Sheep to Slaughter

I punched up dunderhead Greg Mankiw's textbook on Amazon and was semi-shocked to see it cost near $130.

It brought back memories of my own college textbook purchasing at UPenn.

Of course all students used to buy their books from the University book store but I think it was my sophomore year, 1993, that Campus Text arrived to attack the monopoly.

Some upperclass student looked at the enormous mark-up on textbooks and saw a tremendous economic opportunity. He perused the course syllabi, ordered the books, and sold them out of a rental truck on 38th street, right next to the book store. An $80 dollar book in the University store could be found for $60 in his truck.

The guy's name was Doug Levy. Again, he was only a student, yet an obviously precocious businessman. Everybody bought books from him. He hired students, advertised, accepted credit card payments, etc. He had to easily make tens of thousands of dollars by just working a week before each semester. I didn't know the guy personally but saw him late one night at a frat party. I asked him how much money he made. Doug misread my sentiments and responded, "The question is, how much did you save?"

Well, I saved a lot less than he made, but that was beside the point. I was in full and complete awe of his success.

He expanded to other schools and made a fortune. Campus Text is still running, Doug sold the business six or seven years ago. Some googling revealed that Doug went on to bigger and better things. He founded internet consulting firm imc² in 1995. Do I even have to say that was some tremendous timing on his part?

What's a more powerful educational lesson, watching a classmate artfully get rich right before my very eyes or learning about Laffer curves and Nash equilibria?

Let's back up for a second.

How in world would a twenty-year old kid think to take on an Ivy League university and sell books out of truck?

He clearly must of had a lot of early exposure to the business world.

To shed more light, I'll get auto-biographical.

Though every conventional educational metric in my life told me I was a genius, there was no way I could have ever come up with an idea like Doug's, not at age 20 anyway.

I grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts which was, unbeknownst to me at the time, an economic wasteland. The only economy there is the oxymoronic Government Economy. Let me just give you a run down of my family members' professions:

nurse
teacher
social worker
nurse
nurse
doctor
firefighter
teacher
homemaker
nurse



The only people in my immediate family that worked in the private sector were two retired grandparents.

My exposure to the business world and entrepreneurialism was absolutely zero. My experience was not very atypical for Massachusetts either; there simply is no private sector vitality. There are no jobs or careers far removed from the government teat. The reasons for this are aplenty and copiously referenced throughout my blog, but that is not the topic du jour.

I, and so many others, could never have the early life success of Doug Levy because I was deprived of the necessary exposure and tools. (Economics was a pariah of a subject in my schooling.)

Make no mistake this deprivation is by design. How often have you read in the paper or seen on television an entrepreneurial success story? Forbes is the only place you'll find them consistently.

Any impartial observer would insist there must be a Big Media ban on optimism.

You see, Big Media is a pure shill for Big Government. They simply do not want a country of financially or intellectually independent citizens even though that was America's founding profile. If scores of people start believing that they can run their own businesses, save for their own retirement, pay for their own healthcare, care for their own parents, educate their own children, etc. then Big Government will lose not only its clients and unwitting supporters, it will lose its mandate.

Thus stories with a patina of hope or a wisp of empowering individualism have been smothered for decades. Socialism needs a steady diet of bitterness, and the Perma-Negative New York Times, Associated Press, CNN, network news are about the only buffet in town.

In some places like Massachusetts, they've been so effective that there simply aren't any more success stories to suppress. Mission Accomplished!

The other trenchant evidence that Big Media shills for socialism is its complete refusal to ever report on government waste. They can't take the risk that taxpayers unite and revolt against Big Government. There is so much waste, a 24 hour news channel would have its hands full covering just this subject. But I digress.

Sure the media plays a major role in stunting the ambitions of Americans, but the larger culprit is Government Education.

Consider this Gatto snippet,

I once had a thirteen-year-old Greek boy named Stanley who only came to school one day a month and got away with it because I was his homeroom teacher and doctored the records. I did it because Stanley explained to me where he spent the time instead. It seems Stanley had five aunts and uncles, all in business for themselves before they were twenty-one. A florist, an unfinished furniture builder, a delicatessen owner, a small restauranteur, and a delivery service operator. Stanley was passed from store to store doing free labor in exchange for an opportunity to learn the business. "This way I decide which business I like well enough to set up for myself," he told me. "You tell me what books to read and I’ll read them, but I don’t have time to waste in school unless I want to end up like the rest of these people, working for somebody else." After I heard that I couldn’t in good conscience keep him locked up. Could you? If you say yes, tell me why.

I submit that little Stanley could be the luckiest kid in America.

Devil's Advocate - But he's being deprived of his childhood....

Yes, he'll enjoy less kickball and peer pressure but he's more likely to become Doug Levy than other kids his age. As Gatto has said, modern schooling "grotesquely extends childhoods" which thereby deprives people of their young adulthood.



That canard reminds me of another I keep hearing,

Homeschooling will stunt your child's social skills.

