Dippin' Dots Soon to be the "Ice Cream of the Past"

I really have never understood the appeal of Dippin' Dots. They sell this crap at most ballparks for a huge price mark up. I swear, some people will eat anything if it is colorful and sweet and there is some form of entertainment placed in front of it. Anyway, it looks like Dippin' Dots is now in deep trouble:

Once the self-proclaimed "Ice Cream of the Future," Dippin' Dots is seeking federal bankruptcy protection, a move the company said is aimed at staving off foreclosure on more than $11 million in loans.

The Paducah, Ky.-based company filed for Chapter 11 reorganization Thursday night, asking U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Thomas H. Fulton to allow it to use cash collateral to continue operations while the case plays out. The company said in a filing that allowing it to use the cash collateral and stay functioning will not harm creditors, including its largest single creditor, Regions Bank, which is owed $11.1 million.

Alabama-based Regions Bank sued Dippin' Dots in February, alleging the company defaulted on multiple loans. The suit is pending in McCracken County Circuit Court.

Steve Heisner, director of administration for Dippin' Dots, said Regions gave the company 48-hours' notice that it intended to foreclose on the loans. That move forced Dippin' Dots Inc., to file for bankruptcy while looking to refinance the debt, Heisner said.

"We are hopeful and believe we will be successful," Heisner told The Associated Press. "There is no thought, intent ... that our operations will be significantly different than they are today."

The company "has no alternative borrowing source and to remain in business, the (company) must be permitted to use the cash proceeds described herein to pay general operating overhead and administrative expenses," its attorneys said in court documents.

Heisner said the bankruptcy affects only the manufacturing and national sales arm of the company. The franchise end of the company will not be affected by the proceedings, he said.

"The dot, it's going to be there," Heisner said. "There's no doubt about it."

Yeah, but for how much longer? Because it strikes me that any cash strapped family looking to cut back on expenses could easily do away with the dot. And maybe lose a few pounds along the way as well.

Linder's Furniture in California Closing All Stores

Furniture has been a bad business to be in for awhile now, and it just got worse:

Linder's Furniture is gearing up to close its stores across California, including its Superstore in Cathedral City.

Sadly, though I am not familiar with the chain, it appears as though this company may have had at least some redeeming qualities:

The Southern California home furnishings, mattress and consumer electronics chain opened the Cathedral City store in April 2010. At the time, company president Eric Foucrier said he wanted to open the job process up to local residents who had been hit hard by the recession and lost their jobs.

That sucks. So how bad is the overall damage?

Linder's was launched in 1980 and has locations in Cathedral City, Murrieta, Rancho Cucamonga, Westminster, Torrance, Fullerton, Laguna Hills and Cerritos.

Linder's also is the parent company of Legacy Designer Showcase in Palm Desert. That store is gearing up to close as well, employees said.

The monthly jobs report released yesterday by the Ministry of Information Bureau of Labor Statistics tried to claim that America gained jobs last month even though their own statistical manipulation, known as the "Birth-Death Model," added more phantom jobs than the overall gain. Those jobs are supposedly from smaller businesses whose additions get overlooked. Smaller businesses that is, like Linder's Furniture. Just some more of the lies we tell ourselves to convince the unaware that all will be well if they just wait long enough.

Riding in the Eighth Car of the Subway Train – A Doomer Metaphor

There is one important aspect of my daily life that separates me from the vast majority of Americans: I actually have a decent public transportation option that I use daily to commute to and from work. The Washington Metro subway system has many problems—overcrowded trains, frequent breakdowns, aging infrastructure and, most horribly, a fatal collision two years ago that killed nine unfortunate riders. Still, you have much better chance of dying in an auto accident than riding the subway, so I don’t worry too much about that last one.

It’s the overcrowding and the frequent breakdowns of the overloaded system that are the worst aspects of using it for commuting purposes. My office is located near the last downtown station on one of the lines headed out to the suburbs, which means that I frequently have to deal with standing room only trains packed to the limits with bodies when going home in the evenings.

After that terrible collision two years ago, Metro changed the way the trains pull into each station. The standard Metro train is six individual cars long, and before the crash they used to come to a stop centered on the platform. After the crash, for safety reasons the trains started pulling all the way to the front of each station and have been doing so ever since. Obviously, the commuters quickly caught on to this change, and so as the crowd waiting at the station for the train builds up it tends to move forward, away from the rear portion of the platform which is now not near the doors when the train stops.

