Have we really gotten to be that self-centered?
When I was a kid, (eyeball roll), almost everything was closed on Sundays and holidays. There were, and still are some, 'blue laws'. Blue laws prohibit certain activities on Sundays. Some time in the late 70's, some of these bans were lifted and various establishments started to conduct business on Sundays and holidays. All for the sake of the almighty dollar.
Sunday used to be reserved for family. It was a day of rest. We went to church in the morning and gathered with family the rest of the day. We went to our grandparent's house where we had the opportunity to play with our cousins while the adults talked about whatever adults talked about. That's why I know my cousins. It's why I know cousins of cousins. Even after our grandparents passed, we still got together on Sunday's with family. We did the same thing for holidays.
While I don't like laws that try to dictate morality, they generally don't work anyway, I do think that the easing of blue laws gave us an excuse to start ignoring an extremely important aspect of our life - family.
Instead of spending the day breaking bread with family, we haul our kids to yet another activity, soccer, baseball, whatever. Sunday has become a day to catch up on those things we didn't get done during the week. Sunday has become just another day of the week of running errands. When did it become ok to schedule ballgames on Sunday anyway? I know what my mother would have said. "Too bad. You'll just have to miss this game."
But we've gone even a step further now. Again, for the sake of the almighty dollar, we have stores who are going to open their doors for shoppers on Thanksgiving Day to get in a couple of extra hours of Christmas shopping. Really?
That means that some poor souls have to forfeit their Thanksgiving with their families so the self-centered, in-debt-up-to-their-eyeballs, I-just-can't-get-it-done-without-these-couple-of-extra-hours, people can get a 'great deal'. Give me a break. Can't you wait until a respectable hour on Friday? Isn't 6 am Friday early enough to start your Christmas shopping?
The Santa Claus magic should have gone away when you became an adult. There's nothing wrong with kids, even teenagers, thinking, on Christmas morning, that all that stuff magically appeared overnight with the help of little elves. But do you realize that doesn't happen in the stores? Someone has to be there to stock and restock the shelves. Someone has to ring up your order so you can run that over-used credit card through the little machine. Someone has to watch the mob come through the door and be there to help your fellow shopper up when you run them over trying to beat them to the coveted item the marketers said you just have to buy or life just won't go on.
All that takes a lot of someones. Those someones have to be at work well before the doors of the store open to you. Those someones are going to try and cram in a quick Thanksgiving and get some sleep before heading off to work.
Yes. I know there are a lot of people who work holidays. I was one of them. There are jobs where it is critical for people to work the holidays, hospitals, fire and police departments to name a few. And others not so critical. But can we keep it to a minimum? Must we add retail stores?
I've never been shopping on black Friday and really don't understand the hysteria. There's always been more than enough things in the store to buy in the middle of December and somehow guys manage to find stuff on Christmas Eve. Besides, internet shopping means I can have a cup of coffee in hand while wearing sweats and I'm not infringing on someone else's family time no matter when I want to do my shopping.
So this year, when I venture out to the brick and mortars, it will be Sears or JCPenny's which are resisting this ridiculous trend, somewhat. And there's always the little mom and pop places that usually have incredible customer service. And if for some really weird reason I find the shelves empty at those places because I didn't show up in time, there's always the orange, peppermint stick, and nuts as a back up. Oh, and the turkey, ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade noodles, pies....
.....and we'll eat too much and talk about how we didn't miss out on Black Thursday over a game of Euchre.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Recycling Recycling
It seems the Athens-Hocking Solid Waste
District is out of compliance with Ohio EPA. Still. And the district says they need more money in order to fix this. There's a shocker. But there's something smelly about this whole thing and it isn't the trash.
It all started over two decades ago with HB 592...
1988 - HB 592 was passed that created solid waste districts in the state because we weren't recycling enough and the landfills were filling up. The Ohio EPA gets to oversee the districts and tell them how to do things. Problem #1. Since it is a government entity, tax dollars pay for it. Problem #2.
In 2009, the Athens-Hocking Solid Waste District said they needed more money. To generate this money, they proposed a 'fee' of $3/ton of waste. A tax by any other name is still a tax. Call it a fee if it makes you feel better but it's still a tax. This tax would be levied on the trash haulers and will of course be passed on to their customers with rate increases.