After most people say this, they reference the one kid in their hometown that was a social misfit and homeschooled. But that is a classic case of distorting correlation. Misfits are misfits; they aren't made that way by homeschooling. There's simply no causal relationship.

I have to laugh about this "social skills" argument when I think of Massachusetts. Remember my theory that the people here are the dumbest BECAUSE they are the most educated and degreed group around? Well also consider that these people are the rudest, most self-absorbed, ANTI-SOCIAL people you'll ever meet.

So 16 to 20 years of formalized government education apiece hasn't really made Bostonians so friendly now has it?

Gatto's book is mostly an indictment of government education but he does offer some prescriptive nuggets such as,

If you can keep your kid out of any part of the school sequence at all, keep him or her out of kindergarten, then first, second, and maybe third grade. Homeschool them at least that far through the zone where most of the damage is done. If you can manage that, they’ll be okay.

Now contrast that with Massachusetts governor-elect Deval Patrick's vow to extend government school kindergarten to a full day. As usual, government failures are consistent arguments for more government intervention. When is the public going catch on to this ruse?

Consider that kindergarten, the very class that Gatto claims does the most damage, is the one Patrick wants to expand. From Deval's own website,

I see every 3-and 4-year-old with access to quality early education, and every 5-year-old with access to full-day kindergarten. Experts agree that such early opportunities have a life-time impact on young learners in terms of greater academic readiness, higher test scores and improved social skills. All children deserve this opportunity.



Here we go, "experts" and "improved social skills"....

Patrick also disgustingly admits,

I believe the best teachers seek to educate the "whole child".

People just can't see through the rhetoric. What he means is, teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic shall not bound the aspirations of Big Education. Even the most casual glance reveals that schools are teaching birth control, multi-culturalism, obedience, irreverence for family and church, government dependency, anti-American history, evangelical environmentalism, and countless other extra-curricular subjects completely estranged from what used to be considered a classic education. This is what's really meant by the "whole child".

More from Deval Patrick,

Public education in America began in Massachusetts. In my administration, we will lead again.

Yeah, Deval your state foisted a hideous Hindu and Prussian invention on an unsuspecting public. Compulsory government education has proved a fascist, thoroughly dehumanizing monster. It's almost impossible to quantify the damage in its wake. Yet Deval can comfortably trumpet the success of government education because both he and his constituents are Moronic byproducts of it.

Why do you send your kids to school to be taught by strangers, agents of the government?

Well most likely because you yourself went to a government school. Just as most teenagers would not think to open a competing college book store, most parents have never thought about teaching reading and writing to their own children. The notion simply is not alive in anyone's consciousness today. I fancy myself pretty informed, yet didn't even know what homeschooling was until I was 30 years old.

Back in 1850, Massachusetts began mandating government education and the cycle of homeschooling was broken. The socialists have had inertia ever since.

Government schools may spawn hordes of illiterates, but nevertheless their graduates are natural apologists for the system that screwed them. Nobody really wants to think that they are thoroughly uneducated; after all, they have degrees that scream otherwise.

Nobody wants to think that as children they were lied to, manipulated, and deprived by calculating elitists.

This is quite frankly too much for many people to bear. After all, most people cherish their childhood memories. Why sully the nostalgia?

But the biggest impediment of all is that nobody today wants to think they are a bad parent today for outsourcing the care of their most prized possessions. Heck, everyone does it; it must be the right thing to do.

Devil's Advocate - But my sister is a teacher and she is great. Everyone loves her and she's very dedicated to her profession...

Ah, yes more small-brained Captiousness. She doesn't have to be conscious to be a part of the people's educational conspiracy against themselves. We'll get to the details of this in subsequent posts. BUT ask her or any other teacher to explain the history of schooling to you.

I'll bet 99% of them can't. How comfortably would you do you toil at your job each day if you didn't know exactly why it existed in the first place?

Ignorance is not bliss, it's blight.



More Gatto,

What few knew then or realize now is that they were also a Hindu invention, designed with the express purpose of retarding intellectual development.

Here is just a window into the Prussian (i.e. German) origins,

Traditional American school purpose—piety, good manners, basic intellectual tools, self-reliance, etc.—was scrapped to make way for something different. Our historical destination of personal independence gave way slowly to Prussian-purpose schooling, not because the American way lost in any competition of ideas, but because for the new commercial and manufacturing hierarchs, such a course made better economic sense.

Prussia itself was a curious place, not an ordinary country unless you consider ordinary a land which by 1776 required women to register each onset of their monthly menses with the police.

In 1839, thirteen years before the first successful school compulsion law was passed in the United States, a perpetual critic of Boston Whig (Mann’s own party) leadership charged that pro-posals to erect German-style teacher seminaries in this country were a thinly disguised attack on local and popular autonomy. The critic Brownson allowed that state regulation of teaching licenses was a necessary preliminary only if school were intended to serve as a psychological control mechanism for the state and as a screen for a controlled economy. If that was the game truly afoot, said Brownson, it should be reckoned an act of treason.

