Allow me to introduce you to the Peterkins. If you’ve never been exposed to this book, I strongly encourage you to read it. Especially the first story in the book. As this article describes:

The charm of the story is not in the plot, but in the telling, building up layers of complication, and the affectionate fun poked at the not-quite-cartoonish characters.

The first story is about how Mrs. Peterkin mistakenly puts salt instead of sugar into her morning cup of coffee. The day is spent on an absurd quest (meeting with chemists, and herbal experts, and…) to neutralize the effect of the salt, all of which leaves the coffee undrinkable. The solution is obvious to the reader, you simply pour out the coffee and start over, but this eludes the Peterkins.

When I read the news, or watch the theater that passes for politics in this country, it always feels like I’m watching the Peterkins. The most recent stories about the financial meltdown and the government’s response to it is just another desperate attempt to neutralize the salt in our coffee. The futility of this band-aid on top of a band-aid approach becomes obvious, as the government responds over and over again to problems of its own creation, due to the The Law of Unintended Consequences. When will this country wake up and realize that it’s time to pour out the coffee and start over?

We all know what this law says, or at least most of us do. Why is it that so many people who work in government either forget this law, or believe they are exempt from it? I had to comment on this story which brilliantly illustrates this point. The State of Hawaii is ending its program of universal health care for children because it has become too expensive. The reason?

A state official said families were dropping private coverage so their children would be eligible for the subsidized plan.

You mean if you give away something for free, some people will start using it instead of paying for it themselves? Oh yeah, would not have seen that one coming. Shocking.

“People who were already able to afford health care began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free,” said Dr. Kenny Fink, the administrator for Med-QUEST at the Department of Human Services. “I don’t believe that was the intent of the program.”

Gee, ya think? Of course it wasn’t the *intent* of the program! That’s why it’s called the Law of *Unintended* Consequences. How does someone make it to adulthood and remain this clueless?

Last winter I received a rather curious letter in the mail. It was from a company calling themselves RedLightViolations.com. I’ve seen other scams by mail, and at first glance, I thought that this was just another. It purported to be a citation, issued by authority of the State of Illinois, for running a red light. After further inspection, I became even more convinced that it was a scam, especially since they didn’t have the right vehicle model, or even the right license plate. There was a photo on the notice of what they claimed to be my car, at a rural intersection that I’m pretty sure I’ve never been through, and the violation allegedly occurred on a date when I was, in fact, on vacation in Florida.

But if we ignore all of that, and further set aside the general legal issues raised by red light cameras across this country (a plague that organizations like the National Motorists Asssociation are currently fighting), we come finally to the point of my rant: what is the procedure when the system fails? In other words, when an innocent person is wrongfully accused, what is their recourse?

After a quick Google search, and verification that RedLightViolations.com was a bonafide agent of the State (which, by the way, does not at all diminish their scam status), I called the toll-free number provided on the notice to inform them that they had the wrong guy. The license number cited was very close to mine, but the 2s had been replaced with 3s. How this happens in our current Information Age, I know not, but explaining all of this to the bureaucrat on the other end of the phone left her completely uninspired. Her only response was the standard protocol: I would have to draft a written statement documenting this fact somehow, and mail it to the address provided on the notice.

So in a country where our justice system is supposedly predicated on the maxim of innocent until proven guilty, I had to literally *prove* my innocence. Not in a court of law. Not before a magistrate. But in a letter to some faceless Sheriff of Nottingham threatening to take my money if I did not comply. It did not matter that their mistake was self-evident. I still had to expend my time and energy (and postage) refuting this meritless charge against me. Is this what we’ve become? America, I think we can do better.

I told a few people last week that I was planning a reunion for members of my 8th grade class, and their reaction was something like, “8th Grade?!?” Is it that unusual? I don’t know. Maybe it is. Is it unusual because people don’t generally have reunions for that? Or is it unusual because it’s the Class of ’82 and we’re all old?