But the tax must be approved by the county commissioners for each county, city council of the largest city in each county, and legislative authorities representing a combined population of at least 60 percent of the total population in each county. Athens loves paying taxes but the great people of Hocking County evidently do not. Logan City Council wouldn't pass it and neither would the county commissioners. It seems they had questions that were either not answered or were answered inadequately. Thank you to the elected officials in Hocking County for not playing the part of ostrich.
After a few months, the district recycled their plan to implement the $3 fee. Well, that is their business. Sort of. Hocking County again to the rescue. Questions gone unanswered concerning the finances of the district kept the Hocking County elected officials from approving the added tax.
Now Athens wants to take their ball and go home. The landfill used by the two counties is in Athens County. It's really close to the Athens/Hocking line though and wouldn't surprise me if some of it were located in Hocking County. Athens wants to break up with Hocking. The problem is that in order for a solid waste district to be a single county, that county must have a population of 100,000. Neither county meets that requirement and the Ohio EPA would have to approve the split. Hocking County would be left high and dry according to the threats made by the Athens County Commissioners. There's other stuff to it within the original bill that I am having a difficult time making heads or tails out of because it involves government speak and I'm not fluent in idiot.
The Ohio EPA says the Athens-Hocking District is not in compliance. I'm not sure exactly what that means but based on various newspaper articles dating back to February of 2010, we need to recycle more or maybe we need to generate more trash. I'm not sure. They want people to recycle but the county gets more money if we generate more trash. Since it's more money the county wants, do they want us to generate more trash? But the EPA says recycle.... makes my head spin....
The state says there is a partnership between public and private entities but at least a few of the private trash haulers don't exactly see it that way. They see it as the public side is pushing the private side out of business by causing the private haulers to raise rates. I can tell you that we pay almost twice as much out here in the county as what the people in the city pay using the county trash haulers. I'm pretty sure subsidies are involved. When the private trash haulers go to the landfill, they pay a fee to dump the trash. The county gets this fee. That's a subsidy, right?
But there's still the compliance problem. I'm not sure how the $3 tax will fix that unless it will be used to pay the EPA to look the other way. According to one of the private haulers, one way for the district to come into compliance is to add a handful of drop locations for recyclables in each county. Evidently there isn't enough participation and that's suppose to encourage it. In the same article from The Athens News:
Which is backed up on collegegreenmag.com:
Where and when will the madness stop?
It all started over two decades ago with HB 592...
1988 - HB 592 was passed that created solid waste districts in the state because we weren't recycling enough and the landfills were filling up. The Ohio EPA gets to oversee the districts and tell them how to do things. Problem #1. Since it is a government entity, tax dollars pay for it. Problem #2.
In 2009, the Athens-Hocking Solid Waste District said they needed more money. To generate this money, they proposed a 'fee' of $3/ton of waste. A tax by any other name is still a tax. Call it a fee if it makes you feel better but it's still a tax. This tax would be levied on the trash haulers and will of course be passed on to their customers with rate increases.
But the tax must be approved by the county commissioners for each county, city council of the largest city in each county, and legislative authorities representing a combined population of at least 60 percent of the total population in each county. Athens loves paying taxes but the great people of Hocking County evidently do not. Logan City Council wouldn't pass it and neither would the county commissioners. It seems they had questions that were either not answered or were answered inadequately. Thank you to the elected officials in Hocking County for not playing the part of ostrich.
After a few months, the district recycled their plan to implement the $3 fee. Well, that is their business. Sort of. Hocking County again to the rescue. Questions gone unanswered concerning the finances of the district kept the Hocking County elected officials from approving the added tax.
Now Athens wants to take their ball and go home. The landfill used by the two counties is in Athens County. It's really close to the Athens/Hocking line though and wouldn't surprise me if some of it were located in Hocking County. Athens wants to break up with Hocking. The problem is that in order for a solid waste district to be a single county, that county must have a population of 100,000. Neither county meets that requirement and the Ohio EPA would have to approve the split. Hocking County would be left high and dry according to the threats made by the Athens County Commissioners. There's other stuff to it within the original bill that I am having a difficult time making heads or tails out of because it involves government speak and I'm not fluent in idiot.
The Ohio EPA says the Athens-Hocking District is not in compliance. I'm not sure exactly what that means but based on various newspaper articles dating back to February of 2010, we need to recycle more or maybe we need to generate more trash. I'm not sure. They want people to recycle but the county gets more money if we generate more trash. Since it's more money the county wants, do they want us to generate more trash? But the EPA says recycle.... makes my head spin....
