[Arschloch]

I like the Swedish or Norwegian cabin builders best. What those people can do (many of them old men) with wood is amazing.

...old man.  ...Gretas Generation and the flower power crackpots can't ignite a barbecue grill, yet they are great leaders and commanders.       

And hell ya, it sure is fun to build one of these so it turnes into private property of some yelling Marlena.

[AzCal Retred]

Is this a Prozac moment? 

[tooseevee]

And hell ya, it sure is fun to build one of these so it turnes into private property of some yelling Marlena.

        Yup, that's the problem now; they've all grown too close together now. Used to be so that very few could even HEAR Marlena. You gotta go further and further away nowadays to be further and further away.

[Arschloch]

Is this a Prozac moment? 

I think they take something else in Sweden, I don't remember what....the diversity is very large. 

[AzCal Retred]

Possibly Sarpa salpa, a species of bream, strömming or maybe aged Lutefisk?   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyoallyeinotoxism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming

[Arschloch]

The Russians have become great entrepreneurs by the way. Once Gretas are finished with the "fossil fuel" economy they have the solutions already available. Brehmen, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Oslo, Stockholm....just park it in the harbour. 

https://www.foxnews.com/world/russias-floating-nuclear-plant-heads-for-the-arctic-amid-geopolitical-and-environmental-concerns

Or do you think Bill Gates will build some? That would cost money..

[AzCal Retred]

Good idea. Article was from May 22, 2018. The Akademik Lomonosov became operational 19 Dec 2019. A 70 MW RosAtom combined heat & power plant. These are PWR's. Nothing to burn like the RBMK's, self contained loops. Ship to shore power cabling has been perfected since the 1940's.

Nov2018 article: Chinese Floating NPP:    https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/chinas-planned-floating-nuclear-power-facilities-south-china-sea-technical-and

Jan 2020 Article: Russian & Chinese Floating NPP:https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a30731226/floating-nuclear-power-plants/

Dec 2020 Article: Russian & Danish Floating NPP:https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/17/floating-mini-nukes-could-power-countries-by-2025-says-startup

[Richard230]

Here is another example of big government at work. As usual the example is from California:  According to an article in my newspaper today, written by George Avalos of the Bay Area News Group, the state's Employment Development Department (EDD) says that $11 Billion of fraud has been sucked up by scammers and crime rings. And the cost could be as high as $30 Billion. The Federal pandemic unemployment relief money was sent to rings operating out of Nigeria, China and Russia (no mention was made of North Korea - so far  ) that unleashed a wave of fraud that focused on California's unemployment benefits as their most tempting target. Apparently the department handed out the money as fast as they could without verifying who it was going to. The state has already acknowledged that it has paid about $400 million in the names of prison inmates.  Easy come, easy go, I guess. 

[AzCal Retred]

Why do you persist in posting unreferenced claims? Are we all supposed to just blindly agree with you that the "Gummint" is always bad/incompetent/screwing us over? It's not rocket science to copy the link and paste it into the message. Not doing so just says you aren't being forthcoming with the data. Things are usually less exciting when all the data is presented. EDD just failed to adequately perform its function in an emergency situation, but now steps are being taken to remediate that. The feedback-loop is working. "Easy come, easy go, I guess." is pretty dismissive. With even a cursory examination it looks like "big gummint'" does have some corrective measures in place & functioning; apparently they ARE at work. The "Hair On Fire" numbers reported are about a "whopping" 10% of all the claims processed by EDD during an emergency. The other 17%/$30B was just a CYA possibility by Julie Su. About 5% of that is just folks that didn't really understand the paperwork. I'm all good with opinions about motorcycles, but when you drag in politics and start flinging shade on the processes that we all have to live under without offering either documentation or solutions, that's not helpful.

