53

Thanks, Steph!!

...!!!51!!!...

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31

This week has been hectic (do I hear an echo?), with a push to finish some of my work, Work Night at church, and tonight, company for dinner. Thankfully, there are some dedicated volunteers out there doing my job for me. That is why the numbers are increasing.

The problem of voter disenfranchisement in Ohio.

A major hindrance to getting petition signatures on nominating petitions is fulfilling the signature requirements sections of the ORC. From the 2010 Candidate Guide, for US Representative (p5) :

Signature Requirements (R.C. 3513.05, 3513.257):

1. Major party candidates: 50 signatures
2. Minor party candidates: 25 signatures
3. Independent candidates: Based on the number of votes cast in the
congressional district in the last general election for governor:

Number of votes cast:	Number of signatures:
Fewer than 5,000	25, or a number equal to 5 percent of the vote (whichever is less)
5,000 or more	1 percent of vote

and (p19) :

Petitions for a candidate for party nomination must be signed and circulated by persons who are members of the same political party as the candidate. (R.C. 3513.05)

What we are finding frustrating in a small way is the number of people who agree with my positions, but who were disillusioned by the choices they had in previous primaries and opted to vote an issues-only ballot in those elections. By doing so, they de-registered themselves from any party affiliation, and they are not eligible to sign a party petition.

This is reasonable, since the parties themselves exist for their own benefit, and it would be ridiculous to allow people who did not share the same platform viewpoints to take part in choosing the candidates for the election. Open primaries may seem like a very egalitarian thing, but the party primary system was designed as a way for large groups of like-minded people -- the parties -- to make decisions among themselves. The decision-making process would be corrupted by including people who might have a vested interest in weakening the party's position.

Nevertheless, Ohio law needs to be amended to enfranchise those who wish to be able to have input at the base level of politics. There should be no difference in the requirements for major party, minor party, or independent candidates. This would allow presentation at the time of the general election of a slate of candidates that would cover a wide range of position options. The resistance to such a plan comes from the parties themselves, because their power to control the electoral process would be diluted by such an open arrangement.

Impetus for change will not come from the Legislature, since it is dominated by the Republican and Democrat Parties. Change will only come from an initiative by the people, and working groups to produce such initiatives should be started, using blogging sites as 21st Century "taverns" for modern patriots to gather in, for discussion and refining of the process.

21

16

13

Makin' yer mark

It has been a hectic week, but the petition signing is under way. Between wrapping up a work project, and the death and funeral of Carl Demiter, there was no time to spend on the petitions.

It would be possible to get the entire 50 signature complement from one ward in Norton, but hopefully we can get signatures from other areas as well. It would be nice to be able to file by the end of this next week.

Have to be careful what I write here from now on, lest I run afoul of McCain-Feingold. There are too many laws designed to keep power out of the hands of the people.

Stai tooned.

Gotta Run...

Picked up a petition pack yesterday at the Summit BOE. Looking for 50 registered Republicans in OH-13 to get the show rolling.

Some quickie points :

** No Federal support for abortion. I will campaign to eliminate all Federal spending that contributes to the murder of the unborn.

** No deficit spending. Period. If the money isn't there, I don't plan to vote for the bill.

** No corporate bailouts. I will not vote for corporate welfare.

** National defense means just that. No revenge campaigns, and no mercenary activity on behalf of the United Nations. Put a defense shield over the country and let each State upgrade its Militia. Secure our borders. I will not vote for foreign adventurism by the United States military, but I will not stand in the way of protecting United States shipping and passenger transportation.

** No foreign aid. If citizens of the United States want to fund a foreign government, that is their business. Millions for defense if needed, but not one tax penny for foreign entities, including the United Nations. Any citizen who wants to donate his own money to the UN is free to do so. I will not vote for foreign aid to any nation.

** Remove from the Federal Reserve banks the power to print money. I will support legislation to require complete auditing and accountability to the Congress of the Federal Reserve system.

