The Deadman Night Rider

A nation fit to be slaves

2009-01-23T09:02:00.000-08:00

I came across this in an article advocating for a nationwide freeze on foreclosures--not just for 90 days, but for at least a year:

In December Mabuhay [a community non-profit organization] sponsored a "foreclosure clinic" at a community college in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Vallejo, which despite its small size--its population is about 112,000--boasted the tenth-highest foreclosure rate in the country at the time. About 150 anxious homeowners showed up, clutching thick folders of financial documents, waiting to speak with mortgage counselors. Their stories were painfully similar: one couple was struggling to pay an interest rate of 16 percent; another was unable to make $4,300 monthly payments and owed $630,000 on a home worth $370,000; another, in their mid-60s, had resigned themselves to losing the home in which they'd lived for twenty-three years and spending their retirement in a motor home.

If anything, these anecdotes show why we need more foreclosures, and sooner rather than later. By law, the couple struggling to pay that 16% interest rate was provided with documentation showing that figure in large print boxed in a nice big table--but they were too busy picking out drapes and planning trips to Home Depot to look at the table. The family with a $630K mortgage on a $370K home definitely signed up for negative amortization, meaning they were way, way, way out of their price range from the start and knew it.

But my absolute favorite is the supposed tear-jerker of a couple who have somehow managed to live in a house for 23 years but still failed to pay down their mortgage to the point where they are in danger of foreclosure now. Instead, my guess is that they plundered all the equity that should have been there long ago with home equity loans, and so they are back where they started 23 years ago.

The foreclosure process is there for a reason--to force people who can't face facts out to free up the property for someone who can pay for it. I know it's sad, and I know it sucks, but houses are just things. The sooner we start thinking of them as such, the quicker we can get out of this mess.

Playoff picks

2009-01-06T08:27:00.001-08:00

OK, success in any venture depends largely on having a personal stake, so herewith are the officially Deadman-endorsed teams for the playoffs this weekend:

NFC

1. Philadelphia over the NY Giants.

2. Carolina over Arizona. WRONG!

AFC

1. Baltimore over Tennessee. DING!

2. San Diego over Pittsburgh.

UPDATE:

Well, because of my inexperience and generally not paying attention, I didn't realize until this morning that two of these games went down last night, but it seems the Deadman is batting .500. The Panthers let us down, but the Ravens pulled through for us. Now it's up to the Chargers and the Eagles...right?

2009 is Here!

2009-01-02T08:15:00.000-08:00

This is the year the Deadman deal will finally wrap up. Here's my list of New Year's Resolutions:

1. Improve my Russian.

2. Improve my Spanish.

3. Learn to play golf.

4. Learn to enjoy pro football and baseball, or at least be conversant.

The first two are for if I ever find a way out of here again, and the last two are in case I don't. We'll see which ones get the most use!

Happy New Year!!

Structural Shift

2008-12-27T09:15:00.000-08:00

From the real estate section of yesterday's New York Times:

“In 1985,” he said, “50 percent of households had children at home. In 2000, that was down to 33 percent. Today it is 29 percent, headed to 25 percent.

“That means that 75 percent of home buyers over the next 15 years will have childless households — and within that group are empty-nester baby-boomers, or couples or singles buying a first house. And that means that three out of four home buyers will have no interest in a house in the suburbs with a good school system, which is pretty much what we’ve created over the last 50 years.”

Mr. Otteau cited a new study from Virginia Tech projecting that a nationwide surplus of 22 million suburban homes on lots larger than a sixth of an acre will be languishing on the market by 2025.

The article notes that some counties surrounding New York City have almost two years worth of backlog inventory in residential real estate. Since home construction (not sales, construction) drove over a third of the economy for the last eight years, it's not surprising that we're in a deep recession. Hopefully we'll realize that putting people that don't need them in these homes just to put people in homes is not the way to go. Here's how Professor Posner sums up our recent housing policy:

“Home ownership policy of the Bush and Clinton administrations was, in essence, an attempt to pay low-income people to make a risky investment that they would otherwise rationally avoid. I cannot understand why anyone would think that such a policy would be sensible. In some cases, these people will do well and enjoy the upside of their investment, but in other cases they will do poorly, with the result that they will be worse off than ever.”

Unfortunately, this same logic may be about to be deployed in the realm of 'job creation':

Speaking of digging holes, Obama also wants to spend $60 billion to "provide financing to transportation infrastructure projects across the nation." He says "these projects will create up to two million new direct and indirect jobs and stimulate approximately $35 billion per year in new economic activity."

Fixing a bridge, widening a highway or building a light rail system may or may not make economic sense. But the fact that it involves paying people to operate jackhammers and pour concrete does not make it any more worthwhile. If creating jobs can justify transportation projects, why not fill the country with bridges to nowhere?

First, houses for no one, now bridges to nowhere. Both are what happen when we let sentimental notions (houses are good, jobs are good) override analysis.

Maybe someday

2008-12-27T03:18:00.000-08:00

Some winter shots of Atyrau and Almaty that I came across on the net.

It sucks being ahead of your time

2008-12-22T05:46:00.000-08:00

Here's an excerpt from a piece in the New York Times on the mixture of federal policy failures that led to the housing bubble:

Typically, as home prices increase, rental costs rise proportionally. But Thomas sent charts to top White House and Treasury officials showing that the monthly cost of owning far outpaced the cost to rent. To Thomas, it was a sign that housing prices were wildly inflated and bound to plunge, a condition that could set off a foreclosure crisis as conventional and subprime borrowers with little equity found they owed more than their houses were worth.

That was in early 2007. But of course, no one believed this guy, because it was accepted as a truism that owning just had to be cheaper than that "sucker's game" of renting. Econ 101, man! Read the whole thing when you have time--especially the early sections that detail how the unquestioned, blind belief that increasing home ownership was a good thing drove so many policy decisions.

For those more visually oriented, here's a clip of a recent talk given by Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute that has alot of good material on how tax policy--specifically the deductibility of home equity loan interest--led to generally lower levels of equity across the board. What's so striking is that Wallison still can't quite see the forest for the trees--note the standard genuflection to the altar of home ownership that prefaces his otherwise very insightful analysis. He's got all the symptoms down, but he can't bring himself to diagnose the disease.

Here's my Christmas present to everyone--something you won't hear anywhere else: owning a home is what keeps poor and middle class families poor and middle class. For most people, the vaunted "wealth-building" effects are only an illusion, and this will only become more so as lending standards tighten back up to require down payments approaching 20%. Consider this: hardworking family A spends five years accumulating a sizeable down payment. By plowing it into a home, they have just placed that capital into a financial vehicle that pays no interest and generates no dividends. May has well have stuffed that money into a mattress. True, each month, a portion of their mortgage payment then goes toward building more equity ("wealth-building" as the radio mortgage jocks like to call it), but because of the reality of loan amortization, it is pitifully small: on a $100K balance on a 30-year note, it takes more than five years to accumulate even $5K of equity. After ten years, it's barely over $12K.

And let's say family A was lucky--after 10 years, their home appreciated in value. What do they most likely do? What do most families in fact chomp at the bit to do? Yep--use all that equity as a down payment on a bigger house, and begin the whole process over once more, starting again at square one of the business end of the amortization table. By investing all this capital in their home, they have choked themselves off for years from the single most powerful force known to mankind: the power of compound interest. This is what economists call an opportunity cost.

Not to mention that all this time, the family has had no access to the accumulated capital in their "wealth-builder" unless they wanted to borrow against it with a home equity loan. When cash shortages came (as they inevitably do), they would instead likely rely on credit cards. See now why we have such outrageous credit card balances? Sure, we shop too much, but it's also because the average American family carries 60%(!) of their 'wealth' in the equity of their home--in the one place where it can't do them any good when they need it.

Plus, I've been kind here--this whole thing ignores the cost of Home Depot, new furniture and appliances, normal (and abnormal!) repairs, increased commuting costs, etc. The term "money pit" didn't appear out of thin air, you know.

Maybe those petunias and picket fences are worth it to some, and if so, that's great. But the numbers show that it's time for a new-style American dream--hopefully one that's got some hard-nosed analysis worked in there somewhere. Here's to hoping!

Today Dallas looks like England

2008-12-18T14:04:00.000-08:00

Or at least what I always imagined England to look like--overcast, kind of misty fog, gray. I've always kind of dug this look, plus it's the day after finals. Natasha always says that the law school reminds her of Hogwarts from Harry Potter, so I guess it really looks like it today.

A little reverse homesickness

2008-11-21T09:20:00.000-08:00

Feeling the yen especially keenly this morning for some reason, so I noodled around for some photos, and found these from Aktau. I've heard it's become a nice little resort since I was there years and years ago. The tradition is to take a bar trip after the exam, so maybe I'll treat myself to two or three weeks in KZ this summer.

A glimpse of things to come

2008-11-20T19:17:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON, Nov 20 (Reuters) - U.S. economic and political clout will decline over the next two decades and the world will be more dangerous, with food and water scarce and advanced weapons plentiful, U.S. spy agencies projected on Thursday.

The report predicts that the dollar will lose its place as the premier currency of the world, and

Global wealth [will shift] from the developed West to the energy-rich Gulf States and Russia, and to Asia, the rising center of manufacturing and some service industries.

Meanwhile (my prediction), we will remain slaves to our houses, cars, and credit card bills. I'm constantly berated for saying that the real opportunities for the next several years lie well outside the States, but the evidence is finally mounting. Wishing it weren't true is not going to stop it, friends and neighbors. I just wish I was still in a position to capitalize on it, or that I can find a way to recapture that chance.

