The Story of my Distraction

Earlier this evening, I was rummaging around the cabinet looking for something. I pulled out a small e-cig box and thought, "I wonder what I stashed in here?"

So I opened it.

This is what I found:

• a key-chain with the Lincoln automobile logo on it.
• a gold-coloured ring (Shit. I put it on one of my fingers and now I can't get it off.)
• a silver-looking bracelet
• part of a necklace consisting of a string of Shamrocks(?)
• a cold-coloured ankle bracelet
• another ankle bracelet made of tiny links
• a ring with a clear stone in it
• a keyring with a nylon fob
• This thing
  
• a hash pipe lid (the kind you screw on. Not the other kind.)
• another hash pipe lid
• a dead rat and a string to swing it with (just kidding)
• This thing
  
• another ring with a red stone in it.
• my old man's dog tag

Hmm. The dog tag.

Maybe I can use it to find out more about what part of the Wermacht my old man served in.

So I did a search on Fl. Ers. Batl. III.

The best I could come up with was this google translation:

As best I can remember, the old man was taken prisoner in Holland, near the end of the war, at the age of nineteen. Since he was Luftwaffe, he was selected to be shipped over to the U.S.A. instead of the U.K.

He wound up at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. A.K.A. Edgewood Chemical Biological Center.

He often used to complain about his treatment as a P.O.W. He claimed that the prisoners at Edgewood were "starved." I have to admit, from the photos I've seen from that period, he was pretty skinny.

So here is my best recollection of what he told me.

The German prisoners were sent out to work on various farms in the area.

He ended up working for a farmer by the name of William Pugh, somewhere in the vicinity of Bel Aire or Joppa, MD.

He explained to me that, as prisoners of war, he and his fellow prisoners had little reason to enthusiastically perform the work assignments.

One day, while my old man was playing stupid as he repaired a fence, Mr. Pugh, in frustration, asked him, "What is wrong with you? Can't you understand English?"

The old man had studied English in school, back in Germany, so he was capable of understanding the farmer's simple instructions. He just wasn't in any mood to cooperate.

He replied to the farmer, "You give eat, (food) I understand. (English)"

Mr. Pugh understood. After that, as I remember the story, the POWs were invited to eat dinner with the family, and the work performance improved.

I recall also, that when the POWs were finally going to be sent home, after the war had ended, Mr. Pugh endured some community disapproval after he had made a politically incorrect statement, down at the general store, expressing his regret that his German "friends" would soon be going home.

I know that as the years pass by, my recollection of stuff is getting pretty rusty, and for all I know, the version of events I have provided, could be complete bullshit.

But I do know this.

I think it was 1966. (I've been corrected. My sister says it was 1963.)

The old man packed the whole family into our Volkswagen, and drove us to Bel Air, Maryland to seek out, and re-unite with Mr. Bill Pugh. So there's that.

And he was successful in discovering the farm.

When we arrived we were welcomed with open arms by the family. Unfortunately, Mr. Pugh had passed away by then, but Mrs. Pugh and her daughter, Francis remembered the old man. They invited us to stay. When the old man asked if we could pitch our tent out in the yard, they wouldn't hear of it. We stayed in the house.

Man, I loved that Bel Aire. And I developed quite a fondness for one of the granddaughters, who lived just over the hill, down by the river. When it came time to leave, I didn't want to go.

As part of that vacation, we drove down to Edgewood Arsenal. The old man wanted to re-visit his "home" for four years during that period. I remember him pointing to a tree and saying, "That was where a Japanese prisoner hung himself."

I had trouble believing my old man's claims that he had been starved while an American POW. But I do remember another story he told me about the time he was working as an orderly in a hospital, or something, during his captivity. Someone came out of one of the hospital rooms pushing a cart that contained leftovers from supper. He saw an uneaten steak on the cart, so he grabbed it and ran into the bathroom where he devoured it in one of the stalls.

If the story is true, it goes to show how different a world I have grown up in. I wouldn't fucking eat anything that came out of a hospital ward. Though I might be tempted by a half-smoked Marlboro.