Was this the article?
https://www.dailybreeze.com/2021/01/26/edd-call-center-woes-unemployment-backlog-fraud-audit-jobs-layoff/
Or This?
https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/25/edd-27-of-california-unemployment-payments-could-be-fraudulent-state-says/
“Roughly 10% of the $114 billion in claims are confirmed fraudulent, another 17% are potentially fraudulent,” California Labor Secretary Julie Su said during a question-and-answer session regarding the EDD’s efforts to combat unemployment insurance fraud. If 27 percent of the claims are determined to be fraudulent, that would amount to more than $30 billion.
Crime rings operating out of Nigeria, China and Russia have unleashed a wave of fraud that has focused on California’s unemployment benefits as their most tempting target.
The state has already acknowledged that it has paid about $400 million in the names of prison inmates, and last month, federal prosecutors charged a former state labor agency worker, a prison inmate and a parolee in a scheme to defraud California’s scandal-scarred unemployment insurance system.
In October, the EDD launched a new identity verification technology called ID.me that the state government hopes will help turn the corner against fraudulent payments. Blake Hall, chief executive officer with ID.me, believes progress has been made.
“California was able to stop the bleeding and put a tourniquet on the fraud,” Hall said.
It’s not surprising that the crime rings picked California, whose economy is one of the world’s largest, as a target to exploit unemployment insurance payments.
“In California, it’s easier to hide in the crowd,” Hall said. “Organized crime is approaching this as a business process.”

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/01/26/edd-fraud-millions-may-have-to-repay-california-jobless-aid-auditor-says/
" On Monday, California Labor Secretary Julie Su estimated the state has paid $11.4 billion in fraudulent claims during the pandemic, representing 10% of the more than $114 billion in benefits paid since March. "
" The Employment Development Department has been under intense pressure by state lawmakers and the public to more quickly process benefits during the pandemic. The agency’s rush to do that, along with Congress approving a major expansion of benefits with few eligibility safeguards, have made the agency — and others like it in states across the country — an easy target for fraud. "

https://www.abc10.com/article/money/edd-prisoner-fraud/103-88847056-81d8-4264-8b48-c171add0b76f
25 Jan 2021 : District Attorneys holding EDD accountable after inmates receive unemployment benefits
" Two months after district attorneys from across California announced widespread unemployment fraud in prisons, the scope of the investigation continues to grow. "

And for Nationwide scams:
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2020/12/30/unemployment-fraud-how-international-scammers-took-36-b-us/3960263001/
How scammers siphoned $36B in fraudulent unemployment payments from US
" In a Zoom session with the camera turned off, Mayowa describes how he scoops up U.S. unemployment benefits fattened by COVID-19 relief, an international imposter attack that has contributed to at least $36 billion being siphoned away from out-of-work Americans. "

[Richard230]

It sounds like you said just what I said only with a lot more words. California's government is just inefficient and dysfunctional from my perspective as someone who has been living here for 76 years.

[AzCal Retred]

" California's government is just inefficient and dysfunctional from my perspective as someone who has been living here for 76 years." That's a flat statement implying that nothing in government works or will improve.

I pointed out that the feedback loop here was working - the EDD is being looked at and will be fixed. It should improve over time. I also pointed out that the EDD failure rate was actually about 10%; this meant their "success rate was close to 90%.

Finding and fixing your mistakes isn't dysfunctional. A 90% success rate isn't inefficient. 9 out of 10 folks got what they needed in a time of high demand.

Can things be improved? Always. Assuming that they won't or can't isn't helpful or realistic. What would your solution be?

[Richard230]

I have been paying state and federal income taxes, which are based upon total income, for over 55 years. Right now I am paying about 13% of my gross income to the state of California each year and 25% of my income to the Federal government. Add to that 10% sales tax on everything I buy except for food and a few other items that are exempt from that tax. Then there are property taxes amounting to thousands of dollars each year, plus other taxes and fees tacked on to the yearly property tax, which include paying off bonds for four overlapping school districts, school district parcel taxes, storm water fees (used to be included in gas taxes), and then there are a long list of federal, state and local taxes and fees stuck on to all of my utility services, and yearly DMV registration fees amounting to hundreds of dollars for each vehicle, which include other fees "requested by your local county". Those are just the ones that I can think off off of the top of my head. I have no doubt there are many more fees and taxes that residents of this state pay all the time without even noticing.

California is said to have the heaviest total tax burden of any state in the union. Maybe not as high as Sweden, but I bet it is pretty close. So I feel justified in requesting that my tax money to be spent wisely and efficiently and not to be given away to criminals residing in jail, to Nigerian Princes  , random Russian hackers and other scammers. The EDD has been having this problem for at least the past 6 months and every time they catch one scammer feeding at their trough, another one shows up. (The fact that they contracted with Bank of America to make the payouts doesn't seem to help matters much either.) They just don't seem to have a system to weed out people who don't deserve the pandemic handouts before they send out the money. The only people who really seem to be locked into the payment system and can't get out are the people who really need the money, but who don't seem to be as knowledgeable regarding how to navigate the EDD's application system as do criminals. What a mess!   

