I have a fascination with American history of the 1920s. Naturally, there's a limited view of history told of the period....we tend to like starting history at WW II (1942).
One of my favorite topics is Prohibition. There's a lot of odd history, which people simply never got introduced to.
For example.....most every single community and town that existed in America up until Prohibition....had a saloon. Sizable towns had several.
Saloon had grown in statue since the 1800s and its safe to say that a lot of guys would get off work and automatically walk to the local saloon. They sit there for an hour or two. On any day off....they'd stay for hours.
There was a general belief in society that American culture was addicted to saloons and booze. This led the way for some type of control. The problem was.....you'd go and fix something by legal means and it'd lead to a court confrontation. Eventually, the only method left was the Constitution.....meaning an amendment needed to be added so that the court could not get around the law.
When you look back at the amendment....it simply said that no one in the U.S. could manufacture, transport, or sell alcoholic beverages (with the exception of medicinal or religious reasons). You could drink alcohol but it doesn't take an idiot to realize getting it to you was physically impossible without some legal implications.
All of this comes up shortly after WW I, within the women's right to vote period, and in the midst of the Wilson era.
What people tended to notice during the first month was the remarkable closure of saloons and bars across the nation. Your friendly neighborhood saloon.....no longer existed.
What quietly occurred over the next year or two....was a two-vehicle substitute. You could privately buy some illegal booze (imported or manufactured within the US) from a local guy or operation. Maybe your local grocery guy would get a truckload that he kept in the back of the warehouse, or your local barber would provide you some relief at a fair cost. The second part of the substitute was 'speak-easy' operations.....a private club with a strong door.
Speak-easy operations opened up a strange new door. They were meant to be private and slightly better than the old saloon operations. They had real entertainment or gambling. Unlike the saloon atmosphere where drunks hung around.....speak-easy operations were for people to drink, talk and socialize. Oddly, they opened up the drinking scene to women, which wasn't the case with saloon operations.
It took a year or two for most people to observe that women....after getting the right to vote and finding more potential jobs.....were now open to drinking themselves.
All of this led into this odd observation by the revenue mechanism of the US government. Booze taxes were zero, and it was now a problem because they didn't have some method to make up for losses.
The new Harding government (after Wilson)? Most everyone within his 'club' found that the White House kept ample amounts of booze and had it trucked in from Canada. The folks who should have shown some restraint and law obedience.....weren't doing so.
It took roughly thirteen years to admit Prohibition was stupid, get it back onto another amendment schedule, and get it finally passed.
Our drinking habits? Well.....they changed. I suspect for the most part, to a better level. Prior to Prohibition, drinking was a manly thing. After Prohibition....I'd take a guess in major urban areas (New York City for example).....probably fifty percent of all women were regular alcohol drinkers by 1930. Speak-easy operations were a more classy business situation than the old saloon trade. And if you asked most folks.....beer lost out over that decade to the cocktail trade, and has pretty much made itself a major factor in alcohol consumption today.
We needed some dramatic change to overhaul drinking habits, and that's precisely what Prohibition delivered.
Saturday, 27 June 2015
How Polygamy Now Fits
It's not that I support threesome or foursome marriages, but as I looked over all the chatter from yesterday.....it hit me that the court actually wrote the introduction to legalized polygamy into this decision.
The scenario will be this way.....within six months, a guy will walk into some marriage license office and ask for a license for his second wife. The license clerk will respond with it being illegal, and the guy will challenge this in local court, then state court, and by October of 2017....be in the Supreme Court to present their case. Decision expected by summer of 2018, but you can't really deny a threesome marriage situation because all of this has to deal with "happiness" which is written into the Constitution, and the cornerstone of this week's decision.
There will be ever so brief pause by the news media when the decision is handed down.....a bit of shock....because they thought that marriages could only be between two people. Well....that's simply not the case.
A marriage of five or ten people? I would say it's now possible and there's virtually no limit because 'happiness' is a factor. This brings me to the big question....can a guy really be happy with two wives? I just don't see this trend going to be a happy situation for most folks. It'll twist itself into a fad. Over the course of the first year of legalized polygamy......I'd take a humble guess that 20,000 such marriages will occur.
