New York Times' Bigotry Towards Golf

Excerpts reprinted with neither permission nor expressed written consent of the NY Times. Red denotes my emphasis.

THE MUDDYING OF THE GREENS

By ANNE E. KORNBLUT
Published: January 22, 2006

Of all the lessons to emerge from the Jack Abramoff scandal, the most culturally consequential may be just three words long.

"I'm going to go over a lot of things today, and I can take all of your questions, but let me give you the all-encompassing rule," a lawyer teaching the course began at a recent session in Miami, according to one of the participants.

"Golf," he said, pausing for effect, "is bad."

The ominous warning can almost be heard echoing across the greens of the political establishment, where the game is not only a cherished pastime but has increasingly become a critical cog in the wheels of campaign financing and lobbying. Fact-finding Congressional trips are tailored to cross paths with golf resorts. Candidates and their supporters spend tens of thousands of dollars on golfing costs each campaign cycle - more and more each year, it turns out - as part of the cost of doing political business.

But now, as the Abramoff ordeal in Washington unfolds, golf is acquiring the whiff of scandal, its exclusive fairways and cozy clubhouses redolent of an improper commerce between money and influence.

But the Abramoff scandal, which suggests that tens of thousands of dollars were spent by lobbying groups to fly lawmakers around the world to play golf, in violation of ethical and perhaps legal strictures, exposes golf as an almost irresistible political carrot that is used to buy favor and access.

Until golf entered the picture, the ethics scandal surrounding Tom DeLay was hard for many to fathom. It involved complicated transactions between obscure political action committees. (Mr. DeLay was indicted last year in Texas in a campaign finance case and has also been under investigation in Washington as part of a wide public corruption case involving lobbyists' efforts to secure legislation for their clients.) The issues are difficult to convey to average voters. But a weeklong $70,000 trip to the golf course in St. Andrews, Scotland, arranged through Mr. Abramoff, as suggested by financial records and participants in the case? To Democrats seeking to exploit the matter, that is the eye-popping stuff of scandal.

More than any other perk - except perhaps free meals and drinks at Mr. Abramoff's upscale restaurant, Signatures - expensive overseas golfing trips have surfaced as his lobbying gift of choice, meant to curry favor with lawmakers and, more often, their underpaid staff members. Golfing fees to courses in the Washington area have also been listed as evidence of attempts at bribing public officials in court documents.

The effect has been, at least for now, to cast a shadow over certain fairways. "I think what we will see here in the current environment is members being pretty careful about getting caught in golfing adventures that don't pass the sunshine test of full disclosure," said Fred Wertheimer, the president of the nonpartisan group Democracy 21 and a longtime advocate of stricter ethics rules in Congress. "How long that will last remains to be seen, particularly for those who are golf-obsessed. There's a certain golf caucus on Capitol Hill, and playing golf is very high on their list of priorities for the country."

Thus the question is raised: What it is about golf that politicians seem so unable to resist, even when their reputations, their very careers, are at stake?

"To be able to play the most challenging golf courses in the world is as good as it gets," said Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, who shares a golfing obsession with his friend Bill Clinton. "That is a dream vacation."

"Other people shouldn't be paying your golfing dues," Mr. McAuliffe quickly added.

For Mr. DeLay, who wears his golfing passion on his plaid pants,

"Golf has a long, treasured heritage in terms of junkets and even potentially corrupt socializing," said Jan Baran, a lawyer specializing in campaign finance and ethics (and who described himself as "someone who personally doesn't understand or appreciate the allure of golf").

Who, after all, is keeping watch over lawmakers to see which golf courses they are frequenting, and with whom? (Are they proposing that we "spy" on them?)

Golf has long held a special place in political life…..

Limited to the upper classes for much of the 20th century, the game was played more by members of the Senate than the House...

Yet there have been scandals, big and small, all along the way.

During the alcohol-free era of Prohibition in the 1920's, lawmakers flocked to private golf courses because they could get a drink; President Warren G. Harding sparked a ferocious uproar over the bottle of whiskey he pulled from his golf bag…..

Dan Burton, the Republican congressman from Indiana, came under fire in 1997 for accepting an invitation to play the famous Pebble Beach tournament in California - a lifelong dream of his - at a time when the corporate sponsor of the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am Tournament had business before the committee he led.

President Bush lost his patience on the golf course one morning in August 2002.

But a vast majority of political golf outings these days take place hidden well out of public view; the remoteness and privacy of golf is one of its appeals to politicians...

All of which is perfectly legal. Most golfing members of Congress are proud of their participation in the sport, not embarrassed. Representative John Boehner of Ohio, one of the candidates running to replace Mr. DeLay as majority leader, belongs to Burning Tree despite the fact that it doesn't accept women as members.

Even Congressional members from some urban areas treat golf as a fund-raising vehicle.

They view it as something they must do - they've got to have these fund-raising events, and it's a chore," said Kent Cooper.

"You sort of wonder, do members of Congress exercise other than golf? Have they moved the smoke-filled room to the green? No one is going to stop them from taking out a cigar on the golf course."

Let's play this game again. I will further condense everything the Times wants to say about and associate with golf.

Golf is bad
ominous warning
political establishment
critical cog in the wheels
whiff of scandal
exclusive
cozy
improper commerce
money and influence
violation of ethical and perhaps legal strictures
irresistible political carrot
buy favor and access
ethics scandal
wide public corruption
eye-popping stuff of scandal
perk
curry favor
bribing public officials
cast a shadow
stricter ethics
certain golf caucus
on Capitol Hill
unable to resist
junkets
potentially corrupt socializing
upper classes
scandals
ferocious uproar
came under fire
lost his patience
hidden well out of public view
remoteness
privacy
proud
not embarrassed
doesn't accept women as members
fund-raising vehicle
smoke-filled room



Anti-golf propaganda at the Times isn't a new wrinkle. They have written almost 50 articles in the last few years ripping Augusta National for its men-only membership policy. They even went so far as to suggest that Tiger Woods should boycott the Masters to advance their agenda.

Devil's Advocate: Hey C-Nut, as usual you are overreacting to a NY Times article. They don't hate golf, just corruption.

Hey DA, I may rename you Simpleton's Advocate because you play the part far too well.

They hate suburbia.

They hate SUVs.

They think everyone should pay $3 per gallon of gasoline.

They hate golf.

DA is a simpleton because he wants to analyze this article in a vacuum rather than see it for what it is - another cog in the Times' demented worldview.

THE NEW YORK TIMES IS ALL ABOUT...

...ELITIST URBAN CHAUVINISM.

A couple more notes.

When the Times says,

"Who, after all, is keeping watch over lawmakers to see which golf courses they are frequenting, and with whom?"

Are they proposing that we "spy" on American citizens?

I get it. If Muhammad in Brooklyn is using a disposable cell phone to communicate with Al Queda....the government shouldn't monitor that call. BUT, we should "keep watch" over lawmakers on golf courses.

Very interesting set of priorities...

Also, the Times cited Democracy 21 as a "nonpartisan" group which seems to be somewhat of a bald-faced lie. From this link,

"Democracy 21," which has called for "investigations" into what they claim are "ethics violations" by Rep. DeLay, is headed by Fred Wertheimer, a long-time liberal activist who once headed the far-left group "Common Cause". Democracy 21's board of directors has given tens of thousands of dollars to Democrats, but not one single cent to Republicans; and of course, the group has received over $300,000 from George Soros' "Open Society Institute."

That hardly seems "nonpartisan" to me, but remember, this is the New York Times. Also, some googling revealed that Fred Wertheimer originally had decried Soros' soft dollar peddling but based on that above link, he opted for the 300 grand and hypocrite status.

Also there is this comical, yet telling sentence,

"Even Congressional members from some urban areas treat golf as a fund-raising vehicle."

Could you imagine that? Golfing is such depravity that even the enlightened "urban" pols get tangled in its web.

But at least the inherently morally superior urban pols resent golf,

"They view it as something they must do - they've got to have these fund-raising events, and it's a chore," said Kent Cooper.



In the above article, Terry McAuliffe righteously asserted,

"Other people shouldn't be paying your golfing dues,"

Terry, did you mean "green fees"?

"Dues" connotes country club membership fees usually paid monthly. Most people pay per round and all of the accusations in the article center around per diem courses. I seriously doubt that Terry is an "obsessed" golfer.

This a little bit reminds me of when a certain Massachusetts Senator exclaimed that his favorite member of the Red Sox was "Manny Ortiz [sic]"

(Note: Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz are two different players for the Sox - as even a casual Sox fan would know.)

And lastly,

Representative John Boehner of Ohio, one of the candidates running to replace Mr. DeLay as majority leader, belongs to Burning Tree despite the fact that it doesn't accept women as members.

