Glad I don’t live next to this guy.

I try not to use the word hate too much, but my feelings toward Wal Mart are bordering on that word. I used to shop at Wal Mart several times a week, but as my frustration grew, Food Lion began to get more and more of my business. The main problem is that Wal Mart is usually out of at least one of the items I go shopping for. One day, they were completely out of shredded cheddar cheese. Not just the store brand, Kraft and Sargento and whoever else makes shredded cheddar. Last summer, we went shopping for a water jug for one of my offspring to take to camp. Guess what, no water jugs. Today, I had a two page list compiled by my better half for the next few days. Lime juice, nowhere to be found. Limeade, empty shelf. Is everybody in Fruitland making margaritas this weekend? I like to give magazine subscriptions for Christmas presents. I had four titles in mind. Not one of them was on the shelf at Wal Mart. So I picked up a couple of DVD’s and the few groceries that I had collected and went to the check out. Thankfully, one of the blue and khaki associates was waiting at the entrance to number 11. She made a couple of trips over to 10 to chat and then typed in her password to open her register. She thanked me for my patience, and I said, “If I was in a hurry, I wouldn’t have come to Wal Mart.” I made my way home with several bags and unloaded them. Then I went to Food Lion. They had everything I needed. I stopped going to Kmart a long time ago. I think Wal Mart has seen the last of me as well. Happy holidays.

Everyone else seems to be perfectly happy with one blog, so why have I started a fourth one? Random Signals will be a place to post things I want to remember. Life just wouldn’t be the same without music, so that will be a common theme among these posts. And someone else always has the words that we would like to say (or write), like Thoreau. We don’t have a cat … or dog … just a couple of fish, so there won’t be any cute pet pics here. There will be some weak attempts at humor, with the emphasis on weak. By the way, I like Rush…the band, not the big fat idiot.

In order to maintain the continuity of my original intent for this blog (the Delmarva Peninsula), I will be posting my thoughts on state and national politics on a new blog called ShoreIndie. There are a couple of posts up to get things started. To start things off, O’Malley has been governor for six months now, so how can the deficit (and its solutions) be his fault? Your visit to ShoreIndie would be appreciated.

To Do List:

Go see the July 4th fireworks in D.C.

On July 4, 1939, Lou Gehrig said, “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.” He made his luckiest man speech two weeks after being diagnosed with a disease that would later bear his name. Gehrig’s illness was the only thing that could end his Iron Horse streak of 2,130 consecutive games, a record that would be broken 56 years later by Cal Ripken. You can read the full text of his speech on the official Lou Gehrig web site.

It seems appropriate as we reach the day on which we celebrate our nation’s independence to ponder how lucky we are and who is responsible for making us feel that way.

Today marks the anniversary of the very first television commercial which was aired on July 1, 1941. Television broadcasts were changed forever. According to Wikipedia:

The first television advertisement was broadcast in the United States at 14:29 on July 1, 1941, when the Bulova Watch Company paid $9 to New York City NBC affiliate WNBT (now WNBC) for a 20-second spot aired before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. It simply displayed a Bulova watch over a map of the U.S., with a voiceover of the company’s slogan “America runs on Bulova time!”

Thank goodness for TiVo.

Then check out how the Mom at Get Your Own starts her day, today and every day, until it is over.

Funny bumper stickers are not as common as they used to be, but occasionally there emerges a public display of adhesive humor. I saw this one today on the back of an old beat up pickup truck:

I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it.

Don’t you hate it when the information sources you depend on make you look like an idiot. That was today for me. Delegate Page Elmore held a political fundraiser today. According to the Daily Times in two different listings, it was Paige Elmore that was holding the event. I should have known better than to rely on the grammatically challenged local paper.

From the Week Ahead Calendar.

Del. Paige Elmore’s Annual Crab and pork feast. Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield. 1 to 4 p.m. Reservations. $40.

From an events listing.

Del. Paige Elmore’s Annual Crab and pork feast.

If it is the current #2 on
the Billboard Pop charts,
then this is what they are hearing.
The only way to end it is to stop buying it.

