes, this is business as usual. But it has consequences for real people. More American families are suffering through a winter of unemployment. Kids in too many families won't get adequate health care. We are failing to confront the climate crisis that threatens our national and economic security.

The corporate influence in politics isn't good for people, it's not good for democracy, and it's not even good for capitalism. The housing bubble's growth, securitization, and collapse hurt everyone—businesses, communities, and individuals alike. Rather than opening up new markets, lobbying typically helps incumbent industries prevail over start-ups. Huge subsidies for oil companies mean that American solar and wind companies are less competitive than those in other nations. In this context, a genuinely free market, without lobbyist-induced favoritism, would be a step in the right direction.

These giveaways are as offensive to many people on the right as the left. And libertarians, Tea Partiers and MoveOn members can find common cause in reforming this corrupted system.

Mr. Obama, to his credit, has done more than any sitting president in a generation to counter the influence of lobbyists. But it's not enough. And of course it's not just his problem—Congress is more beholden to corporate interests than the executive branch.

We urgently need to restore our ability to govern for the common interest. That's the overarching task of 2010 (and beyond) for progressives. Here are three places we can start:

• Public financing of congressional elections. The Supreme Court is busy dismantling the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance act, which makes it all the more urgent that candidates who don't have a powerful industry backing them can get heard. Public financing for all federal elections would cost less than $1 billion a year, compared to the hundreds of billions that oil companies alone make as a result of sweetheart tax breaks.

• Eliminate our current corporate subsidies, and start with a clean slate. No more subsidies for oil drilling. No more subsidies for pharmaceutical companies. In theory, progressives and conservatives ought to be able to align on this one. And if we do it, the payoff is enormous—billions that we can return to taxpayers and invest in real economic growth.

• Apply to Congress the new lobbying restrictions that the president has established for the executive branch and the stimulus. Too many elected officials cash in on their time in office by becoming lobbyists for the industries they used to regulate.

Fix the System
Enacting these changes won't be easy. But there's one big thing working in favor of real reform: It's clear to just about all of us that the current system doesn't work. We live in the shadow of a decade of lobby-rigged markets and see the results every day in the unemployment numbers and food-stamp counts.

And we're angry about it. If we put that anger into action, we might just see the era of reform and change President Obama promised. As he said on election night, "This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were."

— Mr. Pariser is president of MoveOn.org and blogs at elipariser.com.

The wisdom and foresight of Abraham Lincoln

2010-01-26T07:19:00.000-05:00

This passage appears in a letter from Lincoln to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864.

"We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. .. . It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching hat unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."

The passage appears in a letter from Lincoln to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864.

For a reliable pedigree, cite p. 40 of The Lincoln Encyclopedia, by Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY). That traces the quote's lineage to p. 954 of Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait, (Vol. 2) by Emanuel Hertz (Horace Liveright Inc, 1931, NY).

A final Lincoln tidbit, although it pertains to one very specific case:

"These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel."

speech to Illinois legislature, Jan. 1837.
See Vol. 1, p. 24 of Lincoln's Complete Works,
ed. by Nicolay and Hay, 1905)

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I want to thank Harvey for calling this quote to my attention.

Your Neighbor humble

2010-01-25T15:02:00.000-05:00

Radio friend Mike sent me this. It turns up on another blog.

The primary indication and responsibility of citizenship is the right to vote. While a citizen may choose NOT to exercise that right, corporations don’t even HAVE a right to vote, at least not in the legal way of a citizen. In a sense, they DO vote. In the Middle East this form of voting is called “baksheesh” or bribery, and though it’s widely practiced, even there it’s illegal. In the US, it’s called “corporate campaign contributions,” but unlike the Middle East, it’s legal, mainly because these contributions have bought laws that make them legal. This is the same as Alice’s Red Queen saying that a word means what she wants it to mean. However, to mix a metaphor, A rose by any other name is still bribery.

Money is NOT free speech. Money is legal tender and it says so right on the bills. Legal tender, of course, means the money legally can be offered (tendered) as a medium of exchange. When corporations tender money to a political candidate, what is it that the political candidate can offer in exchange? The only thing any politician does is create legislation, therefore, ipso facto, the corporation tenders money in exchange for legislation. Of course, this would be legislation favorable to the corporation. In other words, this is bribery. And here, too, the bribees have seen to it that the word no longer means what it means.

I’d like to start a campaign of rebranding our political heritage in view of this miserable situation into which the Supreme Court has just put us. This falls in line with the strategy the far right has used so effectively in the past: “Obama is a Muslim;” “The single payer plan is Socialism;” “Global warming is a liberal plot.” A grassroots movement that would be the liberal internets’ equivalent of the tea-baggers but with a less deviant symbolism.

So, I suggest everybody start calling our country “The United Corporations of America.” The term “Citizen” should become “Minion;” we should incessantly insist that in light of this new ruling, we no longer can call our form of government a Democracy, but a Corporatocracy; let’s worry that the Bill of Rights will be reworked and then renamed the “Bill of Indenture;” let’s reveal that the House of CEOs and the Board Chairmen’s Senate plan to rewrite the Preamble to the Constitution to read, “Government of Corporations, by Corporations and for Corporations.”

In addition, we should claim that a manifesto will soon be published that eliminates a citizen’s guarantees of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness and in its place will be the corporations’ guarantees of Bonuses, Freedom from Regulations and the Pursuit of Unlimited Profit.

The Vocapeople

2009-05-08T21:43:00.001-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6EYrqIn0yI

Commentary for The humble Farmer's Radio Program May 3, 2009

2009-05-04T16:49:00.000-04:00

1. You know that many lives are controlled by the computer and email and my life is one of them. I admit that I am addicted to email. If you email me and don’t get back at least a “Thank you,” I probably didn’t get it and you should try again and then call me to find out what went wrong. Yes, I admit it. I am weak, I am addicted, and answering your email and commenting on what you and other friends send me, dictates what I think and what I do for a good part of my day. Yes. You knew I was going to give you an example. Because I’m 73 years old you can believe I opened this particular email with a great deal of eager anticipation because --- it said, “Boost your night experience.” I thought I was going to learn something that would help me get more sleep.
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2. You have heard me confess that I am addicted to email. And although email does not direct the course of my life, I very often get something in my email that warrants our attention. Here's an email I got about the swine flu last week that said, "Read my ten page special report on this vital topic so you can avoid deception and manipulation by the conventional media." Of course, what the sender of that email might well mean is, "Read my ten page special report on this vital topic so you can avoid deception and manipulation by the conventional media and be deceived and manipulated by me instead." Do you think that after going through all the bother of writing up a ten page report that this person is simply going to tell us to thoroughly wash our hands with hot, soapy water? Wouldn't you sooner suspect that this person is going to try to sell us a pill or some kind of body-building food supplement?
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3. Can you believe that when I googled cold fusion, I turned up an ad for a tempering valve? The computer gremlins knew that I was out there on the Internet pricing tempering valves last week. And, no, save yourself the time of sending me an email --- I was not planning to attach a tempering valve to my wife.
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4. Bev, who is a long time radio friend in Belfast, sent me a You Tube link to Britain’s version of American Idyll which introduced me to the great voice and personality of Susan Boyle. Susan’s singing was so good it made me cry. While drying my tears, I listened to Susan over and over, and while fumbling around I also found the opera singer Paul Potts who was discovered on the same show. I was raised on Paul's kind of music, and tears came to my eyes when I first heard Paul Potts sing. And it still happens. It has to do with --- I guess you would call it soul, rather than technical mastery. Only a few greats can make me cry with their music. Dick Cash was one. Dick Cash died in 1988 with ALS. My sister Marta can make me cry with her singing. Over 50 years ago Dick's sister, Rita Cash, could raise the hair on the back of my neck with her singing. If Rita Cash had sung professionally in clubs, she would have needed several bodyguards to get home. Although I am not a fan of American Idyll, I applaud the caustic Simon for discovering great talent --- the likes of Susan Boyle and Paul Potts --- that would otherwise never be heard.
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5. May I quote for you a ditty that you will immediately recognize from the writings of Mark Twain?

Conductor, when you receive a fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare,
A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,
A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
CHORUSPunch, brothers! punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!

You will remember from Mark Twain’s story that once anyone got that insipid rhyme in their heads, it stayed there. Punch, brothers! punch with care! Punch in the presence of the passenjare! No matter what you did --- eat, socialize, try to sleep --- the Punch, brothers! punch with care! Punch in the presence of the passenjare kept running through your head. It was maddening, and the only way to free oneself from the grip of the rhyme, was to teach it to someone else. What brought this poem to mind? Susan Boyle on You Tube. My radio friend Bev in Belfast told me to listen to Susan Boyle on You Tube and I did. There was something about Susan Boyle that made me listen to her over a dozen times. She was singing a song I’d never heard before and now I can’t get it out of my head. I hear it morning, noon and night. Would you mind if I sang it for you?
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6. Here’s your humble Farmer question of the week. Are you ready? If I have heard of Susan Boyle and the singing contest in England you certainly have. Now you have heard that Susan Boyle might have some competition from a young boy named Shaheen Jafargholi. No matter who wins the singing contest in England can there be any doubt in your mind but what within a year both Susan and Shaheen will be able to pay off the mortgages on their homes? You and I have followed the careers of enough singing stars to know that a lot of money is going to immediately pour in upon both of them. So, your humble Farmer question for this week is --- which one do you think is most likely to die from a drug overdose before the age of 22?
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7. Dear humble. I am at my aunts house in France, we came by way of a small town in Spain called Barcelona. On the way I met an older traveler, with a Slovakian girlfriend, in Tossa de Mar, an ancient village by the sea, we got to talking and it turns out he had been to Maine some twenty years ago. He told me of a great radio show he had heard while there, some Jazz and humorous wisdom, of course he was speaking of your show, in those days it wasn't even on at a reasonable hour! I told him you had been censored because of your brilliant war rant and he was amazed at such nonsense. The Slovak too shook her head in disgust. Anyway …My Aunt and her companion have fixed up a formerly abandoned 400 year old Manganerie, that is a big house they used to raise silk worms in, (Nations as old as these take a lot of maintenance) we'll be home soon, if your sailing past Green's Island stop in for a mussel salad sandwich bonne chance, Au revoir john. Thank you for this John. Isn’t that amazing? A man visits Maine and the thing he remembers about Maine 20 years later was a great radio show with jazz and humorous wisdom. Isn’t it nice that Maine excelled at something? I think there is a lesson to be learned here if you are young and thinking about entertaining your friends on the air. ---Make a good radio show --- only if you dare. Mediocrity is a lot safer.
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8. We are losing our enemies at an alarming rate and America’s washed up politicians who once ruled by fear are justly alarmed. Enemies are necessary if one wants to consolidate power by circumventing the US Constitution with overnight panic legislation --- which is why you now see on television these has-beens with their prognosis of doom, as the leaders of several countries approach a cheerful, intelligent man who is willing to listen. What do you think? Should the present administration have the option to choose its own enemies? You don’t need to be reminded that our enemies change about once every ten years, as dictated by economic/political expediency. In 1972 Nixon befriended communist China, and everyone now knows what an inundation of dirt cheap products have done to almost every American employer --- and their employees. The obvious goal: one step closer to our O. Henry economy of a century ago where hungry store clerks and scrub girls would gladly settle for $4 a week. Another president had a low tolerance level for any country with oil reserves. He tried to either blow them back to the stone age and put their economy and infrastructure in the hands of American corporations --- or put them in a position where a smile and shaking hands would be considered an act of aggression. Thanks to your vote, America is presently on the right track, and as long as our children are not deprived of a broad education America will continue to prosper: A child who reads science and technology will become respected and prosperous. A child who reads history will become a democrat.
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9. Here’s another letter, this one from Dave who says, “your show is great. whenever my lady or i hear a django tune now we both shout "DJANGO!" at the end. i like old four banger fords too. thanks for having ears, a heart and a spine. - dave & tricia, in somerville massachusetts
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10. You saw it on television. A polar bear attacked a woman at a Berlin Zoo after she climbed a fence and jumped into its pen at feeding time. No one seems to know why the woman jumped into a pen with a bear, but it might help explain why some people vote for republicans.
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11. You’ve seen the first lady holding President Obama’s hand when they get off an airplane. This worries me, because when my wife Marsha and I get off an airplane she always holds my hand. She’s afraid I’ll either get lost or fall down.
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12. I am going to talk about Compact Florescent light bulbs. Perhaps you know what I’m talking about. CFL bulbs look like a large white corkscrew and we are told they have mercury in them. When I heard that these bulbs would last a long, long time, I bought a bushel basket full of them and replaced all the old bulbs in my house. As I recall, a couple didn’t work when I first screwed them into the socket but I figured that was par for the course. Then I heard from several other sources that a few were duds and that they don’t last if you keep turning them on and off. What good is a light bulb if you can’t turn it off? Are we going to have the same problems with the presently touted LED’s?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kdvHUUDsJ0&NR=1

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread431043/pg1
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13. Did you see the 60 Minutes story on cold fusion and Martin Fleischmann? He is the man who was hounded out of science after introducing cold fusion to the world 20 years ago. The way I understand it, cold fusion is nuclear power without the unpleasant waste that will forever contaminate the planet. The crusty, old experts tell us that cold fusion must be junk science because neither its exponents nor anyone else can experimentally replicate the results. But I like the looks of what I’ve seen of cold fusion so far and I’ll tell you why. Although I know nothing about physics or science, one of my favorite bedside books --- that I have read and reread for years, is Dampier’s A History of Science. So --- although I know nothing about physics or science, I am more than passingly conversant with the history of physics and science. Hardly any great discovery has ever been eagerly accepted by the experts. You know that Ignatius Semmelweis not only lost his job for suggesting that doctors wash their hands, but also came to a bad end. Most scientists are just like everybody else in that they have to look around and see what their neighbors are doing before they’ll take a stand on anything. It might take learned scientists 20 years to finally accept something like Quantum Theory. Which really puts scientists on the cutting edge when you consider it might take society at least 40 years and the church over 400 years to finally do the same thing. Here’s an ancient quote I found which might apply to the cold fusion controversy today: the statistical theories hide a completely determined and ascertainable reality behind variables which elude our experimental techniques.
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Robert Karl Skoglund
785 River Road
St. George, ME 04860-4818
207-226-7442
humble@humblefarmer.com

Hear humble's radio show on his web page

http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/ThisWeek.html

See and hear humble tell stories on his web page:
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/

Hear dozens of humble's rants and even his radio show on PRX:

http://www.prx.org/Enjoy humble's music/humor program on Maine cable television stations:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/TvTowns.html

Did you know that Robert Skoglund, The humble Farmer, stands on stages and tells funny stories?Ask humble to entertain you and your friends with dry stories like these:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/PortlandA.html

You can visit humble and Marsha at their Bed & Breakfast on the coast of Maine.http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/BaB.html

The humble Farmer on Universal Health Care -- H. R. 676

2009-03-13T14:06:00.000-04:00

What is single payer universal health care and why do people either sigh or bristle when they think about it? We read that universal health care is health care coverage that is extended to all eligible residents of a governmental region and often covers medical, dental, and mental health care. Typically, most costs are met by single-payer health care systems or national health insurance.

If you travel at all, or if you have friends or relatives in Europe, you already know that universal health care is implemented in most wealthy, industrialized countries --- with the exception of the United States. In recent years it is also provided in many poorer developing countries.

Because universal single-payer healthcare works, it is now the trend worldwide.

So. Why do they have universal health care even in some poor developing countries and not here in the land of the free and the home of the brave where we put little sticky American flags on the back of our cars and proudly boast that we have the best of everything? We don’t have universal health care because too many people in the health care business are getting richer by overcharging you for services. --- Like the $220 one company charged my health insurance company this week for a chin strap that I later found on line for $19.95.

If you are young and just starting a family or are old and wondering if the kids can afford to bury you after they pay your medical bills, you should be interested in learning more about a single payer health care system. Bottom line --- it will save you money. It will raise your standard of living. You won’t have to sell your home or deplete your savings if you get sick.

We read that 28 industrialized nations guarantee access to health care as a human right. They have single payer universal health care systems like the type presently proposed in a bill now before Congress --- yet not one spends as much per capita on health care as the United States.

May I repeat that? - 28 industrialized nations have single payer universal health care systems and not one of them spends as much per capita on health care as the United States. Of course they don’t. Only in the United States are there so many paper-shuffling sticky fingers between your health insurance check and the hard-working health professionals who care for you.

Good news. The United States does not need to rank near the bottom among industrial countries in most everything from life expectancy (20th) to infant mortality (23rd) because --- some doctors have proposed legislation that would control skyrocketing health costs while covering all Americans. It would eliminate all those layers of sticky fingers. The bill also restores free choice of physician to patients and provides comprehensive prescription drug coverage to seniors, as well as younger people.

Under this bill, which is called H.R. 676, we read that a family of four making the median income of $56,200 would pay about $2,700 in payroll tax for all health care costs. No deductibles, no co-pays, no worrying about catastrophic coverage. The services covered include primary care, inpatient, outpatient and emergency hospital care, prescription drugs, durable medical equipment, hearing, dental and vision care, chiropractic treatment, mental health services, and long-term care.

Wow. Imagine an America without grange suppers and garage sales for veterans who lost their legs or, even worse, their minds in combat. Now you can get behind legislation that really will Support Our Troops.

I have a good friend who probably voted against universal health care for years. But --- when a family member needed years of intensive long-term care, it cleaned him. His fifty years of hard work and scrimping and saving went down the drain. They took it all. Had he lived in any one of 28 or so other countries (or an updated America); he’d be leaving his heirs some nice certificates of deposit. Hopefully, this bill will pass in time to save your estate.

Can you think of any other issue that so directly impacts the long-term welfare of you and your family as single payer universal health care? Shouldn’t you write to your friends in Washington and tell them what you think about H. R. 676? Your letter is really no substitute for the feasts and festivals put on for Congress by the greedy so-called health-care industry, but it would at least let them know that you’re watching.

