Tilting at Windmills

I stood at the gas bar the other day just watching the numbers go flashing by on the pump. It was mesmerizing in a curious way, the rhythm of the cents counting upwards to the regular changing of the dollar amount. Maybe that is how they get us to buy more gas. They lull us with a sense of rhythm. It is fortunate that we aren’t still in the old analog days of meter reading with a bell dinging at the turn of every dollar. If that were the case, the pump would sound off like a school bell ringing as the dollar amounts wracked up at mind dizzying speeds.

I have been dealing with the economic downturn as well as the next guy, although as a writer the economic rewards do not roll in with any regularity to be all that concerned. My financial management skills consists mostly of checking my pockets for anything with a silver sheen and making sure I don’t loose the Lotto 649 tickets from one draw date to the next. The Lottery Retirement Plan, which is the linchpin in my long term financial strategy is also the vehicle of choice amongst many of my friends and family, even though it was not mentioned as a viable option when I took the Canadian Securities Course. I guess they better update that program to reflect the realities of today.

Like many other people, I have been counting my pennies and looking for ways to stretch what ever bucks happen to come my way. There are plenty of things to do in this area for cheap entertainment. We have many museums and art galleries to see, the local landscape north of the city is ideal for picnicking, the small quaint villages and towns around us gives us the opportunity to step back in time a bit and enjoy their rustic charm. The waterfront, the city’s pride and joy, is a perfect place to lie on the grass and watch the clouds drift by. It used to be just letting my eyes wander over our opposite shoreline would lull me to a state of nirvana, but now whenever I look over at Wolfe Island and see the towering windmills, I instantly flash to those lumbering alien machines that strolled through the countryside blasting apart the world as we knew it in the original movie, “War of the Worlds.” The mental image of mayhem, havoc and devastation on Wolfe Island kind of disrupts any zen state I may have achieved.

The recent economic woes have certainly impacted all levels of society, from the wealthiest to the ones who depend up the generosity of others. However, the frenetic and frantic wheeling and dealing of how to stimulate the economy that was deemed so critical in January and February has morphed into a more casual response. The buzz word of projects that were shovel ready and were ripe for an instantaneous injection of readily shoveled federal money has become sort of ...meh. Not that important anymore.

Don’t misunderstand me, the economy is still in a lousy state. But it is a little confusing when you go from a sky-is-falling, panic inducing, end of the world scenario into a kind of blase feeling in a matter of months. It is understandable if you get a little discouraged after all, look what happened to Chicken Little. It is not as though this was solely a media created problem, the economy really has taken a hit and while some believe this is a correction that has been a long time coming, that is small comfort to all those who have lost their jobs, their savings or more.

I would bet one of my few remaining loonies that if you ever got two thousand economists in the same room with one problem you would most likely emerge with two thousand solutions, if not closer to three thousand. Or better yet, two or three thousand recommendations for solutions, no use going out on a limb with a real solution. Even the ultimate question of do we throw money at an economic problem or not will not get you a black and white response. The best that can be brought forth is a definite maybe or maybe not. No one has quite figured out which is correct and we won’t ever know the solution as there really doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer to this. In reality, there is a lot of middle ground that is awash in a sea of grey. Each side gleefully hold up examples of the teachings of Friedman or Galbraith or any other economist ‘du jour’ as quintessential models of economies at work while not fully understanding any of them.

My hometown has fared better than some other urban centers and this is all part of our master plan to not overly exceed on anything but then again we never really under exceed either. There are some examples locally of business growth but most companies are part of a larger umbrella of companies of which we are just a cog. Our real estate values did not go through the roof as happened in cities like Toronto or Vancouver to the chagrin of some people. But then, our crash did not take 20% off the prices of real estate to the enormous relief of others.

Throughout history, we have seen that sometimes the best solution to surviving a crisis is to hunker down and weather the storm. I am sure many of our citizens have been through much worse and some may feel that our present problems are a creation of the forces who would benefit from them. That would not surprise me in the least. Tilting at windmills has always been a favorite maneuver of the press and politicians. Now if they want to take up this quixotic battle all they have to do is sit on our shoreline and gaze over at the wind farm scattered across Wolfe Island. Don Quixote only thought he was facing thirty or forty of them, we have eighty six, more than enough for everyone to tilt at willwith.

