Secretary Hillary

I've been busy so I don't have much time, but I wanted to say how disappointed I am with Obama's choice for Secretary of State. Doesn't he realize how many of the Obama votes were anti-Hillary votes. He operates best by divorcing himself of the past partisan legacy, yet has just put Clinton on his cabinet. Feels a lot like treason and a lot less like change.

A.C.O.R.N. and the appearance of impropriety

Lots of stupid in politics these days with less than a week until voting day, so of course, I have little time to write.

A.C.O.R.N., hereinafter ACORN, has been in the news lately because the RNC is accusing them of voter fraud. NPR had a guy on yesterday who was saying how that wasn't the issue because numerous studies have found that the ACORN type voter frauds were done for financial gain by workers who get paid per registration and that there is no evidence that any of these fake registrations voted. With respect to the credentials of NPR's expert, that is not the issue.

In law, we have a concept in our ethics rules called the "appearance of impropriety" which is a fancy way of saying that something looks like it might be fishy. We shall not undertake an action which has the appearance of impropriety, even if we are not actually doing anything wrong. We do this because the appearance casts suspicion on a process which must, ideally, be above such suspicions. Our courts work because most people believe they are generally fair, and we will go long strides to prevent anyone from being able to make an accusation, even if it turns out to be unfounded. Without faith, the system collapses because people will not turn to the courts for justice, they will take matters into their own hands.

The same applies to the American Republic. Generally Americans accept the result of election because we believe that with a handful of exceptions, they are generally fairly implemented. I know there are people out there who disagree, but I rather suspect that few of them who have lived in Third World (or even Second World) dictatorships where elections are rigged. It's all relative is the point. However, the majority of Americans have faith in our electoral process which is why it works. That faith legitimizes the results.

ACORN's admitted voter fraud instances undermine that faith and THAT is the problem. If we know we have fraudulent registrations, then even if we are being assured those people never vote, we all know they might vote or could vote. Just because someone is not caught, does not mean it doesn't happen. And that makes the results of elections suspect.

Consider it like keeping your cash in a bank vault. You find out that the bank is being routinely broken into every night. The bankers assure you that all the burglars are taking is jewelry, not cash. How much better do you feel? Probably not much. You'd probably get a new bank.

This is why the voter fraud in ACORN is a serious matter and not something to be dismissed as minor or unrelated to false votes. It undermines the entire process.

Then politics rears its ugly head. Dems want to keep ACORN because they know it does more to help than hurt them. Reps are the opposite for the same reason. This becomes a partisan fight which only enhances the appearance of impropriety and further weakens the faith in the system.

My Opinion: ACORN needs to be shut down and all it's voter registrations ejected. If the Dems want, they can allocate personnel and resources to going through the rejected registrations and verifying the legitimate ones. The Reps can as well. But the system and the public faith in it must be protected first.

Defeat of the Bailout Bill

I can't help but wonder if yesterday's defeat of the Bailout Bill isn't the equivolent of the passengers on the Titanic refusing to help an unpopular captain steer the ship and then saying, "Serves him right, now he'll sink," when he hit an iceburg.

You can't lose

NPR ran a story this morning on how much collecting tractors has been gaining a following in both Europe and here. Apparently, tractor prices are jumping at a rate of about 100% a year.

They talked to one gentleman who has been collecting tractors for about 5 years now. According to him, it is his "retirement plan" and "you can't lose."

Anyone remember when the only risk in the stock market was not being in it? Anyone remember when you couldn't lose by investing in real estate? When was the last time you saw something increasing in price by doubling every year and it wasn't a bubble?

Anyone think this guy will need a bailout eventually?

Market Meltdown

All that seemed to be on NPR today was discussion about the status of the markets and as they talked I had a lot of comments. Some of which I remember now, hours later.

Everyone is busy decrying the "greed" of Wall Street by which they mean corporate America. Hypocritical. Now that "we" are in this mess because of "them," we get mad at them, and in the rush of emotion, fear, and panic, you hear all kinds of crazy things. One listener posited that "we" should send them to "jail" for what they have done "to us." Another suggested that the government, giant wet-nurse to the nation, should step in an allow bankruptcy judges to unilaterally change the mortgages and loan notes. But here is the thing, or at least the first thing: The "we" that got us into this mess is the same "we" who wants to blame the faceless "thems" and send them to jail. For the big banks and big insurance companies to have gotten into all this trouble with their mortgages, they had to lend the money to someone. That someone came to them wanting a loan and was delighted to get a loan. That someone wanted the loan, in many cases, to pay for something that has subsequently turned out to have been a poor purchase decision. That someone would have been very angry had they been turned down for a loan because the bank thought the house was worth far less than a "certified" appraiser. "We" wouldn't be in this mess without the "someones" I described who are, wait for it, the same main-street middle Americans who are outraged and calling for the heads of the captains of Wall Street. If "we" want the culprit, "we" need to look in the mirror.

I don't hold Wall Street blameless either, but I certainly understand a captain of business following what works. More accurately perhaps, I'm not going to force him to choose between a decade of what would have been dismal performance for his company by making sound decisions and dismal decisions in order to keep his job. Make no mistake, had any of these "thems" done what we are now telling them they should have done, their stockholders (including the "we") would have forced them to resign because their profits were so low. The short-term now-now-now demands of the American Public set all of this up. The greed and short-sightedness of the public made this disaster a disaster, and our lack of patients and unwillingness to sleep in the bed we made are going to make it worse.

There is a song refrain that says, "I want it all. I want it all. And I want it now" or something like that and that encapsulates the American Public, especially the baby boomers (who might be the most me oriented generation ever). The public wanted their parent's standard of living (attained over their parents' lifetime) immediately. They wanted stock to go up fast and rewarded short term performance. Worse, they punished poor short term performance which, as mentioned causes fund managers to either focus on the short term exclusively or to get a new job. They wanted new TVs, new computers, new cars, new ipods, bigger houses, all right now. Borrow all you need up front and then pay it off over a lifetime instead of save it over a lifetime and only get the STUFF at the end. What did that do? Well, the first thing that happened is huge credit card debt -- buy now, pay later. Better yet buy now, pay a little later so you can buy more then too. Hey, look you can borrow against your house like a giant credit card for those really big purchases (or to pay OFF your credit card giving you more credit there). This rush of buying was akin to a sprint only no one saw it. Of course, if everyone bought everything they'd ever need in the next year, then we'd have a bunch of activity for a year and then a sudden drop off. Worse, that drop off would then cause lay offs at exactly the time when everyone is trying to pay for everything. We created an economy that is driven by these credit transactions and when there was not enough money in the system to keep things going "at pace" the "we" borrowed it just like a sprinter injecting steroids. Like that sprinter, we could not keep up the pace forever and eventually, something broke. That's the problem with momentum economics.

Also when everyone is buying something,it increases demand which, in turn, increases price. Prices go up until suddenly demand drops and then prices fall. The guy who buys an item at the top, now loses all that value and says he loses money. It's more accurate to say he lost illusory value for which he paid "real" money. Of course, if the seller of that item turned around and sunk that money into something that also lost value, then it's almost like losing illusory money as well.

That brings me back to greed. Readers may recall a previous blog entry about people who were just voluntarily walking away from their mortgages because they still owed more than the property was worth. When people do that, it furthers all that bad debt, corporate collapse, and recession we keep hearing about. Additionally, one of those default credit swaps (insurance policies on mortgages) has to then be paid which is yet another blow against AIG and others. The irony is that these same people who are walking away from their signed word (the note and mortgage), are the same ones who are blaming the greed of Wall Street. If what the bankers did is "criminal" "bank fraud" then I think walking away from a mortgage you could pay if you chose is equally bank fraud.

We also have to ask ourselves what sort of society we are creating. More and more I see a no-fault society where we, be it big brother or whoever, moves in to save everyone from their own mistakes. Bad investment? We make it good. Lost your job? We make it good. It's all about shifting responsibility. It's all about not feeling like what just happened to you is not your fault; that someone should have prevented it. That someone is never the victim because, to us, the word victim implies guiltlessness. It's all the bank's fault because they should have known not to lend money to me when I asked for it by filling in fraudulent information on my loan application. Shame on them.