Deadman Heroes of the Week

2008-11-20T19:11:00.000-08:00

The Indian Navy:

"India's navy sinks pirate ship"

Note to the rest of the world: go on ahead with out us

2008-11-20T18:45:00.000-08:00

Scrap the bail-out and the economic stimulus plan--let's just pull the plug right now. It's obvious we're going to remain a nation of idiots for some time:

In a state where football is king, students who pass, kick and tackle will soon be able to get more credit toward high school graduation.

After lengthy debate that pitted coaches against some school reform advocates, the State Board of Education approved a plan Wednesday to give football players – and other high school athletes – twice as much credit.

The proposal, which could go into effect as early as next school year, would allow four years of sports to count as elective credits toward graduation instead of the current maximum of two years.

The board's 10-5 vote followed often emotional debate, with both Dallas members – Republican Geraldine Miller and Democrat Mavis Knight – voting no.

Supporters said the move would keep kids in school and spur them to do well in academic courses. Critics charged that the plan would de-emphasize academics and return to the days of "football comes first."

This is especially poignant given this column from Leonard Pitts in yesterday's Dallas Morning News that raises an excellent question about the Obamas' choice of school for their children to attend in DC (almost certainly a private school): if our public schools aren't good enough for the President's children, why are they good enough for any of our children?

Let me jump off on that point--since there's an even chance that at least one of Obama's daughters will be in high school by the time he leaves office, do you think the high school that she will attend will give four years of credit for athletics? Or do you think maybe it might eschew that choice in favor of rigorous math/science, arts, and foreign language requirements? You think that school will give a damn about students whose goals and motivations are so upside down that they need to be lured into a classroom with a damned toy? Given all that, you think maybe we should make our public schools look more like the kind of schools our elites send their kids to, instead of less??

Alright, I know I'm just whizzing into the wind on this one. Just like gardening and giving a damn what color the kitchen is, I've tried to understand this deal--watch the games, read the stats, listen to ESPN radio--and it just ain't in me. Someone who does understand it--enlighten me: are sports really so damn important that we have to send everything else to hell over them?

The sickness of houses continues

2008-11-17T08:31:00.000-08:00

It's entirely possible the YouTube lady was right that she no longer has to worry about paying her mortgage. Under this new plan, if you're underwater or close to it, you can get your payment cut to around 38% of your income (through haircuts on the interest rate, re-fi over a longer period, or even principal write-offs):

Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, predicts that many homeowners who have little or no equity will stop paying their mortgage and then reduce their income to get the biggest payment cut possible. They could stop working overtime or, if two spouses work, one could quit. After the modification, they could try to boost their income again.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Schiff says. "People are going to feel like complete morons if they don't participate. The people getting punished are the ones who never made an irresponsible decision to buy a house they couldn't afford."

The government is offering loan servicers $800 for every homeowner they get into the plan.

Understand me any better now when I say I wish I'd never left Aytrau??

Some things you just can't say in English

2008-11-11T19:10:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, as I'm scanning through the radio, I'll hear a song on one of the Spanish language stations that must play mostly pop music from Spain that sounds really cool. Today was one of those days--if I'm lucky, I can snatch out just enough of a phrase to type into Google to find it. Today I was in luck. Of course I didn't know what she was singing until I could read the lyrics and parse it out, but when I did, man, what a kick in the gut. Those Spaniards sure know how to write a song!

Here's the link to YouTube if anyone wants to see it there.

A little culture

2008-11-09T18:28:00.001-08:00

The painting is "A Knight at the Crossroads" by Viktor Vasnetsov, from 1878. Pretty cool, huh?

Alot of the Deadman's companions are standing in front of that stone right now, and I've definitely stood there myself. Stand fast, my friends!!

UPDATE:

A couple of people, like Andria, have looked around to see what the stone says, and found the inscription "If you ride to the left, you will lose your horse, if you ride to the right, you will lose your head." I have also seen it as "If you go straight, you will lose your life, left, your horse, right, your head." Based on one of the words I can barely make out on the stone, I think this last one might be it, but I can't tell for sure.

Anyway--a little more culture: one of recurring the themes of Russian literature seems to be the struggle between fatalism and free will. (For example, the last chapter of Lermontov's A Hero of Our Times). I think that puts a neat spin on the conundrum. For fatalists, the choices do look pretty grim--life, horse, head. True, the Russians have a penchant for the no-win situation.

But, if you reject the idea that all outcomes are necessarily foretold, the stone simply gives an indication of the nature of the dangers that lie ahead. In that case, straight and left seem to be hardships like penury and privation (maybe even slavery), things that can only be endured. On the other hand, the right hand road seems to indicate a violent battle with a physical enemy--one who possibly could have weaknesses, and perhaps can be defeated. I hope that I would turn right.

But the last thing that I like about the painting is the skull of the man and a horse on the ground in front of the stone--maybe a traveler who simply couldn't decide? Recognizing my own weaknesses, this is the one that I find the most disturbing...

God, please let some have taped this...

2008-10-31T17:50:00.000-07:00

I would pay $100 to get to see this on tape--Arnold Schwarzenegger describing Obama at a campaign rally:

"Every year in March I come here to organize the Arnold Classic, which is all about building the body and pumping," Schwarzenegger said.

"That's why I want to invite Senator Obama because he needs to do something about those skinny legs. I'm going to make him do some squats.

"And then we're going to make him do some biceps curls to beef up those scrawny little arms. But if he could only do something about putting some meat on his ideas.

"Senator McCain on the other hand is built like a rock. His character and his views are solid."

Sign me up please!!

2008-10-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

Click here for a wholesale plan put forward at Opinion Journal to forgive 20% of every mortgage, with the proviso that they then be refinanced over a 20 year term. The writers propose two conditions that are supposed to reduce abuse:

There are two additional conditions that must be added to these new mortgages, to make them less of a windfall for borrowers. The house could not be further encumbered by a home-equity loan until the government mortgage is fully paid off; and the mortgage-holder would be fully liable for the loan, unlike almost all other mortgages, which are backed only by the house itself. Requiring the new mortgages to be "full recourse" loans will tend to screen out of the plan those homeowners who can currently make their mortgage payments, and will attract those homeowners who are willing to assume personal liability in preference to foreclosure. (my emphasis)

Help me out here: if (as now) I am comfortably making my mortgage every month, and after this government-backed refi, my monthly payment will go way down--making it even easier--why wouldn't I jump at the chance to pass 20% of my principal balance on to all of you other taxpayers out there? Make it full recourse all day long, baby--I've got equity now, and I'll have 20% more after your plan. How does my position really change??

The horoscope today

2008-10-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

Pisces : The sun's going into Scorpio, in your solar Ninth House of travel. You may not get the whole next four weeks to travel the world, but get in as much as you can.

Well, no world travel for me in the next four weeks, unless you count Topeka, Kansas for the negotiation competition. In fact, it's becoming increasingly obvious that YouTube is as close as I'm going to get for a long, long time:

Ah, well--someday!

UPDATE: Well, it looks like the horoscope people must quote by household, since the Deadman wife found out today that she'll soon be required to circumnavigate the globe!

Put me down for some of what this dude is smoking

2008-10-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

Everyday provides new evidence for my theory that people are fundamentally unable to think rationally about residential real estate. Check out this column from the Wall Street freakin' Journal's opinion page from a Harvard economics professor who has an idea on how to stem the mortgage/foreclosure crisis:

We need a firewall to break the downward spiral of house prices. Here's how it might work. The federal government would offer any homeowner with a mortgage an opportunity to replace 20% of the mortgage with a low-interest loan from the government, subject to a maximum of $80,000. This would be available to new buyers as well as those with mortgages. The interest on that loan would reflect the government's cost of funds and could be as low as 2%. The loan would not be secured by the house but would be a loan with full recourse, allowing the government to take other property or income in the unlikely event that the individual does not pay. It would by law be senior to other unsecured debt and not eligible for relief in bankruptcy.

With all due respect, Professor Feldstein is cuckoo for cocoa puffs on this one. He claims that this plan is needed to provide an equity cushion to homeowners who are on the brink of slipping into negative equity from falling home prices, which would keep them from defaulting and putting more homes on the market, thus depressing prices even further. The big bugaboo, he fears, is "a downward overshooting of house prices and the resulting mortgage defaults."

Wow. So now, to shore up the holy of holies--home prices--Mr. Marginal Homeowner is supposed to sign on to a non-dischargeable federal loan that jumps ahead in priority over every one of his existing creditors and essentially pledges all of his other assets to guarantee it (car, boat, bank accounts, etc.), just to save $3000 a year--less than $300 a month--in interest payments? Honestly, you need to get out more, Professor. Are there really that many homeowners out there that are at the risk of default over $300 a month? Do homeowners have to have those homes so bad that they'll be willing to get equity by mortgaging everything else they have, or will have in the future for that matter? Maybe so.

But what happens in the "unlikely event" of default? If you think a mass of home foreclosures by private entities is ugly, just wait until the feds have to start garnishing bank accounts and seizing cars to satisfy these mortgage-replacement loans. Have we lost our minds here? Are houses so important that we're ready to fork over to the government the power to collect mortgage payments like the IRS collects unpaid taxes?? Or, in the article's somewhat antiseptic terms, by giving the government "a fully offsetting claim on individuals?" To borrow a line from Friends: remember, they're just houses, they're not love.