But here’s the thing. In an attempt to alleviate the chronic overcrowding problem, Metro has begun to occasionally run eight car trains during rush hours. The eight car trains are long enough that when they pull into the station they take up the entire platform. Metro currently does not have enough cars in its system to run every train with eight cars during peak hours, so only about one in every five trains is configured that way.

All of this would be of little interest, but for the fact that the number of cars each train contains is flashed on an information screen above the platform along with the number of minutes until its arrival. Therefore, on nights when the station platform is crowded, which is nearly always, you would expect the waiting passengers to spread out to the rear section whenever the screen flashes that an eight-car train is approaching. But for some curious reason, they don’t do this.

Many times, I have arrived to find the platform particularly crowded and have dreaded being squeezed in like a sardine all the way home. It can really be unpleasant to be literally touching the riders all around you and desperately hanging on to the overhead hand grips to keep from falling into the person next to you as the train starts up and jerks to a stop. I can’t imagine that any of my fellow riders ENJOY this.

And yet, invariably, whenever I look up at the station monitor and see that an eight-car train is about to arrive and thus make my move towards the end of the platform, I am usually almost always alone. Many is the time that such a train has arrived with the first six cars packed full to the limit, and yet the last car is so empty that not only am I not jammed up against my fellow riders, but I can actually grab a seat and read my book comfortably.

When I first observed this phenomenon, I figured it would be only a matter of time until my other fellow regular commuters figured this out and the eighth car became as packed as the others. But it’s been over two years now and things haven’t changed. All these commuters, who are mostly people bright enough to hold down white collar jobs, don’t seem to have noticed that all they need to do when they check to see how long before the next train will arrive is consciously register that extra bit of information on the screen and then act on it by walking a few steps in order to avoid a major inconvenience. Of course, if EVERYONE did the same, it would cease to be an advantage, so I’m not complaining.

As so many things do these days, of course, this got me to thinking. You could call this observation an example of the “herd mentality,” but I don’t really think that’s it. There’s no personal risk to those few who, like me, have caught on to the advantages of moving down the platform to wait for the arrival of the eighth car. The advantage we seem to enjoy is the simple ability to absorb one piece of readily available information and use it to apply a little bit of critical thinking to an everyday situation.

It also goes to show just how high and daunting is the sheer wall of ignorance for those of us who are aware of the issues of peak oil, resource depletion and overpopulation. It isn’t so much a matter of “educating” others, but a matter of getting them to even understand why the information could affect their lives. Unfortunately, the information about peak oil is far more complex and daunting that a simple number telling you how many cars are attached to the next subway train. Furthermore, if everyone did suddenly become aware of its importance, the advantage in understanding these issues would rapidly disappear, because then the eighth car would become hopelessly overcrowded as well.

Syms & Filene's Basement Closing All Stores - "Running of the Brides" Kaput

Another day, another retail chain goes belly up and another 2,500 people lose their jobs:

Educated or not, consumers just weren't shopping enough at Syms stores.

The discount department store chain, which operates 25 Syms and 21 Filene's Basement stores, couldn't cut it amid a sour economic climate and rising competition from larger rivals. Syms filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Wednesday and said it would shut down all of its stores by the end of January 2012.One casualty of this action is a long-standing Boston tradition:
Filene's Basement was originally part of the now-defunct Filene's department store, which opened its doors in Boston for the first time in 1909. The company is famous for its annual "Running of the Brides" in Boston, which just took place -- for the last time -- on Friday.

Filene's Basement had offered severely discounted wedding dresses, and brides-to-be would camp out early to be among the first to get the best deals.

The companies have nearly 2,500 employees combined.

One would think that in this economy, deeply discounted wedding dresses would be a hot ticket item. But maybe young brides-to-be can't afford to have a wedding ceremony at all anymore.


Bonus: The bride is rocking and rolling no longer.

Friday Rant: Why the “Americans Elect” Third Party is Another Really Bad Idea

Public opinion poll after public opinion poll have clearly shown that an overwhelming majority of Americans are absolutely fed up with the two major parties. Certainly with good reason: ever since the economic crash of 2008, our so-called “leaders” have been making a grand spectacle of themselves, exchanging barbs and insults like petulant schoolchildren while doing little to alleviate the very real economic suffering being experienced by millions. In that spirit, many people dream that a third party will somehow rise up and be able to ride this wave of discontent right into the White House next year.

