The right to chase cheese

A woman, an 86 year old cheese maker who produced the competitive cheese found herself at the caprice of the infantile 'elf and safety brigade, who warned if she supplied the wheels of cheese, she would be fully liable for any injuries inflicted by said cheese rolling.

In England, the Gloucestershire cheese-chasing spectacle has gone on for centuries.  The manufacturer who made the cheese (a double Gloucester) supplied three or four wheels, and whoever captured the cheese won a prize.  The losers mostly hurt their pride if they didn't get physically injured.

After watching a few YouTube videos of the Gloucestershire (England) cheese-chasing event, I said to myself, "Hot damn, I'm surprised there haven't been these types of events in America!  The iPhone roll down would bring in millions of wacky customers!  Simon Cowell would be salivating at the chance to interview people for the chance to roll down the hill!"

I know, the cops have better things to do than threaten a grandmother for supplying cheese.  They have even better things to do than enforce infantilism, which is becoming vogue in Britain and worldwide.  When you actively prevent people from having fun - even if it seems ridiculous - you are attempting to control lives.  Then, as more and more fun is taken away, the final result is that fun is now a crime, where even thinking of fun is subject to immediate arrest, torture, and death.

The organizers will not be deterred, thankfully. They'll find another cheese - or object - to roll down the hill.  May we suggest the "Bollocks to 'Elf and Safety Cheese Rolldown?"

The 0.75% "if the bankers get it, so should we" solution

If you're currently paying back your student loans, you might have read about a bill that would temporarily reduce the student loan rate from 3.4% to 0.75%.  The loan rate is scheduled to rise to 6.8% in July.

Sounds like a good deal, right?  It actually isn't.

The motivation behind this bill is that if large banks get a interest rate break, so should students.  However, the author of this bill is woefully blind of the unintended consequences.

Take a student who takes out $150,000 in loans for four years, and may pay back in 25 years.  That means a student would pay $5,400 a year in interest, or $135,000 over the life of the loan.  If that same loan is paid at 0.75%, which is the discount rate the Federal Reserve offers, the interest drops to $1,125 a year, or $28,250 over the lifetime of the loan.  That's a significant savings of $106,750.

However, colleges and universities are aware that with lower student loan rates, they will likely have more students take out more loans, which in turn would give the opportunity for those universities to raise tuition even higher on current and future students.  Furthermore, federal aid to these universities is already a huge factor in tuition increases, as universities see these loans as interest-free from the government.

In other words, socializing the interest rate as part of a personal vendetta against banks only privatizes the profits and enriches the endowments of college universities.  The student may think he's saving $100K+, but those colleges and universities will not hesitate to make up the difference if their federal funds or endowments are threatened.

It is neither loony nor evil to consider something like this, but carrying on a vicious personal crusade against finance without full knowledge of the consequences only hurts those you wish to defend, not the ones you wish to battle.

Why you didn't win tonight's Powerball

Tonight's Powerball jackpot is estimated to be over $600 million, and likely, someone will be a winner.

That winner, I'm afraid, won't be me.  As much as I would enjoy hauling that big souvenir check to the bank, winning that $700 million jackpot would mean that Uncle Sam, without any effort on his part, gets a chunk of my windfall in the millions.  The state of Massachusetts will also get a piece for their general fund.

The lottery is a voluntary tax...but the odds are incredibly lousy (math tax!), and when you lose, the government keeps 100% of the bet (stupid tax!).  Addicts nonwithstanding, if you're aware that you won't hit the million, you see the game as purely entertainment, are satisfied with smaller wins, and play moderately, then there's no problem.  It's funding your government without having to write a big check on tax day.

Someone mentioned the converse of that obnoxiously condescending and patronizing statement, "The people who can least afford to play are the ones who play the most", and that is "It's kinda sad that we have to raise money from idiots and gambling addicts rather than those who can afford it."

If you were Uncle Sam or the state that needs money, and the people who resist paying high taxes don't want to pay up, where else could you go, short of directly confiscating money?  The Britons once imposed a 95% supertax on all the rich, and the rich responded by moving out of England and becoming tax exiles.  The poor, of course, can choose to play a dollar or two, ignorant of the gigantic odds, and several poor people with several dollars can easily and quickly fund something that the wealthy resist to pay.

The other fear from the critics is that the poor, should they win the jackpot, would no longer have to rely on the government.  That's why the poor play the most - the chance to get out of poverty for good, not relying on the whims of bureaucrats and the rules they impose, even at the ignorance of the impossible odds that they must overcome.  And, it's dirt cheap for states to collect money from the lottery compared to the methods of extracting tax revenues from the wealthy, who can afford to shield their money in tax havens and other methods that the poor cannot.