I note that I've heard a lot of criticism of the "free marketers." They are getting blamed for this mess but they caused "deregulation" which everyone now knows is synonymous with "greed" and "irresponsibility." The thing I'm noting thought is that this is not a test of deregulation and free market economics because you aren't allowing half of that approach to operate. In a free market, you pays your money and you takes you chances. If you do well, you do really well and reap a windfall. If you screw up, you reap the whirlwind and get hammered by the free market. It is the latter part our society is now predisposed to prevent and THAT throws the whole thing off balance. The good must balance the bad and the goods of a free market are all huge, BUT SO ARE THE BADS. The true free marketers are the ones saying that we should not rescue AIG or Fannie and Freddie; that it's now time to take our medicine no matter how bad it tastes. Fair weather free market doesn't work.

Now lest you think I am a total free marketer, I have to say I'm not sure that I am. The free market is essentially a Darwinian system and, in evolution, extinction is the rule. The problem is that when you get something as major as AIG or Fannie and Freddie going extinct, it drags a lot down with it, often through fear and panic. The market is not called the thundering herd for nothing. When a company gets so big and affects things on a national or international scale, when the government "cannot allow it to fail," then it seems to me governance of that company almost becomes a position held in trust. We either have to treat large companies as trusts for the nation or we have to prevent them from becoming so large and influential that they need to be treated as trusts. I don't like those options; the capitalist in me is hiding his head. But the protection of the larger population means we need to make sure that the extinction of any given part cannot threaten the whole.

I heard this morning that the Dems want to do a couple of things: 1) Give bankruptcy judges the power to re-write mortgages and 2) change the executive compensation for companies that are being helped by Federal funds. I'll begin by saying that I agree 100% with the Dems that the government should allow itself to renegotiate its loans with the borrowers who are in default. I could not disagree more about the rest. We have something called freedom to contract which should govern the loans. If the gov wants to buy the loans and then renegotiate, that's fine, but it should HAVE to buy them. Deciding for the lender that it is better for the lender to renegotiate violates the freedom to contract. Worse though is stepping in and telling a company that it's pay structure for its executives is now something other than what it was. Again, this interferes with contract. It also provides a huge incentive for the executives of these companies to turn down aid. At the very least, the executive should have the immediate ability to quit under the terms of their old pay package before a new one is imposed. We also must consider that a lot of the so called golden parachutes are coupled with the exiting employee's obligations to keep information confidential.

International Talk like a Pirate Day

Today is apparently International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Think about pirates. Think about what they really did. Think about them raiding, killing, raping, and so forth. Then ask yourself if this is really something you think we should be honoring by emulating them?

I realize it's fun to talk like a pirate and that pirates have a certain glamor. The make good Halloween costumes and Kiera Knightley looks great as one, but this day makes little sense.

Georgia and the Sudetenland

I heard an interesting opinion on NPR this evening on the way home from work. The topic was the Georgian-Russian conflict that is going on as I speak. The expert, a history professor, was comparing the similarities between modern Russia and Germany between the world wars. Both nations, he argued, were feeling that they had fallen and needed to reassert their national greatness. Both nations want/ed to reestablish their "natural" territorial boundaries. The analogy was chilling. The expert went on to suggest that the unified West should stop Russian integration into the EU, punish the Russians by dissolving their special committees in the UN, and so forth.

And let us not forget the recent tendency of the Russian government to assassinate annoying ex-patriots in other sovereign countries.

If Russia is in the same position as Germany circa 1938, I don't know why this expert thinks any of the things he suggested will make a damn bit of difference. Does anyone think that canceling the Olympics in 1936 would have stopped Hitler's Germany from its aggressive course of action? This is a Neville Chamberlain tactic and it is doomed to the same results, again, assuming the analogy between Germany and Russia holds water. The ONLY thing that would have checked Germany would have been a military response by England, France, etc. When the "Allied" world did not respond militarily, then Hitler saw it as a lack of resolve and was encouraged to go further. Plugged back into Russia's invasion of Georgia, whatever pretense they are using be it a need for "living room" or because they are "obligated a peacekeepers" the implications of the 1938 example are staggering.

Of course this isn't 1938. While we are in a recession as we were in '38, many other things are different. For example, the U.S. military is currently deployed meaning it is busy and not able to respond if it wanted to (and don't think the Russians don't know it.) Also, The Russians have nuclear weapons and that is the most chilling aspect of all. Take a moment to think what would have happened during WWII if Hitler had had nuclear capability in 1938.

One thing is the same though. The thought of getting a unified anything from the West is just as absurd now as it was then. If 1938 is the truest analogy in history, then as in 1938, I am sure that, human nature being what it is, we will delay too long before acting.

4x100 Men's Relay

Congrats to the U.S. Men's 4x100 relay team. Last night was super exciting! Congrats also the the qualifying team that broke a record to get us to the finals; your work, although less glamorous than the photo finish of the final, was no less crucial. That footage is among the all time great Olympic moments.

Congrats also to Katie Hoff who took silver. We were cheering for you so hard. Your every bit as great as anyone on the U. S Swim Team. You rock!

Olympic mercenaries

Maybe I’m over-sensitive, but something I’ve seen in the Olympics really bothers me. I’m used to modern baseball, football, etc teams trading players. The NBA has players from all over the world. Yet, it really bothers me when Olympians, including coaches to some extent, immigrate to other countries for the sole purpose of having an easier road to the Olympics. I guess I think the Olympics are supposed to be different; that it is about representing your country instead of finding an international sponsor so you can get in. I think the Olympics are about each country sending its own, native grown, very best to the games instead of hiring mercenaries to do its athletics for it. There are exceptions, of course, like the now-German gymnast who moved to Germany to find leukemia treatments for her child, but they seem to be the exception, not the rule. Instead this seems like the Olympics are taking yet another step to make them indistinguishable from professional athletics with a four year championship.

SUVs vs Crossovers

Has anyone seen the Chevy advertisement where it starts out taking about how not all SUV’s have bad gas mileage and then goes on to talk about the new Chevy CROSSOVER? Maybe someone should tell GM that an SUV is is not the same thing as a Crossover. A Crossover is a car designed for the late 20’s person whose life style is crossing over (get it?) from single and fancy free to family. Its not as sporty as a sports car, but not as, well, family as a minivan or an SUV. Hence the name.

This is like talking about how not all oranges are equally hard to peel and then doing an ad for your new apple.

Baby-Boomers of their word

I saw this on the BBC yesterday. My response is not suitable for children.

I was a bit outraged. It’s one thing to default on a loan because you can’t pay it. It’s another to default on a loan because you made a bad choice. Then I realized which generation we were talking about: the I shouldn’t have to be responsible for anything generation, the ME generation, the I-deserve-to-be-rescued-from-my-own-stupidity folks. You buy a house at an over inflated price. In a market that had experts warning that real estate was over-valued. And suddenly you should be able to just walk away and stick it to the folks who gave you the loan to do it? Stick to the man right? Stick it to BigBank. Jokes on them, right? Oh and stick it to their share holders. And their account holders. And the folks who work there. And the tax payers who will have to fund the bail-out. To quote John Travolta in Broken Arrow, “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.” And after all, isn’t your asshole just that much more important than that of your fellow creatures? It’s great, you made a mistake and now you don’t have to live with it. It’s like getting into a car drunk, getting pulled over, and getting to blame the passenger for letting you drive.

Who selected the house, jack ass? You did. Who decided to buy it. You again, jack ass. And who should have to eat the consequences if the house falls in value?

Oh, it would have meant dipping into your retirement? Oh well you shouldn’t have to do that? Nope. Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness, and never having to dip into your retirement account are your rights as an American. Absolutely. Your retirement is much more important than the salary of the bank employee who gets laid off. Why? Obviously because its yours and they are just a faceless bank person. We all know how much more important YOU are.

You selfish turd.

