Thou Shall Not ___________?

By: Jake Jakubuwski

Copyright, 2012

Thou Shall Not ___________!

 Why not? It seems like everyone else does.

Kings, commoners, princes, priests, popes and politicians have all been caught with their hand in a cookie jar that didn’t belong to them. Or, they get caught with their pants down — so to speak — and have been known to wreak mayhem and murder on other folks who got in their way of breaking various laws, statutes, decrees and mandates.

 I know that no matter how severe the penalties for stealing, murder, adultery and other ‘sins’ are, there’s always gonna be someone who decides that the risk is worth taking — and they’re going to take it.

 I guess that’s just Human Nature. Or maybe it’s just plain stupidity. Whatever it is, it seems as if more and more folks are doing something with, to, or for, other folks that they shouldn’t be doing

I mean, how many presidents, presidential candidates, or would be candidates, have thrown their pants into the ring — only to have them thrown back at them?

 How many politicians have been caught with a freezer full of cold cash and tried to lie their way out of the stash?

Now we have secret service people participating in not-so-clandestine assignations on company time. I’m not castigating these people for joining in fun and games where these types of fun and games are NOT against the law. I DO however, expect that the crème-de-la-crème of the Palace Guard would have better sense then to wet their wicks while on duty. Now, it looks like a lot of them are going to get trimmed from the Federal payroll. Good riddance!

Then there was the Financial Officer of the small town inIllinoisthat is suspected of dipping into the public coffers to the tune of 30 million bucks! Then she was released on a 4,500 dollar bond! If I read the article right, she was released so she could feed her champion horse crop (That at least part of the 30 mil bought her) and because of her obligations to her farms (Note the plural) she is considered a low flight risk.

About a decade ago, a young man snatched a purse from a lady on theNew Yorksubway. He was shot by a transit cop, wound up paralyzed and collected 4.2 million from the Big Apple! I thought I had read somewhere that crime didn’t pay?

Cases like that seem to indicate that crime pays in direct proportion to whether or not you can afford to fight the charges or are fortunate enough to find a lawyer that can turn the perpetrator of a crime into a victim or convince a jury that an over privileged congress person did not fully understand the venality of their actions.

Now, at least one Secret Service agent is going to sue Uncle Sugar and will probably (Just a guess on my part) succeed in forcing the government to pay for firing him … never mind that he works for us and wasn’t acting within the parameters of his job description. Never mind that he has a job that requires his full attention and he shouldn’t have his mind filled with the talents of a lady of the night rather then on his job.

The way I see it is that theUnited Statesnot only has the best political system that money can buy it also has the best judicial system that money can buy.

On the other hand, if you can’t buy it, maybe you can get it to pay you for being a royal idiot and getting yourself shot by a law enforcement officer during the commission of a crime.

Isn’t it time to turn the rule book right side up and apply its mandates equally and without prejudice?

 Then, just maybe, the “Shall Not’s” will once again have some meaning and folks will believe in them to the point that they might respect the law. More importantly maybe if there were a little fear of breaking the law involved; folks wouldn’t be so quick to take the chance.

Then again, if frogs had wings, maybe they wouldn’t bump their derrieres every time they jumped…

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

By: Jake Jakubuwski

Copyright, 2012.

All rights reserved.

 Right at forty years ago (39 to be exact), I was running a carpet cleaning company with six trucks, a furniture van, a car for my estimator and my own personal vehicles.

Then, the infamous Oil Embargo sank its teeth into the World’s economy!

The Oil Embargo culminated in a different game plan when it came to the pumping, delivery, refining and selling of oil-based products and chemicals from gasoline to plastics and roofing shingles. A lot of those changes were still in the future but were definitely coming our way.

Our immediate concerns in 1973-74 were with long lines at gas stations, limits on how much gas you could buy and concerns about the possibility of radically escalating prices for gas, heating oil and a host of other ancillary products. An ever growing list of “stuff” which was dependent — in one way or the other — on a readily available, economical, and uninterrupted supply of oil.

Stuff like groceries, medical supplies, fertilizer, manufactured goods and retail merchandise of all sorts, sizes, shapes and forms.

