Wifey flew to Cincinnati this morn.
Here's the deal: she took a flight from DC to Detroit to Cincinnati because the direct flight to Cincinnati would have been $1200 and the two leg flight through Detroit only cost $350.
Somewhere in there is a lesson about capitalism and the free market and efficiency and so forth. . . .
But WTF?
Showing posts with label whiney boys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label whiney boys. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Friday, May 2, 2008
Trust Babies
Descendants of the John D. Rockefeller on Wednesday made a big hullabaloo, chastising Exxon Mobile for going after short term profits from high oil prices and advising XOM to start investing in alternative energy.
How nice to be a limousine liberal trust baby.
The problem, little dears, is that XOM, FYI, is an oil company. Their responsibility is to their shareholders--you and me and everyone else in this country who has a pension plan, has an interest in a college or church endowment, or is invested in a large cap mutual fund. What they're good at--damn good at, in fact--is finding, pumping, and delivering oil.
They're not good at spending money on speculative technologies that aren't proven to be profitable without government subsidies. Nor are they obliged to. Let the venture capitalists and the college professors and the government grant hogs work on that stuff.
If you don't want to make money off of Big Oil, Rockefellers, sell your Exxon shares. Buy some First Solar (FSLR) or Canadian Solar (CSIQ)--both have appreciated at a much better rate than XOM in the past year.
And stop whinin'.
How nice to be a limousine liberal trust baby.
The problem, little dears, is that XOM, FYI, is an oil company. Their responsibility is to their shareholders--you and me and everyone else in this country who has a pension plan, has an interest in a college or church endowment, or is invested in a large cap mutual fund. What they're good at--damn good at, in fact--is finding, pumping, and delivering oil.
They're not good at spending money on speculative technologies that aren't proven to be profitable without government subsidies. Nor are they obliged to. Let the venture capitalists and the college professors and the government grant hogs work on that stuff.
If you don't want to make money off of Big Oil, Rockefellers, sell your Exxon shares. Buy some First Solar (FSLR) or Canadian Solar (CSIQ)--both have appreciated at a much better rate than XOM in the past year.
And stop whinin'.
Monday, March 31, 2008
What No One Will Say
Or rather, let's just say this is what very few people are willing say.
One of the reasons for the subprime mortgage debacle, the debacle that has led to what is certainly the worst real estate slump since the early 1990s and what may well become the worst since the Great Depression, is found here, to wit, banks and lenders were pressured to relax lending standards in order to make more loans to minorities.
Writes Liebowitz, "Countrywide's chief executive bragged that, to approve minority applications that would otherwise be rejected 'lenders have had to stretch the rules a bit.'" I love it: instead of the borrower having to have a down payment, a job, and a credit score, now all that was needed to get a mortgage was a diploma from a credit counseling program.
Skip to today and what was once just a little "stretching of the rules a bit" (in order to provide loans to minorities in order to avoid discrimination lawsuits), has now (inevitably) been dubbed "predatory lending". Nice. Compel the banks and mortgage companies to make these loans and then brand them as thieves and carnivores when the folks don't master the skills taught in their ACORN credit counseling sessions.
It was great politics then and it's great politics now.
Sometimes you just can't win.
Once again, the law of unintended consequences.
One of the reasons for the subprime mortgage debacle, the debacle that has led to what is certainly the worst real estate slump since the early 1990s and what may well become the worst since the Great Depression, is found here, to wit, banks and lenders were pressured to relax lending standards in order to make more loans to minorities.
Writes Liebowitz, "Countrywide's chief executive bragged that, to approve minority applications that would otherwise be rejected 'lenders have had to stretch the rules a bit.'" I love it: instead of the borrower having to have a down payment, a job, and a credit score, now all that was needed to get a mortgage was a diploma from a credit counseling program.
