Just got this note regarding two bills going through Congress, both of which affect funding for the Arecibo Observatory. I’ll quote it in its entirety:

Arecibo Observatory, the world’s largest radio telescope and the source for the SETI@home data that your computer analyzes, faces massive budget cuts that will END its ability to continue the search for life beyond Earth. The decision to ensure full funding currently rests upon votes in Congress on Senate Bill S. 2862 and House Resolution H.R. 3737. These bills desperately need more support.

Please take a moment to help us SAVE ARECIBO.

Clicking the link below will direct you to a web page that allows you print out letters prepared for your Senators and Congressional Representative urging them to support Arecibo. Printing and mailing the letters is really easy, too! You will also have the chance to add a few personal thoughts, if you wish, to let your Senators and Representative know why this funding is important to you! And if you’re really feeling passionate about saving Arecibo, please use these letters as the basis for letters you write yourself, urging your congressmen and women to vote to save Arecibo.

Because our representatives in Congress rarely give much attention to all the email they receive, printing out and MAILING these letters via standard U.S. Postal mail remains our best option for contacting them and our best hope for saving Arecibo (The second best option is to call your representatives). Your 42 cent stamps on these letters could help us get the millions of dollars needed to save Arecibo.

Our search cannot continue without the necessary support. Your work, as SETI@home participants, represents an indispensable resource for conducting the search. Now, we need your help to ensure that our other most valuable resource – our eyes and ears to the cosmos – can continue to probe the universe as we seek to answer the question: Is there anybody out there?

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/arecibo_letter.php

Thank you for your help,

The SETI@home Team

Please take a moment and print out the letter from their website, sign it, and MAIL it to your representatives. Funding for the telescope is almost trivial, when compared to other things we’re pissing money away on.

The budget for ONE DAY of the War In Iraq would fund the observatory for THIRTY YEARS.

Update: The letter generator on their site seemed to act up for me. Please just copy the text and then go to house.gov and senate.gov to find your Representatives and Senators.

In Puerto Rico, no less! As I mentioned previously, PR is handing out federal “rebate” checks, just like in the states. Well, today Evelyn’s mom received a check in the mail, addressed to me, for $600. I gotta give them credit, they actually got those out pretty quick. I still haven’t got my US Federal one.

So, the question is, should I have been stimulated twice? If not, do I keep the $600 from PR or the $1200 from the Feds? Either way, the entire amount is going to my quarterly estimated tax payment. Time to call the IRS.

I had heard rumors about it, but now the rumors are true: Puerto Rico is distributing “federal economic incentive payments” to its taxpayers, thanks to the U.S. Congress. You see, for reasons I don’t quite understand, the Puerto Ricans are getting the same sized stimulus checks as the mainland. That seems a little odd to me, as they don’t pay U.S. Federal income taxes. They do pay PR income taxes, so why the money isn’t coming out of the PR treasury is beyond me. (Besides the fact that the PR treasury has no money, that is.) 

As if that wasn’t odd enough, guess how they are distributing the money? To the hard working private workers first, right? By SSN, like up in the States, right? HA-HA. Of course not! The government workers are getting their checks first (initially direct deposit, then checks). All you hard-working non-government people have to wait another month. That, my friends, sums up living on that island quite well.

The checks are based on 2006 PR tax returns, which we filed, as Evelyn was working at the observatory. I wonder if we’re going to get one? And if we do, are we allowed to be double-stimulated? God forbid I have to return the check, as I’d be filling out forms and buying tax stamps for the next 10 years just to clear it up.

Another week, another plant closure in Puerto Rico. This one is Tyco Safety Products in Aguadilla, with the loss of some 600 jobs.

Evelyn and I used to drive by there all the time, it’s right across from the HP plant, and is one of the few areas which actually look like a “normal” corporate campus you’d see on the mainland.

The cause of the shutdown? The nebulous “high operating costs”. Though, to be fair, I don’t think this is a euphemism for “high labor costs” because labor down in PR is still pretty cheap. Yes, they have to meet U.S. minimum wage laws, but much of the workforce is at that level, or not much higher. (You can’t compete with 12 cents an hour in China, but even that is changing. Look here: Era Of Cheap Chinese Products Over.)

No, in this case “high operating costs” is pretty clear. It just costs too much to run a business in PR. Fuel costs, high. Electricity costs, high. Shipping costs, high. Bureaucracy, high. It’s a mess all around.

And then we have the god damned silver bullet syndrome.

Every time the government on that island wants to improve things, they always go looking for the damned silver bullet. That one industry that will save them. Sugar cane. Coffee. Pharmacetucals. Tourism. The huge problem, of course, is that your entire economy gets locked up in one area, and any decent competitor (or competitive country) can destroy you. Because, quite simply, there is always someone who will do a job more cheaply than you.

