National Bike Month

I wish more people would ride their bikes to work or take the bus.  

Then the freeway wouldn’t be so crowded for me.

Jackson and Allison just fly their B-52.

This Land Is My Land…

I have noticed several stickers on cars that proclaim “NATIVE” inside a silhouette of the state of Iowa. I first noticed these types of stickers many years ago in Colorado. Then and now I find these stickers slightly tacky, a bit arrogant, certainly xenophobic, and perhaps racist. Just recently two of these stickers have attracted my attention.


The first was applied to the car at an angle. Nothing clever like putting it at a 90-degree angle to the left or right to signify a political leaning by the driver or the state. It was not upside down like a distress flag. It was just a sloppy job of applying it.

The other one was on a car with Iowa plates but the frame around the plate proclaimed the University of Nebraska Alum, the car was a late model Hyundai Santa Fe (made in South Korea) with a dealer sticker from Topeka KS. Way to support your “native” state!

I do have one good thing to say about the “NATIVE” stickers: They are a little less obnoxious than the stickers with the little boy urinating on the logo of a car company.

Winner!

I cannot for the life of me recall what teams were in the last Super Bowl, World Series, World Cup or championship games for any other sport. I am just not interested in this type of entertainment.

Think of all of the time I have had to learn and master new interests and hobbies!

Bliss!

Retirement 2.0

The agency is on track to break even and perhaps make a profit in 2013 which is ahead of our business plan. This month I picked up a part-time job as an executive of a small insurance company while Debbie picked up a side job as a bookkeeper for a local insurance association.

We may find ourselves pushing a combined Federal/State/Medicare tax rate of 50% again. I swore I would never pay that tax rate again.

Where is John Galt when you need him? He never came for me or was I as obtuse as Hank Rearden?

Fence Row to Fence Row

Over the last few weeks, I have been across parts of Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota. In all three states, there were many fires where large piles of trees and brush were burning. 

The last time I saw this much clearing was when I first moved to Iowa from Michigan in 1979.  Back then farmers were encouraged by federal agencies to grow fence row to fence row.  Easy credit and low interest rates drove up the cost of farmland and many farmers leveraged their operations to acquire more acreage. This was followed by a bust that lasted over a decade and many families lost their farms to foreclosure. Many of these farms had been in the same family for over 100 years. 

I served on the Warren County Board of Human Services in the 1980s. I saw firsthand the extent of the suffering that the boom and bust inflicted on so many people.  There is a story in the D M Register that some Iowa farmland sold at auction for over $26,000 an acre last week. 

Maybe the bonfires in the fields are a warning to the wise to be careful about going into debt during a boom.