Now, I don’t have any sympathy for BigBank who got itself over extended. I hate BigBanks with a passion, I really do. And they are taking it on the chin because they were stupid to lend money in the first place for property that wasn’t worth it. They should have had the expertise, but instead they had greed. And now they are getting bent over and I revel in it.

Right up to the point where you decide the financially best thing to do is walk away and stick it to them when you don’t have to. Thousands of Americans are honest-to-God worried about HOW they will afford their next house payment. People are being evicted who NEED their houses and who got suckered into bad loans because they were stupid, ignorant, or uninformed. But you are just gonna walk away, not because you have to, but because you don’t want to have to make that payment that you could make. And in doing that you will damage the economy and make it even worse for all the others who don’t have your ability to choose. Aren’t you just a saint?

So here’s what I hope. I hope you end up not able to find a new place to live, having cast away your last one. I hope you end up with nowhere to live. I hope you end up living in a cardboard box, and a leaky one at that. Of course, you would probably think that someone should rescue you from that particular bad decision too. After all, it wasn’t your fault was it?

Fat Chance

Learned something stupid on NPR today and I couldn’t wait to blog about it. It seems that the lovely city of Los Angeles noticed that they have the highest concentration of obese people in south LA as well as the highest concentration of fast food establishments in south LA. Realizing immediately the crisis this posed to their fair city where everyone must be California thin, they acted with dispatch and put a moratorium (ban) on constructing any new fast food places in that area.

1) That would be the government telling you that you can’t do something with your land which, IMHO is a “taking.” Further, it is discriminatory taking that violates principles of free trade since it isn’t against all restaurants, just those which are “fast food.” (Leave aside that the issue of determining which places are fast food and which are not is entirely subjective and that almost all fast food places offer a salad and all sit down places offer something high calorie and fattening.) This is like saying you can put in a Target store but not a Wal-Mart. This measure is illegal.

2) Some major assumptions about cause and effect seem to be in play here. The City Council assumes, or at least their remedy assumes, that the proliferation of “fast food” is what causes the obesity (and that obesity is bad and that they are obligated to clean it up). But what if the fast food has come to be where it is because that is where the obese people are? What if there is something in the life habits of the obese people that makes fast food more appetizing? If that’s the case, the proliferation of fast food is only a symptom and not a cause. Banning it simply means the obese people will have to travel further for it, and this in a city that already battles smog and pollution. Further, the ban hurts the economy and may cause a slight slow down in local construction.

3) The Council is apparently looking for a way to encourage non-fast food restaurants to move into the city and hopes that this moratorium will both give them time to think of a better way to fix the “problem” as well as allow non-fast food places to get established. The restaurant association points out that many people who patronize fast food do so because it is, theoretically, fast. This dovetails with the previous point, but if that is the case then there is no reason to think that by stopping the development of new fast food places, you will somehow get people to go to “slow food” places if they don’t have time. Maybe the reason that no sit-down places really existed in the area is because they can’t survive there. If that is the case, this measure only stops the development of vacant lots that would otherwise become something.

4) I think we also need to ask ourselves where this road is going. Here in Illinois we banned smoking in all public places and within 15 feet of the door to such a place. Of course it’s for our own good and we should trust in the legislature to know best what that is; after all we ordinary citizens aren’t really smart enough to do so. Now L.A. is passing laws to deal with obesity, for its citizen’s own good, etc. What’s next? Will we legislatively impose the food pyramid upon the population for its own good. Make it a misdemeanor to eat more than one candy bar in a week? Will we say you can’t eat a Big Mac in a public building? Maybe all food should be prepared by government chef’s using approved recipes constructed by expert nutritionists and served in city cafeterias?

Nope, not a fan of this. I think I’ll have Big Mac for lunch out of protest.

McCain vs McCane

Some have wondered why I seem to use both spellings for the current GOP contender. The answer is that I can never remember which one is correct and got tired of looking it up on CNN all the time. So I alternate or just pick one. I do try to be consistent within the same post. What can I say, I'm lazy.

Smoking -- What's the point

BACKGROUND: Illinois recently passed an anti-smoking law that prohibits smoking within public buildings or 15 feet of the door to a public building.

At the courthouse today, I was walking along and I noticed a new sign painted on the door, “Smoking prohibited within 15 feet of this point.” For some reason, I started thinking which is always a bad thing when confronted with public notices. Back in the day, I took a geometry class and was actually not too bad at it which is why I have an issue with this sign. The door in question was a double door so call it a 6 foot by 8 foot rectangle.

Query: What exactly is the “point” from which I should measure to make sure I am in conformity with the notice?

See, that door is a geometric plane with an infinite number of points (and that’s not even allowing for the opening of the door which creates an infinite number of planes, each with an infinite number of points). When you label a plane with a sign referring to this point, suddenly your sign becomes meaningless. Which point exactly do you mean? Further, for any point you pick within the plane, I can find another point somewhere in space which is more than 15 feet from your point but still within 15 feet of a point in the door’s rectangle.

Why oh why didn’t whoever painted the sign simply say, “No smoking within 15 feet of the DOOR?”

Tax experts

NPR had a tax specialist on Fresh Air yesterday to give us the “truth” about McCane and Omaba’s tax proposals. I had several problems with his expertise: 1) He kept using the words “bigger/smaller” and “more/less” without explaining if he meant a raw figure or a percentage. Ex: McCane’s proposal would result in bigger tax savings for the upper income bracket. Does he mean they would save more in absolute terms or that they would be able to save a bigger percentage? 2) He frequently referred to low, middle, and upper incomes without telling us where he made the demarcation. Is $50,000.00 annually low, middle, or upper? Where is 30K? etc. 3) He was rather blasé about estate taxes claiming that the dead don’t need their money any longer. This would be a fine argument IF all we are talking about taking was the liquid assets of the deceased. However consider the following: Family farm of 1000 acres in the bottom land near Labadie, Missouri; been in the family 150 years; currently owned by little old widow who share crops it, land in Labadie is on the very boarder of suburban St. Louis and has shot up in assessed valuation because it is now prime subdivision land. Little old widow dies and the land becomes her estate, administered by her farmer son. They are farmers and don’t have a lot of liquidity, either in the son or the estate, however the value of the family farm’s LAND shoots the total estate value over into the millions of dollars, triggering estate tax; triggering a LOT of estate tax. The estate and the heirs of course don’t have the CASH needed to pay the tax because the value is all tied up in land. In fact the only way the tax can be paid is to literally sell the farm to generate the cash to pay the tax. Now tell me the little old widow wouldn’t have cared about that. Of course Captain Harvard the tax expert just skipped right over that.

Obam's "World Tour"

Anyone else wondering why Obama is campaigning to the German and French voters? Is this to make him look more like a world leader and more in tune with international affairs. Maybe he wants to say he ducked sniper fire too.

Hell the BBC even called it his "World Tour." Maybe they will soon have concert T-shirts. Black Plague World Tour. Genghis Khan World Tour. Obama World Tour.

Feminist credentials

NPR the other days was doing a story on Obama and McCane for some reason or another that I don’t remember and is not relevant to this discussion. What I want to mention is their tag line regarding Obama, that he had not yet established his feminist credentials with the Hillary supporters.

HIS WHAT?

Feminist credentials? Silly, me I wasn’t aware that that was even an issue in this Presidential election. I’ll be sure to run right out and add to my list of issues that determine how I vote, right along with the other issues of equal weight like Iraq, Iran, the Economy, Climate Change, and Education. Feminist credentials my ass. Anyone who will withhold their vote from Obama until he proves his “feminist credentials” deserves another 8 years of King George.

Mid-life crisis, anyone?

The reason I wrote the last entry was so this one had some context. I'm 36.5 years old which seems young for a mid-life crisis, yet the other day I saw something that gave piqued my interest. I subscribe to an Illinois State Bar Association newsletter which, among other things, clips "news items" of interest to lawyers. Included in that clipping one day about three weeks ago was this gem. And for some reason I read it and I went... I paused over it and thought that it looked interesting.

