bmagnus

Shorties Todd

Well, “free” does appear in the title: someone is suing FreeCreditReport.com for charging them a monthly fee for credit monitoring in order to get that “free” credit report.

“How can payrolls and the unemployment rate both go down at the same time?“: More than you want to know about how those figures are manipulated and tortured.

Data bears out common sense: Layoffs are often very bad for the companies that make them. Not only are there severance costs and bad morale (duh), it’s harder to hire back good people when market conditions improve.

Speaking of employment: The President is still of the opinion that small business hiring can and must get us out of this recession. Specifically, he said “Government can’t create these businesses, but it can give entrepreneurs the support they need to open their doors, expand, or hire more workers.” And what does he want to do about it? He wants to expand a couple of SBA programs designed to help well established businesses that already have debt. You know what would really help small businesses? Leveling the playing field with large businesses when it comes to taxes. Dave’s point is that only profits get taxed, which benefits large companies rather than small ones; tax cuts benefit big businesses while shafting the government that needs taxes to run. But let’s face it, Joe’s Hardware Shop has no leverage with city hall, but Wal-Mart can threaten to open in the next town over unless it gets tax breaks.

5th Amendment takes a beating: apparently the Obama Administration reserves the right to assassinate Americans overseas with “special permission.”

Makes me wonder why I bother to pay my mortgage: Here’s your real “phantom inventory,” banks refusing to foreclose on homes where the owner is well over a year in arrears. People are paying credit cards ahead of the mortgage now, which makes sense in a way. Financial planners have always said to pay down your high interest rate debts first! And, well, if the mortgage company is unlikely to foreclose, what incentive is there to pay?

Shackleton’s Whiskey: it’s been freed from ice near the south pole, and sent off for analysis and hopefully recreating lost liquor formulas.

Speaking of drinking: did you know that a 7-11 Double gulp is twice the size of what your stomach should reasonably be able to hold? And, at 64 oz, it’s the equivalent of 8 servings of soda.

And speaking of serving sizes: the FDA wants to crack down on misleading serving sizes on nutrition labels. You know, the ones that say a bowl of cereal is 2 servings, or 6 chips is a serving?

Glad to see someone holding the banks accountable: Cuomo has filed a lawsuit against B of A and several of it’s executives, charging that they hid information from shareholders and lied to the Feds to get bailout money.

And last but not least: a lesson about inflation.

Stay warm and dry, wherever you are.

Reform. For Freedom.

We have officially gotten to the point where corporations control us.

They control how much money we are allowed to make. They control our finances on the national, international, and personal level — badly. They control our health care in a system that is doomed to collapse under the weight of its own expense real soon now. Worst of all, they play by whatever rules they like while squeezing ordinary people to desperation. Now they have a green light to even more openly control our government.

And unless this worthless Congress remembers that the one thing corporations can’t do — yet, anyway — is vote, things are going to get worse rather than better. We desperately need real financial reform now, the kind that restores rules that worked through most of the 20th century and not the kind so riddled with loopholes as to be a gift to the financial services industry. We need insurance reform that puts more of our health care dollars to work providing health care and curtailing the abuse of patients who foolishly want the care they think they (or their bosses) are paying for, not a “reform” that forces everyone to participate in a broken system through mandatory coverage.

“I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free,” the song goes. Free to do what? Free to get involved in staged protests of issues we don’t understand? Free to loudly proclaim “facts” with no basis in reality? Free to watch propaganda dressed up as news? Free to owe everything to the companies that hire us, care for us, and mis-manage our money with no hope of anything else?

If you don’t mind, I’d prefer a different flavor of freedom.

In Closing: Roman Army Knife; “Um, because it was the right thing to do and we didn’t want any lawyers saying we did wrong later? Was the 5th Amendment repealed while I wasn’t looking?”; nice to see that we are going to count job losses more honestly, but it’s a shame that Mr. Obama will be blamed for “losing” these jobs when he merely counted Bush Administration losses correctly; I couldn’t have said it better either; at least child abuse is down!; where genetic testing and “pro-life” collide; trees are loving global warming (much more so than the polar bears); and Americans are drinking more, but we’re not paying for the Good Stuff. So, uh, maybe the price of Scotch will return to rational levels? No? I thought not.

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

This week’s Time Magazine arrived in the mail a little while ago. Here’s what the cover looks like. Accompanied by a big picture of a deflated football, the cover stories are “The Most Dangerous Game. How to Fix Football” and “The Crisis in High Schools.”

My immediate thought was that somehow football is more important that education? Will football impact America’s ability to compete in the world economy more than what high school kids are learning?