One thing that I will recognize as unusual is that our school was K-8, so I spent 9 years of my life growing up with some of these folks, and a few of them I even went on to the same high school with, so they’ve been a part of my life for a significant number of years. Although it is sad that we lose touch with people over the years, life gets in the way, I suppose. And that’s what makes reunions so fun, right?

Everyone brought their kids, and we had a great time reminiscing, looking at old photo albums, and telling stories. It’s so interesting to catch up with people you haven’t seen in such a long time, and see the different paths that people take in life. I am thankful to everyone who was able to come and make the day so enjoyable. I hope we can do it again sometime.

I hereby announce that I am organizing The Six Million Man March. Why? Because apparently a million isn’t enough. If you really want to get the government’s attention, it takes six million. Or maybe five million. But it’s something more than three million. How do I know? Well, remember back in February when everyone was supposed to switch to broadcast Digital TV? You know, the thing that had been in the works for over 10 years? The Neilsen Co. was reporting back then that over six million people were still unprepared for the switch, and since the US Constitution guarantees us all a right to television, the government stepped in, led by the newly-elected President Obama, to protect the rights of six million Neo-Luddites, technophobes, and other toothless morons who couldn’t figure out what they needed to do to not miss Deal or No Deal. Plus it was sweeps month.

Now fast forward to June. CNN is reporting that when the switch was made on Friday, there were still three million people unprepared. But wait, the government didn’t step in this time? Nope. No love for the three million. Sorry, y’all are on your own. So the critical threshold for government intervention (at least under the Obama administration) is apparently somewhere between 3 and 6 million. Geez, how many detainees do we have at Gitmo, anyway?

This is the halfway point in this year’s 30 Days of Blog, and I thought I would devote at least one day responding to the man who started all of this. The Numb Trolleybus is singing Congress’s praises for finally making the move to regulate tobacco products. And I shared his surprise when I learned that the government didn’t already regulate it. I mean, the feds tell you how much water your toilet can use per flush, how is it that they aren’t already involved in this aspect of your life?

Whenever anyone casts tobacco as the bad guy, I always reflect upon the fact that our country would not exist but for tobacco. The Virginia Colony was founded to make this product more affordable (and to make its growers rich), and for the first 100 years of our history, next to cotton, tobacco was our biggest export. But for my entire life, we as Americans have had a love/hate relationship with this lowly plant.

I’m certainly not advocating smoking, and I’m no fan of sitting next to a smoker, if I can avoid it. However, I am a fan of freedom, and I recognize that person’s right to put whatever they want into their own bodies. The argument is that allowing them to use this dangerous product will “inflict enormous drains on the health care system.” That may be true, but the first question to ask yourself is, why am I paying for the health care system? Since when is it the job of goverment to provide me with health care? The answer: it isn’t. And despite the attractiveness of giving away health care to every American, it creates just as many problems as it solves. Entitlement spending always creates or exacerbates problems like this, or immigration, to use another example.

When you agree to pay for something, you should have some say in how that something is used. The logic behind that is unassailable, however, it’s based on a flawed premise: that you have the authority to pay for that something in the first place. Health concerns are certainly a valid reason for shunning tobacco, but don’t blame the plant for the problems caused by our attempts to implement socialism.

Since we’ve been talking about planting a garden for quite a while now, my Earth Day gift to myself this year was a new compost bin from Envirocycle. This bin has a fairly unique design in that it’s a tumbler, but the base incorporates a set of rollers that make it easy to spin the tumbler right where it sits. Some others that I’ve seen require you to remove the bin from its base and roll it around the yard.

We bought the unit from Amazon, and if you are thinking about purchasing one, I’d recommend you read the user comments there. I share their general concern about the flimsy latch on the door of the bin. This is a very poor (and cheap) design. I also wanted to thank one commenter for their suggestion that you keep your kitchen compost container in the freezer. This is a great idea! It keeps the smell in check and plus freezing the food accelerates the composting process.