Shop Boyz
Party Like a Rockstar

i’m on a money makin mission
but i party like a rockstar
flyin’ down 20 lookin’ good in my hot car
you know them hoes be at my show
worried bout where my chain go
i uh rubba in ma pants
but these hoes won’t let my thang go

i uwa like i uwa
cuz you know them hoes be tryin us
hoe don’t you know i f*** wit fine dimonds
that look like Pa-me-la
they fine and they hot bra
when i’m in the spot bra……
I PARTY LIKE UH ROCKSTAAARRR!!!!!!

A recent conversation on sports radio suggested an additional punishment for sports stars who are found guilty of criminal activity. Take away their nicknames. If it was reported that Adam Jones had been suspended for the season for his criminal activity, casual fans would ponder “Who, what?” In a related story, Terry Johnson was suspended for 8 games for violating league policies. Terry who? Add back the Pacman or the Tank, oh yeah, that guy. Many high profile NFL players have lost their appreciation for what the game gives them. They act like they won the Super Bowl after every tackle or catch, and their off the field behavior offers a complete lack of maturity and respect. Show it to me for 16 games, and I might cheer for you. Show me your mug shot, and I am done with you.

The law of supply and demand has long been a standard of the study of economics. This law controls the prices of everything from raw materials and commodities to the latest fad items like the iPhone or Tickle Me Elmo. There are two vastly different products that are currently seeing new highs in prices due to high demand and restricted supply. These two products are gasoline and stocks.

The effects of supply and demand on the price of gasoline are quite obvious to us on a daily basis. This coveted fuel recently hit all time highs in price even on an inflation adjusted basis compared to the peak in the 80’s. The supply of gasoline is restricted at the point of refining. There has not been a significant increase in the capacity of our nations refineries in decades. This lack of investment in refinery infrastructure can be blamed mostly on integrated oil companies who are driven to optimize their earnings, but blame can also be placed on increasingly restrictive environmental regulations that have discouraged the expansion of our refinery base. As a result, we now import about 13% of our gasoline from foreign refiners to make up for a lack of capacity domestically.

There is another number that is reported in the business pages on a regular basis that is referred to as refinery utilization. This number quantifies the percentage of all refineries that are currently operating. The current range of refinery utilization varies between 85% and 90% which is considerably less than the historical range of 90% to 95%. There are also complications involved with the production of as many as 12 different formulations of gasoline required by different regions of the country. If a national standard for gasoline formulation were adopted, the refining of gasoline would be less expensive, and the price of gas would decrease considerably.

The law of supply and demand can also produce positive effects on our finances. The recent new highs in the Dow 30 and S&P 500 stock averages are due in large part to a decreasing supply of stocks being sought by an increasing amount of dollars. The supply of stocks is decreasing due to record volumes of stock buybacks by publicly traded companies and private equity buyouts of other companies listed on the various stock exchanges.

Many companies are currently using their cash flow to buy back their own shares in the open market. These buybacks provide support for stock prices at current levels, and they decrease the amount of stock that is available for trading. These buybacks have reached numbers in the hundreds of billions of dollars among all the companies that are removing their shares from the market. Exxon Mobil is buying back $31 billion in stock, while Proctor & Gamble and Time Warner are each purchasing about $11 billion of their own shares.

Private equity buyouts are also removing hundreds of billions of dollars of stock from the open market. The most recent buyouts include Avaya for $8.2 billion and CDW for $7.3 billion. All of the money that is paid by companies in their share buybacks and by private equity groups in their buyouts is usually reinvested in the stock market. The supply of stocks is decreasing, and the amount of free cash for investing is increasing, so our IRA’s and 401k’s are hitting new highs all thanks to the law of supply and demand.

The recent rise in the price of gasoline has all of the news sources proclaiming that citizens are going to stay home this summer because they can’t afford to buy gas for their vacation travels. This theory has been proven wrong so many times that I can’t believe respectable journalists resort to this tired topic each year. For thirty years, since the energy crisis of the 70’s, the federal government has been pushing the use of corn based ethanol as the alternative to fossil fuels for use in transportation. Part of this push has been through the use of huge subsidies paid for by US taxpayers. If it weren’t for these subsidies, ethanol would not be at the top of the list for alternative energy sources today.

