Trumps parade. My thoughts

          I am a supporter of the military. Many of my family members have served , some their entire career. I have nothing but respect for them. Even the guy I used to work with who seemingly spent 20 years sweeping out airplane hangers in nowhere Kansas. 

          That parade had nothing to do with the military. It was to swath the ego of our liar in chief. estimates of 50 to 60 million dollars were wasted on a parade reminisint of North Korea and Russia despite the facts that came out later that their parades were full of phony rockets and broken equipment. The squeeking treads on the tracks of the tanks yesterday pointed it out. 

         It must have been embarassing for the military to march down the streets of washington DC and find them mostly empty while reports of hundreds of thousands of people showed up all over the country for No Kings rallies. Meme's took no time to appear comparing trumps crowds to local tag sales, the line at the DMV..the line at the staduim to pee in the trough.Even trump news outlets said "thousands" instead of the usual bloated exaggeration. Maybe "thousands" was the bloated exaggeration. Thats a thought. 

         

        

Well, Proud of my town meeting colleague's

 We had our Bi-annual Town Meeting yesterday( for those who don't have this , we elect representatives for a town meeting (think congress in a much smaller but SMARTER instance) and we meet twice a year to discuss and vote on matters in our town( budgets, bylaws etc...) Yesterday was our spring town meeting. We had a number of the usual questions that appear every year (allocate this, approve that. Basically housekeeping articles.) and a few important ones. a Camping bylaw that would make homelessness a felony if carried far enough-failed. An article regarding allowing LTC(license to carry) gun owners permission to carry in our municipal buildings-FAILED resoundingly.(to my surprise given our gun culture here) and an amendment to trim the other town dept's budgets to fund our school system shortfalls--this also failed. 

        I did not support the camping question because we are short of resources in our town and it placed a demand on the police to maintain patrols of the known area of campsites the homeless have created. During the discussion it was divulged the town has exceptional programs in place to house the homeless and in fact have currently reduced the homeless to Zero or almost zero. The question would have created civil fines that the homeless cannot pay and taken to the extreme would had led to jail if the fines were allowed to lapse. Homelessness should not be a crime anywhere. A lot of us are a major illness away from joining them given the soaring costs associated with medical procedures. 

       I did not support the Gun question because of public safety. The employees of the town when polled (even though a slight majority were LTC) - they did not want guns in municipal buildings. Municipal buildings in our town are a 9-iron away from public schools and their facilities in fact the Town hall is surrounded by the middle school on one side, athletic fields behind and the Stadium of the 3rd side. There was talk that the building itself belonged to the school dept since it had originally been a school. 

       The school question. I supported it even though I knew it would fail. I believe the gentleman had the right idea but the chainsaw approach was wrong much like Musk. Forcing the town depts going forward to maintain a percentage increase equal or less to the schools would certainly be a start. Does it solve the problem? no but it does make unappetizing solutions a little more palatable. 

The problem is Prop 2 1/2. in its concept to force town government to stay within a 2.5 % annual increase of growth. This eases the strain somewhat on the homeowners. Well it does not take into account of all things Inflation and Insurance costs whose annual increases far exceed those of inflation. In the past 20 years we have seen this town get lean. Very lean with cost cutting. we don't pay comparable salaries, offer lousy benefits and as a result the turnback's our administration boast of are simply salaried budgeted for unfilled positions. Great system. we have turned off streetlights, we now pay for trash and bags, everything to do in town hall comes with a fee. before much longer the bathrooms will charge a quarter. Nickel and dimed to death?. More like $25 and $50. 

That's the town we decided we wanted because God forbid we pay more in property taxes. We pay convenience fees. Use a service-pay a fee. Downside is children in school, the service of Public Education. I have no problem paying my share of public education. I fully support education and those who provide the service. These kids are our future. My 4 kids went through the system and three graduated college and the last works fulltime for a government contractor. They received an excellent education but know that education is in danger because of short sightedness regarding money. Why build today what we can put off till tomorrow?. Well we can and we do. just remember that school that will cost 25 million next year will cost 30 million the year after and more the year after that. How long can we afford to wait to fund education? 

 

Friday Night flight over NYC at dawn. Learning as I go. its amazing how much the authentic flight manual really makes a difference. Flap positions, take off speeds , engine settings...couldnt even takeoff without that information now flying all over the world. 

TRUMP TACO's an easy explanation.

 

Over the last week or so the term #TrumpTaco or #Taco has come across my timelife and on TV. What follows is my explanation of exactly what a Taco is. 

        Media defines it as Trump Always Chickens Out....TACO. He threatens countries with tariffs but when it comes to enforcement...he delays or cancels. The definition does make logical sense. We know he is perceived as a bully and when confronted. Crumbles.