Remember, golf doesn't just corrupt politics, it oppresses women.

But speaking of exclusive clubs...

....would the Times hire a born-again Christian or a capitalist?

How about an SUV-driver, a Republican, or an anti-abortionist?

Would they hire a global warming skeptic or a military veteran?

They probably don't even have one serious golfer on the "exclusive" payroll.

Wal-Mart, Healthcare, and Economic Illiteracy

Maryland recently passed a law that would require Wal-Mart to increase its spending on workers' healthcare. The bill mandates that employers with over 10,000 employees spend at least 8% of payroll on health benefits. This is a subject that I have previously blogged on.

Lost, or should I say completely ignored, in this Wal-Mart debate in Maryland is the notion that private companies should be OBLIGATED to provide healthcare for employees at all – never mind what percentage of their payroll should be dedicated to it.

This demonstrates once again the hypocrisy of being “pro-jobs” yet anti-business. Why would any company open a huge business in the state of Maryland when meddling socialists are going to hyper-regulate how the company pays its employees? Existing large companies will decide to expand in other locales rather than further invest in an anti-business region. When Wal-Mart first got a whiff of this bill they promptly delayed plans to open a new massive distribution center in Maryland.

Minimum wage law is socialist enough, but mandating health care expenditures takes that up a few notches. First of all, a business can’t control the price of healthcare, so by requiring that they spend any amount on it sows the seeds of more healthcare price inflation. Price increases will invariably raise the number of uninsured. Thank you Commi's....MISSION UNACCOMPLISHED.

The sheer inanity of this debate has no end. Socialists mistakenly presume that businesses SHOULD provide healthcare, and then ratchet up that by arguing for an amount to their liking. And these socialists have yet again conspired to MIS-FRAME the healthcare debate.

People don’t have healthcare because it is EXPENSIVE.

It is EXPENSIVE because of EXCESS GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT, i.e. MEDICARE.

The solution to expensive healthcare is not more of WHAT MAKES IT EXPENSIVE.

Every business would love to provide healthcare, dental care, life insurance and every other benefit to attract and keep good employees.

The econo-illiterates don’t understand that forcing businesses to spend money on already overpriced healthcare DOES NOT ALLEVIATE runaway healthcare inflation. In fact it AGGRAVATES the price and as I have already noted, it INCREASES the ranks of the uninsured.

Of course Maryland legislators are,

1) Too dumb to realize this.
2) Don’t care.
3) In the pocket of the unions of Wal-Mart’s foundering competitors.
4) Outright socialists.

Take your pick(s).

Devil’s Advocate: What about the claim that Wal-Mart is shifting its healthcare burden on to the state’s Medicaid budget?

First of all. Medicare and Medicaid should never have been born – they may even be un-Constitutional. Basically, politicians promised healthcare to some people (poor and elderly) and are taxing productive members of society to fulfill that promise. Unfortunately, eliminating these programs remains a pipe dream and won’t happen any time soon. The only way it would happen is if every young and working person decided to elect pols that represented their real, rather than perceived, self-interests.

Basically, government created this healthcare "burden", and instead of fixing it on a structural level, THEY lazily want to pass the buck to businesses like Wal-Mart. Furthermore, they erroneously think this will have no consequences.

How did/does government inflate the cost of healthcare?

By subsidizing (entitling) healthcare for the poor and elderly, the government effectively became the biggest buyer of medical services.

This creates a panoply of problems, some obvious and some not so.

Axiomatically, government involvement begets gross economic inefficiencies but the overall effects are more pernicious than simply higher consumer prices.

A friend of mine is a pharmaceutical rep for Merck. He recently said this to me about the drug approval process,

“...all we (drug companies) have to do is avoid or limit hospitalization....because it is that expensive.”

Essentially he was saying that drug companies can and will promote any drug that simply reduces hospitalization expenditures. That sounds pretty sensible, right?



But when you consider the exorbitant costs of hospital care, the hurdle for cost savings is set recklessly low. What did Dr. Kovac say on ER last week? Something like the cost of one day spent in the ICU is $22,000.

I can’t find good data on normal daily hospitalization costs but that ICU figure should give some idea of how high they are. With these low hurdles, justifying $500 per year spent on Lipitor or Prozac becomes very easy for all the necessary Morons: HMOs, government bureaucrats, hospitals, and doctors.

Before you know it, the nation is spending billions on new "cost saving" blockbuster drugs.

Get it? SPENDING BILLIONS to SAVE MONEY.

This low hurdle is the medical analogue of the False Comparison tactic.

Now multiply this by every drug, medical device, and treatment option and you will end up with government (Medicare) approval for almost everything under the sun. In fact, about 14% of the entire Gross Domestic Product was spent on healthcare last year.

Another example. Look at this “ad” for the Freedom Bed, a $24,500 hospital bed.

From that link,

Costs of Bed Sores:

The approximate daily treatment costs for pressure ulcers in US hospitals range from $39 per day for a stage I ulcer to $811 per day for a stage IV ulcer. Stage IV ulcers can take up to 90 days to heal, leading to a total treatment cost of as much as $73,000 per occurrence. Under these circumstances the purchase price of a Freedom Bed™ would be recouped in as little as 30 days. The repayment period is even shorter when the regular hospitalization costs of the patient are factored in. Thus the prevention of bedsores and other complications of immobility such as pneumonia (which can cost up to $40,000 per occurrence to treat) in home-based individuals who would require hospitalization is one key method of considering savings to be realized.

Do you see what is going on here?

This expensive bed wants to be measured only against the outlandish costs of treating certain ailments, rather than by its inherent worth. I guess in this sense, they have re-formulated all medical tradeoffs into crude functions of extant inefficiencies.

This would be like if a consumer decided to buy a $9,000 television simply because it was cheaper than a $10,000 one.

Devil’s Advocate: That's a stupid analogy C-nut...there are more than just two televisions for consumers to choose from.

That’s right DA, but when was the last time a person picked (and was charged accordingly) a hospital based on the cost of its beds? It simply is not possible. The industry-wide bed cost is set by the largest medical buyer, i.e. the government (Medicare), and patients have no purchasing power.

If the hospital were in a truly competitive industry it would be working indefatigably to lower all of its costs, just as any normal business would. It would have to, simply to remain competitive with other hospitals. But there is no such competition and with more people joining the Medicare rolls each year, dumb money keeps getting pumped into the system. This undermines the very tenets of capitalism. When the price of a good goes up, consumers need to be able to lower their demand for said good – otherwise there is no mechanism to check rising prices.

What happens when capitalism is unchained? From a prior post,

I was trying to explain to someone how we need more free market forces in healthcare. I used the example of corrective laser eye surgery. That procedure is not covered by healthcare (or Medicare) and thus its cost has crashed from over $2000 per eye to around $350 an eye now.

Government involvement in healthcare is more pernicious than simply higher prices because it adulterates the innovation process. This interference keeps medical research stuck on treatment and blockbuster drugs that only improve healthcare AT THE MARGIN. A free market in healthcare would re-align the economics of healthcare consumption and production, yielding prices more like corrective laser surgery than the ever escalating costs we have now.



Medical consumers are impotent also because of what is known as the Third Party Payer system.

When John Doe is sick and visits his doctor to decide a treatment plan…..neither John nor the Doc pay directly for this medical care. Either an HMO or the government (Medicare) will foot the bill. Thus divorced from the economics, neither the doctor nor the patients are directly vested in the cost of treatment. Unfortunately both are pre-disposed toward overspending.

My pregnant wife recently noticed some slight spotting. She wanted to call her doctor and I warned her not to. Of course her doctor insisted that she go to the hospital that night. It is strictly CYA on the doctor’s part who is more concerned about her legal liability than the marginal healthcare dollar spent. The same goes for my infant son. Every time he is a little bit sick, my wife calls the doctor, and they reflexively tell us to come in for a visit. It is not the revenue they want. They just don’t want to risk, God forbid, someone dying after they telephonically advise them not to come in. With today's jury awards, who can blame them?

The same indifference applies to the patient. If told that running some extra tests would cost them say $1 in extra healthcare premiums per month, for the rest of their lives, indubitably many would opt out of the tests. Of course a fretful CYA Doc may not be honest about how necessary the additional tests are in the first place. This is the morass that medical spending and decision-making are stuck in.

Also in this medical malpractice debate, watch out for deceitful propaganda. During the 2004 Vice-Presidential debates, class action “gouger” John Edwards tried to downplay the malpractice component cost of healthcare. I think the number he tried to throw out was 2% of the total cost of healthcare. It is deceitful because it only takes into account malpractice premiums and jury awards – it DOES NOT INCLUDE THE COST OF SUPERFLUOUS CARE FROM CYA DOCTORS.

