Who Killed Joe Camel?

Almost 15 years ago in November of 1998, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began the Clinton Administration's last assault on Joe Camel, an advertising character created and then owned by RJR Nabisco Holdings Corporation (RJR), contending that RJR was using the character to lure young smokers.  The FTC was seeking to force RJR to sign an order banning the company from using Joe Camel in any future cigarette advertisements.  RJR, involved in a lawsuit and under pressure from Congress and other "pubic interest" groups, had already voluntarily ended its use of Joe Camel in July of 1997.  Still, the FTC continued to kick Joe Camel in the head afer he was down.  Such can be the power and character of some federal agencies and bureaus.  

Joe Camel, RIP, July 12, 1997 

It has been asked, "Who is next, Ronald McDonald?" Can any survive such an attack? It seemed to me at the time that consequences for freedom of speech were involved, or perhaps for freedom of choice. Yet, much can be done in the name of "protecting" the children or some other group. What might truly motivate those in positions of power? Think about it. 

"Keep A-Goin' "

Keep A-Goin'  by Frank Lebby Stanton (1857-1927) is probably my favorite poem.  I read it to my children when they were young, and I read it myself when needing inspiration.  If you can't remember the words to poems, or don't like to memorize, all you need here is to remember the title-- Keep A-Goin'. 

Keep A-Goin'

If you strike a thorn or rose,
Keep a-goin'!
If it hails or if it snows,
Keep a-goin'!
'Taint no use to sit an' whine
When the fish ain't on your line;
Bait your hook an' keep a-tryin'--
Keep a-goin'!

When the weather kills your crop,
Keep a-goin'!
Though 'tis work to reach the top,
Keep a-goin'!
S'pose you're out o' ev'ry dime,
Gittin' broke ain't any crime;
Tell the world you're feelin' prime--
Keep a-goin'!

When it looks like all is up,
Keep a-goin'!
Drain the sweetness from the cup,
Keep a-goin'!
See the wild birds on the wing,
Hear the bells that sweetly ring,
When you feel like singin', sing--
Keep a-goin'!

Frank Stanton was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1857.  Stanton's father was a printer, then Confederate soldier, and later a farmer.

Remember that all the years of growing trouble between the North and South erupted in civil war on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery opened fire on Federal Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Fort Sumter surrendered 34 hours later, and Union forces would try for nearly four years to take it back.

Frank Stanton started his education in Savannah, Georgia, but his schooling was cut short by the Civil War (1861-1865). 

Recall that Savannah fell to Union General William T. Sherman just before Christmas in 1864 following Sherman's famous "March to the Sea."  It was from Savannah that Sherman telegraphed President Lincoln, presenting the City of Savannah as "a Christmas gift." 

In 1869, at age 12, Stanton apprenticed with a printer, and later got into the newspaper business. He went on to work as a columnist for the Atlanta Constitution until he died in 1927 at the age of 70. 








One of Stanton's works most widely quoted during his lifetime was a quatrain titled "This World" and it is reportedly on his tombstone in Atlanta's Westview Cemetery:

This world we're a'livin' in

Is mighty hard to beat.

You get a thorn with every rose.

But ain't the roses sweet?

"The Old Man And The Sea" of Cortez

 

What do Ernest Hemingway and I have in common?  We are both wearing the exact same style of fishing shorts in these two pictures.  Check out the shorts. That's Hemingway on a fishing boat some place in the Caribbean, and that's  me with the captain of a small fishing boat in the Sea of Cortez, just out of Cabo San Lucas. Or, could it have been in the Arctic Ocean, looking at the way the captain is dressed for cold weather? 

In June we went to Cabo San Lucas for a wedding.  Some of the groom's family made arrangements to go fishing and invited me.  I'd long thought about going "deep sea sport fishing" but never did.  This was a chance.  That, plus the romantic idea of joining the likes of writer and "tough guy" Ernest Hemingway. 

 


Cabo San Lucas is certainly beautiful and warm, with blue sky and water and lots of sport fishing.  Cabo San Lucas is located on the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula, on the same latitude as Hawaii.  It's approximately 1,000 miles south of San Diego.  It is now definitely a tourist destination. 


 


 
Although the Sea of Cortez is named after Spaniard Captain  Hernan Cortez, his navigator Fancisco de Ulloa is credited with discovering Cabo San Lucas in 1537.  It has a history of pirates raiding Spanish ships taking treasures back to Spain.  A fort was established there and the area was opened up to further exploration.  In 1730 a Jesuit mission was built.  The biggest obstacle to development was lack of a steady water supply.

That's one of the things I wondered about when I got there-- Where does the fresh water come from?  I have since learned that the

Laguna Mountains to the north produce about 30 inches of rain each year from the clouds.  The rain feeds into the underground Rio San Jose and accumulates underground and in nearby estuaries.  The stored water is then treated for consumption.  At any rate, the fresh water problem has been solved in Cabo San Lucas.