March 13, 2009 The humble Farmer

The humble Farmer Rants for March 1, 2009 Radio Show

2009-03-05T19:11:00.001-05:00

March 1, 2009, Rants

1. Have you noticed that all of a sudden there is a lot of opposition to the most recent bailout? Have you also noticed that it is all coming from the folks who already got theirs?
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2. You have heard me say many times that my hobby is learning how to read languages. K lastimme --- esta mala el tocadiscos. If you can think of any hobby that costs less to pursue, yet constantly invigorates whatever you are fortunate enough to have for a mind, please let me know what it is. Years of research has taught me that the ideal language learning vehicle is the Harlequin Romance. This is because you can get the same story in 5 or 6 languages, and the language is at the level of what you would find in an elementary school reading book. What you do is memorize the story by reading it constantly in Dutch or French for several years, and then it is easy to figure out in German or Italian. Do you remember my saying that if you write to 10 or 12 women who write Harlequin Romances and ask, many of them will send you one of their stories in 4 or 5 languages? Yes. They will. Sometimes they permit you to pay. Sometimes they simply give you these odd copies. Ann, who has sent me many books, has done so well writing that she is now working as a nurse in Africa. Besides reading, over the years I’ve also listened to half a dozen languages in my car or in the shop or on my bicycle. Because I have not yet moved up to the little ipod thing that fits in the pocket, I tie a nail apron around my neck and put my cd player in that. You know that those cd players look like flying saucers and are about the size of a whoopie pie so they just fit in one side of a nail apron. Anyway, if you know two or three languages or have lived in two or three countries, you know that there are cultural distinctions that are reflected in each language. This was forcefully brought to my attention again this morning while listening to a conversation in Italian. Listen and repeat. Ascolti an repeata: A man knocks on a hotel room door to keep a business appointment with a woman. Before getting down to business they have a drink and exchange a bit of information about their families and home towns. There is another knock at the door. And here is the interesting part. If you are studying one language, it translates into English as, “That must be my husband with the plans.” In another language the woman says, “Oh goodie, now my husband is here, too.” In yet another language, the woman simply says, “Oh my God --- it’s my husband.”
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3. Everyone knows that the United States has one of the widest rich-poor gaps of any high-income nation today. We also know why it is in the interest of some people, who would like to once again be able to hire an Irish maid for five dollars a week, to see that gap continue to grow. We also read that some prominent economists including Alan Greenspan have warned that the widening rich-poor gap in the U.S. population is a problem that could undermine and destabilize our economy and standard of living. They tell us flat out that "The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself.” So --- what can anyone do to save our democratic capitalism while bringing our living standards up to that of our friends and relatives in Europe? You recently saw an example of corporate socialism when Bush gave almost a trillion of your tax dollars to some bankers, who went belly up and suddenly decided that democratic capitalism wasn’t working. And when you see the biggest fat-cat bankers in the land turning socialist and begging for your tax dollars, will it be long before working people wonder why they can’t be socialists, too, and beg the government to help them out with health care? Will there come a day in America when a veteran with no legs will not need to be supported by his kindly neighbors and their fund-raising suppers?
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4. Here’s an interesting letter from a radio friend who says, “In the old soviet union the saying was "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." In public interest law the reality is they pretend to pay us but we work for sure…. Here are two cases you will appreciate. They came up in an elder abuse task force meeting the other day. After our last big storm two men solicited an elderly man to shovel snow off his roof. They worked for half an hour and demanded $400. The kicker is they didn't have their own shovels or ladder and they borrowed those items from their victim. Another case - a young woman snatches an elderly woman's purse from her shopping cart and then goes to the service desk to ask them to call a cab for her.” Thank you for that letter. It would appear that there will never be a recession in Maine as long as our young people are on the cutting edge of improvisation.
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5. One of my friends recently said that she didn’t like Obama because he was in favor of having us register our guns like we do our cars. The way she explained it, if you start registering cars, only criminals will have cars. Or something simple and easy to understand like that. But what does gun control really mean? It seems as I remember that in the movie about Good Will Hunting, something was said about thinking things through to the logical conclusion. If A, then B. And if B, then C. And if C, then D. So by doing A, you are also doing D, although D is so far removed from A that --- well, it’s like knocking over a row of dominos. You can visualize that and you know what I’m talking about. So what would be the result of gun control? It would mean a recording the numbers of every gun and the name of the person who owned that gun. In my neighborhood there are people who have guns who have waited for years for someone to break into their house so they could pull out the shooting iron and, blooey, blow the intruder away. They are the last houses in the neighborhood anyone would want to enter for any reason at 2 in the morning. If there were a list somewhere of everyone who had a gun, it would certainly be stolen by crooks who’d then know which houses you could enter at night without risking ventilation. Have you ever wondered why one political party fights so hard against gun control?
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6. Here’s a letter from a radio friend that says: “Hi Humble I had never heard of Django Reinhardt before listening to him on your program. I just love his guitar and band so thanks for exposing me to them. I did a search online and found some videos of them on YouTube. I like that Bennie Moten piece, too. Your commentary is entertaining, often informative, has a bit of bite, and tends to make one think. I agree that keeping chickens is smart; maybe some sort of chicken investment program should be included as part of the stimulus package. For years, I have wanted my own hens, but I lived where restrictions prevented livestock ownership. It never occurred to me that city living was the place to be - for chicken raising that is. I did a google search on cats eating dead people. I found one story from October 2008 about a dead woman in Romania being eaten by her 20 cats. I also found an article about soldiers in Iraq seeing cats and dogs eating dead people which caused them to have less than pleasant reactions to the family pets when they returned home. I guess that starving carnivores will eat what they have to even if it means chewing on granny or gramps. Keep up the good work.” Thank you for your letter. I’m humble at humblefarmer dot com and I’d like to hear from you too. Hopefully with a more pleasant subject.
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7. Thanks to you, I stumbled on a young man out there on youtube named Josh Klein who pointed out that we could train crows to pick up highway litter and put it in a barrel. If I had time I’d do it. I can see how it would backfire, because if some of the kids who live down the road knew what was happening, they’d throw extra trash on my lawn just to see the crows working overtime. By the way, if you don’t really know me and think I’m joking about getting crows to pick up trash by the road and put it in a trash barrel, how much money would you want to bet that I can’t do it? What a great idea --- train crows to pick up roadside trash and put it in a trash barrel. Of course, although it is practical and would be very easy to do, it will never happen. It wouldn’t make somebody a lot of money.
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8. I was staggered when I saw on the Today show the great deals you could get on houses all across America. They picked 4 or 5 different locations, put up pictures of these houses, and then told us, “This is the great house you can get for only a quarter of a million dollars.” A quarter of a million dollars for a little house with no land? And that is a great deal? $250,000 is 50 times as much as I paid for a house on one acre of land around 40 years ago. I bought a house with one year’s salary. My question to you is, “Are working people earning 50 times as much as they were 40 years ago, or are they working 15 times as long for the same buying power?” $250,000 is more than 25 times as much as I paid for another house with a big barn and over 50 acres of land. At the time I was teaching and was being paid around $5,000 a year. Twenty five times $5,000 is $125,000. Are Maine school teachers being paid $125,000 to $250,000 a year? If they are, they are getting the same salaries that teachers were getting in 1970. Minimum wage in Maine is around $14,000 a year. Six percent interest on your $250,000 house mortgage is $15,000 a year. So anyone on minimum wage couldn’t even pay the interest on that “great deal” quarter of a million dollar house. “Ha, ha,” you say. “I’m not a lowly teacher and I’m not working for minimum wage.” But --- the price of houses is only one index that exemplifies the erosion of salaries in America in just half of my lifetime: If you are presently earning $250,000 a year, you have held your own since 1970. If you earn $125,000 in a year, you worked twice as many hours for that buying power as someone did 40 years ago. If you earn $50,000 a year, you now have to work around 5 times as long to buy a house as you would have 40 years ago. If you are young you might find this hard to believe, but the day President Franklin Roosevelt died in 1945, it was taken for granted that any American who had any kind of job could buy a home. That’s why older working people call the era before Reagan and Bush, “The Good Old Days.”
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9. Radio friend Mark called our attention to chickens. One reads that Portland has lifted its ban on raising chickens in the city, but --- we read that some people in Camden face fines of $100 to $2500 a day if they don’t get rid of a dozen hens. I don’t have a dozen chickens, but when I was a kid, we did. And now that I think of it, if I had chickens, they, and not crows and seagulls, would eat the food scraps we throw out back. I don’t know if I’d want to raise chickens in an apartment in the city, but wouldn’t you consider anyone who keeps a dozen chickens out back a valuable, thrifty neighbor who is trying to build a stronger America? For quite a few years I have wondered how we would ever survive if they suddenly shut down all the stores. --- Or, if because Bush and his republican friends relaxed the inspection regulations on veggies, as they did on meat and peanut butter, nothing bought in a store would be fit to eat. When I was a kid, there was a bin of potatoes, bottles of pickles, berries, string beans and other vegetables in the cellar. Our chickens provided us with eggs. There must be over 100 empty quart canning jars down in my cellar now. But, although we have a nice garden in the summer, I wasn’t paying attention to my parents and grandparents, so I don’t know how to put up enough food to survive a Maine winter. --- But I’ll bet I could learn by asking any American clever enough to keep chickens in the back yard.
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10. If every American child spent 4 years at a state college or university, or lived abroad for two years in any capacity but a proselytizer, within a generation one of the political parties in the United States would wither and die. And when I say attend a university, I’m talking about going there to study history or sociology or anthropology. Although you could study math and science for 8 years and make a lot more money when you graduated with your PhD, math or science wouldn’t necessarily give you much of a political education. You might Google “the dumbing down of America” and see what turns up. I did and found one interesting essay in which the writer doesn't use the f word although that is what he is talking about. Eisenhower didn't use the f word, either. You will recall that Eisenhower called it the military-industrial complex.
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11. Here’s something you might know something about if several members of your family use the same computer. A radio friend writes: “Our son comes into the office and uses the computers pretty much every day, often snacking as he does. I'm thinking of publishing a booklet entitled something like "Meals from the Keyboard", as I have to "defood" the keyboards the following morning on a regular basis!” There’s food for thought.
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12. When I went into the doctor’s office, the doctor asked me if I had noticed the man who just left. I allowed as how I had seen a man leave but I hadn’t paid too much attention. The doctor said, “That man is 107 years old, and he plays golf every day.” Wow. Isn’t it sad to see a man who is still strong and active at 107 who’s lost his mind?
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13. When my friend Winky was very young, he went to the senior class prom with a girl who was wearing a low, low-cut off the shoulder dress. And after a while curiosity got the best of him and Winky said, “What is keeping that dress on you?” She said, “Only the onions on your breath.” (Chauncey Depew)

Germany to Require Renewables for New Homes in 2009 by Jane Burgermeister, Contributing Writer

2009-02-28T17:06:00.000-05:00

Germany to Require Renewables for New Homes in 2009

by Jane Burgermeister, Contributing Writer

Berlin, Germany

All new homes built in Germany from January 1st 2009 will be required to install renewable energy heating systems under a new law called the Renewable Energies Heating Law (Erneubare-Energien-Warmegesetz).

The government is allocating 350 million euros [US $517 million] each year in grants for homeowners to install renewable energy systems such as solar panels, wood pellet stoves and boilers and heat pumps.

Homeowners will have to use renewable energy sources to meet 14% of a household's total energy consumption for heating and domestic hot water.

"The heating sector is the sleeping giant of renewable energy," Thomas Hagbeck of the German Federal Environmental Agency tells RenewableEnergyAccess.com.
"Using renewable energy for heating homes will not only significantly cut greenhouse emissions but also reduce heating bills as oil and gas prices surge," he says.

Heating buildings accounts for 40% of the total energy consumption in the country. Renewables currently account for about 6% of the energy sources used for heating buildings. The new government legislation targets an increase in the use of renewables for heating to 14% by 2020.
Existing houses will also have to be remodeled to incorporate renewable-energy-based heating systems from 2010 on. For old houses, 10% of the heating and domestic hot water energy needs will have to be provided by renewables.

"The Renewable Energy Law gave a big boost to the renewable energy sector when it came to generating electricity in Germany and this law will give the same big boost when it comes to heating," says Hagbeck.

The use of renewable energy sources for electricity increased 300% in the last ten years in Germany while the use of renewables for heating increased by only 40% over the same period.
It is estimated that updating energy performance in buildings could save 50 billion euros [US $73.9 billion] in heating costs in Germany up to 2020 alone.

According to a German government source, houses built in the 1960s use on average four times more energy for heating than updated, energy-efficient houses, which need 5 to 6 liters of heating oil for each square meter a year. Meanwhile, oil prices in Germany have tripled since 2001.

The government is allocating 350 million euros [US $517 million] each year in grants for homeowners to install renewable energy systems such as solar panels, wood pellet stoves and boilers and heat pumps.

Most homeowners are expected to choose solar panels. Under the new regulations, the size of the solar panel required will depend on the size of the house: solar panels will need to have an area equal to 4% of the total area of a house.

Fines of up to 500,000 euros [US $739,000] will face anyone who fails to switch their heating systems.

Also, the government is launching a program to improve insulation in the country's housing stock, and to cut back on energy waste.

The introduction of new energy ratings for all houses in 2008 will be further incentive to homeowners in Germany to invest in energy efficiency to protect the value of their houses, analysts say.

The state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany has already passed a law requiring all building plans for new houses submitted after April 1st 2008 to include renewable energy heating systems.
People building new homes there will have to install a renewable heating technology that can provide 20% of the household's heating and domestic hot water needs.

Energy used for heating homes in Baden-Württemberg accounts for 33% of the 72 million tons of carbon emitted by the state each year, officials say.

Many of the 2.2 million homes built in Baden-Württemberg before 1977 use 7 times more energy for heating than updated, energy-efficient homes, according to Claudia Rist of the Climate Protection and Energy Agency Baden-Württemberg (Klimaschutz-und Energieagentur Baden-Württemberg).

The German federal government's new renewable energy heating law, which is set to be passed by parliament next year, is part of a comprehensive package of measures that aims to reduce the country's carbon emissions by 40% by 2020 when compared to 1990.

It is estimated that the package will cost 31 billion euros [US $45.8 billion] a year to implement.

But the costs will be offset by savings of 36 billion euros [US $53.2 billion] a year from lower bills for coal, oil and gas, experts say.