My dilemma anytime I think about career options is that I have this debt for law school among other things. I need my salary to pay it off. My family needs my salary to get by. I can't just take off for retraining whether it was in forestry or architecture or anything, because the world would fall in. I am trapped and I think it is slowly ruining my health. My blood pressure is up. I have ever worsening heartburn. I have trouble sleeping. I'm probably borderline depressed and I am tired all the time. And I'm just waiting for ulcers. Yet, I don't feel as if I have a choice, nor do I know what I really want to do "when I grow up."

There was a time when I was waiting forever for my Illinois license (which is a soap opera in and of itself) when I got a part time job counting trees. It was work for a forestry company who did inventory & analysis of urban tress for cities. It was January. It was cold. And it was wonderful. No arguments. No getting stressed out at opposing counsel. No explaining to clients that they couldn't have what they wanted. Just me and some trees.

And so I saw this thing and looked at it. Then I thought about it. Then I looked at it again. Then I googled online MLS programs. Printed off some stuff and sat down to read it. About this time I had a small "eureka" moment. I thought about what it would be like to not have to deal with the stress of opposing counsel, litigation, clients, etc., and I had this surge of raw emotion. I get it now even writing this. It is a profound sense of relief and of freedom. Of longing. I knew then: I hate my job.

Don't get me wrong, there are things I enjoy... I think. I enjoy researching an interesting legal issue. I enjoy winning cases or arguments. I enjoy writing what I think is a really good brief. when it's muggy and 90 degrees outside, I enjoy being indoors. I enjoy having a lot of control over my time off and schedule. And I like the people I work with. But over all, I think I hate my job.

So I went and found out some stuff about getting a Masters in Library and Information Science. Illinois has the top program in the nation and for me the tuition was in-state. The University of Washington has the top ranked Law Librarian program, but it is not available on-line. The programs at Pittsburgh and Drexel also looked good. (For those of you keeping score at home, remember one of my primary criteria is the ability to attend all or most of the classes on-line because I need my job.) Obviously, Illinois has to be on the short list, but, given all the above, is it the only item on the list? Most programs cost $32K and up, but I can attend Illinois for around $17K dues to in-state tuition. Both Pitt and Drexel would be in that 30K+ range. Of course tuition will go up and those numbers are based on current tuition rates. Add to this that per U.S. News, librarian is one of the top careers of 2008.

What does that mean? I'm afraid it means that getting into my own state's MLIS program will be double tough, because being #1 means they will get more applications AND being a top career means more people will apply. I don't know if having a JD or being a resident will help me. I'm wishing I had done better in law school or graduate school, but that's water under the bridge.

But here's the rub. I tried being a graduate student and abandoned it for being a lawyer. Now I'm sick of being a lawyer. Do I even know what I want to be? I don't want to drift through life from career to career as one of those people who can't stick with anything. It costs money to get a MLIS, money I'd have to borrow, and I am already in debt from law school and other things. Will be for about 30 years. Before adding more debt, I really ought to be sure, don't you think? But how can I?

Half of what I read on the MLIS pages from all the 56 schools that are ALA accredited to teach it, I am not sure how to translate. For example, "Informatics" is a buzz word in this profession that I'm still not sure I'm translating correctly. I'm not entirely sure what one does with an MLIS anyway beyond the ubiquitous "work in a library." (By the way, I've never worked in a library so add that to your mental list. Actually, in college I was on the committee that selected fiction books for our college library. I have to take some of that back.) From what I've read there is much more to the degree than shelving things. The I in MLIS includes how we store information, how we think about it, how we learn things, how you get information to those who need/want it, and so forth. The programs also include archiving (everything from rare books to government records), special collections, children's programs, and so forth. It includes WEB DESIGN and NETWORKING. When I first saw that first article, my thought was that researching was one of the parts of my job I still enjoyed, but this... this is so much more than researching. Will I like it? For another 17-40K, I'd better. Yes, I find myself gunshy.

Library and Information Science is a nexus between communication, computer science, and psychology. As an undergrad, I majored in communication and was one course shy of a major in computer science. Parts of LIS would seem to be right up my alley. My sister, who has known me all her life, thinks I'd be a good fit. She has an English Ph.D. from Illinois. My wife, who works in a library, hasn't said whether or not she thinks I'd be a good fit for the work, but she is interested herself.

Then there is the firm. They have been very good to me, really. Very good. Bob needs me. I don't want to feel like I have abandoned them and I don't want them to feel that way either. There is also my father who was so proud the day I graduated and the day I passed the bar. He's glad that I have "proven" I can stick with this. He's said as much. I don't want to disappoint him either.

How can you be 36, dissatisfied with your work, and not really know what you want to do other than, well this looks interesting? Should I or shouldn't I? Would I enjoy it? Is it right for me? How do I know without trying it?

Aren't I too young for a mid-life crisis?

Frustrations with my profession

I concluded the other day that practicing law would be lovely without opposing counsel, many clients, and the legislature. These three things are what detracts most from my enjoyment of the business and in that order.

Then I got to thinking and realized that was a gross over simplification. One of the things that eats away at you is that every day at work, it is always fight, fight, fight -- confrontation, confrontation, confrontation. At first, its only a small thing. After all, the practice is new and everything is interesting and exciting. Every issue is a new issue. But after nine years of this profession, this has become the dominant aspect of the thing for me. Its a rare day when I don't have to get argumentative or confrontational about something. I enjoy those moments. Drafting a trademark renewal or a contract. Incorporating a business. Even drafting a will (I don't really have enough tax background to do estate work all the time.) But those are not most of the day. Most of the day is responding to bullshit motions, calling opposing counsel so we can dance the nice professional courtesy dance with little sincerity, drafting bullshit motions that you file to "protect your record" so no one can sue you for malpractice because you didn't file them. You write letters saying where is the blah; you have ten days to produce it or else. You call clerks to schedule hearings. It's almost always a fight of some kind. The worst are probably when the siblings are fighting over the care of the parents or their inheritance. Right behind that is marriage/child cases. Then there are the corporate cases where someone hires a 100+ silk-stocking, big city, $400/hour, Biglaw lawyer who owns stock in paper companies and bombards you with frivolous, 100 page, motions that are just colorable enough that they don't get in trouble and that you can't afford to ignore so you have to draft responses. Then there are cases by pro se litigants and incompetent counsel which are almost worse because you don't always understand what they think they are up to. And let us not forget the cases where you have BigCorp on the other side following their script (say foreclosures here) where they do things automatically, "by policy" (Wells Fargo) and don't bother to look at the situation or the facts of the case or even open the damn file to realize the best course of action. You learn to hate them all.

I have one case now that just breaks my heart. I can't say everything I'd like b/c my clients have a right to privacy. It involves documents signed by an elderly person and the question in the case is really whether or not she was in her right mind enough to sign them. My clients are normal, average, middle class folk. This should be a fairly simple case, right? Wrong. We have Biglaw on the other side, so we got a ten count counterclaim alleging every possible and impossible legal theory for the issue and asking for millions in punitive damages. We've had motions of every kind filed from emergency injunctions to summary judgment to discovery arguments to arguments about discovery arguments. Opposing Council attaches everything to their pleadings and consistently misrepresents facts to the court. They argue they are entitled to summary judgment because there are no disputed facts which forces us to file pleadings showing all the places where their version of the facts are disputed but they just ignored in making their claim. I don't mind a well-taken motion, but these motion are not well taken and sometimes even self-contradictory. They are filed to run up fees and to harass us in a battle of attrition. My clients are closing in on the $30K mark in legal fees because of it when their fees should be closer to ten. They will not be able to recover their fees and will have to take out loans to cover them. This is not justice.

How do you explain to the client who walks in with a $15K claim that it probably is not worthwhile to pursue it because they will likely end up paying more than that to recover it. They should let the bad actor get away with it. They might be able to get away with paying less than that to recover it, but they can't be assured. Further, if they win, then we may have an equally expensive process to try to collect on our judgment. How do you explain to the client when a court treats you cavalierly because you "only" have a $40K case? (In Illinois, real cases start at $50K.) Where is justice here?