I have a soft spot in my heart for educational issues, so I opened it up and tried to find the article on what crisis is befalling our high schools. I could find no such article title in the table of contents, so I began to flip through. Oh, look 10 questions from readers posed to Ozzy Osbourne, that’s nice. Good picture of him too. Bomb crater in Baghdad, shame the picture isn’t in the online edition. Flip, flip, flip…. Joe Klein on “Failing our Schools“. Huh, not about high school, but about how the evil teachers unions are preventing meaningful reform of our schools. Not even the same author mentioned on the cover. Moving on. Disaster porn, pictures of the devastation in Haiti. Can Bank Bashing Help Obama (yes, only if it comes with rules and regulations that protect us from predatory banking). What Obama should learn from Reagan (stand up for something, blame the guy you replaced for everything that’s wrong). Oh, we’re up to the cover article on football now.

And the article on what’s wrong with our high schools! Finally fount it! Is it standards that are too low? Curricula that don’t get kids to the standards? Is it teachers? Is it helicopter parents? Is it student apathy? High stakes testing? Too little focus on preparing kids for college and the workforce? Underfunded technology initiatives??

No, the article that the cover bragged was on a crisis in our high schools is in fact called “A Lifetime Penalty: In Texas, catastrophic spinal injuries aren’t enough to change high school football.” The article isn’t about instructional issues at all, but the tragedy of a handful of kids who suffer serious, crippling injuries on the football field. What schools are “failing” to do is keep young players of a dangerous, full-contact sport safe. The writer’s answer to this problem? Not better coaching to avoid injuries. Not getting rid of a dangerous extracurricular activity with debatable educational value. Not educating the teen-aged players about the risks of concussions and more serious injuries. Not changing the “win at any cost” mentality that makes this an acceptable risk for communities, coaches, and the players that understand the risks. No, he thinks there should be an ambulance at every high school football game.

Yeah, that will really keep kids from ending up in wheelchairs.

Not to make light of these kids, but is that really the biggest problem our high schools face?

This is what passes for a news magazine in our country. And that is part of the educational crisis in our country.

Thankfully, Murder Will Not Be Tolerated

Today, the terrorist who killed Dr. George Tiller was convicted of murder and assault. It took the jury 37 minutes to come to a verdict. The soonest he could possibly see parole is in 25 years — and given his age, it’s entirely possible he won’t be alive then. Thankfully, the judge did not allow this trial to become a circus, did not allow abortion to become a central issue, and did not allow the defense to argue voluntary manslaughter, because Dr. Tiller never posed any sort of threat whatsoever — not even an imaginary threat — to the defendant. It’s hard to argue that the someone you admit you’ve been stalking for 10 years posed a danger to you.

I will not glorify the terrorist by naming him. Let him die forgotten.

Now if we can only do something about the thousands of other people so mentally ill that they think murder for God is acceptable.

In Closing: we had positive GDP growth last quarter, but you’d never know it to look at reality (more evidence that the way it is currently measured is flawed); David Sirota on Disaster Porn; must read item on jobs and economic justice; now Ezra Klein says Rahm Emanuel makes him very pessimistic about health care reform! Gee, really Ezra? Rahm made me pessimistic a good solid year ago. Sometimes wonks can be insightful, but sometimes they can be nearsighted.

Bless the Shorties

Wishful thinking for those of you up North:

see more Epic Fails

Tama Gets Promoted: Tama, Japan’s most famous train stationmaster-cat, is now an operating officer with the company. Hopefully this post comes with a generous allowance of maguro and catnip.

Political Beliefs Don’t Justify Murder: The ACLU asked the courts in Kansas not to allow the person who murdered Dr. George Tiller to use as his defense that he “honestly, but mistakenly, believed the circumstances justified the use of deadly force.” I love the fact that they are citing Kansas legal precedent to do it, but I wish they had gone one step further and pointed out that killing for political beliefs can be considered terrorism.

It must be nice: New CEO of Bank of America gets a 19% pay raise.

Obligatory Health Insurance Reform Stuff: Senate admits that a bill full of gifts to insurance companies and drug companies without an equal or greater number of gifts to voters is a dead idea. Howard Dean on how to do it right.

Jingle Mail: sending the keys back to the mortgage company and telling them it’s all theirs. It’s not just for homeowners anymore. The world’s most expensive apartment complex has been given back to the bank. At least banks (sort of) know how to run an apartment complex (they hire a management company!).

Starship Troopers: Hold it right there, consumer! Are you really a citizen? Can we really fix the economy without fixing our democracy?

Speaking of the economy: There may be more trouble among small business owners than currently dreamed. That means either we are not having a recovery anytime soon, or we are about to be even more owned by the nation’s biggest businesses.

She works hard for the money, so you better treat her right: Well, assuming she has a job at all (thanks, Jukkou!). Those that do have jobs are “working twice as hard for half the money“. Poverty is moving to the suburbs — there goes the neighborhood! And those who do have a job must deal with a workplace that fits the needs of the 1960s workforce, and the stress of work-family conflicts that increasingly tear the fabric of our communities.