"Where the whole tendency of education is to create obedience," Brownson said, "all teachers must be pliant tools of government. Such a system of education is not inconsistent with the theory of Prussian society but the thing is wholly inadmissible here." He further argued that "according to our theory the people are wiser than the government. Here the people do not look to the government for light, for instruction, but the government looks to the people. The people give law to the government." He concluded that "to entrust government with the power of determining education which our children shall receive is entrusting our servant with the power of the master. The fundamental difference between the United States and Prussia has been overlooked by the board of education and its supporters."

Under Frederick William II, Frederick the Great’s nephew and successor, from the end of the eighteenth century on into the nineteenth, Prussian citizens were deprived of all rights and privileges. Every existence was comprehensively subordinated to the purposes of the State, and in exchange the State agreed to act as a good father, giving food, work, and wages suited to the people’s capacity, welfare for the poor and elderly, and universal schooling for children. The early nineteenth century saw Prussian state socialism arrive full-blown as the most dynamic force in world affairs, a powerful rival to industrial capitalism, with antagonisms sensed but not yet clearly identified. It was the moment of schooling, never to surrender its grip on the throat of society once achieved.



Big Government does not simply confiscate money from its subjects. It deprives us of individualism, of hope, of knowledge, time, and humanity. A scheming mind couldn't concoct a better instrument to disembowel family, faith, and spirit - the bedrocks of civilization.

I would like my children to be knowledgeable enough to start a business long before I was.

I want them to get their values from their family, not from other kids in the schoolyard (or MTV).

I want them mature enough to marry and have children while they are young.

I want them to see educating their own kids for what it is, a wondrous opportunity to cherish rather than a burden fit for outsourcing.

If I am lucky, my kids will be far more successful and educated than I was. Maybe they'll buy me a Cadillac and nursing home room with a view at Del Boca Vista.

Boston Morons and Question One

Here's the transcript for you people with multimedia or firewall issues:

I am chief Bob Bradley of the Somerville Police Department.

Some people would have you believe that Question One is only about the convenience of being able to buy a bottle of wine at a supermarket.

BUT what it’s really about is doubling the amount of liquor licenses that we’ll have in this state.

Here in the city of Somerville we’ll go from 26 to 46 licenses.

It’s not just about supermarkets. It’s about convenience stores. It’s about gas station mini-marts being able to sell alcohol. That’s what we’re talking about here.

DON’T BE FOOLED BY QUESTION ONE.

This was an ad that was "credited" with helping defeat Question One on the Massachusetts Referendum which would have allowed grocery stores to sell wine pending local approval. See my prior post.

The stupid decrepit cop says "DON'T BE FOOLED BY QUESTION ONE", but please do be fooled by my ad.

He conflates "Wine" with "Alcohol/Liquor" and doesn't even mention "Local Approval".

Also, I thought that when you doubled 26, you got 52?

What's worse?

1) That people are so dumb as to be swayed by a deceptive ad?
2) That they can't think about the issue for themselves?
3) That the Morons think they are saving "mom and pop" liquor stores?
4) That the media did not look at other states (or countries) for test cases?

I could keep going.

I just found out that some more of my older relatives voted against the measure.

It's so ridiculous that my wife has banned me from further discussing it. So I need the blog to vent.

The dumb reasons keep coming.

"We have too many college kids here.....We are different than other states."

Excuse me, but college kids don't drink wine.

They will however continue to move out of your state when they graduate.

Another Dose of Big Media Hypocrisy

Remember Heath Shuler, the star quarterback at Tennessee?

Well he was just elected to Congress from that nutty enclave of Asheville, North Carolina.

I saw him speak on Larry Kudlow's CNBC show last night and was underwhelmed to say the least. Think of the dumbest football player you knew in high school or college. Well that is what he sounded like. I thought about putting it up on YouTube but it was too long and torturesome. Not only is he incredibly dumb (for a quarterback) but he speaks   r-e-a-l     s-l-o-w-l-y.

But what do you expect from Asheville?




Massachusetts just elected Deval Patrick who'll be its first Democratic governor in 16 years. The Boston Globe reported this spring that Patrick is personally leveraged to the hilt. He owes $5.9 million in mortgage debt which they generously calculated at a $27,000 per month payment.

I say generous because I just punched it up, at 5.75% over 30 year, Mortgage-Calc gives a payment of $34,430 per month.

In order for Patrick to owe that much money and pay a mere 27k per month, someone would have to have given him a 30 year mortgage at 3.65%.

Recently I heard, more credibly that his payments are closer to $38,000 per month. We'll never know Patrick's real financial status because he refused to release his records to the public. Massachusetts confiscated $18 billion in state tax revenue last year. Now they have a governor to oversee it who is not only personally leveraged but won't reveal any potential business conflicts of interest.

Now I have no idea how much money Patrick has but consider that he will only be earning $140,000 per year for his gubernatorial services.