Sugar cane! It’s great, until the sugar beet comes into play. Coffee! Still an industry in PR, but only for the locals (and they have net imports of coffee to the island, which is stupid). That industry got destroyed by the cheaper, and larger, plantations in Central America. Pharma? Sloppy employees, and the elimination of tax benefits, without a reduction in over-the-top energy expenses, is killing that industry. Tourism? Still has a long-term shot, but it’s not going to grow without a lot of cleanup and incentives for small businesses.

Of course, it’s not just the government of PR that loves the silver bullet. We all do. Take a pill, get thin. Parrot tapes, learn a language. Give everyone a check, pull out of recession. And on and on. The problem is that short term easy fixes are simply patches, not solutions. Sometimes that’s okay, if you need to get past some immediate problem. But it’s not the way to run an economy, or your life.   

Shocking news here:

Puerto Rico Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila proposed slashing an unpopular 7 percent sales tax to stimulate the U.S. territory’s economy, as it struggles through a second year of recession. … Acevedo said the Caribbean island’s first sales tax … must be lowered to 2.5 percent. “There is no doubt that the sales tax has done damage to your pockets and to the economy.”

Who would have thought! Making everything cost 7% more would mean that people could afford less? I can’t believe it! And taxing everything under the sun (including food staples, if I recall) isn’t the right thing to do? Well, golly!

In further depressing news:

The governor said he will also draft legislation to increase teachers’ pay to $3,000 a month in eight years. The starting base salary for a teacher in Puerto Rico is $19,200 a year.

Wow, $19,200 a year. If they work 39 weeks a year, that’s about $12 an hour. On an island where just about everything these days is expensive. Gasoline, water, propane, housing, electricity. All of those are more expensive in PR than in Austin, except maybe housing. Very sad.

On top of that, more plants are shutting down, due to rising labor costs and poor quality control. It’s tough times for the island, and I don’t see things getting any easier. You want to see a perfect example of big government gone horribly wrong? Live in PR for a while. It will knock any quasi-socialist tendencies right out of you.

Update: Of course, what everyone is forgetting is that this tax was put in place to cover the governments gigantic debts. Now that they are talking about cutting the tax, their bond ratings are getting cut. This means that the government will have to borrow at higher rates. Which is one of the reasons why they put the tax in place. And so the circle of debt continues.

Fitch Ratings has placed the Puerto Rico Sales Tax Financing Corp’s approximately 4.5 bln usd in sales tax revenue bonds on rating watch negative, after the governor proposed to eliminate 4.5 pct of the 5.5 pct of Puerto Rico’s sales tax that was instituted in Nov 2006. It said that though the commonwealth expects that the 1% sales tax that will be left in place will be sufficient to cover debt service on the sales tax bonds, the pledge of all commonwealth sales tax revenues to cover the statutory base amount of revenues, which serves as a cap for debt service, was a key factor in achieving the ‘A+’ rating.

Adding insult to injury, they will keep taxing at just enough to cover “debt service” (read: interest only). Great financial planning.

The other day Evelyn found a book called “Love Me, Puerto Rico” at a local book store. It’s by an American woman named Mary Louise Edwards who moved to PR in the early 1960s. After cracking open the book and reading “there’s no phone service here”, I knew it was one I wanted to read.

I find it interesting to read what other Americans have to say about there experiences in PR. Not because they describe PR better than a native, but because I like to compare their experiences with my own. I enjoy reading about other perspectives, especially those written by people who have had to live on the island (i.e. not tourists).

Another thing that interested me about this particular book was the timeframe–the early 1960s. You see, there are a lot of books out there that cover the 1950s, because of all the commonwealth activity, but I’ve yet to find much (English) writing on the 1960s and 70s. I find these time periods even more interesting than the 50s. Why? Because it’s during the 60s that you really begin to see the island shift from agriculture (sugar cane) to manufacturing. A very tough period for a country to go through, as we see now throughout the world.

The funny thing is that “Love Me, Puerto Rico”, if written today, would be a blog! It’s a series of short (1-2 page) sections that cover different aspects and experiences of her time in Puerto Rico. It follows a timeframe between arrival, purchasing a house in the city, and then moving out to the campo. Each short section is a snippit of life: City Noises, Street Vendors, Things We Do Without, Manana Mood, and so on. There are also sections that cover people and families that she met. A comprehensive narrative, it’s not. But it really does have some very interesting entries.

Roast pig is such a popular food on the island that there are many lechoneras–restaurants specializing in pork. We watched one lechonera being built by a poor, almost ragged man. At first it was just four poles supporting a roof that kept the rain off the roasting spit. A few weeks later the man was wearing a large white apron and a starched cook’s cap. Next came a roof addition, and another addition, then cement block walls, and finally tables, chairs and a juke box.

I really have to give the author credit, she is pretty fair with her subjects, discussing the good and the bad. While she doesn’t hold back in telling us what she feels, she is constructive and thoughtful about her criticisms (more than I am, for sure).