Anyway enough on healthcare stupidity and back to Wal-Mart stupidity.



Semi-business basher David Faber asked the head of Wal-Mart if Sam Walton would be proud of the company’s healthcare record today to which he responded something like,

“Sam would because he was all about value and money well spent…”

What Faber and many other viewers probably couldn’t discern from that response is that healthcare is simply too expensive as it is currently priced. What econo-illiterates probably heard was, “we are too cheap to pay for healthcare...” – which is a patently ignorant inference.

It is not an either-or situation, both worker and employer bear the healthcare burden. More money spent towards healthcare is less for cash wages and vice versa. If Wal-Mart workers wanted more healthcare benefits and less cash, they would have already left and found a job that compensated accordingly. But they don't because Wal-Marts everywhere are overrun by job applicants.

Of course, if you are of the arch elitist mindset that thinks Wal-Mart workers too dumb to take such action....then you have your acrobatic mental escape from this logic. But you should at least be honest about your arrogant postulation.

It also should be noted that Wal-Mart already spends about 7% of its payroll towards healthcare coverage. An increase to 8% would represent a 14% jump in healthcare spending for Wal-Mart. Last I checked, basic arithmetic was simply not part of the Communist Manifesto. I'll explain.

Healthcare premiums are up an astounding 73% since 2000 and a mere deflation of 14% would be financially equivalent to forcing Wal-Mart to meet the 8% threshold. Furthermore, such deflation would:

1) help Wal-Mart AND every other business in Maryland.
2) make healthcare more affordable, reducing the number of uninsured.
3) refocus medical innovation on substantial, rather than marginal, cost savings.
4) keep large employers in-state.

Economically illiterate pols should be decrying and addressing the cost of healthcare. Instead they choose to clang the bell of class warfare and deflect attention from the depravity of Medicare, an albatross of their own creation.

What was that expression about socialists? Something like,

"You need us in power today to solve the problems we created yesterday..."?

Click here for another trenchant indictment of the Maryland bill.

Massachusetts: A Perpetual Cycle of Economic Illiteracy

If Joe Blow decides to launch a business and sell widgets, if won’t be long before he figures out whether or not this was a good idea. If he doesn’t sell enough widgets to cover his costs....he is not going to stay with this too long. Not making money is some serious NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.

Consider the philosophy professor at a government subsidized university. If he is a bad teacher, where is his negative feedback? Maybe a low rating in a student guidebook? He certainly doesn’t lose any money after a poor job of teaching one semester. He may flounder for years and still not lose his job.

Others insulated from negative feedback are 99% of government employees, much of the unionized workforce, journalists, and generally anyone in a very secure job – usually marked by monopolistic or government involvement.

A person’s job is their main intersection with the economy. The secure jobs with no negative feedback effectively insulate these workers from connecting with capitalism. It is no surprise that such people are collectively the most economically illiterate. They are the ones that think jobs descend out of nowhere, that prices are arbitrarily set by old men in Texas or Enron executives, that high wages and benefits are an entitlement, and that the President can flip a switch to lower gas prices or create the jobs to which they feel entitled.

These are the people that vote for politicians that are “pro-jobs” and yet anti-business.

These are the dummies unaware of the dangers of taxing the rich.

These are the Morons that I blog about all of the time.

There is, by inference at least, a constitutional right to be a Moron. These econo-illiterates are a blight on the country even though their condition may be accidental.

Consider Massachusetts, which has, in my limited travels, revealed itself to me as the most economically illiterate place I have ever been. For the most part, the people here are economically illiterate by default. Essentially, despite the dense population, there is no thriving economy up here.



Demographically, Massachusetts is dominated by the elderly. They are all on fixed incomes with very little money to spend. So there are very few high end clothiers and restaurants – instead there are probably a billion Dunkin Donuts, hospitals, and discount retailers. Forget about a vibrant service economy and its jobs. Also, Puritanical regulation of liquor licenses also retards new restaurant and bar development.

Now adding to the poor demographics is a very hostile anti-business political climate. High corporate tax rates, onerous unemployment benefits, meddling politicians like Tom Reilly and William Galvin(BoA/Fleet merger, Gillete merger, NStar), etc. You can’t build anything here because of the restrictive zoning. This list goes on and on.

Some big developer was going to develop the Fan Pier on the Boston waterfront, but at the last second meddling pols stepped in and demanded that they build a ridiculously expensive parking garage, all sorts of public access, a marina, space for civic institutions, and a deal-killing expensive seawall. Needless to say, the developer (Boston Properties REIT) walked away, paying a $2.5 million fee, rather than be extorted. Moronic pols celebrated their success with one Legislator exclaiming that he wasn't there to enrich a private individual from another state.

HEY DOPE, A REIT IS NOT A "PRIVATE INDIVIDUAL".

Maybe the Fan Pier will be developed before the Big Dig, but regardless this one example is a microcosm of how Bostonians retard development. (That Big Dig link is worthwhile reading as a case study in government ineptitude.)

I want to comment on mass transit up here. Let’s just say that it basically sucks. The commuter rail doesn’t run that often (actually closed on Sundays). You can’t even buy a monthly pass from a vending machine. You have to wait in line at South Station and buy it from the booth AND you have to show identification. Why they need to see ID to sell you a train pass is mysterious and it doesn’t exactly speed up the wait in line. Also the trolleys wait for everyone to pay before they move and have to stop at all of the same traffic lights as cars.

As far as I am concerned they don’t have mass transit here.

Nobody uses it because it is cumbersome and impractical so everyone has to own a car and drive around town. Obviously this makes traffic worse and parking very expensive.

Forget about cabs, they are a complete jam-job. Not sure about now, but in 2004, the same 2.8 mile cab ride in Manhattan that cost $6.85 was averaging $10.08 in Boston. That was an astounding 47% more expensive.

These taxi rates are set by politicians, explaining the disconnect. The retarded Boston pols want the cab drivers to earn a good living AND want to limit the number of taxis on the streets. How the bleep is this good for most Bostonians? Instead of having a few more cabs on the streets, Boston gets a ton more passenger cars.

So nobody will take mass transit and nobody will take cabs…..how does that mitigate the traffic and parking problems?

Boston should float a ton more taxi medallions and drastically lower the fare rates. There is no justifiable reason why cab drivers in Boston need higher incomes than NYC drivers. The cost of living in NYC is still much higher.

Devil’s Advocate: Wait a minute, C-Nut…..Boston cab drivers don’t get the same volume of business as do their brethren in NYC so they need a higher rate, no?

CaptiousNut: They would get more volume if they lowered the damn rates to a reasonable level!!!!!!!! Now shut up DA, you are always wrong.

NewsFlash...Boston just raised cab rates last month, ostensibly to offset rising gasoline costs. The deplorable Boston Globe has the story.

The city of Boston has approved a 50 cents per ride gasoline surcharge on cab fares, which are already among the highest in the nation

City officials did not say how far gas prices would have to drop before the surcharge was rescinded.

The fare relief comes at a time when the city is also mandating that cabs must have transponders in their vehicles so they can use Fast Lanes on the Massachusetts Turnpike and tunnels.

The move is unpopular with many taxi drivers, who do not want to face a huge Fast Lane bill every month.

"I've had a transponder, and the average bill was $800 to $900 a month," Meister said.

That’s right, the already sky high taxi rates for everyone in Boston have been raised and the Boston Globe calls it “fare relief”.

And can you believe that the cab drivers actually don’t want to have Fast Lane (even though the tolls are a direct surcharge to the riders)?

But then again, why should they be any different than the rest of the dopes up here that prefer to wait in the cash lanes?

The idiocy up here seemingly never ends, pick any topic, talk to almost any person, open any newspaper and your jaw will drop at the depth of ignorance in Boston.

Let me give another example. I just grabbed a copy of The Bulletin, a West Roxbury local newpaper. Consider the headline Harvard expansion raises expectations, real estate values

Harvard University’s decision to expand into Allston has some residents concerned about the growing number of students inhabiting the area and the threat of increased traffic.

Now, as the proposed project draws closer, another fear has emerged - the likely rise in cost of homes in the area.

A home at 62-64 Kirkwood Rd. in Brighton has been put on the market with an asking price of approximately $1.6 million, an out-of-the-norm price that has some local activists uneasy about what could be a market shift set in motion by Harvard’s plans.

Local activist Bill Haas said he is "tremendously amazed" at how high the price has been set for the home on Kirkwood Road.

"To put a home up for sale at $1.6 million is just crazy," Haas said. "This could drive up other prices in the area and make Brighton unaffordable. I hope this is an anomaly because it is so way out there, but on the other hand, everything else in the area can go up with it."

Haas said he thinks the cost of the home is proof that Boston College students are "driving the rental income through the roof."

