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.