Skip to today and what was once just a little "stretching of the rules a bit" (in order to provide loans to minorities in order to avoid discrimination lawsuits), has now (inevitably) been dubbed "predatory lending". Nice. Compel the banks and mortgage companies to make these loans and then brand them as thieves and carnivores when the folks don't master the skills taught in their ACORN credit counseling sessions.
It was great politics then and it's great politics now.
Sometimes you just can't win.
Once again, the law of unintended consequences.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Obama's Soc. Sec. "Coverage"
Hopped on Obama's issues website after hearing the rumor that he wants to eliminate the cap on Social Security wages. If you're not familiar, right now we all pay SS taxes on the first $97,500 we earn. That figure is matched by our employers so that we pay $6045 out of the first $97,500 and the employer pays $6045 more.
The theory behind the cap is that SS was originally intended to be a supplement to retirement. We would get back according to what we put in. It was not meant to be a welfare-type program where the folks who didn't pay much in (or any in) would get back as much as everyone else.
Senator O says this on his website:
"The first place to look for ways to strengthen Social Security is the payroll tax system. Currently, the Social Security payroll tax applies to only the first $97,500 a worker makes. Obama supports increasing the maximum amount of earnings covered by Social Security and he will work with Congress and the American people to choose a payroll tax reform package that will keep Social Security solvent for at least the next half century."
I love the use of the word "covered" here! That's not "covered", that's "taxed".
And then here in a op ed piece he wrote last fall:
"One possible option, for example, is to raise the cap on the amount of income subject to the Social Security tax. If we kept the payroll tax rate exactly the same but applied it to all earnings and not just the first $97,500, we could virtually eliminate the entire Social Security shortfall."
I take that to mean that all income would now be "covered"--the sky's the limit on this "coverage". I also take that to mean that this extra cash from the new "coverage" would be used to "virtually eliminate" the existing shortfall. I guess employers would have to match the "coverage" as well--call it double coverage, like in the NFL.
What might some unintended consequences be?
Let's take Dick and Jane. Dick teaches high school and coaches football in the 'burbs of New Jersey and makes $60,000 a year. Jane sells computer widgets, makes a base of $110,000, and had a great bonus/stock options reward last year of $40,000. I bet that's not uncommon for a good number of folks living in a metro area on either coast. What would Senator O's extra "coverage" mean to them?
An extra $6045 a year in taxes.
Now, how might that affect Dick and Jane's spending habits? Well, they're a little nervous these days bc. their house value is down over the last two years, their 404(k) is down over the last two months, and they're really worried about Jane's bonus this year bc. everyone's talking recession.
My guess is that they'll do two things. First, cut back on the doo-dads. They'll put off replacing the car, building a new deck, or buying that flat screen at Best Buy. They'll go to Six Flags instead of the Grand Canyon. This reduction in discretionary spending will only add to the "recessionary pressure", as it's called it on CNBC.
Second, they'll freeze or cut or, at the very least, give second thought to their charitable giving. They're already one of the decent givers at church with a $4,500 contribution to the annual fund. They were happy to do it. They're being asked to increase their pledge by ten percent. But with with an extra $500 a month going to SS, and house prices still falling, and the market in a tizzy. . . . .
And the YMCA that's doing a capital campaign for an addition? D & J will wait a year to commit just in case the the market hasn't found a bottom yet.
It's easy for Senator O to say he's just going to erase that cap. It might even be true that it's no big deal, Junior's SS in more important and D & J can "afford it".
It might not be so easy to deal with the opportunity costs and unintended consequences $6045 of extra "coverage" for Dick and Jane.
Just another way of looking at things. . . .
The theory behind the cap is that SS was originally intended to be a supplement to retirement. We would get back according to what we put in. It was not meant to be a welfare-type program where the folks who didn't pay much in (or any in) would get back as much as everyone else.
Senator O says this on his website:
"The first place to look for ways to strengthen Social Security is the payroll tax system. Currently, the Social Security payroll tax applies to only the first $97,500 a worker makes. Obama supports increasing the maximum amount of earnings covered by Social Security and he will work with Congress and the American people to choose a payroll tax reform package that will keep Social Security solvent for at least the next half century."
