http://wokv.com/localnews/2008/10/invest…
A newspaper investigation finds more than 30,000 felons who should have been stripped of their right to vote are still registered in Florida.
…at least 4,900 felons turned out in past elections…
Of the felons who are registered, Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one.
Color me shocked.
http://www.boston.com/news/health/articl…
Fatigue has long been one of the most common, yet least understood, of medical problems. It drives millions to their doctors every year, and doctors typically have had little to offer except the usual bromides - eat well and rest.
exercise is an obvious, and readily available, remedy. A large body of research has already shown that exercise dampens down the “bad” cytokines and boosts the number and efficiency of mitochondria…
Dr. TJIC asserts that 90% of physical problems and 99% of “mental health” problems can be solved by
To a large degree, the process of medical research is the process of actually licensed doctors coming to agree with me.
http://fpb.livejournal.com/353925.html?n…
British media, including the supposedly conservative ones, are supporting Obama and (especially) hounding Sarah Palin, with a ferocity unknown even to their American counterparts, and looking more like the Daily Kos than anything…
it does nothing to disprove my view that at the roots of all serious modern political conflict in the West there is abortion; for the British media and establishment, including the so-called conservatives, are completely sold on the practice, and anti-abortion forces are marginalized to an extent unknown and hard to believe in Italy or America…
Sarah Palin, simply by being who she is, is a living rebuke to all the abortion-is-necessary crowd; and this explains the ferocious hatred and the avalanche of pathological lies…
It is not about race; if Judge Clarence Thomas were running for President, he would be treated like Palin has been. It is not even about party; if Condoleeza Rice had run and got the Republican nomination, you can bet your life that she would have had a much smoother ride than Palin. She, after all, has no children. You cannot underrate the power of repressed and concealed guilt feelings, crawling under the skin of all the career women who got rid of unwanted babies in order to please bosses and boyfriends, and indeed among all the men who were complicit in their crimes or even demanded them; when faced with a brilliantly successful career woman who not only had five children, but opted against aborting even the disabled one….
Sarah Palin is a mirror who tells them the truth about themselves; and it is a truth that they cannot bear to see.
Those who are convinced by such things will nod their heads to the above; those who are unconvinced will leave comments saying “this is not a compelling argument; you haven’t proved your point”.
Indeed not.
Cultural observation and criticism, and moral reasoning never results in “proof” in any scientific sense - folks look for patterns, match them against what they know of human nature, and do the best they can in a domain of fuzzy non-mathematical concepts.
The vehement level of support for abortion on the left has always astonished me - folks get agitated for affirmative action, wind power, and other things, but they don’t level viscous personal attacks, mock family members, and criticize the geography, culture, and upbringing of folks over disagreements on smokestack catalytic technology.
That’s reserved for abortion fights.
My take is similar to FDB’s: you’ve got with in the Left a demographic engages in extended adolescences, who hates anyone telling them that they live in the real world, with zero sum rules re: redistribution, health care, etc., and a disdain for personal responsibility. The biggest shining moment in their history of freedom is not the Magna Carta or the American Revolution or defeating the Soviet Union - it’s the sexual revolution of the 1960s. That’s the point in time when man’s most primal urge was given free reign, and - because of changes in society, technology, and law - rendered “without consequence”.
…and then some elements of the right say “Hey, you’re not living in a padded rumpus room - you’re in the real world, and actions have consequences. Your bed hopping is bad for your self image, your health, and your sense of charity - but that’s not the important part. The important part is that by aborting pregnancies you are killing children.”
That’s an unacceptable challenge to one’s self image.
Challenges to one’s self image are never easy to ignore. One is forced to either change, or demonize the challenger (I assert that this is based in low level primate hardwiring - if you’re in a tribe, and a small group of other primates is calling you out, saying that you’re unfit to lead, or even to be a member of the tribe, ignoring them and letting the attitude spread can be deadly).
So the radical pro-choicers fight back, and demonize anyone who - explicitly or implicitly - questions their world view. Thus, I argue, the issue isn’t really “legal access to abortion”, so much as “cultural ability to portray one’s self as a good person”.
I’m hardly even convinced that all of this is conscious - I suspect, actually, that it’s unconscious.
Again, the most vehement attacks are always about sex and abortion.
Read Boing Boing - if it’s still going on now like it was weeks ago, there are maybe two posts saying “McCain stinks”, and about 4,000 saying “Palin is a disgusting subhuman whore with no taste, intelligence, or ability to think for herself. She’s brainwashed and stupid, just like her husband and kids.”