Sorry, not going to say much about the State of the Union. In a few days, all the important things will be spun until you can’t recognize them anyway.

“I’m late. No, you don’t understand, I’m LATE.”

Do you trust me?

Seriously. Do you trust me?

Do you trust me to drive a car? Even if I am on the same road as you?

Do you trust me to balance my own checkbook?

Do you trust me to select and cook nutritious meals?

I have a CPR certification; do you trust me to do CPR on someone you care about if it is necessary?

Do you trust that I can, with the help of a physician and perhaps the internet, make decisions about what I must do or not do to be healthy?

Do you trust me to raise children?

Do you really?

If you trust me to do all these things, how about other women? Do you trust the lady in the next car to not crash into you? Do you trust the woman doctor to save your life in an emergency? Do you trust the woman at the grocery store with 3 kids in tow to raise them? What about the high school girl down the block, do you suppose she could put together a balanced meal?

So then, why are there people who won’t trust a woman to make the most important decision, a decision which will directly influence her health for 9 months, and will directly influence her life possibly forever? How can you trust someone to raise children, yet not trust her to make the decision whether to have them in the first place?

Blog for Choice day was yesterday. I am late with this post. Sorry. Here’s some other great Blog for Choice posts for you to enjoy.

Wake-Up Call

Wake up call! Come home from the polls
With another one in my Senate!
Don’t you care about Ted anymore?
Care about Ted? I don’t think so!

No 60 votes, health care bill in trouble
So I had to shoot it dead.
Won’t come around here anymore.
Come around here… I don’t feel so bad!

Yesterday, everybody went crazy trying to figure out what went wrong and what was going to happen next. So what went wrong? You can’t blame it all on Coakley’s terrible and tone-deaf campaign as much as some people would like to. The party has to take some blame for not delivering on very darn much.

Very interesting that all of a sudden today, we are talking about financial services reform. The administration spent a year playing nice and begging the banks to do likewise, and now we’re playing hardball. Go figure! My theory is that it’s a combination of quid pro quo (they didn’t do their part towards making sure that seat went to a Democrat, any Democrat), and a desire to at least appear that they are finally going to protect the American people from the predatory financial services industry that has been robbing the economy blind.

So, let’s hope the Democratic party takes the situation in Massachusetts for what it is: a wake-up call. They have 10 months to get their act together! That means doing The People’s Work, and not just for show.

In closing: reasons profiling won’t catch terrorists go beyond Tim McVeigh; don’t feel too bad about your house’s value, even the White House lost value last year (hold the jokes about the President, please); better shoelace tying; and giant cattle.

A Rock, a Hard Place, and a Pyramid

Today I saw an interesting pair of articles. First, it seems that many of our unemployed and underemployed neighbors are starting their own businesses. That really is good news, because some small percentage of those businesses will eventually be employers. It’s really hard to run a business even in good times, and these people are to be commended for their ability to take a lemon of a situation and try to make some lemonade.

But there’s bad news. Banks have collectively pulled a thousand million dollars of funding from small businesses last November alone. Here’s a great quote, emphasis mine:

The 22 banks that got the most help from the Treasury’s bailout programs have cut their small business loan balances $12.5 billion since April, when the Treasury began requiring them to file monthly reports on the tally. The banks’ total lending has fallen 4.6% in that seven-month period, to $256.8 billion.

As Wall Street megabanks return to health — and celebrate with lavish bonuses — President Obama and his administration have been pushing financiers to help spur a Main Street recovery. Small business owners are still reporting difficulty finding banks willing to extend the credit they need to launch, run and grow their ventures.

So to review: more small businesses and less money being lent to them. That is a recipe for failure. These are not the sorts of businesses that can generally get venture capital, and these business owners certainly can’t get home equity loans right now. And frankly, all too few of us have anything in the way of savings.

But wait, there is one kind of business opportunity that doesn’t require lots of capital outlay. Start-up fees are generally small and ongoing costs modest. Some of these opportunities don’t even require the small business owner to carry inventory. I am talking about multi-level marketing, or MLM for short. I’ve been offered multiple “opportunities” in the last 6 weeks, including cold calls, so it’s heavy on my mind.

Disclaimer: my parents used to be Amway distrubutors, and I am an Independent Beachbody Coach. I will be sitting for the ACE Certified Personal Trainer exam next week, and to be honest Beachbody makes a number of complete in-box programs that are good fits for roughly 90% of people. If you’ve considered getting into P90X or another workout program (I can help you pick one if you want guidance), I sure would appreciate if you would order through me instead of the phone number in the infomercial.