The problem with polygamy will be the handling of benefits. Like social security or pensions. When one of the foursome passes on.....do the remaining three split it by 33-percent? It'll beg for more Supreme Court action....more decisions.....more divisions.
So get used to the idea of polygamy....it's really not that far off and maybe you actually can think of another gal that would add value to your present marriage.
The scenario will be this way.....within six months, a guy will walk into some marriage license office and ask for a license for his second wife. The license clerk will respond with it being illegal, and the guy will challenge this in local court, then state court, and by October of 2017....be in the Supreme Court to present their case. Decision expected by summer of 2018, but you can't really deny a threesome marriage situation because all of this has to deal with "happiness" which is written into the Constitution, and the cornerstone of this week's decision.
There will be ever so brief pause by the news media when the decision is handed down.....a bit of shock....because they thought that marriages could only be between two people. Well....that's simply not the case.
A marriage of five or ten people? I would say it's now possible and there's virtually no limit because 'happiness' is a factor. This brings me to the big question....can a guy really be happy with two wives? I just don't see this trend going to be a happy situation for most folks. It'll twist itself into a fad. Over the course of the first year of legalized polygamy......I'd take a humble guess that 20,000 such marriages will occur.
The problem with polygamy will be the handling of benefits. Like social security or pensions. When one of the foursome passes on.....do the remaining three split it by 33-percent? It'll beg for more Supreme Court action....more decisions.....more divisions.
So get used to the idea of polygamy....it's really not that far off and maybe you actually can think of another gal that would add value to your present marriage.
Friday, 26 June 2015
This Confederacy Discussion
Over the past ten-odd days, I've sat and watched this Confederacy flag business and the various 'bumps in the road'. Some folks are taking all this personal, and some folks are on an agenda. If I may.....let me offer six observations:
1. The war ended over 150 years ago, with whom three generations of our ‘kin’ have passed on since it occurred. Oddly...most of southerners will admit that we were dirt poor in 1860, and maybe two or three steps above dirt poor today. In the period after the war, the economics of any of the southern states was lousy. It took at least five decades for most folks to see some light at the end of the tunnel. In some ways, the war fixed a problem or two, and in other ways.....it generated a whole generation of folks on the marginal end of the economic scale.
2. Oddly, ninety-nine percent of people who claim southern status today....never were in any large scale farm situation or owned slaves. You can ask southerners about this and I'd take a guess that more than eighty percent can’t even name their ‘kin’ who was alive at the time if they were in the war or just stayed home. It's a shock to most folks that as you look over some county's residents in 1860....you come to realize that there's only a hundred-odd guys who are plantation 'CEOs' and own slaves. The other two or three thousand males in the county? They are simply small hundred-acre or two-hundred acres farmers.....nothing more than that.
3. Getting any southerner to explain Tennessee’s status of 1860 to 1865....is just about impossible. Tennessee was never part of the Confederacy.....but barely attached to the Union itself. It's a difficult topic and most southerners just avoid this discussion.
4. The pride thing generally only comes from the ‘them-versus-us’ situation. You see the same thing with the Germans after WW I. You see the same attitude with various countries that lost wars. In this case, a lot of southerners got upset over the regional carpetbagger situation. For a decade or two, hostility generally brewed throughout the south.
5. A lot of this southern enthusiasm waned off by 1900 and went to a lesser degree. After 1950s, and going into the mid-1960s...for some odd reason, you see fake enthusiasm built up by some fraudulent political gimmicks/groups. A lot of this flag charm stuff came up in this period....rather than the fifty years after the war. No one has ever tasked the news media or historians to chat over fake enthusiasm of this period, and how it wove itself into hundreds of thousands of people. Much of what you see today....is the result of this period, and not the 1860s.
6. Finally, my general prospective is that there is a vast amount of information concerning this period of 1800 to 1860.....which has been just quietly stuffed into a closet and historians/news media players have simply left either purposely or accidentally on the floor. The same problem exists with the 1920s and the period leading up to the 1929 Wall Street crash. No one ever talks economics in the 1840s or the structured/layered situation of the South from 1800 on. No one talks of politics and the us-versus-them attitude taken in Washington DC.