I will say that there is an art to making compost and you have to be especially watchful of the moisture level inside the bin. Start off with equal parts dry (grass clippings, leaves, etc.) and wet (food waste) matter, and don’t put any straight liquids (like coffee or tea) in the bin, or you will wind up with a soggy mess inside.

Last week I wrote about our new trees. We bought them from Schmittel’s Nursery in Maryland Heights, and paid them to install the trees. The installation was complicated by the fact that two of the trees were 5-inch maples that are very large and very heavy. They could not use the normal wheelbarrow or hand truck to move these trees — they required heavy machinery, like a Bobcat, to get them into place — which meant that I had to take down a section of our fence to get the machine into our yard.

After one false start, when they postponed the install due to weather, they came out a week later to walk our yard and see if it was still too wet. At the time, I was impressed with their concern for our yard. The gentleman who came out said several times that they didn’t want to tear up our grass. He also said that they would use a piece of equipment that had tracks instead of wheels because it wouldn’t leave ruts in the yard. He decided to delay the install two more days just to be sure the ground was dry enough.

Well, that was a Monday, and I was at work when they showed up. As it turns out, they did not use the tracked vehicle. They used a plain old Bobcat instead, and it did, in fact, leave ruts. Everywhere. There were a number of places where the grass was completely torn up. They acknowledged the damage, and offered to make a followup visit to fill the holes with topsoil and grass seed, which they did. Prior to this, I called to tell them that the two big trees were starting to lean, so they staked them and put ropes on them to keep them from settling crooked while they were there.

The worst part of the install, however, was that they dumped a couple of yards of soil from the holes they dug over our fence onto the creek bank. This is not an unreasonable thing to do, however, out of the hundred or so feet of fence along the back of our yard, they chose the one and only gate as the place to dump the dirt. Yeah, the gate. You know, the one place where someone is likely to walk? What kind of moron does something like that? And it just so happens that I have constructed steps into the creek bank below that gate so it is easier to get up and down. So when I called, I complained about that too, and I asked them to clean up their mess. Somebody showed up that day and scraped a bit of the dirt around with a shovel, but most of it is still there, and my steps are completely buried.

Now the people at Schmittel’s that I talked to, either on the phone, or in person, were very nice, and seemed committed to customer satisfaction. The people who actually showed up to do the install, well, that’s another story. It is very disappointing, and for this reason I would not recommend Schmittel’s to anyone.

In addition to the updated spice rack, we also recently remodeled the basement door. Dixie has had the idea of turning it into a chalkboard ever since we moved in, and it’s finally a reality. She sanded and primed the door and then painted it with chalkboard paint (that you can get at most home centers). Then I cut trim for the border and put a new doorknob on it. It looks pretty cool and the kids love it!

I’ve written about electric cars before, but for a while now I’ve been following what I consider to be the most promising entry into this market. The current offering from Zenn Motors is little more than a glorified golf cart. Classified as a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (NEV), with limited range, and a top speed of 30mph, it is intended to fill a fairly small niche market.

However, their new car, dubbed the City, has the potential to be a game changer. The reasons, as I see it, are the price point (in the mid 20Ks) and the powertrain, which relies on some groundbreaking technology from a company called EEStor. The company’s name rarely appears without the obligatory adjective ‘secretive’ and they don’t even appear to have a web site. But I guess when you claim to be developing a new ultracapacitor that will revolutionize energy storage on the planet, rendering batteries virtually obsolete, there is some incentive to play your cards close to your vest. Either because you have trade secrets you want to protect, or because it’s an elaborate hoax.

I don’t want to believe it’s a hoax, and neither do Zenn Motors, since they have purchased a significant stake in the company and the future of their own company is riding on this. I want to believe they can do everything they say they are going to do. And I, for one, will be among the first in line to buy one of these new cars, if they ever come to market. How can you resist a car with a top speed of 80mph and a 250 mile range that recharges in under 10 minutes, and never needs gas? All for about the same price as a conventional gas-guzzler? I want one. Will it ever be a reality? Only time will tell…