I finished detailing the following EA ships:
I am nearly done painting a Hyperion Cruiser. I also finished the Mindriders ship over a month ago. I'll post pictures and painting details as soon as I can.
Wow! I wish I knew this in 2002 when I ran for Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:
Cahill voted to double supporter's pension. Then again, so do Cahill's other opponents. Here are the interesting bits (the bolds are mine in case you just want to skim it):
Shea, who retired that year at age 49, has been collecting a pension
now worth $47,000 a year, plus health-care insurance, paid by Norfolk
county taxpayers. If she had received the kind of pension usually given
to sheriff's department administrators, instead of the type Norfolk
corrections officers get for their potentially dangerous jobs, her
pension would be worth less than half that, $21,230 a year.
…
Steve Kenneway, president of the Massachusetts Correctional Officers Federation Union, blasted Shea's pension.
"I don't see a lot of stress on a paper-pusher, not compared to an
officer who might get stabbed or beaten up on the cellblock," he said.
"These retirements are meant for officers who get old before their time
under the stress and physical demands of the job."
…
Shea's work for Cahill, a Democrat,
extends back at least to 1996 when she was actively raising funds for
his campaign to become county treasurer, according to three Quincy
Democrats who observed their relationship. She also used her contacts
from having served on the retirement board to round up support for
Cahill around the county.
Shea
again worked closely with him in his 2002 campaign to win the state
treasurer's post. After he took office, she continued to be on his
inner financial team that met in Quincy, sometimes weekly, to plan
fund-raising for Cahill's political account, said two Cahill
supporters. Shea has also donated to Cahill's coffers, more than $3,000
since Cahill won election as state treasurer.
…
The five-member Norfolk County Retirement Board approved Shea's pension
with no questions asked, minutes show. At the time, Cahill was
chairman, and Shea was also a member of the board (and still is).
Neither Cahill nor Shea recused themselves from the July 2000 vote,
according to minutes of the meeting, which state that the vote was
unanimous to approve a batch of pension requests, including Shea's.
Additionally:
Paul F. Connors Jr. and his wife
have been longtime contributors to Cahill's campaign committee, dating
back to when he was first elected county treasurer. Since Cahill was
elected to the state post in 2002, they have contributed $12,000.
Connors could not be reached yesterday; he has previously not responded
to requests for comment about his firm's dealings in Massachusetts.
In
October 2005, the state retirement board chose EARNEST Partners, an
Atlanta-based financial firm, to manage $250 million in pension money.
EARNEST used Connors & Co. as a broker on the deal. Cahill also
chaired the selection committee that reviewed the proposals.
If
normal industry standards were used, Connors & Co. would have
earned between 1 and 12 percent of the $6.8 million fee that the state
pension board paid EARNEST to manage the funds. EARNEST's disclosure
statement did not include the fee Connors & Co. received.
Cahill
served on the state pension board selection committee that recommended
EARNEST and also voted for final approval. He has said he does not
excuse himself from participating, even if his political supporters are
involved, because he is not told which third-party brokers helped
arrange an investment.
Please go read the Boston Globe article: Cahill voted to double supporter's pension. It does make for interesting reading.
Congratulations to my fellow Greens participating in the 2009 European Parliamentary elections. Ecolo in Belgium, Europe Écologie/Les Verts in France, the Socialist People's Party in Denmark, Bündnis90/Die Grünen in Germany and Sweden's Miljöpartiet de Gröna did particularly well. All got over 10% of the vote. Unfortunately, Comhaontas Glas in Ireland and Strana Zelenych in the Czech Republic, both in government, were trounced very soundly and did not receive any MEPs.
Also, congratulations to the Swedish Pirate Party for its strong showing and electing an MEP.
One of my daughter's preschool teacher's remarked that my daughter got her bunny out of her cubby yesterday and gave it to a crying classmate. She said she'd never seen a kid do anything like that. I am so proud!
From the Dollars & Sense blog comes this NY Times piece about a Communist run town in Spain providing jobs and housing. The NY Times focuses far too much time on what the mayor does than on how they put their Communist economy into practice. Last I knew towns had councils that acted as a municipality's legislature. My guess is that they are approving the town's municipal housing program and farming cooperative. Here is the wikipedia entry that lists more about the town council.
The reporter wrote a similar article for the International Herald Tribune that appeared in the Boston Globe a month ago.
Today is my birthday. On the actual date of my birth Kyle Eastwood, American jazz musician & son of Clint Eastwood was born. I share a birthday with:
Today is a weird day.
On the 27th, the Massachusetts House of Representatives approved an increase in the sales tax from 5% to 6.25%. Strangely, my own legislators in Somerville, who are viewed as very progressive and who I know and like, voted for it.
I understand that our Massachusetts' government is facing a very large deficit and that vital programs will be cut to balance the budget. If we don't raise taxes then vital programs that help our cities and towns, children and provide the little safety net we have, will be axed.
However, increasing the sales tax is not the way to do it!
The sales tax is incredibly regressive. Page 58 of The Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy's Who Pays: A distributional analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States lists a break down for the total tax burden faced by people at different levels of income in Massachusetts.
Those in the lowest 20% by income, pay 9.3% of their income in taxes. The poorest 20% pay 5.4% of their income in sales and excise taxes.
Those in the top 1% by income, pay 4.6% of their income (6.8% before they get a kick back from the federal government because of our state income tax) in taxes. The richest 1% pay 0.6% of their income in sales taxes.
Basically the Massachusetts House has decided to fund services used by the poor and middle class (as well as corporate welfare) on the back of the poor.