Some are no doubt pinning their hopes on Americans Elect, a third party effort that plans to nominate a candidate for president via the Internet. If you haven’t yet heard of this group, here is the Los Angeles Times with the details:

But there's likely to also be a wild card in this election. Americans Elect, a well-funded "virtual third party," plans to put a centrist presidential candidate on the ballot in all 50 states, and while he or she is unlikely to win the presidential election, the presence of a third candidate could still have a major impact on the outcome.

Americans Elect is a collection of Republicans, Democrats and independents who say they're fed up with the polarization that has poisoned American politics.

So far, so good, right? I mean any entity that has enough juice to at least throw a scare into the Donkey and the Elephant has to be a positive thing, right?

Oh come on, Bill, I hear you saying. Certainly you’re not going to heap your usual generous helping of scorn and derision upon this effort, right?

Sorry to disappoint you, but that is exactly what I intend to do. And here’s why:

Who will its candidate be? Bloomberg is frequently mentioned, even though he says he doesn't plan to run. So is Huntsman, even though he says he's only interested in the Republican nomination. It might be former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, who has been trying to break into the Republican race; former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who retired after denouncing both parties; or independent business figures such as Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who has called on his fellow moguls to stop giving money to politicians.

If that list does anything whatsoever to inspire you, I seriously suggest you go get yourself a check up from the neck up as soon as possible. Let me knock down these sitting duck targets one by one if I may.

First of all, you simply cannot be taken seriously as a “reform” movement if your preferred candidate is billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Not only is the man a one percenter among the one-percenters, it was his thuggish cops, led by the notorious Tony Baloney, who set the precedent for abusing peaceable Occupy Wall Street protesters. If you support this guy thinking he is going to represent any change in direction from President Hopey-Changey, someone needs to do an intervention and take your voter’s registration card away because you are clearly a danger to yourself and others.

As for former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, he is currently polling within the plus or minus margin of error of zero among the Republican contenders, so I hardly see how he would throw a scare into Obama or his Republican opponent. Similarly, although former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer has been saying the right things about the corrupting effects of money in politics, he hasn’t shown enough support to even be allowed into the Republican debates.

From the other side of America’s alleged partisan divide is former Indiana Democratic Senator Evan Bayh, the kind of mealy-mouthed corporate centrist who gives centrism such a bad name. Bayh "denounced" both parties after enthusiastically voting for the Iraq War authorization, repeatedly voting for the Patriot Act and also voting for the TARP law bailing out the big banks and Wall Street. Clearly, his little tantrum was because he was miffed that the two parties don't work together OFTEN ENOUGH to fuck over the rest of us.

And do I really need to waste the pixels stating why nominating Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz is a bad idea? Am I supposed to give this guy props because he doesn’t want to donate any of his millions to regular politicians anymore? Excuse me, but fuck him. Starbucks is a scourge, blighting the landscape with thousands of ugly stores selling overpriced swill to hipster douchebags and pretentious yuppies who wouldn’t know a good cup of coffee if someone poured it over their heads.

At the risk of beating my point straight into the ground, it ought to be painfully obvious by now to anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together that there is NO hope for any meaningful change to arise within the conventional political process. A third party founded and funded by a few disaffected one-percenters has no more legitimacy than do the Republicans or the Democrats.

I guess there is a chance that some genuine, viable grass roots political movement might arise from the Occupy protests. It is too early to tell at this point. But if it does, those who nurture it along must be ever vigilant lest it get co-opted and derailed like every other such third party effort has throughout American history.

I Just Received Great News About My Brother

I just received the best news imaginable from my brother. He visited an expert neurologist today and was told that the initial diagnosis from his MRI was wrong and he does NOT have neurological damage, nor any signs of Lou Gehrig's disease. He is still chronically ill as he has been for the past five months, and they still don't know exactly what is wrong with him, but at least he is NOT facing an imminent death sentence.

Needless to say, this news is like a 1000 pound weight being lifted from my shoulders. My family was so certain that my brother faced the very worst that my father when talking on the phone with me this past weekend broke down and cried for the first time that I can remember since my stepmother died 15 years ago. I guess I should be really pissed off at my brother's first doctor who put us all through this week of sheer emotional hell, but instead I just feel immensely relieved.