The humble Farmer's Most Subversive Comments of 2008 CD #2

2009-02-09T14:33:00.001-05:00

Script for Most Subversive Comments of 2008 CD #2

1. One evening when my friend Winky was reading the newspaper he said to his wife, "Here's a man up in Rangeley who was shot for a moose." And Winky's wife said, "Any man who can be mistaken for a moose is better off dead." (081109)
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2. Sometimes I see 20 wild turkeys on my back lawn. A friend of mine told me that he has taken several wild turkeys home for dinner. He says that the breasts are good eating but that the drumsticks are so tough they could be used for Marimba mallets. I asked him, “How often do you shoot a turkey?” He said, “Until he falls down.” (081123)
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3. Children speak the truth. I can remember sitting in the back of a fifth grade classroom while Paul Strout, who was probably 11 years old, stood at the blackboard and did an imitation of me, the teacher. He had everything down --- my mannerisms --- my speech. The stage lost a consummate master when Paul decided to work instead. Adults who speak the truth are likely to be avoided in good company. You will remember one of Agatha Christie’s adult characters who spoke the truth. Everyone was terrified to be in the same room with her. She was eventually murdered, which was probably just as well. Mastering the art of circumlocution is a rite of passage for children. Those who can do it, are accepted into adult society. Those who do it well, write books. Our topic came to my attention on a tour last week when our guide raised a hand without a thumb and asked if anyone had a question. A small boy said, “I see that you have an unfriendly dog.” (080803)
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4. Two lobster catchers from Down East were talking: “If I were to have an affair with your wife and she had my baby, would we be related?” “No, but we’d be even.” (081012)
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5. The Common Ground Fair is the most impressive gathering of people to be held in the state of Maine. They have this Common Ground Fair every year, the last weekend in September, and I’m always there. My favorite event is the sheep dog demonstration. They put these little dogs out in a field with a dozen sheep and when the dog’s trainer whistles, these dogs jump up and herd the sheep into a pen. Every organization in Maine that might be in favor of some positive political or social change is represented at the Common Ground Fair. My friend David Bright said that the most shocking thing he saw there in three days was the endangered species booth. David went over to check it out and there was no one there. (080921) USE ON COVER
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6. My friend John told me that he was standing around outside chatting with a woman when he chanced to look at the scratches in the ledge underfoot and said, “Look where the glacier went through here.” And the woman said, “Recently?” And of course John said, “No, years ago.” And the woman said, “Well, I wouldn’t know. I live over in Friendship.” (081123)
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7. I went down to Monhegan where I did a benefit show for the Wharf, which needs repair. The only way you can get to Monhegan if you don’t have a helicopter is to swim ashore and crawl up over the rocks or bring your boat in to the wharf or dock. Call it what you will, the dock is important to the people who live on Monhegan. I use the dock myself when I go out there, which tells you two things about me, doesn’t it? I don’t have a helicopter and I do not choose to swim ashore and crawl up over the rocks. Chris Rollins lives on Monhegan. Ten or 11 generations of his ancestors are buried up on the hill so you have to assume he feels very much at home out there. I’ve known Chris for several years, but just met his wife, who, through the eyes of this 72-year-old man, is a pretty young thing from away. Chris met her on Monhegan when she was 18, but Chris says that after that she had two husbands before he married her. I was surprised to hear that such an attractive and well-spoken woman was already on her third marriage and suggested to Chris that perhaps she had made some poor choices. And he said, “Nah, I think she just takes what comes along.” (080803
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8. No matter where you live, you are proud of your town and the things that your town is famous for. Here on the coast of Maine when you go into a restaurant, the best seats are those overlooking the harbor and all the lobster boats. When I visited my brother-in-law Steve who runs a gambling casino in Colorado, the hostess in the casino restaurant very proudly seated me by the window so I could look out and see the Brink’s truck. (080914)
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9. My wife’s brother Steve runs a gambling casino in Colorado. The last time I visited him I noticed that his office was only one of many small offices. He doesn’t have a big office. So I asked him if he really were the boss, and he said, “You sit down in a room with five women and say that you’re the boss and see how far that goes.” (080914)
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10. You can get great books for a quarter at lawnsales. The best books are found when someone has died and the heirs are simply trying to clean out the house. They have no idea of what the books are or the interesting things you can find in them. Here is a comment from one I just got called The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes. On page 76, one reads, “Victor Biaka-Boda, who represented the Ivory Coast in the French Senate, set off on a tour of the hinterlands in January 1950 to let the people know where he stood on the issues, and to understand their concerns --- one of which was apparently the food supply. His constituents ate him.” (081130)
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11. The wheel was invented when man needed to transport material over a great distance. Fire was first utilized when man moved north out of Africa and needed to keep warm at night. Bills or invoices evolved when Maine inn keepers started charging so much that they couldn’t look the customer in the eye when it came time to squaring accounts. (080928)
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12. My friend Julian is a connoisseur of fine men’s clothing. He buys shirts and pants from specialty houses that cater to the upscale outdoor crowd. It is my understanding that some of that clothing is so durable that it will stand alone. One man put a canvas jacket in his driveway and drove over it all summer to soften it up just so he could wear it. (081123)
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13. Have you ever seen something on the evening news that made you wonder if we will ever create a civilized society? Let me give you an example. Tonight on the evening news they showed a woman in the Philippines who had 8 hungry little children. There wasn’t enough rice to go around. The focus of the program was: What can we do to produce more food? (081130)
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14. I just saw a commercial on television that said that my brain might be undernourished. Then, to drive home the argument, it gave a printed quote on the screen from some medical association that said that the problem was ubiquitous. And after ubiquitous it had the word widespread in brackets. I suppose they defined ubiquitous just in case anyone with an undernourished brain were watching. (081019)
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15. Every week they have a husband's marriage seminar out to our grange. At the session last week, the councilor asked Winky’s father, who was approaching his 50th wedding anniversary, to tell everyone how he had managed to stay happily married to the same woman for 50 years. Winky’s father said, "Well, the best thing I ever did was take her out to Monhegan Island for our first wedding anniversary. You know, for our 50th anniversary I think I’ll go out there and bring her back." (081012)
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16. We have a bed and breakfast. And on top of that we have many friends. It is not unusual to see ten or more people eating at our table at any given time. So we find more than our share of things scattered about the house that people have left behind. Today I am dealing with Sally Tuttle’s shirt or light jacket which she left draped over a dining room chair. Because it says, “Made in the USA” on the label, I think I’ll keep it as a curiosity. (080817)
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17. Are computers more efficient than people? Thank back to Y2K. For years we were told that when the year 2000 came in, a computer failure called Y2K was going to shut down banks and railroads and big companies and bring the country to its knees. But the computers didn’t fail and the year 2000 was ushered in with our country still standing strong and proud. It took the republicans almost 8 years of concentrated effort to do what computers and Y2K was expected to do in a millisecond. (081123)
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18. You know that for many years I have studied the life and times of Hitler. But I just learned that two years after many of Hitler’s top generals knew the war could not be won, they continued to paint rosy “progress” pictures. To admit that the war was a lost cause would mean they’d be replaced or demoted. Can you believe that even though their leader also knew that he couldn’t win the war, he wasted his country’s lives and resources for two more years? Yes, perhaps you can believe that. (081026)
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19. Over the past few months I’ve been seeing a specialist for the coughing problem I’m having with my lungs. Unlike my regular doctor, I don’t know anything about this doctor. I don’t know if he has children, if he is married, where he lives, I know nothing. But when I left his office one day in October, he asked me how I thought the election was going to go. I didn’t say a thing. I kind of shrugged my shoulders and slipped out the door. Because --- well, you think about it. Would you discuss politics with a person you don’t know who has a license to inject substances into your body?
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20. No matter what you do for a living, there are certain questions that you hear over and over so many times that you finally develop a standard answer for it. My cousin Truman Hilt is an antique dealer and when people come into his store and ask, “Hey, do you buy antiques?” he always says, “I have to --- I can’t steal enough to stay in business. My brother-in-law Steve runs a gambling casino in Colorado and when people come in and ask him, “Hey, what’s a good machine?” he always says, “The ATM. You can’t lose.” (080914)
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21. Our celebrity friends on television recently reported that some doctors give patients placebos. Patients might feel better, even though the pill does nothing, because they think that they are receiving treatment for whatever ails them. Doctors know that a positive and cheerful attitude is conducive to healing. Laughter heals. But the question seems to be, “Is it right, or even legal, for doctors to play with the minds of their patients?” Then you change channels and see a huge auditorium, crowded with people, who believe that the man on stage can heal with his hands. (081026)
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22. You might have read in the paper that during a typical deer season in Michigan, about a dozen hunters die with heart attacks. That little furry head sticks itself up out of the brush, and these grown men get so excited that they drop right over. Shock from the unexpected can kill. Think of all the teachers who would probably drop dead, if that certain student ever cleaned out the rat's nest in his desk and handed in a paper that didn't look as if he'd blown his nose on it. Yes, the shock from the unexpected can kill, which is why I don't dare risk coming to supper the first time my wife calls me. (080928)
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23. Scientists have discovered that chewing gum helps you remember. The experts found that of the people tested, 35% who were given gum to chew found it easier to remember words. They hypothesized that it might be because chewing increases the speed of your heartbeat, so more oxygen is pumped round your body. Or it could be because chewing gum helps your body make insulin because it thinks food is coming. Even more plausible is the fact that because many of us can’t walk and chew gum at the same time the chewing keeps our mind from wandering and forces us to focus our attention on whatever it is we are trying to remember. (081026)
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24. I can remember reading a book called 1984 years and years before 1984. 1984 is one of those hit-the-nail-on-the-head books that anyone who even pretends to be educated should read every 5 years or so. If you read 1984 way back in the 50s or 60s you might have also wondered if in 1984 we really were going to be living in a society where the state spied on you and where continual war was the norm. But 1984 came and went and in 1984 there wasn’t continual war and the state wasn’t spying on you. That was because George Bush was not yet in office.
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25. Americans think differently than Europeans do. When I was a boy --- back around 1939-1940 --- a crazy man started a war which destroyed his own country, and not only did he have to answer for that war --- the people who supported him were also considered culpable. They had to stand in shame before a world court for giving their leader the votes or legislation or support that enabled him to bring their homes and economy down around their ears. But here in the United States we don’t see things that way. Here, many of a discredited leader’s most ardent supporters are returned to state legislatures and Congress. (081102)
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26. Radio friend John Doucette over in Nova Scotia sends us this news item about a mechanical gorilla that was stolen from outside a store in Machias, Maine. The mechanical gorilla turned up in a cornfield in Swanton, Vt. According to this news article, Ken Booth, who made the thing, helped them find it by posting a YouTube video offering a reward for the gorilla’s return. Then --- another video turned up on YouTube, showing a hooded person demanding a $1 million ransom. You know, I probably wouldn’t believe a story like this, had I not just finished watching the Republican National Convention. (080914)
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27. When I was five or six years old, way back before the Indians cornered the gambling market in Maine, most anybody could set up a slot machine. Alvah Harris had a slot machine in his garage in Tenants Harbor. One day my grandfather Skoglund gave me a nickel to put in that slot machine and I got back thirty-five cents. That was back around 1941 and to the best of my knowledge, since that day I have never put money in a slot machine. When I mentioned this to my brother-in-law Steve who runs a gambling casino in Colorado, he wanted to put my picture in his front window with a sign underneath that said, “This man has a lifetime profit of 700 percent from playing slot machines.” (080914)
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28. My friend Doreen tells me that once upon a time there was a religious commune. It was a friendly commune and everyone got along very well. But one day tragedy struck. A young man fell and hit his head so hard that he didn’t wake up that day. Nor did he wake up the following day. The members of the commune prayed for the young man and every day two or three people stood by his bed singing hymns --- all day long. Then, one day, after 16 weeks, a miracle. The young man opened his eyes and he looked at the people standing by his bed --- and he raised his hand and they could see that he was going to speak. And he said, “Please turn off the music.” (080914)
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29. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, left off scrubbing and polishing for two days and went down to Connecticut last weekend for her 40th high school reunion. I took advantage of her absence to put two supers full of honey on the dining room table and to set up the honey extractor in the kitchen. When you extract honey, you cut the wax cap off the little honey cells. If the caps are too shallow in the frame to be cut off, you have to scratch them off with a tiny steel rake. And no matter how carefully you cut off or scratch off the caps, you do some damage to the cells. Fortunately, I knew that when I put those frames back in the hives, the neurotic-compulsive bees wouldn’t rest until they’d cleaned up my mess and made everything as good as new. Which is why I also didn’t worry too much about the mess I made in the kitchen. (081005)
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30. A man I respect recently called my attention to the inevitability of plastic cars. I might mention that this man is in the business of improving plastic computer chips, so his thinking is even a bit beyond that which the layman might consider to be the cutting edge of science and technology. This scientist told me that cars made out of plastic would be as strong as steel. Plastic would not rust out. Plastic, being lighter than steel, would require less energy to move from place to place. If you Google plastic cars you will read that this lightweight car could be powered by electricity or solar energy. Oil is a finite resource. Every last drop of it will have been pumped from the earth in 40 or so years, and there will soon be a day of reckoning when the electric powered plastic car will be the only vehicle on the road. Can you guess why our American corporate giants are putting off this inevitable transition?
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31. Please listen closely because I’m about to say something that might make your life easier. You know that I could never afford to have children. But when I married the widow Marsha VanZandbergen she had two daughters. And now my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, has three grandchildren. The oldest one was six this week, and although they live in Fort Kent way up by the Canadian border, they drove five hours to get here because the child wanted to celebrate her birthday here with us. I was out in the barn working on my hot water solar collectors during the party, but looked up often enough to notice that the dooryard was full of cars. You know how gobs of cake and partially masticated cookies get ground into the floor at these things, so you can believe that I rushed right in to vacuum up the mess as soon as they were gone. And here is the tip that could save you a lot of bother: At this party --- not one crumb on the floor. Someone had brought a dog. (081102)
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32. If you're on the Internet, you know about junk email. Someone is always mailing you a scheme that will make you rich in two weeks. Another common piece of junk mail asks if you are interested in his or her background. They claim to be able to find your old friends, lost loved ones, dead beat parents, or your debtor's assets. They claim to be able to find safe deposit boxes, social security death records, non-published numbers and driver's license records. They will search vehicle records and pre-trial comprehensive reports. They will verify education, employment and professional licenses. One of the most curious things about this service, is that although they claim to be able to find out anything you want to know about anyone else, they also claim to be able to change your records so that people can only find out good things about you. (080803)
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33. Who do you think cries out for new schools? Can you honestly think that there are a few concerned citizens who have nothing to do except think about what we as a society can do to give our children a better education? If you do think about it, you know that any move to consolidate schools is driven by big money. There is money in constructing buildings. Which, by the way, is why you’ll see big construction money also buying ads on television to bring in casinos. They don’t care if the casino destroys your town and impoverishes your immediate area. They just want to build the thing. Anyway, wouldn’t you think that the officials in the state legislatures who are on the education committees would be people with actual experience in the classroom? Would it surprise to you discover that the people who purport to be serving the educational needs of our children are actually looking out for the business community? Money rules. (081019)
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34. In September I took 8 quarts of honey from my bees. Yes. I stole from my workers. First time in my life I ever felt like a republican. (081005)
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35. My wife Marsha has 47 first cousins and one of them was here last week. She said they had an exchange student in their home for two weeks. Of course, they asked for one who didn't smoke. He was a French kid from Zieer and they picked him because his picture looked so sweet, and they figured he'd be less worldly than a French kid from France. But when he arrived he showed them some nude pictures of himself and told them that his father and grandfather had taken him to a brothel to get him drunk on his sixteenth birthday. Of course, you go down way east on the coast of Maine and that kind of party wouldn't be necessary. But then they found a heap of cigarette butts underneath this kid's bedroom window. I'll bet he'll think twice before he lies on his application again, because they really punished him. They made him drive a car in Boston. (080727)
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36. You have read 1984 and you are familiar with the concept of “doublethink.” Doublethink is the ability to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in your mind simultaneously, and accept both of them. An example of doublethink is the political ads that one sees on television before an election. Senators, who have always voted with corporate America and against the people they are supposed to represent --- Senators who have been no more than a rubber stamp for the President’s illegal war and tax breaks for the super rich, run warm, fuzzy ads on television. Although uneducated poor people without health insurance and no way to pay their heating bills this winter know that their Senator has voted against them for years, enough exposure to these warm, fuzzy ads just before the election convinced many that their Senator is also working for them. The television ads you see before an election could easily have come out of the Ministry of Love where people learn to believe that two plus two are five. (081026)
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37. Funerals have changed. Back in the good old days when a man died, his friends sat around drinking for a few days before ravishing his favorite slave girl, and setting him off to sea in a burning boat. When I was young, funerals were solemn affairs. You sat up straight in a black suit and black tie and black shoes and black socks and you didn’t dare breathe. But now those in attendance are asked to come forward and “share.” I don’t know about you, but this “share” business grates on my sensibilities. You aren’t asked to stand up and say something. You are asked to “share.” It is my belief that this kind of wimpy language is moving in from California and you can correct me if you think otherwise. Of course, I’m old and old people are always uncomfortable when they are asked to give up their old ways. Nowadays at funerals we see children and grandchildren who stand in front of the assembly and cry as they read a carefully prepared piece. I suppose it is even worse for people who can hear what it is they’re saying. (081102)
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38. It is not uncommon to go out in the woods in the town of St. George, Maine and see a little wooden platform twenty feet up in a tree. I think they call this a tree stand. My friends who are hunters climb up the tree and sit or stand on this tiny wooden platform, sometimes for hours, until an animal comes close enough for them to shoot it. By that time, the hunter is so stiff from just sitting that he can barely climb down the tree. This is why there is hardly a hunter alive who has used one of these tree stands who has not fallen off the thing and dropped kerplunk on the ground. Perhaps you have chanced upon those Wipeout television programs where people crash snowmobiles and skateboards and water skis. But if you have never seen a hunter fall out of a tree stand you realize that Maine’s number one sport has been denied valuable promotional coverage. Are not producers of Wipeout shows remiss in not adding footage of falling Maine hunters to prime time television? (081123)
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39. You probably heard that some militants over there on the other side of the pond captured some Humvees. Big mistake. A week later they had to capture an oil tanker. (081123)
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40. Uncle Jack lives on a piece of sand called Nags Head. Uncle Jack says that a recreational diversion at Nags Head is watching the sand around the brand new house next to yours wash away. Of course the water washes away the brand new house, too, and when the sun comes out after the storm there is nothing blocking your panoramic view of the sea. If you are truly innocent, you might ask why people are permitted to build houses on sand that is certain to be washed away. If you have been around as long as Uncle Jack and The humble Farmer, you know that the realtors and developers sit on all of the zoning and planning boards so they can do anything they want. Why should a realtor care if a new house with five bathrooms washes away after they have sold it? It’s all about quick and easy money. Uncle Jack says that a big construction company with connections wheedled eight million out of an agency called FEMA to put up a protective sand berm 30 feet wide and 12 feet high. One end of it washed out before they had finished the other end. It’s all about money.
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41. There are those of us who trust in science and there are people who don’t. Even back before there was such a thing as science, people wanted answers. And because human nature doesn’t change, ten thousand years ago, people asked themselves the same questions that we ask today. You can well believe that one of the first questions that came to a philosopher’s mind was, why am I here? How did life start on earth? Because people needed answers to these questions, they invented Zeus and Ra and anyone who might have had a different slant on things was hung up by the thumbs. Of course, Zeus and Ra now have more adherents than ever and probably never will be superseded by science. Another question that delves even deeper into the innermost recesses of the human psyche has been asked by your rude mechanicals since the dawn of civilization. If you have ever stood by a bench in any kind of repair shop or office you’ve wondered how it happens, too. No matter how many tables or flat working surfaces you bring into your work area, they immediately get covered with clutter.
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42. You’ve heard me say that I read the Encyclopedia Britannica every day. There must be 30 or so volumes on the shelf by the bathroom door and I just pull out one at random, open it at random, and read for ten minutes at random. The name Karl Follen recently turned up. His activity for civic freedom in Germany kept him from teaching at German universities so in 1824 he came to the United States where he became Harvard’s first professor of German language and literature. While at Harvard Professor Follen was instrumental in establishing the first US college gymnasium. But, in 1835 his appointment as a professor at Harvard was not renewed, probably because he spoke out against slavery. You can understand this because you know what happened to me when I spoke out against fascism. It took a few more years and a Civil War before we were ready to give up slavery. Our 2008 presidential election will probably be considered a turning point as critical as the Civil War: --- it certainly indicated that the people in this country were getting tired of fascism. (080914)
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43. Little public service message here. You have heard me say that I’m putting in solar collectors and a solar hot water heater. Now, Aaron, my son–in-law, says I should put in a windmill that generates electricity, because it is cheaper and more efficient than the solar collectors. So I’m now investigating the cost of installing a windmill to generate electricity on my farm. But, and this is the important part --- Aaron also went on line and brought up a web page that told how much electricity each refrigerator takes. Aaron said that it was silly to generate all kinds of electricity from the wind and the sun when I could cut down on the amount of electricity I need by buying a better refrigerator and other more efficient appliances. I didn’t know that one brand of refrigerator might use ten times as much electricity as another model. Go on line, find out which refrigerator uses the least electricity, crunch the numbers, and you might find that a new refrigerator would pay for itself in two or three years just by the amount of electricity you save. I can tell you about this now without shame because times have changed and we live in a new era. If I’d told you about this thirty years ago, you’d accused me of being a hippie. (081102)
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44. This morning I Googled “how to adjust the pressure switch on a water pump.” We have a new water pump and for several days I’ve heard increasingly louder complaints from management that there is not enough water pressure. I know that there are two little nuts on the water pump switch. In years gone by I’ve twisted both of them at random until the pressure was where I wanted it. But times have changed. Nowadays I can find out anything I want to know about anything or anybody --- in a matter of seconds --- right at my desk. I Googled, “how to adjust the pressure switch on a water pump” and two minutes later trotted down cellar, fully informed, and tightened up the big nut. Yes, times have changed since I walked to our one room school. Imagine walking to that friendly neighborhood school today and sitting down before a computer screen with the world at your fingertips. A few parents have already figured out that there is no longer any need to bus children out of town to an expensive consolidated school where they can sit down at a computer screen. Every day more and more parents realize that a computer screen can be set up anywhere, and before long you will once again see children walking to a small local school.
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45. You have heard of compartmentalized thinking and that is my topic now. When I got out of college I bought a completely furnished house with a garage on an acre of land for $5,000. A year or two later I bought another house with an attached barn on an acre of land for $3500. Back in those days a Maine schoolteacher could buy a house with one year’s salary. Today a Maine schoolteacher would have to work around five years to buy those very same houses, which are now 40 years older and should have depreciated. I can’t tell you how it happened, but the salaries of working people in the United States have been seriously eroded. You might have heard old people wonder aloud how a young couple could even think about buying a house nowadays. But then --- you turn on your television and see that there is a crisis in America: the value of houses has dropped umpty ump percent. In other words, if the value of houses continues to drop, they might get back down to where they relatively were 40 years ago and teachers right out of college might once again be able to buy a house with their first year’s salary. You tell me --- is this good, or is it bad?
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46. Post office employees are about the only people who know how to talk on the telephone. When you call the post office, someone will pick up the phone and tell you who they are. When I answer the phone I also identify myself. I say, “Robert Skoglund, sorry to keep you waiting.” Then, instead of telling me who they are and what they want so we can have a conversation, the mysterious caller on the other end will say something like, “Hello Robert. Is that you?” That brings us back to the beginning, so I’ll repeat what I said, “Robert Skoglund, sorry to keep you waiting.” I’m polite about it. I don’t say, “You called Robert Skoglund. I answered and told you that I am Robert Skoglund. What is it about this conversation that you don’t understand? Now -- I’m trying to be calm while I’m telling you about this although it annoys me terribly --- and you’re in impartial observer, so let me ask you. They are calling Robert Skoglund. I have already mentioned my name twice, but they’ll ask again, “Hello, hello. Robert, is that you?” Are people idiots? Why this, “hello, hello. Is that you Robert?” I want to cry, but I control myself and never reply with “No, I’m Spiderman. Who do you think answers the telephone in my house?” Why can’t people simply tell me who they are and what they want so we can get down to business? I’m Robert Skoglund in Tenants Harbor, Maine, sorry to keep you waiting.
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47. I had never heard of patchouli soap until last September when someone up in Unity told me about it. I might change that to say that although I might have smelled patchouli soap many times, as far as I know I have never heard of patchouli soap until a radio friend named Robert told me that a bar of patchouli soap got him stopped by customs at the border. When he rolled down the car window and the officer got one whiff of what was inside, he ordered Robert to pull aside. The customs officer said he knew Robert had marijuana in the car so he might just as well tell them where it was. Robert denied it so they pulled everything out of his car and combed through everything until Robert remembered that he had a bar of patchouli soap in the glove compartment. I don’t recall why he had it or what he was going to do with it, but if you Google patchouli soap you will learn that marijuana smokers keep it around because it masks the smell of marijuana. Here’s what turned up on line when I Googled patchouli soap: “An oil worn as perfume by dirty hippies in lieu of showering or bathing in any way. Used to mask the scent of marijuana and week old body odor, but usually it merely mixes with the scent to form a new, BO/Patchouli combo that can repulse even those who are olfactorally challenged.” So --- the next time you smell it, at least you’ll know what it is. (080921)
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48. Have you ever met an old neighbor in a store or on the street who extended a withered hand and said, “My word. I thought you were dead.” If it hasn’t happened to you yet someday it will so please listen closely. Every day I record a bit of innocuous social commentary and email it to Public Radio Exchange. PRX, as it is called, might be described as a huge warehouse filled with bits and pieces of radio programs. Young wanna-be producers as well as grizzled used to be producers write and record pieces we hope intelligent people will find interesting and deposit them electronically in this warehouse called PRX. We hope that an enlightened Public Radio program manager might someday actually listen to one of our pieces and deem it worthy of broadcast. Well, there is a new PRX and I was updating my profile on the appropriate PRX web page. While posting my work experience, which was with the Treasury Department between the years of 1955 and 1957, I clicked on the little year box that you are so familiar with and saw that it only went back to 1968. Yes. If you were working in 1955, the kids who are now creating web pages have no idea that you’re still alive. Better get used to it. (081207)
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49. Whom do you hate today? When I was a kid, a grandmother who lived not too far from me was upset when her grandson married a Finn. When we went to war against the Japs and Germans, things changed and we didn’t worry if grandchildren married Swedes or Finns. You might even be old enough to remember when the fear and hatred we had of the Japs and Germans was shifted over onto the Communists. I was already out of high school when just saying that someone was a communist was enough to put them out of business. Then we started doing business with the communists and we couldn’t get enough good things from these people who magically became our friends --- just as the Japs and Germans had done when I was a kid. You should know that I was too young to shoot Chinese communists in Korea and too old when we found an excuse to shoot them in Viet Nam, which, by the way, did fulfill its intended purpose of making a few people very rich. You might have recently been getting redneck email urging you to hate Muslims. If you’ve lived long enough and have a good memory, you realize that it isn’t really important whom you hate and fear as long as you hate and fear someone. Hate and fear are good for big business. And --- if you’re old enough, or if you have read any history, you know that you can pretty well tell who is running things in any given country by what you are allowed to say about whom. During the Bush administration it was difficult for some Americans to find work if they had recently spoken out against fascism. (081005)
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50. In the fall of 2008 a friend of mine who is an employee of the US Forest Service, had to sign a “loyalty pledge” to defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. He says that only the Secret Service keeps him from doing what he has sworn to do. (080817)
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51. Back in the 1920s and 1930s you’d hear people say, “He’s coo coo.” Coo coo is an old term that meant that people or things were about as crazy as they could get. Coo coo came to mind today when I heard someone on television mention the war on terror. The war on terror. We are being told that we are waging a war on terror but you really have to be capable of some mental gymnastics to believe that we are waging a War On Terror. See if you can hang here with me as I walk you through it. A while back, some fanatics from Saudi Arabia crashed an airplane in New York City. Immediately, people all over the world who might not have even liked the United States for one reason or another, felt bad for the United States, because these crazy men from Saudi Arabia had killed a lot of innocent people in New York City. But --- soon afterwards, ostensibly to get revenge on this handful of crazy men from Saudi Arabia, the United States attacked a country called Iraq and all that good will we had earned by being the injured party was wiped away. But, before we could attack Iraq, our propaganda machine had to turn things around. We couldn’t call the men who crashed the plane Saudis because we were attacking Iraq. So we had to call them terrorists instead and just hope that Americans who couldn’t read wouldn’t notice the difference. And when you think about it, all those guys over there have brown faces and wear funny looking hats, so one is probably just as bad as another. So it really doesn’t matter if you are blowing up people in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan or India because you are fighting people you call terrorists. The bad news for poor working people is that although there might have only been a handful of these crazy terrorists back on 9-11, every time an American bomb accidentally killed someone, every one of the dead person’s brothers and children and cousins and friends all of a sudden had a very good reason to hate Americans. So every day the American war machine ensures that we will have a never ending war by creating more people that can be called terrorists. This is a great improvement over the old days when we could declare war on Japan or Germany, because back then when the Japs and Germans were pounded into the ground the war stopped. But our military industrial war machine has smartened up a lot over the past 60 years so now they don’t go after Saudis or Germans --- they go after terrorists because a war against terror is a self-sustaining war that can go on forever against an endless and faceless enemy. And because a few very rich people are getting richer by running so-called security and war related industries, you might suspect that it is going to be very difficult to stop this thing they call the war on terror because a war on terror knows no national boundaries. Our American war machine can stagger about like a blind 800 pound gorilla and wipe out people anywhere. What got me started on this so-called War On Terror, anyway? Oh yeah, we were talking about that old term coo coo. Coo coo means that things are just about as crazy as they can get. (080914)

he guessed fraud in five minutes and proved it with math in four hours

2009-02-05T08:56:00.000-05:00

Analyst who raised alarm about Madoff nine years ago lambasts authoritiesDaniel Nasaw in Washington, guardian.co.ukWednesday 4 February 2009 18.25 GMT

Article history

The financial analyst who nine years ago discovered Bernard Madoff's multi-billion dollar alleged fraud scheme today lambasted US securities officials who ignored his warnings, calling for a shakeup of the US securities and exchange commission's structure.Harry Markopolos, a Massachusetts financial analyst who since 2000 several times sought to alert the SEC to Madoff's fraud, told a House of Representatives committee that the agency should replace its lawyer-heavy enforcement staff with senior securities professionals who have years of industry experience and can understand cutting-edge financial instruments used by hedge fund traders.He said regulators should give fraud investigators a pay incentive to unearth large fraud, and eliminate the turf wars that he said kept New York-based regulators from heeding tips he fed to the Boston office.Markopolos discovered Madoff's alleged malfeasance in May 2000, after he became suspicious of his years-long record of success in all market conditions. Markopolos said it took him about five minutes perusing Madoff's marketing materials to suspect fraud, and another roughly four hours to develop mathematical models to prove it. He eventually delivered a detailed case to securities regulators in Boston and followed up several times over the next eight years as he continued to gather evidence. He said that important SEC officials in New York and Boston brushed his reports aside.In testimony before members of the House financial services committee, Markopolos described "an abject failure by the regulatory agencies we entrust as our watchdog".He estimated the size of Madoff's fraud was about $7bn (£4.4bn) in 2000 when he first alerted the SEC. Markopolos said today that figure reflected the aggregate amount on customers' financial statements, but that Madoff actually took in between $15bn and $25bn in clients' cash.Asked to suggest remedies, Markopolos said the SEC's enforcement staff was too reliant on lawyers and people who lacked industry experience."They really don't comprehend the frauds of the 21st century," Markopolos said.He said that one competent SEC regulator in Boston described relations between the Boston field office and New York field office, which had jurisdiction over Madoff's New York-based operation as "about as warm and friendly as the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry". Markopolos was told the New York office did not want tips from Boston."My team and I kept collecting additional information, and I kept sending it to the SEC, and they kept ignoring it," he said.He said that the SEC was afraid of bringing big cases, and that only Massachusetts state regulators and the New York attorney general's offices were willing to prosecute financial fraud."I gifted and wrapped and delivered the largest Ponzi scheme in history to them but somehow they could not be bothered," he said. "If a $50bn Ponzi scheme doesn't top their list of priorities, I want to know who sets their priorities."