The big disconnect here is in how we define the problem. Professor Feldstein (and obviously alot of other folks) say the problem is falling home prices. Stop the fall, solve the problem. But that's wrong--prices are falling because homes are overvalued. We built too many and sold them to people who shouldn't have them. Stopping falling prices just expends resources to keep them overvalued, and can only delay the inevitable. Let's find the floor now and be done with it.

Prediction: the big winner in this presidential election

2008-10-05T08:54:00.000-07:00

The Electoral College. The last two elections (especially Bush-Gore) spawned a brief Democratic flirtation with the notion of scrapping it in favor of the national popular vote, but I think this election will put that idea to rest.

CNN's 'poll of polls' shows a pretty tight race--49% Obama to 43% McCain. But, their electoral map tells a much different story--250 votes for Obama to 189 votes for McCain (270 is the magic number). The Sunday talk shows seem to agree that the polls will tighten up over the next few weeks, so we'll probably see another close race in terms of the popular vote, but to make it competitive in the EC, McCain will have to do something dramatic like winning both Ohio and Florida, or taking back Pennsylvania from Obama. So, something tells me that the Dems will soon find a renewed respect for the institution.

Embarrassing

2008-09-28T07:13:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that the last few weeks have been somewhat disorienting for me. For example, I've seen Robert Reich on TV half a dozen times talking about the financial crisis, and he's made sense every time. On the other hand, I've watched the Republicans lurch from cynical denial (e.g., we're only seeing "core inflation", and there's really no recession--we're just whiners) to empty grandstanding (McCain's declaration that he would fire SEC chairman Chris Cox, which earned him a stinging, full-column rebuke from George Will).

Now, in the muddle of the extended bailout negotiations, the Democrats seem to be the ones who generated most of the good ideas (capping executive salaries and taking equity positions in "rescued" firms, a post-bailout fee assessment), etc.), and the Republicans didn't have anything to counter except weak charges of socialism. The major exception was the proposed change to the bankruptcy code, which thankfully got shot down.

I hate to say it, but the Republicans richly deserve to lose this election, and unless something wholly unexpected happens in the remaining debates, they will.

Jack Hough, you just said a mouthful

2008-09-27T19:23:00.000-07:00

This dude sums up my sentiments exactly. He even hits on something I observed over the summer:

The average renter makes about $34,000 a year, but while the percentage of renters declines after incomes exceed $20,000 and rents exceed $600 a month, it jumps again once incomes top $150,000 and rents top $1,200 a month. In other words, poor people rent modest apartments for lack of choice. Middle-income people buy houses. High-income people, presumably with a dose of financial savvy, often rent nice apartments instead of buying.

Unfortunately, there's no way this article would have seen print even one year ago.

Time to pay the piper

2008-09-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a graph that plots US household debt as a percentage of GDP over the last fifty years or so (from Contrary Investor, via Fabius Maximus). Note the sharp rise starting at about 2000, just as the tech boom/bust was tailing off. Now, take a look at what happened to mortgage interest rates at that same time--they fell off a cliff. As the Fabius article points out, "[o]ver the past decade, deficit spending by consumers has supported the United States economy." It's easy to see why the idea of a credit crunch puts so many on Wall Street and in DC in a cold sweat.

Meanwhile, China has enough cash to allow its taikonauts to perform their first space walk, and are working to field an aircraft carrier soon, with technology provided by Russia. Russia is also making pretty good money selling arms to Venezuela, and tightening its grip on energy resources:

"During Friday's meetings, Putin also said that Russia was ready to cooperate with Venezuela on nuclear energy. Their ministries signed a memorandum of understanding that sets out plans for an energy consortium. The deal would give Russian companies greater access to fields in Venezuela, which would reap billions of dollars in Russian investments."

Back here at home, "Flip This House" decides to soldier on.

NY Times supports state action when the feds fail to act

2008-09-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

But only when in comes to global warming. On immigration, not so much.

I hope you really, really, really like houses

2008-09-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

Because you're about to own even more of them--and overpay for them, at that. I'm sure the investment bankers thank you.

Hopefully, one positive outcome of this whole mess would be an end to the fetishization of home ownership. Hell, that's why we have a Freddie Mac and a Fannie Mae to begin with--to broaden access to buying houses. Part of the problem, though, is that the system is a relic from an economy that doesn't exist any more.

The thirty-year mortgage is a product of a time when a family (one where only one spouse usually worked, by the way) bought a house in their late twenties/early thirties, paid on the note over their working lives, then paid it off just as they were getting ready for retirement. To say that this is now the exception rather than the rule is an understatement. Given how many times the average person will change jobs, locations, and even marriage partners during their lifetimes, most people should only be thinking about buying a home now in their fifties, by which time a much shorter note--say 15 years--is more appropriate. As a matter of public policy, we've recognized this trend with portability of retirement plans and even, to an extent, health insurance. But,we'll probably never see the death of the publicly-backed thirty-year note.

Because the one truly empirical conclusion that the mortgage meltdown yields is that people are dumb, dumb, dumb when it comes to this area--they'll pay way too much for a house, spend 50%+ of their monthly income on housing, commit to usurious rates of interest, and so on. And we have tons of programs at every level of government to help them do it.

So, I'm not holding my breath. I'm most interested to see what happens when (and if) lenders try to impose stricter standards, since we've heard alot of tsk-tsking this week about how this all started when we stopped requiring down payments, etc. My guess is that any attempt at discipline will be short-lived. I don't think most Americans have it in them to save over five years of so to accumulate enough for any sizeable down payments, unless they start to raid 401(k) plans. And just wait for more news stories about how home ownership levels have dropped back to 1990 levels--especially for minority households. Plus, folks like DR Horton and Keller have a backlog of unsold homes they need to move--and getting tetchy about figures on the loan app doesn't put butts behind picket fences. I don't envy the job of loan officers for the next few years (especially since mortgages will probably be subject to being stripped down in Chapter 13 bankruptcies--but more on that later).

Houses, baby. We wanted 'em, we got 'em.

2008-09-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

Double rations until further notice!

I hope you really, really like houses...

2008-09-07T09:14:00.000-07:00

Because you now own alot more of them, at least indirectly. And with both parties espousing plans to keep people in houses that they can't afford and never should have bought in the first place, we're going to be picking up even more of the tab. The American Dream turns out to be targeted socialism.

Don't take my word for it--here's some advice from one of the folks who brought us this mess, straight from the Flip This House website:

ARMANDO MONTELONGO'S FLIP AND GROW RICH TIPS

"#2. Get past the B.S. belief that it takes money to make money. When I started I had zero dollars in my pocket and was $50,000 in debt. Who said it takes your money anyway?"

Indeed. Why risk your own money when you can risk ours?

OK, I'm sold

2008-09-03T20:35:00.000-07:00

Just watched the convention speech. I think it's time to revive the phrase "sock it to 'em."

"These are not the smartest guys in the world."

2008-08-26T11:04:00.002-07:00

So say Denver police of the alleged would-be Obamaassins.

Check out the mug shots. These guys are living proof that the whole white supremacist movement, like their meth-addled fever dream plot, is "no credible threat."

Back on the air...

2008-08-26T11:04:00.001-07:00

One last lap to go!

Men fit to be slaves...

2008-07-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

"Facing Foreclosure? Pennsylvania Says - Get REAL and Be A HERO"

I am simply rendered speechless. Here's a link to the actual program whereby Pennsylvania will coordinate refinancing, or even outright purchase itself, the home mortgage that a presumably literate adult entered into with an exercise of his or her own free will.

Here's my favorite part: "If you owe more than your home's current value, PHFA may be able to negotiate with your current lender to reduce the amount owed on your loan."

Some more about houses...

2008-05-26T15:18:00.000-07:00

For our anonymous poster from below, a couple of articles from Salon.com:

Flip this house, please!

and

I bought a house, and now I'm crying everyday

Here's just a snippet from the second one:

I am 35 years old, and we recently bought our first house. I have cried every day since. Our house is an older fixer-upper. All I could see when we looked at it was lots of potential. Most of my TV time is spent watching shows like "Flip This House" or "Designed to Sell." They make it look so easy. There were so many red flags, but for some reason I persisted.

I could read stuff like that all day long. Just for the record, though, I don't hate home ownership--I just think we have way too much of it. In fact, I agree with this guy who wrote a well-considered response to the 'Flip this house, please' article:

Home ownership is kind of cool, though. You can paint the walls and know that any improvements will benefit you, not a landlord. The bank can't raise the "rent" (never, EVER, get an adjustable loan, unless you are a financial expert). If you plan on staying put for 10 years or more, and you're careful, you will find it a positive experience. (my emphasis)

Hell, in fact, this guy is even more conservative than I am about it--I've always said five years, not ten. But, because the very thought of spending ten years in one place fills me with existential dread, I know that owning a home is always going to be like wearing a shoe that's too tight. And the housing market is only going to really get better once all of the dreamy-eyed (see above), the flippers, and the dudes like me who aren't in it for the correct time frame get squeezed out.

Anyway, point taken--enough about all of this for a while. Maybe we'll move on to golf...

Best of luck to all our comrades!

2008-05-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

Today is graduation day, mates! Here's to all our buddies about to set sail--especially the LegalDiva who hails from Big V!

Exam and Summertime Mojo

2008-05-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

Alright--feeling like we need some psychic voodoo to take us to the next level. At times like these, there's only one place to go: the Conan well.

Conan: Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, Crom... so grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!

This could be the shot we've been waiting for--the one that could get us back. Now we'll see if we're tough enough (though hopefully we won't have to bite through a vulture's neck while nailed to the Tree of Pain...)