Why the vehemence?
Because Palin - and other pro-lifers - call into question the entire self image of the Boing Boing demographic.
If Palin is worth being respected, then that means that the Boing Boing demographic are not.
You can not simultaneously respect both fecundity and loyalty to one’s own offspring, born and unborn, healthy and impaired, and also respect 30 year old adolescents who think that the two most important freedoms are the freedom to kill a child and the freedom to write Star Trek / Harry Potter slash fanfic.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/…
Hundreds of economists (including Nobel Prize winners Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Robert Mundell, Edward Prescott, and Vernon Smith) have signed letters opposing Barack Obama’s economic and tax plans (here, here, and here):
We are equally concerned with his proposals to increase tax rates on labor income and investment. His dividend and capital gains tax increases would reduce investment and cut into the savings of millions of Americans. His proposals to increase income and payroll tax rates would discourage the formation and expansion of small businesses and reduce employment and take-home pay, as would his mandates on firms to provide expensive health insurance.
After hearing such economic criticism of his proposals, Barack Obama has apparently suggested to some people that he might postpone his tax increases, perhaps to 2010. But it is a mistake to think that postponing such tax increases would prevent their harmful effect on the economy today. The prospect of such tax rate increases in 2010 is already a drag on the economy. Businesses considering whether to hire workers today and expand their operations have time horizons longer than a year or two, so the prospect of higher taxes starting in 2009 or 2010 reduces hiring and investment in 2008.
Rope.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articl…
WASHINGTON - As the nation’s inmate population climbs toward 2.5 million, the US Sentencing Commission is considering alternatives to prison for some offenders, including treatment programs for nonviolent drug users and employment training for minor parole violators.
The commission’s consideration of alternatives to incarceration reflects its determination to persuade Congress to ease federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws that contributed to explosive growth in the prison population.
The laws were enacted in the mid-1980s, in part to address a crime epidemic
Too many crimes –> Oh noz! –> Stricter laws –> more criminals in jail / less crimes –> Oh noz!
Is there an aspect of this that I’m missing?
http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/archives/…
More than half of French respondents would move to the U.S. if they could,
Hmmm.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach…
The MBTA, which has a history of long delays in its rail car purchases, is relying on a South Korean company that has never built a passenger rail car in the continental United States for a vital set of train coaches needed to upgrade its aging fleet.
This sounds like exactly the kind of decision that a CEO in the private sector would make, knowing that if the decision worked poorly investors would not give the company any additional capital, and he’d be fired.
To deliver on that promise, the T has placed a $190 million bet on a company, Hyundai Rotem, that has yet to open an assembly plant on American soil, a requirement under federal law.
Yes, remember when Steve Jobs wanted to launch the iPod, and how we found a company that had never made consumer electronics, and was currently located in Bulgaria, and how we said “hey, if you can make steam pipes, you can make an MP3 player”, and how he paid to have them move to Taiwan?
MBTA general manager Daniel A. Grabauskas, through a spokesman, declined an interview request
Well, sure, he’s just a government employee - it’s not like he’s answerable to the people who’s money he’s spending…
T officials said their choice of Rotem was not influenced by the fact that former T official John K. Leary, who also once led the Philadelphia transit system, has worked as a consultant for the company. Leary’s son, Richard, is now head of operations for the MBTA.
Hmmm.
Rotem has fallen months behind schedule on its other two American commuter coach orders, in Philadelphia and Southern California. Officials at Southern California’s Metrolink commuter line and Philadelphia’s SEPTA said they expect delivery of their trains about six months later than first promised
Hmmm.
So it’s not like Rotem has never attempted to build train cars before. It’s just that it’s never succeeded.
A 1995 contract to build Green Line trolley cars with the Italian company now known as AnsaldoBreda resulted in accusations of shoddy work - including derailments and leaky air conditioning systems - and a $50 million lawsuit against the MBTA. The T halted delivery in 2004 after frequent breakdowns. The order was completed this year.
Clearly we’ve learned from that.
The MBTA order will be third in line at Rotem’s Philadelphia plant. But Rotem and its project management partner, Sojitz Corp., promised that will not be an obstacle.
“Once the engineering issues are all done and the prototypes are completed, it’s just a matter of repetitious work and it’s a question of how much productivity you have, one shift, two shifts, or three shifts,” said Hats Kageyama, vice president of Sojitz.
Oh, it’s just a matter of doing the task.
I’m glad that it’s as simple as “execution”, because that’s the easy part in business.
Coming up with the concept - that’s hard work.
