Open Thread Wednesday 8/1/12

By on August 1, 2012 7:10 am in Brooklyn Heights

What’s on your mind? Comment away!

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  • chicagokath314

    @David: Double the Celsius value and add 30. Quick n’ dirty.
    @Van: THANK YOU

  • Topham Beauclerk

    @Package Shipping

    The USPS is a vital and necessary government service that is consistently underfunded by the Republicans because they want to privatize it. If the Post Office were as lavishly subsidized as, say, the Pentagon ($1 trillion and counting ) I imagine the Post Office would give better service.

  • AEB

    Or, David, stare with sufficient frequency at the Watchtower time ‘n’ temp sign over many years.

    Slowly, through a process undoubtedly like knowing where to reach for the milk in your fridge or finding Faith, you gain an unexpected ability to translate C. to F. and vice versa.

  • ME

    The USPS is neither funded by Democrats or Republicans…. “It’s a self-supporting government enterprise. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations”.

  • hoppy

    Crusty, D.O.M.,

    Just use the app!!!

    Otherwise, a useful formula is this:

    30–hot
    >33 very hot
    >35 f***ing hot

  • AnnOfOrange

    Matthew Parker – re stray voltage! I am sure that report is accurate. Several nights ago my dog went nuts as we walked along Middagh between Willow and CH. He ran frantically in circles, shaking violently and I had to hold him. I didn’t feel anything, but had rubber soled sandals. Now he won’t go near that area. I saw the lights of the Con Ed truck tonight and wanted to talk with them, but dear dog wouldn’t budge past the corner of Middagh and Hicks! Thanks for confirming my suspicion.

  • Neighbor Hood

    @ME- you are partly correct…the USPS does fund itself, and has been doing so up until recent years. (see below).
    However the Republican’s have had a long standing position of wanting to kill it so it can be replaced by a private corp. (and imagine the postage rates then).
    You may know that a huge # of USPS employees and facilities are being cut due, in totality, to a Republican law, enacted under the last administration, that requires the Postal Service to accrue/prefund for 75 years of future pension/healthcare costs over a 10 year period which no other organizations (government or corporate) have to account for in similar fashion. It roughly equates to a $5B expense each year; making the Postal Service appears unprofitable. The law is designed to break the US Postal service: 1) allowing for more of its business to be taken over by FedEx (non union) and UPS (some union) 2) to effectively dismantle one of the largest single employer unions left in the country.
    That’s why it is accurate to say the Republicans are against the USPS.
    (Wow, that was a mouthful)

  • epc

    @Lauren That top photo appears to be of 70 Willow.

  • Ellie

    I’m a metric immigrant and even after 10 years here I still convert into C. From F, take away 32 and divide by 2. Gives you a rough idea of what to choose from your wardrobe for the day. And today is bikini day!

  • j

    I’m a democrat and I have no problem with the elimination of the USPS. It might have been necessary in the days carrier pigeons were used, but it’s no longer necessary. The only thing that shows up in my mailbox is junk mail. I handle bills and correspondence via email. The quality of service is terrible, the employees are unpleasant and for larger packages, I would only trust it’s safety to FedEx/UPS anyway.

  • GHB

    @Matthew Parker and AnnOfOrange… thank you for posting that info. I was going to walk my dog through there yesterday, but it was already taped off.

  • Knight

    @Neighbor Hood: there is no such thing as a “Republican law” in the United States. The previous administration had a Democrat controlled Congress, therefore both parties must accept responsibility for bills that were passed and signed.

  • AnnOfOrange

    So here’s a trivia question for the Fahrenheit vs. Celsius group:

    At what temperature are the F and C values the reverse of each other? (I discovered it one evening while watching the Watchtower time and temperature.)

  • ME

    The USPS service has to be competitive in order to survive, whether through privatization or revamping it’s current business model. Either way, I don’t feel that tax payers should pay for another government program whose solution to it’s problems is more and more money.

  • Neighbor Hood

    @ Knight- The Republican’s controlled BOTH houses from 2003-2006, under a Republican President. The postal service re-funding law I referred to was passed in 2006 while they still had control of both I believe. Wouldn’t that qualify it as a “Republican law” How
    can you state there is no such thing as a republican law?

    @ME- The taxpayers DO NOT pay for he USPS. USPS has not received any taxpayer money from the Federal Government for operational expenses since 1984. They have met their expenses until this absurd law passed under a Republican administration, drafted by Republicans, with the intention of bankrupting ad hence eliminating it to pen the market for privatization.

    @J- just because you do not value the mail does not mean it is not a valuable service and a lifeline still for many Americans, especially those in poor and rural areas. And FedEx /UPS charges more for their services, which again takes a valuable resource away from the less affluent.
    .

  • Topham Beauclerk

    @Neighbor Hood

    It’s an old trick of Republicans, the party of privatization, to starve a government service of funds, then wait for the inevitable complaints from know-nothings that the government can do nothing right. Once the public is deceived into thinking that only the private sector can rescue a failing service, the service is then more easily privatized with the consequent loss of jobs, tax revenue, and higher prices for the consumer.

