Photo on Wood, as shown Carrboro Century Center Art Gallery January and February 2015.  “Neighbors House”  It’s not really connected.  The connection is tenuous.  I want to sell it.

 

 

The “Connect” Bond

First thing to remember is that Bonds are loans that pay back to the lender.  The Connect Bond is intended then to be a money maker for people who already have the money to buy stocks and bonds.  Working people who are the majority of people living paycheck to paycheck don’t have any opportunity to buy bonds.  They pay taxes at the pump.  They pay taxes to the State and the Cities and towns.  Sales taxes.  Half a cent here, half a cent there.  Pennies.  It adds up.

The infrastructure we all share isn’t supposed to be a money maker for the select few.  Our taxes give us schools and roads and if the plan is good there is prosperity.  The plan, the system, the enforcement, the oversight, all that is what we are all supposed to get from our taxes.

Really I don’t care how good or bad the plan is, I think it ought be paid for as a regular part of the budget.

I went out to sea the furtherest ever from Morehead City with Dave Roderick to do a crane test for the John C. Pope.  Dave has 5 cranes.  3 or 4 boom trucks and a dock.  At least he did.  He was the coolest Baptist I ever knew.  You’d think a cutting torch was part of his body.  He told me as we drove out from Wilmington to Morehead City,  “Morehead City ought be the place, the port.  Big ships can pull up to the docks right there.  The water is deep.  The people of Morehead, they don’t want it.  Cranes should have been put there.  Wilmington had more pull.”

You’ve got container ships that are thirteen hundred feet long now.  They can’t make the turns in the river, up the channel.

Seems then to me that all the Connect Plan needs really, main thing, would be a superhighway connection to I 40.  Airplane makers like Honda, they don’t need much more than Wilmington.  They can get along fine with the smaller ships.  Cars, trucks sending their production out to Europe, anywhere across the Atlantic, they want a port that can handle big ships.

Ask them.  I would.

Ask the engineers.  Ask the Federal Government.  What do they want to see?  What will the Federal Government chip in?

I’ll tell you another thing.  Professionals appreciate Union standards.  This non union, anti union stance of the NC Leadership.  I think it works against the State.  Unionized seamen, Unionized ports, they don’t want to support non union ports.  Why should they?  I don’t think it works for the State of NC to be anti union.

I was a member of IATSE.  I’m proud they wanted me.  I worked with Union and non union in NY.  Union work was safer.  I worked with 491, that was my Motion picture local card.  I worked with 574 stagehands in Greensboro.  Great people.  Brothers and Sisters.  Take care of their own.  Get in early and be committed.  It’s a tough job.  There are standards.  Non Union people in Rhode Island burned up some young people at their concerts.  They didn’t have standards.  Your children are safer, lots safer at a show that is Union.  You don’t think about it.  It matters.  Things don’t fall out of the ceiling or catch fire.

Professional builders, from anywhere, they look for the IBEW.  International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.  These are two Unions that live and work in the State of North Carolina.  They keep a low profile.  Professionals know to give them a call.  They have standards.  Anywhere it is understood by professionals.

NC wants to have professional working in all its trades.  Community Colleges are fantastic.  The one over there in Guilford is superior.  When young people embarking on their lives, they want a home, a family, they can join a union.  They’ll get work.  They will have work.  It’s all hard, the trades.  You need Brothers and Sisters.  You look out for each other.  You find each other work.  Life goes on.

Connect, “Prosperity Zones”.  What if you’r off the beaten path.  What if there is only a RR line?  It’s for Freight.  The truckers, they undercut even the RRs.  I don’t know everything.  Ask a Civil Engineer about how the Trucks and the RRs ought be working?  I’ll ask.  I’ll find out.  It just crossed along in my mind.  What did NC get out of buying the NC RR Company?

Seems like there was one mile of track down at Wilmington that didn’t get bought.  Last I looked at the youtube videos from the State DOT, they said this one mile slowed all the freight up.  Why?  What’s going on there?  Wilmington.

When I was studying all this they said NC had 5,000 miles of RR track.  The rights of way had been eaten away by the roads.  Nobody wants to wait for a train.  Build a tunnel.  Build a bridge.  Keep things moving from East and West and North and South.

Every county needs its own Local Community Airport.  That’s big.  “You can’t get there from here.”  Make sure people can get there.  If they’re off the beaten path, land locked.  Make sure they can get in and out by air.  People live there.  They need to get around.  NASA and the FAA have little airport feeder to the bigger airports, plans.  Use them.

Why a bond?  What happened to all the money?  Why are people poor.  People at the top, they decide who is rich and who is poor.

What happened to the money from the gambling, the Education Lottery?  Local property tax funding of schools is a crime.  It’s criminal.  Every kid ought get the same best education.  Per capita spending ought be mandatory.  It ought be mandatory all over the Nation.  Two things a Government is legitimately responsible for: Defense and Education.  If they don’t have tax money for nothing but that, spend it all on that.

10 years now is like a hundred.  Oceans are rising.  Why build bridges that have been torn out by hurricanes.  Buy Ferries.  Buy Wing in Ground effect ferries.  Build them.  Sell them.  They’re flexible.  They’re fast.  People need to get around.