Figure that 38k per month minimally implies at total expense of $50,000 per month to pay taxes, insurance, upkeep etc.

$50,000 times 12 months = $600,000 in yearly expenses.

He and his wife would need a million bones per year in gross income just to cover that. Again, I have no idea how much money the guy has, but he'd need at least $10 million in bonds to throw off even 500k in interest income per year.

This unctuous fellow has all sorts of business dealings and relationships but no one seems to care in Massachusetts. It's amazing the pass some people get and others don't. (Above is his Milton home and below is his leveraged Berkshires project)



Ironically, Deval Patrick's election victory may shatter his own personal real estate investments in Massachusetts.



Speaking of the Boston Globe and the selective application of principle....

The Globe's parent, The New York Time Co. has a very unique ownership structure that Marginalizes its public shareholders. From Dinocrat,

While the broad market has gone up 10%, the New York Times’ shareholders have lost almost 30% of their money. Put another way, New York Times shareholders have lost over 40% of the money they would now have simply by being in a diversified portfolio. Disastrous.

How can a public company get away with this?

Normally, in a public company, you would expect the independent directors to take action to stem the losses and to enhance shareholder value. The New York Times is not a normal public company, however.

The New York Times gets away with its appalling stewardship of its franchise, because it is not in business principally for its readers or its shareholders. There are around 144,000,000 shares of the New York Times that trade freely, but these do not have any power. Control of the New York Times resides in a mere 738,810 shares of non-trading class B stock which reside in a family trust and have the power to elect 70% of the Board of Directors. Pause a moment to take this in: one half of one percent (0.5%) of the stock of the New York Times gets to elect 70% of the directors.



Hey pot, doesn't that kettle look black to you?

The New York Times is not only most influential newspaper in the country, they are the most hypocritical. All the socialist rag does is rail against CEO pay, executive stock option grants, full financial disclosure and whatnot. I simply don't see how Standard and Poor's could index this company with such an unaccountable ownership structure.

After a 50% decline since 2000 that erased $3.5 billion of their money, some investors are finally taking action. From Briefing.com (paid site),

AP reports a Morgan Stanley investment fund is stepping up its confrontation with The New York Times with the submission Wednesday of a shareholder proposal that would urge the co's board to take several steps to "reform" its corporate governance practices. The proposal, if it is approved at the co's next shareholder meeting, would recommend that the board put to a vote the co's dual-class share structure, which currently allows the members of the Ochs-Sulzberger family to control the co through a special class of stock. It would also recommend that the roles of chairman and publisher of the Times' flagship newspaper be separated. Both jobs are currently held by Arthur Sulzberger Jr. The shareholder proposal was submitted Wednesday by Morgan Stanley Investment Mgmt, which owns about 7% of the Times' shares. The proposal also includes a recommendation to adopt a policy of making the chairman an independent director and making a majority of the members of the board's compensation committee independent directors.

Make no mistake, these investors just want a bounce so they can get out.

Currently around 11% of NYT stock is held short by Wall Street traders, which is a moderately high number.

Morons Spamming Me

My wife is a Boston College grad. One of her fellow alumnae has been organizing a group to go to the November 18th football game versus Maryland here in Chestnut Hill.

There are only about 16 people going. Now as we approach game weekend, one of these kids sends out a "reply all" email to everyone. She wrote,

hi guys,

anyone interested in buying two tickets off me? if not, i might have a couple people who have never been to a game who would love to have them. i'm going to be in ghana for two weeks, missing our reunion at the game AND missing a visit home by my sister.

I showed it to my wife and we both shook our heads in concert.

C-Nut's Wife - Who the heck goes to Ghana? I guess the only place worse than that to go to would be Darfur...

Now realize that there is only a sample size here of 16 people, eight of whom I already knew. Look at the "reply all" email that surfaced the next day from a different respondent.

Hi,

Is it the weekend before Thanksgiving? If so, I don't think I can go. I am trying to get to Sudan...



What are the odds? I told my wife we needed to play the lottery pronto.

Don't you hate those "reply all" emails? I mean who needs to be a party to trust-funded girls trying to one-up each other's charity?

The Long Lost Art of Invective

Ethan Albright wrote a hilarious letter to John Madden where he takes issue with his ratings on Madden's NFL Football 20007 video game.

Warning - Adult language.

Click here to read the letter.

Jonathan Swift is smiling in his grave (he brought invective to its ne plus ultra).

November Rain

A few bits of wit and wisdom before I head into NYC for a drinking binge baptism.

When you get married, be sure to have the photographer put the shaky inlaws on the periphery of your family photos. Believe me, with todays 50% divorce rate, you're almost guaranteed to be in need of a cropping or two down the road.



It has come to my attention that my fruity sister pays $6 per pound for organic tomatoes. Yes, she is also the one who buys organic dog food for her mutts. I wonder if she uses this crap - Veggie Wash. There is seemingly no end to the list of products that sell purely by Marketing to Morons.

But there is hope. Note that organic icon Whole Foods' stock got creamed today. The stock is down 21% today as I type this.