I love the use of the word "covered" here! That's not "covered", that's "taxed".
And then here in a op ed piece he wrote last fall:
"One possible option, for example, is to raise the cap on the amount of income subject to the Social Security tax. If we kept the payroll tax rate exactly the same but applied it to all earnings and not just the first $97,500, we could virtually eliminate the entire Social Security shortfall."
I take that to mean that all income would now be "covered"--the sky's the limit on this "coverage". I also take that to mean that this extra cash from the new "coverage" would be used to "virtually eliminate" the existing shortfall. I guess employers would have to match the "coverage" as well--call it double coverage, like in the NFL.
What might some unintended consequences be?
Let's take Dick and Jane. Dick teaches high school and coaches football in the 'burbs of New Jersey and makes $60,000 a year. Jane sells computer widgets, makes a base of $110,000, and had a great bonus/stock options reward last year of $40,000. I bet that's not uncommon for a good number of folks living in a metro area on either coast. What would Senator O's extra "coverage" mean to them?
An extra $6045 a year in taxes.
Now, how might that affect Dick and Jane's spending habits? Well, they're a little nervous these days bc. their house value is down over the last two years, their 404(k) is down over the last two months, and they're really worried about Jane's bonus this year bc. everyone's talking recession.
My guess is that they'll do two things. First, cut back on the doo-dads. They'll put off replacing the car, building a new deck, or buying that flat screen at Best Buy. They'll go to Six Flags instead of the Grand Canyon. This reduction in discretionary spending will only add to the "recessionary pressure", as it's called it on CNBC.
Second, they'll freeze or cut or, at the very least, give second thought to their charitable giving. They're already one of the decent givers at church with a $4,500 contribution to the annual fund. They were happy to do it. They're being asked to increase their pledge by ten percent. But with with an extra $500 a month going to SS, and house prices still falling, and the market in a tizzy. . . . .
And the YMCA that's doing a capital campaign for an addition? D & J will wait a year to commit just in case the the market hasn't found a bottom yet.
It's easy for Senator O to say he's just going to erase that cap. It might even be true that it's no big deal, Junior's SS in more important and D & J can "afford it".
It might not be so easy to deal with the opportunity costs and unintended consequences $6045 of extra "coverage" for Dick and Jane.
Just another way of looking at things. . . .
Sunday, February 17, 2008
The Pain
As the old adage goes, it wasn't the fall that hurt, it was hitting the ground.
My brother the war hero helicopter pilot from Desert Storm says that when helicopters crash it's never one thing. There are always enough safe guards to catch any single mistake. Crashes only happen after a string of failures. (Same thing with revolutions and elections, but that's for discussion on another day.)
In my case, I decided to clean the gutters but it was raining so (1) the paved driveway was slippery wet. The ladder was an old (2) piece-of-crap extension ladder that, if I remember correctly, I picked up for free when I bought an old piece-of-crap house to rehab. I weigh (3) about 250 pounds. I went in to get my 16 year old son to hold the ladder, but he had fallen asleep in front of the TV and looked very peaceful. So (4) I let him sleep. I was only up about four or five rungs, I guess, holding on to the ladder (5) with one hand and (6) trying to stretch the hose up off the ground with the other. I, of course, have been known once or twice (7) not to listen to my wife who suggested once, maybe twice in the past that we should hire cheap immigrant labor to do this, guys who generally weigh only about 140 or 150 pounds and do this sort of thing every day. I, however, too often am (8) a little tight with a penny.
So down I went. A string of little things resulting in complete system failure.
Two broken wrists and a compression fracture of the L-1 vertebrae (tho, that may have been a fracture from an old high school injury that was merely aggravated).
And boy did it hurt. For two days, oxycontin wasn't even good enough to dim the pain.