Yet the firm has to pay rent. It has to pay for the research tools, the copier, the fax, the secretarial support, and the computers. Oh and we have to eat too. And pay health insurance. And buy office supplies. We can't work for free. We can't give away services. Not if we want to stay in business.

I see all the problems. I don't see a solution. And that creates a lot of frustration.

InBev & Corporate America

The InBev purchase of A-B is what tipped off this topic, but it is just the straw that broke the camel's back as it were.

For those who don't know, InBev is a Belgian brewer who recently offered to buy Anheuser-Busch. At first, A-B turned InBev down and then InBev sued the board for not taking an action in the best interest of the shareholders. Some mutual funds sued the A-B board for the same reason. And one of the Busches did likewise.

Earlier this year, Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo and when, rejected, similar lawsuits ensued.

It's a sad commentary on this country when a board can be sued for not selling the company to a prospective buyer, no matter how good the offer. It smacks of corporate raiderdom. People by stocks of companies so they can sell the stock at a huge profit when some other company gobbles up the first company. What happened to wanting to own a piece of the actual business? If you don't like the performance of the company, either sell the stock or try to get new management.

The idea of suing a board for not selling out is absurd. It should be a distinct separate kind fo shareholder suit and no board should ever be required to sell out the company. If there is to be a sale, it should only be able to be authorized by a supermajority of the stockholders at a shareholder meeting.

Just my 2 cents.

Environmentalism as a political issue

Listening to NPR as I drove to work this AM and they did a teaser that Al Gore will be on their show today talking about how people are more receptive to 30 second soundbytes about the climate change topic than a year ago.

For some reason I thought of this analogy: The way politicians talk about climate change is like they were all in a house where the front door has just fallen off the hinges, the living room needs new paint, the kitchen faucet drips, and there is a pile of oily rags in the basement that are smoldering. Obviously the oily rags present the biggest threat to the entire house and if they become a fire, they have the potential to consume the entire house making all the other issues irrelevant. Yet the politicians spend their time talking about the other issues, especially the front door because it is so obvious when you walk in. Every now and then, one of them asks if anyone smells any smoke and then goes right back to arguing about how to fix the sink. That way, if any one asks later, once the house is on fire, the politician can say they tried to say something about the smoke.

That's is how climate change is dealt with in modern politics.

Typical Hillraisers

Recently a Hillary supporter I heard on NPR was saying that if Clinton isn’t named as Obama’s running mate, then the supporter (a Hillraiser) won’t contribute to Obama’s campaign. Further, in order to get the Hillraiser’s donation, Obama also has to help Hillary pay back her campaign loans. This is typical on so many levels. First, the my way or no way attitude is typical of the Hillary crowd. Second, having gotten into debt on her campaign, somehow Clinton is expecting a bailout… or else. Charity by Obama is one thing, but he should not give in to coercion, not if he wants to beat McCain.

G-8 sets targets for emissions ... pulleeeesse

So the G-8 summit is over and we have set target emissions for 2015 or some such. That equates to saying the bathtub is overflowing so I’ll turn down the water in six hours.

McCain, Obama, & the declining middle class income

Recently McCain and Obama offered opinions on the declining middle class income by which, from the NPR story, I gather means the overall decline in earnings relative to buying power.

McCain’s solution was more tax cuts. Obama wanted to tax the upper income tiers more to fund government programs. At least that’s what I got from NPR.

Starting with McCain, one wonders why he thinks the solution to this problem is tax cuts. We’ve been doing a lot of that already and, as far as I can see, to no appreciable result. If I made 30K a year, I still make 30K a year and that 30K buys the same as the other 30K except I have an infinitesimally greater amount of it to spend, so I suppose I can buy more. Still, this approach only works if the government can manage to spend less at the same time. If it doesn’t; if the government continue to spend like it was getting the old revenue amount then all that happens is the government goes into debt and debt creates interest. Eventually, the government will have to pay off the debt plus interest and that will probably have to come from taxes. I realize the advocates of tax cuts believe that the extra money being spent will increase the economy so that we can make up the difference, but I don’t believe it.

Obama’s plan makes even less sense. I fail to see how putting upper income money into programs (ultimately programs for the lower income bracket) solves a problem of the middle income bracket having declining purchasing power after inflation. Does it make goods cheaper? No. If anything, it will make the companies paying these taxes have to raise prices faster which actually DIMINISHES the middle class’s purchasing power faster. Does it give more money to the middle class? No. It provides services (not purchasing power) to those who qualify which is usually not the middle class.

I don’t like either approach. If you want to increase purchasing power then you need to either add money to the purchaser or lower the cost of the items being purchased. Between these two, I choose the McCain plan. At least that way, even if the problem is not being solved, I am getting a bit more money.

Corn-pone advertising

Corn-pone Ads

I was listening to the radio this morning (not NPR for a change) and I heard something stupid enough to blog about. Call this one a failure of logic and or a failure to connect an argument.

Per the advertisement I heard, America is a great nation because of our independence. (Obviously since the 4^th of July was three days ago, we are supposed to feel a positive pathos from that holiday washing over this message.) We fought for our independence. But, did we know that we are not energy independent? Did we know that the U.S. oil production accounted for only 6% of our consumption for the same period?

At this point, the audience has been alerted to a potential issue that the orator wants to address. In a standard persuasive speech, the orator would now present a proposed course of action which would correct the problem. The solution should connect to the problem. Thus, I was astonished that the solution to a lack of energy independence was, in fact, conservation.

The ad advocated that you should take less trips to the store and conserve in all aspects of your life. Generally, I’m all for conservation and using less petroleum products` for all kinds of reasons, but as a solution to energy dependence, conservation leads something to be desired. Yes, admittedly, if we reduce our overall consumption, then the PERCENTAGE of consumption which our domestic production comprises would rise (assuming that production remains constant rather than falls off because of a decline in demand). Mathematically it works, but practically, if the problem is one of dependence, then this amounts to sweeping the whole thing under the carpet. For example, assume that we achieve 100% independence (meaning we consume no more than we produce). I suggest the economy would crash, people would starve, and the utilities would not be able to meet demand.

Reducing use does not create independence. Instead, independence either means finding an alternative which is locally available or acquiring additional production ability, or both.

The ad then said that the conservation solution would allow us once more to “control our destiny.” Talk about grossly misleading over-statements! What nation, in the last 100 years has had the ability to “control its destiny?” I can’t think of a one. Events, natural, political, and military are often enough imposed upon nations by the universe or other nations to stamp ludicrous all over this idea. In WWI, the U.S. tried to be a neutral, but unrestricted U-boat warfare inflicted on U.S. ships and citizens forced our hand. In a world where scary-crazy people (who, by-the-way, hate us) are working hard to achieve the ability to make atomic weapons, who believes that we have control over our destiny? I don’t. We have influence, strong influence, certainly. But control? I don’t think so.

The ad, by the way, was produced by the Illinois corn farmers. Clearly a wise geopolitical think thank.

Trash day

It being Trash Day here, this seemed appropriate.

Supreme Court Me

NPR ran a story today about a lawsuit in Texas where the owners of some beachfront property have a problem with the State of Texas. Seems they bought a house 25 years ago and since then the beach shrunk or the water level rose or something, but the house is now on stilts and occasionally tide gets under it.

Enter the State of Texas which says by law that all beaches are public parks upon which it is illegal to have a building. The State has demanded the house be torn down because the park has moved under it. Lawsuits ensued and the relevant detail is that the homeowners have been prohibited from conducting any repair on the property during appeal.

The only argument that interests me is the Constitutional one. Under the Constitution, the government can take land but must pay a fair value for it. I've blogged on this before. The homeowners claim the State is taking their property without compensating them for it. The State says it is the Gulf of Mexico which is taking the land.

In essence the State is citing to riparian law (rivers; I forget the name for the law as applied to lakes) principles that when the water changes the contours of your land gradually, you simply lose land. Accretion.