Another example of the state government inefficiency is that the last time I visited a DMV office to renew my license, which I have to do every 5 years, I had 90 days before my license expired after receiving the paperwork. I tried to get an appointment at six different DMV offices in my area and all were booked up past when my license expired. I finally found an office 45 miles away and got in there a couple of weeks before my license expired. Because I had an appointment, it only took an hour for me to finish having my license renewed (requiring an eye test, a written test and a new license photo), but there was a long line of people who did not have an appointment that stretched outside the building and wrapped around two sides of it waiting to get in. Things are supposed to have improved at the DMV lately. I sure hope so, but I have my doubts as they are having to deal with the Real ID problem, along with the pandemic, so I wouldn't be surprised if the motor vehicle offices get overwhelmed again once the pandemic finally ends. You would think that with the huge number of drivers in California that the DMV could think up a more efficient system to provide services. When I pass by DMV offices in other states I don't see any lines and the offices look pretty quiet to me. 

[Stanley]

I see long lines at my DMV here too. I walk past them whenever I go to the desk for those who made appointments. Puzzling.

[AzCal Retred]

@ # 101 by Richard230:
Very well composed arguments & observations - that's the R230 we all remember - A pleasure to read!

Only about 50 years of tax payment history myself. I miss Arizona's $35/yearly registration fees for older vehicles, the $200/yearly for liability insurance, etc., but I lived on a dirt road, there were no sidewalks, no sewer system (septic tanks), no natural gas service (propane only), no water service (private well only), no street lights, no traffic signals. Food & fuel costs were actually higher in the rural areas as everything is "imported". Local area roads were pretty rough except for the I40 from Needles to Kingman and the 95 to Las Vegas.

The population density is much less in Arizona than California also (7M vs. 40M), which generally means less waiting in lines (except for Social Security Check day twice a month at the grocery store). The Arizona DMV experience is better, depending on when you go. As a retiree you can usually schedule around the crowd. As most folks in our area were retirees, there were fewer school taxes but no shortage of mostly retired California & Washington geezers complaining about subsidizing "other peoples kids". I'm not sure who these folks thought paid school taxes when they were growing up.

Every where you choose to live there are pros & cons. Arizona infrastructure & social services are nowhere near what California has, except perhaps inside the cities of Phoenix & Tucson. At about 1/6th the population, we average about 15 square miles of state per person vs. 4 sq. mi. or so in California, so similar infrastructure would be very costly per capita.

I chose to retire here for the climate & location. I pay my "biggo box" of Property tax yearly for the privilege of squatting on my own acreage. I still don't have any infrastructure, but pay state & local taxes just like I do. Here I can grow a few fruit trees, battle gophers for my garden, watch the foothills change color seasonally, enjoy a parade of wildlife helping the gophers finish off the garden remnants, all at sane temperatures (105 is a real hot day here vs. 125 in the shade), and watch actual rainfall (maybe 20"-30" yearly vs. 2"), and still have enough brush between  me and my neighbors that we don't see each other except at the local grocery store.

It's pretty easy to up stakes & move to a lower cost of living area, and Arizona is certainly full of expats. Houses are selling well right now, that'd finance a nice "casa grande" in a lot of other cheaper, less regulated places to live with lots left over. Life's too short to be miserable. If you aren't happy where you are, change it while you can. We need to spend our remaining time doing what makes us happy, not grinding our guts on stuff we can't really change in the time we have left.

[Richard230]

I sometimes fantasize about living out in the boondocks where there are actual seasons, real weather and neighbors who don't always stay inside their homes and ignore you and everyone else around them. But I lived here all of my life, my family lives just a 60-minute ride away and the weather is perfect for riding a motorcycle almost every day, even during the winter. But then I do have to put up with crowds, highway congestion, high taxes, a large homeless population (some just down on the luck and others drug addicts or just plain nuts) and a politically-correct social environment that I just don't understand. (The San Francisco School District just passed a requirement demanding that 42 schools in the city be renamed by April because they discovered that the historical people that they were named after did things that would not be socially acceptable in SF nowadays.  ) I appear to be stuck in a self-made rut that I just can't bring myself to leave.

I might add that it is mind boggling how much ticky-tacky boxy home prices on 5000 sf lots are here now, too. My home sold in 1971 for $35K and homes in my area are now going for $1.3-1.5 million. How can anyone possibly afford those kind of prices? But they do. Homes rarely stay on the market more than a couple of weeks around here.