** Repeal Amendment 16. Bill the States for the cost of maintenance of the Government of the United States in proportion to their populations as stipulated in Article 1, Section 9. Each State should be free to tax its citizens as they deem appropriate in order to meet its Federal obligations.

** Repeal Amendment 17. Restore the ability of the States to resist the power of private national political parties.

** End Federal interference in education. I will not vote for any legislation which restricts or diminishes the rights of parents to seek out and obtain the best education for their children which they can afford. I fully support the right of each State to determine the best way to provide for the education of the children residing in their respective States.

** I will not vote for any bill that has not been exposed to public examination, without alteration or amendment, for 72 hours prior to the vote. Each time any such bill is scheduled for a vote and is amended, I will require an additional 72 hour public examination period before I consider voting for it.

While some of the above positions may seem radical and hard to imagine in practice, it should be remembered that the Great Experiment in government that is the United States was considered radical and impractical when it began, and is difficult even to this day for the inhabitants of other lands to imagine and understand. My goal is the encouragement of individual freedom and the growth of the entrepreneurial spirit in all facets of American society.

No doubt there will be many people who are frightened by the specter of freedom. Nevertheless, I offer a clear choice for those who believe in the dream of America.

Hard Drive

It happened. The dreaded hard drive crash. The iMac suddenly was lost in its own case.

I was able to access the drive in target mode and update my August backup of most of my files. The I tried to let TechTool repair the drive. The repair failed. So I tried to do a reinstall of the system software. The reinstall failed with the upgrade to Tiger; installed could not find some disk sectors. Bad drive, failed its physical.

Ooops. Forgot to do a recent backup of the Quicken data. Too bad, so sad.

Off to Best Buy for a replacement. A 500Gb WD Caviar Green. $75.

The instructions on the Apple Support page were simple enough. Out came the 160Gb Seagate, in went the 500Gb WD. Into Disk Utility to do a partition - 160Gb Avram, 160 Gb Yitzhak, remainder in Yakov.

In go the system CDs. Now for the fun of setting up, then updating to Tiger (I will NOT be upgrading to Leopard, because there is no Classic support in Leopard and I like some of the Classic apps). Then all the hastle of rebuiding the important files from the backups. Oh, joy.

Moral : a backup external hard drive is a good investment.

Moral : if you have it, use it.

Gittin' the Runs

As 2009 ran out its string and 2010 crawled out of its crevice, Joonyah and I shot the breeze, lamenting the trampling of the Constitution by the current Congress. We again tossed around the question of who might represent OH-13; that is, who might be in the running to raise the moral and intellectual quality of the occupant of that seat.

We did a little exploratory work. Visiting the sites of all four Boards of Elections in OH-13 (Cuyahoga, Lorain, Medina, and Summit) revealed that no candidates had filed for 2010 yet. That is OK; the deadline for filing for the May 4, 2010 party primaries is February 18, 2010. For independent candidates, the filing deadline is May 3, 2010 (because independents don't have a primary).

Looking at the FEC requirements, an individual is not considered a candidate (even if he has filed the petition and is on the primary ballot) until he (or [a] person[s] authorized by the individual) has[ve] raised of spent more than $5000 for the campaign. There is a provision for voluntary registration with the FEC even if the $5000 threshold has not been attained, but the possibility exists (although highly unlikely) that a candidate could be elected to a Federal office without tripping the requirements. Posting the information we have uncovered on this blog, because no formal efforts have been made toward candidacy to date, is a sort of grey area that may or may not fall under 11 CFR 100.94 & 100.155.

The Ohio Administrative Code, (111-1) states, "The rules set forth in Chapters 111-1 to 111-6 of the Administrative Code shall apply to the nomination or election of candidates or support for or opposition to ballot issues in state and local elections. Nothing in these rules shall be construed as limiting or regulating federal elections, and those committees, parties, candidates, or funds when they participate in such federal elections." I would assume from that statement that only FEC requirements would apply (and as with any such assumption, I could be wrong).