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We have hopes that the present administration will not tolerate this kind of foolishness.Neighbor humble

The humble Farmer Rants for February 1, 2009 Radio Show

2009-02-01T14:53:00.000-05:00

February 1, 2009 Rants

1. When many men hear talk about a six pack of firm abs, they reach down and lovingly pat one firm ab caused by too many six packs. Although we don’t want take sides, you might know that anyone who has raised children or chickens will tell you that one of anything is easier to manage.
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2. There is a thing coming up called Superbowl. It has to do with a football game. You might have also learned about the Superbowl on the evening news. We are told that for their own protection attendees will be patted down by security before going into the stadium. We are told that they will also be protected by policemen in helicopters in the sky and policemen in boats and policemen on foot and horseback. You might have read more than a little about what was done to protect German citizens between the years of 1933 and 1945, so you will probably not be surprised when someday soon, for your own protection, you are stopped on the street and asked if your papers are in order.
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3. I’ve seen a rubber band, I’ve seen a peanut stand, I’ve seen a needle wink its eye…. For a week now we’ve heard that all the salmonella came from one peanut plant in Georgia. Last night, while actually paying attention to the news, it suddenly dawned on me that the salmonella came from one building in which peanuts were processed and not one peanut plant. It took me several days get that one. When I told my 94-year-old friend, Doris who was raised on a farm, that I hadn’t understood “plant” in this context, she said she also though it was one peanut plant. I blame the scriptwriter who was apparently availing the advantages of articulating alliteration. I’m Rapid Robert and I reside on a rhubarb ranch.
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4. You might recall my saying last week that Doris, who is 94, told me that she was so happy when her father put electricity in the house because it meant she no longer had to wash the lamp chimneys. Radio friend John in Falmouth writes that the story reminded him of his grandmother, Leslie Foote Barrows, who was one of the first pioneers in the Judith Basin in Montana. When interviewed by a newspaper in San Diego back around 1928, she mentioned their first make and break gasoline powered water pump. When asked if the noise bothered her, she said, "Only when it stopped.”
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5. An email that arrived today reminds me that I am fortunate to have many friends with diverse backgrounds. This gives me a social advantage over people who, day in and day out, only see folks with graduate degrees from prestigious universities. How many of them, do you suppose, ever get an email from a friend who gives thanks that black folks were evacuated from Africa in slave ships so they could be introduced to Christian salvation?
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6. Addiction is a terrible thing. I have had no coffee for a week and I know this. Anyone who has to look at their email before their eyes are even open in the morning also knows this. Even more insidious is Facebook, which I ignored until it completely overpowered me. Being an educator, this morning I posted a synopsis of An Enemy of The People on my Facebook page --- just in case a couple of my friends were unfamiliar with it. Reading things like An Enemy of the People is part of one’s education. Even if it doesn’t change the way one votes, it might activate some unused thought process that will enable one to finally understand the power of dirty money. And even better than the opportunity to pass along interesting things to one’s friends, are the interesting messages that appear on Facebook from one’s friends. Wilder Oakes very astutely compares it with getting messages from a trance medium or an Ouija board.
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7. I have lived in Europe. If you have lived outside of the United States, you know that in many parts of the world Americans are seen as people who always have something bigger and better. Even yesterday, I reinforced this unfortunate stereotype of the Ugly American. My friend Boon, who lives on the outskirts of Groningen, sent me his picture. In his arms was his day-old grandchild. I replied, “That’s only one --- here in America we have 8 at a time.”
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9. This morning, when I came out of the bathroom, my wife Marsha said, “You were in there talking about what you were going to do today. I think you’re going crazy.” This was a surprise to me. I didn’t realize that I talked out loud to myself. But, as the day went on, I realized that when I was alone I talked out loud to myself all the time. Listening to myself for the first time, I was also somewhat shocked to hear myself employing lexical items that I never use with anyone but must have acquired 20 or 30 years ago while listening to the Nixon tapes. So --- because I don’t want people to think I’m crazy, I’m going to have to get a dog. People who talk to animals are considered normal.
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10. Because I stand on stages and tell stories to audiences, I make an effort to watch people on television who are doing the same thing --- you know --- just to make sure I’m in tune with the present generation. I see the people in these television audiences laugh, even though the entertainer on the stage is not saying anything funny. They are simply telling dirty stories that are neither funny nor clever. I don’t know why people laugh, I don’t know how these so-called comedians can sell out huge houses, but I recently learned why this kind of programming warrants time on television. My brother told me he saw a television program called, “They Made Us Laugh.” They showed television programs made in the 1950s that featured Sid Caesar and others who were doing and saying some very funny things. The narrator explained that in the 1950s, television was expensive. Only the most intelligent people had money enough to buy one. Then, when the price dropped and everyone had a TV, they had to lower the programming standards. You’ve hear the term that describes this, but I’m going to repeat again. It is called the Dumbing Down of America.
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11. If you visit enough stores in Camden, you'll see a book named, "Why Gay Guys are a Girl's Best Friend." How could you argue with that? Anybody who thinks about it at all knows that gay guys are everybody's best friend. Ever see one run up your taxes by sending 8 kids to your school's remedial reading program? Ever have one break your heart by marrying your high school sweetheart or running off with your wife? Seeing that book brought to mind a poem I wrote years ago that summarizes the situation: "Oh what a great world this would be, if all the guys were gay --- but me."
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12. Friends who know that I am interested in solar power send me articles and I pass along the best ones to you. Ever hear of a solar powered refrigerator? It's a simple yet brilliant invention. Not only is the fridge solar powered, it can also be built from household materials - making it ideal for Third World countries or Maine. Emily Cummins, who is only 21, came up with the idea while working on a school project in her grandfather's potting shed and the fridge is already improving the lives of thousands of poverty-stricken Africans. After her first year at college, she spent five months in Africa, perfecting and demonstrating her product. In Namibia she became known as 'The Fridge Lady'. Miss Cummins returned to the UK to enter a business management course at Leeds University. She had been refused a place on an engineering course because, to her dismay, she didn't have the correct qualifications. And I laugh out loud every time I read that. Here’s a girl who comes up with a fantastic invention and she lacks the correct qualifications to take an engineering course. Makes you wonder if Mozart could get into music school today. Last year Emily Cummins met the Queen at Buckingham Palace after being invited to a prestigious women in business event. Emily Cummins invented a solar fridge and lacked the qualifications to take an engineering course. Check her out on Google.
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13. Oh, one thing I wondered about for years was -- who would do the dirty manual labor if every person in America earned two MA degrees or a PhD? I just realized that I live with the answer. Marsha has a 4.0 on her MA degree. She loves to scrape paint, scrub floors and wash windows. After spending two days with two radio friends who were B&B guests at our home, I told the Misses that I was surprised that her husband, a brilliant, well-read man, was a rural mailman. She said he had a PhD and gave up teaching at a university to deliver mail. And then there was the brilliant young man on one of the islands who was sent to Harvard by a wealthy neighbor. He came back to the island where my brother saw him happily cutting bushes by the small airport runway. It is only this very minute as I write this, that I realize that after four years of graduate school I, too, came home and mowed fields and bushes on a big tractor for my neighbors. So I suppose it is what you think about when you vote or are working that determines the quality of your life. Although my body was on my tractor, my mind was writing personal ads to be published in the Maine Times. "Ornithologist seeks attractive young woman, willing to sacrifice everything for a few cheep thrills."
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14. I like the looks of the girl in the ad before she lost 25 pounds of fat in one month.

Is China spending 100 billion on railroads this year? Guess where they got the money.

2009-01-26T09:13:00.000-05:00

We hear that the economy is in bad shape. And although I don’t have any answers, I might have the same questions as you do. You might remember that Mr. Nixon did better in the polls than Santa Claus when he opened the doors to China and by so doing put us where we are today.

Which is broke.

Three generations ago, the dollar bill you gave to the milkman would pass from hand to hand five or six times before it ever left your village. And then it would circulate a while longer in your county and then move elsewhere in your state. Spend that dollar nowadays in a big box store and within a week it is in China by way of Arkansas. Not one of your neighbors gets to see it.

Thirty five years ago nobody thought to ask what would happen if you and all your neighbors bought everything you could from China at low, low Wal*Mart prices: toys, wood, clothes, dishes, instruments, and now even food.

Yes. If everything we buy in every store in America is made in China does it take an economic genius to figure out what is going to happen to the companies in the USA that made the things we used to buy from them?

Right. They go out of business. And when they go out of business, American workers lose their jobs. Of course, this is no concern of mine or yours because American workers losing their jobs is an abstraction --- we don’t know who these people are, and their wages were probably too high, anyway. But being able to buy things made in China at low, low prices is, for you and me, a concrete and necessary reality.

So China is now the proverbial Company Store. For all practical purposes, China owns most of The United States. And because every day that goes by they get almost every cent that we spend, day by day they own more and more of the United States. To survive, very soon almost every rural family will have to do what their ancestors and put up preserves from a big garden. They will keep a cow, chickens and a few pigs.

How do we avoid this huge, sucking economic black hole? By buying only those products made in the USA so Americans can go back to work? Probably not, because we look for those low, low prices offered only by the Chinese. And there is a good chance that there are no longer on our shelves any products made in the US of A.

So, now we are told that the US economy is in bad shape. The past administration whipped up an unnecessary war that has cost you a trillion or so. And while the war commanded your attention, every business was deregulated or privatized so billions more could be funneled down that rat hole.

But a brighter day is coming, because is not Mr. Obama going to jumpstart a ruined economy with a trillion or so dollars? You’d better hope he gives it all to the bankers, because if you and I get our hands on it, within a week every penny of it will be in China.

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Seeing this rant from my January 11, 2009 radio show, one of my radio friends sent me something similar:

"This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format: Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment? A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers. Q. Where will the government get this money? A. From taxpayers. Q. So the government is giving me back my own money? A. Only a smidgen. Q. What is the purpose of this payment? A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy. Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China ? A. Shut up. Below is some helpful advice on how to best help the US economy by spending your stimulus check wisely: If you spend that money at Wal-Mart, all the money will go to China. If you spend it on gasoline it will go to the Arabs. If you purchase a computer it will go to India. If you purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala (unless you buy organic). If you buy a car it will go to Japan. If you purchase useless crap it will go to Taiwan. And none of it will help the American economy. We need to keep that money here in America. You can keep the money in America by spending it at yard sales, going to a baseball game, or spend it on prostitutes, beer and wine (domestic ONLY), or tattoos, since those are the only businesses still in the US.

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You are invited to stop by for supper anytime.
Robert Karl Skoglund260 Hamlin Drive
Fort Myers, FL 33905
207-226-7442
humble@humblefarmer.com

Hear humble's radio show on his web page

http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/ThisWeek.html

See and hear humble tell stories on his web page:
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/

Hear dozens of humble's rants and even his radio show on PRX:

http://www.prx.org/Enjoy humble's music/humor program on Maine cable television stations:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/TvTowns.htmlDid you know that Robert Skoglund, The humble Farmer, stands on stages and tells funny stories?Ask humble to entertain you and your friends with dry stories like these:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/PortlandA.htmlYou can visit humble and Marsha at their Bed & Breakfast on the coast of Maine.http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/BaB.html

The humble Farmer Rants for January 25, 2009 Radio Show

2009-01-25T15:59:00.000-05:00

Rants January 25, 2009
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1. My friend Sal is exactly like so many of my other friends: he can do things that I, and perhaps you, can’t do. He is a specialist in his field. Sal spends summers down the road a bit from me in Port Clyde, Maine and winters down the road a little bit from me on the Florida Keys. Oh, the one thing that you and Sal have in common is the stories you tell me, and this is one of them. Every January there is an antique car and tractor fair in Fort Meade, Florida. It is such a large fair that one rents a golf cart at the gate for $65 just to get around. One year Sal arrived at the fair too late to rent a golf cart. Alas! Every last one was gone. But when he walked onto the grounds he saw a small tractor for sale. Sal said, “I bought it for $400 and rode around on it all day.” I said, “But what did you do with it after the fair?” Sal said, “I sold it for $2600.”
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2. It doesn’t take much to make me laugh --- even if I haven’t had a cup of coffee. This morning I laughed when I deleted some of the emails in my junk email box. One said, “Looking for a Fling?” What is a fling nowadays? If I had been pressed to define a fling, I would have said that a fling is running off to some near-by town for two or three days. But not until today did I ever wonder if yesterday’s fling is called a flang or a flung. I just Googled “Looking for a Fling” for a current definition. According to Google, the affliction known as “Lonely Wives Looking for a Fling” is now pandemic.
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3. For years I’ve enjoyed collecting and sending along to you the silly things I encounter throughout the day. This one is an email from a Maine couple in which someone mentions that they’d like to hear from their Maine friends. It says, “I am forwarding this message from Ron and Lorina … as they wish to be remember to everyone. Joleen ----- Original Message ----- Subject: Hello Hope everyone made it back safe and sound. We were wondering how Marge is fairing? Please give her our address & email. Really would like to hear from our Maine friends. Simone & Ron …“ The wonderful thing about a letter like this is that it justifies the institution immortalized in Melville’s story about Bartleby --- the dead letter office.
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4. For a year I have toyed with the idea of making a television program that consists of nothing except an old man who sits in a chair and simply talks while tossing a baseball from hand to hand. Until this morning, I wondered who would watch such a show. I wish I’d asked you, because that person lives with you so you knew a long time ago. For hour upon endless hour, that person sits like a rag doll and watches men run with a ball under their arms, or men hit a round thing with a stick. When they are lucky, they watch girls who hop on sand while pounding a ball over a net. Sometimes they watch cars going round and round an oval track and won’t even take a bathroom break for fear they’ll miss the pile up of the century. So --- we have determined that it is not what it is on the screen that builds a faithful television audience --- anything that provides an excuse to sit and drink whatever is in the glass or can is a show capable of climbing off the charts. So, when the day comes that they stumble upon this show, and they will, will you please do me a favor and, as you fill up the dish with heavily salted nuts, suggest that it might be time to order a catheter?
+5. It must be true because I not only heard it on TV, I also read it on the Internet. Drivers who use cell phones in their cars kill 2600 people and injure 330,000 every year --- just in the United States. Cell phones are now right up there with those beloved dogs and cats in a driver’s lap when it comes to causing automobile accidents. You can believe it, because half the people you pass on the turnpike have a cell phone plastered to an ear. Scientists tell us that 20-year-old drivers have the same reaction time as 70-year-old drivers who don’t even know how to use a cell phone. My first car was a 32 Ford coupe convertible with mechanical brakes and because I probably weighed around 100 pounds when I was 15, for all practical purposes I had no brakes. If you don’t know what mechanical brakes are, you should look it up. It took everything you had, and even big, rugged men had trouble stopping a car that had mechanical brakes. Eddie Tyler might tell you that in 1951 I passed him on the right hand side. I was coming up on him too fast down there between Harrington Cove and the Clark Island Road, there was a car coming the other way, and because I couldn’t stop I went out in the dirt and the grass and passed him on the right with dust and rocks all a flying. At the time I’d probably been driving a car for only a few days so it was a valuable lesson --- ever since then I’ve driven as if I have no brakes. I’ve taught driver education so I also have the annoying habit of hanging in there with the speed limit and stopping at stop signs, so my friends all hate to ride with me. When they do, they call me nasty names. And you probably know that in Europe they have Yield signs so I don’t have to stop there if nobody is coming. In America they have stop signs in many, many places that would be better served by a Yield sign. Anyway, can you tell me why the experts talk about reaction time when they should be talking about thinking time? If you don’t tailgate, you don’t need that famous reaction time they talk about where you have to jam on your brakes to keep from ramming that car ahead. And if a deer jumps out of the dark, you don’t need reaction time because they say you hear the bang and never see the deer anyway. When all is said and done, I’m glad I don’t have a cell phone. It’s bad enough to have to drive a car when you’re over 70. I’ve been hit in the rear end at least 6 times just because I stop at stop signs.
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6. I am thinking about having my credit card paid by big brother. I pay off the balance every month but think my payment arrived one day late because of a holiday and my negligence. There is, I think, a $30 or so fee for this. You might have many of your monthly payments automatically deducted from your checking account so this can’t happen. I haven’t done it yet, because I don’t like the idea of someone being able to dip in there and take what they want. You might have seen some months, when there might not have been anything in there to take, when you had to very judiciously juggle things around. Businessmen would not have that problem. They haven’t seen a bill in years because their office staff takes care of things like that. I think they ran electricity down our road around 1923 and I’m old enough to remember hearing that my neighbor Alex went into a rage when CMP sent him a bill. He said that he’d always paid cash for everything, no one had ever sent him a bill in his entire life and he’d have the power shut off if he were going to get bills. You might be old enough to understand that most any change is upsetting.
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7. You will recall I mentioned a while back about seeing a program that promised to tell me how to tell a real Rolex watch from a counterfeit Rolex watch. I was so busy taking notes, so I could tell you about it, that I didn’t see how the program ended. Radio friend Bill Miller sends this: “Dear Humble, Once, while working for U -Haul a few years back, I stumbled upon a Rolex laying in the under-seat portion of a truck. No one claimed it, and I had, a Rolex Presidential watch. This watch had diamonds on the quarter hour and a gold bezel...Im not sure what that would get me in life but wow...I had a Rolex. For years I wore that watch very proudly as a status symbol..showing I was a winner in life..a ROLEX. Some years later I was working as a paramedic on the beach in florida and had to extricate a young man who had imprudently dove into the water wearing speedos ,showing off to women who wanted gucci flannel pajamas, and had broken his neck. As I reached below the backboard in 4 feet of water I felt that watch unclip and fall off my wrist...gone...forever. That was a life lesson I couldnt have paid enough for. I wear a Timex now. Bill” My question to you is the obvious one: Why would anyone wear a watch that came with a cheap strap?
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8. What you can learn when you listen to the radio. Of course it has to be a certain kind of radio and I’ve been getting my radio off a place called PRX on the Internet. This week I learned that Hawaii has about the highest electric bills of any state. Right up there with New York, Vermont and Maine. But on this radio program I heard that the University of Hawaii is going broke trying to run their air conditioners. How about that? Haven’t you always heard that the temperature in Hawaii is perfect? Never hot, never cold. And now we hear they can’t afford to run their air conditioners. I guess this punches a hole in that bit of folklore. Another bit of folklore, which approaches an outright lie, is calling Florida the Sunshine State. And if you have never heard of Ibsen or his play called “An Enemy of the People” I suggest you Google “An Enemy of the People” right now and become familiar with it. --- Because there are days when they shut down highways in Florida, The Sunshine State, because you can’t see the road through the smoke from wildfires. Even worse are the controlled fires caused by burning the cane fields and the burning forests that are being swept away by endless housing developments. On an average day, you might not see that smoke or even be aware of it, but the soot builds up on your car and in your lungs. Some days the air is so bad in parts of The Sunshine State that you can’t get enough air in your lungs to ride a bicycle. You find that your lungs make a little whistling sound when you breathe. People who live in many parts of Florida take this constant smoke and burning eyes for granted and should you mention smoke, they’ll give you a funny look and say, “What smoke?” Don’t expect to see anything about Florida’s rotten air quality on television or in the newspapers. It would be bad for the tourist business. Yes, and please do look up Ibsen’s play, An Enemy of the People.
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9. When I called my wicked step mother she said that one of our neighbors had fallen on the floor and perished. She stayed right there and languished because they didn’t find her for a day or so. She had one of those magic buttons to wear around her neck, I think they call them Lifelines, but she didn’t bother to put hers on that day. So when she dropped, she was helpless. You know, there are days when you can go out in the woods and scramble to the top of a 60 foot spruce tree and I remember those days well. But I told the wicked one that I knew I was at the age where it would be foolish to go out in the woods unless I told someone where I was going. She said that she was at the age where it would be foolish to go out in the woods.
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10. Here’s another junk email that got my attention. If you are a social commentator, you should be grateful for junk email because you will never run out of topics. This one says: “Your wife need your attention? Solve all your problems with IT.” I don’t know why they need to advertise. You and I have friends who no sooner left for work, when IT came in the back door.
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11. (prx 090120) On the morning of the presidential inauguration I looked at the television and saw three million people jostling each other, elbow to elbow in that space between the Washington Monument and the Capitol Steps. I couldn’t help but think what a great day it was in Washington for pickpockets.
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12. Have you ever seen the Eifel Tower in Paris? Have you ever seen The Brandenburg Gate in Germany? This is redundant. Where else would you find the Eifel Tower or The Brandenburg Gate? I was going to say that for over 30 years, I have boasted and bragged that I have never talked down to you. I was going to say that when I mentioned An Enemy of the People or Bartleby, I took it for granted that you were familiar with the works of Ibsen or Melville, so I would never day, “Ibsen’s, An Enemy of the People.” I was going to say that President Obama was talking down to you by pointing out to you and me in his inaugural address that his words, “the time has come to set aside childish things,” came from the scripture. But, much to my surprise, in looking over my notes, I see that I have recently been as guilty as the President of the United States. Is there not a lesson to be learned here? You hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye.” That’s Scripture, Matthew 7, 3.
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You are invited to stop by for supper anytime.

Robert Karl Skoglund
260 Hamlin Drive
Fort Myers, FL 33905

207-226-7442

humble@humblefarmer.com

Hear humble's radio show on his web page

http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/ThisWeek.html

See and hear humble tell stories on his web page:
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/

Hear dozens of humble's rants and even his radio show on PRX:

http://www.prx.org/Enjoy humble's music/humor program on Maine cable television stations:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/TvTowns.html

Did you know that Robert Skoglund, The humble Farmer, stands on stages and tells funny stories?Ask humble to entertain you and your friends with dry stories like these:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/PortlandA.html

You can visit humble and Marsha at their Bed & Breakfast on the coast of Maine.
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/BaB.html

Rants for The humble Farmer radio program, January 11, 2009

2009-01-11T15:22:00.000-05:00

humorous social commentary for the January 11, 2009 The humble Farmer radio program

Broadcast on the Internet on humble's web page, on the web page of Village Soup, and on WDNA in Miami.

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1. (090111) Imagine how startled you’d be if you just learned that Johnny Cash did not do time in Folsom Prison. Did the fact that I’m probably not the only person who was misled help Johnny Cash sell 90 million records? On the same page on the Internet I also learned that Merle Haggard wrote Okie from Muscogee as a satire. Everybody knows that song, Okie from Muscogee, and it is only now that I realize why I have heard of Merle Haggard. I don’t see how you could not have heard Okie From Muscogee because it was on top of the popularity charts fairly recently --- 1970 or so. I’ll bet you didn’t know that Okie from Muscogee was a satire, either. Listening to songs by Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, is there really any way to tell?
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2. It finally happened. This morning my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, looked at me and said, “Take those filthy pants off right this minute and throw them in the wash.” I had to laugh. I said, “I just put them on fresh two minutes ago right out of the bureau drawer.” You know, I’m not able to do it very often, but this morning I stopped her right dead in her tracks.
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3. (prx 090108) We hear that the economy is in bad shape. And although I don’t have any answers, I might have the same questions as you do. You might remember that Mr. Nixon did better in the polls than Santa Claus when he opened the doors to China and by so doing put us where we are today.

Which is broke.

Three generations ago, the dollar bill you gave to the milkman would pass from hand to hand five or six times before it ever left your village. And then it would circulate a while longer in your county and then move elsewhere in your state. Spend that dollar nowadays in a big box store and within a week it is in China by way of Arkansas. Not one of your neighbors gets to see it.

Thirty five years ago nobody thought to ask what would happen if you and all your neighbors bought everything you could from China at low, low Wal*Mart prices: toys, wood, clothes, dishes, instruments, and now even food.

Yes. If everything we buy in every store in America is made in China does it take an economic genius to figure out what is going to happen to the companies in the USA that made the things we used to buy from them?

Right. They go out of business. And when they go out of business, American workers lose their jobs. Of course, this is no concern of mine or yours because American workers losing their jobs is an abstraction --- we don’t know who these people are, and their wages were probably too high, anyway. But being able to buy things made in China at low, low prices is, for you and me, a concrete and necessary reality.

So China is now the proverbial Company Store. For all practical purposes, China owns most of The United States. And because every day that goes by they get almost every cent that we spend, day by day they own more and more of the United States. To survive, very soon almost every rural family will have to do what their ancestors and put up preserves from a big garden. They will keep a cow, chickens and a few pigs.