Once again, I would like to thank everyone who sent their best wishes this week, both on the blog and at the Silent Country and Hubbert's Arms discussion forums, offering such fantastic words of support. It really meant a lot to me and served as a reminder that there are still plenty of great people in this world.

More Evidence of U.S. Infrastructure Collapse: 3,538 Bridges Closed in 2010

image: the Sherman Minton Bridge over the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky...closed indefinitely.

I haven't yet written much about the rapid deterioration of America's car-centric infrastructure, so I thought I'd remedy the situation by calling your attention to a very good article from Bloomberg this week on the subject:

Jim Benton, a Jeffersonville, Indiana, jewelry-store owner, says sales fell 40 percent in two weeks after the Sherman Minton Bridge connecting his border community to customers in Kentucky closed Sept. 9.

Fifteen miles from the bridge’s Kentucky side, officials at United Parcel Service Inc.’s Worldport, the world’s largest automated package-handling facility, say they’ve used software to reroute trucks with no substantial impact. That’s not so easy for Benton, who said he’s keeping longer hours and buying less merchandise for the holiday season.

Benton’s plight is playing out for small businesses across the U.S., where 3,538 bridges were closed in 2010, as customers shop elsewhere rather than take detours. With the average U.S. bridge seven years from the end of its useful life, and one-fourth of 600,000 crossings classified by regulators as “structurally deficient,” more places will be hurt by closings, said Barry LePatner, founder of LePatner & Associates LLP, a New York-based construction law and consulting firm.

Let me repeat the most important factoid from that last paragraph so that everyone recognizes the full implications of its meaning: the average U.S. bridge is a mere SEVEN YEARS from the end of its useful life. Sounds like we're facing an imminent collapse of the entire system, doesn't it?

So, you might ask, how much in the hole are we, cost-wise, as far as correcting this problem?

The average U.S. bridge is 43 years old, while the average useful life is generally about 50 years, according to the highway agency. The agency said in 2006 that it would cost $140 billion to immediately repair every deficient bridge in the U.S. That’s more than three times what the U.S. government receives in taxes annually to pay for road, mass transit and bridge projects.

Given the above, how exactly did we manage to borrow and spend $700 billion on President Hopey-Changey's utterly futile Recovery Act without correcting this problem? Wasn't all of that loot supposed to have been invested in "shovel ready" projects? You don't suppose it was because it is more profitable for corporate America to build new roadways rather than to repair old ones, do you? Gawd, you're such a cynic.

All we've managed to do is run the federal deficit up to unsustainable levels without fixing the problem. As Scott Adams once wrote in his Dilbert comic strip: "don't step in the leadership."

This is just another way that Obama has been a colossal disaster for the nation that elected him. It was bad enough to place the country far more deeply in debt trying to sustain our unsustainable car-centric economic model. It's far worse that the money was spent so incompetently.


Bonus: sorry, I couldn't resist.

Clear Channel is Laying Off Hundreds at Radio Stations Around the Country

Believe it or not, there actually was a time in America when if you drove from city to city you could tune into different radio stations and hear diverse programming unique to that local community and the particular tastes of the on air talent. Nowadays, however, other than maybe a few small stations located in college towns, that programming model is long since dead and buried. It had already been declining by the 1990s when President Bill Clinton killed it off for good by signing into law the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which allowed for big media conglomerates to consolidate the vast majority of the industry.

Probably no company has pursued this strategy more aggressively than Clear Channel Communications, which currently owns around 850 stations and is the largest radio network in the U.S. Clear Channel has a very dubious reputation, in no small part because it is the home network of such talk-radio slimeballs as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Dan Savage and Mark Levin.

That would be bad enough, but over the years Clear Channel has been accused of such transgressions as censoring opinions critical of former President Bush--including dropping the Dixie Chicks from its playlists after lead singer Natalie Maines said she was ashamed that Bush was from Texas--and using paid actors to pose as listener callers for its talk show programs.

But the most serious corrosive effect of Clear Channel's corporate practices has been the destruction of local radio, as reported by Wikipedia:

Clear Channel uses the Prophet Nex-Gen automation system throughout their properties. Like most contemporary automation systems, Nex-Gen allows a DJ from anywhere in the country to sound as if he or she is broadcasting from anywhere else in the country, on any other station. A technological outgrowth of earlier, tape-based automation systems dating back to the 1960s, this method — known as voice-tracking — allows for smaller market stations to be partially or completely staffed by "cyber-jocks" who may never have visited the town from which they are broadcasting. This practice may also result in local on-air positions being reduced or eliminated. It has been stated that Clear Channel maintains a majority of its staff in hourly-paid, part-time positions.