Someone finally had the guts to say it

2008-05-02T08:31:00.000-07:00

To borrow a phrase from my younger colleagues, OMG (or, the more emphatic and profane, OMFG), I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone--the New Republic is running this as their top story:

Too Many People Own Homes

Here's the opening paragraph from the article:

In the midst of the subprime crisis, there's an important question that analysts and policymakers have neglected: Did so many people need to own homes in the first place? The dream of home ownership has long been part of the American experience, but, as the federal government steps in to artificially support borrowers and lenders with tax credits that encourage more spending or with public spending that keeps over-indebted borrowers in unaffordable homes, we ought to consider whether it's time to wake up from that dream.

So far, all the comments left under the article are positive--which is surprising, since I've been beaten to all but a bloody nub countless times on this topic.

Rosner, the author, notes that, historically, home mortgages were a sort of forced savings mechanism, since they were relatively difficult to sell, and required at least a 20% down payment. We're all well aware--painfully aware--that this is no longer true, and probably won't be again. The "Flip This House" generation simply won't stand for it. The best we can hope for is to wring at least some of the silliness out of the system.

To that end, Rosner is right on another point--what he calls the 'stigmatization' of renting. If you think that's hyperbole, consider that financial planners used to advise parents to buy their children houses to live in while in college, rather than 'waste' money renting.

I've been taken to task several times on the American Dream rhetoric. The American Dream is--or should be--financial security (which is the only true form of freedom there is, in this country or any other). That used to be realized by owning a home--but only because of the process, not the physical thing. This whole thing went off the rails when the house became confused with the goal. Once that happened, naked greed for vaulted ceilings and picture-perfect lawns could be passed off as virtuous. To paraphrase Russell Crowe in Gladiator, people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had a vision for this country, but this is not it.

To the victors went the sub-prime mortgages...

2008-04-22T07:06:00.000-07:00

Russia may soon join China, India, and various Middle Eastern countries in sowing sovereign fund investment money into the U.S. I couldn't help but laugh at one of the comments posted underneath the story:

Great - now the US will be owned by both China and Russia - I wonder who won the Cold War - hmmmmm?

Willis, Tampa, USA FL

Yep, Willis from Tampa, FL, it's a bitch waking up from that American dream, ain't it? When you read the lastest employment figures and wonder where the jobs are going, remember this (from the same article):

Russia has become KPMG's fastest growing market, outstripping China for audit and consultancy services. Last year, the accountancy group's business there increased by 65 per cent.

The times, they are a-changin'!

Exactly what I've been wondering lately

2008-03-29T17:38:00.000-07:00

From the Opinion section of this weekend's Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Frank and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd are planning more schemes to move the risk to the taxpayers from those who made bad decisions, such as buying mortgages that are now in default. As a result, ordinary citizens will ask themselves: Why should I pay my mortgage if my neighbors can get theirs reduced?

I heard my new favorite "dream home" story on NPR this week: first-time homebuyer (single income, with children) buys dream home for $249K on a sub-prime ARM. The reporter made the obligatory mention that with a mid-600s credit score, the buyer could have qualified for a traditional mortgage (but of course failed to mention that it wouldn't have been enough for the price range our intrepid home buyer was looking at--only smart to get all the house you can get, right? After all this is your home, your wealth builder!).

Two months ago, the ARM reset, which doubled the mortgage payment. Of course, home buyer claims that he never saw this coming. Here's the best part--when they finally(!) had the home appraised as he was looking to get out from under it, it came in at a whopping $180K, leaving Ace an almost $100K deficiency if he sells. He's waiting for foreclosure to see what the bank can get out of it. If he can hang on long enough, though, this is the kind of guy who stands to reap a huge windfall if any of the 'solutions' to the housing crisis being batted around right now actually comes to pass.

UPDATE: watching CNN program that claims that on the average (pre-meltdown), people stayed in a house for only nine years--a medium-term investment by rational, i.e., not residential real estate, standards. Compare that with the statistics about how many times the average person today can expect to change careers (not just jobs) in their lifetime, and you'll see what I mean that the demographics simply do not favor the home market long term.

Why we have the 2nd Amendment

2008-03-21T09:13:00.000-07:00

And why Heller is so important:

Check out this story about a California woman who was shot to death by a burglar while on the phone with 911.

Via Instapundit.

Sanity returns??

2008-03-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

I heard the most amazing thing on TV whiile I was getting ready for work this morning. The Today show had a financial planner on to answer e-mailed questions about retirement, family financial planning, etc. A couple wrote in that they were relocating to a new town for work, where they planned to be for no more than five years or so--they wanted some advice on the best financing tools for buying a new house there. You could have knocked me over with a feather when the lady said this: if you're only planning on being there for five years, I would seriously consider renting over buying.

What rank heresy is this?!? Did I just hear sound advice about residential real estate on the TV?

It seems that reality is starting to set in at all levels about just how foolishly we've acted for the last several years. Here's a snippet from one of today's op-eds in the Dallas Morning News about the housing market:

Who's to blame?

Who's not to blame? The mortgage brokers were out of control. Regulators were asleep. Homebuyers thought they were entitled to Corian counters and a two-story great room. Everybody from Norwegian town elders to financial geniuses decided that house prices would always go up. This was an episode of mass idiocy.

The writer (David Brooks) lists some stats:

Housing prices are off about 10 percent from their peak, and experts expect them to drop another 20 percent or so. Without policy changes, several million households will default on their mortgages over the next few years. Roughly 14 million homeowners will owe more than their houses are worth.

That means 14 million homeowners are going to learn a fundamental lesson: when you're upside down, you don't own the house--the house owns you.

While it's good to see commentators finally take a sober look at this situation, there are still a couple of conclusions that the articles I have seen so far have studiously avoiding facing:

1. We have sold houses to too many people who shouldn't have been in a house--any house--to begin with. We've got to shake this sentimental attitude that home ownership is some kind of silver bullet. It's not right for everybody, and if you look at the demographics, the number of people that it IS right for is declining every year.

2. As a result of #1, we have built too many houses. Even more than how we deal with the sub-prime mess, how badly we are overbuilt is what is ultimately going to determine if and when the housing market recovers.

And yet "Flip This House" has been picked up for another season...

2008-03-14T15:11:00.000-07:00

The sickness of houses threatens to swallow Bear Stearns, and if we're lucky, will stop there (though I doubt it).

The long-term fundamentals aren't all that great, but in a way they sort of understate how bad the short term may really be: the only thing keeping overall housing prices flat or just barely negative (especially here in Dallas) is the high-end market. But here's a snippet from an article in the Atlantic this month:

Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics, construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (houses built on a sixth of an acre or more) by 2025—that’s roughly 40 percent of the large-lot homes in existence today. (my emphasis)

Friday fun

2008-03-14T11:43:00.000-07:00

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5

As proof of that, Exhibit 1--a massive dance routine staged by Filipino prisoners to Soulja Boy and Can't Touch This:

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If you don't believe this is real, Google up "Filipino prisoners dance" or something similar. It's really a pretty interesting story.

Shocked, shocked to find gambling in Casablanca

2008-03-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

In the aftermath of the Spitzer flame-out, we're getting alot of misty-eyed sympathy for poor little Ashley Alexandra Dupre, who evidently--with the classic "if I can make it there, I can make it anywhere" spirit--just came to the Big Apple to launch a singing career. It doesn't look like they're going to be making a sequel to Pretty Woman out of this one, though. Since motivational speaker Matt Foley (who once noted of an aspiring young writer "Brian, from what I've heard, you're using your paper, not for writing, but for rolling doobies!!") is unavailable, I will simply say that she apparently wasn't using her lips for voice lessons (ahem):

She's been hanging around the night-life scene for a few years," said one well-connected club source. "She's definitely a party girl. She was out four, five nights a week and was a staple. She danced on tables and had fun.

Here's what her former employers had to say about her motivations:

"Like all of them, she wanted to hang out with guys with money," a source said.

For the club owners, it's all coming together:

Now it makes sense where her Cartier watch, her Louis Vuitton bathing suit and her trips to St.-Tropez came from.

Fascinating--who would have thought that a prostitute would have been motivated by money?

Why I'll never do labor law

2008-03-09T08:59:00.000-07:00

From a story on efforts to improve the physical fitness of Chicago police officers:

The police union opposes mandating a physical fitness regime, and argues consideration must be given for the stress and irregular hours of the job.

Thank God the Marines aren't a union shop.

Now here's a strategy with legs!

2008-03-09T08:19:00.000-07:00

How many times have I said it myself--I should have listened to my wife:

Clinton has often said that not acting in Rwanda was one of his biggest regrets. It's a decision, he said, for which he continues to try to make amends. Had he listened to his wife, Clinton said, things might have been different.

"I believe if I had moved we might have saved at least a third of those lives," he said. "I think she clearly would have done that."

He went on to explain how America, which did intervene in the former Yugoslavia, could only take on so much at once. But not acting in Rwanda, he suggested, was a mistake his wife wouldn't make.

Here's a thorough run-down of why this can't possibly be true in the conventional, non-Clintonian sense of the word.

Aside from the trivial matter of veracity, though, this could be a killer campaign strategy--if Hillary starts claiming she was right on all the things Bill was wrong on, she's can dip into a very deep well of talking points indeed.

Note to self

2008-03-04T16:43:00.001-08:00

Default on house payment next month. (I wonder if it's too late to put a stop order on this month's check...)