How do we avoid this huge, sucking economic black hole? By buying only those products made in the USA so Americans can go back to work? Probably not, because we look for those low, low prices offered only by the Chinese. And there is a good chance that there are no longer on our shelves any products made in the US of A.

So, now we are told that the US economy is in bad shape. The past administration whipped up an unnecessary war that has cost you a trillion or so. And while the war commanded your attention, every business was deregulated or privatized so billions more could be funneled down that rat hole.

But a brighter day is coming, because is not Mr. Obama going to jumpstart a ruined economy with a trillion or so dollars? You’d better hope he gives it all to the bankers, because if you and I get our hands on it, within a week every penny of it will be in China.
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4. (prx 090110) Where do you get your information? Newspapers? Television? Because I can’t afford to buy a newspaper, and because one must carefully consider the source when getting news from television, I just realized that I am turning more and more to the Internet. You know that I already have solar hot water heaters attached to my house and that I am presently building panels that will generate electricity from sunlight. All my bustle and scurry has nothing to do with a burning desire to save the planet. Putting in solar collectors will save me money. So I’m also on a tear to get rid of all the energy hogging appliances in our home. Did you know that the older models of refrigerators gobble electricity and that many of the new ones will pay for themselves in just a couple of years just by being more energy efficient? Of course, you know, too, that over the past 30 years, whenever I’ve learned something interesting, I’ve quickly passed it along to you --- for whatever it’s worth. So, if you are standing, please sit down in the nearest chair and hang on with both hands because I was staggered by what I just read today. While looking on line for an energy efficient refrigerator, I learned, that many of the newer refrigerators will run on next to no electricity at all --- if you never open their doors.
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5. If you are like me, you constantly update your web pages. You put up things that are new and you take down things that no longer have meaning. When this wonderful letter came in from a radio friend in Miami, I put in on my Facebook, my blog and my web page at once. Please listen carefully to this: Dear Mr. Skoglund, As a Native American, or whatever you want to call us, from my earliest remembrances of growing up in the home of my beloved maternal grandparents, I learned to love and respect my elders. As I grew older I came to the realization that offering to our elders respect and gratitude was small compensation for the wisdom they imparted to us younger people. For this reason I rise early every Sunday morning to listen to your show, more for the wisdom you impart than for the good music you play. As a Native American, I, too, have often wondered why people think they need to have more than one pair of shoes. Thank you for imparting your wisdom each Sunday morning. Have a happy, healthy, and enjoyable New Year.” This letter is signed by a Mr. Myers who has appended on the bottom of his letter:
Treat the earth well,
It was not given to you by your parents;
It was loaned to you by your children.

Isn’t that wonderful. The earth was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. My sentiments exactly. Oh, and while I was on my web page I then removed this other item which doesn’t apply anymore, now that we have a new press secretary in the White House. It said: "You might have seen that best-selling author who made the evening news because he had lied to the American people on national television. --- This was news because he was an author."
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6. Long time radio friend Harris Contos sent me the following news item: “VASSALBORO, Maine --Vassalboro's planning board has approved an application for a coffee shop with topless waitresses despite opposition of most residents who showed up. More than 50 residents showed up for Tuesday night's meeting and most of them voiced disapproval of the idea. Ellsworth businessman Donald Crabtree plans to open the topless cafe within 30 days at the site of the former Grand View Motel on busy Route 3. Planners said the central Maine town has no ordinance to regulate businesses' uniforms -- or lack of them. They say the proposal met the town's 10 performance standards, which are mostly related to safety, parking, traffic and signs.” Of course I immediately replied to this news item from Harris. My obvious question to him was the same question that is in your mind right now. Would their health insurance would pay for any colds caught during working hours? Harris believes that any waitress submitting such a claim would get a form letter back from the company, pointing out that they weren’t covered.
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7. A news item about topless waitresses in a Vassalboro coffee shop, sent to us by long time radio friend Harris Contos, raises several issues. Would an unemployed waiter be likely to picket coffee shops where your steaming hot coffee is served by topless waitresses? As a person who believes that men and women should receive equal pay for the same work, I am somewhat alarmed that any woman would choose to uncover anything perceived as an advantage. And what culture from ages past has so impressed its values upon us that a topless waitress should be viewed worthy of space in a newspaper --- or of a place in a coffee shop? How much would a topless coffee shop have to undercut the competition before you would be seen going in there? And what do you say to the waitress when she smiles coyly and asks, “Cream and sugar?”
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8. Whatever is America’s greatest satirist, Alan Able, doing nowadays? If you can find out, please tell me because I’d like to know. I see that a movie of his life is available and I have snuck it into Marsha’s queued requests on Netflix. The name of it is Abel Raises Cain, and I am told by Netflix there will be a long wait. Thirty or more years ago Alan Able impressed me with his satirical antics and I became a fan. We exchanged stuffed envelopes through the mail, this was long before email, and one day, which must have been around 25 years ago, I found a note from Alan Able on my back door. I missed his visit. The same week I chanced upon a girl from the Pinies in New Jersey, who was wandering about my farm taking pictures of the huge woodpile, the sheep and the piles of junk. Do remember that this was before my wife Marsha moved in and restored order. Anyway, knowing that Alan Able was capable of most anything, I viewed the New Jersey girl with great suspicion for several days, thinking that she might have been set upon me by Alan Able. I suggest that you Google Alan Able, because reading about his capers is a refreshing, enjoyable adventure in itself. Take for example, his Omar’s School for Beggars, a fictional school for professional panhandlers. Or read about the actor he hired to pose as Deep Throat after Nixon’s Watergate scandal. That conference drew 150 reporters. Read about the 7 actors he hired to fall asleep in the studio while Donahue was interviewing gay senior citizens. Or the time he ran for Congress on a platform that included selling ambassadorships to the highest bidder. At the 2000 Republican National Convention, Able campaigned to ban all breastfeeding, saying that it manifests an oral addiction leading youngsters to smoke, drink and even become gay. My favorite was his Society for Indecency to Naked Animals. Their goal was to clothe naked animals all over the world and their slogan was “A nude horse is a rude horse.” It began as a satire on media censorship. Thanks to the satire of Alan Able, there is no censorship of the media in America today.
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9. (PRX 090112) You might have seen those silly little articles in magazines about dogs and their owners. The premise is that people buy pets that not only reflect their personalities but their physical features. We have also heard that people who live together for 20, 40 or 60 years also tend to resemble each other. I don’t know if this is true, because, wouldn’t you agree that an evaluation of the data would be subjective --- as long as we are talking about outward appearance? But could we not prove that, after a few years of marriage, man and wife do seem to approximate each other in their observable habits? I invite you to participate in the following experiment. To confine the experiment within the parameters of solid science, you will be asked to keep a written record of your bathroom habits for a month. I’m humble at humblefarmer dot com and if you are truly in love and 100 percent compatible I would be surprised if your results differ from mine. Every time over the past 18 years that I have moved toward the bathroom, day or night, for any reason, I have had to stand by the door and wait --- because my wife had the same intentions two seconds before.
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10. Last week I caught a rat in a mouse trap. Something ate a hole in an orange that was on the floor by the door and I thought I’d catch whatever it was in a mouse trap. I didn’t think whatever it was could be more than two inches long. But the next night, around 6 o’clock right after supper, I was surprised to see a huge rat, upside down with the trap on top of him, with his nose caught in that mouse trap, right there in the entry way that you might as well call the kitchen floor. How a rat got into the house I have no idea, unless it hopped in when someone left a door open. --- What do you do when you see a live rat with his nose caught in a mousetrap? If you scoop up the whole business, the rat might escape and you’d sleep that night with a rat either running across the bed covers or trying to yank them onto the floor. Being a television person, I quickly set up my video camera and took pictures of the rat while I was trying to figure out what to do. You can well believe that when I posted the film of the entire operation on Blip, which some people call the thinking woman’s YouTube, I heard at once from some animal rights people. Well, now, a week or so later, I’m still hearing about this live rat in a mousetrap and more than one person has called my attention to the havahart trap web page. I commend this havahart web page to your attention the next time there are unwanted rats in your kitchen. All it says is, “Rat Traps. Remove unwanted rats the most humane way!” So --- here you are with the unwanted rat in the little humane havahart cage without a word of advice as to what is expected of you next. Presumably you will not kill the rat, because if that were an option, you might as well have set a snap trap, eliminated an interminable unnecessary wait on death row, and had the unpleasant business over with at once. So --- there should now be no question in your mind as to what you must do when you have taken a rat prisoner. Visit one of your animal rights friends as quickly as possible and let the rat out in their kitchen.

Tentative Rants for January 11, 2009 The humble Farmer radio program

2009-01-10T17:35:00.000-05:00

Rants January 11, 2009
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1. Imagine how startled you’d be if you just learned that Johnny Cash did not do time in Folsom Prison. Did the fact that I’m probably not the only person who was misled help Johnny Cash sell 90 million records? On the same page on the Internet I also learned that Merle Haggard wrote Okie from Muscogee as a satire. Everybody knows that song, Okie from Muscogee, and it is only now that I realize why I have heard of Merle Haggard. I don’t see how you could not have heard Okie From Muscogee because it was on top of the popularity charts fairly recently --- 1970 or so. I’ll bet you didn’t know that Okie from Muscogee was a satire, either. Listening to songs by Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, is there really any way to tell?
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2. It finally happened. This morning my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, looked at me and said, “Take those filthy pants off right this minute and throw them in the wash.” I had to laugh. I said, “I just put them on fresh two minutes ago right out of the bureau drawer.” You know, I’m not able to do it very often, but this morning I stopped her right dead in her tracks.
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3. We hear that the economy is in bad shape. And although I don’t have any answers, I might have the same questions as you do. You might remember that Mr. Nixon did better in the polls than Santa Claus when he opened the doors to China and by so doing put us where we are today.

Which is broke.

Three generations ago, the dollar bill you gave to the milkman would pass from hand to hand five or six times before it ever left your village. And then it would circulate a while longer in your county and then move elsewhere in your state. Spend that dollar nowadays in a big box store and within a week it is in China by way of Arkansas. Not one of your neighbors gets to see it.

Thirty five years ago nobody thought to ask what would happen if you and all your neighbors bought everything you could from China at low, low Wal*Mart prices: toys, wood, clothes, dishes, instruments, and now even food.

Yes. If everything we buy in every store in America is made in China does it take an economic genius to figure out what is going to happen to the companies in the USA that made the things we used to buy from them?

Right. They go out of business. And when they go out of business, American workers lose their jobs. Of course, this is no concern of mine or yours because American workers losing their jobs is an abstraction --- we don’t know who these people are, and their wages were probably too high, anyway. But being able to buy things made in China at low, low prices is, for you and me, a concrete and necessary reality.

So China is now the proverbial Company Store. For all practical purposes, China owns most of The United States. And because every day that goes by they get almost every cent that we spend, day by day they own more and more of the United States. To survive, very soon almost every rural family will have to do what their ancestors and put up preserves from a big garden. They will keep a cow, chickens and a few pigs.

How do we avoid this huge, sucking economic black hole? By buying only those products made in the USA so Americans can go back to work? Probably not, because we look for those low, low prices offered only by the Chinese. And there is a good chance that there are no longer on our shelves any products made in the US of A.

So, now we are told that the US economy is in bad shape. The past administration whipped up an unnecessary war that has cost you a trillion or so. And while the war commanded your attention, every business was deregulated or privatized so billions more could be funneled down that rat hole.

But a brighter day is coming, because is not Mr. Obama going to jumpstart a ruined economy with a trillion or so dollars? You’d better hope he gives it all to the bankers, because if you and I get our hands on it, within a week every penny of it will be in China.
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4. Where do you get your information? Newspapers? Television? Because I can’t afford to buy a newspaper, and because one must carefully consider the source when getting news from television, I just realized that I am turning more and more to the Internet. You know that I already have solar hot water heaters attached to my house and that I am presently building panels that will generate electricity from sunlight. All my bustle and scurry has nothing to do with a burning desire to save the planet. Putting in solar collectors will save me money. So I’m also on a tear to get rid of all the energy hogging appliances in our home. Did you know that the older models of refrigerators gobble electricity and that many of the new ones will pay for themselves in just a couple of years just by being more energy efficient? Of course, you know, too, that over the past 30 years, whenever I’ve learned something interesting, I’ve quickly passed it along to you --- for whatever it’s worth. So, if you are standing, please sit down in the nearest chair and hang on with both hands because I was staggered by what I just read today. While looking on line for an energy efficient refrigerator, I learned, that many of the newer refrigerators will run on next to no electricity at all --- if you never open their doors.
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5. You might have seen those silly little articles in magazines about dogs and their owners. The premise is that people buy pets that not only reflect their personalities but their physical features. We have also heard that people who live together for 20, 40 or 60 years also tend to resemble each other. I don’t know if this is true, because, wouldn’t you agree that an evaluation of the data would be subjective --- as long as we are talking about outward appearance? But could we not prove that, after a few years of marriage, man and wife do seem to approximate each other in their observable habits? I invite you to participate in the following experiment. To confine the experiment within the parameters of solid science, you will be asked to keep a written record of your bathroom habits for a month. I’m humble at humblefarmer dot com and if you are truly in love and 100 percent compatible I would be surprised if your results differ from mine. Every time over the past 18 years that I have moved toward the bathroom, day or night, for any reason, I have had to stand by the door and wait --- because my wife had the same intentions two seconds before.
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6. Friends who know that I am interested in solar power send me articles. I immediately pass along the best ones to you. Ever hear of a solar powered refrigerator? It's a simple yet brilliant invention. Not only is the fridge solar powered, it can also be built from household materials - making it ideal for Third World countries or Maine. Emily Cummins, who is only 21, came up with the idea while working on a school project in her grandfather's potting shed and the fridge is already improving the lives of thousands of poverty-stricken Africans. After her first year at college, she spent five months in Africa, perfecting and demonstrating her product. In Namibia she became known as 'The Fridge Lady'. Miss Cummins returned to the UK to start a business management course at Leeds University. She had been refused a place on an engineering course because, to her dismay, she didn't have the correct qualifications. And I laugh out loud every time I read that. Here’s a girl who comes up with a fantastic invention and she lacks the correct qualifications to take an engineering course. Makes you wonder if Mozart could get into music school today. Last year Emily Cummins met the Queen at Buckingham Palace after being invited to a prestigious women in business event. Emily Cummins invented a solar fridge. Check her out on Google.
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7. My present topic is wishy-washy people. – I think that’s what I want to talk about --- people who can’t make up their minds. Not a day goes by, but what one of your wishy-washy friends stops by in need of something. They probably think that by being satisfied with anything and everything, their friends will think they are easy to get along with. But wishy-washy people make me scream and holler and wave my arms. Last night my friend Alden came in here and asked if he could borrow a rat trap. I said, “Do you want a new rat trap or an old rat trap?” He said, “I don’t care.” Answers like that drive me crazy, because then, I have to either press a friend to the mat in hopes of extracting a definitive answer, or I have to make the decision myself. If I give him a new rat trap, will Alden say that he doesn’t really want to take my only new rat trap and that an old, used rat trap will do as well? And if I give him an old, cherished, family-heirloom type of rat trap, will he think I don’t value him enough to give him a shiny new one? You run into this kind of thing every day --- someone who can never tell you exactly what it is they want. Ask them if they’d like a cup of tea or a cut of coffee, and they’ll say, “Yes.” And then there was Thelonious Monk, rehearsing one his original pieces with a small group. The sax player said, “Hey, --- is that third note in the second bar of the chorus a b or a b flat?” And Monk said, “Yeah, one of those.”
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8. Here’s a good page if you have an extra hour and want a few laughs:
http://thinkprogress.org/category/raa/ Some of these people are really serious.
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9. You hear would-be intellectuals putting down television all the time. Their mantra is that there is nothing worth watching on television. Perhaps it is the redneck in me, but I beg to disagree. This morning I saw part of an educational television program that I would describe as nothing short of vital. It explained how I could keep from getting cheated when I bought rolex watches. If you can think of anything you would rather see on television than how to tell a real rolex watch from a counterfeit rolex watch, please tell me what it is. I’m humble at humblefarmer dot com. I’ve heard a lot about rolex watches over the years, but I don’t know what they are and I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. Have you? And please notice that I said I saw part of the program. That’s because I was so busy taking notes so I could tell you about it that I didn’t see how it ended.
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10. One of my radio friends sends me this: “If you like "young adult" literature, Tangerine, by Edward Bloor is set in a smoky FL subdivision.” What in the world could I have ever said that gave anyone the impression I cared for young adult literature? Let me repeat that so you can hear the sneer in my voice: What in the world could I have ever said that gave anyone the impression I cared for young adult literature? It is true --- I read books that were written for the 13-year-old school girls in Italy, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Spain, France and Holland. By definition, a Harlequin Romance written in German is world literature and I peruse this world literature on a daily basis to refine and polish my linguistic skills. Is not a person who can order a hot dog in 9 languages a cosmopolitan on a par with James Bond? F Credis Toe. Geen senap. Because my IQ is low, I will never get to the point where I can absorb the nuances of Voltaire or Cervantes or Thomas Mann or Dante in the original, so I will live out my life trapped on the sixth grade level wherever I go in Europe. Dutch and Swedish are my best languages, but even there I can only understand the most elementary satire and have to have most jokes and the wordplay in advertising explained to me. So, to eliminate the need for any future misunderstanding, I would like, at this time, to state categorically that I consider a Harlequin romance printed in the English language nothing more than trash. To the best of my knowledge I have never read one --- not even to help me read a parallel text in Spanish. I would never, under any circumstances, permit a Harlequin Romance in English to be brought into my home, and, to the best of my knowledge, I don’t have single friend who even knows what they are. Tack ska du har for att listena.
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11. You have heard me say that I go to exercise class. Three times a week I stand before a television screen in the select company of 30 or ladies who were born around 1925 and swing my arms and stretch my legs for an hour. The last time I looked, I was the only man there. But --- I pass many pot-bellied men of a similar vintage on my way in and out of the building. Most of them are seated or standing near a pool table, where one of the company pokes at a little ball with a stick. Even if you have never played pool, you might remember seeing Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats in the movies, which is about all the education anyone needs on pool right there. I never learned how to play pool. The pool hall was 9 miles away in the city of Rockland. It was owned by Phil Sulides who was a good guy. As I recall, there was a chair or chairs in the front of the pool hall where you could get a shoe shine. I can’t remember now why I ever went in there, but I think there were two or three pool tables out back obscured by the amount of cigarette smoke that you would only expect to find at the Elk’s Club today. I was one of those wimpy little kids who never learned how to play baseball, either. Many men would consider my entire childhood a waste. About the only thing I learned as a kid was how to read.
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12. Last week I caught a rat in a mouse trap. Something ate a hole in an orange that was on the floor by the door and I thought I’d catch whatever it was in a mouse trap. I didn’t think whatever it was could be more than two inches long. But the next night, around 6 o’clock right after supper, I was surprised to see a huge rat, upside down with the trap on top of him, with his nose caught in that mouse trap, right there in the entry way that you might as well call the kitchen floor. How a rat got into the house I have no idea, unless it hopped in when someone left a door open. --- What do you do when you see a live rat with his nose caught in a mousetrap? If you scoop up the whole business, the rat might escape and you’d sleep that night with a rat either running across the bed covers or trying to yank them onto the floor. Being a television person, I quickly set up my video camera and took pictures of the rat while I was trying to figure out what to do. You can well believe that when I posted the film of the entire operation on Blip, which some people call the thinking woman’s YouTube, I heard at once from some animal rights people. Well, now, a week or so later, I’m still hearing about this live rat in a mousetrap and more than one person has called my attention to the havahart trap web page. I commend this havahart web page to your attention the next time there are unwanted rats in your kitchen. All it says is, “Rat Traps. Remove unwanted rats the most humane way!” So --- here you are with the unwanted rat in the little humane havahart cage without a word of advice as to what is expected of you next. Presumably you will not kill the rat, because if that were an option, you might as well have set a snap trap, eliminated an interminable unnecessary wait on death row, and had the unpleasant business over with at once. So --- there should now be no question in your mind as to what you must do when you have taken a rat prisoner. Visit one of your animal rights friends as quickly as possible and let the rat out in their kitchen.

