General Dwight D. Eisenhower....his legacy was simple: "He got the job done"

General Dwight David Eisenhower was the Commander, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in Europe in WWII.   He was responsible for putting together a diverse coalition to execute a successful invasion of Europe, with the ultimate goal of defeating Hitler's Germany.

It would have no doubt been easier for him to just appoint his fellow American Generals and Admirals and charge them with carrying out his orders, but he (and US President Franklin Roosevelt) knew there were allied "national sensitivities" that needed to be massaged.  While Eisenhower sat at the head of the table, Brits Bernard Montgomery, Bertram Ramsay, and Trafford Leigh-Mallory were respectively in charge of the actual land, sea, and air components of Operation Overlord.

Stay with me here...

Eisenhower knew how to play the diplomat.  Of course he had his opinions, but he often listened to the little voice in his head that told him "No, don't say it."  He knew that to say what he really wanted to could sometimes be counter-productive.  The ultimate goal, defeating Hitler, was of paramount importance.  He was focused on the prize.

Eventually the Allies committed 39 divisions to the Battle of Normandy: 22 American, 12 British, three Canadian, one Polish, and one French, plus a scattering of Belgians, Dutch, Czech, and a few others, totaling over a million troops, all under British field commanders, who answered to an American.  Somehow Eisenhower managed to keep them all pulling in the same direction.  It was a constant exercise of give and take.  He gave in on a few internal battles along the way, acquiescing to one ego or another to keep them on board, BUT HE WON THE WAR.  Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally on May 8, 1945.

Every good leader knows it's pointless to win battles if you somehow manage to lose the war.  And they know building coalitions offers the best chance to win wars.  It's a timeless, winning strategy.  They also know alienating potential allies seldom gets you where you want to go.

Too deep?

To take a knee, or not to take a knee, THAT is the question

The coast-to-coast talk today is whether it was appropriate for NFL players to take a knee at the games yesterday or whether Prez Trump was right that it was disrespectful to our flag/anthem/country to do so.  My opinion:  Like beauty, appropriateness is in the eye of the beholder.

Of course NFL players, or anyone else for that matter, have the RIGHT to take a knee as our National Anthem is being played.  And President Trump has the same First Amendment right to say anything he wants, short of "FIRE" in a crowded theater, regardless of how obnoxious it might be.

But, as the original purpose of Colin Kaepernick's statement was to bring to light the systemic injustice African Americans experience daily, it appears the "take a knee" protest is taking at least some attention away from the original issue.  IMO many people who might have otherwise gotten on board with CK's message have been sidetracked, insulted even, because of their reverence for the anthem.

Isn't there a better way to make a statement for social justice for everyone that would not be as divisive?  Here's an idea...find a time and a place in every city that has professional sports teams (football, basketball, baseball, hockey), and professional sport icons of all races, and have giant rallies, with all of them on stage at the same time along with maybe some big name musical groups.  Wouldn't that make one helluva statement?  

Wouldn't that be something any reasonable person could get behind? Wouldn't that make people think, and maybe bring about some real change....without squabbling over a song or a flag?

  
Now as for the POTUS, maybe we could just confine him to the Alabama While House that weekend.

S

Follow the money

The Senate is currently on their third....or is it their fourth or fifth....iteration of a "Repeal and Replace ObamaCare" attempt, and this one is no better than the ones that came before it.  As bad as ObamaCare supposedly is, all their attempts to date have been giant steps BACKWARD.  The highlight of the current Republican bill is to give each state a "block grant", essentially a pot of cash, and then tell them to figure out what to do with health care.  "Not my circus, not my monkey" the Feds can then say.

Polls show less than 20% of Americans like this giant step backwards.  Neither does AARP, or the American Medical Association, or the various hospital associations, or the insurers, or the drug makers, or the American Cancer Society, The American Heart Association, the Diabetes Foundation, or any other group advocating on behalf of people with health issues.  So why are Republicans so hellbent on ramming this "reform" down our throats?  Who wins in this deal?

