08:14 – The markets have reacted pretty much as I expected to the announcement of the €750 billion Spain/Italy bailout, which is to say that Spanish/Italian bond yields have fallen by 10 or 15 basis points (0.1% to 0.15%). The markets aren’t stupid. All along, the EU has been trying to fool the markets. Promise them anything, but don’t commit to spending any real money. And this so-called €750 billion bailout–which hasn’t even been approved by Germany and probably will not be–is actually backed by only about €20 billion of real assets. The rest of the money is to come from, you guessed it, selling bonds, at which the EFSF hasn’t been notably successful. Ultimately, everything depends on the ESM being given a banking license, which would give it essentially unlimited credit to borrow from the ECB. Germany is almost certain to veto a banking license for the ESM, recognizing that this would be just a back-door way of allowing the ECB to monetize the debt of the profligate southern-tier countries and ultimately shifting the debt to taxpayers. German taxpayers.
I am still trying to get an answer from UPS and FexEx to what seems a simple question. How much would it cost to have them pick up an ORM-D box of specific dimensions and weight and customs value from our address and deliver it via ground to a specific Canadian address? All I want is a number, but that’s apparently impossible to get. But I’m persistent.
All of the courier services will hit your customer with a broker fee roughly double or triple that from USPS. UPS was almost $50 the last time I got a shipment and the postal service charged $15. You will not see this fee from you end but the receiver will get the bill.
I shop online from the US all the time. I have yet to divine the method used to arrive at the fees charged for broker fees. Sometimes I get charged. Sometimes not. It is nothing more than an tax on consumers who dare to want better retail choices.
And I mean seriously better choices. Remember that scene in “Moscow on the Hudson” where Robin Williams is sent for coffee and is staggered by the sheer volume of choices of the coffee aisle? I feel like that, sometimes, when I shop online at a .ca store and then search at the .com equivalent, and there are ten times the options, and products that are not even offered for sale in Canada, for whatever bizarre reasons.
Well, I thought we had NAFTA, which should mean that the borders are open to trade with no tariffs, customs duties, inspections, paperwork, or other impediments. It would also be nice if the US and Canada trusted each other: anything legal to ship within the US should be legal to ship from the US to Canada, and vice versa.
For that matter, what’s with all this border-control shit? I remember when I was in grad school back in the 70’s and then later in the 80’s with Barbara driving down a country road and seeing a sign that said “Welcome to Canada” on one side and “Welcome to the US” on the other. That’s how it should be, and was before the fascists in both countries took over everything.
Yes, I often wonder what NAFTA was actually intended for. Businesses, I guess. As for trust, we haven’t slept with both eyes closed since 1812. 🙂
I have friends who used to own a house across the street from the Canada/US border and the posts were cement with CANADA on one side, and UNITED STATES on the other, so you didn’t get confused. We would drive across the border to eat supper (the best restaurant in town was in another country!) and the “guard” would look up from the book he was reading and wave.
Yeah, these islamist bastards have a lot to answer for.
The kits should be duty free. However Canada Customs will collect GST and/or HST on the Canadian dollar value, the same as any other purchase in that province or territory.
The brokerage fee is something else. I don’t buy from the US unless the vendor ships by USPS. In the past, and it was quite a long time ago now, I was hit by customs clearance fees of as much as $80 for the simple act of having the courier pay GST on my behalf. The GST was then on top of that. As I recall, the actual value of the purchase was something like $20. It is the brokerage fees that might be the real problem. I don’t don’t know how things are now. I’ve just avoided anything that can’t be sent by mail.
As far as trust goes, as things unravel in the US I can’t help but think of Germany and Austria in 1938. Anschluss does not strike me as happy (or desirable) state of affairs.
And for something completely different, a long time ago someone was wonder about the Asus eeeBox computers for multimedia. I’ve had an EB1501 for about a year and a half and with Media Player Classic and VLC, I’ve found it to be excellent. It plays everything up to and including 1080p. The only problem is the wireless networking. I’m in an apartment, and there are at least 15 other wireless networks around me competing for bandwidth. I just ran a cable from the other computers in back room. There are other models available, some without DVD drives (I never use it) and if you’re so inclined, ASUS sells the motherboard (AT5IONT-I) if you want to build your own.
True enough, but it’s our home-grown jack-booted thugs are the real
problem. Well, them and the sheep who gladly accept a collar in exchange
for a vague reassurance that the wolves will be kept away… and who
don’t realize that the shepherd doesn’t watch the sheep for the sheep’s
benefit.
It’s amazing how quickly after 9/11 the collective (word chosen
advisedly) law enforcement groups put together a proposal for what
became the PATRIOT Act. Or maybe not so amazing. All they did was dust
off the police state wet dreams they’d been submitting to Congress for
years.