Maybe some people will stand up and finally ask some stupid questions and come to realize some facts. We are roughly 150 years from the event. What happens in 2150? Will we still be arguing over a war from 1865?
1. The war ended over 150 years ago, with whom three generations of our ‘kin’ have passed on since it occurred. Oddly...most of southerners will admit that we were dirt poor in 1860, and maybe two or three steps above dirt poor today. In the period after the war, the economics of any of the southern states was lousy. It took at least five decades for most folks to see some light at the end of the tunnel. In some ways, the war fixed a problem or two, and in other ways.....it generated a whole generation of folks on the marginal end of the economic scale.
2. Oddly, ninety-nine percent of people who claim southern status today....never were in any large scale farm situation or owned slaves. You can ask southerners about this and I'd take a guess that more than eighty percent can’t even name their ‘kin’ who was alive at the time if they were in the war or just stayed home. It's a shock to most folks that as you look over some county's residents in 1860....you come to realize that there's only a hundred-odd guys who are plantation 'CEOs' and own slaves. The other two or three thousand males in the county? They are simply small hundred-acre or two-hundred acres farmers.....nothing more than that.
3. Getting any southerner to explain Tennessee’s status of 1860 to 1865....is just about impossible. Tennessee was never part of the Confederacy.....but barely attached to the Union itself. It's a difficult topic and most southerners just avoid this discussion.
4. The pride thing generally only comes from the ‘them-versus-us’ situation. You see the same thing with the Germans after WW I. You see the same attitude with various countries that lost wars. In this case, a lot of southerners got upset over the regional carpetbagger situation. For a decade or two, hostility generally brewed throughout the south.
5. A lot of this southern enthusiasm waned off by 1900 and went to a lesser degree. After 1950s, and going into the mid-1960s...for some odd reason, you see fake enthusiasm built up by some fraudulent political gimmicks/groups. A lot of this flag charm stuff came up in this period....rather than the fifty years after the war. No one has ever tasked the news media or historians to chat over fake enthusiasm of this period, and how it wove itself into hundreds of thousands of people. Much of what you see today....is the result of this period, and not the 1860s.
6. Finally, my general prospective is that there is a vast amount of information concerning this period of 1800 to 1860.....which has been just quietly stuffed into a closet and historians/news media players have simply left either purposely or accidentally on the floor. The same problem exists with the 1920s and the period leading up to the 1929 Wall Street crash. No one ever talks economics in the 1840s or the structured/layered situation of the South from 1800 on. No one talks of politics and the us-versus-them attitude taken in Washington DC.
Maybe some people will stand up and finally ask some stupid questions and come to realize some facts. We are roughly 150 years from the event. What happens in 2150? Will we still be arguing over a war from 1865?
Thursday, 25 June 2015
The Nutcase Bill
I sat this morning.....gazing over over a couple of newspapers and noticed this one odd piece. Two senators (Manchin of West Virginia and Toomey of Pennsylvania)....Democrat and Republican....want to start up a new gun-control bill....but ONLY if there's 60 votes sitting out there. If there aren't obviously sixty votes.....why waste the effort? So, they've got their staffs walking around and trying bean-count votes.
What kind of bill? Well....the ONLY thing they'd say is that they want to make a law to keep guns away from crazy people (note: mental illness).
If you walk into any church, fishing resort, golf club, beer joint, or gas station and bring this topic up.....generally ninety percent of folks would readily agree....they sure don't want their nutcase nephew 'Robert', or crazy Uncle Leroy, or screwball neighbor Dorthy, or goofy boyfriend Lester, or insane daughter Mandy, or nutcase sister Leslie....having a gun.
Yeah, ten-percent of folks still voice that nutcase folks ought to have the right to guns.....go figure. After they get shot or some nut at the gas station pulls a gun on them....then they get smart and realize nutcases ought not have guns.
The problem I see here though....once you open the 'crazy-in-Bama' situation.....why stop at guns?
If your lunatic sister is certified as crazy......how can we allow her to have a driver's license, register to vote, get a bank loan, have a pilot license, get married, or operate a lawn-mower?
If your psycho cousin is a certified nut.....how can we allow him to purchase dynamite, a chain saw, or purchase legal narcotics at the drug store?