Pathetic:

``Efforts by both government and private-sector entities to reduce unnecessary foreclosures are helping, but more can, and should, be done,'' Bernanke said in a speech to bankers in Orlando, Florida, today. ``Principal reductions that restore some equity for the homeowner may be a relatively more effective means of avoiding delinquency and foreclosure.''

That's the Federal Reserve Chairman talking, not some wingnut with a general grievance toward the free market system. I am not joking or exaggerating when I say that there is a danger here of wrecking the housing industry for the next 20 years. Based on what both Democrats and Republicans are proposing, there's really no reason for anyone to send their lender one dollar more than they feel like from now on. The last thing the banks want to do now is foreclose (even if they're not under a federally-mandated injunction from doing it), and if you're stubborn enough, maybe they'll just knock your principal balance down to wipe out the deficiency.

This sickness of houses just goes on and on.

Where do I sign?

2008-02-28T00:59:00.000-08:00

I had the pleasure at lunch today of sitting next to one of the bankruptcy judges from the Northern District after a moot court exercise. One of my partners in the exercise is an international LLM student from China, so the judge mentioned that one of her former law clerks just got posted by V&E to Beijing.

Another of my buds tells me that her friend at Jones Day gets fairly regular solicitations from head-hunters about positions outside the U.S. as well, including Moscow.

Maybe there's some light at the end of this tunnel! Keep your fingers crossed.

A nation fit to be slaves...

2008-02-28T00:18:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I saw a TV ad from the National Association of Realtors that I haven't been able to get out of my head. Teeing up a montage of picket-fence scenes with lots of photogenic youngsters running around, it opened with this great line:

"When buying a home, family concerns often outweigh economic concerns."

Wow. In a rational world, shouldn't economic concerns be family concerns? I couldn't find this particular commercial on the net, but here's another one just like it. Here some of the wise words NAR hands down in this one:

"When you have a family it's always a good time to buy..."

"Didn't make sense for us to spend the same amount of money renting something when we could own it..."

Maybe in a weird way the sub-prime mess will be a good thing if it can finally break us of these childlike notions masquerading as good sense. I can definitely recall that as recently as a year ago, no one would have questioned these airy truisms. Luckily, though, some break-throughs are forming--I was heartened by these words from Slate's economics columnist not long ago:

Most people do not seem to see the cost of a house in the same way that they see other prices. House prices are simply viewed through the lens of monthly repayments that either can or cannot be afforded. We spend time and money insuring ourselves against some losses, such as a malfunctioning washing machine, yet the value of the house we own (or the cost of the house we might someday want to buy) fluctuates by far more, perhaps on a daily basis. Nobody cares, nobody hedges the value of their homes—although it is not hard to do so—and nobody seems to compare the price with any meaningful alternative, such as retiring 15 years early.

I'll end on the same note that the NAR commercial I saw ended on: it claimed something to the effect that most homeowners had 60%(!!) of their net wealth in the equity of their homes. Again--that was supposed to be some kind of selling point for jumping into buying a house. When you can see why this is terrible investment advice, grasshopper, you are ready to leave the Shaolin temple...

Cool picture from Atyrau

2008-02-23T19:21:00.000-08:00

The site I saw this on said it's from December '07. The hotel on the left is new since I was there. Seems like every picture I see from there has new construction in it, which isn't surprising since the place was set to burst wide open even back then. So much opportunity... It's sad think how much the rest of the world has gotten done the last few years while we've wrecked our economy selling over-priced houses to each other.

It's no wonder shops in New York are happily taking euros in payment now. I liked the positive spin that this story tried to put on exactly why shopkeepers have started taking other currencies, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the real reason.

We're still flying...

2008-01-15T17:21:00.001-08:00

Man, am I glad the Fall semester is history. 3 to go!

Quote of the Year

2008-01-10T09:56:00.000-08:00

OK,so it's only January 10, but I think this one's got a lock on the award for 2008:

"Why is it every time an Arab father kills a daughter, it's an honor killing?"

19-year old Islam Said, on the death of his teenage sisters, allegedly at the hands of their father, Yaser Said, a Lewisville cab driver.

Right on, Islam--why it is nowadays in this country a man can't kill his own daughter in peace without people trying to twist it into something wrong? We certainly wouldn't want these tragic deaths to [shudder] reflect badly on anyone...

The PETA syndrome

2007-12-05T20:28:00.000-08:00

That's the term I'm coining for the condition of such intense earnestness that one is blind to acts of self-parody. Case in point:

A group of Israeli environmentalists has launched an Internet campaign encouraging Jews around the world to light at least one fewer candle this Hanukkah.

The founders of the Green Hanukkia campaign say each candle burning all the way down produces 15 grams of carbon dioxide, and that -- multiplied by an estimated 44 million households in Israel -- adds up quickly.

"The campaign calls for Jews around the world to save the last candle and save the planet, so we won't need another miracle," Liad Ortar, a founder of the campaign, told The Jerusalem Post.

Lame!

2007-12-05T20:12:00.000-08:00

Naomi Wolf posted an "explanation" of her earlier endorsement of the Second Amendment--get this:

I was referring to the historical origin of the Second Amendment, as the protector of local militias that would be more closely accountable to the people than a federal army. Many in the founding period were distrustful of a large standing army: they - and their wives and children - had experienced abuse at the hands of unaccountable soldiers in their midst.

Riiight. Because don't we all associate the kind of "government intrusion that other citizens suffer around the world" with British redcoats quartered in private homes during the pre-Revolutionary days?

This is classic

2007-11-27T17:24:00.000-08:00

From the Instapundit's website, here's a snippet from an article by Naomi Wolf in the Washington Post:

EDUCATION ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT, from Naomi Wolf: "Few young Americans understand that the Second Amendment keeps their homes safe from the kind of government intrusion that other citizens suffer around the world; few realize that 'due process' means that they can't be locked up in a dungeon by the state and left to languish indefinitely."

UPDATE: A couple of readers think that Naomi Wolf meant the Fourth Amendment, not the Second, but I'm sure they're wrong. First, she's writing about Constitutional ignorance, so I'm sure she took time to review the Bill of Rights herself. Second, if she had made that kind of error, one of the layers of editors at the Post would have caught it. Third, her statement is correct on the merits.

The question now is: will Wolf or the Post be too embarrassed to correct the error, or too embarrassed to let it stand???

The Crew takes Michigan!

2007-10-31T10:27:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my teammates:

Chris Simmons
Brandon Wonnacott
Avery Williams
Ward Davison

And congrats to St. Mary's--it was a great fight in the final round.

Thank God for the internet...

2007-10-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

...and unlooked treasures like this one:

I still hate goddamn football

2007-09-13T18:34:00.000-07:00

Worst moment so far from OCI (other than having to disclose my undergrad grades to the punk asses who decided to ask about them):

I sit down to talk to two very nice people, one of whom happens to be from Burkburnett--so an immediate down-home angle to play. Unfortunately, he looks at my resume and perks up with "Ah, so you're a Longhorn. What'd you think of that game Saturday?"

Damn it. The season opener, which everyone was talking about on Saturday like it was the second coming or something. My mental "to-do list" flashed inside my head, with "At least find out who wins" unchecked (I HAD managed to check on the Cowboys, though, but to no avail). Worse yet, the guy didn't give me any of the inflection that I normally count on in these situations to indicate whether I'm supposed to be giddy or outraged over whatever the hell transpired out there.

The best I could manage was a lame "Well, it's just one of those things. I heard on the radio that it was closer than the scoreboard said." (I did hear that as I scanned past ESPN Radio, right? Weren't they talking about UT?) Mercifully, a subject change came to my rescue.

I found out later that UT won, for whatever that's worth. Hook 'em Horns!

Frou-frou cocktail party winds to an end (at least for me)

2007-09-13T18:18:00.000-07:00

Now to be replaced with a much more abbreviated frou-frou lunch/dinner season. Here's a few wrap-up observations:

Comfort level with consuming alcohol ramped up drastically toward the end. For well over half of them, it was Diet Coke only. When it got down to the ones in the last week, though, we figured, "what the hell, free wine--pound it."

"What's your sign? Leo or Aquarius?" In ffcp talk, that comes out as "So are you interested in transactional or litigation?" Or, from us back to them: "So what area do you practice in? Transactional or litigation?"

The Ritz-Carlton downtown is a little over-the-top. However, it will probably be the only time in my life that I see beef wellington served from an appetizer tray.

All in all, a very long, stressful three weeks. Just for Kellus, though: proof that they're not going to alter the Deadman. Instead of flying the flag at the last cocktail reception on my rotation this evening, I decided to hit the gym instead, where I got 7 reps at 225 on the bench press, then cleaned 185 off the floor and jerked out 5 overhead reps, which makes a bodyweight attempt look doable soon. That workout was just what the doctor ordered.

Ask me again why I want to get the hell out of here...

2007-08-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

Just finished up calculating my taxes for 2006 (like every good CPA I filed an extension) and totted up my net worth for financial aid. Once again, our much-ballyhooed venture into home ownership netted us a whopping tax savings of (insert drum roll)...zero. Nada. Duck egg. The standard deduction was still almost 35% more than my itemized. When you add in the Home Depot expenses, water bill for the lawn (thankfully low this year due to rain), appliances, etc., we were way better off playing that "sucker's game" of renting. Considering that there are four houses on the block up for sale now, with one resorting to a huge "Buy this house with ZERO DOWN!!" sign as of today, I don't think I'm gonna recoup it in capital gains any time soon. The guy who wrote "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" has it right--your home isn't an asset, it's a liability.