When we left Boston for Germany (well, for Indiana, then Germany), we got rid of everything, including returning books to my wife’s stepdaughter from her first marriage. Stepdaughter was Canadian, but lived in the US for a good long stretch of her childhood. We had most of her childhood books, which she wanted back, now that she had kids of her own. So, we boxed up the books (about 80 of them) and shipped them to her in Tahronuh. Surprise, surprise. Even though they were HER books and it said that on the custom form, and even though the books were now over 20 years old, she got slapped with $180 in customs fees by the Canadian government. Worse, all those books together never cost $180 retail when they were new. They were kids books bought in the late ’60’s/early ’70’s for crying out loud. This was after NAFTA but before 9-11.
Was far enough south on assignment yesterday that I headed down to see my son, who has returned to the wonderful little city of my alma mater, a cosmopolitan oasis in the middle of a state that is otherwise a vast cultural wasteland—albeit fairly vibrant economically and incredibly friendly. In celebration of Aung San Suu Kyi’s world tour, we ate at a wonderful little Burmese restaurant. Any time I get the chance to have eggplant (aubergine outside the US), done by foreigners, I take it. And it was particularly tasty. Burmese food seems a lot like Thai, with things toned down just a little. Their Burmese sweet tea is like Thai ice tea, but stronger on the tea and a bit less sweet. More to my liking.
Interesting economic dynamic occurring down there in the limestone capital of the US. Ever since I was in school in the late ‘60’s, locals have owned a good many of the older houses near the university, and rent them out for lots of money. In recent years, the going rate has been $700/mo per person. If you have a house—usually crudely divided into apartments—that can sleep 4 in one apartment, then the rent for that apartment would be $2800/mo. Now with my kids having attended there as recently as a few years ago, I can attest that such housing is the pits. The landlords do nothing to keep the places fixed up or in good repair; they just do the minimum to make sure plumbing and heating are working, so the housing authority is off their backs. What were once some really nice two-story houses in their day, are now just beat-up wrecks.
From my era to even as recently as a couple years ago, one had to find and contract for an apartment in March, to be guaranteed a place to live for the fall term. My kids always had to do that.
However, during the last couple years, an outside developer came in and cleared about a 2-square block area just off the downtown, near the upscale bars, but still within less than a half-dozen blocks walking to most of the various classroom buildings. In that space, they built a low-rise complex with about a hundred ‘luxury’ apartments for students. Rents for those places are about $800/mo per person.
So, we had quite a few errands to run in various parts of the city—which is now huge compared to when I was in school there—and on nearly every street in the blocks near to the campus, there are “For Rent” signs out on the lawns. My son tells me that for past years, that is unheard of; it is something new that has just started. By mid-summer, all available houses near to the university would be rented.
It looks like the new luxury apartments are offering something that is challenging the pricing of the slumlords’ properties. Pay for a beat-up, hardly-maintained, rickety dump of an apartment, or for just a little more money, live in new-construction luxury, close to ‘the action’.
My kids are glad to see that happening.
One of the game companies I buy from has noted the arbitrary nature of customs offices around the world. They ship wargames internationally and have seen customers slapped with differing amounts of duties on the same games shipped at the same time to the same company. Sometimes the package gets delivered with no delay and no fees. Sometimes it’s slapped with VAT, duties, and a processing fee, in some cases equalling or exceeding the cost of the game. They now recommend buying from a UK distributor if they live in the EU, as it averages out to be cheaper.
[snip] Well, I thought we had NAFTA, which should mean that the borders are open to trade with no tariffs, customs duties, inspections, paperwork, or other impediments. [snip]
If you or I wrote such a treaty, it would be three pages long, tops. The fact that NAFTA was several thousand pages long was a dead giveaway that it, like the rest of the US government, was a crock of excrement.
I agree with your kids. It’s refreshing to see the market function correctly for once. Although I have to note the irony that it’s happening in what is probably the most left leaning part of Indiana.
College town ‘hoods and housing are often student ghettos of the kind Chuck describes here, with absentee landlords allowing the properties to disintegrate and charging zillions for the rent thereof. During my time as a campus cop we had many a call to these dumps, usually for various alcohol-related complaints involving noise, destruction of property and violence. Never once a call to a pot party.
Patrick J. Buchanan and myself were totally against NAFTA and GATT when they were first proposed and then implemented, and we arrived independently at that opinion, I might add, and I am on record on various sites as such. I believe Jim Hightower was also against it at the time. One of the big reasons being how unfair it was gonna be to regular citizens and working people here in this country, and another being that as far as international trade goes, we simply cannot trust our lords temporal to enter us into the fray on a level playing field and thus our vast trade discrepancies, repeatedly over decades. Patrick just recently put out a short article on how we are being royally taken to the cleaners by the South Koreans now. Who dreams this stuff up and who looks out for our interests?