Staring at the surf we noticed flying manta rays. There were quite a few of them close to shore.  For game, people fish for all types of marlin, sailfish, and sometimes sword fish.  There are also dorado (mahi mahi), yellowfin tuna and several types of shark.  We were going to fish for the tuna.

 

We were picked up on the beach by a couple of small boats and then we bought some live bait from another small boat anchored out.  You could see many local residents relied upon tourists fishing, just as many worked in the tourist hotels.

We started fishing for the yellowfin tuna, and we caught some before too long.  Apprently, that's not always the case.   While the water had a little bit of chop to it, particularly where the Sea of Cortez collided with the Pacific Ocean, it wasn't so bad that I got sick-- only pretty queasy. 

After catching a few tuna, the chop was getting to us gringos and we decided to turn back to town.  But, on the way the captain spotted a marlin and asked if "we" wanted to catch it.  We said okay.  This is the way it actually worked-- the captain got his engine running again (it had broken down and we had bobbed up and down in the waves for a while as he tried to fix it, breathing the gasoline fumes, which didn't help a whole lot), quickly got in front of the swimming marlin, got a stiff pole, and then baited a hook and threw it over in front of the marlin (while I steered the boat for him, thankful for having something to hold on to).  Sure enough, the marlin grabbed the bait and was hooked-- all thanks to el capitan.



Sam, the other adult in our small fishing party, had caught and reeled in marlins on other trips to Cabo, so he asked if I wanted to reel in this one.  Wanting to save face and act like Ernest Hemingway, I agreed.  That's when I started identifying with "The Old Man and the Sea."  It didn't take days to reel in the marlin, but it still seemed like a long time to this queasy, thristy (my mouth no longer had any spit in it) ol' man.  I never felt like giving up-- but maybe secretly hoped the marlin would break loose and free me. 

Hemingway's short story "The Old Man and the Sea" was written by Hemingway in Cuba in 1951 and published in 1952.  Apparently, it was his last major work of fiction produced and published in his lifetime.  Born in 1899, Hemingway commited suicide in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961, at the age of 61.  Anyway, "The Old Man and the Sea"  is one of Hemingway's most famous works.  It was made into a Hollywood movie starring Spencer Tracy in 1958, and into a television movie starring Anthony Quinn in 1990. 

"The Old Man and the Sea" centers upon Santiago, a Cuban fisherman who has had a string of bad luck.  One day he goes out and finally catches a fish, hooking a monster marlin.  Santiago respects the marlin and battles it for a couple of days in a test of wills, holding on while being pulled by the marlin out to sea.   Santiago finally wins and the too-big-to-get-into-the-boat marlin is tied to the side of the small fishing skiff as Santiago returns to shore.  Of course, sharks attack and eat the marlin, so Santiago returns to port with only the large skeleton tied to his small boat.  But, at least all the townspeople see that he his luck had returned and he had caught a very large fish.  He's not a "has-been" yet. 

In the Hollywood movie, Spencer Tracy at times almost looks possessed.  Note that in the pictures, Spencer Tracy and I are wearing almost the exact same shirt.  The similarities don't end there, however.  While there is no picture of me, battling the marlin for probably less than 20 minutes, with the exact same possessed expression of a desparate man who had been fighting a fish for days, I'm sure it was there on my face to be seen.  (Instead of a fishing line, imagine pulling on a five-mile long drinking straw with the other end in a tall, cool Diet Coke on ice.  That's what I was imagining). 

Would I do it again?  Well, probably not-- although later in the month a couple of friends and I went out on the Pacific Ocean off the Washington coast, fishing for salmon, which will be the subject of another post. 

Land Ho!

"Reno Jim" Uprichard

Jim Uprichard, who tells me his last name is Welsh not Irish, has been a friend for 50 years.  He now lives in Reno, hence the moniker "Reno Jim."  That's him in the US Navy.  The two stripes means he was Admiral of the Second Fleet or something. He was also a boiler man on the USS Agerholm (commissioned in 1946, but sunk as a target off California in 1982).  A boiler man does what Steve McQueen does in the movie "Sand Pebbles."  That's a good movie. 

Reno Jim and I stay in touch as friends do, mostly out of curiosity to see how life turns for us. The guy in the Captain's hat is Jack Kerouac, the "beat" writer.  I didn't know Kerouac, but I think he may have tried to model his life after Reno Jim.  Uprichard makes Kerouac look like a Sunday School teacher.  The guy with the curly hair is Kurt Vonnegut, whose books I saw Reno Jim reading from time to time.  That's pretty much Jim's background, so far as I know.   

When Jim went into the Navy he had a metallic blue '56 Chev hardtop.  When he got out, he bought a purple VW bug.  Over the years, he's pretty much settled on a couple of Harley Davidson motorcycles. 