"If there is a condominium in a complex that decides to sell their unit for a much higher cost than everyone else - then the costs all eventually go up because everyone thinks that they can get much more for their property. It’s just amazing."

“Local activist”? Why don’t they aptly call him some local Moron?

He thinks that simply listing a house at a high price will “drive up other prices in the area”?

I love how that article bemoans the "cost" instead of the value of homes. Almost as if real estate appreciation is categorically a bad thing. I am sure all of the homeowners in that area are PISSED at the prospect of their houses appreciating.

With Perma-Commi Naysayers, both the appreciation and the depreciation of real estate are ripe talking points.

Yeah it is the listing that drives home prices up, not fundamentals or demand. I hate to even spend one sentence debunking these dopes but include such only for purposes of econo-illiteracy illustration. It is not like these Morons are harmlessly wallowing in their ignorance, they pervade media stories, politics, and public policy.

Okay, I went off in a slight tangential rant, but this is where any discussion of Boston takes me. Back to the cycle of economic illiteracy. To reiterate, we have fossilized demographics with fixed income and the resultant blah service sector. We have a socialized political climate that away scares and taxes away businesses. We have poor transportation infrastructure.



On the other end of the demography side is the considerable college and university populations. Whatever the issue, Boston Globe writers will find some university professor to back their pre-conceived claim. The whole city’s obsession with these schools numbs the mind.

These academics are absolute Morons. Everytime an esteemed university economist open their mouths, they say something profoundly ignorant like,

"consumers are irrational when they leave tips at restaurants that they will probably never return to..." or

"tax cuts are trying to take credit for 'normal' growth..."

Red Sox outfielder Mike Greenwell used to slide into first base and sportswriter Bob Ryan just had to go find some MIT Physics professor assert its folly (i.e. that a baserunner would not be optimizing their speed by sliding.)

It is another variation of Selective Metric Fishing. The columnists start out with conclusions and then go looking for dignified evidence. Most people think a Harvard professor is an unimpeachable source, which I think is laughable in and of itself.

No disrespect to teachers, on the contrary I have the highest respect for the profession. I even aspire to teach some high school myself one day. BUT, teachers represent one of the most economically illiterate demographics out there. This goes from elementary school educators all the way to Harvard professors. Working in a socialized industry completely insulates them from the real world and negative feedback.

Recently I asked my mother, a high school teacher, whether she thought we were in a recession or not. She paused, accurately sensing entrapment and replied,

"I don't know......that is your thing (to know about)..."

Now that was a much more satisfying answer than the "yes...we are in a recession" response of an astounding 43% of the public, but it still leaves much to be desired.

How can someone who is a homeowner, taxpayer, grandparent, consumer, and voter not bother themselves with knowing an inkling about the economy in which they are inexorably immersered?

One more note about teachers. John Stossel of ABC was on Bill O'Reilly last night promoting his upcoming show on how bad government schools are and he dropped this nugget:

"In the last two years, out of over 80,000 teachers in the New York City School system, only 2 have been fired for incompetence."

This is what I mean when I talk about insulation from NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.

I would venture to guess that substantially more than 2 highly competent teachers quit teaching in NYC over that same period because of work conditions, bureaucratic BS, the socialistic pay scale, etc.

Such ignorance is par for the course up here in Massachusetts mostly because nobody works in the private sector. Growing up in Central Massachusetts, I barely knew a handful of people who had jobs in the private sector - everyone either worked for the government, in education, or healthcare.

That is right, HEALTHCARE IS NOT PART OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR.

Because of the hostile business climate there simply are no private sector jobs which forces new workers into the un-competitive sectors. Entreprenurial types move out of state and it is not hard to see how this cycle is self-sustaining. What's left is a economically illiterate public that elects representative idiot politicians.

Are you getting the impression that I hate this state?

Sticking me, a self-appointed econo-illiteracy cop in Taxachusetts is like sentencing Emeril to a lifetime of McDonalds or banishing an avid golfer to Antarctica.

Massachusetts is nothing but a bunch very old people with no life experience, pandemic economic illiteracy, and the formidable inertia of dumb ideas. Ideas so stupid that they scare good hardworking people out of state, leaving a monolith of Morons in their wake.

I'll end this post with a sign of economic vibrancy on Harvard's campus.



Yeah that will look great on your resume.

New York Times' Bigotry Towards Suburbia

Excerpted from today's paper - with neither permission nor expressed written consent of the NY Times. Red denotes my emphasis.

GOODBYE SUBURBS

By TERI KARUSH ROGERS
Published: January 8, 2006

...those plotting a hasty exit to the suburbs (the space! the schools! the space!) may want to consider the experience of others who went before them, only to double back within a year.

"I'm never leaving the city again; I'm terrified of leaving the city," said Anna Hillen, 42, summing up the prevailing sentiment among the repatriates interviewed for this article.

Ms. Hillen, her husband, Gerry McConnell, 42, and their son, Duncan, who was 1 at the time, vacated their TriBeCa loft in December 2001, shortly after 9/11. They bought a 6,000-square-foot newly built McMansion on three acres in the upscale, semirural Westchester enclave of Pound Ridge, N.Y., not far from the country homes they had rented before.

"It was just a giant, echoing space," Ms. Hillen said, adding, "It was great to have all that room, but we never used it," except to put up extended family on holidays.

Once settled, Ms. Hillen, a stay-at-home mother, embarked on a fruitless hunt for companionship. "Out there, you have to work at being with people," she said. "In a year, I got one play date for my kid. We joined the Newcomers Club, and the day we put our house on the market, they finally called. You'd go to the library for a reading and there would be no one there." She added, "You're a lonely, desperate housewife with nothing to do."

Even the playgrounds were desolate. "And on the rare occasions there was somebody there and you struck up a conversation," she said, "they would literally move away. And they didn't encourage the kids to play together. We were so shocked."

After nine months, she persuaded her husband - who was enjoying his truncated commute to his financial services job in Greenwich, Conn. - to sell the house. "Summer had come and gone and I was looking at another winter of being completely alone," she said, citing frequent power failures as another concern, along with the so-so restaurants and lack of food delivery. "He was very supportive, the poor man."

By December 2002, the house was sold at a loss and the furniture stowed away, and the family was tucked back into their old 1,800-square-foot, two-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment in TriBeCa, which they had never got around to selling.

It's worth noting that the suburbs are populated by plenty of satisfied former city dwellers harboring few, if any, regrets. Fully expecting to join the ranks of the contented, most of the couples interviewed here said their motivation for moving out was linked to a vague understanding that it was a prerequisite for raising children - a normal transition from one phase of life to the next, and one in which they would find plenty of company.

"Everybody says when you get the baby, you leave the city," said Ronn Torossian, 31, the president and chief executive of 5W Public Relations in Midtown Manhattan. In July, he and his wife, Zhana - who have a 1-year-old daughter - sold their large one-bedroom on West 68th Street and Broadway and moved into a 3,500-square-foot split-level house in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., near friends. With the help of Ilan Bracha, a broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman, who had sold their apartment on West 68th, they moved back in December to a three-bedroom rental a block south from where they started.

It's like death out there," said Mr. Torossian, a fast-talking Bronx native who resisted the comparatively tempered pace, like food delivery that stops at 9 p.m…..

“…..I go home and there's, like, people doing their lawn every five minutes. They seem like normal people but they spend, like, hours working on their lawn."

"You go to these little towns and they are very charming and sweet and have all these cute little shops," said Brian Lover, who put his West Orange, N.J., house back on the market just three months after moving there. "But I think when you live in these areas full time, those neighborhood shops aren't so cute. And those neighborhood restaurants that look so great, you know how bad they really are."

Mr. Lover, 42, a vice president at the Corcoran Group, and his wife, Kristina Rinaldi, 41, an interior decorator, decided to give up their one-bedroom rental on West 55th Street when they had a daughter, Tallulah. They wanted to live in Montclair, N.J., a popular magnet for exurbanites. Outmatched in bidding wars, they expanded their search to neighboring West Orange. There they became besotted by "an old English Tudor with a slate roof, character, an acre and a half of land," said Mr. Lover, who worked as a fashion advertising director for Esquire magazine at the time.

In July 2001 they bought the house for $480,000; it came with a tinge of unreality. "Every day when I came home, I would say to myself, 'I really am a king and this is a castle, and who do I think I am?' "

With their baby in tow, the couple stalked the parks and Gymboree classes in nearby Montclair, figuring "that's where we'll find the city people and the cool parents," Mr. Lover said. "But there wasn't anyone we could find a core to. It was all air." As for the city people they'd hoped to meet? "They were city people, not anymore," he said. "The suburbs have some way of sucking the city out of you."