@RBT:
I’ve just placed an order at Amazon.com, containing 5 DVDs and a 300-page hardcover book. The DVDs were all recent season sets of some TV series, e.g. Dexter season 6 and so on, i.e. each contains 4 to 6 discs and is about an inch thick. Total value $180. Total weight, I guess you can find out for yourself by weighing similar items you own. Amazon charged $20.94 to send all this to Ottawa, Ontario. They usually send me stuff via USPS, ground shipping, and it takes two weeks. Maybe three, if the stuff gets stuck in Customs. IIRC Amazon’s shipping charges depend on number and type of items, not so much on weight. For example they charge the same to ship Dexter season 6 or a 40-DVD package like Star Trek (whatever) complete series.
A couple of years ago I ordered a digital camera from B&H. A small one, weighing less than this Amazon order. Total value was about $300, I think. They shipped by UPS for $28. I believe that was from New York State, also to Ottawa, Ontario.
Another thing you may want to know about Canada: UPS can be very annoying if you work normal hours. They come to your door at noon, you’re not home, they leave a notice and go away without leaving your package. They repeat the next day, and the next. Then the package gets returned to sender. USPS, on the other hand, will leave a notice and then the recipient goes to the post office and picks up the package in the evening or during the weekend. Also, with UPS the recipient ALWAYS pays customs fees, while with USPS it happens only from time to time.
I hope this helps…
Once again here, the obvious solution is simply to annex Canada. What’s the bloody holdup, anyway? While we are at it, let’s grab Oz and the Kiwis, too; why do we always end up grabbing deserts, rocks and ruins? A guy here sez the Oz chicks are hot. Well, let’s get on it!
I thought we tried that 200 years ago, and that it didn’t work out so well.
I’m sure if the US asked nicely Canada would give them Quebec.
Thanks. Yes, that’s the conclusion I’m coming to. If I used FedEx or UPS, I’d have no idea what I or my customers would end up paying, and that’s simply unacceptable. For example, I’ve heard from several people in Canada who ended up being charged a few dollars in tax or customs fees by Canada, which FedEx paid for them. FedEx then tacked on a collection fee of something like $88.
I’m still investigating using USPS Priority Mail flat-rate large boxes, which cost $39.95 for shipment to any Canadian address.
Photographed a rare event in this times. A couple had their 60th wedding anniversary celebration.
http://www.raymondthompsonphotography.com/P6168921.jpg
I will have to be 84 to reach the milestone and by then my brain will be sponge rubber so I really won’t remember, nor care. The picture of me would be with drool running down my chin, tongue hanging out the side of my mouth, finger up the nose and a full diaper. Sigh.
Ray, don’t write yerself off just yet; my MIL up here is 84 right now and drives herself to northern New Brunswick, Virginia and sometimes Florida. She moves furniture around at her place by herself and does a fair amount of painting (artwork). Sharp as a tack most of the time. Also cooks and cleans like she has for 75 years. Some hip replacement stuff and cataract surgery but that’s about it. Her older sister kayaks around Lake Champlain by herself and still works part-time as a nurse.
Ya just gotta stay interested and active and everything in moderation. Yeah, right.
RE: Quebec.
The US of A needs to keep their car doors locked, or we’ll stuff Quebec in the back seat.
Ray, don’t write yerself off just yet;
Runs in the family gene pool. I think my end of the pool is deeper with my brothers somewhat on the shallow end of the gene pool. Most of the family member’s brains start going in the early 80’s. I have seen it happen to several. I suspect I will get the same treatment. Physically there are no real problems in the family blood line. No cancer, joint issues, no heart issues, no stroke issues. The brain just goes soft and forgets to tell the body how to live.
Ray, nice pic. I thought I’d look at your homepage, but…there isn’t one?
Anyone who hopes they could persuade the USA to take on Quebec would need to hurry up about it. You might be able to persuade Obama, but any normal US citizen would probably see immediately that having the USA bracketed top and bottom by French colonies – Quebec and LousyAnna – would probably be a bad idea. Politicians in both places are bent and broken enough that they’d probably also make common cause with their fellow Latins (until they learnt better, too late), and serve as an organised large-scale source of infection.
I thought I’d look at your homepage, but…there isn’t one?
I do not have a home page, nothing is on the page. I just use the website to post images when I want people to look. When I do a wedding, or a sporting event, I will post the images in a folder off the main site and send people the link so they can look. There is no direct INDEX file on the root to avoid people getting there when I don’t want them to and also avoids the various search engines. I don’t use any website for promotional purposes.
My aunt (mother’s sister) and uncle are coming up on their 68th wedding anniversary. My aunt is no longer mentally up to all challenges—like paying the bills—but can still help with anything. Uncle is as sound as ever, but not physically up to things like mowing the yard, anymore. They got married while my uncle was in the Army. They intended to marry after he got out, but in 1944, no one knew when that would be, and if they got married, he got a raise from $15/mo to $54/mo, and he thought, “Why wait?”