If you have Weatherbug on your computer, disable it at once, and go ahead and delete it as well. You'll get an ominous warning like, "If you disable WeatherBug you'll be missing potentially life-saving weather alerts...."

Maybe, but I'll take my chances.

You'll end that semi-permanent internet connection that not only slows your computer down, it also leaves you vulnerable to viruses. Just about any permanent internet connection is risky. A lot of old people don't know how to turn off instant messengers which also run quietly in the background. My mother's computer was destroyed by a virus from such negligence. Just about round the clock I would notice my mother logged on to Yahoo Instant Messenger even when I knew she was not home. I tried several times to show her how to terminate the little smiley face but she obviously couldn't handle the responsibility and consequently lost her hard drive.

More than once I have railed against the older generation for their nitpicking grandparental idiosyncrasies. They reflexively think a baby is ALWAYS COLD and HUNGRY. (Right now I am at my mother-in-law's house. She has been feeding my son all freakin' morning. The only thing that ended it was my son choking from over-consumption.)

I had my infant at the supermarket recently and a nosy fossil chided me,

"Your baby's toe is uncovered."

Mind you it wasn't a leg or a foot - just a single toe transformed the octogenarian into a buttinski.

People in Boston won't so much as say hello (or offer a sign of peace at Mass) BUT they'll scream at you with political bumper stickers and offer unwanted parental advice.

One of these days I may snap back. I respect my elders and I can most certainly see how they think kids today are Morons. But they are Nuts too. I am apparently the only one on planet Earth who is sane.

Do you know anyone that has adopted a little Asian girl or boy?

Well, chances are, they are RACISTS.

That's according to one of my acquaintances. He insists that there are plenty of black and Hispanic kids in America to adopt and that by going halfway around the globe to find an orphan, these adopters are clearly revealing their prejudices.

That's quite a harsh stance if you ask me. I have a lot of sympathy for people that can't have children. When we die, all we really leave on this planet are our kids.



Speaking of minorities. Clint Eastwood's new movie Flags of Our Fathers hit the screens recently. It's been criticized for a lack of black soldiers. Given that blacks make up a disproportionate share of moviegoers, I am surprised at this oversight. These days, I would have expected an exaggerated number of blacks in a such a movie. Of course they would also normally take license to highlight female and Native American heroes.

Anyway I read the book a couple of years ago so I have no need to see the movie. In case you don't know, Flags of Our Fathers is the story of Iwo Jima as told through the men caught in the famous flag-raising photo. The book's author is the son of one those brave men. As far as I am concerned, the book should be required reading for EVERY high school student in the country.


If you were a blogger and an esteemed Harvard professor, would you link to dog poop?

Well that's what wonderboy Greg Mankiw recently did. He wrote a blog post titled,

Pornography and Rape are Substitutes

In it he quotes some economist who claims that internet porn has diminished the incidence of rape. His smoking gun is a decreasing rape trend from 1998-2003. That's it. Just correlation and presumption. Porn is probably but one of a thousand factors (mostly unquantifiable) contributing to rape. This idiot used a mere 5 year period. I bet the success of the New York Yankees and rape would produce an identical correlogram over that same time period. Maybe it's Yankee pennants that actually slake male frustration?

Next thing you know, these pointy head intellectuals will be using a 50 year climate trend of a billion year-old Earth to extrapolate an SUV-induced apocalypse. Oh wait, they already do that.

Is it impertinent to ask why an economist is studying porn and rape? Or who pays this fool? (Taxpayers)

Why did Greg Mankiw link to such dog poop? Because it was from an economist? Or perhaps he is a latent porn advocate? Who knows and who cares. If (and when) I link to dog poop, I usually call it such. Mankiw refrains and thereby tacitly endorses this study.

Remember as far as Mankiw and his ilk are concerned, only SUVs have negative externalities.

And now porn accompanies higher education as the two things in which he sees positive externalities.



I want to Marginalize the position of Ryder Cup Captain. The sports media world makes such a big deal over this crap it's nauseating. ANYONE IN AMERICA could captain the US Ryder Cup Team. There is absolutely no strategy, planning, or thinking involved. Pairing up the 12 best golfers might in fact be the easiest job on planet Earth. It's just another example of a media-created myth.

There's a cooking school in my hometown of Newton. Of course it advertises classes for little rich kids touting that it provides a "...good non-competitive arena."

HAHAHAHA.

"non-competitive" = Commi-speak



A member of my beloved Boston Celtics was involved in a shooting last year. I know it's a big shock to hear about an athlete involved in foul play... but check out the Moronic name of the victim.

The Celtics guard has been charged with throwing the punch that triggered the melee, leading to a shot from a still-unidentified gunman that wounded Marktwain Johnson.

His name is Marktwain??????

I wonder if he has a brother named CharlesDickens or a sister named SylviaPlath.

Independent Idiot For Governor

So Christy Mihos is going to protect the three industries that have no chance of leaving: higher education, healthcare, and tourism.

