Monday 3 November 2014

Bye Bye Bezerkeley Blues: Monday, November 3rd!

It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we are so obstinately opposed to current opinions; we find the first places taken, and we do not want to be the last. -Francois De La Rochefoucauld, moralist (1613-1680) 

Twisted Oak Winery!
P, Let me know when and where ya wanna meet. Will await word before heading to Bartage. 
Hi Tarzan! How did you and Carlos The Jackal fare? Sure it was fun in spite of any disappointing results. No room for hardware anyway!

Chloe Alexis Dunn shared Aunt Leah's Independent Lifeskills Society's photo. Facebook friends and family, loved ones all round, it is Tree Lot time and I want well rather I BEG for your help!!! message me, text me, email me if you are up for a shift or 5!!! THANK YOU!!
I have made an executive decision regarding BART Station and it will be to meet you at Ashby at 10:00 am. If that does not give you enough time, let me know as I'll be checking email right up until just before we head out. Glasgow is still abed but once we is up we'll start to reload Titanium Green and do a few light housekeeping chores here. 

See you there. Conductore Whirligig will meet you at Ashby BART at 10 this morning Cheers and safe travels. Charlie P, See you at Ashby at 10am. W

Hello Darling! Trust all goes well! Forgot to mention that we enjoyed your antipasto the first night we were staying with Coffaros, outside Healdsburg, watching SF win. Delicioso indeed, so thanks again! We are off to Calaveras this morning, heading north, via Tahoe, on Wednesday to put us within easy commute to Portland on Thursday, if that still works for everyone. Dinner out, is on us, it goes without saying.  
You have already feted us so generously please don't go to any trouble about breakfast. I'm happy to eat month old overlefts, as you know, and other lads are even easier to please. Your last breakfast was more than a fest but again, please, seriously, don't go to such lengths. A cup of java and some toast will set us up.

Trip has been a delight and Glasgow and I rode over Golden Gate yesterday. What fun. Incredible weather. Will be in touch once we leave Foothills and make our way north, via Tahoe, Bend, etc. Fondestos and Cheers, Patrizzio!

Hi Lads! If we are late, Whirlygig, just put out your unwashed, fermenting squash gear at the flea market there. Need room for wine muleage! Cheers, Il Conduttore!

Hello Duhlink and Goils! How are you, Chloë managing without "your" car? Gorgeous weather here! Fondestos, Love and Cheers, Patrizzio/Dad! Very Difficultly!! I am not meant to not have wheels!!! xx I only had the car for the weekend. I'm now back to busing Corinne Thank goodness for CAR2GO!!one weekend too long in my mind :) xx
 
Hello Lads! Here are the Me Jane snapolas! Cheers, Il Conduttore!

Hi Kids! Great to have people working on next major trip while I'm suffering in the the foothills of the Sierra Nevada! Had a grand day tasting in Murphy's after we arrived from Berkeley. Loads to tell about many of the changes to various wineries in this region. Delightful dinner at Teresa's this evening and loads of fun with Teresa, herself, granddaughter of original "Teresa". Plan to ride from Jackson to Plymouth tomorrow but driver of Titanium Green will be determined by who has worst overhang domani! Fondestos, Love and Cheers, Patirizzio!

Pics: Twisted Oak; Teresa's; salad; Teresa with lads.      Hi Kids! Just a quick note to thank you both for your unstinting hospitality and generosity! Ate our bagged lunches in Farmington and they were fabuloso, Vinnie! No trouble with route so many thanks to Donna Florida!  
Had a grand day tasting in Murphy's after we arrived from Berkeley. Loads to tell about many of the changes to various wineries in this region. Delightful dinner at Teresa's this evening and loads of fun with Teresa, herself, granddaughter of original "Teresa". Plan to ride from Jackson to Plymouth tomorrow but driver of Titanium Green will be determined by who has worst overhang domani! Many thanks, primarily, from Glasgow, and Giorgio for vegetarian sandwiches, which we "suffered" through! Fondestos, Love and Cheers, Patrizzio!

Hello to The Two Davids! Sorry to David C for sending along message and to David K for not sending along message! Too, too much malt, I think! Enjoy cruise, David C. I put three of your wonderful tomatoes on a salad I made last night and they were some of tastiest I've ever had. Anyway, Cheers to you both. Patrizzio! Hi Kids! (To Berkeley People!)