My explanation goes on a slightly different path. Here it is. On Monday Trump makes headlines threatening Whitemanistan with 75% tariffs on widgets. As we have seen the markets are incredibly sensitive to his comments like this. The news media reports it and the the stock market slumps. On Tuesday Trump and his "buddies(Flunkies and congressmen) buy on the dip...depending on the depth of the dip it could extend to wed or even into Thursday.  Untold millions of dollars. On Friday, Trump announces a "deal" with Whitemanistan for a much smaller tariff or cancel the tariff all together. Funny thing is the media in Whitemanistan report of no such deal or even negotiations. (That's the problem he has with Canada. The media is so close we can hear for ourselves about what happened and since we have no basis to disbelieve them and no basis to believe ANYTHING trump says) The market soars and they dump their shares for a large profit. The new tax cuts for the wealthy guarantee they get to keep their profits. 

We are being played. Art of the Steal. 

Fun times on the FinComm.

 Fun times,

   Town meeting approaches and we as a town are facing a dilemma. Recently our Select Board (who were well within their rights) hired a new town administrator with a substantial increase in pay over the previous administrator and mayors of several surrounding much larger towns. Se ethe articles in https://dartmouth.theweektoday.com/  for background information. The following are my thoughts and do not express the thoughts of the Finance Committee or its members in any way. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have resigned my position as a result of the situation and another that is brewing) 

 The Finance committee spent months over the winter and spring meeting with and reviewing the budgets of the different town depts. We asked questions of the the dept heads about capital needs and present budgets conditions and we felt as a group a 3% raise for employees was do-able given out town budget and financial constraints. we spent meetings discussing the effects of people getting 4% while their employees get 3. After the meetings ,discussions and arguing (good naturedly) we agreed on a preliminary budget  to submit to the Select Board. we received back a budget with an abnormal increase in one line item. Town Administrator. The budget has been increased to 225,000 over the 200,000 we had agreed on.

       Dartmouth is encumbered by a process called Proposition 2 1/2 . Google for more information. 

With the town manager getting a 25,000 raise or more (depending on who you talk to) how do you tell the other employees in town who do an excellent job that they might get 25 HUNDRED dollars if they are fortunate. 

Another fact that draws into question the contract is the fact the mayors of surrounding towns which have a much larger population have substantially LOWER salaries. New Bedford for example pays its mayor 167,000 (almost 60,000 dollars less.) and Fall River 118,000 and its Town Administrator 145,000. New Bedford's annual budget is roughly 6 times Dartmouth's budget . Shouldn't those figures be turned around?

about time for an upgrade.

          It finally happened. the yoke and quadrant system ( flight simulation hardware) finally went on sale. I use fs9 (flight sim 2004) to fly all over the world without ever leaving my office. I flew a bunch of planes (737, little Cessna's etc...) and finally chose a Boeing B-50 . the RB-50F to be exact seen below flying over the lush green fields of Ireland. This plane had a long and varied history in the USAAF starting out as a replacement to the B-29 with larger engines , a larger tail and many advancements. It was in fact a stop -gap between world war 2 and the age of Jets. several were used in a variety of roles. Weather detection, photography and even refueling tankers for the jets that replaced them. Ive added several items that were not available to the pilots of that era. Flight computer navigation, a Heads up display, ground proximity warning system, GPS, modern autopilot and landing system. Every time I fly I learn something new about this plane. 

          Im not a "gamer" with an expensive setup and the newest "cutting edge " hardware. I downloaded the game for the folks at Internet Archive for free. Bought a 34 dollar joystick. (best 34 dollar joystick you can imagine ( the Logitech pro something) on Amazon. scoured Flightsim.com and Simviation for planes and gauges, scenery, tips and tricks , went on Youtube to see great videos on how to optimize the experience through tweaking the program parameters and suggesting add-ons to improve the experience. The landscape of Ireland below was such an add-on. Its amazing. 

         The reason I went the "economy route " was simple. a lot of people spend a lot of money building a great flight setup to discover after a while it gets kind of boring. I'm trying to get the best experience without spending a fortune and so far I have. I went as far as purchasing the electronic versions of the flight manuals for the B-50 and many of its various versions from a website that specializes in out of date manuals in New Zealand. downloaded all six 500+ page manuals and voila. Reading material for the next six months on my wife's original 12 year old iPad. courtesy of iCloud. (first time I ever used it). right ..why by new when used will do! I don't believe in built in obsolescence. I have an old iPhone 7 my kids used years ago on my motorcycle for a compass and weather. works great. 

Olaf. 

 Well, its been awhile. I decided to start updating and adding fun little things featuring my relatively new love of aviation. Odd how someone who gets so motion sick would love flying but. Whatever.

I've added a few new webcams for far and exotic places . Greenland , Las Vegas and St Martin where I believe they land right over your head on the beach. 

In the last few months I finished my Masters in cybersecurity and resigned from my towns finance committee in protest over 2 events that occured recently in my town. I'll be posting about them later.

Ive joined Bluesky as Olaf Olaffsun and quit X.