Wouldn't the prudent thing be to protect the industries of private businesses that ACTUALLY COULD LEAVE?

Wouldn't a competent governor be promising to ATTRACT NEW BUSINESSES to move to Massachusetts?

I guess he has thrown the towel in on private enterprise. Lucky for him, this type of message resonates with the Moronic residents here in Massachusetts.

Traffic in India

Hey Mankiw, note that there are already plenty of fuel efficient vehicles on the road.

A $1 per gallon gasoline tax would not get rid of the mopeds, it would increase their popularity.

Penalty Kick

Marginalizing Sharing

Whenever I take my older child, a near two-year old, out to the park or library, I invariably have to deal with idiotic local parents. One thing I absolutely can’t stand is them screaming at their kids to “share”. Some child will be playing with a ball or Matchbox car, my son will run up, articulate some curiosity in the toy and then the same scene erupts, every single day.

"Adam, share your car!"

"Alyssa, no one will want to play with you if you don’t share!"

"Buckley (actual name I heard the other day), you have one, give him the other!"

Many of these Moronic parents make such a ruckus over this nonsense simply because I, and other parents, am there. Remember, these days parents are all about themselves and they most certainly don’t want their peers thinking they are derelict - especially in groupthink-plagued Boston.

Yes, it’s not the worst thing in the world to say "share". But do it once and don’t make such a big deal about it.

But quite frankly I am AGAINST SHARING. Sometimes I quip at these stupid blathering parents, "That’s okay, we don’t believe in sharing". They smile and erroneously assume I jest.

How are you helping your kid by inculcating the lesson that they are entitled to what others possess?

If there is something my son wants, then he should figure out how to acquire it for himself. He can mow the lawn for instance to earn some money. I have already got my son doing housework and he won’t be two for a month.

Now say my son ran up and procured a toy from little Jacob at the park. He would be wrong to do this and would be admonished, BUT he’d be teaching Jake an important life lesson, namely that people are always going to try to take his things. The same applies to my son. Others will try to dispossess him throughout his life. Shouldn't he be prepared for this and know how to protect himself?

Another example.

At the supermarket I shop at in West Roxbury, every weekend there are kids PANHANDLING out front – asking for donations to support their baseball, basketball, or other youth sports team. What kind of crap is this? Have a bake sale or a raffle, get a local business to sponsor your team, or perhaps have your parents pay for the activity.

Let me emphasize that these are not underprivileged kids. They are middle-class white kids, standing there in uniform with usually a father or two nearby. Next time I may holler at the dad,

"What the heck kind of a parent teaches their kid to beg?!?!?!?!"

Yeah people in Boston are SOOOOO smart, teaching their kids a sense of entitlement and dependency.

What could possibly be worse than depriving young children of their full human potential?

SHARING is for Commi’s.

Google and YouTube

How could I possibly leave this story unmentioned on my blog?

Around September 28th, 2006,

Mark Cuban: Only a ‘Moron’ Would Buy YouTube

Cuban said "anyone who buys that (YouTube) is a moron" because of potential lawsuits from copyright violations.

Fast forward to October 9th, 2006,

Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., October 9, 2006 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community.

Remember, Google is the only stock I own. I am 8% Google and 92% cash. That covers everything, including retirement accounts.

So is Google a Moron as Cuban exclaimed?

Right now, nobody knows. Only time will tell. The blogosphere is abuzz with discussion of this deal, much of it very detailed. A good place to start is actually Mark Cuban’s blog, blogmaverick.com.

Be sure to read the comment thread if you’re interested in the business angles of the GooTube combination. Lumpen posters bring up some very interesting points such as:

How can YouTube sell ads in block when the advertisers won’t know what's going to be on the clips. What image conscious corporations want their to be placed above the popular soft porn clip-o-the-day? (Then again, Desperate Housewives has no shortage of sponsors)

Will Google fight with or try to share revenue with Big Media content holders claiming copyright infringement?

Will YouTube start sharing ad revenue with the amateur video posters?

Couldn’t YouTube just make uploaders personally liable for any copyright infringement? In that sense, make YouTube just a hosting site?



Also Forbes published a very edifying article on YouTube just before the deal was announced.

Here’s my take.

First of all, as a Google shareholder, I am getting sick and tired of these share dilutions. Pay cash for YouTube or borrow the money to buy it. Every chance these guys get they float more stock. The YouTube deal is at least the third, if not the fourth dilution in the past couple of years. Furthermore, I don’t have the hard numbers to back this up, but I hear that Google recklessly doles out stock and stock options to its employees. I don't look forward to them having to buy back stock at $1,000 per share to stem option dilution. Prior world conquering tech giants like Microsoft climbed a lot more than Google’s 400% before their management started acting so arrogant.

Google’s market cap is today $145 billion, so the $1.65 billion YouTube dilution is statistically insignificant. I just don’t like the arrogance too easily inferred by many of the Google headlines these days. Google's conceit has grown from noticeable to palpable and now to edible!