Pat, we have to finish my story about Billie........He was the one who worked on my deck and be a great friend climbing up my 120 stairs most nights......Look forward to seeing you soon  

Hi Corinne, Thanks for doing this leg work. I think the tour looks fantastic, and you’re right there is a lot to take in. Think of all the new best friends Patrick will be able to make!

I don’t think the cost is out of line, but let’s make sure we know what we’re getting for their service. As you noted, that there is an additional charge for an English speaking guide from Udaipur to Delhi, days 29 to 43. That begs the question, do we have a guide for the first 28 days? If the guides are optional, what are we paying Luxe tours for, other than arranging hotels, cars and airport transfers? Looking forward to more discussion, Peter


Hi Peter If you look at the second rates page it states that we have a English speaking guide in each city. The only thing I'm wondering if it is too much? We are on the move sometimes every day. The 4 days in Goa is the only real break. What do you think? We could ask for more time in some areas. I've looked at air fare and Cathay pacific goods through Hong Kong and looks like one of the shorter flights. C

Wilson, A. Scott Berg, The Berkley Publishing Group, 2013: "Woodrow Wilson instituted the first presidential press conference in 1913 with the idea of introducing transparency to his office. He also re-instituted the practice of giving the State of the Union address in person. Since the days of Thomas Jefferson it had been delivered in writing instead. The speech lasted all of nine minutes: 


"At 12:45 on March 15, 1913, the [Woodrow] Wilson Administration made history when it established what would become a convention of the Presidency. That Saturday afternoon, Tumulty ushered 125 members of the press corps into Wilson's office; and for the first time, a President held a White House press conference. 
Wilson was hardly the first President to talk to a journalist; indeed, Taft met occasionally with newspapermen after hours and granted them a few minutes of questions; and TR [Teddy Roosevelt] cherry-picked members of his 'newspaper cabinet,' allowing them to transcribe what he chose to dictate. To promote government transparency, Wilson announced that he intended to schedule regular conferences at which any journalist could ask whatever he wanted. "If nothing else, the exercise was a good publicity tool for Wilson. Few could speak off the cuff with such ease, and he sometimes simply chose not to answer a question. 
Most of his responses -- terse and precise -- revealed nothing more than necessary, but his witty interplay with the press set the tone for relations between the press and future Presidents. 'As he went on talking, the big hit he was making with the crowd became evident,' reported The New York Times after the first gathering. 'There was something so unaffected and honest about his way of talking ... that it won everybody, despite the fact that many of the men there had come prejudiced against him.' Between March and December 1913 alone, Wilson appeared at sixty press conferences.
 
"At the second conference -- which moved to the much larger East Room -- Wilson took the press into his confidence and asked for its help. 'The only way I can succeed is by not having my mind live in Washington,' he said. 'My body has got to live there, but my mind has got to live in the United States, or else I will fail.' Wilson hoped the newspapermen would bring him a sense of the nation beyond the city in which they worked, considering themselves importers as much as exporters...."The Constitution states that the President shall from time to time not only give to the Congress information on the state of the Union but also 'recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them.' ...
"After John Adams left the Presidency in 1801, Presidents virtually discontinued their visits to the two legislative houses. Ostensibly to keep 'the President's Annual Message to Congress' from becoming a throne speech -- though possibly because he was not a good speaker -- Thomas Jefferson messengered his texts to the legislature for a clerk to read, and that practice became standard.  
"The morning after his election, Woodrow Wilson had contemplated that clause, thanks to a journalist named Oliver P. Newman. In an off-the-record interview about executive style, Newman had suggested that Wilson might abandon the 112-year-old tradition and deliver important speeches in person. ... Thinking it would emphasize the cruciality of all that he wished to propose, Wilson asked the legislature to convene. 
Reaction from Capitol Hill was swift. Republicans, such as William O. Bradley of Kentucky, cautioned him to remember the separation of powers, saying, 'If Mr. Wilson comes to the Capitol to influence legislation, he will be more foolish than the donkey that swam the river to get a drink of water.' Several Democrats, such as John Sharp Williams of Mississippi, denounced the notion as a reversion to royalty. 'The practice instituted by Jefferson was more American than the old pomposities and cavalcadings between the White House and the Capitol,' Williams said. On April 8, 1913 -- for the first time since November 22, 1800, when John Adams delivered his fourth annual message -- a President of the United States rode the mile and a half from the White House to the Capitol for the purpose of addressing a joint session of Congress.
 