If I were to run, would it be as a party candidate? Yes, for two reasons. Firstly, I have been republican in my leanings my entire life. A republican form of government was to be guaranteed to all the States under the Constitution, and a respect for the Rule of Law is essential to the maintenance of individual liberty. While other forms of government may extend individual rights, no other form of government protects individual rights.

Secondly, the regulations for access to US Representative candidacy in Ohio state that a major party candidate needs 50 signatures to have access to the ballot, a minor party candidate needs 25 signatures, but a non-party candidate needs signatures totaling 1% of the number of votes cast in the district in the last general election for governor. Looking at the stats for the 13th District, there were 297,680 votes cast for Representative, and assuming that about the same number voted for governor, the minimum number of signatures required for an Independent candidate to access the ballot in OH-13 would be about 3,000. In Norton 1-B there are just over 100 registered Republican voters; it would be possible to access the ballot as a Republican for the 13th District, covering parts of 4 counties, without even leaving my own precinct to gather petition signatures.

Of course, there is always the tantalizing challenge of running an illegal campaign (WhatifI) under the guise of Libertarianism.

"See, here is deep water, what doeth let me to jump in?" [calm down, that is a paraphrase]. When I last ran for Congress in the 13th District (2000), the situation was quite similar. Just before Thanksgiving of 1999, Mickey Axlebender Thirdson and I were bemoaning the fact that no Republican candidate had yet appeared to challenge the Democrat incumbent. He said that if I ran, he would manage my campaign. I stopped at the BOE, picked up a petition packet, and off we went. In about two weeks time, we had our signatures. With a total expenditure of about $300 (never even made it onto the FEC's radar screen), and with the Summit GOP endorsing my party primary opponent, I picked up 42% of the primary vote. In fact, a part of Stark County was in the District back then, and the SOS's stats show that I actually won -- quite handily -- in the Stark County portion of the District. [But, mind you, Stark County is vastly more conservative in its politics than Summit!!]. Thus, I have no doubt that my governmental views would resonate with a substantial portion of the electorate in the 2010 climate.

However, the run in 2000 did cause some discomfort for my Better Half, who was concerned over family privacy issues and the exposition created by a political campaign. Thus, my first concern is her consent. She has said that I can do whatever I want, and such a statement has dangerous undertones. I would prefer to have her support, indeed, I need her support. She willingly complied and followed me thousands of miles in previous attempts to joust at windmills, but in those days we were both a lot younger and more resilient.

Another concern is the support of my church. In 2000, I had the support and encouragement of most of the Elders I talked with, but my responsibilities at that time were quite different. I don't doubt that I would have the encouragement of the congregation, but the bigger question is whether or not it would be to their benefit.

Finally, there are the career considerations. I am on my way toward General Certification and new levels of accomplishment in my profession. Despite my age, I could be productive for another decade or more before senility rotted my cognitive functions. Becoming a US Representative would likely be a terminal career move.

Stay tuned, this is only the first day of 2010.

CoCo RULES!!

Earlier today I got an email from Boisy Pitre, one of my on-line friends who develops Mac software, and as a hobby, supports our common interest, the Tandy Color Computer running NitrOS-9 (which is an operating system very similar to UNIX and Linux -- many very similar commands in the shell -- but which was designed to run in a 64kB space under the Motorola 68B09E processor). He wrote to the CoCoList:

Aside from Aaron [Wolfe], Jim [Hathaway] and I attempting this (with slightly buggy software), this is probably a first.

If you want to play around with NitrOS-9/6309 Level 2, then telnet to my system. I have tsmon running on ports t0-t6, although t0 isn't working for some reason. That leaves 6 ports that can be in use simultaneously.

Press ENTER when connected. You should see the tsmon login prompt, though depending on how other users disconnected, you may see a shell prompt when you press ENTER.