So what’s the big deal? I hear you asking. I've got my satelite radio hookup, so I'm good to go.

Well...nothing, unless there is, you know, a local emergency or something:

Clear Channel was criticized for a situation that occurred in Minot, North Dakota on the morning of January 18, 2002. At around 2:30 a.m., a Canadian Pacific Railway train derailed and leaked 240,000 US gallons of toxic anhydrous ammonia, releasing a cloud of caustic, poisonous gas over the city. At the time, Clear Channel owned six commercial radio stations out of nine in the Minot area. City officials attempted to contact the local Clear Channel office by telephone to spread warnings of the danger using its radio stations, but it was several critical hours before the station manager was finally reached at his home. In the meantime, 9-1-1 operators were advising panicked callers to tune to KCJB-AM for emergency instructions, but the station was not broadcasting any such information.

So, much as I hate to see anyone lose their jobs, I did feel a little bit of Schadenfreude upon reading in this recent story in Billboard Magazine that Clear Channel is having financial difficulties:

A new wave of personnel reductions has hit Clear Channel radio stations in small and medium sized markets. As of Wednesday afternoon (October 26) it was unclear just how many people are being cut as part of the reduction, but indications are the numbers could be in the hundreds.

And yet, despite firing people at its smaller stations, they also had the gall to make this announcement:

The company also says that, despite reducing the number of personnel at each station, the new programming will serve local listeners and advertisers and will result in, "more localization, not less."

A large part of the commitment to localization will fall to the recently announced group of 45 Regional Market Managers and Regional Programming Managers who are being asked to "focus more on their local brands and engage more with their audiences and local communities."

They will get assistance from some of the company's top on-air talent who will be asked to, "conduct custom breaks and produce localized content for each city."

Because nothing says “localization” more than having Rush Limbaugh personally read an on air commercial for Joe’s Auto & Tire Repair, or have some traveling regional sales manger drop in once a month to meet with the local advertisers. Paging Herb Tarlek...your moment in the sun has arrived.

Even more laughably, in a second article published on Monday, Billboard clarified Clear Channel’s new strategy:

It is much easier for a brand trying to reach a specific national audience to buy commercials in network television shows that air in nearly every city in America than it is to buy spots on radio stations across the country that all deliver the same audience. That's because not only will many of the radio stations be owned by different companies, but each one will have its own local programming style, making it difficult to deliver a consistent audience. With Clear Channel's new strategy of using a centralized, national system for radio programming that could change: Advertisers will conceivably be able to buy programming that is consistent across multiple markets reaching the target audience they want.

Of course, if Clear Channel's new strategy proves successful and brings new advertising dollars to radio from other mediums, it could become the standard operating model for the industry. Other radio companies could begin placing an emphasis on national and regional programming of their own and the sound of radio could change quite radically. And radio's traditional position as the strongest local medium could change into one with a more nationalized perspective.

That sure sounds like they are “going local” to me. And just to drive the point home:

No one can predict exactly what this would mean long-term for the medium. Certainly Clear Channel’s initial cuts had a large human cost with one source estimating an average of five people were cut per cluster across 100 markets. If other radio companies follow suit it will more than likely lead to widespread workforce reductions leaving a lot of radio's creative people on the outside looking in.

Because that is just what the wasteland that is modern day radio in America needs: more “creative people” heading to the unemployment line. But hey, at least they will have plenty of time to sit around listening to Rush Limbaugh.


Bonus: Oh, Andy Travis, where are you when we need you?

When the Police Run Out of Gas

From down in North Carolina, we have a new spin on the old storyline of cities and towns cutting back on municipal services:

SMITHFIELD --Police say they'll stop responding to some 911 calls and stop investigating misdemeanors if the town doesn't increase funding for gasoline - the latest episode in a standoff between the police chief and Town Council, which is trying to save money.

It's also the latest sign of how tight municipal budgets are impacting services throughout the Triangle.

On Tuesday, the Smithfield Police Department will present dire predictions of how an austere budget could leave police cars in park.