I guess I was just born without whatever genes make all of this make sense (like the one that sees the difference between kinds of grass) or maybe I just have ultra-high levels of IKEA-blocker floating in my bloodstream. My dream house is still company-paid accomodations in some place at least ten time zones from Dallas, the harder to pronounce, the better.

More grinch

2007-07-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

I guess this is more fodder for the grinch pile. This weekend I was noodling around on Instapundit and followed a link to the Amazon review for One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding (don't ask me why--I have no idea). A couple of interesting facts came out in the related links, like that before WWII, people didn't usually buy engagement rings or expensive wedding dresses. Maybe that's why we had a positive savings rate as a country back then. Consider this, from a review of the book in the Washington Post:

About a dozen years ago, an old friend of mine was told by his daughter that she was going to get married. This suited him fine, but he balked at pouring untold thousands of dollars down the drain of a full-dress wedding. "I'll tell you what," he said to her. "I'll give you a choice: You can have a wedding, or you can have $30,000 to help you get started on your new life." Without a moment's hesitation, she astonished him -- and me, too, when he told me the story -- by replying, "I'll take the wedding."

To paraphrase the Lone Rider of the Apocalypse: and them's 1995 dollars. I'm sure everyone's seen something like this. I remember a young woman in an office I used to work in--a very well-educated, level-headed CPA--who explained why it was that her fiancee had to max out the three months' salary rule for her to be happy about it.

"I don't really want a ring that expensive," she explained. "I want him to want to give me a ring that expensive. It's a symbol."

If that's the case, wouldn't a joint IRA contribution be a better symbol, showing all the intent in the world to stick together until age 65 to draw on it? Of course, flashing a joint IRA statement around the office to the other gals doesn't get quite the same effect, which I think gets alot closer to the heart of the matter.

Of course, it's easy for me to be preachy on this subject, since my three months' salary has been safely earning interest all these years because I got married an ocean away, where blowing that kind of cash wasn't something you just had to do. As much as I'd like to think otherwise, I'm sure that if it had happened here, I'd have been sucked through this same wringer. For example, logic has availed me little against house fever. In that area, I've even indulged in the ultimate irony: paying more money for less stuff, just so that stuff would be in a house.

So, there you go. I guess the best we can hope for is that when the Russians and the Chinese start spending their bulging foreign currency reserves, they at least hire us to plan their weddings and fix up their digs for them.

More martial arts philosophy

2007-07-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

As I've posted on before, you never know what rare nuggets of wisdom you're going to run across in reading martial arts training material (e.g., the first response to pain must be anger, not submission). Here's one I just ran across surfing around:

As a practitioner of combative martial arts, one must forever strive to reach the goal of, "one strike, certain death."

I wonder what the Chinese pictograph symbol for that is?

Is this the American Dream?

2007-07-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

I guess we're all feeling old and curmudgeonly this week. I managed to stay out of Roscoe and Kellus' discussion about the precipitous decline in customer service in cities as opposed to small towns, but this photo really got to me.

For anyone who doesn't recognize what's going on here, here's a quick quiz. This guy is hoisting his prize overhead, exulting in victory, because:

A. He won an Academy Award.

B. He won a local spelling bee.

C. He stood in a line for an embarrassingly long time for the rare privilege of forking over an obscene amount of his own money for a toy.

Of course, C is the correct answer--we are looking at the proud owner of an Iphone. This apparently is what passes for accomplishment nowadays.

To paraphrase the movie Gladiator, the Founders had a dream for our country, but this isn't it.

Hoist the Colors!!

2007-06-26T08:58:00.000-07:00

Rum all around--another semester is beneath the waves.

Banjo is doing OK

2007-06-11T16:31:00.000-07:00

Out of surgery today, and no amputation necessary. Hopefully he can come home from the vet OR tomorrow or the next day. We'll post some pictures so everyone can see how he's doing.

My three years is almost up...

2007-06-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

Just a little more than 90 days left--after September 15, any opportunity that comes on the screen to get back overseas is fair game, dude. A quick search shows Ernst & Young looking for audit managers for Moscow, so who knows what else might be out there?? Any feasible deal would have to include a resolution for what's left of law school to complete, but that's not outside the realm of possibility.

We've got just over 45 hours of law school under the belt at this point--well within striking distance if the right deal comes up. It's been fun, but definitely no substitute for being back in the action.

Stay tuned and pray for rain, friends and neighbors!!

UPDATE:

Just to clear up any lingering misunderstanding--we will not, under any circumstances, quit law school to take an overseas opportunity. That doesn't mean, though, that we might not be totally done with law school before taking on a foreign posting, if the right deal comes up that allows for finishing over time, transferring in foreign credits, etc. Admittedly, the chances of that happening are very small, but they do exist. If there's one thing we've seen over and over, it's that an arrangement can always be reached. As we used to say about Russia--everything is difficult, but nothing is impossible. :)

Kendalia chiggers!!

2007-06-06T05:18:00.000-07:00

Man, them's some powerful hoppers they got down in the Hill Country. It's Wednesday morning, and I'm still discovering new bites up and down both legs--and I was wearing jeans and boots. Anybody else bit up?

Why it's tough to lose weight--

2007-06-05T07:53:00.000-07:00

For some reason I had calories on the brain yesterday. I guess it started at lunch when I noticed the nutritional information printed on the wrappers of my hamburgers (250 calories apiece, 80 of those from fat--32%, so not too bad overall).

Then, at the gym I tossed in some cardio after my weight workout: the bike told me I'd burned about 200 calories over 30 minutes. Obviously, I wasn't setting any speed records on that stint, but still it got me thinking about how just how efficient the body is at using and storing energy. Each little McDonald's hamburger contains enough energy to run the body at exercise for more than half an hour. Or, at rest, when you burn as little as 50 calories an hour, for five hours.

Now, think about this: I weigh about 200 pounds. Say my body comp is 20% fat (hopefully a little on the high side), meaning I carry about 40 pounds of fat. One pound of bodyfat translates into 3,500 calories of energy. 3,500 x 40=140,000 calories of energy stored in my body.

To go back to the exercise bike--at my pokey pace of 400 calories per hour, I have enough stored bodyfat for 350 hours.

Deadman High Alert--Recapture Black Envoy!!!

2007-05-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

The Deadman hereby declares war upon the Church of Scientology pending return of this vehicle. All hands are issued unrestricted Letters of Marque and any and all reprisals against Church assets are authorized.

Katie Holmes, you are on notice!!! [we can't resist--"Help me... help you."]

More news as this develops:

So I'm not the only one who sees the connection...

2007-04-20T11:22:00.000-07:00

I would have written about this before, but I figured that none of the Deadman readership is so gauche as to have ever played the old school paper-and-dice Dungeons and Dragons. I've often been struck by the similarities, though.

Compare this:

Optional Combat Rule for D&D 3E:
Parry: Before a combat round begins a player may designate any number of his attacks as a parry. The player selects as many of his opponent's attacks as he put into parrying, usually the BIG ones, and if that attack hits a parry is possible. The parrying player rolls an attack roll against the total attack roll of the opponent (d20 + bonuses). He must at least match it in order to parry the attack. A natural attack roll of 20 can only be parried with a natural parry roll of 20. If the attack is parried no damage is suffered.
Note that some attacks can't be parried. A halfling can't parry a hill giants club for example. The parrying weapon must be a solid object, a sword, a club, a chair. It can't be a pillow, a net, or a whip for example.

With this:

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)

Every defense, in law or fact, to a claim for relief in any pleading, whether a claim, counterclaim, cross-claim, or third-party claim, shall be asserted in the responsive pleading thereto if one is required, except that the following defenses may at the option of the pleader be made by motion: (1) lack of jurisdiction over the subject matter, (2) lack of jurisdiction over the person, (3) improper venue, (4) insufficiency of process, (5) insufficiency of service of process, (6) failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, (7) failure to join a party under Rule 19. A motion making any of these defenses shall be made before pleading if a further pleading is permitted. No defense or objection is waived by being joined with one or more other defenses or objections in a responsive pleading or motion. If a pleading sets forth a claim for relief to which the adverse party is not required to serve a responsive pleading, the adverse party may assert at the trial any defense in law or fact to that claim for relief.

I rest my case...

Bust out the rum II

2007-03-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

The St. Mary's Legal Diva is far too modest to post about her victory, but the Deadman has no such qualms--we are on double rations 'til Monday at seven bells! Great job, A.!!

What I learned in law school this week...

2007-03-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

According to the scale in the Dedman Lifetime Sports Center, my constitutional law book weighs 6.5 lbs.

2007-03-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

The best advice I've heard all year...

2007-03-24T12:57:00.000-07:00

Now that we've sprung for cable, I can actually watch things like Comedy Central. Last night, Ron White had this advice:

If life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade.

Then, you should try to find someone whose life has given them... vodka. And then you should throw a party.

Second adolesence

2007-03-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

Well, it's like high school debate season all over again--just compressed into a few weeks, and with alot of drama club thrown in to boot. Just as we got back from Chicago, where we tried a fake personal injury case, it's already time for oral arguments in front of a fake US Supreme Court--complete with characters from Cheers. Here's the upshot:

Carla Tortelli shot Cliff Clavin while he was delivering mail (with Lilith Stern being the only witness). When she was arrested, she was carrying marijuana and drug paraphernalia. At trial, her pre-arrest silence in response to police questioning was used as evidence of guilt, leading to a unanimous guilty verdict (despite a spirited defense by Frasier Crane). The federal judge, Norm Peterson, handed down the sentence, which was later affirmed by Circuit Court Judge Ernie (Coach) Pantusso.