"It's definitely someone's dream; it's just not our dream," said Andrew McCaul, a 37-year-old photographer who moved from Ridgewood back to Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, in June - exactly one year after buying a $580,000 three-bedroom Dutch colonial, in walking distance of town, with his wife, Sarma Ozols, 36, and their son Aidan, now 2.

Their suburban sojourn started off promisingly in June 2004. "It was like a honeymoon period where it felt like we had a country house in the summer," Mr. McCaul said. But after three months, he said, "real life started setting in."

There was the commute, for one thing. "You kind of trick yourself into thinking the commute is going to be easier than it is," said Mr. McCaul, who only occasionally caught the express train for a 40-minute door-to-door commute. "I spent many depressing nights at the Hoboken station," he added, waiting more than half an hour for a connection.

"If you go out for a drink with friends, you're always watching the clock," he said. Adding insult to tedium, Mr. McCaul suffered through the suburban version of the Freshman 15, putting 10 to 15 pounds on his normally thin frame, which he attributed to his mostly nonpedestrian lifestyle.

Though the couple liked their neighbors, Ms. Ozols, a photographer at home part time with her young son, recalled feeling cut off. "I didn't have a community of moms, and I guess that would have come in time if my child were older and going to school," she said. "It's not as easy as being in Brooklyn where you just start talking at the playground and there's always someone to talk to."

She also found that the unaccustomed space - the house was roomy compared with the 850-square-foot rental they had left behind - "weighed on me," she said. And she developed an unfamiliar, unwelcome compulsion toward domesticity. "On Thanksgiving, I kind of felt I had to be Martha Stewart, with all the right plates and everything," she said.

They listed the house last Mother's Day and sold it for $60,000 more than they had paid. The couple, who now also have a 4-month-old child, Julian, put the proceeds toward a 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom, two-bath condo loft in Carroll Gardens West. "The space is a lot smaller, but it's all we need," Ms. Ozols said.

Melanie Williams, 40, also determined that smaller can be better. In February 2004, she exchanged a $950-a-month, rent-stabilized two-bedroom apartment in a "decrepit" Hell's Kitchen building for a spacious $1,350-a-month four-room apartment in Riverdale, a suburban-feeling section of the Bronx, in part because of the good public schools available to her daughter, Dorothy, now 5.

"It was just like this land of no culture," said Ms. Williams, who owns Plain Jane, a children's home furnishings shop on the Upper West Side. "You never met anybody. There's one little street with a meat market on it. It was very bizarre but beautiful."

Petty crime troubled them. The family car was broken into several times while parked on the street - an unfortunate necessity, she said, because all the garages were full. And over the next nine months, she said, both she and her actor/carpenter husband, Andrew Finney, 44, came to realize that although they had moved, "our life was still in New York."

In November 2004, they rented a 900-square-foot loft in the financial district, in the well-regarded Public School 234 school district, which cost a third more than the Riverdale apartment. "It didn't matter," she said. "We had to get out of there."

Learning the hard way, twice, Mary A. Sweeney, an Upper East Side registered nurse, moved back and forth - then back and forth again - to Poughkeepsie. (The first chapter, beginning in 2000, lasted almost two years; she blamed the second, three-month-long episode, occurring in 2003 when Ms. Sweeney was newly pregnant with her third child, on "lack of oxygen going to the brain.")

Ms. Sweeney, 36, recalled the many disconnects she discovered between fantasy and reality.

"We had this beautifully landscaped acre-and-a-half of land for the kids to play in, but we were terrified of Lyme disease," Ms. Sweeney said. "We lived in a cul-de-sac and it was lovely but if we biked off the cul-de-sac, we were on these beautiful country roads that were curved so that bike riding on them wasn't so safe. We realized we were far safer going to Central Park, really playing with the kids and having our picnic, especially in the summertime."

She mostly stayed at home while her husband, Azeddine Yachkouri, 43, commuted to his job as a banquet manager at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Manhattan. "It was lovely for him to drive home to me and the kids and the house and then drive back to the city the next day and work and socialize," she recalled. "But for me, when this retreat is my everyday life, it became monotonous and mundane."

Those who have left and returned sometimes share their wisdom with friends who are considering the same move. "When people tell us that they're thinking about it, I'm like, don't do it," Ms. Ozols said. "But everybody has to get it out of their system. If we didn't do it, it would still be in the back of our heads. Maybe I would tell them to rent instead."

Why doesn't the Times just hoist up a flag for all to see proclaiming,

WE ARE ELITIST A**HOLES ??????

They can't just say they like the city, they have to piss on suburbia.

Where is the enlightened tolerance? What about multiculturalism?

Oh yeah, I forgot. There is no "culture" in the burbs? How is that for untrammelled arrogance?

Make no mistake, this is the Times Editorial Board speaking here. These "random" people are simply the vehicular mouthpiece of Arthur Sulzberger and his degenerate minions.

Where I grew up, children came first. Whether it was soccer games or homework, my family revolved around what was best for the kids - and this applied to almost everyone I knew. But this article is full of self-centered parents hellbent on THEIR SOCIAL LIFE, THEIR FOOD, THEIR CULTURE, etc. But what about the kids?

No crap the food is great in Manhattan, but that is a FALSE COMPARISON.

Shouldn't they choose to live in the best environment for their children?

The government schools in Westchester County may be the best in the nation. Maybe these selfish whiners should elevate the education of their children over the alleged Third World takeout menus in Scarsdale and Pound Ridge?

The only complaint that superficially reflected the best interests of children was from the dolt who asserted that suburbanites don't "encourage the kids to play together".

This is anti-suburban propaganda, pure and simple. Out of 2668 words, and only these mere 21,

"It's worth noting that the suburbs are populated by plenty of satisfied former city dwellers harboring few, if any, regrets.",

...are not inimical towards the burbs.

This article reminds me of a Manhattan lifer that I know. When he moved his family out to Westchester, a light in his new house went out and he didn't know how to change a lightbulb. Seriously. He thought one needed a super to change a bulb.

So who really are the culturally deficient fools?

Those who think small talk with a doorman is socialization? Those who can't screw in lightbulbs and can't cook? Or the rest of America?



I already synopsized this article once (above) but this further condensation is all one needs to know about the Times' attitude toward suburbia.

terrified
giant, echoing space
fruitless hunt for companionship
lonely, desperate housewife
desolate
didn't encourage the kids to play together
completely alone
lack of food delivery
loss
It's like death
seem like normal people but
bad
tinge of unreality
all air
sucking the city
depressing
insult
tedium
suffered
nonpedestrian lifestyle
unfamiliar
unwelcome
compulsion towards domesticity
smaller can be better
land of no culture
bizarre
crime
lack of oxygen going to the brain
disconnects
monotonous
mundane
don't do it
get it out of their system

And if this is how they feel about tony Westchester and other uppidity Manhattan suburbs.....imagine what they think of flyover-country suburbia.

Moron Potpourri, Real Estate Deflation, and Whatnot

The headline says it all:

MAN DATES GAL ON INTERNET FOR SIX MONTHS—AND IT TURNS OUT SHE’S HIS MOTHER.

And how Moronic were these Frenchies to actually tell someone what happened?

My coworkers on the PHLX used to dirty talk with anonymous girls in chatrooms. Well they assumed they were girls. That may have been the one risky gamble that I stayed away from during the bull market.



Isn’t environmentalism just another evangelical religion?

Author Michael Crichton makes the persuasive case.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

Read the whole speech.



He argues that environmentalism should be reclaimed by scientists. In other words, get the politics out. I would submit that science has been hijacked by atheistic nerds. Or perhaps it has always been their bastion?

On side note, I hate the term "politics". All too often "politics" is a euphemism for TOTAL BLEEPIN' BULLSH*T.

I can’t find the poll now but I read where something like 88% of scientists voted against President Bush, far and away the most monolithic political demographic (outside of the 89% of black Americans who voted against him in 2004.)

Everybody's ken is defined and limited by their own personal experience. Teachers tend to think public education is the most important political football, Christians may think abortion is, doctors look to medical issues, scientists may elevate their field above others, and CaptiousNut thinks capitalism trumps them all.

The major distinction is that CaptiousNut is willing and able to argue his case.



Before last year’s election I weathered a 30 minute tirade from my 90 year-old grandfather on how the Iraqi War would achieve nothing because the Arabs are basically all the same – a 7th century people. Anyway, I ended his monologue and asked him, “But what about Social Security? What about economic issues?” He sighed and didn’t even try to downplay them.



(Yeah dope, "oil is bad for consumers". Consumers really hate the ability to drive cars.)

It is every American’s right to be a one-issue voter, but implicit in that is an arrogant and usually ignorant disparagement of other issues AND other people.