Those of us who are peak oil aware already realize, of course, that it is the underlying cause of the economic crisis that has left so many towns and cities are strapped for cash. But it is still unusual to see the fuel supply for a police department actually under threat. Here are some of the juicy details of what is happening in this unfortunate town:

Police Chief Michael Scott will ask the town council to let him use $30,000 of office supply and equipment repair money to pay for gas. He says his department has already cut patrols, halving the numbers of cars on the street at certain times.

Scott said three recent crimes might have been prevented with more patrols - the armed robbery of a convenience store, the theft of tires and rims from a car dealership and a major cocaine bust.

"Those things can all be directly related to patrol issues," he said, adding that he's gotten complaints about the reduced patrols. Some callers have asked if they should buy guns to protect themselves.

I'd have to say, yes, those callers probably should buy guns to protect themselves, with the caveat that they also get properly trained in how to use said guns. Because the last thing we need is a neighborhood shootout between a bunch of nervous, paranoid and woefully inept firearms-toting homeowners.

Lest you think this is merely a local story, the article continues:

Law enforcement agencies around the country have seen budget cuts this year. Here in North Carolina, the state Highway Patrol is coping with an $8 million reduction, and they've stopped training new cadets as part of a hiring freeze. The city of Raleigh recently delayed police and fire academies by six months.

The sad part here is that state and local governments as well as the citizenry they serve are treating these situations as if they are merely a temporary condition, when in fact they are a very early sign of much worse to come. So yes, go out and get yourself some form of personal protection if you don't already have it. But if you do please make sure you know how to properly use it. Your very life could depend on it.

Hawaii is Sinking Because of Retiree Health Care Costs

Here is a rather shocking story out of the State of Hawaii about financial problems related to health care costs for its own employees and retirees:

The Hawaii state legislative auditor has released the 2010 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR), which is a series of audited government statements that detail the financial condition of the state government.

Sheila Weinberg, founder and CEO of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, called the state’s liability in the report “shocking", particularly when it comes to the increase in costs for medical services for state employees.

For example, the 2009 CAFR shows an unfunded liability for the Employees Union Trust Fund of $7.2 billion and for the Hawaii State Teachers Association's Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Association (VEBA) of $1.6 billion for a total of $8.8 billion (for July 1, 2007, even though the CAFR is for June 30, 2009). Whereas the 2010 CAFR details unfunded liability for the EUTF of $11.5 billion and for the Hawaii State Teachers Association's VEBA of $2.5 billion for a total of $14.0 billion. (These numbers are for July 1, 2009.).

But wait, as bad as those numbers sound, it gets worse when you consider just how quickly the situation is deteriorating:

Weinberg points out that this is an increase of $5.2 billion in just two years - or almost 60 percent.

"Note that the EUTF liability per the 2009 CAFR was 4 times the amount of covered payroll. Per the 2010 CAFR the liability is now up to 8 times covered payroll. In other words, to have enough money to pay the EUTF benefits employees have already earned, the state would have to take all of the money they are using to pay employees for eight years and put it in the EUTF," Weinberg said.

Weinberg uses other comparative numbers to give the liabilities perspective.

"The state’s 2010 total revenue was reported to be $9.9 billion. Therefore it would take all of the state’s annual revenues plus $2 billion more to have enough money to pay these benefits. The state’s reported liabilities as of June 30, 2010 totaled $10.5 billion. Therefore the liabilities for retirees’ health care benefits that employees have already earned, but the state has not set aside money to pay, is more than all of the other liabilities the state has. And this does not include pension benefits," Weinberg said.

It is staggering tho think that this giant fiscal hole in Hawaii's finances are being caused merely by skyrocketing retiree health care costs. When you see figures like these, you realize just how broken and beyond repair the financial structure of our health care system really is.

The real wonder in all of this is not that things are unraveling, it's that they haven't actually collapsed already. I doubt even Steve McGarrett can save Hawaii this time.

A Majority of the Metropolitan Poor Now Live in the Suburbs

The New York Times recently ran an excellent investigative report on the explosion of poverty in suburban America. The statistics really are quite an eye-opener:

The poor population in America’s suburbs — long a symbol of a stable and prosperous American middle class — rose by more than half after 2000, forcing suburban communities across the country to re-evaluate their identities and how they serve their populations.

The increase in the suburbs was 53 percent, compared with 26 percent in cities. The recession accelerated the pace: two-thirds of the new suburban poor were added from 2007 to 2010.

“The growth has been stunning,” said Elizabeth Kneebone, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution, who conducted the analysis of census data. “For the first time, more than half of the metropolitan poor live in suburban areas.”

