Woodstock CT Café

from Newcomer

I’m slow to reply to your question (see “Re: Tough Times Ahead”) because it’s so thought-provoking. Our nation was formed some 234 years ago and one would think that this question would have been answered at the outset. But as we’ve ‘evolved’ (if that’s the correct word) we’ve added more states, more people, more industry, more infrastructure, more politicians, etc.

I think for me, what makes your question so difficult to answer is that in these 234 years, we have blurred the lines ourselves as to the proper role of our government. That role was generally initially defined in the preamble of the Constitution, the purpose of which was “in order to form a more perfect Union”. The goals and “mission statement” of our federal government were to “establish Justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of liberty…”

If you take that piece by piece, there’s quite a bit there. I think most citizens would agree that we still have a legitimate need for our Federal government to provide for our National defense. We can dissect the hows and how much of the defense system, of course, but I think we would all agree on the continuing need for it to remain in place.

Ensuring domestic tranquility….I’m not sure what the founding fathers exactly intended by this phrase, but to me it speaks to the need at the State and local governmental level (since we’ve now added more states than the original 13 we started with) for basic public services such as police enforcement and fire protection. How tranquil can one’s life be if subjected to crime or fire? If we want to expand this notion of tranquility to the Federal level, then I could see an argument for FEMA to exist in times of disaster relief. I guess this would also make a case for militia at a State level, such as the National Guard, enforcement at a State level, such as a State police Dept., disaster relief at a State level as an outpost of FEMA at the federal level. I could also see highway infrastructure coming under this category at all 3 levels of government because vehicles are available for purchase in the private market for those who have the financial means. But vehicle ownership requires someplace on which to safely operate the vehicle. I would limit the role to infrastructure maintenance though. To me, this should not include a nationalization of public transit be it planes, trains, buses, monorails, subways, ferries - whatever. None of these other modes of transport are a requirement for one to live a life of domestic tranquility so they can and should be provided by the private sector and each citizen can choose to avail themselves of any given method as their means and circumstance (and personal preferance) dictate. Read the rest of this entry »

from John

What could be a better indicator of a recovering economy? Timber harvesting.

We are seeing this on Barber Road in Woodstock and on Storrs Road in Tolland. The two graphs at the bottom are showing that both white pine and fuel wood are coming back. You can get as much as $15 a cord for fuel wood. We recommend Don Dubois of Brooklyn as the Forester (Masters Degree from Yale in Forest Management) who marks the trees and manages the harvest. He works with John Trowbridge, a local logger. This is a clean, professional operation that improves the forest by removal of older and diseased trees.

The pictures below were taken on Barber Road yesterday at dusk. The first picture is white pine harvested as saw timber for construction lumber.
Read the rest of this entry »

from Kevin E. Ford

Regarding editorial policy, I do think that it is an important discussion because it is one of the most crucial factors to consider when deciding what type of media site you want to be. I believe that the reason why the Cafe’s policies appear to be going back and forth is because to some extent they are as the owners receive different advice on what their editorial policy should be. At the end of the day one important thing for a media outlet’s credibility is the notification, constancy and consistent application of the editorial policy.

To this end, this is the best advice I can give living in the industry is to consider the mission and vision for the site in three particular areas; 1) what type of content do you want (logical discussion, free for all, political debate, educational issues, family memories, this doesn’t mean they have to be mutually exclusive but some items may be), 2) who and how many do you want contributing content (creators and critics) and 3) who and how many do you want reading the content (spectators). It is important to realize that for the second and third questions it is unrealistic to just say everyone because no matter what editorial policy you choose, including no editorial policy, you will be attracting and repelling different groups.

Once a mission and vision is articulated, including those three areas, you can design an editorial policy. The editorial policy should, of course, be designed to directly support that mission and vision. Luckily the Café doesn’t have a profit component so makes this much easier to consider as an entire set of stakeholders is gone. I’ll list out a few of the areas of contention on the Café’s editorial policy as of late and how they impact those three things I mentioned.