If your wacky neighbor is a certified nut.....how can we allow her to own a sword, keep up a snake collection, or carry a sledge hammer in their car-trunk?
You see, these two guys are opening up a Pandora's Box of sorts. Why limit crazy folks to just no guns? How can you allow them roam freely around the neighborhood, with a chainsaw in their possession or marrying some other nutcase gal three hours after meeting them?
How many certified nuts are there in America? Unknown. No one has ever sat down and really counted. If you asked any guy from Bama.....we'd give you a humble number of three-percent of folks in Bama being certified as 'nuts'. In California.....it might be more. In Oregon, it might be a lot more. It'd require a judge to sign the paperwork, but we'd be fairly sure that three-percent of our Alabama relatives and neighbors were nutcases.
Would the senators then be willing to take the full situation, and just do the right thing? I'm guessing "NO". They wouldn't want to stop crazy folks from marrying, carrying dynamite, or having rattlesnake collections. They wouldn't want to limit a guy on the three-thousand freedoms that most regular folks have.
It's a nice thought that they have, and I'm guessing they are hoping that sixty folks will stand with them on this. But it's mostly just a fraud if you ask me.
What kind of bill? Well....the ONLY thing they'd say is that they want to make a law to keep guns away from crazy people (note: mental illness).
If you walk into any church, fishing resort, golf club, beer joint, or gas station and bring this topic up.....generally ninety percent of folks would readily agree....they sure don't want their nutcase nephew 'Robert', or crazy Uncle Leroy, or screwball neighbor Dorthy, or goofy boyfriend Lester, or insane daughter Mandy, or nutcase sister Leslie....having a gun.
Yeah, ten-percent of folks still voice that nutcase folks ought to have the right to guns.....go figure. After they get shot or some nut at the gas station pulls a gun on them....then they get smart and realize nutcases ought not have guns.
The problem I see here though....once you open the 'crazy-in-Bama' situation.....why stop at guns?
If your lunatic sister is certified as crazy......how can we allow her to have a driver's license, register to vote, get a bank loan, have a pilot license, get married, or operate a lawn-mower?
If your psycho cousin is a certified nut.....how can we allow him to purchase dynamite, a chain saw, or purchase legal narcotics at the drug store?
If your wacky neighbor is a certified nut.....how can we allow her to own a sword, keep up a snake collection, or carry a sledge hammer in their car-trunk?
You see, these two guys are opening up a Pandora's Box of sorts. Why limit crazy folks to just no guns? How can you allow them roam freely around the neighborhood, with a chainsaw in their possession or marrying some other nutcase gal three hours after meeting them?
How many certified nuts are there in America? Unknown. No one has ever sat down and really counted. If you asked any guy from Bama.....we'd give you a humble number of three-percent of folks in Bama being certified as 'nuts'. In California.....it might be more. In Oregon, it might be a lot more. It'd require a judge to sign the paperwork, but we'd be fairly sure that three-percent of our Alabama relatives and neighbors were nutcases.
Would the senators then be willing to take the full situation, and just do the right thing? I'm guessing "NO". They wouldn't want to stop crazy folks from marrying, carrying dynamite, or having rattlesnake collections. They wouldn't want to limit a guy on the three-thousand freedoms that most regular folks have.
It's a nice thought that they have, and I'm guessing they are hoping that sixty folks will stand with them on this. But it's mostly just a fraud if you ask me.
Tuesday, 23 June 2015
The Forty-Hour A Day Worker
I generally regard Amtrak as a failure. They exist mostly because of a couple of routes which people seem to be preoccupied with (New York to Boston, New York to DC, Chicago to Seattle, etc). Beyond that.....Amtrak could dissolve today and seventy-five percent of America wouldn't care. I would even take the humble guess that seventy-five percent of America will confess they've never ridden Amtrak. Three percent of the nation might (my own guess) say that they've used Amtrak more than ten times in their life.
This week, we had another report which kinda demonstrates the incompetence associated with Amtrak. The Inspector General of the organization went out and did an audit of time-cards. I've worked with government and private industry, and what you can generally expect of a time-card audit is maybe one-percent with issues, and the issues will generally be minor in nature. I've only known one guy ever fired over time-card fraud.
Well....this inspector for Amtrak did a long review and came to find at least twenty cases where people confessed they'd worked forty hours in one single day.
