BAIL BONDS

Governor Moon Beam first proposed elimination of the bail bond system in his 1979 inauguration speech. I wonder how many more lifetimes he will lead matters in such an important state.

The new system would allow judges to rate criminals and determine if they should stay in jail. If you have a serious felony, like third offense DUI or murder, you're going to stay put, I guess. Others, let 'em go.

Right now, the system acts as insurance that the offender will show up for their court date. If not, the bail agent is out his money (less the fees that are about 10% of the bond). Bond agents are not fond of forking over money because some knucklehead decided to skip, so they find them and drag them to court.

There are about 3,200 bail agents in California (and I would expect some support people?) and in 2014 they collected about $308 million in fees or roughly $100,000 average per agent. Take out all your expenses for rent, licenses (about $1,000 per after all included) and chasing down skips and it is a job, but not a great job.

Not only will the state lose the taxes, etc on the $300 million, implementation of the program is expected to cost $200 million per year. When was the last time a government project came in under budget?

The current system has faults. Seems like for a net cost to the state's economy in excess of half billion dollars (not counting the multiplier of economic activity), seems like some reforms might have been considered?

The ACLU was in favor, now not. Part of their perpetual employment plan.

Now, as you all know, I pretty much know nothing about bail bonds and have so far in my 73 years avoided needing one. Which is a pretty good thing because I can't remember phone numbers, even the simple ones that are plastered on the placards for these guys. But what a world we live in--I can opine about this stuff with not the foggiest idea of what I'm doing, sort of like a CNN correspondent.

SCHOOL BOMBING...A DIFFERENT TWIST

It was about this time of year, late August 1950.  My family, the four of us, were hot, tired and stuffed in the non-air-conditioned cab of the 1949 Chevy farm truck on our way back from a horse show on a Sunday afternoon when a neighbor stopped us on the road, leaned out of his car window and told us the “school blew up.”  The “school” was the one my grandfather, my father and my brother had attended and the one that I was scheduled to go to, Nance County District 12, “Big Cut.” And I was going to start school the very next day.

The school had been remodeled during the summer, the barn that provided shelter for students’ horses was torn down and a new propane-fired furnace and water heater were installed supplied by a large tank located a few yards away from the building. It was a one-room school house and the new appliances, along with indoor plumbing, were located in a new basement that was a major part of the remodel.  The propane was carried to the basement using soft copper pipe.  Ah-ha!  We have discovered a problem.  Soft copper is not approved for that application by building codes, for good reason.

There was a leak, propane being heavier than air pooled in the new basement and when the pump for the water well kicked on, the spark ignited the propane. There was an explosion and fire, but it did not burn the building down, just blew the ends out, charred the whole interior and caused the building to have a unique smell that never went away. It was eventually destroyed, ironically enough, by an arson fire when my niece and nephew were students there many years later.

The talk of the neighborhood was, naturally, how the accident might have happened 24 hours later and the kids would have been wiped out or maimed.  The location of the tank was also questioned, but was not a true issue.  As it was, we were shuffled off to start our school year at an abandoned house nearby.  During those years, it was poor and dry and abandoned houses were plentiful as families picked up and moved to California.

Horse shows were pretty common.  We already had the horses, it was entertainment and it was cheap.  Besides, you could be home in time to do the milking in the late afternoon, so it all worked out.  The “cheap” part was a significant motivation—we weren’t exactly poor, but one of the memories of my childhood is that there wasn’t much money.

When Nebraska was surveyed and laid out, the land was divided into “sections,” (squares with one-mile sides, 640 acres).  The sections were usually divided by roads and several sections would then comprise a township.  The next larger entity would be the county.  Nebraska has 93, Iowa 99, for instance.  Unlike the states in the East, the Midwest is characterized by these grids aligned to the cardinal compass points.  Factoid: Delaware has 3 counties and as far as I can tell, no roads that are straight.  The streets in Omaha are an illustration of this process as the major streets are one mile apart so that 60^th Street was a “mile road” at one time, 72^nd Street is the next and so on. Notice they are 12 streets apart each block 1/12 of a mile.

The townships had several acres set aside for schools and “Big Cut” was situated on one of those reserves across the road from the corner of our farm.  To my knowledge, none of those one-room schools survive with the possible exception of a few in the Sandhills.

My first back-to-school event would forever have an unusual twist.

DECLINING BIRTH RATES

I have been observing (ok, a lot of it looks like complaining) that when I stayed with my two granddaughters in South Dakota in May and my granddaughter in Denver in June, child care on a regular basis is exhausting. We keep the two and one-half year-old grandson in Va Beach on a regular basis, usually once a week. Yep, a lot of work.