In my humble opinion, the State loses. It is not Accretion that is requiring the home to be torn down before the land is fully gone; it is the law of the State of Texas. Likewise, the law of the State of Texas prohibits any repair. Thus the law of Texas is TAKING property rights before the Gulf does. Compensation is due. State loses.

Obama's running mate

I will be dreadfully disappointed if "Hillary" becomes Obama's running mate. Surely he realizes that a lot of his support voted for him because he isn't a Clinton or a bush; because he's new and not so tarnished by partisan infighting. If he takes on Hillary Clinton, he will pick up all of her negatives without really attracting all that many new voters. It would be a HUGE mistake for him.

While I'm talking politics, Florida and Michigan should have had no votes in the Democrat convention. They broke the rules and this is a PARTY affair wherein the party is choosing its nominee. If you want to participate in the party's choosing, you need to play by the party's rules. Obama did. He did not campaign in Michigan because of the party rules. Clinton, ever the opportunist, did. She and those states should not be rewarded for breaking the rules and Obama should not be punished for following them. It would have sent a clear message about the integrity of the Democrat party had Clinton had her delegates seated.

4.0 is WOTC's Vista

I got to look over D&D 4^th ed this weekend. If you aren’t into RPG’s, skip this blog entry.

I liked some of the aspects of it. Rangers look good. The idea of taking 10 is pretty well thought out. Low level wizards don’t blow through their bag of tricks in 3 rounds and then sit around playing bridge with the opposing wizards while the combat finishes.

Some things I simply noted like there are less skills.

And then there is the other stuff:

SUMMARY: I think that someone at WOTC looked at how well WoW is doing and miniatures games and said, hey, let’s try to be everything to everyone. So now D&D is trying to compete with video games and mini games and will probably discover that it can’t do video game as well as, well, a video game. But in so doing, it will have alienated its core audience which liked it because it wasn’t, well, a video game. It wants to be everything to everyone.

FOR EXAMPLE:

Apparently, movement in terms of feet was too complicated for folks so now your character has movement in terms of “squares.” That’s right my dwarf now move 5 squares, but your elf moves 7 squares.

Now you advance in power much faster, piling on tricks, powers, ability score increases, etc. at a frenzied pace. We must have instant gratification! And if you don’t like what you picked, why you can swap out. It caters to the, “This one time I had this uber awesome PC who killed the Gods and took their place and had this magic hammer that blah blah blah.

There are now epic levels (21-30) where you can save not just the world, but several worlds. This is adventure on the scale of Frodo (or beyond), not the scale of Conan. And when you hit 30, you graduate to immortality and it’s time to start again. Just like a video game. You can win. Oh yeah, and it hints that every PC is “special” as in destined for great things.

It’s over-organized. We have not only classes, but roles like defender, leader, controller, and striker. Read that as “Damage sink,” “Support,” Mass effects,” and “Concentrated damage.” Every class is then assigned to one of the roles. It’s D&D for people who can’t write with capital letters.

We also took another step away from random stat generation. The book suggests (and the RPGA requires) that you have a stat line of 16 14 13 12 11 10. Period. Now, if you’re paying attention you will realize that depending on the race you choose, you can end up with an 18 in something. (Races now only have positive bonuses; no negs. Apparently, the new happier D&D felt negatives were a no sell.) Thus certain races have affinity towards certain classes because they will score higher. If this feels like a cave to the anti random side, it is. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to GURPS, the all point bases, all skill based, system.

EVERYONE gets magic. Depending on your role we call it different tings, but everyone gets it. For Wizards, it’s spells for example. In old D&D parlance it would be called special abilities or some such, but the lines have further blurred. Moreover, some of the old spells have become RITUALS. Anyone can learn the feat that lets them cast Rituals. Ergo, everyone gets magic. The only advantage to being a Wizard (the only member of the controller role) is that you get rituals easier, faster, and at first level.

Races – We added two new races. We got Eladininin or some such and we got Tieflings. The Eladrin (however it’s spelled) are essentially grey elves or high elves. They live in or on the boarder of Feyland (the local adventurer amusement park) and are arcane in nature. They are the mysterious, we do wizardry, kind of elf. Then there are elf elves who are the we skulk around in forests elves.

Tieflings… Tieflings are descendants of human nobles who made pacts with infernal beings. The infernal beings and the humans who made the deals were defeated, but the infernalism tainted the blood of their descendants. From a role-playing perspective they are incredibly interesting albeit perhaps limited to their world and their history. The book says they make natural warlocks…. Better explain that term.

We have three spell classes now. Clerics (who get their powers from being invested, not from their deity), wizards, and warlocks. Warlocks have the flavor of the old witch kit for mages from the old 2^nd Ed AD&D. They made a pact with some eldritch power. In the core book that is either Fey, Infernal, or Stars. (Who knew astrology and stars are eldritch powers.) It says nothing about having to serve the empowering entity’s ends or selling your soul or anything like that. Doesn’t say what kind of deal you made. Kinda unfilled in there methinks. We do know that the Fey Warlocks use Charisma to power their effects, Infernalists use Con, and Star Warlocks use both.

Anyway, Tieflings get bonuses to Charisma and Intelligence. Now you will realize that this means they can achieve 18s in those two areas. What uses those abilities. Well Int is the primary qualification for a wizard. Seems the Tiefling would be good at that, but if you look at the book, when it lists who are the good wizards, it omits Tieflings. Apparently since they don’t have a dex bonus to increase their AC, I guess. So they are supposed to be good Warlocks and part infernal. But they don’t have a con bonus. So that means that they probably would be best at being FEY warlocks. WTH? But if you look at their feats, they have racial feats that relate to fire and fear and the infernal stuff. Okay so we say they are infernal and are often warlocks, check. We give them feats that seem to back that us, check. And then we set up the warlock class so infernalism is the type of Warlock they are least qualified to be. Now that makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? (The ones who get Con bonuses are dwarves and Humans (if they select to do so)).

And while we are ranting, why do we need two spell casting classes, Warlocks and Wizards. It smacks of Palladium RPG doesn’t it? Surely Palladium wasn’t taking market share.

We also have many more contested skill roles. If I want to affect Bob, I roll and attack and Bob roles a resistance. Doesn’t this sound White Wolf-esque? There is some small amount of trying to beat a target number like AC or ability DCs, but there is less of it. Saves are much dimished in roll as well, mostly to ending on-going effects.

D&D it seems has moved away from being its unique self and more towards being generic. Pity. Further, the changes are dramatic enough that the only way to see the thing is as an entirely new game. Well, if I want to learn an entirely new game, I have a lot of options: 5 Rings, Rune, Palladium, GURPS, Rolemaster, Exalted, and so on. The ONLY reason to stick with D&D is market share because WOTC has such a large part of the market share. No matter how awful the changes and how much they screw up, they are too large a voice in the market they have to be considered.

It’s kind of like Microsoft’s Vista that way. The shame is that there is no Apple in this market.

ATTN Big Oil

The trend in the last year has been noticeable with big oil companies pulling in record profits and their stock values going up. I remember back when I was a geology major finding out that the cost of U.S. oil exploration was largely prohibitive given the cost of a gallon of gas.

Times have changed.

If the big oil companies are pulling in record profits, it behooves them to use that money to prepare for the lean times. I'd like to call on them now to do their oil searching within the U.S., when they have the money and the economics favor the searching. I'd also like to suggest that any oil company should realize that oil based fuels and transport are an industry with a finite end. If they want to stay in the transport business, they need to spend some time doing alternate energy production research. I call upon them to use this capital they suddenly have to fund that research. I suggest to them the idea of a filling station where I pull in, take the standard sized drained battery from my car and replace it with a fully charged battery provided by the OIL COMPANY station for a small fee. Zoom, away I go. Convenience of a fill up, just call it a battery station, not a gas station.

Big Oil, now is the time to invest in your future.

Stupid car ads

Apparently, when it rains ideas for a blog post, it pours.

Over lunch today I heard a Lou Fuze ad on the radio. Lou Fuze is a local car dealership with about a hundred different brands of car. Here is their deal (I can't remember which brand it was for.):

If you buy a car of this brand at another dealership for less than their sale price, they will credit you 110% of the difference towards the purchase of that car from them.