But finding and hiring the right people, deciding upon the right processes and training, laying out your factory, managing your inventory, managing your staff, responding to errors and engineering change orders, etc. - that’s the easy part.
That’s why Ford, GM, and Chevy all did so wonderfully well in the 80s and 90s - turning out defect-free cars that everyone loves for insanely low prices - because execution is the easy part.
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/…
WASHINGTON - Congressional leaders yesterday urged the Bush administration to swiftly use some of the $700 billion financial rescue fund to purchase stakes in the nation’s largest troubled banks, a historic step widely considered crucial to freeing up credit around the globe and injecting new confidence in battered stock markets.
The calls for speedy action to effectively nationalize segments of the banking industry came as Democrats called for enacting an additional $150 billion economic assistance package for average Americans immediately after elections on Nov. 4.
Let’s say that 150 million Americans qualify as “average” (you know - hermaphrodites with 2.1 kids).
So we’re going to give everyone $1k.
Where is that $1k going to come from?
Either (a) average Americans; (b) abnormal Americans (i.e. the most productive members of our society); (c) the future.
None of these is a free lunch.
Also, what’s this “immediately after elections on Nov. 4.” stuff?
It’s almost as if Congressional Democrats want to make the economy better … but not until their candidate can be perceived as getting the credit…
http://volokh.com/posts/1223873009.shtml
Closed-End Funds and Panic Selling: from Volokh Conspiracy by David Bernstein
I posted a few days ago about the crazy action in closed-end mutual funds. At the end of the week, the action got even crazier. As of market close on Friday, the median closed-end fund was selling at slightly under a 30% discount to net asset value. In other words, investors could buy $100 worth of securities for just under 70 cents.
He’s correct, to within two orders of magnitude…
Paul Krugman won the Economics Nobel Prize.
From what I can tell, it was a decent pick - the guy has done a lot of good economics, even if his political writing is unfair, moonbatty, and venal.
An argument that Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s autobiographies.
It sounds conspiracy theory crazy at first, but give the article a read.
John C. Wright makes a point about abortion:
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/18923…
Eleven Million Black Babies Since 1973
Merciful God, that is genocide. I tremble for my nation when I recall that the Lord is just.
Funny (”funny”) that white leftists who claim to care so much about whites exploiting blacks have created both the culture and the laws that create this situation.
The moral aspect aside, that’s eleven million Americans that don’t exist. Some of them would have become aeronautical engineers. Some would have been roboticists. Some would be “just” carpenters and nannies and janitors.
Everyone is another pair of hands and another brain that we don’t get to share the world with.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andre…
The green-preaching WWF issues an invitation to fellow eco-alarmists:
“Join us on a remarkable 25-day journey by luxury private jet,” invites the WWF in a brochure for its voyage to “some of the most astonishing places on the planet to see top wildlife, including gorillas, orangutans, rhinos, lemurs and toucans.”
For a price tag that starts at $64,950 per person, travelers will meet at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Fla. on April 6, 2009 and then fly to “remote corners” of the world on a “specially outfitted jet that carries just 88 passengers in business-class comfort.”
Pardon? Isn’t this the same WWF that tells everyone else to fly less to cut greenhouse gases?:
http://space4commerce.blogspot.com/2008/…
Some guys call for rope, I call for mockery and derision.
In the spirit of bipartisanship, I suggest that we compromise on rope, mockery, and derision.
I’m not too concerned about the order.
Some folks “rope” thresholds are even lower than mine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/nyregi…
Pint-Size Eco-Police, Making Parents Proud and Sometimes Crazy
Sometimes, Jennifer Ross feels she cannot make a move at home without inviting the scorn of her daughters, 10-year-old Grace and 7-year-old Eliza. The Acura MDX she drives? A flagrant polluter. The bath at night to help her relax? A wasteful indulgence. The reusable shopping bags she forgot, again? Tsk, tsk…
In Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, Jan Schmidt, a stay-at-home mother, and Mark Goetz, a professor of furniture design, have watched, amazed, as their 4-year-old son chastises them for letting the water run while they brush their teeth. “He’ll come over and turn it off and say, ‘Every day is Earth Day,’” Ms. Schmidt said. “He learned it at school.”…
Pint sized gestapo agents, trained by the least intelligent and able among us (public school teachers).
Wonderful.
My kids are never going to go to government school.