Reno Jim is an excellent rider.  When he sees a sign that suggests using caution, he'll grab a fist full of throttle and go even faster, lest some danger catch up to him from behind. The "dangerous curve" ahead sign is  biographical for Reno Jim.  

There are way too many stories and anecdotes to include here, obviously. 

This is a picture of Jim and I from the early 1970's.  I don't know who the women are standing next to Reno Jim in the pictures. 

That's Reno Jim with Ron Paul.  That makes perfect sense. 

UPDATE September 19, 2011--

Here's a picture of Reno Jim giving Senator Rand Paul a short seminar on the value of money and the dangers of the Federal Reserve this last weekend in Reno, Nevada (of course). 



UPDATE:  So Reno Jim was riding his bike around Florida in late summer 2012 to be a Ron Paul delegate at the GOP national convention, which he did.  But, he got banged up pretty good in a bike accident and ended in the hospital.  His bike got out earlier than him.  The "New World Order" trying to take him out?   His friends are trying to help him out.  For more info about this patriot, check out

https://www.youcaring.com/manage-fundraiser.aspx?frid=100492

Ouch-- that had to hurt, Reno Jim. 

"Walter the Penniless" and "Peter the Hermit"

Walter the Penniless was lieutenant to Peter the Hermit and co-led the People's Crusade at the beginning of the First Crusade (1095-1099).

The Crusades were undertaken by European Christians between the 11th and 14th centuries to recover the Holy Land, particularly Jerusalem, from Islam. The movement began in France when Pope Urban II exhorted Christendom to war, promising that the journey would count as penance.

The First Crusade (1095-1099) began with the march of several undisciplined hordes of French and German peasants (approximately 12,000 people, of whom only eight were knights), led by Walter the Penniless and Peter the Hermit.

Leaving well before the main army of knights and their followers, Walter led his band, traveling separately from Peter. They started out by massacring the Jews in the Rhineland (i.e., West Germany) and incensed the Bulgarians and Hungarians, who attacked and dispersed them. They reached Constantinople in shreds. Walter and Peter joined forces at Constantinople and crossed over the Asia Minor, and were promptly defeated by the Turks.

Peter the Hermit had returned to Constantinople, either for reinforcements or to protect himself. But Walter was killed, allegedly pierced by seven arrows. Peter returned to France and joined an Augustinian monastery.

There were nine crusades, plus the Children’ Crusade of 1212. Thousands of French children set out for the Holy land but were instead sold into slavery by unscrupulous skippers. Another group of German children made their way by land but perished of hunger and disease.

Sources: Will Durant, The Age of Faith; Wikipedia; Columbia Viking Desk Encyclopedia; Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia.

Stimulating Unemployment and Inflation

The policies of the Obama Administration are continuing to stimulate unemployment, not jobs. Moreover, rampant inflation is coming, a future result of those same policies. There are two very knowledgeable and well-respected economists who explain it quite simply—Dr. Walter Williams and Dr. Thomas Sowell.

The following is condensed from Dr. Walter Williams' July 14, 2010, article “A Failed Obama Hero”—

Let’s look at the failed stimulus program of Obama’s hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The unemployment figures for FDR’s first eight years were: 18 percent in 1935; 14 percent in 1936; by 1938, unemployment was back to 20 percent. The stock market fell nearly 50 percent between August 1937 and March 1938. During the Roosevelt Administration, the top marginal income tax rate was raised at first to 79 percent and then later to 90 percent. In 1941, Roosevelt even proposed a whopping 99.5 percent marginal rate on all incomes over $100,000.

Where do the trillion-plus dollars come from that Congress and President Obama are spending in an effort to stimulate the economy? The only way government can spend a dollar is to tax or borrow it.

In the case of a tax, one should ask what would that taxpayer have done with the dollar had it not been taxed away. He would have spent it on something that would have created a job for someone. If the government hadn’t borrowed the dollar, it might have been invested in some project that would have created a job. When government taxes, borrows and spends, it shifts unemployment from one sector to another. Of course, the sector that benefits tends to be a political favorite of the shifter.

Between 1787 and 1930, our nation has seen both mild and sever economic downturns, sometimes called panics, that have ranged from one to seven years. During that interval, no one considered it to be the business of the federal government to try to get the economy out of a depression because there was no constitutional authority to do so. It took the government to turn what might have been a three- or four-year sharp downturn into a 15-year meltdown.














The following is condensed from Dr. Thomas Sowell’s July 13, 2010, article “Signs of the Times”–

Barack Obama has spent hundreds of billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money just by using the magic words “stimulus” and “jobs.” It doesn’t matter that the stimulus is not actually stimulating and that the unemployment rate remains up near double-digit levels, despite all the spending and all the rhetoric about jobs.