My grandparents made it to 70 years of marriage before they died. She was 15, he was 16. She was pregnant. He left town. His brother went after him and brought my grandfather back under the watchful barrels of a shotgun. Grandparents said the would get divorced when the child was 10 but they had another child before then. Said they would get divorced when that child was 10, but had another child. After 15 years they just said “what the hell.” and stayed together another 55 years.
I didn’t think 15-year-old girls had sex back then. 😉
Speaking of which, I see a 22-year-old girl in Indianapolis is going to be charged with a felony for having sexual relations with a 17-year-old guy. Of course, he’s a student and she’s a teacher, although not his. Once again, I say fire the girl for having sex with a student, but don’t charge her with a crime. Geez.
I didn’t think 15-year-old girls had sex back then.
My grandparents hid it for many years. Even celebrating their first son’s birthday on the wrong date. He was going into the military for WWII and needed his birth certificate. That is when the skeleton came out of the closet.
I also found out my uncle had been married before and her parents had the marriage annulled. I only know that from papers I found while cleaning out my aunts place. No one in the family knew about the prior wedding. No more information about why is available and will never be as it died with him.
My great grandparents on my dad’s side (his mother’s parents) were having sex when she was 14 and he was 15. They lived on directly adjacent farms near Columbus, Indiana. Not sure whether they were forced or not, but they were married as soon as it became clear she was pregnant. Child #1 came when she was 15, and 14 more kids followed, her last when she was 49. No problems with that marriage; they both lived quite happily past 70. From pictures, he was a really good-looking guy. Her father died when they were still a teenagers, and he took over that farm. By the time he was in his early 20’s he was reputed to be the most profitable farmer in the county.
Ya find out all kinds of funny shit sometimes but way late. We still hear strange rumors about deceased family members from the 20th-C and back then we heard rumors about family stuff from the 17th- and 18th-C’s, including piracy and highwaymen.
I of course remained totally celibate myself until my first marriage at age 35.
How about Quebec leaves Canada and then the USA annex what is leftover ?
One of the Baen stable of Sci-Fi writers, Travis Taylor, writes about the USA in 200 years with the 350 states including the Lunar and Mars colonies.
What gets me about the French to our north, is that dodgy phony crap where they pretend they do not know English very well, and then intentionally butcher the language. Geez, even the Mexicans do far better than those Canadian French who always put on the ‘can’t speak English’ act, when their damned French is so rotten that it is not understandable to a real Frenchman.
Montreal is a great city, howsomever.
Years ago I played cards with some Canadians on the Internet. I mentioned a story I’d heard, that the French French privately didn’t want Quebec to become independent because that would so weaken Canada as a country that some of the provinces might elect to join the US as states. The Canadians were very upset and scornful of that rumour, but it made a certain amount of sense to me.
We have had actual French people talking to us, in Quebec and down here, one of whom is a vendor for us with CentOS clusters that we have at our main site. They tell us that the so-called French spoken in Quebec is to them like a Brooklyn or Bronx accent is to us northern New Englanders, and it grates on their ears and is held in amused contempt.
As for Montreal, it is a huge metropolis, where our daughter works part-time at an Irish pub and takes classes at McGill and may start at Concordia in the fall. Her mother graduated McGill shortly after I quit working (mostly) for Uncle a long time ago. But it is not for me. I like Quebec Ville better but that is still a large city and the only places in both that I care to spend any time at all are their historic areas, museums and libraries.
Every generation thinks it invented sex, I suppose. Some of the old family histories are pretty funny. In my case, my grandparents married – both were tough nuts, eventually (after six kids!) they couldn’t stand each other and divorced. Which was pretty awful in that day and age. He remarried, divorced his second wife and remarried my grandmother. They divorced again, and he went back to the other woman. Never bothered to marry her the second time.
Both of my grandfathers died before I was born (heart attacks, which also claimed my paternal grandmother when I was eight.) My father’s grandparents lived next door to us and didn’t get on. They only had one child, and that grandfather moved to Melbourne and lived there for several years. My mum, who knows the family history backwards, has never said if there was another woman. Anyway, he moved back in with gran at some stage. He died of a heart attack in, I think, 1956, while running for a tram.
Mum had a luckier life, I guess. She had a brother, and her father was in work right through the Great Depression, so they had what they needed, but not always what they wanted. By her own admission my mum isn’t a good cook, she says that was because her mother couldn’t afford to let her have ingredients to experiment with when she was a teenager – which was in the Depression.
She’s always said “I won’t make old bones” but she’s outlived my father (10 months younger than her) by 15 years and her brother (five years younger) by 11 years.