Also. If the story isn't true, who the fuck could make something like that up?

Here is another recollection of a story he told me. Though not a smoker himself, many of the German prisoners enjoyed tobacco. He told me that the G.I. guards were forbidden to give cigarettes to the prisoners. But there was one American guard, a black man, who, when asked for a smoke by a prisoner, would light up a fresh one, then throw it on the ground. The prisoner would pick it up and enjoy it. And the guard could not be accused of giving cigarettes to the POWs, since he had merely discarded one.

This morning, I tripped across an article that reinforces the story that my father told me, as I remember it.

German POWs Who Died in Md. Honored

Different times. Different places.

I have always been an enthusiastic fan of the United States of America. It's the greatest example in history, as I know it, where the common man can live a damned good life. Hence my affinity for the slogan, "Make America Great Again."

My old man, on the other hand, remained bitter to the end of his life over his treatment in that USA POW camp.

I think he was way off base on that. Human cruelty is not restricted to any one government. All governments are cruel.

Even when they show apparent kindness, one thing is certain, they don't use their own money. In fact, they expect to be paid out of taxpayer funds for their "services."

Most politicians are "virtue signalers." They sincerely profess their compassion for their constituents, but someone else always get the bill.

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Other Curiosities

The old man always believed in paying his bills.

Don't you wish we could find some politicians with similar ethics?

Uber in Hamilton Update: Maria Pearson, Don't Delete This One.

Molly

A cabbie friend of mine told me that she had recently received a follow-up call from her council rep, Maria Pearson - Ward 10, over a recent licensing issue.

After some small talk, the councilor asked my friend, I'll call her Molly, how things were going in the Hamilton taxi business now that Uber had been formally exempted from Hamilton's "old category" of taxi licensing bylaws.

Molly told her that things were really bad. Then Molly suggested that if Maria wanted more information on the Uber impact, that she should talk to "Hans."

Maria replied, "Hans Wienhold?"

Molly: "Yes."

Maria: "Oh. I just delete his emails."

When I heard this I laughed. First, Maria feigns interest in the plight of Hamilton's cabbies (probably just fishing for a vote, IMHO,) and then, when offered a source of information on the Uber impact, Maria unconsciously intimates that she is not remotely interested in the subject.

Maria: "Oh. I just delete his emails."

As I have said on many occasions before, most politicians are phony people who pretend to care about their constituents, but demonstrate by their actions that they care much more about their own careers. Once you know what to look for it becomes very easy to see.

Step one: do they put on a big show about how much they care about the poor, downtrodden, and marginalized members of our community? (Like Hamilton's cab drivers?)

Step two: ask yourself if their proposed solutions to any given problem involve digging into their own wallets or purses, or someone else's?

Need I go into any more detail?

I call this Hans Wienhold's free, two-step course on Everything you Ever Need to Know about Politics and Politicians.

Molly was absolutely mortified when I told her just how juicy the information she just gave me was, and that I intended to use it in a future blockrant.

"I don't want to get into any trouble," she said.

I could write an essay on that response alone. Where did a person develop the impression that telling the truth about something could get them into trouble?

Of course, this reaction disturbed me. I told Molly that she should not have to fear retribution from a politician, and that the politician, theoretically, is her servant, NOT her master.

“When the people fear the government, that's tyranny; when the government fears the people, that's freedom.” -- Thomas Jefferson

Poor Molly. No citizen should have to live in such fear of politicians.

Alert: Prostitution in the Taxi Business

Last night, as I loitered at the Blueline parking lot while Uber taxis drove our former customers home, the prominent Hamilton taxi consultant, Jaspal Gill, showed up to purchase gas for his cab.

We had a conversation.

We started out talking about how badly Uber drivers were being suckered into believing that their investments in relatively fancy new cars, permitted them to succumb to the illusion that consuming their capital for a few dollars today was a form of "job."