The state says there is a partnership between public and private entities but at least a few of the private trash haulers don't exactly see it that way. They see it as the public side is pushing the private side out of business by causing the private haulers to raise rates. I can tell you that we pay almost twice as much out here in the county as what the people in the city pay using the county trash haulers. I'm pretty sure subsidies are involved. When the private trash haulers go to the landfill, they pay a fee to dump the trash. The county gets this fee. That's a subsidy, right?
But there's still the compliance problem. I'm not sure how the $3 tax will fix that unless it will be used to pay the EPA to look the other way. According to one of the private haulers, one way for the district to come into compliance is to add a handful of drop locations for recyclables in each county. Evidently there isn't enough participation and that's suppose to encourage it. In the same article from The Athens News:
He (the private hauler) said that officials often say that they are in the trash business because recycling doesn't pay for itself and they need the funds to pay for recycling.
Which is backed up on collegegreenmag.com:
“There’s not big money in recycling… so the government does it,” said Roger Bail, operations coordinator for the Athens-Hocking Waste District. “There’s money in trash.”So they're trying to get more people to recycle more. We used to recycle stuff all the time. Pop and milk came in glass bottles. We took empty bottles to the store and got a deposit back. Now they come in throw away plastic. I like glass. And we drank water that came from the tap. You would fill a glass with water and wash the glass afterward to reuse it. Now we insist on carrying around plastic water bottles that end up in the landfill. But I'm sure the government had a hand in the glass bottles going away - probably some concern about hygiene. So the answer to that is now creating problems. Maybe if the government would stop trying to regulate everything, thus tying our hands, we wouldn't have either problem. We wouldn't be producing as much trash and would be recycling. Our trash haulers could make a living without raising rates to the point that many lower income families do not purchase the service to have their trash hauled away creating a bigger illegal dumping problem that the county also complains about.
Where and when will the madness stop?
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Oh the Irony - Voting No on Issue 2
I wonder if anyone else noticed the irony on the front page of The Athens Messenger yesterday?
Since it was the day after election day, they naturally had the election results on the front page with the headline, "Voters reject union limits". The focus was the rejection of SB5 with an 80% no vote in Athens County on Issue 2.
Any time the topic of Issue 2 came up in conversation, face-to-face or on facebook, I mostly bit my tongue. Once I asked "Did you read the bill?", and got the usual response of "No" or "I read some of it", it was only a baby step to the realization that there was no way to try and convince someone who was so willing to eat the union garbage to vote Yes on Issue 2. They had made up their minds and there was no changing it.
Of course, one of the arguments to vote Yes was the jobs that might be saved. To my way of thinking, it came down to: Do you want more jobs or more money for fewer jobs? The 'no' crowd evidently wanted more money.
Ok. Back to the newspaper. At the bottom of the front page was a small article: "Looking like county will have fewer workers in 2012". It went on to explain the budget woes and how there were likely going to be layoffs or staff cuts by attrition in various county agencies. An article in today's paper went into a bit more detail and included whining from the heads of departments about how they have no where else to cut their budget and the rest of the typical resistance to the commissioners telling them the money just isn't there. And of course, Sheriff Pat Kelly didn't pass up the opportunity to campaign for his re-election.
If I were a commissioner, which will never happen because I'm just way too conservative for this county, I wouldn't be able to resist an appropriate or inappropriate comeback, depending on which side of the aisle you're on, of: "Well, maybe you should have endorsed Issue 2."
So Issue 2 goes down in flames while our local government department heads complain about budget cuts. I don't want to give credit to the death of SB5 as the reason just yet, but I will next year.
But not being one to always see the glass as half empty, I did find a positive way to look at things. Those of us who love to follow the Constitution to the letter and expect our elected officials to do the same, we do want less government, right? Well, we'll be getting it in 2012 in Athens County.
Since it was the day after election day, they naturally had the election results on the front page with the headline, "Voters reject union limits". The focus was the rejection of SB5 with an 80% no vote in Athens County on Issue 2.
Any time the topic of Issue 2 came up in conversation, face-to-face or on facebook, I mostly bit my tongue. Once I asked "Did you read the bill?", and got the usual response of "No" or "I read some of it", it was only a baby step to the realization that there was no way to try and convince someone who was so willing to eat the union garbage to vote Yes on Issue 2. They had made up their minds and there was no changing it.
