Catskills - Sullivan County - Ulster County Real Estate -- Catskill Farms Journal

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No matter how many times you say it, to yourself or outloud, 2020 has been a crazy year.   Thanksgiving was spent on Zoom, with my 76 year old mother on the 3rd week after testing positive for covid.  She's fine, thank god.  But a week later, pre-symptomatic, she would have infected the whole family who was set to arrive for Thanksgiving Dinner -'whole' family much reduced since a bunch of us weren't coming due to virus best practices.

I do a family Shutterfly calendar each year and typically because of the sports and the get-togethers and the travel and the fun times, there are far too many pics for the allotted 12 months of picture slots.  Not this year - if there is one true measure of what a 'stay at home' year looks like, it's the lack of pictures I've taken.  How many pics can you take of your son gaming, or your dog looking cute lying on her back with her legs pointing skyward.

We remain busy, which sheds off some survivor's guilt, because me and my team are prospering.  But that type of over-self analysis is boring and as indulgent as feeling guilty in the first place since my company being busy has such an intense and wide-ranging economic impact on a huge number of families, that to assume the guilt as singularly, is silly and self-absorbed.  Catskill Farms dumps $1.5m a month into someone's pocketbooks and wallets, and that impact creates ripples and waves of ancillary impacts in community spending, retirements, consumption, but most of all - it creates economically stable families who can engage in predictable planning near-term and long-term  - benefiting communities - be it social, economic, health or spiritual. $1.5m a month rivals most SuCo town's annual budgets.

I'm without a doubt a free-market believer - not in the pure Ayn Rand where all gov't is bad, but I do believe without hesitation that I make good decisions more than bad, that I can navigate the micro-market I work in better than anyone for the benefit of more, that I reinvest my profits back into the community and people I work with, and that a lot of gov't rules that create the box from within I work are good.

I believe in gov't assisted healthcare - mostly because I see how destabilizing lack of healthcare is for families.  We just had a guy with a serious member of his family ill, and he was able to take off with pay for 3 months (and his wife under a separate program) to care for this family member, rather than having to make a choice of bankruptcy or caring for the family member.  That was a big deal, that none of us had ever even considered before when complaining about NY taxes, or Obamacare.  This was life saving for 7 people.

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The idea that small business people reject any form of higher taxes when in the public good, especially when you can see the diret impact on persons you work with, underestimates the caring many employers have for their employees, and the intelligence and realism good managers use when deciding what is good and bad for them ('them' always defined as the whole corporate family, not the owner individually.

Near the year end, when tax planning is crystalized before Dec 31, charitable giving becomes front of mind.  And sometimes I look at my percentage of income given, and it seems paltry, but then I step back and have to acknowledge I give everyday, every week, to my employees, my vendors, my extended family - just giving everyone off Thursday and Friday costs $7000 not including the opportunity costs of not getting anything done, the illness in a team member's family was truly expensive indirectly - healthcare, 401k, time off, bonuses - all definitely not 'charity', but definitely an allocation of profits to others other than oneself.

So on this Thanksgiving, we feel blessed - as individuals, as an owner of a company, as a family - for the bounty of harvest and health we have here in 2020, even if we have to measure it a bit irregularly.

I'm a team guy.  I create teams, scout teams, mentor teams, respect teams, learn from teams.  Value teams.   Clearly, anyone who achieves anything of any size has an appreciation of teams.

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I work daily with teams that work well, teams that are inefficient, teams that are unselfish, teams that execute well, teams that don't.  Just like I'm in this weird place politically where everyday I interact intensely from a broad selection of persons from all over the political spectrum, I also am at the center of literally hundreds of teams, and their individual players.

I mention it because, like all human nature, I tend to dwell on the shitty teams that give me heartburn, and overlook the dozens who kill it each and every day.  I don't really overlook them, but if something is going well, and time and attention is scare, you aren't going to go around fluffing all the teams that are performing well - you spend your time coaching, cajoling, convincing the teams that are underperforming, urging them to the goal-line.

Perspective is everything - you keep in the mind the many things that are going well, as you work through the ones that aren't - that really is the healthiest and most fun way to get along in business (and life).

We had the honor and pleasure of selling on of our new farmhouses today, a 3 bedroom 1.5 bath marvel, with a finished well-lit basement that added another 600 sq ft, and a bathroom.