Profanity. I mention this because there has been a fair amount of it introduced to the Café recently. This goes back to the questions of whom do you want to contribute and who to you want to read the site. The profanity question is very important to the later. Do you want parents to read this site and just as importantly be comfortable allowing their children to? The decision to allow profanity will have a real impact on who will be reading the content. There is a technological component to this as well as parents increasingly are utilizing filtering tools to protect their children; there is a very real possibility this site might end up blocked by those tools if it contains profanity.

Personal Insults. This really ties into all three. Abusive debate attracts certain people as contributors and repels others. It also helps determine what type of content will be created in the first place. A poster had mentioned that anyone is free to just skip such posts but there is a different result in practical application. What actually tends to happen in practice is that individuals do not decide to read or not read certain posts on a case by case basis, they eventually move on or off the media site as a whole. Human nature is what it is. Read the rest of this entry »

from Anonymous

That anecdote about the $100 circulating through a small town is - as one blogger observed - in part about velocity. How fast money moves through the economy is a partial measure of how well the economy is functioning. 

The anecdote is also an illustration of what economists call the “circular flow.”
Circular flow can be reduced to a simple chart that illustrates how money travels in a (theoretical) circle throughout the economy.
- Consumers pay for what they get;
- The storekeeper uses that money to pay the manufacturer for his store stock;
- The manufacturer uses the money to pay for his equipment, his raw materials, and the talent that made it;
- and along the way, everyone is using some of the money to pay employees… who take their paycheck home and … spend it on consumer goods and services.

Circular flow also works the other direction; read the little story backwards to see how goods and services move in a circle too.

There are lots of visual charts for this (go to google images and type in “circular flow”). Some are simple, most add in government, usually placed in the center of the circular diagram (because money flows to the government from all quarters as tax payments, and services flow out from the government to all quarters). Some diagrams get very complex by adding in the role of banks, others add annotations for “leakage” (money that goes out of the system because Aunt Tillie stores it in her mattress or Billy dropped his lunch money down the storm drain or all those coins are gathering dust in odd corners around the house). But however much elaborated, the basic idea remains one of money moving around the circle in one direction, in exchange for goods and services that move around the circle in the other direction.

The reader who thought the anecdote was just a tired old internet joke … was right; it is. But perhaps he didn’t recognize it as an illustration of Circular Flow, deliberately oversimplified for a touch of humor (yeah, rather dry humor at best, but economists aren’t known for their humor, are they).

 See the full analysis at JenRan Realty.com. You have to register to read Jennifer Esposito’s monthly news letter which contains a monthly Northeastern CT housing market analysis.


Read the rest of this entry »

from Frank Corden

Independent, Taxpayer, Con and all others who seem to be routinely participating in a number of thoughtful discussions, I’d like to tee one up that flows from Independent’s comment above regarding a few tough years ahead.

Clearly, we need to get our state and federal budgets under control. As we look at the approach of the Reagan Republicans (and as most recently championed by the Tea Party activist), abandoning regulation hasn’t served us very well. Their collective cry for “smaller government” is too simplistic. There appears to be this sense that by starving government for funds, government will get better.

Rather it seems that a cash poor government is generally headed to becoming a poor government. Case in point, starving the regulatory arms of the SEC, the bank regulators and the food safety inspectors hasn’t made us any richer or safer.

Organizational behavior virtually guarantees a poor outcome. When organizations are starved for resources, in the absence of VERY STRONG leadership, the organizations don’t try to limit what they do, but rather peanut-butter the resources across as many of their previous activities as possible. The result is that the organization tries to “do it all” but instead does it all poorly.

If we are going to reduce government spending and still have well run programs that protect the health and safety of our citizens and the financial future of our country, what we need to do is to settle on the appropriate priorities for government at each level, federal, state and local. Then be rigorous about holding to those priorities.