The core of Google’s biz is and will remain paid search. That story is still in tact and so far nothing has swayed my contention that,

I figure about one in twenty people I know googles regularly. The people that do google constitute a young and growing demographic, those that don’t are obviously the dying geriatric Luddites. In five years, I don’t think it is an outrageous prediction to think that three out of 20 people I know will be googling regularly. That conservative forecast would triple the number of googlers and I believe it would also increase the price-point of all keywords. Let me reiterate, three in twenty googling would be extremely conservative – almost to the point to certainty.

Google was around $420 per share when the deal was rumored and then shortly thereafter announced. Today it’s $477. Now does that mean the market believes GooTube will be a powerful combination?

IT ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT.

The stock may have been itching to go up anyway. The overall market has been strong. Also Google’s earnings continue to surprise on the upside. So ignore the knee-jerk media reactions and prognostications.

Remember AOL/Time Warner hit near $110 when that merger was first announced (before falling to almost $10).

Has Skype paid off for eBay? Remember they shelled out $2.6 billion.



I once called Mark Cuban intellectually incontinent. But it may be more accurate to say he is an intellectual playboy. He shoots from the hip, never bogging down his thoughts with formalities like topic sentences followed by supporting evidence. One has to glean his points and profundity - but they're there. He has the Perma-Credibility inherent in owning a very successful sports team and sitting on billions in cash. Like Hugh Hefner, many a young man dreams of being Mark Cuban. Heck I wouldn't mind doing an asset swap with him myself.

Cuban certainly has firsthand knowledge of worthless billion dollar acquisitions. Click here if somehow you don't know his story - then, crawl out from under that rock.

Dr. Greg Mankiw, The Harvard Economist, Marginalizing Himself

Last week, Dr. Greg Mankiw wrote an intellectually abominable piece in the Wall Street Journal titled Raise the Gas Tax.

He wants the gas tax raised by $1 per gallon. (It’s already around 40 cents).

His reasons were roughly:

1) The Environment
2) Road Congestion
3) Regulatory Relief
4) The Budget
5) Tax Incidence
6) Economic Growth
7) National Security

Here is my presently unanswered comment on his blog,

CaptiousNut said... Putting aside whether or not Mankiw's list of benefits is realistic or desirable, am I wrong, or wouldn't capping fuel efficiency at say 16 mpg achieve every single one of his objectives?

Of course it would deprive pols of tax money to squander, lavish on special interests, and redistribute.

The professor thinks the only way to alter behavior is by taxing gasoline. As my comment illustrates - it clearly isn’t. But let’s probe his ridiculous article some more.

His first reason, "The environment" centers upon global warming. I don’t want to indulge this argument now since it’s been debunked aplenty on my blog. Human induced global warming is light years from established fact, it’s all at once a pathology, a religious superstition, and a trendy climate theory.

Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930’s the media peddled a coming ice age.

From the late 1920’s until the 1960’s they warned of global warming. From the 1950’s until the 1970’s they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate’s fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.

Check out 2), directly from Mankiw’s article.

Road congestion. Every time I am stuck in traffic, I wish my fellow motorists would drive less, perhaps by living closer to where they work or by taking public transport. A higher gas tax would give all of us the incentive to do just that, reducing congestion on streets and highways.

Did you get that? Traffic is a personal burden to Mankiw. Perhaps we should all clear the road so he doesn’t get bogged down. Everyone else is inconsiderate and needs to live closer to work or take the bus. What unabashed snobbery. When you are mired in traffic, do you just think "Boy, gridlock sucks" or do you start hating on nearby drivers? If you fall into the later category, congratulations, you have solid elitist potential!

There are plenty of homes in Cambridge, yet Mankiw lives in Wellesley, a nearby town not very well connected to Harvard via mass transit. He’s actually my neighbor but we don’t hang out much.

In point 3), Mankiw inveighs against federal CAFE standards.

From Wikipedia,

The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations in the United States, first enacted by Congress in 1975, exist to regulate and improve the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks (trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles) sold in the US in the wake of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo.

But in his article, Mankiw fails to make the childishly obvious point that fuel efficiency does the very opposite of what his $1 per gallon gas tax aspires to. More specifically, fuel efficiency makes driving cheaper, and encourages more drivers living far away to descend on Greg’s path and retard his commute. While ignoring the obvious issue with CAFE, Mankiw instead chose to blame it for the dreaded SUV, bogeyman of Morons everywhere. Then his last sentence under this point was a doozie.

A higher gas tax would accomplish everything CAFE standards do, but without the adverse side effects.

What? It endeavors the OPPOSITE of what CAFE standards are supposed to do. His tax would raise the cost of driving, whilst CAFE seeks to lower it. How then can the tax possibly "accomplish everything CAFE standards do"?

Can this really be a Harvard economist?