To get to it:

telnet aes.dyndns.org 6809

Good luck and please let me know how it works.
--
Boisy G. Pitre
http://www.tee-boy.com/

So, I fired up the x11 terminal on my iMac, and did this:



Kewl, sez I! Notice my error because it has been so long since I did any file creation in the shell (a decade and a half is a l-o-o-o-o-ng time!).

Telnet connection to a shell on a remote 8-bit machine with six simultaneous users. That used to only be possible on the same wire in the same building. The CoCo enters the 21st Century.

Time Out

I decided to do something a little different for our anniversary this year so I booked a little get-away at the Deer Creek Bed and Breakfast in Litchfield. It s a nice place to relax : two-person jetted tub in the suite, hot tub and heated pool in the greenhouse. We opted not to use the hot tub or pool, and just stayed in the room. I ran some hot water in the tub, we got in, turned on the jets, and for about a half hour enjoyed the turbulence.

Hot water massage by candlelight, and a basket of snacks with a complimentary bottle of champagne for reserving the room by calling the owner directly rather than going through bedandbreakfast.com. Which happens to be a really terrible website -- it doesn't present the terms and conditions of use until after you start inputting your credit card info, and it won't let you print out a copy to keep. (Yeah, yeah, I know I could grab a screen shot but when I'm paying, I want to dictate the conditions.) So there I sat naked by the tub, eating Aldi potato chips and sipping pink champagne, while pondering the incongruity of it all. If you don't like the picture, change the channel.

In the morning they served us a great breakfast; grapefruit, coffee, I had eggs and bacon with fried red potatoes and toast whilst VJ had waffles.

Then we headed south to Lodi Station Outlets to purchase some intimate apparel, and finally further south to Mansfield for the Christmas get-together. Joonyah fried a turkey. It was good, but I have a feeling that deep-frying the bird in oil may leach out some of the embalming fluid the birds are basted with; I think that roasting them in the turkey bag keeps in the precious liqueurs.

And then home again. Good night.

Chappy Chanukkah?

Well, I laughed.

Sister Time

Of course I took a picture. It wouldn't have been right not to.


Sue Hlavac, Katie Pohanka, Annie Hrubik, Mary Miklovic
...the surviving Cipkar sisters...
...aging gracefully...

Bittersweet

Having put away the turkey, we trekked north to the Land of Fabled Health Care. We saw Aunt Sue, who didn't quite remember who I was at first (being 91 may have some disadvantages), and then Aunt Mary, who seemed resigned to her fate as prisoner in a nursing home. She looked well and appeared to be adequately taken care of. Uncle George was our host for Friday and Saturday nights; and Cuzzin Willie threw a spectacular bash (he is becoming famous for that!) Saturday night, complete with his traditional roast pig.

The weekend did have its somber spots. Saturday afternoon was the funeral for Helen Varga, and in the evening, we met Sybil and Serena Kamasz after the testimonies at church. Sybil stunned us with the news (news to us, at least) that Gus had passed away 10 months ago to the day.

Gus Kamasz I counted as one of those people who was a "straight arrow". He immigrated to Canada from Communist Hungary as a young man, and while his English always had something of an accent, he was meticulous about his word usage and pronunciation. Like my father-in-law, he was scornful of those who were born in this country (or Canada) and were ignorant of proper English grammar. However, he had an extremely compassionate side reserved for those who were victims of misfortune and were in need of instruction and assistance. Gus and I got along famously. We could have significant disagreements and still talk and work together as brothers. We saw each other only a few times after he moved his family to Kitchener, and we moved back to Ohio, but I will miss him nonetheless. Sybil said he went out to get the snowblower from the garage, started it and put it in the driveway, came into the house to sit down for a moment, and asked her to keep an eye on it. She began to walk toward the door, heard a coughing sound from him, turned around, and he was gone. January 28, 2009.