"Wilson staged the appearance with predictable simplicity, arriving by automobile with only a Secret Service guard. ... Just before one o'clock, the President appeared in the chamber, escorted by members of each house; and everybody rose and applauded. ...
"The President began by stating his primary reason for delivering this message in person, which was his long-held belief in humanizing institutions. He said he wanted them to know that the President of the United States 'is a person, not a mere department of the Government hailing Congress from some isolated island of jealous power, sending messages, not speaking naturally and with his own voice -- that he is a human being trying to cooperate with other human beings in a common service.' The audience applauded. ...
"His speech lasted nine minutes. Amid applause, Wilson left the chamber.
"In the car with his wife on the way back to the White House, Wilson kept chuckling under his breath. When, at last, Ellen asked what he was laughing about, he said, 'Wouldn't Teddy [Roosevelt, a former president known for enjoying attention] have been glad to think of that? -- I put one over on Teddy and am totally happy.' "

The Sages: Warren Buffett, George Soros, Paul Volcker, and the Maelstrom of Markets, Charles R. Morris, PublicAffairs, 2009. "U.S. Presidents have had a tendency to pressure the Federal Reserve into keeping interest rates low, and Federal Reserve chairmen are often predisposed to please. But deferring needed rate increases and imposing price controls eventually creates its own undesired consequence:

"Maintaining the gold value of the dollar [by increasing interest rates] conflicted with the Kennedy growth imperative in 1962, although it was finessed by the foreign security tax ploy. Starting about 1965, Lyndon Johnson started running big budget deficits to finance the war in Vietnam and his domestic program [and] the floods of new money were already generating inflationary pressures...."And once again, the prescribed medicine-raise interest rates and reduce borrowing-was not on the table, for it conflicted with Richard Nixon's desire to win a second presidential term.  

"The first two years of the Nixon administration were very difficult economic sailing, to the point where the administration was seriously worried about the 1972 election. During the five years of Johnson's presidency, despite the uptick in inflation, the real, or inflation-adjusted, annual rate of growth exceeded 5 percent. But in 1970, growth plunged to near zero, while inflation was scraping 6 percent -- dreadful numbers for a campaign launch. There was little room for maneuver. The 1970 federal deficit was already as big as any Johnson had run, so fiscal stimulation was likely to spill over into more inflation. ...
"But few politicians had Nixon's gift for the bold stroke. In August 1971 he helicoptered his entire economics team to Camp David for a weekend that Herbert Stein, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers, predicted 'could be the most important meeting in the history of economics' since the New Deal. After the meeting, ... Nixon announced that he would cut taxes, impose wage and price controls throughout the economy, impose a tax surcharge on all imports, and rescind the commitment to redeem dollars in gold. ...

"After the final decisions had been taken, [Volcker] was charged with drafting Nixon's and [Treasury Secretary John ] Connally's speeches announcing the changes. His draft, he recalled, was 'a typical devaluation speech' filled with the 'obligatory mea culpas.' None of it saw the light of day. The Volcker draft was handed over to uber speechwriter William Safire and emerged as a proclamation of 'a triumph and a fresh start.' "Politically, it was a masterstroke. With price controls in place, Nixon and his Federal Reserve chief Arthur Burns could gun up the money supply without worrying about price inflation -- both the narrow and broad measures of money jumped by more than 10 percent in 1971, at the time the biggest increase ever. Economic growth obediently revived and was back up over 5 percent by the 1972 election -- just what the political doctors had ordered.
"Consumers were happy with flat prices, while big business loved the tax breaks, the import surcharges and the price controls. All in a single weekend. Nixon had delivered them from union wage pressures, supplier price hikes, and foreign competition. ...
 
"Although Nixon got his landslide, the cracks in the economy were too big to hide. The 1971 wage-and-price '90-day freeze' as it was originally billed, lasted for three years. Controls are always easier to put on than to take off. The underlying inflation builds to a point of explosiveness, and the inevitable thicket of rules offers profitable little crevices for the lucky or the well-connected. Organized labor stopped cooperating in 1974, but by then Nixon was deeply ensnared in the coils of Watergate. Congress forced the end of all controls in the spring, except for price controls on domestic oil. Removal of controls triggered double-digit inflation, the first since the 1940s and the country suffered a nasty recession in 1974 and 1975."







 

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