As the article points out, being poor in the suburbs is often worse than being poor in the cities:

As a result, suburban municipalities — once concerned with policing, putting out fires and repairing roads — are confronting a new set of issues, namely how to help poor residents without the array of social programs that cities have, and how to get those residents to services without public transportation. Many suburbs are facing these challenges with the tightest budgets in years.

What the article doesn’t mention is that this phenomenon is likely a major contributing factor to the rise of the exurbs—those rapidly expanding, far flung tracts of strips malls and McMansions often built 30 miles or more from America’s city centers. The initial post-World War Two population migration pattern in the U.S. was the middle class fleeing from the inner cities to the suburbs to escape crime and poverty. More recently, they have been fleeing from the suburbs to the exurbs in part for the same reasons.

The problem, of course, is that living in the exurbs is even more gasoline dependent than in the suburbs. During the decade leading up to the housing crash in particular, America engaged in its last surge of building ugly, soulless concrete sprawl just in time for the first peak oil-induced price shocks that were a big reason why the bubble popped.

The irony is that within a few years when gasoline becomes prohibitively expensive for more and more people, the exurbs will be the first communities to completely collapse. Already this has been seen in evidence by the many abandoned far flung housing developments in former bubble states like California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona.

A standard theme among those like Jim Kunstler who write about economic collapse is that the cities will be the worst places to be trapped when it happens. But if we continue to experience a slow crash rather than a fast one, in the short run the cities may well prove to be a better place for many poorer people to live rather than being abandoned and isolated where there is little or no assistance available to them whatsoever.

Personal Doom Strikes My Immediate Family

This past weekend I received the kind of news that strikes out of the blue like lightning bolt and knocks the wind right out of you. My younger brother is 42-years-old, father of a young son and daughter, and a physician who was recently able to open his own clinic and is just now entering the prime of his medical career. Being much more focused than I as a young man, he decided while still in high school that he wanted to become a doctor. His primary motivation was to help people, and he has always looked down on those among his colleagues who got into the medical profession primarily for the money.

Though sickly as a young child after having been born severely premature, as an adult he's always been in excellent health and kept himself in great shape. We both ran our first marathon together five years ago, before I suffered a torn ACL that put an end to my distance running days. Though his children are still quite young, he ensured that they got plenty of exercise as soon as they were old enough to walk. The family built their dream house in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains, and there is nothing my brother loves more than taking the kids hiking on the many trails that snake through the area.

Back in June, my brother developed a chronic illness that began sapping him of his physical energy. Because he lives in a semi-rural community, the initial diagnosis was that he had contracted Lyme disease. He had been undergoing treatment for that for that past few months, but didn’t seem to be getting any better.

Finally, this past week his doctors decided to give him an MRI. The verdict could not possibly have been worse: the most positive scenario is that he has contracted Multiple Sclerosis, but more likely the verdict is Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known colloquially as Lou Gehrig’s disease. As I have since learned to my horror, the median survival time from onset to death of this disease ranges from 2 to 3 years. Even if the patient is lucky enough to survive longer than that, they become bedridden and virtually helpless.

Lou Gehrig’s disease is very rare, with only around 5,000 new cases reported annually in the U.S. And here is the real horror, right out of Wikipedia: "because the disease usually does not affect cognitive abilities, patients are aware of their progressive loss of function and may become anxious and depressed." Gee, ya think?

Frankly, a diagnosis of cancer would have been easier to take. At least in many cases with cancer, you still have a chance of survival and complete recovery if it’s caught early enough.

Though we’ve had our spats and fights over the years, my brother and I have been fairly close as adults. He was one of the first people I confided in after becoming aware of peak oil back in 2008. He read the copy of Jim Kunstler’s, The Long Emergency, I gave to him, and fully understands the severe implications of what our society is facing from peak oil and resource depletion. In fact, he remains the only person I can talk to in meat space about these issues without couching my words or holding back my real thinking on the subject.

It all serves as a stark reminder that no matter how much any of us think we have got it figured out and no matter how prepared we think we might be for the future, none us knows how much time he or she has left. You may think you have considered every possible scenario, only to get blindsided by some horrible thing you never even saw coming.

Fate is a cruel mistress that cares not one whit about us as individuals. When your time comes, it comes. There is no court of appeal upon which you can go to beg for mercy, however unfair it all might seem.