The other observation I made, though, is the way bonding plays into the equation. Talk about a tough job you love! And before the trips, I wanted to talk to and see the little ones, but I didn’t have that yearning that was enhanced with bonding.

Preface all this with a comment I have heard many times, but it was repeated recently and goes something like this: “I don’t see how they do it. Having and caring for those kids is impossibly difficult.”

When I was first married and had children, I was 24 and far too young to know or even think about the challenges. We had no money, no support. It had to be harder on my wife, the mother, than it was on me, but I was working an average of 2 to 3 jobs just to have enough money to buy food. Many of you can endorse my statement that it is a huge challenge that is made even more difficult when you’re poor.

Summarizing the articles: Agreed upon: a birth rate of about 2.12 is necessary to replace the current population. The current US birthrate is in the 1.7 range and declining.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility-is-falling-short-of-what-women-want.html

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/21/hat-looks-good-slug-birth-rates-us-falling-reasons-why-family-policies

NYT—the American fertility rate is declining, blame increased use of contraceptives and especially Long-acting contraceptives (LARCS) and millennials are not having sex as much. They used an excellent phrase for cell phones as one of the culprits—“get-out-of-human-interaction free devices.” Then concluded that the biggest drop in fertility was in the western states.

COMMENT:  Without some explanation, what does it matter what state has the most or least fertility? So, Mississippi is the only state to increase. Aren’t there some other factors at work rather than your time zone? How about race? How about income?

THE GUARDIAN (US Edition)—pretty simple conclusion: The reason fertility is declining and so far below replacement in the US is because the US is a terrible place and an even worse place to have and raise a child. OK. ?? Well, if that conclusion is true, why is the birth date declining similarly among the Swedes in Sweden, a paradise according to The Guardian? Back up on that statement—the birth rate is low for Swedes, but the immigrants and especially the immigrants have much higher birth rates. For that paper, though, don’t bother me with those kinds of facts—the US is a horrible place.

Now, wasn’t that helpful?

I’ll give you another scenario that is POWERFUL!! Say that you are a rational, highly-educated, single, 28-year-old woman with a good job. You are old enough and have enough experience to know (not just suspect, but KNOW) that having and raising a child is difficult work, risky and expensive. More kids? = More work. Hmmmm. “I think I’ll wait until Prince Charming drops around.” Completely true and completely rational thinking. But it is absent the love and bonding component. As it should be. You can’t love and bond with a Prince Charming who seems to love his horse too much or for children who are yet to be born.

My generation just went ahead and got married and blundered into parenthood. The apprehension of this generation is warranted, but it is also going to cause a huge change in the civilization going forward. The people who are educated and wealthy are going to dwindle and become less of a voting force, and the uneducated and jobless are going to run out of people to provide for them…and their larger than average number of children. Whoa, there are some words that can’t be published—not PC.

Interesting set of decades coming up.

A DAY AT THE MUSEUM

They flew the 1944 FM-2 Wildcat yesterday at the Military Aircraft Museum. That sound. Wow, that sound.

A special person came to hear it. A WWII vet, he parachuted into France with the 101st Airborne on D-Day, June 6, 1944. He went on to be in the Siege of Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge.

Let's say he was 18 when that happened, he would be in his 90's now. Can you imagine the flutter in his tummy when he heard that 9-cylinder radial engine make pass after pass over the crowd of over 500?

Given the weather the day before, the scheduled return of the P-51 Mustang was delayed so the crowd witnessed that beautiful bird and its distinctive Rolls-Royce V-12 Merlin engine as it came home.

Every weekend during the summer, weather permitting, the museum flies one or more of the War Birds. There are over 60 and most of them are airworthy.

Maybe it will be the Hawker Hurricane, flying in the livery of  Kenneth Haviland, the only American RAF pilot who flew in the Battle of Britain and survived the war. Or the PBY 5A Catalina, the flying boat that can stay aloft without refueling in excess of 24 hours. Maybe the first acquisition of the museum's owner, the Curtiss-Wright P-40E that was rescued as a box of junk parts and emerged with the famous shark mouth of the Flying Tigers.

I'm not qualified like the docents who have tons of information and stories about the aircraft and the museum's celebration of the first 50 years of flight, but I get this "feeling" when I go there. Something about how different the world would have been.

And then to see one of the Greatest Generation, in person. And experience that sound.