Yeah.....it's a bit hard to believe.....since we've been told over and over since high school.....there can be only twenty-four hours of time in one single day.
I paused over this and wondered....how it might be possible.
First, a guy might be finished with route one or his standard nine-hour route.....get pulled to help with a guy who didn't show up and pull another eight hours of duty. I can understand a case like that.....but it'd only get you up to seventeen hours.
Second, maybe the guy was on some weekend holiday deal and felt he needed to double-time the hours. But typically, you'd put in a separate code for weekend or holiday periods.....not to double your hours to meet the situation.
What will happen? Amtrak didn't say much and I assume that the inspector will privately meet with the dozen-odd people who claimed forty hours in one day, and try to get them to amend the card. This means they'd have to pay the money back or find some agreeable way of fixing this.
I would also suspect that some 'fix' will be put into the system and once you do more than twelve hours a day.....some boss will automatically get a warning and have to review your stupid card. Course, you'd think that a boss already reviews your card, and some bosses boss also review anyone with more than forty hours a week.
Guys getting a reputation for forty hours of work in one day? In Bama.....if word got out that you were charging the company for forty hours of work in one day.....folks would start to ask some stupid questions. You'd stall them by saying that you were praying for four hours of the forty (some companies might need a prayer)....clearing out files for four (you are shredding as fast as you are printing)....mowing company grass for six (you told the landscaper guy to go home early today).....working at the office normal business for ten....changing bathroom tiles in the office bathroom for four....and spending twelve hours in various meetings around the whole complex (some of which had nothing to do with your division or projects). Questions would arise and some doubt would be cast over your truthfulness. Frankly, once you got past ten hours of honest work....it's best not to brag much or admit much in public.
This week, we had another report which kinda demonstrates the incompetence associated with Amtrak. The Inspector General of the organization went out and did an audit of time-cards. I've worked with government and private industry, and what you can generally expect of a time-card audit is maybe one-percent with issues, and the issues will generally be minor in nature. I've only known one guy ever fired over time-card fraud.
Well....this inspector for Amtrak did a long review and came to find at least twenty cases where people confessed they'd worked forty hours in one single day.
Yeah.....it's a bit hard to believe.....since we've been told over and over since high school.....there can be only twenty-four hours of time in one single day.
I paused over this and wondered....how it might be possible.
First, a guy might be finished with route one or his standard nine-hour route.....get pulled to help with a guy who didn't show up and pull another eight hours of duty. I can understand a case like that.....but it'd only get you up to seventeen hours.
Second, maybe the guy was on some weekend holiday deal and felt he needed to double-time the hours. But typically, you'd put in a separate code for weekend or holiday periods.....not to double your hours to meet the situation.
What will happen? Amtrak didn't say much and I assume that the inspector will privately meet with the dozen-odd people who claimed forty hours in one day, and try to get them to amend the card. This means they'd have to pay the money back or find some agreeable way of fixing this.
I would also suspect that some 'fix' will be put into the system and once you do more than twelve hours a day.....some boss will automatically get a warning and have to review your stupid card. Course, you'd think that a boss already reviews your card, and some bosses boss also review anyone with more than forty hours a week.
Guys getting a reputation for forty hours of work in one day? In Bama.....if word got out that you were charging the company for forty hours of work in one day.....folks would start to ask some stupid questions. You'd stall them by saying that you were praying for four hours of the forty (some companies might need a prayer)....clearing out files for four (you are shredding as fast as you are printing)....mowing company grass for six (you told the landscaper guy to go home early today).....working at the office normal business for ten....changing bathroom tiles in the office bathroom for four....and spending twelve hours in various meetings around the whole complex (some of which had nothing to do with your division or projects). Questions would arise and some doubt would be cast over your truthfulness. Frankly, once you got past ten hours of honest work....it's best not to brag much or admit much in public.
Book Review: Edge of the World
By Michael Pye
The full title is "The Edge of the World" or "How the North Sea Made US Who We Are".
First, if you were going to build a historical library for decades to come and you wanted five 'cornerstone' books to start the library with.....this is one of the five. It invites to sit down, pause, and ponder over the great revolution of sorts that came up in the North Sea region (UK, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, and Nordic countries), and how they advanced innovation, technology, capitalism, commerce, the world economy, and cultures.