FOLLOW THE MONEY

The only logical explanation I can come up with is that, to Republicans, "Repeal and Replace ObamaCare" is simply a means to a greater goal.  They have told their ultra-wealthy mega-donors that they will deliver to them a giant tax cut, but before they can do that, they first have to come up with a pile of cash from somewhere.  That "somewhere", they have decreed, will be from the Federal healthcare kitty....cut a few hundred billion here, transfer it on to there.  But if they can't realize big savings via a repeal/replace bill, their promised wealth transfer, their REAL goal, is dead in the water.  

If you can think of another reason why congressional Republicans are pushing so hard to pass such a supremely unpopular bill, please let me know.

If they should ever succeed in achieving this goal, hold on!  Their next target will be Medicare and Social Security.  Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has already (correctly) labeled them as the two most expensive Federal programs that can be looted...er..."reformed" in order to realize great savings.  He just never tells us where those savings will go.

So, as is always the case, FOLLOW THE MONEY.  That will show you who is pulling the strings, and who the big winner will always be.

S

Is "socialist" the most feared word in America?

  Damn socialists!

I recently clicked on one of those silly quizzes that asked, "Are you more American or European?"  One of my Facebook friends, who is German by birth, felt the gist of it was that Americans are freedom loving, hard working, go-it-alone individualists, and Europeans aren't.  That Europeans are all just a bunch of *gag...puke...choke* SOCIALISTS.  Ewwwwww!

Truth is, Americans have benefited from many programs some would call "socialist", like SOCIAL Security and Medicare.  I'll concede, some Americans probably don't like Social Security or Medicare, as they will never in a million years ever need to rely on either.  They can just cut a check for whatever they want.

But what about public schools?  Isn't that a social program, paid for by all, for the benefit of all?  How about interstate highways, paid for by all, for the benefit of all?  

How about fire departments?  Modern professional fire departments are a fairly recent development.  Battling fires used to be something neighbors did for each other on a volunteer basis, with abysmal results.  Now we have highly professional, highly effective municipal fire departments, paid for by all, for the benefit of all.  Ditto for law enforcement....paid for by all, for the benefit of all.

When I was in school, way back in the last century, we were taught in civics class that government existed to do for people what they couldn't do for themselves.  At the time of the writing of our Constitution that meant things like maintaining a postal system and maintaining a strong military, paid for by all, for the benefit of all.  It was a pretty simple time.

Now, in this century, it seems reasonable to empower a Securities and Exchange Commission to look out for us, as "financial services" are much too sophisticated for the average person to comprehend, which leads to many of us getting ripped off.  We need an SEC to protect us, paid for by all, for the benefit of all.

How about a Food and Drug Administration, paid for by all, for the benefit of all?  Would you know how to tell if a drug is effective and safe, or just worthless snake oil, or worse? 

We're now on the cusp of comprehensive health care falling into the category of things we probably can't do on our own.  If a national health plan similar to that practiced in the UK is too radical for us, maybe we could look elsewhere, such as in my friend's native Germany, for a health care system that works, that is insurance based, and is universal.  But to just whack what we have now, without a better replacement, just to please those who will never have to worry about paying for anything, is just wrong! 

My point is, benefiting from some social programs does not make us socialists, and is something to be embraced, not feared.  We've had them for years, whether we've realized it or not, and they've served us well.

S

Is this what they mean by "going to the dark side"?

I like to think of myself as "unique".  My daughters very kindly refer to me as "quirky".  Some others just think I'm weird. 

Why do I bring this up now?  Because this morning as I was giving Jax, our SuperDog, his first walk of the day, I realized that dawn is now coming noticeably later, and I like it. 

Autumn is my favorite season for a variety of reasons, one of which being the days are becoming shorter by about a minute a day.  Yea!  I also like a few rainy days now and then, which are more likely in autumn than in summer.  And of course, autumn also = the start of football season.  Ha!  Take that hot, sweaty, sticky summer!

I've become a fairly successful minimalist....except for my collection of coats and jackets.  I LOVE coats and jackets.  I have light windbreakers, a GoreTex rain jacket, a heeeeeavy LL Bean arctic parka, and a jacket for pretty much everything else in between.  This time of year I'm always optimistic it will be a cold enough winter to wear some of them.