Final round's tomorrow--my partner and I are arguing for the United States to uphold the sentence. [Howard Cosell voce] Alan Dershowitz, you've got yourself some competition.

2007-03-14T16:51:00.001-07:00

Get these two on the crew...

2007-02-15T14:32:00.000-08:00

Trying to figure out how to embed this video--but here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTU2o3LGumI

Remind me next year...

2007-02-12T14:24:00.000-08:00

Get the damn flu shot.

Day of the Cinderellas

2007-02-12T14:01:00.000-08:00

I am once again so glad that I'm doing this deal at a 'more advanced' stage in life--there are some things that I see now that I know really would have gotten under my skin 10 years ago. Now, they just strike me as tragi-comic:

Today the results were released for the much-lauded Spring On-Campus Interview Bidding process. The name itself is a bit of fluff--implies some level of strategery definitely not present. All you do is post your resume, writing sample, transcript, etc., and flag the guys you want to try to talk to. Anyway, I signed up for a handful of slots along the spectrum just to see what would drag up.

Everyone has their own log-in page on the net. If someone you flagged wants to talk to you, you get a little button to click to schedule your casting couch session. Out beside the names of those guys who DIDN'T want to talk to you, you just see this:

not invited

At the risk of sounding declasse, can you get a little whiff of 7th grade coming off this deal?

Well, Mr. Big-shot Downtown Tall Building Lawyer firm, you're not invited to my party either. And there's going to be girls there and everything--and Mom said we could stay up 'til midnight. Just think about that. Nerd.

Bust out the rum!!

2007-01-31T16:36:00.000-08:00

Exploring the psyche of the law professor, Part X

2007-01-18T05:58:00.000-08:00

With the start of every semester comes a brand new batch of arm-chair generals and tweed elbow-patches, along with some you've already encountered. Now that we've been to every class once, here are a couple of highlights:

Low stress environment: Our Property prof told us that he is well into grading our exams from last semester, and is right on track to have them done by the deadline for submission to the Dean, January 30. Date we took the exam: November 28. And 50% of it was multiple choice.

Enjoying your job perhaps a bit too much: In Con Law, we were issued a pocket-sized U.S. Constitution with the admonition to develop a level of affection and familiarity toward it 'akin to that of a United States Marine toward his rifle.'

Oh, boy...

P.S.--the pocket Constitution is pretty cool, though. Of course, I named mine Vera.

Life lessons from Folsom Prison

2007-01-17T11:42:00.000-08:00

You never know where you're going to run across a few stray pearls of wisdom--here's a couple I gleaned over the weekend from paging through Knife Fighting Techniques from Folsom Prison:

The skill to win is nowhere near as important as the will to win.

Anger must be the immediate reaction to pain, not submission.

I guess you've got a lot of time to reflect when you're doing 25 to life.

Break's almost over

2007-01-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

We start back Thursday night with White Collar Crime. Roscoe and Kellus will be duly scandalized to know that I've already cracked my case--read through Madison v. Marbury over lunch on Saturday. The book's a mother: over 1,500 pages, plus a supplement. Something tells me this one's the one I'll be dragging to the gym this semester.

Other than that, not much is happening. I did have my first 'life of the litigator' experience last week--the big case I was working settled on the eve of the big hearing where we were going to exclude all their evidence, discredit all their witnesses, see them driven before us, and hear the lamentation of their women (if you don't get this reference, see here and here). Ah, well.

Also, the Deadman household got totally sucked into Battlestar Galactica over the weekend, but still not to the extent of ordering up the 'frackin'' cable to get Sci-Fi. After watching the mini-series pilot and most of season 2.5, I just have one question:

Why does Starbuck always look like she could use a shower? For some reason this chick gives off a vibe like she just always smells a little.

The play-offs beard is history

2006-12-28T08:49:00.000-08:00

Well, we survived finals. Here's a couple of shots of the final product--gray patches and all.

I need a montage...

2006-12-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

Well, I had planned on writing about this, but somebody with greater financial and technical resources copped my wire with this detailed analysis of the Rocky montage.

To me, there are two cool things about the Rocky montages that the Slate writer doesn't cover--the first is physical and second is moral.

It's fun to watch these scenes for the training techniques Stallone wanted to show off in each one--they're like little museum pieces for the state of the gym art at the any one time. Rocky I and II were based around old-school basics like one-armed push-ups and duckwalking, reflecting the pre-Schwarzenegger bias against weight-training for fear of becoming 'muscle-bound' (that used to be a bad thing). III is the best example: Rocky takes up swimming and sprinting to get the eye of the tiger back. The Slate author thinks this is an infomercial for the Stallone full-body work out, but obviously he doesn't remember the late, great 80's buzzword--cross-training, baby! The trend that established the Reebok and Nike empires, since cross-training meant every athlete had to buy gear for multiple disciplines, beefing up the bottom line as well as the biceps.

The clips I've seen from Rocky Balboa show that in the here-and-now Sly has discovered the kettlebell (the cannonball with a handle on it) and chain training. Kettlebells are pretty cool--I used to have a genuine Russian one years ago in Moscow that I wish I hadn't had to leave behind. Lifting chains is a technique borrowed from powerlifting. The idea is to increase the resistance during the lift, as more of the chain comes off the ground during each rep. Some hardcore lifters wrap them around the ends of their barbells for benches and squats.

But the coolest thing about the Rocky montages, and these movies in general, is the storytelling focus on strength acquired through training as opposed to natural ability. It's true that the Rocky movies use the 'underdog' theme, but I think there's a more fundamental principle underneath. I'm not sure why it is, but most story arcs you see hold up natural ability as the gold standard and implicitly distrust power or strength acquired deliberately.

Think of how many books you've read and movies you've seen that are about someone born special. Of course, this is the staple of comic books and sci-fi stories. Superman is Superman because he was born that way, and thus he has an unerring moral compass, but compare that with Batman, whose quest to bootstrap himself into superheroism leaves him in a perpetual twilight. You can only be a Jedi if you're born with enough midi-whatevers, and if you try to expand your powers you fall to the Dark Side.

Until Rocky, almost all sports movies (and most made since) used this theme as well: the movie was always about the guy who was just the best because he was the best(take Hoosiers, for example, where the ultimate, climactic decision is to rely on the natural talent of the best player, as opposed to the practiced teamwork play, in the last moments of the championship game).

Back in the gym today

2006-12-12T12:40:00.000-08:00

Man, did that feel good. The scale says I dropped 5 pounds while I was sick--I thought my jeans felt a little loose. That's the crappy thing about being sick: there's whatever you've got, plus not exercising makes you sluggish and feel like you're wasting away.

Two exams down as of last night, and heading toward the library to study up for number three. Come Tuesday morning, this semester will be a wrap, folks...

Quick study break

2006-12-07T10:06:00.000-08:00

I caught this skit this weekend on MadTV and knew I'd find it on YouTube soon: a great parody of the Dixie Chicks 'Not Ready to Make Nice'.

I love the line "We can't help it if the little one has got a big mouth."

Thankfully, the de facto ban here in DFW continues--it's been years since I've heard a single note from them on any station here.

OK, so I should have gotten the damn flu shot...

2006-12-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

Sinus congestion, coughing, today even a little fever. Crap.

I felt like I was getting on top of it yesterday, so I went for a light workout--one of my instructors back at UT claimed that doing this could work up a 'false fever' that could wipe out what's ailing you and get you back on your feet faster.

I've probably tried this technique every time I've gotten sick in the last 12 or 13 years. Guess how many times it's worked--you got it: zero.

Now onstage: UNBORN WIDOW!

2006-11-29T11:28:00.000-08:00

I'm surprised some enterprising law student hasn't set up a consulting business naming bands from legal terms. I'd definitely take a second look at a rock group called Unborn Widow. Or if you're a rap group, how about Blackacre?? Or, maybe malIce A4Thought...

Play-off beard is on

2006-11-28T11:01:00.000-08:00

One of the 1L's in my mentor group pointed out to me that hockey players traditionally grow out their beards for the playoffs, so I guess I'm in the hunt for the cup. I'll try to post some before and after pictures.

One downside of the playoff beard: I can already see more grey hair in it than from just last May!

Good luck, eh? (you hoser...)

Joking apart, life's good in Kazakhstan

2006-11-27T09:03:00.000-08:00

That's what came up today as I was scanning through the headlines--it's an article about British ex-pats working in KZ. I actually met the guy interviewed in the bottom half of the article, Andy Atkinson, in Atyrau. His VP is a guy who used to work for us at TRUCAT.

I don't know the first guy interviewed, but I do know that the hotels they're talking about are pulling in a ton of cash.

Halfway there

2006-11-22T08:06:00.000-08:00

Well, now that the mock trial competition is finally over, we're getting dug out enough to start prepping for finals. With everything going on, the semester went by pretty much in a blur.

Somewhere back there in September, though, we crossed a milestone: two years of this last stateside hitch down, so there's really only one year left under the original plan. Looking at the calendar, I realized that I could start looking for work back overseas as early as next summer!

Of course, I won't be done with the Deadman that fast, so that puts back the jump date a bit. Still, I should be done inside of the next two years or so, so the way I figure it, I've now got fewer days left to go than I've already crossed off. The best part: rain or shine, good day or bad day, that plane ticket just keeps getting one day closer.