If someone feels that the so-called “women’s right to choose”, “global warming”, “gay marriage” or the War in Iraq is THE supremely important issue....that is completely fine with me. But all too often a little probing exposes these one-issue types as abysmally ignorant on almost every other issue.

My grandfather may be dead right about the efficacy of promoting democracy in Iraq, but how can he justifiably ignore the issue of Social Security reform? People like him should remember to weigh all issues. After all, he does have 12 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren who are inheriting the ticking entitlement bomb.



What’s really bad is the single issue people who don’t even fully comprehend their alleged specialty – like these global warming “scientists”. I have said it more than once already. These "scientists" don't comprehend the fact that the EARTH'S TEMPERATURE FLUCTUATES.

We get all of our heat from the sun which is 109 times as big and 414,375 times as massive as the Earth. So the dopes can wager on the Ford Explorers, but I will bet that any "climate change" is due to the sun.

So not only are Americans ENTITLED to cheap gasoline, rising home prices, worry-free investment returns, etc...., now apparently we are ENTITLED to a constant level of solar radiation!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, I have to Marginalize this one person I overheard at a Roche Bros. supermarket in Chestnut Hill. She was talking about her sister who,

“...exposes her kids to everything….Christmas, Hanukhah, Kwanza…..so they can choose whatever they want to believe...”

There is a name for people like this – JACKASS.

Multi-cultural propaganda is bad enough in schools, the media, and at the office but this woman’s poor kids have to endure it at home. There is something wrong when people think they can concoct an a la carte cultural heritage. Who knows...perhaps stupidity is their family tradition?

CaptiousNut has been predicting a real estate slide all year. Of course I wasn’t the only one forecasting this but the real estate naysayers only constitute a very small minority these days. Two very bearish housing reports this week.

1. The number of homes for sale is now the highest since 1986.

2. New home sales in November fell 11% from October, the largest drop in 11 years.

I have been meaning to blog a bit on housing data the last few weeks but haven't gotten around to it. A lot of times the publicized data is completely propagandized or misinterpreted.

For instance, much of the reported housing data is cited on a month-over-month basis. In other words they will compare November 2005 data to November 2004 data. This is a ridiculous way to report it because when you buy a house, you want to judge it against the prices in the preceding (and following) months. Nobody says,

“Yeah, that seemed like a good deal considering it was an October purchase....”

Also, many dopey pundits keep touting new home starts/permits as an unequivocal sign of housing strength. Sure it represents a degree of strength, but it also means there is tons of new housing supply coming onboard. So in that vein, strong housing starts data actually forebode weakness. Just be wary of the propaganda and economic illiteracy.

One last warning sign of real estate frothiness. Someone just bid $500 million for a 43 acre trailer park in Briny Breezes, Florida.



Pictured above are New Yorkers walking to work over the Brooklyn Bridge during the recent Transit Workers Union strike.

It really hasn't been a good year for unions with the TWU strike failing, Delta Airlines' bankruptcy, and General Motors' woes (see the 20 year low on the chart).



Except for Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki, the silence from New York politicians during the strike was deafening. I guess Chuck Schumer, et al can't really condemn a union that lines their pockets with money.

Deranged Dog People

Alright, I have held it in long enough. This stupid commercial I just saw for doggie stairs has put me over the edge.

What is wrong with YOU PEOPLE AND YOUR DOGS?

A good friend of mine just got booted out of his housing development because his dog mauled a neighbor. Okay, he didn't get evicted, the dog was. Instead of sending the dog to the mythical "farm upstate", he has decided to move to a new home.

My sister spends about $300 a week to kennel her dogs when she goes away. That exorbitant sum includes "extra play time" and "doggie phone calls". Yes, she calls the dogs on the phone.



Another friend sends her canine to "doggie day care" five days a week because it is better "socially" for the dog than staying home alone all day.

One in-law seemingly can't send us a family picture that doesn't include their dogs. It is great to see the development of my nieces but I'm not really interested in the growth of two extremely fat pugs. And they are definitely out of place on a Christmas card.

I have friends in Charlestown, MA that are routinely called "yuppies" by the residual townies there and wonder why. Could it be from seeing them walk that 13 pound hairless, emaciated poodle everyday?



Then there are the couples that get dogs INSTEAD of getting married or having kids.

The deranged that get gourmet dog pastries and take the mutts to aromatherapy and pet "healing" centers.

Have you seen these ridiculous ergonomically raised dog dishes?



Cat people can be nuts too. One friend spend $2,000 getting a half-digested piece of string removed from her feline. I think my brother just spend $4,000 saving his cat. My wife has emphatically stated that our cat has a strict $400 "deductible" and a DNR order as well.

Another friend spent $250 to "save a cat" from a website. The site marketed the cats as on "death-row" and about to be killed if no one paid the $250. What a great business plan! Get kittens costing practically zero. Put some pics of them on a website accompanied by a death countdown and take $250 per cat from assorted Morons.

I knew a guy in Center City Philadelphia who started a pet walking business about ten years ago. He sat at the bar all day drinking martinis and bragged about how much money he was making. He had one client who paid him $600 a month to walk his dogs twice a day. Of course the bragger outsourced the walking to struggling artists and the like. But this was definitely a great business to start there at the time.



My grandmother used to regularly bake meatloaf FOR HER DOG!!!

Anyway, feel free to one-up my anecdotes as I am sure they don't do justice to the complete inanity of Deranged Dog People.

UPDATE:

The day after I posted this I went to Spring Lounge on Mulberry Street in Manhattan. Some whack-job had her pug in the bar. It wasn't long before the dog was on the table sampling everyone's pints. The bar was instantly aglow with camera flashes. Alas, my camera got stuck in my pocket and I missed the shot.

Politically Correct 'Throwback' Jerseys

I was just at Modell's Sporting Goods in Newton, Massachusetts. I was trying to quickly buy a youth football jersey for my nephew and was SHOCKED to find a $35 Tom Brady shirt padlocked to the rack.

I waited almost ten minutes trying to get an employee to unlock it for me. Finally one came and I asked him about the locks:

"Well, Modell's doesn't want to have locks on shirts in some locales but not in others......"

This store was on the border of Needham and Newton - two extremely white (Jewish) and affluent towns outside of Boston - hardly hubs of retail theft.

Political correctness run amok.

Morons Supporting Farms

Pardon me while I play my small violin for Global Warming Killing the Polar Bears. I am sure it is exaggerated enviro-nonsense. I have news for these overly compassionate tree-humpers...

An animal species going extinct is NO BIG DEAL. It’s been happening for millions of years. Remember the dodo, the passenger pigeon, and dinosaurs? Did the world end with them?

Would PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) have domesticated the carnivorous Tyrannosaurus Rex? Would they have made it a tofu-eating vegan too?



Someone asked me to describe PETA the other day. Here is a great summary which clarifies why it is high on every Moron list.



I was recently advised to buy my Christmas tree at the Allandale farm this year to “support it”. I asked for some elaboration and got,

"...if they make money they won’t sell the farm and build homes there..."

I told her that I bought my tree at Home Depot to which she snapped back,

“Home Depot doesn’t need the money.”

I said I support Home Depot because they employ people, are owned by pension funds, donate millions to charity, AND pay lots of taxes that can be redistributed to those who don’t contribute to society.

She has no idea how much money the farm has or needs. Normally I am all for consumer activism but this young lady is hopelessly misguided.



It’s kind of funny because this is the second time in a few months up here in the land of enviro-Commi-groupthink that I have heard “save the farm” sentiment. They recently built beautiful homes and a great golf course on the Highfields Farm in Grafton, Massachusetts. (Okay, that pic is from Naples, not Grafton)

Screw the farm. I have gotten much more utility from the golf course than I ever did from the farm. Furthermore, the poor little farm family was actually loaded to begin with. No $30 Christmas trees or cartons of milk were going to sway the Magills from developing their multi-million dollar piece of property.

Devil’s Advocate: Wait up CaptiousNut...aren’t you doing your little boycott of Big Media, e.g. Businessweek and whatnot?

Yes I am, but I don’t arrogantly think that my personal boycott is going to drive anyone out of business nor do I think any of my retail patronage will sustain any wobbly ventures. I would still buy Businessweek, in spite of its agitprop, if it was entertaining or helped me make money with my trading. Consider that I still watch CNBC for that latter reason. If the Christmas trees are cheaper at the farm…..by all means buy one there. But lose the tree-humping moral superiority.

You see how psychotic these Bostonians are? You can’t just simply buy a Christmas tree. It is a great opportunity to save the environment, bash dreaded Big Business, exaggerate your self-importance, and display your economic illiteracy.

During my Home Depot lecture I received the proverbial "kick-under-the-table" from my wife, i.e. an unequivocal shut-up request. Haha....not my style. Plus I need the blogging material.