The insanity of the whole concept is staggering in dimension. Some of these Uber drivers actually borrowed money to buy their cabs. How could such a blatant fraud have gained such friction? Tom Sawyer would have been green with envy. Tom Sayer got an apple core and a dead mouse, or something. Uber got to mobilize billions of dollars of worker-owned capital to line the pockets of it's capitalist investors!

You've got to hand it to Uber. It's fucking brilliant. There's a sucker born every minute.

"There's a sucker born every minute" is a phrase closely associated with P. T. Barnum, an American showman of the mid-19th century, although there is no evidence that he said it. Early examples of its use are found instead among gamblers and confidence men.

And poiticians.

The conversation turned to the number of new entrants into the non-exempt taxi sector who, themselves, were purchasing brand new cars to operate as taxis.

We all laughed. "That's fucking nuts!"

Our small group were all seasoned cab drivers. We laughed without prompting, because we all knew how stupid a person had to be to buy a new car for use as a taxi.

Jaspal is not only a very competent businessman. He is a great philosopher as well. He knows how to distill reality into short, concise, and comprehensible anecdotes.

Here is my reconstruction of what he said:

"What people fail to understand, is that a taxicab is like a prostitute. It is something to be used, abused, disrespected, and discarded."

That is not the ideal. But it is the reality.

Therefore, getting married to a brand new car, only to whore it out to random members of the public, is a form of self abuse.

For another perspective on the true nature and value of a taxicab, I recall what my late friend, Uncle Jay, used to refer to his taxicab as..... a toilet, because that is how the public treat them. (Only months before his death, the City whacked him with a spitefull $180 fine for a broken seal on his taxi meter. Uber's meters, as you might already know, are exempt from the seal requirement.) Level playing field?

Jaspal was showing us one of his new cabs. It was clean, shiny, and almost brand new looking. He had picked it up for a few hundred dollars, and done some needed repairs.

An astute businessman knows how much to spend to accomplish an objective without pointlessly pissing dollars away into someone else's (or the government's) pocket. Uber drivers, by contrast, pay in excess of 25% of their earnings to the Uber corporation for the privilege of using their own cars as taxicabs. Uber is astute.

Someone commented on one of my anti-government-Uber-bullshit videos, that Uber had outdone the worst nightmares of the bona-fide communists, by extending the exploitation of workers by the owners of capital to the exploitation of workers using their own capital!

An historic and brilliant insight. And a brilliant business play on Uber's part.

Tim Hudak tried to popularize the concept by calling it the new "sharing economy."

What a fucking joke. Share your car with Goldman Sachs.

Suicide

I spoke to a cab driver this morning who's life had been so seriously distrupted by Hamilton's politicians decision to allow Uber to circumvent the traditional requirements for taxi operations, that he is talking about suicide.

I had read about the suicides of an estimated 50 Dublin, Ireland, cab drivers as a result of a similar catastrophic regulatory reversals. Given the impact similar political malfeasance has had on Ontario taxi drivers in Toronto, Mississauga, Oakville, London, Hamilton, Ottawa, and more, I am surprised that I haven't heard of a single case of cab driver suicide in Ontario to date.

But I do have this.

I spoke to a Hamilton cab driver this morning who told me he is feeling so cornered now by the disruption Hamilton's politicians have dumped on the taxi market, that he was actually contemplating suicide.

If something like that happens in Ontario, don't blame Uber. Blame those who facilitated it.

The invertibrates that gravitate to political office.

C*********s.

Aside: That's one reason I like Donald Trump. He is not one of them.

Public Mischief

Harking back to my early (pre) teen years, we went through a mischief phase. We played "knocking on ginger," including the enhanced burning bag of poop version, or we threw snowballs at cars. We even lit a number of field fires. After the fire department arrived we would even help them put the fire out.

We were quite proud to learn by word of mouth that a police officer was quoted as saying that the West Mountain had more mischief complaints than any other area of the city.

We called one of our favorite games "punch out."

We always used the same location for "punch out." It was at the southwest corner of Bendemere Ave and Columbia drive on the property of the St. Vincent-de-Paul Catholic School. And we always played it after dark. Out of five or six of us we would select our voluntary "victim." Then we would wait for a vehicle to approach along Bendemere from the west.