Unique, quirky, or weird....I'll answer to any of them.  Just don't call me Shirley.  :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You've heard the old saying, "Make hay while the sun shines"?  That's pretty much my work ethic.  I feel like if it's still daylight, I should be working or doing one chore or another.  When evening comes, it's time to put my tools down, metaphorically, and relax.  These days I don't have the energy I once did, so relaxing while the sun is still high sorta bothers me.  The earlier it gets dark, the less guilty I feel.

Can you imagine how rested people must have been 150 years ago?  When the sun went down there was little else to do but go to bed and sleep, or maybe make more little farm workers.  Candlelight barely illuminated the space you were sitting in.  Later, coal oil or whale oil lanterns offered a chance to see better later into the night, but those fuels were expensive.  

The big breakthrough came with successful oil drilling and refining in the late 1850's.  Back then the refined petroleum product of choice was not gasoline or diesel (there were virtually no internal combustion engines back then), but kerosene.  Kerosene was a much more affordable fuel, and burned much brighter, too.  That gave John D. Rockefeller the light he needed to count his money late into the night.  Thomas Edison's electric lighting was just the icing on the cake of illumination progress.

I think today we have it just about right:  It gets dark early enough to allow for some rest time before bed, yet a flip of a switch gives us enough light to write unique / quirky / weird blog posts. :)

S

A homebuilder's observation of the US hurricane season to date

Being a "weatherholic" I've watched hurricane Harvey and Irma coverage wall-to-wall.  The builder in me quickly picked up on the fact that the buildings on the Texas coast fared much worse than the buildings in Florida, at least those built after the building code changes prompted by hurricane Andrew in 1992.  It just goes to show that we CAN build homes that will stand up well to storms, short of storms of absolutely Biblical proportions, if we'll just embrace building codes as friends and not foes to be stonewalled.

The fact is, the prevalent mindset of most builders (in Texas at least) is to lobby against stricter codes as they cost money, and builders would rather spend money on shiny amenities like granite and stainless steel to entice buyers than on structural integrity.  "Sell the sizzle, not the steak" they say.  They do this because homebuyers are influenced by Pinterest and Houzz and other online sites, and "pretties" are all they care about.

It's increasingly rare to find an informed buyer who understands that if his/her house has a foundation broken in half, or is spread out in pieces over half the county after a storm, having pretty granite and stainless steel are meaningless.  This is how shallow we've become.

And zoning....how were places like Marco Island, FL, with a population of 18,000 and an elevation of 0, that's ZERO, ever allowed to be developed?  Politics!  With the availability of Federal Flood Insurance there's really little downside to the flooding they're now seeing there with hurricane Irma.  The city/county expanded their tax base dramatically, and developers and builders made bank.  Sure, homeowners will have to deal with the hassle of making claims and doing clean up, but they will eventually be made whole.

You do realize Federal Flood Insurance means the taxpayers are potentially on the hook for this, right?  Older developments already there, and in other coastal cities, sure, they should be extended Federal Flood Insurance, but why should we knowingly approve zoning for new developments, especially high-end luxury developments catering to the wealthy, that we KNOW will flood? It's really pretty easy to foresee using modern hydrological mapping.

My point is, much of the damage we're seeing now is caused by poor planning as much as by Mother Nature.  We should have known better.

S

A homebuilder's advice to hurricane Harvey victims

It was a heartbreaking event.  Hurricane Harvey has blown many homes away, and put many hundreds of thousands more underwater.  Property owners now have to decide what to do next.  Hopefully they have flood insurance, or if not, the financial ability to rebuild / repair out of pocket or with new loans.

Soon will come the next heartbreak.  Unscrupulous builders will be descending on hurricane victims like vultures on roadkill....they're easy pickings.  Already in a fragile state of mind, property owners will sign paperwork they don't understand and fork over what little money they have left, hoping to get their homes and lives put back together.  Here are some things property owners should know:

In Texas there is NO registration or licensing of builders.  Anyone can have some business cards printed that identifies them as a builder, and they're builders.  That's it.  Many people who might be plumbers or carpenters or painters (or insurance salesmen) might decide now is the time to try their hand at being a contractor, and these hurricane victims are their guinea pigs.  In addition there will be thousands of scoundrels from out of state who will show up, holding themselves out to be experienced builders.  They'll get as much money as they can up front, then skip town doing little if any of the promised work.