I just don't take kindly to someone coming into my house and asserting THEIR unfounded moral superiority.

Remember, ignorance is not bliss.....it is BLIGHT. I should "support the farm"? Bullcrap. She should support the country by not fighting our engines of progress: capitalism and the laws of economics.

Economic illiteracy is so prevalent because the afflicted simply don't know how paramount economic issues are (and have been) to our prosperity.

I would bet my bottom dollar that the house she lives in was built on an old farm.

I say tear down the Allendale farm and build so-called "affordable" housing for Hurricane Katrina victims. (sarcastic jest)

Morons at Tookie's Vigil

You have to click on this link to read about and see the panoply of Morons that showed up.

Big Media has never fairly reported on demonstrations like these because

1) They agree with the causes of these Morons.

2) Obviously an accurate reporting WOULD NOT BEHOOVE their image.

In other words, this is just another example of the Big Media's systematic whitewashing of reality.

Devil's Advocate: Wait up CaptiousNut, aren't these just fringe kooks that don't accurately represent their purported causes?

Big Media is a monolithic propaganda organization. Sure these demonstraters are whack-jobs and perhaps real outliers.

But Big Media has a very fickle policy towards extreme examples.

Consider the outlier Enron. It was one of 20,000 public companies to be an accounting fraud YET Big Media wields it as a most favored talking point to bash corporate Amererica, Wall Street, and capitalism. Congress even went as far as passing that superfluous and onerous Sarbanes-Oxley law.

If Big Media directed the same spotlight on Tookie's mourners...

....Congress would call for a full investigation of the schools these nutjobs went to, where their parents are, and would probably be passing laws to institutionalize them.

In an ideal world, journalistic ethics would compel the media to report everything accurately - allowing the public to make up their own minds on issues.

Musings on Morons and the Prior Generation

When I am on the highway, I generally set my cruise control 7 miles over the speed limit. I absolutely can’t stand it when I try to pass people at my constant speed and they decide to speed up. Drivers don’t usually do this to piss people off (except cabbies in New York), mostly it is because they subconsciously want someone else to SUGGEST a speed for them.

Oh, you want to pass me...... then I must be driving too slowly.

The same applies when someone comes flying up to your tailgate, you change lanes, and they follow you. It’s absolutely infuriating.



I am not a pizza crust eater. And if I had a nickel for every time someone stared aghast at my pile of crusts and said,

“You don’t eat the crusts?!?!?!?!?”

I always preempt the predictable "best part" declaration by screaming back,

“WHY..........IS IT THE 'BEST PART' ?!?!?!!?!?!?”

I seriously do this and more than a few people have run away thinking that I am a psycho.

I don’t like seafood either. Sure I will eat fried calamari but bird sh*t would probably be edible if deep-fried. Anyway, when offered fish and whatnot I always decline and tell people that I am allergic to it.

When I was younger and less Captious I used to say that I simply didn’t like seafood. But Morons everywhere would persistently follow up:

“Why don’t you like seafood???????”

Could there be a stupider question than that? What do they think that somehow they can persuade me to like it? Or maybe that I actually like seafood and deny myself the pleasure? MORONS!!!

Now since I started feigning the seafood allergy, it has really started to annoy my wife BUT this dollop of subterfuge consistently entertains me.

At a supermarket we walked by the deli/seafood counter and an employee was offering free samples of sushi. She eagerly approached me with the offer, I sneered at her and told her that I was allergic. Immediately she apologized and literally backpedaled. I put my angry face on and yelled:

“…MY THROAT WOULD SWELL UP AND I COULD DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The girl felt awful and it was absolutely hilarious.

Every time I trot out my allergy lie people get very apologetic and THAT is much more palatable than the insufferable “why don’t you like it?” question.



On the subject of allergies...

My mother-in-law happens to be very allergic to my cat and pretty much can’t spend any time at my house. Now I know 95% of my blog readers are thinking:

“CaptiousNut....you are one lucky bastard”,

...but that is not completely the case. I happen to love my mother-in-law (i.e. she reads my blog).

The downside to her cat allergy is that she can’t come up and babysit and that we have to go visit her more often. It pretty much puts a lot more of a travel burden on us. Except for our one year sojourn to Charlotte, it feels like we live on Intersate-95.

Forget the issue of in-laws (for the record I consider my own parents in-laws as well – they are ALL in-laws), the early 30s are probably the age when it gets most difficult to “live” with other people. By this time most people are married, have honed their own idiosyncrasies, and really start to have trouble dealing with the, let’s just say, Prior Generation.

I don’t think my wife and I can have an extended conversation with our peers, be they friends or family, without some mention of a Prior Generational inanity. A good friend probably summed it up best when she once exclaimed:

“WHAT----IS----WRONG----WITH----THOSE----PEOPLE? ? ? ?”

Sure, when you are sixteen and take driver’s ed you discover that your parents – don’t know how to drive. But it is not for another 15 years that you finally realize the full extent of their craziness. And this goes for your aunts, uncles, family friends, and pretty much the entire Prior Generation demographic.

Almost none of my older relatives read my blog anymore (perhaps because of my clutter post) but I am going to tread lightly here nonetheless.

Here is a non-exhaustive litany of "visiting" tribulations...

1) Cheap toilet paper. My butt is used to Charmin and that Scott sandpaper really chafes me. The Prior Generation all claim to “prefer” Scott...whatever cheapskates. It is like my father and uncle who won’t rent carts on a golf course because they “like to walk”. Bullsh*t. If carts were free they would ride. Why don’t people just admit they are cheap? Why the spin?

2) Ten-year old 19-inch televisions with only basic cable. Upgrade the cable already. Maybe get HBO with some of that money you saved on toilet paper. Watching TV at these people’s homes feels like being in a Third World country compared to the DVRs and premium channels I have at home. Walmart sells 23-inch televisions for $88 – go buy a new one!!!

3) 5 year-old or $600 computers with dial-up internet connections, often times buried in a basement or a far off room. No elaboration needed here.

4) Heat or air conditioning cheapness. This summer we experienced more insufferable humidity in the northeast than we did in Charlotte. Invariably people up here only run their air conditioning at night, if they have any at all. And usually they have old inefficient window units. GO TO WALMART, SEE HOW CHEAP AND BETTER THE NEW UNITS ARE, AND BUY ONE!!!!

Etc, etc,....

See the theme? Most of my complaints that I am courageous enough to list involve cheapness and old technology.

But CaptiousNut is no Moron and could probably write a dissertation on Prior Generation management techniques.

Before any extended visit, I program both of my DVRs to tape just about everything I don’t want to watch on tiny rabbit-eared televisions.

I lugged my father’s two air conditioners out of his basement and installed them in AUGUST!!!!!!! Who the heck INSTALLS air conditioners that late in the summer? Why weren’t they already in the windows?

Answer: Because my parents went away for 10 days in July and figured they wouldn’t need them for the other 80 days of brutal humidity.

Same thing with the thermostat. Instead of complaining about how cold my parents house is, now I just get up in the middle of the night and raise the heat. (My wife does too but I suspect my mother gets up and lowers it soon thereafter.)

I have successfully badgered both sets of in-laws into upgrading their computers and getting broadband. Yeah, they say they were going to do it anyway, but on this blog I’ll be the one to mete out credit.


As for the toilet paper……I bring a roll of Charmin with me everywhere.

In fact I recently whipped it out at a bar in Manhattan and it was quite the stunning conversation prop.

(Hey sickos, the “Charmin roll” is the antecedent of “it”.)

Anyway, when I am teaching Pre-Cana classes, I talk about my mother-in-law's cat allergy and advise the young couples to:

1) Find out what your in-laws are allergic to and.....

2) Buy four of them.

Never let truth or propriety smother a good joke.

Market Orders = Brokerages Ripping Off Their Own Customers

Thankfully I bought some gold stocks and calls last week. They rallied and these gains offset my semi-disastrous short of Apple.

Now I have been a professional trader for 10 years and I rarely ever use market orders, but on Friday I unloaded some Newmont Mining stock via a market order.

(To the layman, this means that I wanted to sell it that instant, at whatever price I could get.)

At the time, the stock was showing multiple bids of 50.44. By multiple I mean that was the bid on the New York Stock Exchange AND on at least two other electronic exchanges for a total of several thousand shares.

Bank of America filled my order and gave me a 50.42 report.

In other words, they filled me .02 below the sizable best bid.

I looked back through the tape (list of trades) and saw that they had traded my shares on the seldom-used Boston Stock Exchange.

Basically, Bank of America has some relationship/agreement or whatever with someone on the Boston Exchange whereby they conspire to rip off the customer.