At the time, my primary concern was how to find and buy enough fuel to keep my small fleet of vehicles running and my business operating. My “partner” and I were discussing the problem one morning over our usual cup of coffee and I said: “Glen, it doesn’t matter if gas goes to five bucks a gallon as long as we can get it!” My thinking, at the time, was the costs would, one way or another, be passed on to our customers.

At the time, gasoline was costing me about thirty cents a gallon. It quickly went up to forty cents and higher as the year progressed and supplies tightened.

By 1975 the Oil Embargo was over and gasoline prices settled in at somewhere around $0.58 a gallon. Oh, for the Good Old Days, right 

By 1988, the year we moved toOxford,NC, gas was hovering between ninety cents and a dollar a gallon.

In April of 2001, I wrote an Op-ed piece for the News & Observer where I was discussing the price of gas going to $1.40 a gallon. That piece was inspired by an earlier article written by an economics professor at UNC who said that when you factored in inflation, we were actually paying less for gasoline then we were fifteen years earlier.

I really get my shorts in a knot when folks start telling me how much better off I am today when you  consider the effects of inflation. It’s not, in my opinion, that the goods cost more (Inflation), it’s the fact that my dollar is worth less (Currency depreciation). Ah, that’s a whole ‘nother story.

I’m probably being unreasonable, but I tend to agree with Mark Twain. He said there were three types of lies; “Lies, damned lies and statistics!”

So, when it comes to comparing how well off I am today compared to how well off I was ten, twenty, thirty or even forty years ago; I think that simple statistical comparisons fall far short of the mark. Er, excuse me, Mark, I didn’t intend that as a pun.

I mean, I remember nickel candy bars, twelve cent-a-pack cigarettes and Saturdays when I would be hard pressed to spend a buck on movies, candy, ice cream sodas and hot dogs. That is, if I had a whole dollar to spend.

Anyway, here’s just one thing I had to say to the prof at UNC:

“The fallacy lies in statistical averaging. If I make $7.00 an hour and you make $21.00 an hour, we average $14.00 an hour each. And, by golly, gasoline at a dollar-forty-cents-a gallon only represents ten percent of our average hourly wage!

Factually, the cost of a gallon of gas represents 20% of my wage rate and only 6.66% of yours! For the wage earner making less then $7.00 an hour, the cost-per-gallon of gasoline is, when measured against their wage rate, even higher — and more onerous.”

Fast forward to 2012!

Last night, I heard on the news that gasoline “could” reach $4.50 a gallon by summer. Most folks seem to believe that we’re headed for $5.00 a gallon over the next several months, late this year or early next year.

One precept that I refuse to consider is that “in reality”, I’m in no worse shape regarding how much a gallon of gas cost today if I compare it, statistically, to the prices of 1955. 

Because I know this for a fact:

In 1955 I had my first “hourly” job and made sixty cents and hour. Cokes cost me a nickel each. That meant, to my way of thinking, that it took me five minutes of labor to earn a Coke. Today, if I were at an entry level job and making $7.45 an hour, and a 16 oz. bottle of Coke sells for $1.58 (Local WalMart pricing at check out) it will take me about 12.65 minutes to earn a Coke.

That means, at least the way I see it, that at an entry level job today earning over ten times what I earned per hour in 1955, it will take me more then 12 minutes of work to earn enough to buy what I could have bought in 1955 for only five minutes work!

Even if you consider that the Coke in 1955 was in an 8 oz. bottle and today’s Coke comes in a 16.oz bottle, I would still have to work six minutes today to earn a coke. That, I believe, is called wage compression. It means that I’m making more but it’s buying me less. Those are statistics that I understand.

In ’55 Pepsi came in a 12 oz. bottle for a nickel. That makes today’s Pepsi an even worse buy then a Coke!

In the final analysis,  here’s the way I see it. We’re getting slammed everyday with higher fuel prices, which, in turn, cause our tacos, Big Macs, Whoppers and peanut butter cost more because it costs more to deliver those things to the stores where we buy them. Even Coke and Pepsi.

About twenty years ago, I wrote the following article for The Hednerson Daily Dispatch.