Of course, one of the arguments to vote Yes was the jobs that might be saved. To my way of thinking, it came down to: Do you want more jobs or more money for fewer jobs? The 'no' crowd evidently wanted more money.
Ok. Back to the newspaper. At the bottom of the front page was a small article: "Looking like county will have fewer workers in 2012". It went on to explain the budget woes and how there were likely going to be layoffs or staff cuts by attrition in various county agencies. An article in today's paper went into a bit more detail and included whining from the heads of departments about how they have no where else to cut their budget and the rest of the typical resistance to the commissioners telling them the money just isn't there. And of course, Sheriff Pat Kelly didn't pass up the opportunity to campaign for his re-election.
If I were a commissioner, which will never happen because I'm just way too conservative for this county, I wouldn't be able to resist an appropriate or inappropriate comeback, depending on which side of the aisle you're on, of: "Well, maybe you should have endorsed Issue 2."
So Issue 2 goes down in flames while our local government department heads complain about budget cuts. I don't want to give credit to the death of SB5 as the reason just yet, but I will next year.
But not being one to always see the glass as half empty, I did find a positive way to look at things. Those of us who love to follow the Constitution to the letter and expect our elected officials to do the same, we do want less government, right? Well, we'll be getting it in 2012 in Athens County.
Athens is No 1 on Issues 2 and 3
Athens County has the distinction of placing first in the state on Issue 2 AND Issue 3. It's not something I'm proud of but I'm sure there are a fair number of liberals who would be if they knew how to get this information. But the reality is they don't really care once the election is over and things mostly went their way.
I have tried to explain to people who are not from Athens County just how liberal it is here. They think they know and they say they know but they really don't know the extent of it. We have Ohio University and I think for most people it stops there when they try to calculate the liberalness of the area. But they fail to include the non-student population and the non-OU affiliated people.
Now, however, I have something concrete to use to point out the level of liberalness.
Issue 3 was the healthcare amendment to nix Obamacare. It passed in all 88 counties and statewide it was 65.63% to 34.37%. If you list the counties according to percentages with the lowest percentage in the first position, Athens County is right there in the big number one spot. It passed 52.76% to 47.24%. The next county had issue 3 passing with almost 56% of the votes. So, we're number one with the lowest percentage of yes votes on Issue 3.
Issue 2 was the big repeal SB5 thing. Again, all 88 counties voted in unison against issue 2 and again Athens County places first. Statewide, the percentages were 38.67% to 61.33%. Now, put the highest percentage of 'no' votes in the first position and again you'll find......
.....YES!!! Athens County with a.... get this....
.....19.65% to 80.35%!!!!! Now that's a big gap.
I bet I can identify every single one of the 3070 people who voted yes on Issue 2.
So, when someone wants to talk to me about trying to convince the people of Athens to vote for the more conservative candidate or vote more conservatively on an issue, and I tell them I'll do what I can and they think I'm giving them the brush-off, which I usually am, I have these facts to use to help illustrate the liberalness of the county.
I have tried to explain to people who are not from Athens County just how liberal it is here. They think they know and they say they know but they really don't know the extent of it. We have Ohio University and I think for most people it stops there when they try to calculate the liberalness of the area. But they fail to include the non-student population and the non-OU affiliated people.
Now, however, I have something concrete to use to point out the level of liberalness.
Issue 3 was the healthcare amendment to nix Obamacare. It passed in all 88 counties and statewide it was 65.63% to 34.37%. If you list the counties according to percentages with the lowest percentage in the first position, Athens County is right there in the big number one spot. It passed 52.76% to 47.24%. The next county had issue 3 passing with almost 56% of the votes. So, we're number one with the lowest percentage of yes votes on Issue 3.
Issue 2 was the big repeal SB5 thing. Again, all 88 counties voted in unison against issue 2 and again Athens County places first. Statewide, the percentages were 38.67% to 61.33%. Now, put the highest percentage of 'no' votes in the first position and again you'll find......
.....YES!!! Athens County with a.... get this....
.....19.65% to 80.35%!!!!! Now that's a big gap.
I bet I can identify every single one of the 3070 people who voted yes on Issue 2.
So, when someone wants to talk to me about trying to convince the people of Athens to vote for the more conservative candidate or vote more conservatively on an issue, and I tell them I'll do what I can and they think I'm giving them the brush-off, which I usually am, I have these facts to use to help illustrate the liberalness of the county.
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