Nowhere ought be more than 4 hours from anywhere else in the State.  No where in the world ought be more than 4 hours away.  There are rocket engines, hybrids.  Build around those engines.  It’s possible.

Population of NC doubled since I was 20.  That’s 42 years ago.  10 more years it might double again.  NC is great real estate.  China wants it.  Anybody in their right mind wants it.  Why force all the working people out?  What’s wrong?

25 percent of North Carolina’s people are living in poverty.  They don’t deserve it.  People at the top decide they should be poor and desperate.  It’s sick.  Republicans, they want to just sell everything to the private investor.  They are the owner class.  Democrats, they work in the schools.  They work in the government.  They are afraid to speak up.  The ballot is secret for a reason.

I am willing to go to Washington as a US Senator.  I’m sick of all the meanness and stupidity.  First thing people ask, or say, “Money”.  Why?  I’m just willing to speak out.  Stand for election.  I’m old enough.  I’ve worked hard.  I’ve had lots of jobs.  Movies paid me the best.  Acting paid me the best.  Things happened.  I was diversified in the same business.  That was the biggest mistake.

Mom said, “No shame in honest work.”  I did what was in front of me.  I didn’t have time to wait for something better.  I moved around.  I know the East Coast like the back of my hand.  Florida.  No income tax.  Fees for everything.  To register my old truck would have been 425 dollars.  Job I made 250 a day for in NYC paid 10 in Florida.  “Cubans will work for 10.”  I was making 8.25 an hour.  I couldn’t afford to drive to Miami from Fort Lauderdale.

This is America?  Where are the Standards?  Their’s a whole lot wrong.  How you going to live?

There is nothing wrong with honest work.  You deserve to be proud of yourself.  “What are we making here?”

“8 hours.”   There is nothing wrong with that.

Employers don’t want to pay.  They have to be forced to pay.  Unions had to blow the place up.  They had to fight.  People got killed.  8 hours.  Standards.  The government had to give it to them.  The government had to put in minimum wages.  Employers paid just that.  Not a penny more.  You had to be in a Union to get more.  Union scale set all the scales.

15 dollars?  They can’t believe it.  The idea is like some sort of horror.  They’ll make gas 5 dollars a gallon.  It was 4.90 a gallon when Bush was in.  Corruption and War keep people poor.  The corruption today in the US is simply astounding.  It’s legal now, but it’s still corrupt.  Meyer Lansky is the man!  He knew how to make money.

They’re going to go to New Zealand.  They become British.  3,000 a year.  Used to be 300.  London bankers make US bankers look dumb.  They can hide money better.  They have the Caymans, and the Cook Islands.  It’s all legal.

It’s sick.  What can you do.  What good would it do you to shoot anybody.  You can’t find them.  They know.  They want to put a wall around Manhattan.  Keep working people out.

It’s like the last hurrah.  What if something goes wrong with the voting machines.  What if it is Hillary and Bill back in the White House.  Bill is always apologizing.  He has a lot to apologize for.  Hillary, it was her fault.  Healthcare the first time, he blamed it on her.  She apologized for the Iraq war vote.  They apologize.  It doesn’t fix a thing.

Obama, he’s got the Democrat leaves office Group think thing going.  Wilson did it at Versalles.  He wanted to leave the League of Nations.  We got WWII.  Roosevelt did it.  We had to support the corrupt Chinese nationalists.  The Chinese Communist did more to defeat Japan.  We wouldn’t help them.  Roosevelt, it was Zionism and private property.  We’ll support Kings, but no Communists?  We’ll support the corrupt, the liars, and cheats, but no Communists?  Chinese, Russians, they figure it out themselves.  People need to have their own stuff.  Private property, you deserve it.  How come we want to let the rich have it all?  Why let them get all the deeds to everything when we gave them the money to start businesses, make jobs.  They just bought up all the deeds to all the land.  Everything was foreclosed, and they bought it with the money we gave them.  Then they raise the rent.  It’s corrupt.  Nobody was watching.  The criminals wearing suits and donating to the campaigns, they fixed it for themselves.  They could care less about the US.  They’re British now.  They play polo.  They’re going to buy up all of New Zealand.

War.  We’re at war.  It’s secret.  They have sanctions in place.  Russia.  Russia did something.  Hybrid war.  Tanks.  Warthogs.  Norway sent its Airforce.  Russian bombers are flying around with their transponders off.  Controllers can’t see them.  Russians shot down an airliner.  I demand an end to the economic war with Russia.  Russia could sell Iran a nuclear weapon.  Whose kidding.  The invoice will just be a mistake.  Don’t fix that war before it gets out of control, it will go nuclear.  It will be the apocalyptic riot.

I hope Obama and Kerry will stop the war somehow about Ukraine.  It’s like before WWI.  History repeats itself.  Nuclear weapons are new.  Really, working people don’t deserve them hanging over our heads.  What did we do?  We’re just trying to make a living.

That’s why I need to be a US Senator.  I love people.  I don’t love people that act stupid.  I don’t love everybody.  Hey Life is Grand!  It’s something for me to do.  I’m with Warren and Sanders.  They don’t have so much to apologize for.