Finally, this weekend gave me a chance to meet some more family. The Hrubik Boys from Glozan, at the turn of the last century (1900), were Paul, Mike, and John. Mike and John each had sons they named Carl (Karol). Dad corresponded with his cousin, Karol; Karol had a son (also Karol) and a daughter, Rose. I had met Rose's daughter, Caroline, many years ago, but this morning I met Rose. I also met Karol's grandson (Rose's nephew) Vladimir Hrubik, who had emailed me back in September asking me to read his new book, "When They Say Peace, Seek Shelter". So here's a plug for his book, which I have not yet read (although Willie says he has read the first chapter and part of the second but just has not had time to finish it). It's available at Amazon, Google, Barns & Noble, Author House and others.

At lunch, we sat with John and Susie Stajfer (Susie is Mom's cousin, daughter of Steve Cipkar Sr.). John's mother was a Miklovic (ah -- is Jaroslav lurking?) and I told them about the blog comments and emails I had had from both "Miklovic" and "K_C34". John said he didn't know too much about the Miklovic side of the family; he claimed he had tried to talk to his uncles at a family picnic in Cleveland years ago but the old folks suspected the younger ones of being Bolsheviks and wouldn't have too much to do with them. However, shortly after lunch, someone tapped me on the back and, when I turned around, asked if I knew who she was. She announced that she was Kathy Cipkar -- John and Susie were standing there with her, with big smiles on their faces. Kathy is K_C34's mother. We had an interesting chat.

'Nuff gossip. Time to catch some z's. Work to do tomorrow.

'Tis the Season

The commercialization of Christmas has always been troubling to me. It has been my experience that picking out gifts for people is difficult, maybe because of my practical side, but I'm always thinking about what someone might need or even use as opposed to just buying something and shoving it at them because it is expected at this time of year. Maybe that statement came out a bit raw, but the following article by George Will sort of hit my hot button :

Scroogenomics

However, my greater concern this season (as in the past several since the economic contraction began) is not so much the spending of money on senseless items, but the fact that people invariably borrow to do so. Coupled with recent notices by credit card companies to their customers that rates are going to be rising sharply (Capital One, for example, will be applying a 39.9% rate to some of its customers, and most card companies have put people -- even their best customers -- on notice that they can expect charges ranging from 19.9% - 29.9% on ordinary balances), the December bash will unhappily become a February surprise for many of these people. The great deals that people are rushing to embrace, paying with plastic today (Black Friday), will turn out to be ulcer-makers down the road.

The ultimate effect on consumer ability to spend will kick in some time in the Spring of 2010, as people struggle to pay for Christmas 2009. Consumer confidence and ability to spend are key to economic recovery, and I see a rocky road ahead.

Thinking Inside the Box

Don't spend too much time thinking "inside the box".
You will have plenty of time for that later.

Big Hal

I left a few pepper plants inside the greenhouse when I transplanted everything else outside. They are still growing and blooming while their siblings have died and gone to compost heaven. One of the jalapeno pepper plants produced some VERY large fruit :


These were meaty, which I find to be a typical jalapeno trait, and not at all hot except in the immediate vicinity of the seeds. Maybe next summer I can work on this strain some more.

Clearly an Improvement

When I built the Cloudyhouse, I covered it with clear polyethylene film, intending to replace it annually due to it not being UV resistant. The covering was put on at the end of March;



unfortunately, by the beginning of July it looked like this :



So, I sprang for a dozen sheets of corrugated polycarbonate that is supposed to be UV resistant. In the process, new framing members had to be installed. It now looks like this :




No longer a cloudyhouse is it. It still needs some weatherstripping added, and then some clear silicone caulk. There are still some peppers inside that are ripening (slowly), and I need to plant one last batch of lettuce to see if I can have some greens until Christmas. As cold as it has been, though, I have my doubts. Maybe I can start onions and cabbages in February -- we'll see!