The home sits on 4+ acres, and has plenty of porch and deck to enjoy.  We started this home as a spec home, meaning without a prearranged buyer - a type of 'if we build it, they will come' sort of thing.  Come they did, and the young couple who purchased it should be pretty comfy in their snazzy little home in Ulster County NY.  I mean, these homes are really neat, and you don't have to take my word for it since one could say I'm biased - the marketplace over and over says it when they come back onto the market - they sell quick, they sell for good money.  Over and over.  The amount of money - realtors, homeowners, contractors, pool guys, gardeners, landscapers, tax collectors - is really unfathomable in its immenseness.  

I think my friend Rob in one of my cottages call it the 'economic cross-multiplier' - which I'm sure is a common term for all you hoyti toyti business school grads (or actually grads that learned much in college) - but to me, it was a new phrase that encapsulated what I knew for a fact - that day to day, year to year, decade to decade - that the impact on the economic vibrancy of these towns we work in is, frankly, gigantic.

Congrats to the new owners.  Welcome to the 'hood.  Sold for the mid $500's, all in, including land, permitting, house construction and basement buildout.

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Let me get this argument straight for my own benefit.  The same vote that saw the Democrats get smashed country-wide in the House, and gain little in the Senate, and sustained many State and Local Republicans, that same vote, that same ballot, for the President was somehow fraudulently cast?  Is that the gist of the argument?   Seems weak and non-sensical, and logistically hard to pull off.

But the close races - jeez - Arizona by 10,000 (maybe Trump shouldn't have attacked John McCain), Georgia by 15,000 (maybe Trump shouldn't toned down his racist leanings), Wisconsin, PA.  While the overall popular vote was pretty large in Biden's favor, the State's that 'matter' weren't, other than Michigan.

It's a shame this criminal Trump can't celebrate the awesome feat of American Democracy, where 150,000,000 million people voted, and the voted smoothly and waited in lines for hours, and braved a pandemic, and participated in the process by volunteering - on both sides.

Although polling is being disparaged right now, It's actually fascinating to look back on how much good information these candidates had.  Trump knew mail-in ballots would raise turnout and that was bad for him (hence post office and legal shenanigans), Biden knew the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconson and Minnesota were critical to his success and also knew Georgia was more likely than Florida.  Trump knew it was going to be close, and that the counts would take time, and that would be the period he could sow chaos - so he and his minions prevailed on Republican controlled state legislators in PA and others NOT to change their laws and start counting mail-in ballots early.  It's just amazing how these campaigns - Trumps especially - were gaming this out, saw the writing on the walls (suburban women), and used all their levers of power to disrupt it.  I mean, who messes with the Post Office?  Who actually knew the Post Office could be messed with?  There's a genius in that, but nothing to be respected or taught to our children.

It's ridiculous the way some on the right are claiming 'victimhood'.  Let's add this up - you have $1,000,000,000 war chest, you have the power of the incumbency which can't be overstated, you have right-wing radio more or less an arm of your campaign, you have Fox News and their commentators, you have all the levers of power to mess with the institutions that keep things straight, you have the bully pulpit and earned media (unpaid news coverage) from your daily press conferences, you have gigantic rallies, you have a motivated electorate, you have a large segment of first time voters coming out, you turn out the vote, and you still lose, and it's the other sides fault because it's rigged?

Because the polls were off.  Because the lamestream media didn't give you credit for anything (here's a tip - people you punch in the nose everyday aren't going to be friendly).  How sad.  It's very clear Trump turned off a fair amount of decent people who couldn't deal with his daily antics and insults, were embarrassed for their children, were tired of Trump being part of their daily lives with his tweets and fights.  Although good article in Today's Post about how White Evangelical Christians played a disproportionate part in his turnout - which is gross, since he is clearly the least Christian man who has held that office.

I'm looking forward to Boring Biden, who respects policy, surrounds himself with experts, and puts our Country's needs before his needs.  Mostly, I look forward to people like my mom, and there are millions of them, who aren't stressed each and everyday by the unacceptable behavior of their President, and allowing them to return to their lives, to live unburdened by the need to defend or attack on a daily basis behavior they would never accept from a teacher, a friend, a coach or a man of the cloth.

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