But I surprised myself. Good Taoist that I guess I've become, it has been somewhat of an adventure in a very odd way. It's all about attitude, taking the bad with the good. I've been pretty lucky in life as far as the health goes. A concussion here and there, the back injury when wrestling in high school, sore knees now and again, and a heel problem for a while. But nothing like this. It really hurt.
For some reason I kept thinking of those who suffered in the Hanoi Hilton. James Stockdale and John McCain are the two whose accounts I've read. I could not imagine the will it took for them to endure years of this sort of pain--broken bones, separated shoulders, hours of beatings, the manipulation of injuries for added effect. Medical treatment withheld and for years. I was up and around in a couple days. But these guys. . . . what horror. Lucky me, I had oxycontin, then vicodin, and the comfort of knowing my doctor was a phone call away. I knew it would be over soon. Stockdale, McCain, and company faced, at the time, a less certain future. Hard to imagine.
So, while it did hurt, it was, like I say, an odd sort of adventure. Learning how to get out of bed. How to brush the teeth, button the pants, eventually how to turn the cars keys to start the car and how to open a jar. Shaking hands was real painful for a while but it seemed that every time I went to shake, it was too late before I remembered it was going to hurt and then I had to be too manly to show in any way that it hurt once I did shake.
The funniest thing? It gave me great satisfaction in an odd way to let people help me. Wifey was up all night one night waiting for me to get out of surgery and then home from work for three days. Middle son actually drove me to the hospital (after I woke him from his nap) and he and number three son were very sweet and caring during my recovery, helpful and with never a complaint. Dad was here for a couple days and then the in-laws for a few more. I got lots of cards, calls from two different minsters, a flurry of concerned emails, and more hugs than ever. It's just one of those things, one of those really good things: they were all happy to help. And I know that they know that, had the shoe been on the other foot, I'd have been happy to help them--and downright angry if not given the opportunity to help.
That's what it's all about, folks.
So thanks go out to all. I coulda really broken my back, coulda cracked my head like a three day old jack-o-lantern. Economically, I could be in a position where laid up means out of work, where the bills would be devastating, where there is not this wonderful family-and-beyond network of support. Yes, yes, it could have been worse.
My brother the war hero helicopter pilot from Desert Storm says that when helicopters crash it's never one thing. There are always enough safe guards to catch any single mistake. Crashes only happen after a string of failures. (Same thing with revolutions and elections, but that's for discussion on another day.)
In my case, I decided to clean the gutters but it was raining so (1) the paved driveway was slippery wet. The ladder was an old (2) piece-of-crap extension ladder that, if I remember correctly, I picked up for free when I bought an old piece-of-crap house to rehab. I weigh (3) about 250 pounds. I went in to get my 16 year old son to hold the ladder, but he had fallen asleep in front of the TV and looked very peaceful. So (4) I let him sleep. I was only up about four or five rungs, I guess, holding on to the ladder (5) with one hand and (6) trying to stretch the hose up off the ground with the other. I, of course, have been known once or twice (7) not to listen to my wife who suggested once, maybe twice in the past that we should hire cheap immigrant labor to do this, guys who generally weigh only about 140 or 150 pounds and do this sort of thing every day. I, however, too often am (8) a little tight with a penny.
So down I went. A string of little things resulting in complete system failure.
Two broken wrists and a compression fracture of the L-1 vertebrae (tho, that may have been a fracture from an old high school injury that was merely aggravated).
And boy did it hurt. For two days, oxycontin wasn't even good enough to dim the pain.
But I surprised myself. Good Taoist that I guess I've become, it has been somewhat of an adventure in a very odd way. It's all about attitude, taking the bad with the good. I've been pretty lucky in life as far as the health goes. A concussion here and there, the back injury when wrestling in high school, sore knees now and again, and a heel problem for a while. But nothing like this. It really hurt.