  • BH’er

    Interesting story about the local parking tickets… I approached a “paring enforcement officer” on Tuesday at 5:45pm to inquire about how rigidly the parking rules were enforced (out of curiosity), e.g. do they ticket, even after the street sweeper has swept??

    He answered my question before he even started to speak as he put pen to ticket pad to cite a mini-cooper parked in a “No Parking 8am-6pm Tuesdays Only” zone

    He said they do ticket up until about 5:55pm but usually offer only the slightest leniency. He was friendly and I asked if he was really going to ticket the mini … after a few seconds thought, he backed off and nicely said that he would let it go…

    Here’s where it got interesting… as he walked toward the corner, another agent came up from the other direction, they spoke briefly (I couldn’t hear the conversation), but he came back and ticketed the car and they both walked off and continued their routine.

    It seemed to me that the officer wanted to do the ‘right’ thing and be reasonable (but was dissuaded by his colleague).

    Now, it wasn’t my mini, and rules are rules, but who are we serving with this practice?? It’s certainly a revenue generator for the city, but it seems like we have No Parking zones configured to just ‘catch people’ through inconvenience, slight of mind or what, I don’t know

    But, it doesn’t seem quite just that this is the practice – ASP should be for the benefit of clean streets (and no abandoned vehicles), but something about this didn’t sit right with me…

    Anyway, thought it was interesting enough to share here…

  • Mr. Crusty

    BH’er so how much leniency should they give? 5 minutes? Well what about the poor slub that is 6 minutes over? You see the problem? You can’t make something like that a gray area and put the burden on the poor traffic enforcement agents to figure out what the “right thing” is. It has to be black and white.

    Also you run into problems of favoritism, when you start enforcing the law for some but not for others. Hey I have gotten a ticket or two when I didn’t “feed the meter” on time but I have nobody to blame but myself. It is a thankless job being a traffic enforcement agent, just let them do their job. You don’t want a ticket, obey the traffic signs.

  • Rick

    Those who want to see the Postal Service gone should take note that FedEx and UPS use it for a large number of destinations which they find less profitable.

    The efficiency of FedEx and UPS is partially built on using the services of the USPS.

    So if the USPS is allowed to go under, analysts tell us both will need to raise their rates.

  • Knight

    @Neighbor Hood: Assuming that you are correct and that this law was passed in the last year of a Republican controlled Congress, that means that the Democrats, who have controlled Congress for the last six years — over three of which were alongside a Democrat President — have done nothing to repeal or amend it. If the Democrats felt strongly enough about the issue, they would have amended the law. By their inaction, they assume part of the responsibility.

    Talking in terms of Republican laws and Democrat laws only serves to keep partisan rhetoric flourishing. It’s that partisan rhetoric that is causing most of the dysfunction in Washington and Albany today. It’s better that we should end it.

  • David on Middagh

    Ending partisan rhetoric does not end partisan politics.

    Interesting story in the NY Times today on a GOP filibuster of a critical cybersecurity bill.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/us/politics/cybersecurity-bill-blocked-by-gop-filibuster.html

  • Mr. Crusty

    @knight it is not partisan “rhetoric” that is causing the dysfunction in Washington it is the Republican obstructionism and outrageous and unprecedented use of the filibuster that is making Washington dysfunctional.

    It is silly to say that the Dem’s could have just amended the law when we all know full well that with the filibuster they can’t do it on there own.

    The law was passed by a Republican House, a Republican Senate and signed into law by a Republican President. Period.

  • Mr. Crusty

    There=their

  • David on Middagh

    AnnofOrange,

    I did the math: F = -C at 11 3/7 degrees, which would be rounded to 11 on the clock.

    I’ll bet the Watchtower clock has never displayed the temperature at which the scales actually coincide.

  • AnnOfOrange

    Temperature Trivia — The way I have seen it on the Watchtower time/temperature, if it is 61 degrees F, it is 16 degrees C.

  • Neighbor Hood

    @Knight- the Democrats have only a technical majority. They need a “super majority” to get anything past the Republicans which is why not ONE jobs bill has been able to make it through.
    @MrCrusty is correct, they have abused the filibuster as never before in the history of this democracy. Look it up, it’s a shameful abuse of our system, and millions of Americans are paying the price.
    Republicans only talk about partisan politics as a problem when they aren’t in the White House I noticed.
    @MrCrusty- I guess every once in a while we align…detente indeed!

  • David on Middagh

    AnnOfOrange,

    Oh, MIRROR reversed. That makes sense. I reversed the sign, when I should have reversed the sign.

  • http://www.shootlikeagirlphotography.com Lauren

    @epc Thanks for identifying the photo!

  • Mr. Crusty

    @NeighborHood I think you’ll find that we agree on more things than we disagree on. I respect where you are coming from but I do have a different perspective when it comes to BBP and as you can tell I am usually not reluctant to express my feelings.

  • Topham Beauclerk

    @Knight

    What’s wrong with partisanship in politics? The Republicans have moved so far right since the 90s that any responsible person must note the clear difference that the two parties now represent.

    We have but one party, the business party, which has a right wing and a left wing. The right wing has been disastrous for the country or weren’t you living in the States from 2000 to 2008?

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