To Bowl or Not To Bowl

I admit I am not a football fan. I really am even less a college football fan, so maybe this will just be a whiney post for you. No matter. I write it, you get it.

My state of Michigan has teams that will appear in five Bowl games this winter. Those are:

• The Quick Lane Bowl (Eastern Michigan U)
• The Pinstripe Bowl (Michigan State U)
• The First Responder Bowl (Western Michigan U)
• The Citrus Bowl (University of Michigan)
• The New Mexico Bowl (Central Michigan U)

I have only ever heard of one of them. Care to guess which one?

Now, I know the various Bowl games have been taken over by major sponsors for decades; there has always been money in college football and in many states, the college football coach is among, if not at the top of, the highest paid people. Someone has to pay the piper, so it is no wonder Bowl organizers - whoever they are - sold out to wealthy corporate owners.

But Pinstripe? First Responder? New Mexico?

I'm pretty sure those aren't corporations, but I have no idea who they are. And I have no idea what the former name of those Bowls were. I am not even sure if the only one I have heard of, the Citrus Bowl, is even the same one I have heard of, so I don't know if my state's five football teams are in "name" Bowls or not.

Then again, it probably means nothing since I am not a college football fan.

Amazon: The Company We All Love to Hate

The newly-built (summer 2019) Amazon fulfillment warehouse about 3 miles down the road from my house opens January 2020. Already, supervisors are being trained on what is no doubt the most modern facility built in preparation for hiring and training 2,000 or more new employees. According to one person to whom I spoke, the new hires will start at $17/hour and will have very generous monthly cash performance benefits. That will most likely make a lot of people apply.

Since I already have next-day delivery - during non-Christmas rush periods; I am lucky if I can get 2-day delivery during Christmas shopping season - opening that huge new warehouse will probably give me same-day delivery.

But there is this from a New York Times article on how Amazon "treats" its suppliers, regardless of size...badly. So:

Many sellers and brands on Amazon are desperate to depend less on the tech giant. But when they look for sales elsewhere online, they come up short. Last year, Americans bought more books, T-shirts and other products on Amazon than eBay, Walmart and its next seven largest online competitors combined, according to eMarketer, a research company...

 

Amazon collects 27 cents of each dollar customers spend buying things its merchants sell, a 42 percent jump from five years ago, according to Instinet, a financial research firm. That does not include what companies pay to place ads on Amazon, a business that Wall Street considers as valuable as Nike.

 

“We really built the company on Amazon,” Mr. Thompson said. “We have no regrets about doing that. But today our focus has to be getting diversification off Amazon.”

He said he understood what he was up against. “We are dealing with a partner,” he said, “who can and will disrupt us for unpredictable reasons at any time.”

 

Yes, Amazon is the behemoth we truly love to hate. We all know how bad it is and we all continue shopping there. It is easy. Click, evaluate, buy...and a couple of days later, the item appears on your doorstep. No car, no crowds. Heck, you don't even have to get dressed.

And like the worst addiction you can imagine, getting "off" Amazon is very, very difficult. I know. I am one of them.

Student debt: What does it actually do for and to you?

As I have shown before, Credit Karma gives me a monthly update on whether my finances are moving in the right direction - down - or the wrong directions, no change or increasing. Last month, the report was my student debt went down $13.00.

Yes, thirteen whole dollars.

I can assure you my monthly payment is a whole lot more than that. Actually, at this point in the scale, it is about $110.00 per month, which means that lending company is keeping almost $100 of my money and my student debt will go down very, very slowly.

Of course, I am not alone. Mandy, a 28-year old college grad living in New York City, chronicles her journey from almost overwhelming student debt to pay-off. She is under no misconceptions that merely being free of her student debt is the end of it. She also has some thoughts about a topic the current batch of Democratic presidential hopefuls have bandied about for some time...student debt forgiveness. While it sounds good on paper, it has sounded to me like fixing a broken brain after years of being a professional football player in the National Football League.

Will the after-action do anything about reducing or removing the initial problem? Here is what she wrote:

I'm all for debt forgiveness, but I don't think it alone will solve the problem. We need to attack the issue at its core: predatory private lenders with high interest rates, tuition hikes, and the lack of education an 18-year-old gets making such a huge financial decision. The system is broken and it's time we vote for lawmakers who are committed to fixing it in its totality.

To me, her phrase "predatory private lenders with high interest rates" is the key. Our government wants its people to fund college education by borrowing huge sums of "easy" money from for-profit organizations. Long ago, I had a student loan from the State of Alaska. The interest rate was 1% over the life of the loan until they sent me a very apologetic-sounding letter saying they would have to double the rate...to 2%.  My federal loans started at 5% and are now well above that, even though I continue to pay on them.

Another student, Jessica, had a similar experience:

For 10 years, we'd been just paying the minimum and not thinking about it much. In late 2015, we moved to a lower-cost-of-living city and started making a little more money, and decided it was a good time to reevaluate our finances — particularly as we had an infant son to think about. Also, the debt had been a thorn in the side of our marriage and we wanted to stop fighting about it and problem-solve.

When we checked the balance, it was still $71,000!!! The interest rate was so high, we'd barely made a dent. We decided to live like monks and put every extra cent toward the debt until it's done.


At $13 a month, I might never get out of this burdensome, $30,000 student debt. My predatory private lender, one of those approved by the US Department of Education to lend tax dollars to college students, will make a lot of money on my student debt and that of thousands of other students, current and past.