A CEO’s Sequoia Meeting Notes:
http://blog.weatherby.net/2008/10/a-ceos…
Today, Sequoia Capital hosted a mandatory CEO All-Hands Meeting on Sand Hill Road. There were about 100 CEO’s in attendance and let me tell you, the mood was somber. I’m not one to perpetuate doom and gloom or bad news, but let me underscore this for you: We are in a serious economic downturn and this is just the beginning. Immediate, decisive and swift action is required, along with frugal, day-to-day management of expenses and our business is required.
Here are my notes from the meeting. Keep this note in your in-box and read it every day. I’m serious folks, this is for our survival.
Speakers:
* Mike Moritz, General Partner, Sequoia Capital (he moderated the speakers).
* Eric Upin, Partner, Sequoia Capital (Eric ran the $26-Billion Stanford Endowment Fund and knows a few things about Economics and investing.)
* Michael Partner, Sequoia Capital (Michael was recruited to start Sequoia’s very first hedge fund, coming from Maverick Capital and Robertson Stephens. I know him from my BEA days.)
* Doug Leone, , General Partner, Sequoia Capital
Slide projected on the huge conference room screen as people assembled inside the conference center to take their seats: a gravestone with the inscription: RIP, Good Times.
Mike Moritz:
* The only time Sequoia’s assembled all CEO’s like this was during the dot.com crash.
* We are in drastic times. Drastic times mean drastic measures must be taken to survive. Forget about getting ahead, we’re talking survive. Get this point into your heads.
* For those of you that are not cash-flow positive, get there now. Raising capital is nearly impossible if you’re too far off of cash flow positive.
* There will be consequences for those who hesitate. Act now.
Eric Upin:
* It’s always darkest before it’s pitch black.
* Survival of this storm means drastic measures must be taken now, so you will have the opportunity to capitalize on this down turn in the future.
* We are in the beginning of a long cycle, what we call a “Secular Bear Market.” This could be a 15 year problem. [many slides on historical charts of previous recessions, averaging 17 year cycles.]
* The credit market [versus the Equity markets] are the issue and will take time to recover.
* Inflection point: Make changes, slash expenses, cut deep and keep marching. You can’t be a general if you turn back.
* This is a global issue and not a ‘normal’ time.
* There is significant risk to growth and your personal wealth.
* Advice:
- Manage what you can control. You can’t control the economy, but you can control everything else.
- Cut spending. Cut fat. Preserve Capital.
- Don’t trust your models and spreadsheets. All assumptions prior to today are wrong.
- Focus on quality.
- Reduce risk.
Michael Beckwith:
* Note: Michael had a lot of slides that were charts, data points and comparisons.
* A “V” shaped recovery is unlikely
* Cuts in spending will accelerate in Q4/Q1. Look at eBay%Gâ??%@this is just the beginning.
Doug Leone:
* This is a different animal and will take years to recover.
* Getting another round if you’re not profitable will be rough.
* Do everything possible to get to cash flow positive. Now.
* Nail your Sales and Marketing message.
* Pound your competitors shortcomings. They’re hurting and they will be quiet. Take the offensive.
* In a downturn, aggressive PR and Communications strategy is key.
* M&A will decrease dramatically and only lean companies, with proven sales models will be acquired.
* Spectrum discussion:
- Capital Preservation/ Grab Market
- Everyone should be far to the left (capital preservation)
Requirements of our companies.
- You must cut expenses. Now and deep.
- Your product should reduce expenses and drive revenue
- Honestly assess your solution vs. your competitors.
- Cash is king [have you gotten this message yet?]
- You must get to profitability as soon as possible to weather this storm and be self-sustaining.
Operations review:
- Engineering: Since you already have a product, strongly consider reducing the number of engineers that you have.
- Product: What features are absolutely essential? Choose carefully and focus.
- Marketing: Measure everything and cut what is not working. You don’t need large Product Marketing, Product Management teams.
- Sales & Business Development: What is your return on this investment? The Valley has gotten fat with Sales people: Big bases, big variables. Cut base salaries on sales people, highly leverage them with upside (increase variable) and make people pay for themselves via increased sales productivity. Don’t add sales people until you’ve achieved your goals with sales productivity. Be disciplined.
- Pipeline: Scrub the shit out of it and be honest with yourself.
- Finance: Defer payments, what is essential? Kill cash burn.
Death Spiral (Nobody moves fast enough in times like these, so get going and research later.)
- The death spiral sucks you in, you’re in it before you know it and then you die.
- Survival of the quickest.
- Cutting deeper is the formula for survival.
- You should have at least one year’s worth of cash on hand.
Tactics:
- Assess your situation. Drop your assumptions, start with a blank page and start zero-based budgeting.