As the vehicle got closer we would would all pretend to be ganging up and kicking the shit out of our volunteer. Most of the cars just passed on by, but every now and then, a driver would take the situation seriously and attempt to heroically rescue the victim.

Sometimes, this could get pretty hairy. There was one time when this Ford Mustang came to a screeching stop. We all ran east into Buchanan Park believing no sane driver would dare drive over the sidewalk and into the park after us. On this occasion we miscalculated and the Mustang came racing after us through the park. Despite the Good Samaritan's heroic act, I don't recall any of our "gang" members being apprehended.

There was only one time that I can remember where one of our members was apprehended. The Samaritan appeared to be on his way to a wedding because he was formally attired. One report said he stumbled and ruined his suit. The guy he finally collared (literally) was the biggest, slowest moving, and slowest thinking member of our group, who tried to explain that the whole thing was just a joke. Unfortunately, due to limited language skills, instead of saying, "it was all pretend," or "it wasn't a real beating," he told the guy in the torn tuxedo, "We was ony doing it for fun!"

By the way, he was the only one who got caught the time we strung a roll of paper towel across Mohawk road as an informal road block. I think the driver punched him in the head.

It was circa 1966 and the entire population of Hamilton's mountain was almost entirely lily white. If we had had any black, Sikh, or other minority gang members at the time, I am certain we would have all agreed that using one of them as our volunteer victim would be a great way to magnify the impact of our mischeivous stunt.

And we hadn't even started drinking that cheap $buck-five-come-alive rot-gut wine yet.

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Vermont Issues 57: Racist Graffiti in Andersonville Hits Several Farms

Other Items of Interest

Tucker Carlson Tonight 9/12/17 - Tucker Carlson Fox News September 12, 2017 ESPN, TRUMP, DEMOCRATS

Ezra Levant: The REAL reason schools are banning "racist" Shakespeare

And this just in....

Woman sexually assaulted inside SUV she mistook for Uber: police

I predicted this over a year ago...

I don't know who this Scottish guy is,

but I love his accent and he is obviously very smart.

The interview with PCR begins after the host's interesting monologue.

In my view, THIS IS REAL NEWS, as opposed to that FUCKING deluge of HORSESHIT we are exposed to from from the (destroy Trump, drive-by, as Sean Hannity describes it,) mainstream media.

There is some station I tune into in my car, from time to time, that touts itself as providing "In depth news coverage." I always laugh when I hear that claim, because it is just so disgustingly obvious that the station provides NOTHING of the sort. Their so-called "coverage" of important news amounts to barely more than a few relevant, or misleading, keywords.

The phenomenon recently came into focus for me since I was away from my computer for a week or so, and found myself listening to news reports on the car radio.

If I were someone who truly believes that all I need to do is listen radio news to get all of the information I need ("in depth" ) in order to cast an intelligent vote, I would have been left with the impression that the chaos and death in Charlottesville was all caused by a bunch of insane white supremacists, NAZIs and KKK members. (and by alleged guilt by association, Libertarians, Conservatives, and Trump supporters.) After all, I disagree with the removal of statues of Robert E. Lee too. So that must make me a NAZI or a Klan member.

Fucking ridiculous.

If you are truly interested in "in depth" news, I recommend the following interview with Paul Craig Roberts.

Related

Fluid Law and how Uber Successfully Exploited It

The guy almost gets the story. One thing he misses, though, is how Uber, with its "Madison Avenue" strategy is able to exploit the natural, systemically inevitable, corruptibility of most politicians.

This whole Uber phenomenon would not have been successful at all, given that taxi regulations already exist, unless they could get the politicians on board, and convince them, or persuade them to pretend they actually believe, that Uber was not in the taxi business. Hence, Uber taxis are exempt from existing taxi regulations.

Most people would interpret this state of affairs as a tilting of the playing field, which it is.