English: Love it or leave it. Apparently, we are leaving it.

Many writers on social media seem to have stopped using subjects in their sentences. Why? Here is an example:

"Not able to cover as much area as we wanted because it's so marshy/swampy up there. Possibly going up in the next couple weeks to rule out some more areas."

I believe we are already well on the way to forgetting how to use penmanship - how many young people use cursive after their school classes? - and if we keep this no-subject-used sentence structure, we will devolve as a species. The ability to use and evolve language is the one thing that really separates us from those species in the the lower Animal Kingdom and I am not sure we really want to evolve language as we seem to.

 

Already one of the most common - though I hesitate to use the word "popular" - subjects in a college freshman's curriculum is Remedial English. (That, of course, leads one to as what is being taught to students in pre-college school...but that is a topic we do not want to address lest we make young students feel less than Perfect In Every Way.)

Our "Modern" Health Care System and Health

I have written this before and I will probably write it again after this time. 

 

I am watching this week's episode of a weekly New York Times show called The Weekly. During these shows, various reporters highlight some story. This week, the show is about the staggeringly high cost of what are called "orphan drugs." These are drugs specifically designed by Big Pharma to combat a specific, highly rare disease. There are about 7,000 of these "orphan diseases" in the country now, affecting about 30,000 patients, sometimes only a hundred or so at a time. Many of them are hereditary.

The cost can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, per patient, per disease, per year. So if a Mom has it, her kids probably will, too, as will theirs. Do the math and try to imagine what you would do if you did not have an employer-sponsored health plan that had the right approach.

I am so glad my health is generally great for a 70-year old male. I take no prescription meds (save those my dentist gave me, which have a limited life), I have no infirmities that prevent me from doing normal, age-related activities, I have no need for joint replacement, and I pretty much enjoy my life as it is.

Even with the excellent Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan I carry, I cannot imagine taking a drug that would cost as much as an orphan drug might. And Big Pharma charges whatever they want; the law allows them to do it. Someone pays the billions of dollars in executive bonuses...you and I do.

Our health care system is totally broken. Totally.

Now I Know Frustration, aka, Where Are The Tradespeople?

Trying to arrange to get my 3-sheet drywall repair done has turned into the most frustrating, irritating task I have had in a very long time. It is not a whole-house job, but one might think it would be worth doing. Apparently, it is not.

First, it started with two "professionals" on Home Depot's list of referred workers. Neither of them wanted the job because it was "too small." Then contact with a handyman organization I have used for years resulted in a waffling response from the customer service agent to whom I spoke. It became clear that she did not want the job, either, even if I combined it with other small repairs I had to meet the 4-hour minimum. Getting no response from them, I contacted the fellow who arranged to build my new deck in April; his company mainly does roofing and decking, but he also has many other contacts in the trades and has done well for me in the past, so I figured he would come through again.

He did not contact me for a month, so I kind of gave up; after all, summer is the busy season for roof repairs and replacement, their main job.

Thinking I had entered some kind of alternative universe where up is down and good is bad or if my breath smelled over the Internet, I wearily contacted a fourth provider of handyman services I found using an online search. I was pleasantly surprised! I was immediately put in touch with an installer, with whom I made arrangements to begin the job today at 8:00 a.m. I was confident my worries were over, so I cleaned the area and moved some objects around to give the worker plenty of room.

Then, at 7:30 a.m., he called.

First, he asked to verify that "all the supplies" were on-site...even though when I originally contacted the company, I told them I had NO products for the drywall repair - no drywall, no tape, no mud, no drywall screws, nothing - and that I had originally agreed to pay $35 to have the worker pick them up. I told him I was home all day, so even if he was late, that was okay with me.

He then asked if I could call Home Depot and get them delivered because his SUV was not big enough to carry 3 sheets of drywall. 

Seriously? You are a drywall installer and do not have a VEHICLE that can carry drywall sheets? So I declined the appointment and put that company on hold...meaning cancelled...and out of my mind.

Finally, the fellow that built my deck - remember him from earlier in the story? The one who did not respond to my initial inquiry more than a month ago? - well, he called to say he has a guy who can come look at the job later this afternoon. While I am happy to hear that, considering my luck in this fix-your-drywall business, I am not going to hold my breath or bet the farm on him showing up or being able to do the repair any time soon.

I might just have to learn to do drywall repair myself. At least I know I will show up on schedule.

How Two Small Bees Made One Man Happy

Readers know that I have a fairly large potful of green cilantro plants that are flowering on their way to seeding. I have enjoyed growing, watching, cutting, and eating them this summer and now I get enjoyment from another observation.

For the past few days, I have watched one bee working the flowers, flitting from this petal to that one. I wondered if it was the same discoverer-bee or if there was some kind of bee hierarchy that only permits one bee at a time on a plant. I still do not have an answer to that wonderment - and quite frankly, I have no real need to know; merely observing is enough.

Today, for the first time, I have two bees on the same bushy, flowering, cilantro blossoms at the same time. And I noticed something else, also for the first time: these two bees have a pink pollen sack on both sides of their abdomens! I am pleased that my large cilantro is now giving two bees happiness. 

Who knows? Maybe in a few days, there will be more; the plants are not even close to being dead and we certainly need to have these intrepid creatures moving pollen hither and yon, don't we?

These two bees have made me very, very happy.