- Adapt quickly
- Make your cuts
- Review all salaries
- Change sales comp
- Bolster your balance sheet - if you can add $5M to your coffers, take it and save it.
- Spend like it’s your last dollar.
http://space4commerce.blogspot.com/2008/…
Congratulations go to Indianapolis for having 105% of its residents registered [ to vote ].
Gee, I bet the surplus is all Republican and Libertarian.
< cough >
…or maybe not.
http://www.boston.com/business/markets/a…
Now come the second thoughts on globalization.
Never before have world markets been so integrated. And yesterday’s concerted interest rate cuts by central banks in the United States and other countries from Britain to China was a signal that the financial crisis rippling around the globe has grown too big for any one of them - even the US Federal Reserve - to contain on its own.
Big government can’t solve emergent phenomena - therefore we need even bigger government.
Hmmm.
It also could mark the start of an effort to overhaul the global financial system conceived at the 1944 summit in Bretton Woods, N.H., which set the rules of international commerce for industrial countries.
“The start” of overhauling Bretton Woods?
Errr…
This is, perhaps, the dumbest thing that I’ve read this month.
…and that’s amazing, because I’ve read the Boston Globe every single day in October.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woo…
The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world’s major industrial states…
The chief features of the Bretton Woods system were an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a fixed value … the system collapsed in 1971
So, yes, maybe yesterday’s interest rate marked the start of an effort to overhaul the Bretton Woods System … which has been dead for 37 years.
Then again, maybe yesterday’s interest rate marked the start of an effort to overhaul the Hanseatic League, which imploded in the late 1500s.
I don’t know for sure.
After all, I’m not a sophisticated Boston Globe journalist, I’m just a dumb hick reader.
Critics of global trade and finance, long a vocal minority in many countries, including the United States, have based much of their opposition on such historical factors as job migration. Now they see their cause gaining momentum as lawmakers push for tougher oversight and financial restrictions to stem the mayhem in world markets.
This bit, in contrast, is accurate reporting of idiotic populist and leftist opinions: the crisis was caused by leftist regulation that pushed banks to make loans to politically popular groups who had, on average, little experience with credit, poor credit records, poor salaries, poor stability … and the whole thing was overseen by multiple government entities, all the way up to the Senate, and all of these regulators were cheerleading the whole time, pushing for increases in the number of high risk mortgages each and every year (with actual quotas that grew by one percent or more each year) … and now the problem needs to be solved by more oversight.
“We’re seeing the fruits of three decades of deregulation of the financial markets,” said Tonya Hennessey, project director at CorpWatch, an antiglobalization group in San Francisco.
$100 cash and a free burrito to anyone who can show me that the total amount of regulation (as measured in pages of the Federal Registry or other commonly accepted metric) on financial markets has decreased from 1978 to today.
While the web of global connections is being sorted out, the trans-Atlantic blame game already has begun. Foreign leaders have been carping about US financial stewardship in recent days, even while calling for more collaboration to resolve the financial crisis.
I’ve watched kids of friends give their parents static - “this isn’t what I want to eat”, “why can’t we go to Disney World this year”, etc., etc., etc. Sometimes I jump in “Your folks work very hard to earn the money to put this on the table. Money isn’t infinite. You’ll get a chance to try it your own way, as soon as you’re willing to take leadership, work on your own, and be an adult.”
Someone needs to say that to the Europeans.
Robert Reich:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/opinio…
Under these circumstances, deficit spending is not unwelcome. Indeed, as spender of last resort, the government will probably have to run deficits to keep the economy going anywhere near capacity, a lesson the nation learned when mobilization for World War II finally lifted us out of the Great Depression.
Except, mobilization for WWII did not lift us out of the Great Depression.
Food was rationed.
Gas was rationed.
Consumer goods were unavailable.
Manpower was shifted to necessary, but entirely unproductive things like making bullets and storming beaches.
The Depression ended at the end of WWII, after FDR was dead and the Republicans reversed many of his socialist policies, and the regime uncertainty (i.e. businesses having no idea what The Grand Maximum Leader will enact next, and wisely choosing to sit on their hands) ended.
Moreover, without adequate public investment, the vast majority of Americans will be condemned to a lower standard of living for themselves and their children. The top 1 percent now takes home about 20 percent of total national income.
There is no such thing as a preexisting “national income”.
There are 300 million individual incomes, each of which - for the most part - is about equal to the amount of value that each person creates.
So, it’s a lie - a damnable socialist lie - to say that “The top 1 percent now takes home about 20 percent of total national income”. We should say instead that “The top 1 percent generates about 20 percent of total national productivity”.