The sleazebags at Hamilton's City Hall came up with the term, "New Licensing Category" in order to facilitate Uber's circumvention of the existing taxi bylaw.

"New Licensing Category" is nothing but a code word for tilting the playing field in favour of a politically sexy fad. In every-day taxi industry parlance, it is the equivalent of granting an unlimited number of taxi licenses to the Uber corporation, which of course, instantly devalues the lifetime investments of those poor suckers who made the error of investing their lives in the "Old Licensing Category." Both categories of licenses, obviously exist at the whim of trusted politicians.

This leads me to ask the question: How can anyone in today's world make any kind of plan for the future? People in the Hamilton taxi industry have spent decades in the business, have configured their lives and investment decisions around the City's taxicab regulatory system, only to discover that the political invention of a "New Licensing Category" has turned their lifetime efforts into worthless dust.

This is the price we all pay by putting too much power into the hands of government, and too much trust into the hands of those who gravitate to elected office.

The most important lesson here is not that Uber managed to cleverly provide a cheaper service by cutting corners on regulatory costs, but that they were allowed to get away with it.

Uber is a perfect lesson in political science.

More Uber News.

My vlog from January 2016

My Road Trip

I just got back from a whirlwind tour of Eastern Canada. I've never been that far east in Canada, so I figured I'd at least touch base on one or two provinces I've never been to.

Here's my report:

New Brunswick

Nice place, but why go there when you can have the same experience right here in Ontario. Oh, I forgot about the illusion at the magnetic hill in Moncton. Six bucks to sit in your car while it rolls backwards. Hardly worth the drive from Ontario.

Nova Scotia

People told me to make sure I visited the Cabot Trail. So I did the entire circuit. It's magnificent.

One thing I didn't like about the Cabot Trail was the price of smokes. $19.57 for a pack of Du Maurier. One does not need to know a thing about Nova Scotia politics other than the price of a pack of smokes. It shows the degree to which a government is committed to imposing non-diversity upon its inhabitants.

Quebec

The things that I like about Quebec are that they sell beer in the stores, and they take Canadian money at par. The fact that the road signs are all in French is very dangerous for people who don't speak French. It's also dangerous for the people who do speak French when they are T-boned by GPS-addled Anglophones. Is this French chauvinism really worth the price?

I did notice a few English signs though. Like the ones that said, "Restaurant."

I was in some town on the St. Lawrence looking for something to eat. Of course they had a McDonald's, but I am sick of that. Then I spotted this restaurant, called "Mike's." I derived a sense of comfort from that, so I went in.

There were a few people waiting to be seated so I got in line and picked up a menu.

The whole thing was in French. What was I supposed to do, just randomly pick an item and point to it?

But the decisive factor for me was not the incomprehensible menu. There was one item, I think it was "Manger de la marde et les Pomme de Brule avec Poisson." The description was about as comprehensible as the rest of the items on the menu, but what really turned me off was the price. $39 dollars or something. And you have to add tax and tip on top of that.

So I went to another place where there was one item I could understand. It was, "Pepperoni Pizza." I ordered that plus a Coke. It was pretty good but at $12 for a pizza smaller than a sidewalk pizza? Even at par that's pricey.

Overall

Without my usual access to the Internet, I was left with little more than fake news reports from Canadian corporate media and the CBC on the car radio. Prominent amongst the reports were stories about a bunch of white nationalists, KKK supporters, and Nazis going berserk in Charlottesville, Virginia. I couldn't wait to get home to check on my alternate media sources to find out what the real story was.

OMG! This is so Uberish.

As I read the article (see link below,) I could not help but recall the targeting, and eventual closure of Jaspal Gill's taxi fleet back in the fall of 2015, and the suspension of his taxi driver's license, on the grounds that his operation was not in compliance with City of Hamilton bylaws.

The message sent to Jaspal Gill was unambiguous. If you disregard the City of Hamilton's taxi regulations, you will be dealt with with the full force of the law. When it comes to taxicab regulation, the position of the City of Hamilton is zero tolerance for non-compliance.

Unless you are Uber.