Now this was, let's just say the opposite of a surprise to me. Every time you give a broker a market order, they will penalize you this way. Thus I hardly ever use such orders.

Probably the Boston guy pays Bank of America say a half of a penny or one penny per share for the right to fill market orders. So when I send my order to BoA, they will earn a commission from me AND a kickback from the Boston guy.

They will buy my stock at 50.42 and immediately sell it at 50.44 and keep the 1 or 1.5 penny profit.

That may not seem like a lot, but if they can make an extra .01 each on 100,000 shares a day, that adds up to ....

$1000 per day or....

$250,000 per year.



That is a nice little skim job all at the expense of brokerage customers.

Brokering and trading may be the biggest conflict of interest on Wall Street but Eliot Spitzer is only interested in the more politically marketable "conflicts".



My little example is a microcosm of what happens to almost every single market order on Wall Street.

Nobody, outside of professionals, is really aware of this because they would need a professional trading platform to see this rapid-fire skimming of .02 here and .02 there.

I actually oversimplified a bit what happened to my order. There probably isn't a relationship with "some guy in Boston". More likely, BoA sells my order to some trading desk. When they got my order they no doubt used a computer to find an exchange that had no bids in Newmont as high as 50.44, they found Boston and decided to route the trade through there - actually buying the stock directly from me and simultaneously selling it .02 higher on another exchange.

In other words, they go looking for a quiet place to rip off the customer. All of this happens in a split second.

And these skimmers don't limit themselves to market orders either. Recently I put in a 4.90 bid for an obscure little Nasdaq stock and the only bid that appeared was one for 4.89. The stock traded there and they gave me a 4.90 report. Essentially they bought the stock cheaper than I was willing to pay but decided to keep the savings.

For one penny per share they put my order at risk of being filled. If I had missed that stock I would have had to take them to arbitration. (That stock hit $20 recently - unfortunately I dumped it around $9.)

So now many brokerages tout half a penny per share commissions or so (around $5 for 1000 shares), but bear in mind that it is costing you MORE than that.

Sure, the ripoffs are smaller these days with decimalization and a proliferation of ECNs (electronic exchanges) BUT.... the volume has skyrocketed AND it still isn't right for brokerages to "gouge" their own customers.

IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL TO BROKER AND TRADE IN THE SAME ACCOUNT.

AND IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL TO "OUTSOURCE" THIS CONFLICT OF INTEREST TO ANOTHER TRADING DESK.

Look at this erroneous and naive explanation of low commissions for "market orders".

A market order guarantees execution, and it often has low commissions due to the minimal work brokers need to do....

The "low commissions" have nothing to do with "minimal work" and everything to do with the lucrative rip-off that market orders facilitate.

I even saw a brokerage firm that advertised "free commissions on market orders of 5000 shares or more".

I think the firm was called Bend-Over Brokerage.

Morons Think This Is a Recession

A friend of mine asked me this weekend if we were in a recession. I almost fell out of my chair, but sadly his inquiry is quite indicative.

Big Media has successfully propagandized economic reality. All three asset classes, stocks, bonds, and real estate are booming. Yet the MSM organs incessantly contort the current prosperity into at best a mirage with dire impending consequences and at worst....a fictional "recession".

This onslaught of negative thinking is clearly having an impact. During the 2004 presidential campaign, when attacks on the economy were in full force, 36% of Americans thought we were in recession. One year later, even though unemployment has fallen from 5.5% to 5%, and real GDP has expanded by 3.7%, the number who think a recession is underway has climbed to 43%.(link)

UN-BLEEPING-BELIEVABLE.

WHAT ASTOUNDING ECONOMIC ILLITERACY.

A 5% Unemployment rate is below the average for the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Devil’s Advocate: But wait a minute CaptiousNut, are you discounting this poll? That many people can’t be wrong. Maybe your metrics are wrong?



Well first of all, the fact that since 2004, MORE people think the economy is in recession than before, even though all macroeconomic statistics are better, seems to DISCREDIT the 43%. Second of all.....

A "recession" is a well defined term:

Two or more successive quarters of negative Gross Domestic Product growth.

In our most recent quarter of July-September 2005, U.S GDP grew at a blistering 4.3%!!!!!

We haven’t had a single negative growth quarter in FOUR YEARS - nevermind two in a row (see pic below).

Shouldn’t a poll asking about a recession first verify that the respondents actually know what a “recession” is?

All that poll proves is that a substantial portion of the populace are MORONS.



That chart is illustrative of the perma-negative reporting. I grabbed it from perma-dour CNN so that accounts for the “SLOWER GROWTH” spin.

Of course that graph was published April 28th, 2005. At the time CNN used first quarter GDP numbers to forecast “the end”, including “stagflation” i.e. slower growth and higher prices. As usual, they were completely WRONG.

Instapundit summarizes the MSM's perma-negativity:

I suspect this reflects the bad economic conditions at newspapers, rather than in the nation as a whole. Workers at GM, Ford, and other uncompetitive companies probably have an unrealistically negative view of the economy, too.

Surely this is partly true, but remember as I have detailed many times, Big Media is essentially a socialist institution that would be harping on illusury negatives even if their businesses were doing better.

Bloggers and alternative media in general have effectively counteracted the more outrageous transgressions of Big Media, yet with the smaller issues the socialists remain supremely influential.

43% think we are in a recession....

That is one MASSIVE INTELLIGENCE FAILURE.

The Inseparable Trio - Morons, Oil, and Massachusetts.

Massachusetts strikes a heating oil deal with Venezuelan Communist and Terrorist Dictator Hugo Chavez.

"Why would it matter where it comes from?" said Bridget Durkin, 70, who lives alone in Quincy and relies on fuel assistance. "Venezuela is doing a good thing for people."

WAIT!!!!!!!!!

I thought they cared where oil comes from? Remember, evil oil companies are not to even disturb the caribou in Alaska, crustacea in the Caribbean, and they are definitely not to subsidize terrorism.



People are starving in Venezuela with a poverty rate conservatively estimated at 35% (USA TODAY said it was 50% in that link above). Why help the rich United States? Maybe they should send pics of warm and cozy southeastern Massachusetts residents to the millions of cardboard box denizens in Hugo’s Venezuelan utopia.

Do the Massachusetts Morons want cheap oil or not? The parent of the Boston Globe editorializes in favor of $3 per gallon gasoline. They are all over the map on this one. Companies shouldn't drill for oil if it upsets birds and whatnot, BUT discounted heating oil can be taken from terrorism-sponsoring dictators.

And from the other side of there mouths comes warnings of “risky foreign indebtedness” and how oil subsidizes terrorism.

Is it illegal for states to conduct foreign policy? By all means yes. But the larger picture is the vast irony and hypocrisy the whole escapade illuminates.

We already buy oil from Venezuela and other dictatorships BUT they are brokered by private individuals and companies – not politicians. It is a distinction with a huge difference. Imagine rogue politicians trying to negotiate separate peaces during wartime.

What is the proper response? The whole thing was a ruse to get President Bush to preclude or at least condemn it. It's nothing more than an unsophisticated attempt to make him look unsympathetic and in the pocket of big evil US Oil. Bush did the smart thing and brushed it aside. There is now $24 million less in Hugo's war chest and I guess that is one way to spin it positively.

So where did this illegal heating oil deal come from?

As always, follow the money. It was brokered by a sham non-profit run by Joe Kennedy. I know....it's shocking to see a Kennedy involved in Massachusetts BS.

I say it is a sham because Joe Kennedy makes dough (400k in 2003) from these transactions. He will undoubtedly mark up the heating oil, masked as delivery fees no doubt, and skim a good chunk of change for himself. It's funny how much "non-profits" can line one's pockets.


Click here to learn who Hugo Chavez really is.

So we have to fret over China’s human rights violations and stop out-sourcing but the blueboods in Massacusetts don’t care one iota about Hugo’s crimes against his own citizenry?

IT IS ALL ABOUT PUSHING A STEALTH SOCIALIST AGENDA.



Again, the whole thing is a political stunt. THE POOR ALREADY get heat assistance, as explained on every single heating bill. Moronic Attorney General Reilly even tells the freezing destitute residents of Massachusetts that you don’t have to pay your bills at all. All the poor has to do is stop eating the Alpo for a second and log onto his website to find out how.

From a prior post:

Utilities and Phone Service
Q: I’m 65, live by myself, and can’t keep up with my electricity bill. I have electric heat and I’m worried that they will shut off my service. What can I do?

A: In Massachusetts the utility company cannot terminate your service if everyone in the household is over 65. There is also a winter moratorium in place every year from November 15 to March 15. During those months, gas and electric companies cannot shut off your service if you are unable to pay. You may also be eligible for home heating assistance, to help pay your bills.