The book is written in a fashion that you basically need to read one paragraph at a time, and soak in the vast amount of information that Pye is giving you. I almost consider the book to be a dozen books combined into one because of the depth of discussion involved.
Chapter two concerns the 'Book Trade' which generates a great deal of thinking and pondering how innovation and how we went quickly from a low-literate society in the 1500s, to a high literate society by the early 1700s. Information came in various packages and was consumed at a fantastic rate. Advancements were put into book form and people read the new strategy or ideas of one guy in another land, and took the ideas to their own craft or business.
If there are any negatives with the book....it's mostly over a large amount of knowledge that Pye is sharing with you, and you have to really put the book down....sometimes for days....to gaze over what he's laid out and you end doing additional reading from other sources to better grasp Pye's story. Pye could have made this a 1,500-page book, in my humble opinion. He does the best he can....condensing a fantastic story into a simple pure tale.
As for recommendations? I wouldn't suggest the book for high school kids because it's got way too much for most kids to handle. A amateur historian would love the book, and I think anyone who wants to really understand the way which innovation took us from a simple age to a bold new world.....this is the book to start with and use as a base.
The full title is "The Edge of the World" or "How the North Sea Made US Who We Are".
First, if you were going to build a historical library for decades to come and you wanted five 'cornerstone' books to start the library with.....this is one of the five. It invites to sit down, pause, and ponder over the great revolution of sorts that came up in the North Sea region (UK, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, and Nordic countries), and how they advanced innovation, technology, capitalism, commerce, the world economy, and cultures.
The book is written in a fashion that you basically need to read one paragraph at a time, and soak in the vast amount of information that Pye is giving you. I almost consider the book to be a dozen books combined into one because of the depth of discussion involved.
Chapter two concerns the 'Book Trade' which generates a great deal of thinking and pondering how innovation and how we went quickly from a low-literate society in the 1500s, to a high literate society by the early 1700s. Information came in various packages and was consumed at a fantastic rate. Advancements were put into book form and people read the new strategy or ideas of one guy in another land, and took the ideas to their own craft or business.
If there are any negatives with the book....it's mostly over a large amount of knowledge that Pye is sharing with you, and you have to really put the book down....sometimes for days....to gaze over what he's laid out and you end doing additional reading from other sources to better grasp Pye's story. Pye could have made this a 1,500-page book, in my humble opinion. He does the best he can....condensing a fantastic story into a simple pure tale.
As for recommendations? I wouldn't suggest the book for high school kids because it's got way too much for most kids to handle. A amateur historian would love the book, and I think anyone who wants to really understand the way which innovation took us from a simple age to a bold new world.....this is the book to start with and use as a base.
Flag Stuff
There are two flags in this little story. The first one.....this flag....came up in 1775 and has some Revolutionary War history tied to it. The Palmetto Tree was used to construct some fortifications.....which held up to British cannon fire. Everyone was impressed by that, and they simply made the tree into the flag. The half-crescent moon goes back to some notion of liberty (no Islam).
As the Civil War came up.....another flag was made up as the battle flag and it's more or less what stands around today and is a symbol of some sorts......but is considered the state battle flag.
So, to halt some radical thinking of people that they'd have to design an entirely new flag after they dump this Civil War battle flag.....no, they already have a flag sitting there and ready to go, and it's been around since 1775, with almost no one complaining about the blue and white flag....other than folks who hate Palmetto trees.
Getting rid of the old battle flag gets rid of racism? Well....no. It is a minor element of a marginal sense, and simply represents one single brick in the wall. As for continued production of the South Carolina battle flag? I would expect some Chinese flag shop to continue producing a couple thousand of these flags yearly, and at least ten thousand South Carolina folks to fly their battle flag as some type of stance. Maybe three-hundred years into the future.....it won't be such a big deal, but right now.....it's a state issue.
One little note.....as for states left with a 'problem'? Well.....Mississippi is about the last state with a connection to the Civil War. Alabama's flag is mildly representing the Civil War but has a white background. I'd expect a frenzy to occur in Mississippi by late summer and they'll replace their flag.
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