The humble Farmer Rants for January 4, 2009 Radio Show

2009-01-05T20:07:00.000-05:00

Rants January 4, 2009

1. Jeb Bush is considering a 2012 run for the presidency and you can understand why his brother George is his strongest supporter. If Jeb could be elected, George would not go down in history as the worst president this country ever had.
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2. Living on the coast of Maine can be a challenge. Let's take a specific example. What do you do if you live within sight of the famous Olsen house, and 75 yachts from New Jersey anchor beside your back yard? You might look out and think that it's a mighty pretty sight. But if you've seen yachts anchor there before, you know you could be looking at trouble, because most of those people on the yachts are environmentally oriented. That means that they would cut off a hand before they'd throw a can, bottle or scrap of paper overboard. But they've got to get rid of their trash somehow and you know how they do it. They lug it ashore and stack it neatly in your barn. The man who brought this to my attention said that he asked them why they were stacking their trash in his barn. And they said, "What do you do with your trash?" And he said, "I take it to the dump." And they said, "When you go there you can take ours, too." If you've driven through parts of Philadelphia and New Jersey, you probably thought that the people who lived there were responsible for all the ankle deep trash beside the road. But now I can't help but wonder if it isn't recycled yacht trash that some old Maine lobsterman has thrown out of his car on his way to Florida.
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3. I’m pretty much like Greta Garbo. I just want to be left alone. All I want to do is make a happy program to amuse and entertain and perhaps inform my friends. But I just heard that a talented and intelligent young friend of mine will be out of work for the next two weeks and as a senior citizen who has seen much and read even more, I feel I must comment on these economic times which some claim are difficult. Don’t you find it interesting that so many of the people who are out of work eagerly voted for the greedy captains of industry who make a habit of shutting things down and putting people out of work every time they’re in office? Anyone who has been around more than just a little realizes that hard times are created to break up unionized labor and drive down wages and living conditions. Anyone who has lived long enough or who can read a history book knows that it has happened over and over here in America. Youngsters, or old people who don’t bother to read, have no idea that the closing of factory doors is just one more step in that age old struggle between the haves and the have-nots. Many of the jobless who are wailing and rending their garments can’t even see that cause and effect relationship and when the next election comes around, they’ll vote against themselves again.
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4. I don’t want to do it, controversy does not become me, but because of what my friends are telling me and what you’ve been seeing on the news, I’ve got to talk about the economy. What you want to bet that the billionaire Warren Buffett could get along on my Social Security income better than many 35 year old kids could. I don’t make enough to pay an income tax and I’m better off now than I’ve ever been in my entire life. These unemployed people, who are young enough to be my grandchildren, were brought up in a rich kid lifestyle. They pay to go skiing and they go out to restaurants to eat. They buy clothes that they don’t need and they have more than one pair of shoes. You might not believe this, but last week while buying a dollar chicken sandwich in McDonald’s, I heard the clerk say to a man, “That will be twenty dollars” and something. Twenty dollars to take your wife and a couple of kids into McDonald’s? I couldn’t believe that working class people had that kind of money to throw around. What are people thinking? The fact that a working family can come up with $20 for four plastic containers that contain mostly ice indicates to me that the economy can’t be all that bad. Please remember that you are listening to a man who went to school with cardboard and metal covering the holes in his shoes. It would seem that hard economic times is a relative term.
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5. I just heard it on television from a man and a woman who were touted as “experts in the field.” When going out on dates in 2009, the man still pays. You can imagine how this must enrage women whose sisters have fought for equality for generations. I have neither experience nor an opinion on the matter because a 15 year old child probably knows more about dating than I do. When I first became aware of girls, all the kids in the neighborhood, 10 or 15 of us, would walk a well beaten path through the fields and woods down to the shore and go swimming. We’d go at a different time every day because the icy cold salt water was warmest after it had just come in over mudflats heated by the sun. In the winter we went skating on Jerry’s pond out back of father’s house in the middle of the woods. I didn’t date in college. On top of being shy, awkward, and socially inept, every bit of the ten dollars a week I got for playing in a dance band at the Blue Goose went for room rent and food. When I got married at the age of 29, it was to a girl whose father had anchored his yacht in Tenants Harbor. When she and her siblings rowed ashore to absorb local culture, I happened by and gave them all a ride in my funny old Model T truck. And because it was a chance meeting, you can’t really call that a date. Some time later, after she left me to marry a better man, I lived alone in my battered old farmhouse for 20 years. I won’t say I didn’t provide any service to the community during what should have been my most productive adult years, but I wouldn’t consider it dating, unless you think a man can date without leaving the comfort and privacy of his own home. And right after I met my wife Marsha in the cellar of a church in Camden where she was the kingpin in a coterie of widows and divorcees who had taken it upon themselves to provide meals for hungry single men, we spent evenings in my home stuffing envelopes addressed to meeting planners. Yes, I missed out on this dating experience thing, but I realize now that all turned out for the best. You know, it isn’t until a man sees his friend’s grandchildren in jail, that he gives thanks he was once a socially inept, poor boy with bad breath.
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6. The way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea. What is it about that special someone in your life that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling and brings the tears to your eyes when you think about it? Songs have been written about that uniquely human emotion, but I’m under deadline and it’s easier to stick with purple prose. Just this past week someone said it bothered them to hear me refer to my life’s companion as “The Almost Perfect Woman” but that’s too bad. You can’t please everybody and I don’t care because my only goal is to please you. Sometime, if you’re interested, you might ask me why I call my wife Marsha The Almost Perfect Woman, and I will tell you. But now we’re going to discuss what it is about her that endears her to me and makes her special. For years her favorite toy was a Snapper lawnmower. I’ve seen her come home from work at five and walk behind that mower without stopping until the sun went down. She resists and resents my attempts at hand delivered nourishment. She sets the blade down as low as it will go and cuts the grass right down to the dirt. If I have mowed a section of lawn that afternoon so it looks lush and green, she mows it again. You can find the phenomenon in the literature under compulsive neurosis. For my entire life I admired women who lived to scrub and cook and clean and, guess what, now that I’m married to one? You’re going to think I’m making this up but if you look on my web page you’ll find photographic verification. One day my wife Marsha hit our ancient privy or toilet or whatever you want to call it with her John Deere rider mower and moved it about a foot. Oh, if she has to be at a certain place at a certain time, she will not leave the house until it is impossible for her to be on time. I’ve seen her take a shower at midnight and then clean the shower stall just the way she came out of it, and then go in the other room and scrub down the shower in there, too. Yes, before she got the rider mower, her favorite toy was the Snapper lawn mower. Every piece of metal or plastic on it has been bent back like your hair in a high wind because it’s been driven into every piece of granite and every building on the property. The living bark has been ripped from all my big apple trees and even when surrounded by stakes of metal, small fruit trees don’t stand a chance. She’s knocked the wooden finish board corners off several of our outbuildings. Bolts are continually being snapped off the motor, and the carburetor and muffler are left dangling after encounters of a granite kind. And here’s the funny thing. I don’t know why, but every time I am called out to restore that lawnmower, I choke up, my eyes get all watery, and I think how much I love that woman. It might help that I think she is pretty.
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7. While deleting the 30 or so junk emails that come in every hour or so, my eye caught the words “so bored.” One might suspect that this is an invitation to engage in an exchange of emails. But is not “so bored” an indication that we have heard from someone who cannot read or think? We understand that people who are dyslexic cannot read, but my dyslexic friends are among the smartest and most creative people I know. So we might assume that the “so bored” email is not from one of them. This leaves us with no alternative but to realize that the “so bored” email comes from someone who might be able to read but who cannot think. Well --- if you were trying to attract anyone’s attention for any reason, would you preface your remarks with the announcement that you were not too terribly clever?
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8. My friend Julian, who has sold more than a few things in his day, says that the time to sell is when you have a buyer. I take that to mean that even though you might not be thinking about selling your grandfather’s 1932 Plymouth sedan with “floating power, set in rubber”, if someone makes you an offer you can’t refuse, he or she owns it. I was thinking of that while out lawn sale ing the other day. Like a woman who knows the price of everything in the grocery store, I know that bicycles are 3 to 5 dollars, books (and we are talking classics or science in hard cover) are a quarter, a handful of Craftsman wrenches are a dollar and pyrex dishes are half a dollar. So when I walk up a driveway and see prices on items that are ten times higher than they should be, I laugh out loud and think to myself that optimism for the economy is alive and well. Thank you for tolerating this digression. Now to the point. We said that the time to sell is when you are visited by someone who wants to buy. You might turn that end for end and say that the time to buy, is when you find someone who WANTS to sell. But if you have been to enough lawn sales, you know that the time to buy is when you find someone who HAS to sell.
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9.
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html

Wow. Is it true that people in Maine pay more for electricity than just about every other state in the Union? Why don’t we hear about this kind of thing on the news? According to the chart I saw, Maine people pay about twice as much for electricity as they pay in seven other states: we’re talking Idaho, Washington, Nebraska, North Dakota, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. In looking at the chart quickly, it seems that only Vermont and New York pay more than Maine. What better reason to buy a windmill that will generate electricity or make some solar panels. Of course, if you think that your power company is all set to slash your electric bill by a third just to bring it into line with most of the United States, you wouldn’t think that generating your own power with the sun or wind is even worth investigation. And while I have your attention, if you think your power company is going to cut your electric bill, you might be interested in hearing about a little private hedge fund that is paying returns in the double digits.
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10. My wife buys most of her groceries at Wal*Mart because she pays less and I don’t like it. I’m a suspicious old man and I would like to know where my food comes from. Used to be you could read on the can that B&M beans were baked and put in the can in Portland, Maine. Now you read on most any can in your cupboard that it was packaged for a company in Arkansas without a hint of whose grubby little hands filled and sealed it. Yes, you and I know that the standards which govern the inspection of food processed here in the US have dropped intentionally and drastically over the past 8 or so years. We understand that profits are lost when food packaging lines are halted to remove substandard items. We read that food inspectors are penalized for inspecting. Can that be why we are hearing all these stories about so many poison things that come from China? Point out the flaws in Chinese products and you won’t have time to think about the problems we have with the quality of the food that is being produced here at home. Along the same line, if you start a war in some other part of the world, the press will find neither time nor space to report on your domestic shortcomings. Oh, I started out to ask you. Can you tell me why it is no longer necessary to print the country of origin on the cans of food sold on store shelves today?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/07/26/china.products/index.html

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11. I recently got a chain letter from a dear friend. It was one of those “do you remember the good old days” chain letters. In one place it says, “I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60s & 70s…” One usually remembers the songs that were popular when one was in grade school up through high school and the friend who sent me this chain letter which waxes nostalgic over the great tunes of the 60s and 70s was in grade school in 1929. She was over 55 years old in the 70s, and by then her children had long since graduated from college. On June 22 she will be 87 years old but if she still has the strength and ability to dance to those wonderful tunes of the 60s and 70s I say, go for it.
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12. A few of the top teachers over at the high school started a program which introduces freshmen to the history and occupations here on the coast. They brought in my brother, Jim, to tell the students about local history, Sherm Hoyt to tell them about fishing, clams and lobsters, and me to talk about humor and storytelling as a natural resource. I’ve spoken at hundreds of banquets and have learned not to eat before I speak because if I eat, I'm likely to fall asleep. So I told the students that I never eat before I speak and asked them if they knew why. A young man named Shannon said, "Because you'd spit crumbs all over the audience." I once made my second appearance for a Connecticut company that had been forced to cancel the Christmas bonus. The overall mood was gloomy at best. I told the students that I'm very often asked back to speak to a group two or three times and that sometimes the second response is very different from the first. I asked them if they knew why. And Wayne Hilt's granddaughter said, "Because they had heard you before?" So fear not my friend. From what I heard from those high school freshmen, humor and storytelling will continue to be one of Maine’s most valuable resources.
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humble, I attended the MPBN public "hearing" in Waterville last Monday. I make a series of remarks - we'll call them "constructive criticism" - in the course of the evening, but I prefaced my first comment with the fact that I had been a public radio listener for over 25 years, and a member right up until they biffed off the humble Farmer. I got an immediate response from two heads in the audience that turned in my direction, a "hear, hear!" and further flogging of that dead horse. I was going to bring up the disclaimer thing again, but others were hammering it into the ground so I didn't need to. Beck got an earful, trust me. Makes me proud to see what good company I'm in.Pegg in Palmyra
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Those who miss laughing at my dry, surrealistic commentary might find an acceptable substitute in MPBN press releases.
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You are invited to stop by for supper anytime.
Robert Karl Skoglund

260 Hamlin Drive
Fort Myers, FL 33905
207-226-7442
humble@humblefarmer.com

Hear humble's radio show on his web page

http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/ThisWeek.html

See and hear humble tell stories on his web page:
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/

Hear dozens of humble's rants and even his radio show on PRX:

http://www.prx.org/Enjoy humble's music/humor program on Maine cable television stations:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/TvTowns.html

Did you know that Robert Skoglund, The humble Farmer, stands on stages and tells funny stories?Ask humble to entertain you and your friends with dry stories like these:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/PortlandA.html

You can visit humble and Marsha at their Bed & Breakfast on the coast of Maine.http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/BaB.html

PRPD News for Programmers --- letters to the editor --- about The humble Farmer and MPBN

2008-12-29T08:02:00.000-05:00

http://prpd-news.blogspot.com/2008/12/main-public-brodcasting-cuts-people.html

PRPD News for Programmers

Friday, December 19, 2008

Maine Public Broadcasting Cuts People & Salaries
The Maine Public Broadcasting Network today announced it was laying off eight people -- 7 percent of the staff -- and asking employees at all levels to take temporary pay cuts. Network President Jim Dowe -- who had his pay cut by 20 percent -- blamed the cuts on the sagging economy and the state's failure to fully fund the network, according to a news release posted on MPBN's Web site.

MPBN is also shutting down a television transmitter in Calais for six months, and radio transmitters in Calais and Fort Kent.

The reduction in salaries are to last through the end of the fiscal year on June 30. Three executives besides Dowe will lose 15 percent of their paychecks, while most other senior managers will have their salaries cut 10 percent. Pending approval by the union membership, the rest of the staff will see their pay cut by 5 percent.

MPBN is also suspending contributions to employees’ retirement plans.

MPBN Vice President David Morse says some financial problems date back to 1992 when the network was formed. He says the state agreed to pay for the network's construction and operation. But, while costs have gone up, the state's contribution has declined slightly, leaving MPBN to cover a $1.3 million annual shortfall, according to Morse.
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Posted by Hollis at 1:57 PM
Labels: Maine Public Broadcasting, Personnel
52 comments:
Bill Miller said...
MPBN is one of the very worst run public radio stations I have ever heard...it consistantly ignores the very people who support it. The Humble Farmer being fired for not signing a gag order is but one example...shameful. I would glady send money (as I know quite a few people would) if Beck gets the axe and Humble gets an apology. Until then...I guess I ll listen to radio on the internet. Good luck to Beck at Fox !

December 26, 2008 4:05 PM
Anonymous said...
MPBN lost $180,000 dollars when they censorsed their home grown humorist off the air. Put him back and the station won;t need to lay off or turn off anybody. I'll never give them a penny until he's back and I am one of many.

Olga Skorapa, PhD
Kennebunk, ME

December 26, 2008 4:10 PM
Gareth said...
I dropped my membership because of the shameful way that long time Jazz host, Robert Skoglund (The Humble Famer)was treated.

If Charles Beck issues an apology, I'll rejoin.

December 26, 2008 4:15 PM
Gareth said...
I dropped my membership because of the despicable way the "Humble Farmer" issue was handled.

If Charles Beck apologises to obert Skogland, I'd be glad to rejoin.

December 26, 2008 4:17 PM
Chris said...
How about this?

More Jazz! Bring back Humble Farmer!...maybe you'll get more money from US the people, who you say you are there for!

December 26, 2008 4:33 PM
arthurharvey said...
I often appreciate Maine Public Radio, but have not contributed since the Humble Farmer was kicked off, and for such flimsy reasons.

After Humble is restored, I will look kindly on your financial needs.

December 26, 2008 4:38 PM
hermit said...
This goes to illustrate just how corrupted MPBN has become. Imagine it ! - their top administrators are paid well in excess of $100,000 each and their assistants and their other assistants all highly paid individuals who don't produce nor present anything ! They have several fund raising weeks (beggarthons) every year just to raise money to cover their own salaries for that year. Now, they want to CUT access to PUBLIC media to the most needy. I say fire all of the brass who aren't actually in the production or presentation of programming and use the money to purchase even more quality programs.

Why,MPBN don't even list the income they get from ads placed by outfits who want to clean up their image after being reported for questionable practices in the news (i.e Plumb Creek, Archer Daniels etc etc).

Make the news then pay to sponsor the news and everything will look fine ! Not !

With broadband streams available from 1,000s of stations over the Internet - free, probably MPBN ought to reconsider their mean spirited, greedy and self serving maneuvers in these difficult times.

Time for a change !

December 26, 2008 4:41 PM
Anonymous said...
It's really too bad that mpbn was behind the political curve, bringing a right-wing agenda to a basically progressive state. Mpbn lost us as contributors when, among other transgressions, they fired the humble Farmer for speaking the truth. We won't be back.

December 26, 2008 4:48 PM
kilgorestudge said...
Brilliant leadership!

They have innovative ideas such as terminating the humble farmer (rather than issuing a disclaimer)who cost them almost nothing for 30 years ($35 a week for 3 years)alienating the many contributors who listened to his show for many years and costing thousands in contributions. Sixty legislators (who decide how much money MPBN gets from the state) and the Secretary of State signed a petition protesting humble’s dismissal by Jim Dowe and Charles Beck but in their wisdumb Dowe and Beck did not relent! They knew they couldn't afford to fill that one hour slot for the egregious price of $35! It would just be....well..... wrong!

I'm sure the employees taking pay cuts or getting terminated are brimming with compliments for their brilliant leaders when they get home at the end of the day.

David Spahr
Washington, Maine

December 26, 2008 4:58 PM
kilgorestudge said...
Brilliant leadership!

They have innovative ideas such as terminating the humble farmer (rather than issuing a disclaimer)who cost them almost nothing for 30 years ($35 a week for 3 years)alienating the many contributors who listened to his show for many years and costing thousands in contributions. Sixty legislators (who decide how much money MPBN gets from the state) and the Secretary of State signed a petition protesting humble’s dismissal by Jim Dowe and Charles Beck but in their wisdumb Dowe and Beck did not relent! They knew they couldn't afford to fill that one hour slot for the egregious price of $35! It would just be....well..... wrong!

I'm sure the employees taking pay cuts or getting terminated are brimming with compliments for their brilliant leaders when they get home at the end of the day.

David Spahr
Washington, Maine

December 26, 2008 4:59 PM
Anonymous said...
Personally when they gave Humble Farmer the business, wanted him to sign the equivalent of a loyalty oath and restricted his right to free speech that was the final straw for me. I stopped contributing at that point. He is a Maine icon and to think he did that all those years for little money.
Public has gone more and more conservative and the programming now is really annoying. I am a Brit Comedy fan and the times got changed and then they have had infomercials on for two saturday nights in a row. That did it. I decided that public tv did not need me. I was willing to contribute for those two things on tv and radio. So I have bought the Brit comedies so I can watch them any time I please and not be disappointed.
Another thing that really gets to me is the constant interruptions for weather warnings right at the important parts of the shows. The idea of public serving as the emergency station is kind of ridiculous. WHen we had the ice storm or any storm they are off the air first. There was a little radio station in Bangor that stayed on 24 hrs through the ice storm. They were wonderful.
I hate to see public broadcasting go but the way it is going perhaps it is time. I used to be a constant listener to public radio. I had it on 24 hours a day because I love classical music. Now they feel they have to be everything to everybody and they aren't doing most of it well. Perhaps it is time for an overhaul and some new management.

December 26, 2008 5:19 PM
Anonymous said...
MPBN has lost contributions since their brutal treatment of Robert Skoglund, who broadcast for 25 years as The Humble Farmer. They attempted blatant censorship and forced him from the air, leading in part to a petition from the Legislature with 80 signatures protesting the station's tactics. In claiming only expenses as a reason for cuts, the station is being thoroughly dishonest about its situation and policies. If this is "public" broadcasting, the media are in a sad - and self-deceptive - state.

December 26, 2008 5:23 PM
Greg McCullough said...
I am one of hundreds, I am sure, who has stopped donating to MPBN in response to its censorship of the Humble Farmer. We will not resume our financial support until the Humble Farmer returns without censorship. When will MPBN acknowledge that this protest is a principal reason if not the sole reason for its financial difficulties?
-Greg McCullough, attorney,
Sanford, Maine

December 26, 2008 5:40 PM
Anonymous said...
The economy is a convenient excuse for the execution of plans long in place. MPBN has been systematically pursuing the desertion of Eastern Maine for some time. Moving TV production and radio control out of Bangor to southern Maine, building a digital TV station to replace channel 12 in Bangor that has a directional pattern aimed south so it doesn't even reliably serve its city of license Orono, all these show the lack of commitment to serve ALL of Maine. I imagine they miss the revenue that was lost from eliminating long-time popular programming like The Humble Farmer. Say, what company actually owns the TV tower in Dixmont that was paid for by a government grant to MPBN? Perhaps someone should look into that.

December 26, 2008 5:51 PM
r.w.hannemann said...
Might the drop in donations be related to censoring the humble farmer off the air? It stopped mine.

December 26, 2008 6:38 PM
Bill said...
I suggest that you could help MPBN out of the current financial morass by bringing back The humble Farmer. His loyal listeners contributed significant $$$ but they don't no more. You could just quietly re-instate him and we wouldn't even make a crow pie for your lunch

December 26, 2008 7:00 PM
Anonymous said...
If Jim Dowe and Charles Beck do not have enough money to run MPBN they should reconsider their dismissal of Robert Skogland and his Humble Farmer music show rather than shutting down facilities and cutting off service to listeners.

I know for a fact, from my own personal experience, that they do not have $190. of my money (two year's contributions) because of this single unreasonable action on their part. There are many many others in Maine who feel the same, including sixty state legislators who vote on funding for MPBN.

Only Dowe and Beck know in their own hearts why they dismissed Mr. Skogland, but it appears to me that it was without logical reasonable explanation and that it seems to me they are in the business of slowly turning down the volume on open public radio here in the good State of Maine. Will anyone notice what is happening before the volume on free speech is all the way down to "off?"

John Leeke
Portland, Maine

December 26, 2008 7:19 PM
john said...
If Jim Dowe and Charles Beck do not have enough money to run MPBN they should reconsider their dismissal of Robert Skogland and his Humble Farmer music show rather than shutting down facilities and cutting off service to listeners.

I know for a fact, from my own personal experience, that they do not have $190. of my money (two year's contributions) because of this single unreasonable action on their part. There are many many others in Maine who feel the same, including sixty state legislators who vote on funding for MPBN.

Only Dowe and Beck know in their own hearts why they dismissed Mr. Skogland, but it appears to me that it was without logical reasonable explanation and that it seems to me they are in the business of slowly turning down the volume on open public radio here in the good State of Maine. Will anyone notice what is happening before the volume on free speech is all the way down to "off?"

John Leeke
Portland, Maine

December 26, 2008 7:19 PM
Jeff said...
Granted that Maine public broadcasting is facing a severe budget crisis, is cutting off the signal in part of the state an appropriate response? I say no, that it is a betrayal of the public trust to do so. Probably they hope that the state legislature will help, but that is unlikely for two reasons: (1) the drastic budget cuts the state legislature must enact because of the recession will prevent them from giving more to Maine public broadcasting, and (2) resentment that the legislators feel, both personally and after hearing from constituents, over Maine public radio's firing, last year, of a state treasure, humorist Robert Skoglund, aka The humble Farmer, which also cost them a tremendous amount of dollars in individual contributions from people who refused to renew membership because Skoglund's radio program and Maine humor had been taken away from them. Instead, I believe that Maine public broadcasting should cut back strongly in the area of public television, which is expensive, and where they do not compete well. They should restore the radio signal, where they do reach a wide audience. If they keep the stations off in Washington and Aroostook Counties, can they expect any more listener and business contributions from these areas? They are "cutting off their nose to spite their face." Reinstate The humble Farmer, turn the radio stations back on, and cut back on the tv programming to save money.

December 26, 2008 7:27 PM
Anonymous said...
I have diverted my funds for public radio to WMPG. This is a direct result of the censorship of Robert Skoglund aka the humble farmer. I know I'm not alone. I feel badly for the people who have now lost their jobs because of this (indirectly). I hope that either NH public Radio or someone like minded can find room for these people on their staff.

