Employees of a Newark-based factory are working 60-hour weeks to fill backorders of a viral camouflage hat sold by campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris…
— from a story by journalist Jackie Roman on NJ.com, September 4, 2024.
A camouflage hat embroidered with orange ‘Harris-Walz’ lettering goes for $40 on the official Harris-Walz website, and is apparently back-ordered through October 14, with a limit of one per customer.
The company producing the hats, New-Jersey-based ‘Unionwear’, normally makes about 3,000 politically-oriented hats per day. They had orders for more than 100,000 Harris-Walz hats as of early September.
But other hat companies have jumped onboard to help fill the demand.
The Harris-Walz hat, seemingly inspired by pop singer Chappell Roan’s camo-with-orange-text “Midwest Princess” hats, reached nearly $1 million in sales in the first 24 hours.
The baseball caps were dubbed “midwest glam” by Yahoo Finance, and have been written about in fashion publications including Vogue, Women’s Wear Daily, and Vanity Fair.
Here in Colorado — which has its own versions of “glam” — big game hunting season has officially started, with archery season kicking off on September 2, running through September 30.
And:
- Muzzleloader season: September 14-22
- Rifle season: October 12-16 and again October 26-November 3
- November 9-15, November 20-24
Non-hunters can still engage in their favorite outdoor activities, at their own risk, knowing that hunters will be out and about. One good precaution: be aware of which weapons are being used and when… and understand that camouflage clothing might not the best choice, even if it’s labeled with ‘Harris-Walz’.
Maybe especially if it’s labeled with ‘Harris-Walz’.
I’m not a hunter, myself, although I appreciate wild-harvested meat as being superior in nutrition to feed-lot beef.
But this season is, for me, more focused on hunting down government budgets.
That’s why I appreciated some of the comments offered by commentator Michel Durand-Wood on the StrongTowns.org website on September 16, titled “Winning a Budget Award Doesn’t Mean Your City Is Doing Well Financially”. Mr. Durand-Wood lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and his article includes these comments:
The ways our city is failing us is a list that just seems to keep growing… Faced with a laundry list of things to address, the enormity of the challenge before us is imposing. It’s overwhelming. It’s hard to know where to begin.
He offers a list of the ways Winnipeg is failing its taxpayers and residents, some of which will feel familiar to those of us living in Pagosa Springs. Although the City of Winnipeg has won awards for its budget documents, he notes, the awards — given by accounting organizations — celebrate the fact that all the required information is included in the documents… but do not address whether the documents can be understood by an ordinary taxpayer.
His article concludes like this:
Unfortunately, we’ve had to fly blind with respect to our city’s financial condition, which has been bad and getting worse for a long time. But the information is all there to show it, and we have the awards to prove it.
We just need to learn how to read it. Because it’s not theoretical — we’ll be living with the consequences for the rest of our lives.
P.S. If you’re interested, I’m giving a webinar with Strong Towns’ Chuck Marohn as part of their Local-Motive series. It’s on September 19 at noon CDT, titled “Parsing Through Your Local Budget to Find Some Real Answers.” I promise it’ll be more fun than it sounds. If you can’t make it to the live webinar, you can still register and access the recording afterward.
Here in Archuleta County, we have a number of government districts that approve their annual budgets in November or December. These budgets define, in a very real sense, which problems will be addressed in 2025, and which will not.
Will our locate taxing entities tackle the needs of the local residents? Or will their efforts be aimed mainly at visiting tourists and second-home owners?
Our government entities must publish a preliminary budget by October 15, to allow the taxpayers time to study and understand the budget in preparation for legally-required public hearings, typically held in November. Given that the annual budget may be the most important document any government publishes, it’s surprising to me how few people show up at the budget hearing.
Except, it’s not really surprising… because the budget documents can be nearly impossible for the average person to understand.
My favorite budget document in recent years has been produced by the finance department at Town Hall. It has regularly included, in addition to the budget details, more than 60 pages of explanations and graphs that help a non-accountant like myself get a handle on the coming year’s spending at the Town.
Archuleta County used to publish a similarly informative budget document, but stopped doing so, several years ago. As a result, the budget provided to the public is quite difficult to understand. The required information is there, but it’s no longer presented in a user-friendly format.
My main concern about the budget presentations — by all our government entities — relates to transparency. Showing the public 60 pages of budget numbers is not the same thing as providing the public with 60 pages of clear explanations.
And if the public can’t understand the budget, then I’m willing to bet money — my own money — that the Board of County Commissioners can’t fully understand it either.
I attended more than one government meeting yesterday at the Archuleta County administration office. The BOCC held a work session at 8:30am, and then held their regular business meeting at 1:30pm. The Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board met there at 4:00pm, and finally, the Pagosa Springs Town Council and the BOCC met for a joint meeting at 5:30pm.
All of the meetings were reasonably well attended by members of the public.
The fact that we are now in budget season seemed to lingering in the background.
Read Part Two, tomorrow…
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.