I have been doing some online research about the big push toward ethanol as the alternative fuel for vehicles on the roadways of the United States. Much of the information about ethanol has led me to believe that we need to get off the ethanol bandwagon.

The demand for corn used in the production of ethanol has increased the price per bushel from $2 to $4. This is great for the farmers(mostly large corporate farms like Archer Daniels Midland), but this increased cost per bushel is creating a trickle down effect on many other products. The cost of feed corn is driving up the cost of beef, poultry and pork. The cost of corn and corn byproducts used in the production of other food, such as cereal, is causing an increase in prices at the grocery store. The increased demand for corn also makes the price per bushel more susceptible to spikes due to environmental issues such as drought or disease.

A gallon of ethanol produces less energy than a gallon of gasoline. The mileage estimates for motor vehicles are decreased by 20-30% when using ethanol.

The use of ethanol blended fuels will increase the cost per gallon because ethanol is more difficult to store and transport. Ethanol cannot be transported through traditional pipelines, because it causes corrosion of the pipeline materials. Ethanol fuels must be transported by rail tank cars and tanker trucks. The increased demand for these transportation modes will increase the cost of transportation for other products as well, which will cause an additional increase in prices at the store.

Depending on whose findings you believe, corn ethanol may actually take more energy to produce than it can create through its combustion. In fact, some studies show that all forms of ethanol require more energy to produce than they contain which will actually increase our nations total energy consumption. One estimate is that it takes 29% more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than it contains when finished.

There are other storage issues with ethanol blended fuels. They absorb water and they evaporate quickly which increases the complexity of storage methods.

Corn ethanol subsidies are costing taxpayers billions of dollars. One estimate calculates ethanol subsidies for the year 2006 of $7 billion for 4.9 billion gallons of fuel, or about $1.43 per gallon.

The United States government is imposing a tariff of 54 cents per gallon to discourage the importation of ethanol in favor of the subsidized home grown ethanol.

The increase in the acreage of corn production, which requires a lot of irrigation, will create a stress on water sources in areas that are already stretching this nonrenewable resource.

According to the Cato Institute, we would need to dedicate 100% of United States crop land plus find an additional 20% of crop land in order for corn ethanol to provide energy independence. Their practical estimate is that ethanol will account for about 6% of motor vehicle fuel by 2030.

In 2005, the US Agriculture Department produced a study finding that it cost $2.53 to produce a gallon of ethanol which is several times what it costs to produce a gallon of gasoline.

I could probably go on for hours finding bad things about ethanol. All of the information listed above comes from various sources, so I feel confident that it is not biased to any one organization. It is quite clear that if the subsidies that originated during the energy crisis of the ’70s (remember gasohol) were not in place, ethanol would not be the dominant player in alternative fuels today. Ethanol subsidies are an excellent example of government by the corporation, for the corporation. The ethanol bandwagon has been gaining speed for 30 years, so it will be difficult to stop, but I, for one, refuse to ride along.

There are certain events in the news that stick with you long after you see them. In the middle of all the political bickering about the war in Iraq, there are soldiers on the ground risking their lives for a reason. I can’t tell you what channel or who the reporter was, but I can tell you what the soldier said. He said that it is not enough to say that you support the troops, they have “to let us finish our mission.”

This statement brought to my mind thoughts about how all of these unsung heroes would feel if their battle ended without feeling that they had accomplished their mission. They have watched their friends die. Some have been injured and returned to battle. Some have been injured and sent home to recover. These heroes are not worried about congress’s budgets or arbitrary dates. The men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan want to complete their mission, so that when they come home, they can tell their mothers and spouses and kids, this is why I fought in this war. This is what I accomplished.

The US Congress and the President need to set a final mission for our troops and let them finish it.

This mission is on my mind because we are approaching the Memorial Day holiday. Many of us will celebrate this weekend as the unofficial start of summer, but thousands of families will be remembering the loss of a hero.

I heard on the Clark Howard radio show about a way that we can remember our troops this Memorial Day weekend. There is a web site called heromiles.org where you can donate your extra frequent flier miles for the benefit of injured service members and their families. During this Memorial Day weekend, participating airlines will match your donation mile for mile, in effect doubling your contribution to Operation Hero Miles. I will be taking advantage of this opportunity to contribute to the cause.