Here’s how it works. Jane Businesswoman signs up and probably gets a starter package of whatever it is that the company sells. She is encouraged to sell this product to people she knows — the bigger your sphere of influence, the better your chances. Depending on the company/product, she may place orders as she sells merchandise, she may stock popular items, she might be able to give out samples (in fact she may be encouraged to buy sample packs and give them out as a marketing tool). But the real money is in getting other people to sign up to be her “downline”. Once she has Susie and Laura Businesswoman working in the system, she gets a cut of what they sell too. Jane will even get a cut of the people Susie and Laura someday sign up. And hey, if one of those people only orders stuff for personal use, Jane still gets a piece of the action.

The only thing that keeps this from being a pyramid scheme is that there is an actual product, and to make money somebody has to be buying it. Often the product is something that gets used up — soap, vitamins supplements, etc — so theoretically Jane, Laura, and Susie should all have repeat customers who come back to buy more on a regular basis. And because they all make money on the product, they are extremely enthusiastic about it.

Most of these plans have a couple of fatal flaws in my mind, which I can encapsulate in two questions: If this product is so great, why isn’t the company trying to get it into stores? and If your business is so great, why do you want to sell it to me instead of keeping the profits for yourself?

What it boils down to is that most of these companies are offloading their marketing costs onto their family of Businessmen and Businesswomen. When is the last time you saw a TV ad for most of the companies on this list? [Notice something? At least Beachbody does marketing for me!] If you know who most of these companies are, it’s only because somebody you know tried to sell it to you. Marketing campaigns are expensive. Hiring professional salespeople and sending them to retailers to get placed in stores is expensive. Putting Jane and her friends to work hawking product isn’t just cheap, it turns an expense into income! Sure, it costs the parent company a bit of theoretical profit to run this way. But they make up for it by turning their independent contractor sales staff into zealots who will buy anything the company makes.

I won’t bore you further, but if you want to know more about how such companies work, there’s these guys.

In closing: lines for peasants but services for the rich; weird scholarships; Japan Airlines files for bankruptcy; more on job creation; is anybody really surprised that the FBI broke the law to get some phone data?; already up to 4 bank failures this year; bankers don’t get it; most of them will turn out to be insolvent; and talking to children about disasters.

“I’d Love to, but Chinese Food Gives Me Gas”

In Closing: Let them eat chard; Christian Taliban are a scary bunch; the failure of progressive organizations; when did the term “centrist” get hijacked?; more sobering facts about what a crappy year 2009 was; NBC the Barbarian (Conan the Classy); Gin and Tacos offers an idea; Haiti follow-up includes the importance of building codes and Satan replies to Pat Robertson; and if there’s a silver lining to our crappy economy, it’s that people are trying to live within their means.

I can’t believe he said that.

By now I think everyone knows that Haiti had a truly horrible earthquake. Perhaps you have also heard that Pat Robertson said it’s their own damn fault.

How’s that? Did they have substandard building codes that led to needless deaths? Perhaps they didn’t heed some geologist’s warning? Perhaps corruption prevented people from reaching assistance?

No, they “deserved” this earthquake, this unimaginable destruction, because they allegedly made a pact with the Devil in 1804 to obtain their liberation from France.

Now, just so there is no confusion here, I do not want anything to do with a deity who kills innocent children because of something their forebears allegedly did 205 years ago! Maybe such a wild tale would be credible if this earthquake happened in 1805, maybe even 1810. But we are talking about divine retribution for rumored events of over 2 centuries ago. It seems to me an omnipotent God could have arranged a more timely comeuppance. After all, He destroyed Sodom within hours of confirming that the natives would rather gang-rape a couple of visiting men than a pair of underage virgins.

But here is my question. Where is the outrage from Christians?

Back in 2001, moderate Islam figures were encouraged to denounce the kind of extremist thoughts and behaviors that led to 9/11. Why aren’t we demanding that moderate Christian leaders denounce Pat Robertson as the lunatic he is? Can’t the United Methodists make a statement more official than a blog post? Can the Southern Baptist Conference do more than ask for money? Where is the outrage from the Episcopals? Whither the Church of England? Has the Greek Orthodox Church nothing to say? Christian Scientitsts? The Mormons? The Lutherans? How can the Pope remain silent about this inflammatory and theologically dubious rambling?

While I see much talk of help for the people of Haiti — which is both very Christian and very much needed — there is near silence of the issue of Mr. Robertson.

At least the Ambassador from Haiti has his head screwed on straight.

In closing: paid to be stupid; Americans are stupid part 2, many of us think airport security should involve profiling (I guess nobody remembers that Tim McVeigh was a white guy); conservatives and trade policy; real unemployment needs real solutions; with the money they spent on negative ads, the insurance companies could have provided health insurance to 3000 families; Junk Insurance Tax; a picture worth a thousand words on checked baggage fees (between the airlines and the TSA are they actively trying to get me to avoid flying??).