So, who needs two of the same car? They aren't paying me cash for the difference? If I BUY a car, meaning I own it and everything for less that Fuze sells it for, I can go to Fuze and get bonus credit when buying the same car from them. Mind you, the first dealer is unlikely to take a return. So if the price difference is $100, I can buy identical car #2 from Fuze for $110 less (or roughly $10 below what I paid for the first car). Of course, I still have to pay Fuze the rest of the purchase price of the second new car.

What idiot would take that deal?

Not much time...

Getting married in just over a week. Yikes!

Tuesday NPR ran a discussion with a ex-colonel who felt that the insurgency suppression mission was driving the army and costing them capability in the areas of more conventional army like artillery. He had a bunch of reasons he didn't like it which aren't mine. Likewise, he pointed out the biggest argument for it is that counter-insurgency is likely going to be the main job of the U.S. Army in the coming century.

It seems to me that the first job of any army is to protect the borders of their nation from invasion by being able to fight and repel anyone else's army. (I realize that in some cases such as Great Britain, this is the job of the Royal Navy, while their army was used to control colonies, but that is vastly the exception.) Insurgents cannot foreseeably invade and take over our country, not really. Armies schooled in doctrines of tanks and artillery can (assuming they can get here). To train our army to play counter-insurgency at the expense of its capability in its first and primary mission, seems a dereliction of duty to me. It assumes that the only use we will ever need our army for is "over there" and not for our own protection. Yet, the answer to a counter-insurgency force would seem to be a main line army, plus then the people who are being the insurgency might be mad enough to take their army over here and use it on us. Making counter-insurgency our primary training model seems to put the cart before the horse.

Earthquake report

Nothing stupid to talk about except myself so far today. Last night at 4:37 AM we had a small EARTHQUAKE. I realized pretty quickly what it had to be and assumed it was New Madrid. It woke me up. At that point, having never been through an earthquake where you could REALLY feel things shaking, I had no idea how severe it was other than much larger than any other Earthquake in my experience. So I woke Cinda. She went to see if the earthquake had woken Clarisse up and stumbled because the house was shaking so much. Everything was rattling so I have no idea how much of the overall noise, and there was a fair amount of that, was the earthquake itself versus all our stuff rattling around. I asked Cinda if we should head to the basement and then remembered that in an Earthquake gas lines can be a major danger. So I headed to the basement anyway to make sure I couldn’t smell gas. By the time I got to the first floor, the shaking has stopped although some stuff was still rocking from the quake and making slight rattling noises.

Basement was fine. No smell of gas. Power worked. Internet worked. CNN and local station web pages had no reports. Cats were acting guilty like they might be in trouble for the earthquake. Cinda came down and asked me why I wasn’t checking TV and then she did so, but also found no reports. We wondered if maybe it hadn’t bee a quake, but I found the USGS page which said we had just had a 5.4 quake in Illinois. The weird part was it wasn’t at New Madrid; it was way over south of Effingham, near Evansville and Vincennes. Not what I expected. Cinda reminded me that if we had an aftershock, I should take shelter in a doorway. This is where I was dumb, because I knew that but forgot when the whole house was shaking. I filled out the USGS page reporting what I had felt and where I was located, logged out, and went back to bed about 5AM. I even tried to go to sleep.
See, there’s my Great Earthquake Adventure of April 18, 2008.

Pay me to save money

You know why e-filing and e-billing is so wonderful? It's because it's good for everyone. Easier and faster for me, saves money for merchants and banks. How is this you ask? Simple. Almost any business or entity's biggest cost is personnel and thus, anything which reduces the amount of personnel saves the entity $$$. When you use electronic means, the entity does not need as many folks to open mail, process mail, or do data entry (because a good e-system will take the data supplied and enter it automatically).

According to NPR this morning, the IRS's goal is to have 80% of people e-filing by 2012. The IRS charges you something like $10.00 to e-file mind you. Even assuming that they still had to process every check by hand (and not deal with e-financial transactions) and counting that they need to review the data once it is entered in their system electronically, they will save a lot of money if people e-file. That's right, Ladies and Gentlemen, you have the privilege of paying them $10.00 so they can save money. Your government in action.

It's the equivalent of pulling into a gas station and paying more to use the self-service pump.

Until the IRS gets its head out of the sand, I'm going to keep paying less than a dollar to MAIL in my taxes and the IRS can suck up the cost of opening them, entering the data, and mailing me a check.

Monday

It's Monday... and how! So to add a bit of humor to pre-tax-D-Day Monday, here is an image from icanhascheezburger.com.

Yup, I'm a barbarian

Wow, one whole week since I last posted. Definitely slipping and the honeymoon is wearing off. Of course it could be because I've been so busy around here and by the time I get home, I'm too exhausted to write much. My next excuse will be taxes.

On NPR this morning, they were discussing the federal government and its “fence” that it is building along the Rio Grande as part of keeping out illegal aliens. I want to be clear that I have no opinion on the ultimate issue of how many aliens we need to keep out or what to do with the ones who are here. As far as I am concerned Amnesty is liberal socio-political organization. However, one of the items in the story was about the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a couple of weeks. But first a stab at the federal government.

Apparently the government issued some sort of mailing to property owners along its proposed fence line asking them to sign the paper authorizing the feds to enter the property. Some owners are fighting this in court. The federally crafted authorization basically give the property owner $100.00 in exchange for giving the federal government unlimited access for six months. This amount is also in lieu of any damages caused by the Feds during that time period. The judge has apparently stated that the Feds could stand to work on their negotiating skills, but admitted that the government has the right to enter and seize land at need. For the non-lawyers out there, that is called eminent domain. This is what allows the government to condemn houses to make new roads and things like that, but ED has a catch. You see, the constitution says the government can’t take property without due process and just compensation. We’re going to digress into that second one.

I’ve seen the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) at work in condemnation actions you see. And the problem is that they can’t read and think like a business, not a division of a government that is to serve the people. If they could read, they would realize that their mandate is to offer a FAIR price for the land they seize. Somehow, they read the word fair and translate it as LOWEST POSSIBLE LOWBALL PRICE WE CAN GET AWAY WITH. Those of you with a fine sense of distinction might realize there is ever so slight a difference in those two definitions. Personally, I think this stems from the corporate culture in to government that rewards lowest cost without looking at how it was achieved. You see, some peon thinks he looks better if he spends less and he thinks he spends less by screwing the taxpayers whose land is being condemned. Further, usually by the time the bill comes for all the delay and legal fees associated with the lawsuits as the taxpayers refuse to bend over for Uncle Sam, the peon who threw out the absurdly lowball offers is promoted or long gone from being their to get hit by the spatter. Hell, maybe the cost comes out of the legal budget, not his project budget and he can excuse himself by saying that if the DOT lawyers had done better, they’d have gotten away with screwing the taxpayers more. The point is that I’ve seen eminent domain abused by the government so much that good, rural, government-backing farmers practically became anarchs. Oh an in almost all of those cases, MoDOT condemned, the property owner said see you in court, the court appointed a commission (three citizens with sufficient experience to determine the value of what the government wanted to take), MoDOT rejected the commission’s decision forcing a trial, and the jury came back with an award close to that of the commission and vastly more than MoDOT had been offering. All this took over a year to do of course. So, how much money did MoDOT save? Not a damn bit, but they did make it hard to pass their next tax levy.

Anyway, I have no problem, having seen MoDOT in action believing that the Feds would act exactly the same or worse. I COMPLETELY understand why a property owner would not want to give the Feds a blanket right to do whatever to their property for the next six months in exchange for $100. The government has a right to build the thing if it wants to, but it has a corresponding obligation to treat its citizens fairly. I hope the judge in this case says the Feds can do their surveying but absolutely hammers them on the amount they have to pay. It’s a damn shame the petty little bureaucrat who came up with this offer can’t be made to be personally accountable for the excess cost.