Recently on one Face Book, a group of locksmith friends began discussing “clients” that had old, locked, safes that they needed open and were sure there was treasure maps, forgotten money or valuable manuscripts inside and wanted the locksmith to open that safe for a share of the treasure that was hidden inside.

Like many of my locksmith friends, I have been approached by folks that have bought safes at auctions, or found a safe in Grandpa’s basement and suddenly dreams of lost fortunes dance through their heads…

Alth9ugh there really have been treasures found in old safes, the chances of stumbling across one is, in my opinion, about the same as winning  big money in the state lottery…

So, I thought my readers and locksmith friends might enjoy the following:

Buying An Old Safe May Lock Up Unforeseen Costs

By Jake Jakubuwski

 Copyright, 1992 – 2012

            I imagine that on the average, I get at least one call a month from folks that are either buying or have bought “a really old safe.”  They want to know what I will charge them to get the safe open or find the combination.  When I quote our minimum price for opening a locked safe, the next statement is generally, “Gee, I only paid “x” number of dollars for it, and the fellow who sold It to me said any locksmith could open it for a few bucks.”

            The seller was good.  He sold the buyer a big box that no one has a key to.  A basically useless, big, heavy, securely locked old steel box because:  it is unopenable (without ruining it) by an unskilled person.

            The buyer, either because he really needs a safe, or thinks that after it is “restored,” that old steel box will be a valuable antique, purchases it.  Then, after much strain, aggravation, two out of six friends with a strained back, one pickup truck with a busted spring, and a chunk of concrete knocked out of his driveway, he finally get the safe into his basement or garage.  Then he calls a locksmith and finds out, that depending on what is required to open it, the price for opening it can run into serious bucks.

            Why does it cost so much to open a locked safe?  After all, we have all watched TV and seen how easily the good guys, and bad alike, can open them.  They put their ear against the door, turn the dial, listen to “the tumblers fall” (actually, there are no “tumblers” in a safes’ combination lock), turn the handle, and it is open.  Two, three minutes…tops.  I hate to disillusion everyone, but it just doesn’t work that way!

         The reason it costs so much to open a locked safe, without ruining it, is that it takes a great deal of knowledge, training, effort, proper equipment, skill, concentration and a smidgin of luck to open one…period!

            Consider this:  the average safe has three wheels, with 100 numbers on each wheel.  Theoretically, that lock has 1 million possible combinations (that’s 100 to the third power!).  Realistically, because various characteristics of a combination lock “forbid” using certain combinations, the actual number is considerably less…only 700,000 or so.  It is from these 700,000 possibilities that our safe buyer wants me to find the combination to his safe!  By no means impossible…just difficult and time consuming, provided…

            The combination lock on this old safe is functioning properly, and that the bolt work has not frozen up from disuse, and the relockers (security devices to thwart burglars, found on many safes) have not been activated by all the moving, thumping, and dropping onto concrete driveways!  If everything is within “normal” parameters, and I’m having a pretty good day, I can probably open the safe within an hour or two, without drilling, banging, burning or chiseling.

            If all is not well within the confines of that big, heavy, securely locked, old steel box, I’ll have to resort to “methods of penetration” , i.e., drilling, etc.  Then comes the repairs (always needed after drilling), and possibly a new lock, dial and dial ring.  All of which add to the cost of the opening.

             If you’re planning on buying an old safe, whether you need it to store documents in, or keep valuables in, or you just want to “restore” it for its antique value, make sure you buy one that has a known combination, or is open.  Otherwise, that big, heavy, securely locked, old steel box, might be better used as a boat anchor…provided you have a big enough boat and your friends are willing to help you move that monster again!

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SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL OF MY LOCKSMITH FRIENDS

As of February 20, 20012 PURE JAKE BOOKS & VIDEOS are available through the ALOA (Associated Locksmiths of America) Book store. If you are a member, visit www.aloa.org for some great buys on eBooks, videos and PowerPoint presentations

ALSO: ClearStar Security Network (CSN) www.clearstar.com has become a PURE JAKE BOOKS & VIDEO affiliate and is offering my books and stuff (In instantly downloadable files) for sale to CSN members.

Many thanks to ALOA and CSN for their participation and support.  By the way: both organizations are members only, secured sites.