December 26, 2008 8:22 PM
Anonymous said...
Very interesting. Has MPBN considered how much money it would have in pledges if they had not cancelled The Humble Farmer? I for one have not pledged since and will not again until he is back on the air. Thankfully I can pledge to New Hampshire Public Radio who appreciates my donation.

December 26, 2008 9:00 PM
Anonymous said...
I stopped giving money to MPBN due to their lack of stewardship of their user community. The process by which they excised the Humble Farmer from the lineup & lack of response to community concerns was the last straw. In this day of multi-channel distribution, I choose to give money to the stations that produce the programming I enjoy: WBUR, WBEZ, etc. rather than feeble local networks.

December 26, 2008 10:05 PM
Ron Huber said...
Maine Public Broadcasting has made several poor choices over the past few years, that have contributed to their now-shaky fiscal situation.

Chief among these was the decision in June 2007 to terminate the immensely popular weekly comedy and jazz show "The Humble Farmer" after 28 years at the station, for show producer/comedian Robert Skoglund's refusal to end his occasional satirical pieces about the president's decision to invade Iraq, said satire being apparently offensive to President George W Bush, whose family has a home in Maine.

Maine Public Broadcasting Network could easily restore about $200,000 yearly to their coffers by bringing Skoglund back on air. This sum is based on the number of listeners and sponsors who left following his dismissal and would almost certainly return if he does.
-RH

December 26, 2008 11:10 PM
Anonymous said...
I think it is pretty obvious the MPBN is being incompetently run. It can't make up its mind what it wants to be and has deteriorated into a hobby for overpaid commercial network wannabees. It's pretty obvious they don't care much for the "public" in their name (just their wallets).

I think the best thing would be for MPBN to shut down completely, get rid of the rotten management, and start over building a real public radio network like they have in the rest of New England.

December 27, 2008 1:30 AM
Rick Alexander said...
I'm sure revenue is down in this economy...which necessitates some hard choices, like MPBN is considering.
But it is worth considering that MPBN revenue decreased ~$175,000 following pulling a statewide, very popular personality off the air about 18 months ago for an opinion that was really much less controversial than many other regular commentators.
I will continue to be a donating member but a very suspicious one.
Rick Alexander

December 27, 2008 10:36 AM
Anonymous said...
I will never give another dime to MPBN radio or tv until you put The humble farmer back on the air.

The person(s) who kicked him off the air do not know the maine people and should either resign or be disnissed because they blew this one big time.

December 27, 2008 11:04 AM
Anonymous said...
no humble - no money from me

December 27, 2008 11:05 AM
Anonymous said...
There are plenty of ways to cut costs without cutting off listeners. Service to all, limited if necessary, is MPBN's real mandate and must be held inviolable.

December 27, 2008 11:15 AM
Anonymous said...
The most popular program, at least for me, was the humble Farmer with his unique mix of humor/satire and excellent vintage jazz. This was the reason I became a subcriber to MPBN several years ago. When humble was ousted, I left. 'Nuff said.

December 27, 2008 3:01 PM
editor said...
I second some of the above recommendations. Cut the salaries of the people at the top. And keep serving all of Maine.

December 27, 2008 6:12 PM
Jack Scotland said...
I like huMble
I like Tea
I like MPBN
But it doesn't like me

MPBN shut of huMble
MPBN stifled free speech
MPBN cries money wolf
And expects me for my wallet to reach

I like huMble
I like Tea
I like MPBN
But it doesn't like me

Graham in Portland, Maine

December 27, 2008 8:53 PM
Anonymous said...
Maine Public Broadcasting made a huge mistake when they tried to strangle Humble Farmer. From the Live Free and Die State...I never never listen to MPB now...just on damn principle! That was just hugely wrong!

Apologize nationally and then follow up with a donation week hosted by Humble. You will see a huge increase in contributions.

December 27, 2008 9:15 PM
Anonymous said...
I disagree with nost here. Humble Farmer did a good job of presenting jazz but his comment and "Rants" are inane and boring. Why was he the only one not to sign the agreement on show format? It was not censorship.

December 27, 2008 9:29 PM
canoeman said...
I was disgusted the way the Humble Farmer was treated by the management at MPBN. Not only does he deserve an apology, but his show should be reinstated with back pay!. My membership in MPBN will cease till he is back.

The management at MPBN has successfully taken the PUBLIC out of PUBLIC radio. Shame on YOU!
If the Prairie Home Companion is next to be axed, I will stop listening altogether.

Bill Miller, Nictau, NB

December 27, 2008 9:48 PM
Jim said...
MPBN seems to be living in the past. Too much staff, not enough streamlining of operations. I don't understand why they continue to purchase increasing amounts of expensive content from elsewhere, and then try to save money by turning off towers and stations in northern Maine, loosing any support and contributions there. I think the audience base would be perfectly happy to have more repeats of some content (like how Car Talk and Praire Home are repeated), especially if it meant that with the savings (from not buying so many unique programs) they could keep the other stations on the air. Really, not everyone watches or listens to MPBN for 30 or 50 hours a week. I would actually argue that repeats in the schedule would actually be an improvement for many folks, making it easier to catch your favorite shows. I do watch and listen to some programming each week, probably less than 8 hours in total. But much of what I want is available via podcasts.

MPBN needs to cut their staff further (unfortunately) and reduce the number of studios, offices, and production locations. They probably should be outsourcing some of their engineering and technical operations, if they can be done for less expense that way. Keep the quality news organization, but streamline the hours of manned operations everywhere. In essence, act like every competitive organization has to act in the 21st century. Oh, and actually listening to their "customers" might be a good start.

I used to support MPBN both personally and corporately, but I have not in several years, and I will not again until the current management changes.

December 27, 2008 10:08 PM
Anonymous said...
My wife and I were big supporters of MPBN until the gagging and firing of humble.

MPBN has lost many hundreds in donations from us for this reason alone.

Apparently MPBN does not care what it's donors and supporters think, regardless of the lip service they give,

Bring back humble, or no dollars for you!

Duncan Potter
Cape Elizabeth

December 27, 2008 11:13 PM
Anonymous said...
Maine Public radio bears the imprint of the personalities who control its programming, Beck and Dowe, and the result is not attractive. The network is increasingly run as a private club by those who control it, and God help the on-air staff who might dare to poke fun at the fading political party that has so thoroughly damaged America.

Sadly, MPBN radio has become least of all about Maine. The shameful hounding off the air visited on veteran broadcaster Robert Skoglund was one more step in removing what interests Maine people from MPBN's airwaves. Heaven forbid that we should have a genuine Maine humorist on the air when we can fill the airtime with more NPR fluff. Skoglund was, of course, forced out for refusing to sign what amounted to a "confession," such as the East German STASI used to demand of those it threatened to silence.

As MPBN's programming has pathetically narrowed,its loud announcements of self-congratulation have grown more numerous. I stopped contributing the day the Humble Farmer was made to leave, and I have also removed a very substantial planned bequest to MPBN from my will.

MPBN's Board, apparently an arm of the Maine Republican Party, remains silent and allows Beck and Dowe to proceed with the damage.

December 27, 2008 11:30 PM
Martin McIntosh said...
When I took the time to write a letter to MPBN to share my concerns for the sacking of the Hunble Farmer I got an arrogant form letter in return. Beck and Morin were nothing but hypocritical in their defense of their actions. That did it for me--my company no longer sponsors MPBN. Instead we're sending our money to WERU, where at least if we don't agree with what is being said we can simply turn it off. When the facists at MPBN go and Humble is allowed back on the air without having to sign some sort of ridiculous pledege to behave I'll open up my pocketbook again.

December 27, 2008 11:45 PM
rodporte said...
I have a friend who has been a regular contributor to MPBN over the years. She sent in money every year even though she was mainly here as a summer resident. When she heard that the humble farmer was fired she asked me to contact the station for her. I was treated very dismissively by the station. They rather obviously valued neither my opinion nor that of my friend. I was a very irregular contributor while my friend represented a good steady amount of money each year. I started listening to other stations over the Internet. My friend stopped sending money to MPBN radio and was more selective about supporting the TV station. I became a member of WERU,one of our state's alternatives to MPBN. Even now, when MPBN needs money they do not ask for or offer to respect our opinion. They make excuses, but they don't ask what they can do to get more listeners to contribute money again.

December 28, 2008 12:47 AM
Anonymous said...
Has MPBN considered how much money it would have in pledges if they had not cancelled The Humble Farmer? I have not pledged since and will not again until he is back on the air.
When I told them I canceled because they canceled The humble Farmer they did not care. I don't think they had any idea of the financial impact of the firing of humble.
I am sorry for the folks losing their jobs and will again support MPBN as soon as humble is back on the air.

Tom Falciglia
Harpswell,ME
Bonita Springs, FL

December 28, 2008 5:47 AM
LFNeilson said...
No humble, no money. It's that simple.
Larz Neilson
East Boothbay

December 28, 2008 7:37 AM
A Native Mainer said...
I am appalled at the way the Maine Public Broadcasting Network has treated one of its most popular, and exceptionally creative, freelance radio-show hosts, Robert Skoglund (affectionately known as the Humble Farmer). I have been following the disturbing saga of the censorship of his wonderful show for months and still cannot believe that MPBN's administrators would show such poor judgment.

While I realize that MPBN is not WERU, I have always believed it was a far more enlightened and progressive source of news and commentary than most other national broadcast outlets. What has happened to Humble has convinced me that I was sadly mistaken.

To make matters even worse, as I was astonished to learn from a recent article in Harper's magazine, the News Hour with Jim Lehrer prohibits its commentators from using the word "torture" with reference to the Bush administration's interrogation policies. In other words, if one wishes to appear on that show, one must accept a preemptive muzzling.

It begins to seem, alas, that something is rotten at the core of "public" broadcasting.

December 28, 2008 7:53 AM
Vicky Fimiani said...
MPBN has lost my $$contribution due to the dismissal of Humble Farmer. I have to snicker when during their pleas for contributions they gush about how they offer "opinions that you may not otherwise hear". They say their station is a platform for discussion. I am a registered democrat, but consider myself a libertarian. I was never offended by Humble's rants about George Bush (even though I voted for him) I really miss his show. I loved to do some late night baking while listening to him. I now have to question everything I hear on NPR (is this person too being censored?) What a bummer

December 28, 2008 8:16 AM
Brad from Bayside said...
I used to donate to the auction at MPBN every year, but have switched my support to WERU when MPBN dumped The Humble Farmer. His crime; he didn't approve of the Bush administration! Beck is cut from the same cloth as Bush and Cheney and can go wherever they go when they die.
Beck, be sure to post these comments on your resume.
Brad Williams of Bayside Maine

December 28, 2008 9:05 AM
Keith F said...
It appears that the corporations and thin-skinned individuals who were supposedly protected by MPBN's decision to censor the humble Farmer's humor are not stepping up with funds. Perhaps in the next year when it becomes popular and acceptable to comment on the fecklessness of the past president and administration, MPBN will be able to invite the humble Farmer back without losing face.

December 28, 2008 9:10 AM
Peggy Gannon said...
I see a lot of angry people here, and I'm another. I have told Charles Beck multiple times, in person and electronically, that my wallet remains closed until Karl Skoglund, the humble Farmer, is restored. Biffing off Skoglund was more than an attack on free speech: it was intimidation, nothing less. "Sign your oath of allegiance to our politics, or your career in Maine Public Radio is over." Those who signed had much at stake; Skoglund, at $30/week (and that only for the last year or so -- look at the years they got out of him for free!) -- could afford to thumb his nose at their attempts to silence him.

I've been a listener for about 30 years, and a member for many of them. I've witnessed public radio's downward slide. Remember Morning Pro Musica? Afternoon music spots? Brilliant educational pubic affairs hours? Now we have foisted on us "Speaking in Maine" and tedious recycled call-in shows. If talk radio was what I wanted, I know where to go for that. I valued my pubic radio station for its former thoughtful programming.

Skoglund could be re-scheduled for $30/week. Like your fundraising pleas say, that's less than management spends at Starbucks. I keep reading estimates of the $180 k/year you'd pick up by bringing him back. Not a bad trade.

Of course it was never about the money anyway.

Peggy Gannon
Palmyra, Maine

December 28, 2008 10:12 AM
Matt Power said...
I'm yet another former listener who abandoned MPBN when in the past few years they quite clearly decided to embrace right-wing corporatism. Instead of asking hard questions about disastrous "trickle down" politics coming out of Washington, they gave the neocons an even bigger radio megaphone than they already had on talk radio--and threw away what little honest content they had left. Charles Beck's decision to force the Humble Farmer off the air was not just arrogant but supremely idiotic--he's probably thrown himself out of a job. Why is it that the most incompetent people seem to be the last ones to go?

December 28, 2008 10:18 AM
Doug said...
I support MPBN Radio because I like much of the programming. (There isn't much worth listening to on commercial radio in Maine.) That having been said, however, I agree with my fellow-bloggers: the way MPBN is run leaves much to be desired. Interesting, isn't it, that several years ago historically upper-crust Camden got its own MPBN station --- which it didn't need, as the Orono and Portland stations come in loud and clear there --- while we in west central Maine, one of the poorer areas of the state, continue to struggle with a lousy signal. I can barely receive MPBN in my car (which has a very good radio), and wouldn't be able to at home if it weren't for the internet and my radio being hooked up to the TV cable. I've complained numerous times; the response has always been "We're working on that." Yeah, right. MPBN operates in much the same way as many Maine state services operate: on the supposition that there are "two Maines." The regions of the state that are able to provide the greatest budgetary support get the perks. The rest don't.

As for my friend the humble Farmer, his treatment was duplicitous and shoddy. MPBN has, it would seem, a double standard. Garrison Keillor can remain on the air despite his blatant jibes at George Bush; Robert Skoglund, on the other hand, got slapped with a gag order because of mere inferences. But then, Keillor is NATIONALLY popular and MPBN wouldn't want to lose him . . .

December 28, 2008 10:30 AM
Anonymous said...
MPBN actually compares well with sister systems elsewhere in the country, contrary to what has been alleged here. However, MPBN is too insular for its own good and, as always, organizational leadership ignores membership at its own peril. It is high time that at least some of MPBN's Board Members be elected directly by membership vote. The Board has become monochromatic and, unbelievably, no Board Member resumes are available online. Jim Dowe, still a relative new-comer, could distinguish himself by pushing for much needed reforms but to do so he will have to take on the very people who were counting on him to not rock their boat.

December 28, 2008 1:43 PM
Susan and John Gold said...
We would like to support our state's public radio station, but we had to withdraw our pledge after MPBN showed its disdain for free speech and viewers' opinions by axing the humble Farmer's show. Instead, we send our contributions to other charities that have earned our trust. As a young teenager, our son developed his love for jazz listening to humble's show and gave his first contribution to MPBN when he was 15 to show his appreciation for the program. Bring back humble and we will rejoin as members.
Susan and John Gold, Biddeford, ME

December 28, 2008 1:50 PM
Anonymous said...
Dismissing a commentator for his opinion on a publicly funded media is a despicable action, unworthy of the values of this community. MPBN is a fraud.

December 28, 2008 4:42 PM
Robin from Maine said...
I am another long-time member who stopped contributing because of the Humble Farmer. I put up with the homogenization of programming, the increasing fluff on the national news programs, and the intrusion of PBS into Airplay. The recent 2008 retrospective=pledge drive would have been more convincing if they had had Bob Edwards on rather than touting Steve Insipid and Renee Monotonous, but the disgraceful termination of Humble was the last straw, and squarely down to Maine Public Radio, rather than NPR.

December 28, 2008 6:19 PM

Laissez-Faire Capitalism Should Be as Dead as Soviet Communism

2008-12-23T17:35:00.000-05:00

Arianna Huffington

Posted December 22, 2008 | 02:47 PM (EST)

Laissez-Faire Capitalism Should Be as Dead as Soviet Communism

The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking.

The only place you can find an American Marxist these days is teaching a college linguistic theory class. But you can find all manner of free market fundamentalists still on the Senate floor or in Governor's mansions or showing up on TV trying to peddle the deregulation snake oil.

Take Sen. John Ensign, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who went on Face the Nation and, with a straight face, said of the economic meltdown: "Unfortunately, it was allowed to be portrayed that this was a result of deregulation, when in fact it was a result of overregulation."

Or Gov. Mark Sanford, who told Joe Scarborough he was against bailing out the auto industry because it would "threaten the very market-based system that has created the wealth that this country has enjoyed."

If a politician announced he was running on a platform of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" he would be laughed off the stage. That is also the correct response to anyone who continues to make the case that markets do best when left alone.

It's time to drive the final nail into the coffin of laissez-faire capitalism by treating it like the discredited ideology it inarguably is. If not, the Dr. Frankensteins of the right will surely try to revive the monster and send it marauding through our economy once again.

We've only just begun to bury the financially dead, and the free market fundamentalists are already looking to deflect the blame.

In a comprehensive piece on what led to the mortgage crisis and the subsequent financial meltdown, the New York Times shows how the Bush administration's devotion to unregulated markets was a primary cause of our economy to ruin. But the otherwise fascinating piece puts too much focus on the "mistakes" the Bush team made by not paying attention to the warning signs popping up all around them.

"There is no question we did not recognize the severity of the problems," claimed Al Hubbard, Bush's former chief economic adviser. "Had we, we would have attacked them."
But the mistake wasn't in not recognizing the "severity of the problems" -- the mistake was the ideology that led to the problems. Communism didn't fail because Soviet leaders didn't execute it well enough. Same with free market fundamentalism. In fact, Bush and his team did a bang-up job executing a defective theory. The problem wasn't just the bathwater; the baby itself is rotten to the core.

William Seidman, the longtime GOP economic advisor who oversaw the S&L bailout in 1991, cuts to the chase: "This administration made decisions that allowed the free market to operate as a barroom brawl instead of a prize fight. To make the market work well, you have to have a lot of rules."

Even Alan Greenspan, whose owl-eyed visage would adorn a Mount Rushmore of unregulated capitalists, has begun to see the light, telling a House committee in October that he "made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."

But most Republicans are still refusing to see what's right in front of them. Especially Bush, our CEO president, who lays the blame not on the failures of the marketplace but on past administrations and corporate greed. "Wall Street got drunk," he says. Maybe so, but who made the last 8 years Happy Hour, and kept serving up the drinks?

Last week, Ben Smith reported that the GOP was launching "a new, in-house think tank aimed at reviving the party's policy heft." In a private memo explaining the think tank, RNC chairman Mike Duncan wrote: "We must show how our ideology can be applied to solve problems." But, of course, it's that very ideology that's causing the problems. It's like the old horror movie cliché: "We've traced the call -- it's coming from inside the house!"

We've got to do everything we can to make sure there will be no sequels to this political horror. The blame shifters cannot be allowed to make their case without the truth being pointed out at every turn. It's time to relegate free market fundamentalists to the same standing as Marxist ideologues: intellectual curiosities occasionally trotted out as relics of a failed philosophy.

The humble Farmer Rants for December 7, 2008 Radio Show

2008-12-09T14:57:00.000-05:00

December 7, 2008 Rants

1. Because I am not going to live forever I went in to see my friend, Lawyer Crandall, about updating my will. Crandall said I had to get an executor I could trust with money. And I said, “When it comes to money you can’t trust anybody.” And Lawyer Crandall said, “It’s a good thing that’s true or I’d be out of business.”
+
2. You have heard me boast --- perhaps on too many occasions --- that I haven’t had a cookie or a piece of cake or a taste of ice cream for over four years. If you are tired of hearing about my adventure in healthy living, you might sympathize with my wife Marsha who prepares my meals. Yes, unless you count honey from my own bees, I’ve had no sweets now for 51 months and as a result I have lost 15 pounds. I am proud that I can not only tie my shoestrings --- I can stand up after I have finished. Then, this morning during exercise class, another benchmark: for the first time in perhaps 30 years, in order to keep my pants from falling down around my knees I had to take in my ancient leather belt one more notch. When I mentioned it to Marsha, she said, “Your belt is stretching.”
+
3. Radio friend Jay down in Topsham who read my comments on working in 1955 writes: “I, too, have started looking at the earliest year that shows up in the little date pop-ups in Web pages. I only sign up when my birth year is available. Otherwise, how will I participate if I don't exist?” Thank you for writing.
+
4. A friend of mine, who lives with his two daughters, told his sister that he was looking for someone special. She said, "I don't know why my brother needs somebody special. He's already got his two kids --- he could round out that little group with anybody for a weekend."
+
5. Brad Terry was rehearsing for a concert with a group of high school kids, and one trumpet player couldn’t get the intro right on Fascinating Rhythm. So when everyone else had left, Brad worked with this kid for two hours, and finally said, “Well, you’ve got it perfect for the concert tomorrow. And the kid said, “I’m not playing the concert. I only came in to help out with the rehearsal.”
+
6. One of my all-time favorite comments came from Mr. Pease, who was my history teacher back when I was an undergraduate at Gorham. On the margin of my essay he wrote: “This is very well written, but you haven’t said anything.” I cherish that remark because almost 50 years ago Mr. Pease saw something that directed the course of my life. Years later when my humor column was carried in dozens of newspapers, I realized that, as Mr. Pease had noticed, I was incapable of original thought but had some small talent when it came to synthesis: that’s a nice way of saying that I was never to be more than an editor for the wit and perception of others. So besides immediately writing down every interesting thing I heard, I also cultivated a coterie of witty friends who filled pages of my notebooks with good things. I adapted these good things for newspapers, the radio, television and the stage. And this is the point of my commentary today. You heard me say that I adapted the comments of my friends. That is, I often had to tweak a story this way or that to get the most out of it. You can be sure that other writers or storytellers have done the same thing for ages. Is this not a sobering point for reflection? No good story is ever quite true. I admit it. I just read that last sentence in a book.
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7. My friend Winky and I were in the men’s room at a fast food place in Rockland, when Winky hollered at me from the stall, “Any paper towels out there?” I said, “No only one of those air drying machines.” He said, “Can I --- can I have your handkerchief?” I felt in my pocket and said, “Bad news, I forgot to bring one this morning. Winky said, “Have you got two fives for a ten?”
+
8. You might remember me saying a week or so ago that when you get to be my age it is not uncommon to have an old friend stagger up to you in a store or on the street and croak, “My word. I thought you were dead.” I am resigned to this. Two days ago my wife Marsha went out to answer a knock at the door and then hollered, “It’s an old school friend of yours.” I said, “Well, wheel him in.”
+
9. The last time I visited my friend Winky, I noticed that he had a horseshoe nailed over the door in his workshop. I said, “Do you really believe that a horseshoe nailed over the door really brings you luck?” And Winky said, “Of course I don’t believe it. But it brings you luck whether you believe in it or not.”
+
10. My friend Winky has an old piano in his living room. The finish on the piano looks like new but I had to ask Winky why the keys were all yellow. Winky said, “The elephant smoked too much.”
+
11. My friend Winky bought a mess of hens and told me he was going into the chicken business. I asked him if he knew anything about breeding chickens and he said, “No, but the chickens do.”
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12. St. George, Maine is right infested with artists so I wasn’t surprised to hear that Winky’s daughter had posed nude for an artist all last winter. I asked Winky why in the world he had ever let her do that and he said, “Why not? He had a stove in the studio.”
+
13. My friend Winky was all set to check out of the store with a can of coffee when he looked in his wallet and found it to be empty. But when he looked up he saw his neighbor and said, “Loan me $20 so I can buy this can of coffee.” But, as so often happens with many of us when we don’t write things down, Winky forgot to pay his neighbor the $20. --- Until weeks later when his neighbor called him and asked if there was anything he could get for him while he was in town. Winky said, “Yes, buy me a can of coffee and take it out of that 20 I owe ya.”
+
14. Here’s your wisdom for today: The journey of a thousand miles starts with going back in the house to look for the keys to your truck.