I hate to say this, but even if you buy one Powerball ticket, you won't win.  Or you'll win very little, enough for a meal or to pay the electric bill early.  You'll have fun dreaming up what you'll do with the money, which is a nice diversion, but along with millions of others, you'll be crumpling up tickets when the drawing is done.

Dear JP: Roslindale is not a Breezewood

Now, I hope the author of this lovely editorial is planting his tongue firmly in cheek, because the way I'm seeing it, there are things in Jamaica Plain that aren't so warm and inviting either.

Last year, I purchased a new pair of glasses at one of the optician's places.  The staff were nice and friendly, even as I struggled to see through the dilation drops they gave me.  I decided, "hey, they're a local store, their glasses won't be expensive at all."

After copayments and discounts, my glasses came to $554.  This is with EyeMed insurance, which would have spiked those babies to $880.  The pair of glasses I bought at Sears (a chain!) two years before, without insurance, barely broke $300.

Yes, yours truly got taken for a sucker.

Then they mention Family Dollar as a place a JP resident wouldn't deign to go near.  Last week, I went to the West Roxbury FD (formerly Value Village and set up as such) and purchased a tower fan. At the hardware store, it would be at least $60, or $50 at CVS.  I got it for $30.  If I went to a JP store and bought a fancy fan with all the bells and whistles, it would have set me back $100 or more, or I would have been scolded not to abuse Mother Earth's resources.  I would have told them to take their sustainability and stick it in a place where a crack medical team couldn't find it.

Maybe, just maybe, the author was implying that Roslindale is equivalent to an urban Breezewood, where corn-fed Midwestern tourists stop over, gorge on chain food, buy cheap gifts, get their pictures taken, and waddle into their motorhomes and skeddadle.  Far from it.  I'm equidistant between Roslindale and Jamaica Plain, but Roslindale is more accessible to the common person than JP.  And for the most part, the employees will take your order without eyerolls and sneers that you're not One Of Them.

JP, of course, has its bright spots, and sometimes it's low spots, but patronizing Roslindale to make JP look better?  It's in bad taste, no matter how much you insist "it's just a joke!"

Welcome to Observational Cleary!

OK...you're all going to kill me, but here it is...

I reverted back from obscleary.blogspot.com to clearysquared.blogspot.com.

The name will remain Observational Cleary, but the domain went back to its ol' self.

"I gave up modeling for God"

Kylie Bisutti, Victoria's Secret model, after being poked, prodded, and cajoled into being a perfect model, ditched it all for a simpler life in Montana and following God's word instead of a photographer's.

It's an interesting story, but parts where these models are told to stay thin at all costs made me wince.   The good part for her: she had a solid marriage, a nice husband, and she's at a weight she's comfortable being, not at the weight some agent thinks she should be.

Four streets down II

Joe Battenfield has seen the response of moaning and groaning about the celebrations after the capture of Dzokhar Tsarnaev, found it wanting, and said to party on.

A short note to those who are wringing their hands and telling us we shouldn't celebrate.  We'll celebrate as we see fit.  Even if you were far away from the action, we celebrated the capture unequivocally and unabashedly.  If chants of "USA! USA!" are too jingoistic for you, or if seeing people high-five cops, cheering on Humvees, and having Big Papi top all of this off with "this is our f---ing city," then you're dead blind to what the stakes were and how this could have escalated to something far worse.

I was not able to go to work Friday because the terrorists were four streets down from where I was working.  Would you have liked to seen these yahoos threatened to blow up buildings in the area?  I sure as hell wouldn't have!  Businesses on Boylston Street haven't opened since Monday because the two bombers had detonated their bombs, and when the police tried to corner them on Thursday, they tossed out more bombs and shot a young, up and coming cop dead.  You think that Boston and Watertown was going to let that slide?  No stinkin' way!  When you shoot a cop, the cops will do anything in their power to hunt you down.

That manhunt wasn't going to be a sixty-minute gig.  The second terrorist was found by a person simply looking around in the area after their imposed lockdown was lifted.  That's four days to bring a reign of terror to its conclusion...pretty damn quick.  (And furthermore, the younger Tsarnaev was reportedly a 9/11 truther.  Guess we can't use that as a self-righteous bleat of it being an 'inside job' when he's hiding inside a boat, now can we?)

Perhaps when you're put into virtual lockdown for over twelve hours because your neighbor, or even you, could be either a hostage or another fatal casualty, you may catch on.  Or if you're a parent of a young child who's never going to see adulthood because two cowards detonated bombs during a marathon, you may catch on.

I don't think you ever will, until it happens to you.