Not only has all the runaway spending and rapid escalation of the deficit to record levels failed to make any real headway in reducing unemployment, all this money pumped into the economy has also failed to produce inflation [so far].

How can the government pour trillions of dollars into the economy and not even see the price level go up significantly? Economists have long known that it is not just the amount of money, but also the speed with which it circulates, that affects the price level.

The velocity of circulation of money in the American economy has plummeted to its lowest level in half a century. Business are holding on to their money. There should not be any great mystery as to why they don’t invest it.

With the Obama Administration being on an anti-business kick, boasting of putting their foot on some business’ neck, and the President talking about putting his foot on another part of the anatomy, with Congress coming up with more and more red tape, more mandates and more heavy-handed interventions in businesses, why would a business risk money it might not even be able to get back, much less make any money on the deal? Banks have cut back on lending, despite all the billions of dollars that were dumped into them in the name of “stimulus.” Consumers have also cut back on spending.

People don’t know what to expect next from this administration, which seldom lets a month go by without some new anti-business laws, policies or rhetoric. Businesses have no way of knowing what additional costs the politicians in Washington are going to impose, when they are constantly coming up with new bright ideas for imposing more mandates on business.

One of the little noticed signs of what is going on has been the increase in the employment of temporary workers. Businesses have been increasingly meeting their need for labor by hiring temporary workers and working their existing employees overtime instead of hiring new people because temporary workers don’t get health insurance or other benefits, and working existing employees overtime doesn’t add to the cost of their benefits.

There is no free lunch—and the biggest price of all is paid by people who are unemployed because politicians cannot leave the economy alone to recover.

Walter E. Williams was born in Philadelphia in 1936, holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from California State University (1965) and a master’s degree (1967) and doctorate (1972) in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1980, he joined the faulty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and is currently Distinguished Professor of Economics. More than 50 of his publications have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review and Social Science Quarterly and popular publications such as Reader’s Digest, The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. He is also the author of several books.

Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina and grew up in Harlem. He left home early and did not finish high school. Eventually, he joined the Marine Corps and became a photographer in the Korean War. After leaving the service, Thomas Sowell entered Harvard University and studied economics. After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University (1958), Thomas Sowell went on to receive his master’s in economics from Columbia University (1959) and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago (1968). He has published a dozen books, as well as numerous articles and essays. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute in Stanford, California.

Walden Pond

Another stop during the Boston visit was at Walden Pond just outside of Concord Massachusetts. Author Henry David Thoreau made it famous.

Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) was an author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, surveyor, philosopher, and transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden (1854), a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience (1849), an argument for individual resistance to civil government on grounds of moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau was born in Concord Massachusetts. After attending college Thoreau moved back home to Concord where he met writer Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) (below left)(essayist, philosopher and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the early 19th century).














Emerson introduced him to a number of other local writers, which appears to have included Louisa May Alcott (1833 – 1888) (a novelist best known for the novel Little Women), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864) (seated below) (novelist and short story writer) and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882) (below right) (educator and poet whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", "The Song of Hiawatha" and "Evangeline").













On July 4, 1845, Thoreau moved into a small house he built himself on land owned by Emerson in a forest around the shores of Walden Pond. The house was not in the wilderness but at the edge of town and within walking distance to his old family home, so his existence at the pond wasn’t exactly a test in raw survival. Thoreau earned money by surveying and was able to walk into town for meals. His mother also lived nearby in the old family home and would provide food.











Thoreau spent a little over two years at Walden Pond. He would later publish Walden, or Life in the Woods in 1854. In the book he compressed the two years into a single calendar year, using the passage of four seasons to symbolize human development. In it, Thoreau explores natural simplicity, harmony, and beauty as models for just social and cultural conditions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau

Thoreau was an early advocate of hiking and canoeing and conserving natural resources on private land and preserving wilderness as public land.

He was not a strict vegetarian, but preferred that diet and advocated it as a means of self-improvement. He wrote in Walden:

“The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth."

While living at Walden Pond, Thoreau ran into the local tax collector who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes. Thoreau refused (as opposing slavery and the Mexican-American War) and spent a night in jail. He was freed the next day after his aunt paid his taxes. While it wasn’t very long, the incarceration appears to have made a strong impact on Thoreau. The incident started him thinking, lecturing and writing about civil disobedience. His essay entitled “Resistance to Civil Government” (also known as “Civil Disobedience”) was published in 1849.

The essay argues that people should not permit governments to overrule their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing their implied consent to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice.

“That government is best which governs least.” This statement is sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine, but its essential wording appears to have been first found in Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau

Thoreau’s philosophy of civil disobedience is said to have influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Henry David Thoreau was a Transcendentalist, a philosophy advocated by Emerson, which holds that an ideal spiritual state transcends, or goes beyond, the physical state and that a person achieves that insight through personal intuition rather than religious doctrine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism