Podcast 377

Summer 2015 Road Trip Part 1. A midnight ride to Iowa, with the first leg ending at Walcott Iowa’s ‘Iowa 80 Truck Stop’ where we encountered the first blush of Internet Upload problems. While I usually don’t write these podcast notes in the first person I have to break format to suggest that a real problem with traveling and ‘untethering’ is spotty Wireless Internet Service, particularly at Truck Stops. Iowa 80 gets points for allowing free access to their WIFI, but when you start uploading huge audio files, it becomes impossible to file. Starbucks used to require people to sign in with AT&T Wireless Service (blah blah blah) but figured it out. It’s free, and its fast downloading and uploading. Unfortunately, in the desert that is Central Illinois and Eastern Iowa, there aren’t many Starbucks. So, Kudos to the Sapp Brothers Truck Stop near Peru, Illinois. I was able to get this package uploaded and posted by around noon central Wednesday. Anyway. Lots of energy and enthusiasm for this trip out east, to the Atlantic Coast, with stops in Illinois, via Kentucky, Tennessee, Southwestern Virginia, onto Richmond, and Washington DC. Bored with the Bruce Jenner changeling story, as the moon rose over the fecund fields of Iowa last night, I began to wonder whether ‘The People of Iowa’ really deserve all the attention their getting in the media, because they hold the ‘first in the nation Caucus’, in 2016. What has become a cliche of American politics; The Diner photo op, the chat with the farmer by the barn, the waving fields of amber, is abundant in Iowa. What happens when an honest, real population becomes aware they’re on the Truman Show, as politicians and Media caravan all over this state? Lots of federal largesse evident in Iowa from Wind Farms to Bio Diesel. Is this good? Is Iowa, with its farms and burgeoning small cities, aspirational? 100 years ago most Americans lived in rural, small towns and cities. Does Iowa represent a desire to get back to that kind of bucolic existence or is it just that they have the first major political contest in what is becoming an insane circus called the Presidential Election of 2016? Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul. 

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Podcast 376

Republicans Sound Like Democrats. And democrats sound like republicans. Updates to start the first week of June, 2015. Self described Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders was in Minneapolis this weekend telling a group of aging hippies that America isn’t a democracy and is becoming an oligarchy. Is this true? Meanwhile, in Delaware, republican candidate Carly Fiorina told a group of republicans big business and big government are crushing Americans. Are these candidates really from different ends of the political spectrum? Do any of them know how to fix the ailing US Economy and by extension, foreign policy and domestic policy problems created by the Obama, and yes Bush administrations? US economic performance in the first quarter of 2015 has been revised down to a .7 percent contraction, all blamed on winter, the weak dollar, the sun didn’t shine this weekend, and it rained, or the dog ate my homework, again. Meanwhile pollyanna’s tout labor department numbers as proof we’re on our way to ‘full employment’; So if we’re on our way to ‘full employment’ mister smartypants, how do we get a nearly one point contraction? For the record, the second quarter isn’t looking too rosy either, with the contraction in profits and manufacturing apparently continuing. Think it’s all those low-grade minimum wage part time jobs we’re ‘creating’? Oddly enough if you don’t read too much between the lines, crazy old Socialist Bernie Sanders, and some Republican candidates seem to be saying the same thing. The question is whether they know the policies currently in place — the kinds of policies Bernie Sanders wants to triple down on — have created inequality and poor economic growth? The republicans talk the talk but do they realize what a political ordeal it is to actually fix the economy and by extension, the country? Meanwhile, the Oligarch’s just keep on comin’. The LA Times published an expose this weekend on everyone’s favorite ‘Tony Stark’ (Elon Musk) who is actually a corporate welfare queen; The ‘electric car maker’, ‘rocket company’ owner and solar power ‘entrepreneur’ has taken nearly 5 billion dollars in subsidies from the Federal and various state governments. Yep, your smug hipster neighbor just bought a ‘Tesla’ because it’s great for the environment and got help from you, through your taxes while you hope the oil burning 96 Saturn you’re driving gets you to your part time job today. Finally, illegal immigrants get special help at Minneapolis and other Minnesota schools, while the children of citizens are pretty much on their own, despite the fact that two federal courts now have told the President his executive amnesty program is out of bounds. Yet it continues. This is a time for people to ask themselves what they expect the government to do, and whether the people running for office really understand what needs to be done, and if the answer is no, finding the path to the political revolution necessary to change it. Sponsored by X Government Cars. 

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Podcast 375

Where’s My ObamaNet? FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler wants to expand a program that dates back to at least the Bush Administration, which became known as the ‘Obama Phone’. Originally the program was intended to make sure older people with no communication could get phone lines, then it was expanded to include cell phones, and was made famous during the 2012 election cycle. Now the FCC wants to expand the program to include free broadband Internet! Surprise! We all pay extra on our phone bills to fund this program, now we’re paying so people who don’t work, can get free or low-cost Internet. When is it time to draw the line? Warning! This podcast includes a freewheeling discussion of technology it all its many forms, economic growth, dystopia, Paul Krugman, Solar Power, Wind Power, the smell of cigarettes and Martinis on a warm summer night, the sound of planes landing, and more! Big argument in the tech world after The New York Times Astrologer in Chief, Paul Krugman claimed the technology revolution has produced no economic growth. Is that true? Then there is the bizarre reaction to Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Machines, Robotics and Additive Manufacturing (to name a few new technologies) threatening to eliminate jobs. Most of the time, it’s disbelief, followed by the darkest predictions about the future. And yet, technology revolutions throughout history while tumultuous, result in economic growth and more jobs. Why does the future have to be so bleak? What if the future is so bright, you’ll have to wear shades? Now, you might have to wear shades because you live next door to a giant solar farm — subsidized by the state and federal governments — while solar produces less than one percent of our power and pollutes the Earth. Why is it, news coverage of the spread of ‘friendly’ solar power doesn’t include stories about the pollution in creating, and eventually disposing of panels, and batteries? Sponsored by Baklund R&D. 

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