The $1,000 per hour consultant.

There seems to be a major shortage of consultants who can design accessible hotel rooms and bathrooms that are actually usable.

All of the incompetents currently practicing are, I believe, paid $1,000 per hour for their work which, having memorized the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), they claim to deserve. None of them, however, has ever met a disabled person. The result, in far too many places - including all of the three hotels in which your correspondent has stayed this week, is that the so-called accessible rooms and bathrooms are really hard to get around in.

One example (two of the three hotels) relates to the roll in showers where the seat is at one end of the enclosure and the shower head and faucet (taps) are five feet away at the other end. Is it not obvious that such a separation of guest and shower head is well beyond the reach of any normal person who needs to sit while taking a shower? Then there are shower curtains which fail to prevent massive floods in the rest of the bathroom, bedside lights that cannot be reached by a person sitting in a wheelchair and a myriad of other minor, and not so minor, nuisances.

Every hotel General Manager should immediately telephone the local chapter of the Disabled American Veterans and say this: "if you send me three of your members - one a wheelchair user, one with balance issues who uses a walker, and the other one a leg amputee - I will buy them lunch at the best restaurant in town. In exchange, I would like them to inspect all of our wheelchair accessible rooms and bathrooms and tell us how to make them as easy to use as possible and not just ADA compliant."

That will be the cheapest and most effective consulting any hotel will ever receive. It will likely make the world a significantly better place and, with luck, we will see some of the $1,000 an hour consultants standing in the unemployment line where they belong.

Investing - the eight Bs

Very few miners made significant fortunes during a gold rush. The people who really made money were the suppliers of services and equipment. In the 19th century, some of the most profitable investments were in bullets, booze, brothels, buckets, barrows, burros, bacon and beans.

So, consider the merits of backing suppliers of components and infrastructure, rather than the companies in the headlines, as a key part of an investing philosophy.

Some Thoughts About the Presidential Election

In the interests of full disclosure, your correspondent admits to having voted for Governor Romney but only as the lesser (just) of two evils.

Here are a few thoughts now that the dust has settled a bit.

President Obama's performance over the past nearly four years was such that he should have been fired for incompetence and gross lack of leadership skills. A contest that any sensible and competent Republican should have won, in a canter, was lost.The only merit in President Obama's re-election is that we can be sure that he will be gone in four years.

It would also have been useful if Governor Romney had refrained from idiotic right wing(nut) remarks that merely demonstrated the ability of an American Upper Class Twit and Poor Little Rich Kid to look down his nose at the lower orders.

Your correspondent considered several of them to be personal insults and does not believe that he is alone in holding an opinion.

Notwithstanding that his wife has a seriously disabling disease (and let us all hope that it will not progress or will progress only very slowly) Governor Romney's condescending attitude towards people with disabilities was appalling. To speak of a quadriplegic as a successful entrepreneur BEFORE he became disabled misses the point. Your correspondent knows many quadriplegics who became, or continued to be, successful after their injuries: a former VP at Goldman Sachs and now sailing entrepreneur, a radiologist, a Professor of English and award winning screenwriter being only three examples.

Then there was the infamous 47% video. In 2011, your correspondent missed being a member of that group by a trivial sum but still paid thousands in payroll taxes. Further, as an International Judge for sailboat racing, your correspondent is on the same rung of the sports officiating ladder as, for example, a Major League Baseball Umpire: qualified to work a World Championship or even the Olympics. The main difference is that they get paid - a lot - and sailing judges do not even though value is surely added. Had your correspondent been paid for the forty four full days and twenty seven  half days devoted to that task in 2011 - even at a tenth of the rate paid to baseball umpires - his tax bill would have been quite significant.

There are many people in this country who work hard and add value but do not get paid: many of them are just called volunteers, others are homemakers. Republicans need to understand that not all problems can, or should, be solved by the application of cash.

Then there was the Republican attack on immigrants in which Governor Romney joined enthusiastically. Your correspondent is an immigrant (now a citizen) and proud of it. The corruption of language among Republicans is such that the term 'illegal' is now automatically implied - which is grossly insulting - when the word 'immigrant' is spoken. Where is the Republican Party's understanding of our heritage as a nation of immigrants?

Then there was his lack of trust in the American people. Admittedly the Democrats would have attacked him viciously for the content of the tax returns that he refused to release but the slow drip, drip, drip of distrust that this secrecy engendered can not have helped his campaign. Finally, to say "I have a plan to create jobs, fix the economy etc. etc." without specifics or even a decent road map is tantamount to the mantra of a con man. 'Trust me, trust me. trust me' only arouses suspicion in those of us who are paying attention.

Your correspondent is suffering from nostalgia for the 'Big Tent' Republican Party and Barry Goldwater (who likely could not win the Republican Party nomination in this day and age) whose fundamental philosophy was fiscal conservatism, strong defense and social tolerance.

Of course, nostalgia is one thing but there is no going back. Our memories are unreliable and honesty demands that we admit that things never actually were the way we think they used to be. Your correspondent merely hopes that the leaders of the Republican Party will think deeply about the good of the country rather than the blind pursuit of political power.

Are you listening Senator McConnell and Representative Boehner?

American Socialism (8)

A common characteristic of all market economies is that scarce products and services can best be rationed by means of price. Students who attend Economics 101 will learn that concept in an early discussion of supply and demand. In socialist economies, by contrast, rationing is achieved by coupon books and by waiting in long lines.

What, then, to make of the long lines to buy currently scarce gasoline in New York and New Jersey?

The United States prides itself on being a market economy but as soon as there is a shortage, then the shouts of 'profiteering' and 'price gouging', sometimes supported by state and local laws, become overwhelming. The result is the same as in a socialist economy: long lines and miserably poor allocation of scarce resources.

Should not the market not be permitted to work? Those who really need - not just want - gasoline might consider $10.00 (or more) to be a reasonable price for a gallon and would find it easily available while those who merely want gasoline, or consider such a price to be too high, can wait until the buying panic is over.

But what about the poor people? Since, at least in this situation, they could have planned ahead and bought gasoline (at its more or less normal price) before the storm, your correspondent has little sympathy for them.

There is such a thing as individual responsibility. Socialism, however, with all of its ugly consequences, seems to be the regrettable solution for those to whom such a virtue is little known.