The decision echoed the result of the attempts by Bruce Bergez to Uberize the optometry business.

Justice Watt, writing for the Court of Appeal, succinctly stated, "We cannot suffer the sacrifice of the rule of law to the lure of lucre."

Yep. That good ol' Rule of Law.

At around the same time as Mr. Gill's business was being decimated by the sincere devotees of the rule of law doctrine espoused by Justice Watt, the U.S. based taxi company, Uber, announced its intention to start operating a taxi service in Hamilton in total defiance of the existing laws.

The main difference between Mr. Bergez and Uber, it turned out, was the amount of lucre the respective parties were able to assemble in order to challenge the rule of law. Uber had billions of dollars behind it. The rule of law folded like a defective lawn chair. The lure of lucre prevailed. In Canada, the law could be purchased. Justice Watt's declaration ended up being exposed as pure wind.

Unlike Mr. Gill, who was severely dealt with by Hamilton's heroic politicians, Uber was not only given a pass on its 100% defiance of the taxi bylaws, the politicians scurried to invent a whole "new licensing category" that would give Uber's blatant disregard of the law an air of legitimacy. The effect of this "new licensing category" was not unlike a corporation initiating a stock split, only instead of issuing an equal number of certificates to the stock owners, the new certificates were given away to Uber for free. The market value of taxi owners licenses (stock certificates), predictably, tumbled from about $200 k, to an estimated $50 k, or less. Some stock split.

Most of the victims of this financial crime are too unsophisticated to understand what happened to their life-time investments. Some even believe the collapse was due to "market forces." Or, "disruptive technology." Anyone who even remotely grasps political economy knows this to be pure nonsense. The collapse in license values was 100% due to "political forces." The market had fuck all to do with it.

The rule of law, it turns out, has no more value than the word of a politician.

What Justice Watt should have said was,

Justice Watt, writing for the Court of Appeal, succinctly stated, "We cannot suffer the sacrifice of the rule of law to the lure of insufficient lucre."

The final outcome?

Uber Inc. will continue to harvest about 25% of the taxi market for deposit in its tax friendly Dutch banks.

The politicians will continue to collect their salaries, and probably get re-elected since the small minority of individuals they have sacrificed have no political power, nor public sympathy.

And the flood of new drivers into the taxi market will, predictably, drive incomes down to third world levels.

We now find ourselves in a situation where the City of Hamilton is flooded with taxi drivers, each vying for a piece of the passenger pie.

With statutory minimum wages set to rise in Ontario, this price barrier to employment will lead to even more thirsty camels being driven to the taxi driver watering hole in search of survival. Taxi driver wages will decline even further.

Finally, we have this report out of Singapore that makes Jaspal Gill's "crimes" of malfunctioning security cameras, and shifter cables secured with shoelaces, look like schoolyard pranks compared to Uber's clear preference for lucre over safety:

Smoke, Then Fire: Uber Knowingly Leased Unsafe Cars to Drivers

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On another issue when it comes to the rule of law. What, exactly, is legal these days?

As the Uber phenomenon aptly demonstrates, the law has become oozingly fluid. Hillary continues to get away with a string of egregious crimes while the establishment swamp, more like cesspool, continues to dig for some pretense to remove the duly elected president of the United States.

Will the newly announced grand jury find something in Trump's history that was illegal? It's a mathematical certainty.

"In his new book, the Boston-based civil liberties advocate and occasional Reason contributor Harvey Silverglate estimates that in 2009, the average American commits about three federal felonies per day. And yet, we aren’t a nation of degenerates. On the contrary, most social indicators have been moving in a positive direction for a generation. Silverglate argues we're committing these crimes unwittingly. The federal criminal code has become so vast and open to interpretation, Silverglate argues, that a U.S. Attorney can find a way to charge just about anyone with violating federal law. In fact, it's nearly impossible for some business owners to comply with one federal regulation without violating another one. We're no longer governed by laws, we're governed by the whims of lawyers."

-- source

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Myth-Busters: Reality Hits Minimum Wage Boosters