Unhinged

2006-11-07T08:51:00.000-08:00

There's nothing like a terminally earnest, hyper-self-righteous wingnut going over the edge into self-parody. I came across this little nugget being advertised on the Nation's webpage.

A tale of terror set in the 4th term of President George W. Bush. Talk about subtle--not satisfied with ripping off 1984 by naming his main character Winston, the author decides he needs to make sure he gets his point across by putting Orwellian right in the title. No fever-swamp here, pal. (Note: the author is a 'he', despite the pen name Dawn Blair).

Check out this link for some excerpts, including the re-drafted Constitution adopted in 2009, after the U.S. has been renamed to God's United States. My personal favorite is this line:

Preamble: We the people of God’s United States, in order to provide for the common defense, in balance with the blessings of liberty and our position as the Freest Country on Earth ™, do ordain the replacement of the Amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America,...

Yep--we trademarked a national slogan. I didn't read on to see if the trademark belongs to Halliburton or a resurrected Enron led by a zombified Ken Lay brought back to life by secret stem-cell research (conducted only in underground bunkers where neo-con scientists developed cures for Parkinson's, AIDS, etc., but have kept them from the public until they can be weaponized against the Muslim Other)...

OK--I'm going to stop there. It's too easy, too much fun, and I've got other things to do today.

NOW we know why Justin Timberlake is a rock star...

2006-11-01T08:05:00.000-08:00

Men's testosterone levels declined in last 20 years

I also now understand the sad rise of the man-sandal, too.

At the Dedman School of Law, on a day of rain....

2006-09-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

Just reading ahead for next week while waiting for trial practice to start here, and watching the rain. All in all, not such a bad way to spend a Saturday morning.

Now if he'd made Borat from Uzbekistan, THAT would have been funny...

2006-09-13T11:14:00.000-07:00

Check out this article on real-life furor from President Nursultan Nazarbayev to the antics of Borat, the fictional Kazakh TV reporter.

In Kazakhstan's defense, especially concerning Borat's phrase "Throw the Jew down the well," I saw alot more anti-Semitism in Moscow than I did anywhere in KZ. For any sociologists out there looking for PHD thesis themes, I think there is fodder here for the study of modern humor in this culture clash. It reminds me of the questions people used to ask me in Moscow when they started showing M*A*S*H reruns in Russian. It totally blew their minds because they'd never seen comedies about war before. If you've never seen a Soviet film about WW II, you can't imagine how dark and depressing movies can get--any other treatment of the subject came as a bit of shock to them.

The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder...

2006-09-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

Check out this link for an article on the sorry state of modern-day pirates.

Add one more to the list of skills I learned in law school

2006-09-07T17:06:00.000-07:00

How to write a cross-examination during a back workout. With only four days to prepare for trial practice, we're in a bit of bind here, so every minute counts.

We'll see on Saturday if it was any good (the cross-ex, not the back workout, that is).

Keep punching!

Thank you, Mr. Dedman--

2006-08-29T16:26:00.000-07:00

--for your state-of-the-art Lifetime Sports Center. It is truly amazing how much gas an hour in the gym puts back in the tank. Although, since I was pressed for time today, I did raise a few jeers and cheers by dragging my Evidence casebook through my workout with me.

Let's have more trial lawyers like these guys (or at least more lawsuits)

2006-08-27T07:50:00.000-07:00

Don't worry--hell hasn't frozen over. But in the last couple of weeks, I've run across two types of lawsuits that give me some hope that the plaintiffs' bar isn't totally irredeemable.

The first one: civil actions against State Farm for denial of Katrina insurance claims in Mississippi based on false engineering reports. ABC ran a big story this week on 20/20 about two whistle-blower adjusters who claim to have evidence that State Farm coerced engineering firms into changing their reports to show damage from rising water as opposed to wind.

If you didn't see it, it was pretty compelling: they even interviwed a PE for one of the engineering firms who had copies of his report as he prepared it and as it appeared in State Farm's files. It had been edited to substitute rising water for wind as the cause of damage, then signed again with the PE's name, but in different handwriting. The best part, though, was footage of all of these houses--some of them now only bare foundations--that supposedly suffered no wind damage surrounded by flattened trees and telephone poles.

The only bad thing here is that the lead attorney going after State Farm is one of the tobacco suit ringleaders, but at least that might mean that there are sufficient resources to take this fight down to the end.

The second instance of 'trial lawyers gone good' is more interesting from a legal standpoint: RICO suits against employers for hiring illegal workers. Here's a summary of the argument from one of the leading cases (Mohawk Industries, Inc. v. Williams, Shirley et al.):

In 2004, four hourly employees of Mohawk Industries, Inc. filed suit in federal court in Georgia, claiming that the hiring of undocumented immigrants depressed their wages and cost them thousands of dollars in workers’ compensation.

Mohawk Industries is the nation’s second-largest manufacturer of rugs and carpeting and is known to consumers through the carpet companies it owns, including Alexander Smith, Bigelow, and Karastan. It is a fixture in northwest Georgia, where it has been for 120 years. It now employs more than 30,000 people.

Of the states that don’t share a border with Mexico, Georgia has seen the largest growth in its undocumented immigrant population over the last five years, according to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-DC-based group that espouses “a pro-immigrant, low-immigration vision which seeks fewer immigrants but a warmer welcome for those admitted.”

According to their attorney, Howard Foster, the workers discovered that Mohawk executives had conspired to bring the immigrants to Georgia from out of state, arranged for them to be housed with legal Mohawk employees, and then hired the illegal workers on a reduced pay scale.

This, claimed the legal employees, reduced the number of available jobs and put tremendous pressure on them to work for similarly poor wages. They also believed that the hiring of undocumented workers had the effect of deterring them from seeking worker’s compensation claims for fear of losing their jobs.

Finally, the employees contend that Mohawk broke federal and state racketeering laws when it colluded with third-party agencies in Brownsville, Texas, to hire the undocumented immigrants. To hide evidence of the deals, the employees say Mohawk destroyed a number of documents and records along the way.

This case recently went up to the Supreme Court on a technical issue on how to apply the RICO statute and got remanded back down to the 11th Circuit, but it would be great if we could see more suits along this line. As we've seen from the "cheeseburger" lawsuits, just the threat of litigation can spur changes in behavior--with suits like these, maybe we can accomplish something a little more meaningful than getting McDonald's to serve apple dippers.

Bloggers Beware!

2006-08-02T18:01:00.000-07:00

That was the tagline of an email we got the other day from the career services office. They went on to advise us to think about removing from our personal websites any information that might hurt our chances with a potential employer, and included this link to a cautionary article about racy myspace and facebook pages.

I know they mean well, and it's good advice to remember that anything you say or post can have consequences, but there's still something about this that just rubs me the wrong way (obviously I'm not talking about sites with something outrageous like pornography or paeans to Hitler here). If I were really worried about it, I'd wipe out the Deadman--it's not like I'm anonymous here, and there are alot of posts with some salty language and political views that some people might not like. Should I really be afraid to fly that Israeli flag below, or strike that post about trial lawyers I was going to write? Is that what it's come to? Even if it has come to that, I don't give a damn.

Maybe it's a function of being older--I just don't have enough life left to deal with people who want to snoop around on the internet looking for something to play "gotcha!". Sure, companies have every right to do that, but then again they have a right to do all kinds of evil and demeaning things. But if somebody out there digging around the net can't take personal websites in the context they're offered in, that says a hell of alot more about them than it does about the blogger.

So if you, dear reader, are a potential employer (or more likely, a lowly HR flunky assigned this odious task) surfing the net looking for reasons to torpedo someone's application to your firm, here's my advice:

1. You should be ashamed of yourself: stop wasting valuable time and resources in an endeavor that only makes you look like a gigantic ass.

2. Fire that consultant you hired to figure out why you have one of the highest employee turnover rates in the business. You just found the answer.

3. Go buy the employees you DO have some new shirts, 'cause I can tell you right now they spend most of their day digging knives out of their backs. Your particular 'corporate culture' just naturally breeds that behavior.

4. If you don't want to hire me now, thank you. You've made both our lives easier.

For anyone else reading, as always, feel free to post away. If you've got something to say, say it. That's why I allow anonymous posting and never delete posts unless someone requests it.

Stay cool, boppers!

Stand Fast

2006-08-01T15:40:00.000-07:00

We're going to be so gauche as to fly the Israeli flag this week. Despite events like the tragic bombing in Qana, the Israelis have to be given the chance to put Hezbollah down for good, otherwise this will be their own little Vietnam--a defeat brought on by lack of will on the part of those sitting on the sidelines, not those actually fighting.

Curiouser and curiouser...

2006-08-01T15:27:00.000-07:00

When I started reading this story from the NYT about older men who've left the work force and aren't really looking for a job, I thought "What the hell? Why is this news?" So some old fat guys like the one in the picture aren't working, so what? Maybe it's just the slacker angle?

Then I found it--the nugget:

Despite their great numbers, many of the men not working are missing from the nation’s best-known statistic on unemployment. The jobless rate is now a low 4.6 percent, yet that number excludes most of the missing men, because they have stopped looking for work and are therefore not considered officially unemployed. That makes the unemployment rate a far less useful measure of the country’s well-being than it once was. (my emphasis)

Isn't it funny how lots of figures lately just aren't as good of measures of the country's well-being as they used to be--say back in the Clinton administration?? The stock market, unemployment rate, subjective measures of happiness, etc. Somehow in the last 6 years they've all gone to crap--about the same time that homelessness suddenly reappeared. Odd.