How do you know who you're dealing with?  For a start, check online here, enter the name of the contractor, and see if they are registered to do business in Texas.  On that page click "details" and see when they began doing business in Texas, their actual physical address, and the name of their principal / agent.  If they aren't listed, or if they were listed just recently....RED FLAG!

Beware of references.  Anyone can find 3 people who know them and will vouch for them. Even convicted felons have friends.  Instead ask for the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the last 10 or 15 clients they built or remodeled for, then call at least a sampling and confirm those clients are happy.  A reputable contractor should have no trouble providing that information.

Builders should provide you a current liability insurance certificate, and either a Workman's Compensation insurance certificate or have WC waivers signed by each vendor and subcontractor.

Ask where they do their business banking, and how many accounts they have.  They should have at least two, as it is illegal for a builder to co-mingle "construction funds" and "operating funds".  (Money paid to a contractor for work completed in stages MUST FIRST be used to pay for labor and materials.  Funds left over can then be transferred to an operating account and used to pay overhead and salaries.)

Property owners should understand that in Texas, even if they pay their contractor for work competed, if the contractor fails to pay for the labor or materials used, those unpaid vendors can turn to the owners directly to get paid.  If the vendors don't get paid, they can file liens on the property.  To prevent this, owners should insist the contractors provide them notarized "lien waivers", which are signed by the vendors acknowledging they have been paid.  And finally, when all work is completed and the final payment to the builder is made, insist the builder simultaneously provide a signed and notarized "all bills paid" affidavit.  If the builder signs and all bills have not been paid, he has committed a criminal offense.

New construction and remodeling contracts must contain certain specific verbiage mandated by the Texas Legislature.  A check with an attorney or perhaps a title insurance company can confirm if the contract meets the state requirements.  If it doesn't comply, that might be a tip-off the builder is less than professional.

Beware of builders from out of the area who come in to do repairs as they will likely not know reputable local building tradespeople.  Understand that builders generally don't "build" anything themselves.  Builders just schedule and arrange for the right materials to be at the right place at the right time for the right trades.  They hire local plumbers, electricians, carpenters, painters, etc to actually do the work.  

When an out-of-town builder arrives, how does he know which are the quality local carpenters and which are the "wood butchers"?  Unless he brings his own vetted, trusted subcontractors with him, it's likely that you'll get at least some shoddy workmanship along the way.  And once the job is completed, who will be there to honor the warranty when the builder is back home in Dallas or Little Rock or Atlanta?

Understand that building tradespeople will be in very short supply, and that the building process will likely take much longer than it would have during normal times.  Be especially aware of work done by unlicensed or unsupervised plumbers and electricians.  These critical trades require a state license.  On-site work must be done or at least directly supervised by someone with a Master's or Journeyman's license.  If stretched too thin, unlicensed rookies will be dropped off to do the work, and then a license-holder will drop by every few days for a cursory look.  Not good.

Don't put too much stock in municipal building inspections.  Larger cities generally have specialized, experienced inspectors who actually know the International Building Code(s), but the smaller jurisdictions might just have jack-of-all-trades inspectors.  And even in the large cities, they will likely be overwhelmed with the volume of work needing inspecting.  They'll pull up, run in, do a 360-look-around, leave a green / red tag, and then go on to the next one.  They'll see the critical things, but might miss some of the deficiencies they would have ordinarily caught in calmer times.  This is just going to be a by-product of the crisis.

I hope this gives the victims of Harvey at least some idea of what to look out for and what to expect.  I have nothing to gain or lose by passing this on as I myself am (semi) retired and have no intention of going to the storm area to work.  Feel free to pass this on to anyone you might know in those affected areas, and give them my best wishes for a happy ending to this horrible disaster.

S