The Arrogance of Stupidity

We had a mass murder here in Kingston almost a month ago on June 30. A 50 year old woman and three teen aged girls were found dead in a car which was submerged in one of the waterway locks that connects Kingston to the Rideau Canal. The lock in question is at Kingston Mills which is part of a waterway system that eventually unites Kingston with our national capital of Ottawa about 100 miles northeast of us. What is particularly mind-boggling about this murder is that the three family members (father, mother and son) accused of this heinous act, actually thought no one would notice. They must have figured that it would be a crime that would be easily disregarded with some simple-minded explanation of their demise. That might have been the case in their native Afghanistan, but not over here.

Their official story was that sometime after midnight, after driving from Niagara Falls, they stopped at a motel off the 401 highway to spend the night. They didn’t remember which hotel they stayed at, just that it was off the 401. Then sometime after settling into their rooms, the oldest daughter (19 years old) took one of the cars to go out for a drive even though she didn’t have a license. Not happy just going alone, they said she took her two sisters and her aunt (who turns out not to be an aunt after all, but the first wife of the father who is accused of this murder). Then they somehow navigated the car through a park-like setting, between barriers and as a result of a freak accident, ended up in the canal.

The police didn’t need a mind-reader like the Amazing Kreskin to start to see the holes in this story. Even I, whose only experience at cracking murders come from the TV set, could ask questions that would cause a suspect to shift uncomfortably in a chair. But this is not an analysis of the murder, it is more an analysis of how can people be so stupid to think they could get away with it.

We have seen this time and time again from all classes of people and all from all social statuses. From the absolute dumb-ass criminals on shows like the First 48 and Cops to the more intelligent, but no less stupid, politicians. The only rational I can come up with is what can only be called the arrogance of stupidity. These people believe that they are first and foremost, smarter than they think. Which really on the scale of how they measure up against normal people, it turns out that they are still pretty stupid.

I remember a murder case in California in 2004, a kid named Skylar Deleon who passed himself of as a former TV star (actually just a bit part in one episode of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series) murdered Tom and Jackie Hawks who owned a 55 foot yacht. The couple had the boat for sale and Skylar, in his own little world, believed he could kill the couple and take their boat by claiming he paid them cash for the boat and that the couple then subsequently disappeared into Mexico with the money. It should be mentioned that the Hawks had a family and friends. How this kid with a gift of the gab actually thought he might get away with this is beyond the comprehension of the average person. But still he went ahead with his plan and as would be expected, was arrested and has been given the death penalty for the crime. Just to top things off, it was reported he tried to cut his penis off with a razor blade while he was in prison (insert your own joke here).

We have repeatedly seen politicians who, when found with their hand buried so far in the cookie jar, have come up with what they believe are rational explanations for their behavior. I guess in that moment of sheer panic when they get caught, their sense of what is rational must have been severely compromised. American Senator Larry Craig whose homosexual encounter in an airport washroom was uncovered by security personnel, tried explained that he was simply tying his shoelace when he was caught soliciting some non-governmental sanctioned fun under a stall. Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney when caught receiving a couple hundred thousand dollars in cash in an envelope explained that this money was a retainer for legal services he had not yet provided and therefore he didn’t report the income to the Canada Revenue Agency. He apparently felt it was unearned income at the time. If there was ever a case where income was unearned, this would have been it. I mean, besides a few babies born at the local hospital, the majority of us weren’t born yesterday.

It would be easy to go on and on about stories of this level of stupidity. The world is certainly not in short supply of examples. The tougher point to crystallize is why these people think they are smarter than the rest of us when quite evidently they are not. Why do they think that they can get away with something that even to the simplest of people, doesn’t seem remotely feasible. The only common denominator that links the lowest knuckle dragging criminal to the smoothest of smooth political operatives is their own arrogance. It is this arrogance that will bring them down, it always does. As I have said previously, the moment you start to think you are smarter than the other guy, is the moment you start to fail.