SOOOOO, back on Deep Space Nine, NPR was asking opinions of local residents about the fence generally. Some were voicing environmental concerns or were being offered as ultra cute sound bytes. Aside from wondering why anyone would think to sound byte some of these people (It’s like walking into a kindergarten and asking them for detailed information on how to rebuild a steering column.), one person’s comment struck me as particularly inane.

She said something along the lines of: While I, you know, agree with putting the Fence up to keep out like illegal aliens out, you know, I think it is such a like totally barbaric way to do it. In the like modern world we must totally have something, you know, like better than that.

I admit I inserted the “likes” and the “you knows” as editorial commentary, but the gist of her comment can still be derived from the passage. In response, I have to ask 1) does she really understand the meaning of the word barbaric? 2) I translate this to mean, I’m in favor of the idea, but it is suddenly inconveniencing me and thus, I think we need to find a better (meaning different in a way that I don’t have to deal with) way to accomplish this goal. 3) Fences are like soooo yesterday! I’ll elaborate on that last one a bit.

Assuming by “barbaric,” she meant old-fashioned or primitive, one has to question why that would make it less effective or desirable. I suppose we could task permanent satellite coverage over the entire boarder to watch for illegal aliens, or fly regular recon drones over the boarder, or mount special sensors in the dirt to detect footsteps, but those would likely cost quite a bit more. Hell, we could put landmines along the entire boarder, which while undoubtedly more modern, probably actually qualifies as barbaric. Getting more into Big Brother and Science Fiction, maybe she thinks we should electronically ear tag all the foreigners so we can track their movements or maybe just erect some sort of invisible sonic fence to keep them from coming across the line. Fences, although an ancient technology, are an effective and fairly cost efficient one.

If someone is going to criticize the project because it is using a fence which is barbaric because it is so old-fashioned, I hope that someone is driving around in a hovercraft to avoid using the equally ancient, and thus barbaric, technology of the wheel.

Women ruling the world

So I heard on NPR that Deedee someone or another who used to be in the Clinton administration wrote a book titled something like, “Why Women Should Rule the World.” NPR insists it is not Hillary propaganda.

I should note, I’m hostile to the premise that any particular gender is immune to the throes of ideologic passion and I have no idea what the empirical basis of this book is, so I’m speaking out my ass to some extent. But you need to know I expected not to like this book.

Apparently, Deedee observed that regardless of background, the women of the senate crossed party lines and personal differences to try to work together. By implication, men don’t. She also noted, she’s not saying that the decisions or beliefs would be any more or any less vehemently held. That’s the part I found interesting.

I can accept, theoretically, that men and women have different decision making and social operating methods. Maybe women tend to be consensus builders by wiring more so then men. The implications of that are… interesting.

So why then do men rise more often to the leader position? Well, Deedee noted that women in business decided to pursue other alternatives because the leadership positions are often given to more assertive and aggressive males.

My thought would be that this implies another interesting thing. Do we, as Westerners, if not as human beings, view leaders as aggressively assertive over consensus building? Thus it is not a preference towards males, but towards that leadership style. It may even be hard-wired into the human beast. And wouldn’t that be an interesting thing. That means the “problem” (if it is actually a problem) is in the style, not the gender.

It would also then imply that the women who tend to rise to leadership positions are often the ones who more or less adopt some amount of the masculine aggressively assertive style. In other words, if women ruled the world it would be by adopting an aggressively assertive leadership style. And if the women were using that style and that style is what causes the “problems,” then the result would be no different if women ruled the world.

It is an interesting thing to play with in your head though. If the world’s decisions were made by folks who were more consensus minded rather than directive minded.

Another day, another trite reply

Remember when I wrote various congressmen about using pre-paid cash cards for tax refunds?

I got Obama's reply today; he's been busy. Here it is. After you get done reading this ad copy, ask yourself what this had to do with anything I wrote about?

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Dear Daniel:

Thank you for taking the time to inform me of your concerns. I take seriously the thousands of letters, e-mails, and calls I receive daily from Illinois constituents like you, and I value your ideas and opinions. Please accept my apology for the delayed response.

I am gratified by the opportunity that the people of Illinois have given me to work on the serious and challenging issues affecting our country’s future. In the first few months of this year, the United States Senate has considered – or will soon consider – important legislation relating to the President’s warrantless surveillance program, consumer protection, energy dependence, and the FY 2009 federal budget.

For my part, I am convinced there are three challenges we must face immediately for the sake of the nation and the world: global warming and our dependence on foreign oil; the challenge globalization poses to our economy and working families; and extracting ourselves from Iraq while assuming once more our leadership role in the world.

Global climate change and energy independence require the kind of ambitious, sustained effort by the American people that we summoned to fight World War II and put a man on the moon. The threat is great: scientists tell us that the earth is warming even faster than previously estimated; gas prices are hitting American families hard; and every day we help sustain foreign dictators by purchasing their oil. The transition to an economy in which we use less fossil fuel and generate less carbon will not be easy, but if we are serious and smart we can do it in a way that helps families through the transition that enlists American scientists, entrepreneurs and workers to develop the new technologies the world will need.

I am supporting several Senate bills that provide some answers to our energy problems: they would cap carbon emissions, auction the licenses to emit carbon, and require that our fuel use less carbon. This will generate funds that we can invest in developing and commercializing green technologies and training workers for new high-wage jobs. A bill that I introduced helped end the decades-long stalemate over automobile fuel economy standards and will begin the process of reducing the amount of oil that we import from hostile countries.

These steps are also important in helping us to address a second challenge that we have ignored for too long: American workers increasingly compete in a worldwide workforce. The result has been stagnating wages and shrinking benefits at a time when everyday costs – from child care to college to drug costs to gas prices – have increased.

The most important step we can take to help families in the 21st Century economy is to make affordable, comprehensive health care available to all Americans. It is unacceptable that 47 million Americans are without health insurance and that many more are underinsured – with policies that demand high premiums and out of pocket costs. The strain on our families, our economy and on our federal budget is unsustainable.

Further, we must do more to assist working families and ensure that our economy is generating quality, high-wage jobs that can support a family. These reforms should include addressing our failing pension system, assisting families struggling to balance work and family, providing quality early education, revamping our K-12 education system so that it prepares our children for the global economy, investing in science and technology, and updating our nation’s infrastructure.

To keep jobs at home, we must end tax breaks to corporations that invest overseas and provide incentives to companies that invest at home – something my Patriot Employers Act would do – while putting an end to negotiating trade deals that help special interests but do little to protect US workers or the environment.

All of this must be done in the midst of a weakening economy. I was glad that the Congress acted to provide working families a quick tax cut to stimulate our economy. In addition, I have proposed legislation to combat mortgage fraud and believe we also must pass a credit card bill of rights, protecting families from the numerous unscrupulous practices that have arisen in recent years.

Additionally, we must finally end the war in Iraq. I have put forward a plan that would ensure we are as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. At the same time, we must turn our attention to the real threats we face by finishing the fight against Al Qaeda. We can enlist others to join us if we assume our leadership role in the world by bringing others together to combat the common threats of the 21st century: nuclear weapons and terrorism; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. We have begun some of this work in the Senate – Senator Richard Lugar and I passed legislation to control loose nuclear and conventional weapons – but there is much more that needs to be done.

Beyond these three challenges, we have to change the way Washington works and break the stranglehold that special interests have held for far too long. This is why I worked with Senator Russ Feingold to enact the most sweeping ethics and lobbying reform legislation since Watergate. It is why I worked with Republican Senator Tom Coburn to pass something called “Google for Government” that would allow all Americans to see how their federal tax dollars are being spent.

But, we must do more to change Washington, and the biggest change will come from other Americans following your lead in communicating with their elected representatives about what they expect of them. If we are to renew our democracy, the process must start with more citizen involvement.

As I have approached these and other issues, I have appreciated the input I have received from Illinoisans like you. While lawmakers and their constituents may hold different perspectives on specific issues, I feel it is particularly important that I hear the views of any Illinois resident who feels strongly about a particular issue.

With that in mind, I appreciate your writing to me. I hope you will stay in touch in the future about other issues of concern to you.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama
United States Senator