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See humble tell stories on his web page:

http://thehumblefarmer.com/

2008-12-03T21:04:00.000-05:00

Uncle Jack Meets The humble Farmer

2008-12-03T19:57:00.000-05:00

http://www.obxconnection.com/blogs/blog_entry.aspx?BHID=1&MID=6&YID=2007

posted by Uncle Jack at 6:58 AM
Comments [1]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Uncle Jack meets the Humble Farmer, 6/21/2007

Uncle Jack first heard the radio show called "The Humble Farmer" last September when he and Mrs. U.J. visited Camden for the first time. It's a simple show consisting of one hour of what Humble calls "old fashioned music" interspersed with his commentaries, which he calls "rants", on whatever comes to his well stocked mind---all delivered in an authentic Maine accent which he comes by naturally having lived in St. George, Maine all his life.

When Uncle Jack first heard the show he thought it was one of the funniest programs he had ever heard in his life and having listened to dozens more in the past few months he has no reason to change his opinion. The Humble Farmer, aka Robert Skoglund, is a very funny man who also has exquisite taste in jazz music of the 20's and 30's which also happens to be Uncle Jack's favorite kind.

Humble has been entertaining New Englanders (Uncle Jack's daughter Emily listened to him faithfully when she lived in Massachusetts twenty years ago) on Maine Public Radio for nearly three decades. He has a huge following in these parts who were devastated a week ago when the arch-conservative idiots who currently run Maine Public Radio unceremoniously booted him off the air for making unacceptable (to them) political comments.

Fortunately for his listeners he continues to produce his program each week which can be heard through his website www.humblefarmer.com until such time that the right wing poobahs at MPR can be made to see the error of their ways.

Uncle Jack's birthday dawned bright and beautiful this morning and he could not think of a better way to celebrate it than by driving down to St. George in the Mini and saying hello to Humble and his wife, Marsha, whom he calls "the almost perfect woman". He also wanted to present Humble with a gift he imported from Minnesota, namely a cap inscribed "It's Hard to be Humble When You're Swedish", which Robert Skoglund, like U.J., happens to be.

Even though we were unexpected visitors the Skoglunds greeted us like we were old friends and by the time we left an hour later, staggering under armloads of fresh rhubarb and pieces of blueberry cake baked by Marsha this morning, we actually felt like old friends.

If you like to laugh by all means check out the Humble Farmer's website which is a hoot in itself. www.humblefarmer.com

Unless you are a very strange person you will be glad you did.

click for larger image The Humble Farmer with visitors from Outer Space

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Sorry Uncle Jack. The humble Farmer doesn't know how to put pictures on his blog.

Nigerian Scam Letter

2008-10-19T18:33:00.001-04:00

OFFICE OF THE TREASURER GENERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA.
DESK OF: ALHAJI. IBRAHIM. H. DANKWAMBO
E-MAIL:
TEL: +234 7023186029

I AM SECRETARY OF MINISTRY OF TRESURY OF SMALL AFRICAN NATION.

I MUST SHARE MY CONFIDENCE WITH YOU IN TRUST:

I WAS PLANNING TO SEND AN EMAIL TO RIP OFF RICH AMERICANS LIKE YOU.

AFTER LAST WEEK OF FINANCIAL NEWS, I NO LONGER HAVE THE HEART TO DO THIS.

CLEARLY AMERICANS HAVE ALREADY BEEN SCAMMED ENOUGH BY BEST IN WALL ST - MUCH BETTER THAN ME AND MY FRIENDS.

I CAN NO LONGER COMPETE WITH SUCH CLEVER AMERICANS WHO HAVE RIPPED OFF FELLOW COUNTRYMAN FOR TRILIONS OF USD.

PLEASE ACCEPT OUR SINSERE CONDOLENCES ON YOUR LOSS OF YOUR LIFE SAVINGS.

BEST REGARDS,

ALHAJI. IBRAHIM. H. DANKWAMBO
TREASURER GENERAL OF THE FEDERATION OF NIGERIAN REPUBLIC

Universal Health Care

2008-08-14T09:16:00.001-04:00

An email that came this morning said:

humble,
I collected signatures for the People's Veto for the Real-Id (/your /national ID number- in case you were tired of your social security
number) this morning and a guy next sitting to me was collecting signatures to repeal the one cent tax on soda, wine and beer (only
those made out-of-state.) So as I was talking to the guy, I realized
that the bill that he is trying to get repealed includes a 1.8% surcharge on all paid insurance claims which means- guess what- when providers are paid- 1.8% will be taken out which will go toward covering Dirigo, just like the one extra cent you will pay for your imported beer, wine and soda- that I know, you, humble- because you drink so much beer, wine and soda will be paying. It was at about 10:00am- an hour into sitting next to the guy that I realized that really I should be signing his petition- which I won't sign because- as I told him- I am ok with paying an extra cent, since I drink so much wine, beer and soda, and yes-as Anthem and all the other insurance companies have abandoned their other technique for messing with providers (and with
patients) - managed care- they have wracked their brains to find other ways to pass along costs to providers so they can- you got it- continue to pay their chief executive officers 44 million dollars so they will have enough money to pay their 200,000 dollars worth of student loans they they incurred after they went to Medical School or is it the 100,000 dollars in student loans after they got their doctorates or is it after they finished their Masters in Business Administration , which only takes 2 years so that would be their 45,000 dollars in student loans. And of course they /*need */those degrees because if you are going to be a practicing health care provider then you have to have the credential first which, of course, as chief executive officers they would need that because before they become chief executive officers for insurance companies, first of all they have to become licensed in the state that they live in as, ok, forget that, maybe they don't have to get licensed by their state licensing board in order to be chief executive officers. But they need that 44 million dollars. Why else would they pay themselves that much money? Why would they possibly be so egregiously cheap as to take yet another nickle out of providers here in
Maine- rather than write the bill so that it comes out insurance companies? And we can of course bring up the old niggling matter- because this entire tax on both providers and on beer, wine and soda drinkers is designed to support Dirigo Health - which - all by itself- right here in the little itty bitty state of Maine- is doing more to decimate a positive vision for universal health care than any insurance CEO could ever do- in part because- sure as shooting-- they got a good run on self-sabotage early on by trusting the biggest stakeholder (in this case we'll call it a stab-holder because that's what they did with the stake)- Anthem- with running it for them which of course no one in their right mind- we can say fondly - now- looking back with what can only be called X-ray vision- would have believed was not going to happen. Eventually, I told the guy that I was going to suck it up and pay my 1.8%. Providers are used be messed with by insurance companies and of course we all have some lingering hope that Dirigo will work and become universal health care. At least it is not Maine Care which is another story. I think I actually succeeded in guilt tripping the guy a little because what he ended up syaing is his petition was about whether or not you supported Dirigo which is not accurate. To get back to the niggling point, the more accurate thing to say would be:
Do you think that legislators, Insurance companies, the state of Maine's budget, the Governor should avoid any and all ways of having the cost Dirigo come out of their pocket and pass it along to providers and soda drinkers and people who drink beer and wine made out-of-state? Sign here. It is called equal opportunity without the equal. I hope he realized I was sucking it up more than he was. But to get back to the CEOs, I think this why they get 44 million dollars- for thinking up stuff like this.-s

The humble Farmer on MPBN: You were the best show on there! The humor and jazz were the perfect ending to a work week.

2008-03-20T11:24:00.000-04:00

March 20, 2008,

Here is a letter from Mason who says,

“I lived in Maine for 9 wonderful, soulful and eye opening years. I came from the south, no not Portland but Atlanta, and found myself and who I was, in Maine.

You were a big part of that.

On Friday nights, because my tv had given out and I didn't want to pay for the cable to be strung down our road to my house, I listened to you and then the late Ed Bradley and Jazz from Lincoln Center while I tied my Caddis flies for the upcoming summer.

I have since moved away from Maine, but think about it daily and miss it with a broken heart.

Today I went onto the Maine Public Radio site to see if I could still hear your show on Friday nights.

It made me sad to see that your show was no longer in the line-up.

You were the best show on there!

The humor and jazz were the perfect ending to a work week. I will miss your show always and look back on it as part of my growing into who I am today.

Mason”

Mason, you are speaking for many people. Some friends have told me they decided to move to Maine after hearing my show. I have been told by many people that I changed their lives. Remember that you have also changed my life.

This is the kind of letter that made that makes my 28 years as an unpaid producer for Maine Public Radio worth while. Thank you for making my day, Mason. Your buddy humble

.

Intersting Letter to The humble Farmer about Iraq --- as many contractors in Iraq as there are US troops and we have no control over them

2007-06-14T09:12:00.001-04:00

As for Iraq, my son in-law's brother just returned safely from his third tour there. He volunteered all three times.

He is very bright (graduated Stanford and Harvard Law), but seems drawn to dangerous situations.

He originally joined the Marines as an ordinary grunt after graduating Harvard, and tried for the SEALs.

They discovered he had a law degree, made him an officer, and put him to work prosecuting penny-ante drug offenses by 19 year old recruits on US bases who were awaiting deployment.

Life in the military is either stark terror or complete and total boredom.

He got tired of prosecuting people for being bored and stupid, so he now leads men on combat patrols.

One of his interesting observations is that there are about as many contractors in Iraq as there are US troops, and we have little to no control over them.

Hopefully, he will stay home for a while now, as he returns to his day job - DEA enforcement agent, awaiting deployment to Columbia or Ecuador...

+++

You can hear humble's radio program for this week on humble's web page:

http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/ThisWeek.html

http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/RadCombined.html A page of links to humble's fun-filled radio show.

Did you know that Robert Skoglund, The humble Farmer, stands on stages and tells funny stories?

Ask humble to entertain you and your friends with dry stories like these:

http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/PortlandA.html

2/22/07 Christian Science Monitor Profile on humble

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0222/p20s01-algn.html?page=1

You can visit humble and Marsha at their Bed & Breakfast on the coast of Maine.

http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/BaB.html

http://www.TheHumbleFarmer.com

You are invited to stop by for supper anytime.

Robert Karl Skoglund
785 River Road
St. George, ME 04860
207-226-7442
humble@humblefarmer.com

What Uncle Sam Really Wants by Noam Chomsky

2007-06-04T14:44:00.000-04:00

A friend just came back from Central America. She went there with a group of affluent church women hell-bent on fighting lice and hunger.

She and her friends have no idea why children there have lice and are hungry. If you were to let them read press reports of how the U. S. and the far right bought the last election there, their Christian-Republican minds wouldn't allow them to believe it.

Anyone who is really serious about fighting hunger and lice in El Salvador would start by cleaning out the enabling crowd of parasites presently running our own government.

The humble Farmer

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The Crucifixion of EL SALVADOR

Noam Chomsky

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ChomOdon_ElSalvador.html

+++

For many years, repression, torture and murder were carried on in El Salvador by dictators installed and supported by our government, a matter of no interest here. The story was virtually never covered. By the late 1970s, however, the US government began to be concerned about a couple of things.

One was that Somoza, the dictator of Nicaragua, was losing control . The US was losing a major base for its exercise of force in the region. A second danger was even more threatening. In El Salvador in the 1970s, there was a growth of what were called "popular organizations"-peasant associations, cooperatives, unions, Church-based Bible study groups that evolved into self-help groups, etc. That raised the threat of democracy.

In February 1980, the Archbishop of EI Salvador, Oscar Romero, sent a letter to President Carter in which he begged him not to send military aid to the junta that ran the country. He said such aid would be used to "sharpen injustice and repression against the people's organizations" which were struggling "for respect for their most basic human rights" (hardly news to Washington, needless to say).

A few weeks later, Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying a mass. The neo-Nazi Roberto d'Aubuisson is generally assumed to be responsible for this assassination (among countless other atrocities). D'Aubuisson was "leader for-life" of the ARENA party, which now governs El Salvador; members of the party, like current Salvadoran president Alfredo Cristiani, had to take a blood oath of loyalty to him.

Thousands of peasants and urban poor took part in a commemorative mass a decade later, along with many foreign bishops, but the US was notable by its absence. The Salvadoran Church formally proposed Romero for sainthood.

All of this passed with scarcely a mention in the country that funded and trained Romero's assassins. The New York Times, the "newspaper of record," published no editorial on the assassination when it occurred or in the years that followed, and no editorial or news report on the commemoration.

On March 7, 1980, two weeks before the assassination, a state of siege had been instituted in El Salvador, and the war against the population began in force (with continued US support and involvement). The first major attack was a big massacre at the Rio Sumpul, a coordinated military operation of the Honduran and Salvadoran armies in which at least 600 people were butchered. Infants were cut to pieces with machetes, and women were tortured and drowned. Pieces of bodies were found in the river for days afterwards. There were church observers, so the information came out immediately, but the mainstream US media didn't think it was worth reporting.

Peasants were the main victims of this war, along with labor organizers, students, priests or anyone suspected of working for the interests of the people. In Carter's last year, 1980, the death toll reached about 10,000, rising to about 13,000 for 1981 as the Reaganites took command.

In October 1980, the new archbishop condemned the "war of extermination and genocide against a defenseless civilian population" waged by the security forces. Two months later they were hailed for their "valiant service alongside the people against subversion" by the favorite US "moderate," Jose Napoleon Duarte, as he was appointed civilian president of the junta.

The role of the "moderate" Duarte was to provide a fig leaf for the military rulers and ensure them a continuing flow of US funding after the armed forces had raped and murdered four churchwomen from the US. That had aroused some protest here; slaughtering Salvadorans is one thing, but raping and killing American nuns is a definite PR mistake. The media evaded and downplayed the story, following the lead of the Carter Administration and its investigative commission.

The incoming Reaganites went much further, seeking to justify the atrocity, notably Secretary of State Alexander Haig and UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. But it was still deemed worthwhile to have a show trial a few years later, while exculpating the murderous junta-and, of course, the paymaster.

The independent newspapers in El Salvador, which might have reported these atrocities, had been destroyed. Although they were mainstream and pro-business, they were still too undisciplined for the military's taste. The problem was taken care of in 1980-81, when the editor of one was murdered by the security forces; the other fled into exile. As usual, these events were considered too insignificant to merit more than a few words in US newspapers.

In November 1989, six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter, were murdered by the army. That same week, at least 28 other Salvadoran civilians were murdered, including the head of a major union, the leader of the organization of university women, nine members of an Indian farming cooperative and ten university students.

The news wires carried a story by AP correspondent Douglas Grant Mine, reporting how soldiers had entered a working-class neighborhood in the capital city of San Salvador, captured six men, added a 14-year-old boy for good measure, then lined them all up against a wall and shot them. They "were not priests or human rights campaigners," Mine wrote, "so their deaths have gone largely unnoticed"-as did his story.

The Jesuits were murdered by the Atlacatl Battalion, an elite unit created, trained and equipped by the United States. It was formed in March 1981, when fifteen specialists in counterinsurgency were sent to El Salvador from the US Army School of Special Forces. From the start, the Battalion was engaged in mass murder. A US trainer described its soldiers as "particularly ferocious....We've always had a hard time getting them to take prisoners instead of ears."

In December 1981, the Battalion took part in an operation in which over a thousand civilians were killed in an orgy of murder, rape and burning. Later it was involved in the bombing of villages and murder of hundreds of civilians by shooting, drowning and other methods. The vast majority of victims were women, children and the elderly.

The Atlacatl Battalion was being trained by US Special Forces shortly before murdering the Jesuits. This has been a pattern throughout the Battalion's existence-some of its worst massacres have occurred when it was fresh from US training.

In the "fledgling democracy" that was El Salvador, teenagers as young as 13 were scooped up in sweeps of slums and refugee camps and forced to become soldiers. They were indoctrinated with rituals adopted from the Nazi SS, including brutalization and rape, to prepare them for killings that often have sexual and satanic overtones.

The nature of Salvadoran army training was described by a deserter who received political asylum in Texas in 1990, despite the State Department's request that he be sent back to El Salvador. (His name was withheld by the court to protect him from Salvadoran death squads.)

According to this deserter, draftees were made to kill dogs and vultures by biting their throats and twisting off their heads, and had to watch as soldiers tortured and killed suspected dissidents-tearing out their fingernails, cutting off their heads, chopping their bodies to pieces and playing with the dismembered arms for fun.

In another case, an admitted member of a Salvadoran death squad associated with the Atlacatl Battalion, Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez, detailed the involvement of US advisers and the Salvadoran government in death-squad activity. The Bush administration has made every effort to silence him and ship him back to probable death in El Salvador, despite the pleas of human rights organizations and requests from Congress that his testimony be heard. (The treatment of the main witness to the assassination of the Jesuits was similar.)

The results of Salvadoran military training are graphically described in the Jesuit journal America by Daniel Santiago, a Catholic priest working in El Salvador. He tells of a peasant woman who returned home one day to find her three children, her mother and her sister sitting around a table, each with its own decapitated head placed carefully on the table in front of the body, the hands arranged on top "as if each body was stroking its own head."

The assassins, from the Salvadoran National Guard, had found it hard to keep the head of an 18-month-old baby in place, so they nailed the hands onto it. A large plastic bowl filled with blood was tastefully displayed in the center of the table.

According to Rev. Santiago, macabre scenes of this kind aren't uncommon. People are not just killed by death squads in El Salvador-they are decapitated and then their heads are placed on pikes and used to dot the landscape. Men are not just disemboweled by the Salvadoran Treasury Police; their severed genitalia are stuffed into their mouths. Salvadoran women are not just raped by the National Guard; their wombs are cut from their bodies and used to cover their faces. It is not enough to kill children; they are dragged over barbed wire until the flesh falls from their bones, while parents are forced to watch.

Rev. Santiago goes on to point out that violence of this sort greatly increased when the Church began forming peasant associations and self help groups in an attempt to organize the poor.

By and large, our approach in El Salvador has been successful. The popular organizations have been decimated, just as Archbishop Romero predicted. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered and more than a million have become refugees. This is one of the most sordid episodes in US history-and it's got a lot of competition.

***
from the book What Uncle Sam Really Wants, published in 1993

Cousin John Reports in From Duabi

2007-05-28T08:09:00.000-04:00

It's been 28 years since I was last in Dubai. There have been a few changes. For example, it was very common to see the odd camel wandering around close to town. Now, he'd be instant road kill if he tried to cross the 12 lane highway that is the main drag through town. Back then it was a 4 lane highway in the middle of nowhere on your way to Abu Dhabi. You had to watch for camels like folks in New Hampshire watch for errant Moose. Now, the entire length is filled with high rise office buildings and hotels.

My drive to the office starts a little west of old Dubai and the Creek on the 12 lane Sheikh Zayed Road. On my left as I head west is Burg Dubai, the tallest building in the world in the largest mall in the world currently under construction. Off in the hazy distance to my right is Burg Al Arab, the sail shaped hotel on the coast that nobody but an oil sheikh can afford to spend a night in. As I continue on, I pass Dubai Internet City where there is typically a traffic jam due to construction in the area. Just past there on the left is the big aluminum colored tube that is Ski Dubai - an indoor ski slope. My journey ends at the Jebel Ali Free Zone, a duty free zone and port. I end up in a typical construction yard office.

The first thing you notice about Dubai is how clean it is. There is no trash anywhere. There is plenty of dust, but not much trash. The second thing is the traffic. Everyone has a car and while they may have had great civic planners, they somehow neglected to think about hiring a traffic engineer or putting in public transport. They are just now building an elevated public system along Sheikh Zayed Road but it's a year away. And then there's the heat. It's 110 or better everyday. There are no clouds but the sun is obscured by an LA like smog that is really dust from the desert. We are on the edge of what Saudi Arabia calls "The Empty Quarter".

80% of the population of the United Arab emirates are immigrants. All labor is done by foreigners, mostly Indian, Pakistani and Phillipino. There seems to be a caste system where Pakistanis are at the low end and do all the outside construction work. The Indians run the shops and businesses in the air conditioning and the Phillipinos do the hotel service and entertainment. Most of them, especially the laborers, are housed in squat dormatory buildings that would make Stalin gag.

There's lots of constuction work. This place must be a reinforced concrete engineers dream. They seem to operate on a "build it and they will come" philosophy and are aware that they will need more than oil to survive and hence have built a tax free business haven with first class communications and logistics. And if you have nothing better to do, dredge up the sea floor and build a series of offshore housing developments on artificial islands. For good measure, shape them tolook like palm trees or a map of the globe. If you talk to the man on the street (your taxi driver, for example) he will tell you that he can't understand how they are going to fill all the new offices and apartment buildings. It has to reach saturation sometime, and when it does, the real estate market may collapse faster than a Florida condominium in a hurricane.

On the seamier side of things, Duabi is a destination country for human trafficking. It kind of makes you wonder what the real purpose of all those private islands is since the only way to get to them is by boat or air.

Stay tuned.

John