If you’d like to read the book, just do a couple of searches on-line. Used copies are pretty available, running in the $10 range. (Don’t bother paying more for a signed copy; it looks like she signed most of the copies out there.) There’s 1962 and 1966 editions (I own the 1962, and would be interested to see if anything changed in the 1966 edition).

One last thing: If you are in the Austin area and are looking for Childrens Books or Cook Books, I’d recommend taking a look at Curio Corner Books. (They also have an on-line store.) It has to be one of the best organized used book stores I’ve been in, better organized than most new book stores!

Disturbing news continues to emerge regarding the recent deaths of a number of pets on the island. For those not keeping up, the mayor of Barceloneta ordered the seizure of cats and dogs from those living in government-supported housing. (There is a Puerto Rican regulation that prohibits animals in public housing.) The regulation, which I very much doubt is fairly enforced, is bad enough. The horrific thing is that the “animal control” company allegedly proceeded to throw the animals, many alive, off a bridge.

On Monday, the contractor denied responsibility and accused residents of the housing projects of lying to get revenge for repeated raids to clear stray animals. “There are five people that went and saw their dogs there,” said Julio Diaz, owner of Animal Control solutions. “It’s their version against mine, and at some point they will have to prove it in court.” 

Ah, the “it’s their version against mine” defense. Is it just me, or do you also think “guilty” when you hear that?

Besides the huge mess that the mayor and contractor are facing, the legality of the original “no pets” law is on shaky ground. That’s because the PR housing projects get funding from the U.S. government, and HUD does not have a no-pet policy. In addition, I wouldn’t think that HUD would want to get involved in a huge Fourth Amendment (illegal search and seizure) issue. I’m not a lawyer, but if I were one of those pet owners, I’d be on the phone with the ACLU and PETA. After all, Puerto Ricans are protected under the U.S. Constitution (by virtue of the Supremacy Clause).

Recently, Puerto Rico has seen a big increase in motocycle and scooter accidents. It’s not because the existing riders are becoming dumber, but because there are so many more of them on the roads. Here’s the plan:

Tropical Puerto Rico will require motorcycle drivers to wear protective jackets, gloves, long pants and boots as part of a strict safety law signed by the governor of the U.S. commonwealth on Wednesday.

I could not think of anything more unbearable than wearing a leather jacket, gloves, long pants, and boots on a motorcycle in traffic in PR. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for safety, but PR is an environment for a helmet (always, IMO), t-shirt and jeans. It’s a beautiful (if dangerous) island to ride a motorcycle, and you often see large groups of riders along Route 2 between Aguadilla and Arecibo.

But wait, there’s more:

In addition to the heavy protective gear, drivers of two-wheeled motor vehicles on the island now must wear reflective vests after dark. The legal blood-alcohol limit is now .02 percent for bikers, down from .08 percent, which will remain the tolerated limit for car drivers.

To add insult to injury, now you also have to wear a shiny “construction worker” vest at night and can’t go near a beer for at least several hours before riding. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in drunk driving, but shouldn’t everyone play by the same rules? And, come on–who’s more likely to kill an innocent bystander, the .02 motorcycle or the .08 SUV? I don’t hear many cases of a drunk motorcyclist killing a van load of people on their way home from a church recital.

And really, I don’t believe that the issue is the motorcycles–it’s the scooters. Scooters are very poorly regulated down there, requiring the barest of licensing–and no motorcycle drivers license. They are popular because they are cheap (you see $1000 models all over), run on very little gas, can weave in and out of traffic (a very popular pasttime with Puerto Ricans), and look like a lot of fun.

Frankly, if they want to do some good, they need to focus on those scooters. In my experience the PR motorcyclist (on a REAL motorcycle; not a dirt bike, not a scooter) is doing a pretty good job. Very similar driving to drivers in the states, with the exception of the excessive weaving between traffic–think bicycle messengers in Chicago. I really think that the real motorcycle riders should be left alone–leave the crackdowns to the kids on $1000 scooters who don’t even have a drivers license.

Update:

Puerto Rico’s legislature on Thursday temporarily suspended a new safety law…. The 27-member Senate unanimously backed a moratorium on the law until Feb. 18, and the House approved plans to delay its implementation for at least three months.

Two words: Clown car.

This past weekend there was a nice cloud of ammonia in the Mayaguez area:

At least 2,000 people were evacuated early Sunday in western Puerto Rico after a cloud of ammonia escaped from a local brewing company. More than 35 people were hospitalized for breathing problems and later released, and several minor wrecks were reported along a nearby highway in Mayaguez because of reduced visibility.

This is actually pretty scary, since it happened at the Cerveceria India plant. It’s right in Mayaguez (the third largest city on the island, behind San Juan and Ponce). The plant is across the street from the University of Mayaguez and is only a block or so from the major “highway” through the western part of the island (mountains to the east prevent other north-south roads).