There are alternatives to a blanket increase in the sales tax.
Short term, we could raise corporate taxes and eliminate the Fidelity and Raytheon tax breaks. We could also raise the income tax rate while also increasing the value of deductions and exemptions so the higher rates don't hit the poor and middle class. If need be, it would be more preferable to change the sales tax to cover services, or items bought over the internet. While not perfect, both changes in the sales tax are more likely to effect the well off.
Longer term we could make the income tax progressive, or impose a wealth tax. Yes, I know "that's not possible" because the rich and the corporations own our government. Still, we have to fight for a just tax system.
The financial corporations and rich are getting a bailout, but the poor and middle class are getting the shaft. Please urge your State Senator to vote against this increase in the sales tax and to seek fairer taxes.
I finally tracked down the problem that caused some, but not all, mailers to fail to send mail to jokeefe at jamesokeefe dot org.
I had setup a CNAME record for jamesokeefe.org that pointed to jokeefe.typepad.com. This setting resulted in some servers getting the typepad domain name server and not the correct domain name server.
Those servers that got the typepad dns would email to jokeefe@jokeefe.typepad.com. Removing this CNAME record and instead setting up an A record that pointed jamesokeefe.org to www.jamesokeefe.org appears to have fixed the problem.
Various folks who have had problems in the past, are now able to email jokeefe at jamesokeefe dot org. I am most pleased, though it took me too long to fix it.
Thanks to R. Scott Perry's helpful DNS Oversimplified page.
I meant to write this before, but Eliot Spitzer beat me to it. I agree that we should force the folks who got bonuses at AIG to give them back (Doug Henwood blogs about how to do that), or tax them at 150% percent.
However, the real scandal is that while millions of people have been laid off, UAW members are forced to renegotiate their contracts, and the US government is bailing out the banking sector seemingly without any upside, AIG paid out tens of billions of dollars to banks, hedge funds and others making good on the poorly setup Credit Default Swap (CDS) contracts that AIG entered into.
As he writes:
It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting
themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad
adventure. The payments to AIG’s counterparties are justified with an
appeal to the sanctity of contract. If AIG’s contracts turned out to be
shaky, the theory goes, then the whole edifice of the financial system
would collapse.
But
wait a moment, aren’t we in the midst of reopening contracts all over
the place to share the burden of this crisis? From raising taxes—income
taxes to sales taxes—to properly reopening labor contracts, we are all
being asked to pitch in and carry our share of the burden. Workers
around the country are being asked to take pay cuts and accept shorter
work weeks so that colleagues won’t be laid off. Why can’t Wall Street
royalty shoulder some of the burden? Why did Goldman have to get back
100 cents on the dollar? Didn’t we already give Goldman a $25 billion
capital infusion, and aren’t they sitting on more than $100 billion in
cash? Haven’t we been told recently that they are beginning to come
back to fiscal stability? If that is so, couldn’t they have accepted a
discount, and couldn’t they have agreed to certain conditions before
the AIG dollars—that is, our dollars—flowed?
The appearance that
this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a
conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason
or explanation.
The US government owns 80% of AIG, right. It would have gone bankrupt without our money potentially taking down the economy. So why don’t we force AIG to renegotiate the CDS contracts it has entered into. What are the parties on the other end of the CDSs going to do, have us call in the money they have borrowed from us?
Hat tip to Dollars & Sense for citing Spitzer’s article.
When I was 20 I found the Throwing Muses. I loved the band, got their tapes (yes it was that long ago), saw them wherever I could and probably pined for the lead singer/guitar player/song writer more than I should have. They were my favorite band, bar none.
Since those days, the band has gone through its ups and downs, but it still keeps working. During that time I bought their albums and attended their concerts. I tended to go alone since few that I knew were interested in going. They didn't play at places like Foxboro stadium, where we were hundreds of feet from them. Instead, they played smaller venues where I could (and did) wade up to the front so I could be six feet from the band with no one to block me. I could stand, singing to the songs (non-verbally of course), swaying to the music and enjoy the show.
I anticipated that last night's show would be the same. They were scheduled to go on at 11:30, so after a dinner out with my wife, we headed over and encountered the end of the second band of the line up, 50 Foot Wave. Now 50 Foot Wave is most of Throwing Muses, but trying a different style of music: noise rock as the Boston Phoenix called it.
Before Throwing Muses went on, I moved to the front to repeat the experiences of past concerts, while my wife stayed in back. After nearly half an hour, something unexpected happened. I decided that I didn't want to be there and we left. Sure the cigarette smoke was gone from times past. However, I found that I put more time into keeping upright in the sardine confines of the hall, trying not to block other people's views and trying to get a good pictures of the band. Instead of enjoying the show and being in the moment as the Buddhists would say, I let myself get distracted.
Once I realized this fact, I noticed that I really don't like experiencing a concert essentially alone. A concert is a social event, and not having someone with whom to share it takes away the charm. When I went to see Solas at the Somerville Theatre, say, the fact that I had to sit in a seat meant that I was forced to share that experience with the family and friends with me. I am the better for it.
Throwing Muses is still one of my favorite bands. However, there is no way I can pretend to be twenty even for a couple of hours. I won't be going to any more Throwing Muses' concerts. That song is done.
NOTE: The folks at the Screaming Females/50 Foot Wave/Throwing Muses merchandise table were really great including the guy who offered to give me some free ear plugs. Thanks! Also a thanks to the guy who told me to put down my camera. He was in the moment, I was not, but without his request, I might not have had the insight I did.