For some reason I kept thinking of those who suffered in the Hanoi Hilton. James Stockdale and John McCain are the two whose accounts I've read. I could not imagine the will it took for them to endure years of this sort of pain--broken bones, separated shoulders, hours of beatings, the manipulation of injuries for added effect. Medical treatment withheld and for years. I was up and around in a couple days. But these guys. . . . what horror. Lucky me, I had oxycontin, then vicodin, and the comfort of knowing my doctor was a phone call away. I knew it would be over soon. Stockdale, McCain, and company faced, at the time, a less certain future. Hard to imagine.
So, while it did hurt, it was, like I say, an odd sort of adventure. Learning how to get out of bed. How to brush the teeth, button the pants, eventually how to turn the cars keys to start the car and how to open a jar. Shaking hands was real painful for a while but it seemed that every time I went to shake, it was too late before I remembered it was going to hurt and then I had to be too manly to show in any way that it hurt once I did shake.
The funniest thing? It gave me great satisfaction in an odd way to let people help me. Wifey was up all night one night waiting for me to get out of surgery and then home from work for three days. Middle son actually drove me to the hospital (after I woke him from his nap) and he and number three son were very sweet and caring during my recovery, helpful and with never a complaint. Dad was here for a couple days and then the in-laws for a few more. I got lots of cards, calls from two different minsters, a flurry of concerned emails, and more hugs than ever. It's just one of those things, one of those really good things: they were all happy to help. And I know that they know that, had the shoe been on the other foot, I'd have been happy to help them--and downright angry if not given the opportunity to help.
That's what it's all about, folks.
So thanks go out to all. I coulda really broken my back, coulda cracked my head like a three day old jack-o-lantern. Economically, I could be in a position where laid up means out of work, where the bills would be devastating, where there is not this wonderful family-and-beyond network of support. Yes, yes, it could have been worse.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Quit Cigs & Kill Yourself
It appears that quitting smoking may make you want to kill yourself. Well . . . no shit, Sherlock.
I saw this Whiney Boy (he had nightmares and thoughts of suicide, oh my!) on CNBC this morn followed by the PR gal from Pfizer, maker of Chantix, a drug used to help people quit smoking. No surprise to me that people who quit smoking may feel like killing themselves. It is, they say, addictive. And in so many parts of the country, few people are shunned so badly as smokers. Being made a pariah may tend to harm one's self-esteem.
Sad part is that while Whiney Boy gets his ten minutes of fame, Pfizer will have to spend bucks defending its drug.
By the by, neither Whiney Boy nor the gal from Pfizer could definitively say if the suicide rate amongst Chantix users is any higher than the normal suicide rate or the suicide rate of people caught in the throes of tobacco withdrawal. The figure mentioned, I believe, was that there were 34 suicides within a population of five million who were taking Chantix. If my math's right that's about one suicide in every 147,000 people taking the drug. Seems pretty low to me. High enough for another Black Box Warning, tho, evidently.
Glad I followed Grandma Ethel Myrtle's advice, "If you don't start smoking, you'll never have to quit."
I saw this Whiney Boy (he had nightmares and thoughts of suicide, oh my!) on CNBC this morn followed by the PR gal from Pfizer, maker of Chantix, a drug used to help people quit smoking. No surprise to me that people who quit smoking may feel like killing themselves. It is, they say, addictive. And in so many parts of the country, few people are shunned so badly as smokers. Being made a pariah may tend to harm one's self-esteem.
Sad part is that while Whiney Boy gets his ten minutes of fame, Pfizer will have to spend bucks defending its drug.
By the by, neither Whiney Boy nor the gal from Pfizer could definitively say if the suicide rate amongst Chantix users is any higher than the normal suicide rate or the suicide rate of people caught in the throes of tobacco withdrawal. The figure mentioned, I believe, was that there were 34 suicides within a population of five million who were taking Chantix. If my math's right that's about one suicide in every 147,000 people taking the drug. Seems pretty low to me. High enough for another Black Box Warning, tho, evidently.
Glad I followed Grandma Ethel Myrtle's advice, "If you don't start smoking, you'll never have to quit."
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