So, the question I pose for discussion is, “what are the appropriate rolls for the federal government” and “what should we shut down”. In each case of the do’s and don’ts, I like to discuss what rationale we would use to justify the recommendation.

from Frank Corden

So to the point, the only position you (WVG) have mentioned that I took that is contrary to your views has to do with Woodstock Academy. You stipulated to items, one that I supported the efforts of the BoE chair to propose legislation changing the statutory status of WA. The second is a general point regarding WA’s budget actions having a detrimental impact on the K-8 programs.

I was not involved or knowledgable of the chair’s action regarding meeting with State legislators. Further, I don’t recall Sherrie Vogt’s name ever being mentioned during the BoE meetings. With that said, I do believe that the governance of WA is structure in a manner that makes it unresponsive to the needs of Woodstock, the largest sending town. If a change in the statutory status or governance structure of WA is a means to that end, I certainly would seriously consider supporting it.

With respect to the second point, I do believe that the budgetary actions of Woodstock Academy have had detrimental impacts on the K-8 system. The education budget is of a fixed size as defined by the Board of Finance. When tuition for Woodstock students to attend Woodstock Academy increases substantially and those increases aren’t adequately addressed by the budget imposed by the Board of Finance, Woodstock Public Schools takes the hit.

In 4 of the 6 years I served this community on the Board of Education, unjustifiable increases in the WA budget directly resulted in cuts in staff and programs at Woodstock Elementary School and Woodstock Middle School. Read the rest of this entry »

from Independent

Once again, Anon makes an important point about the core workings of our economy. When I was in college, my professor took the class to Sturbridge Village to make this same point. Like the little town in Texas, it is a microcosm of the broader economy.

Economists call this concept the “Velocity” of the money supply - the speed at which money moves through the economy is as important as the total supply of money in the economy. So, “Moneterists” traditionally believed modulation of the cash supply is a sufficient tool to expand or contract growth in the economy, as needed, depending on its Velocity.

“Fiscalists” or “Keynesians” traditionally believed that it is the total amount of spending that matters, and that growth must be modulated through the expansion or contraction of government spending.

The “ISLM Framework” resolved this theoretical divide in the 1960’s, providing a hybrid theoretical framework that accommodates both concepts. This common ground was generally supported by both sides.

What changed beginning in the 1980’s was the rise of classical economists and their theory of pure free market principles to the securities markets; i.e., the belief that all security prices were by definition priced correctly in an open market. The theoretical work of these academics was picked up by key players in the capital markets and politicians and policymakers who favored government deregulation. This became the basis for deregulation of the financial markets and the failure to regulate new financial instruments like derivatives. Read the rest of this entry »

from John 

WVG, Your persistence in your last comment about having been here before jogged my memory. I like the way you make things up as you go along. It wasn’t four years ago as you suggested in one of your first comments (maybe just a smoke screen). It was more recently that you graced the Cafe with your presence and inimitable style (I hope I spelled that correctly ). Since you are using a pseudonym now, we will leave your identity at that. You were wrong on the four year span between your two strings of commentary; no, it was not before we came out of the closet; no, you did not use pseudonyms; no, you weren’t banned; no you are not a valley girl; and yes we put you in wackety rants  for two comments … and “biblion” and “gmx” are prevocative to say the least. As for use of Siberia or Wackity Rants, our friend Con has straighten me out about that practice. It was also interesting that Ernie came back to the Cafe when you did, but that may be just a coincidence. As I said earlier, you are very entertaining and we like to be entertained. Readers sometime forget but the Cafe never forgets.

During your last visit (a couple of years ago), I had the distinct feeling that you were on a mission on behalf of someone else more local or a particular group with a political agenda. As you are from another town, why would you lower yourself to unproductive activity like blogging in Woodstock. I sort of have the same feeling about your presence now. That’s okay though because we all have missions and/or agendas. The Cafe really runs on its own as it has since October 2005 so your contributions are welcomed within reason.

It’s been an education for me to read your commentary about election procedures. I haven’t the time to check anything you have said although you sound convincing. You are certainly in a position to speak with authority though. Maybe Bill will learn something during his tussle with you.