He’s caught in the quandary of today’s self-righteous environmentalist. For them, the little car is the mandatory badge of Earth-love, but they also want to inveigh broadly against driving. Unfortunately, little cars enable people to drive cheaply, live far from work, and perhaps even frustrate a tardy professor’s commute.

True environmentalists should advocate for FUEL INEFFICIENCY.

It’s one thing for the typical pot-smoking, trust funded, government working, tree hugger to juggle such hypocrisy and illogic, but quite another for an economist at our most esteemed college. The hippie can wallow quietly in their ignorant mysticism, but a professor at Harvard, at some point has to formally articulate his beliefs.

(Yeah, me too. I also wish the hippies actually were quiet.)

Reason 4) The Budget. After accurately identifying our budgetary albatrosses (Social Security and Medicare), Mankiw posits says that his gas tax would "make a dent". First of all, why not fix the problems directly? I hesitate to even dignify further this non-argument. By this logic, because the government is profligate and makes promises it can’t keep, then any new tax is kosher?

Reason 5),

Tax incidence. A basic principle of tax analysis -- taught in most freshman economics courses -- is that the burden of a tax is shared by consumer and producer. In this case, as a higher gas tax discouraged oil consumption, the price of oil would fall in world markets. As a result, the price of gas to consumers would rise by less than the increase in the tax. Some of the tax would in effect be paid by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Don’t worry consumers, it really is only an 85 cent tax. Saudi Arabia and Venezuela will pay 15 cents of it. Don’t you feel better now?

Now that’s it. That is his entire discussion of tax incidence. Apparently higher gas taxes won’t raise the cost of food, shipping, furniture, a plumber’s visit, or anything else. Just 85 cents for you and 15 cents for Hugo and Prince Muhammad. What a joke.

Mankiw’s blog is nauseatingly riddled with discussions of progressive taxes and the Commi-speak “income inequality”. A google of his fledgling blog already turns up 21 posts on the latter.

Yet when it comes to taxes that might free up his personal roadways, he forgets all about lower income folk. A $1 per gallon tax on gasoline obviously hurts the poor disproportionately since fuel costs represent a larger percentage of their incomes. Apparently his compassion has an on/off switch.

Next up, point 6),

Economic growth. Public finance experts have long preached that consumption taxes are better than income taxes for long-run economic growth, because income taxes discourage saving and investment. Gas is a component of consumption. An increased reliance on gas taxes over income taxes would make the tax code more favorable to growth. It would also encourage firms to devote more R&D spending to the search for gasoline substitutes.

Apparently, since we all should simply be resigned to higher taxes, Mankiw thinks that just because a consumption tax is better than an income tax he has posited an argument for taxing the bejesus out of gasoline. This is typical False Comparison disputation. I am quite certain that Economic growth would be better behooved by leaving the gas tax alone or dare I say, reducing it. Greg compared one evil to a greater one. What scholarship!

Conundrum, hmmm? Boost interest rates, I must.

National security. Alan Greenspan called for higher gas taxes recently. "It's a national security issue," he said. It is hard to judge how much high oil consumption drives U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern politics. But Mr. Greenspan may well be right that the gas tax is an economic policy with positive spillovers to foreign affairs.

A Greenspan quote? Is that supposed to bring gravitas? Here's what this is. Greg wanted to trot out his own personal conspiracy theory of oil consumption subsidizing "Middle Eastern politics" - whatever the heck that nebulous animal is. BUT, he lacked the stones to say it himself and opted to mask his tripe in a quote from Yoda.

Anyway, combine Greenspan’s "It’s hard to judge" with Mankiw’s "...may well be right..." and all you’ve got is empty weasel-speak.

Mankiw concludes his vapid prose with an inanity quite on par with the preceding ones.

Even after a $1 hike, the U.S. gas tax would still be less than half the level in, say, Great Britain, which last I checked is still a democracy.

What is that a fourth or fifth grade argument? I have been out of school so long and standards seem to have deteriorated, so I just can't tell these days.

Americans hate taxes not because they think infrastructure and security are costless, but rather because they know pols simply waste it on pork, redistribution, elitist utopian dreams, and the corrupt solidification of their own incumbency.

Make no mistake, the Big Government socialists control the debate. Tax debate in this country is wholly centered upon class warfare and how high taxes should be. Ideally, WSJ editorials from alleged capitalists would take aim at how to more efficiently run government with the plentiful monies it already confiscates.

Just consider these already voiced plans for new gasoline tax revenue.

The New York Times wants to redistribute the money to poor people

Hillary Clinton wants to use the money to fund alternative energy development.

And now Greg Mankiw wants to use the money to pay down the deficit.

Okay let's get back to my unanswered comment

CaptiousNut said... Putting aside whether or not Mankiw's list of benefits is realistic or desirable, am I wrong, or wouldn't capping fuel efficiency at say 16 mpg achieve every single one of his objectives? Of course it would deprive pols of tax money to squander, lavish on special interests, and redistribute.

Even though Greg has deigned to respond twice in the comment section of his post (which may be a record for him), he predictably hasn't responded to mine - nor has anyone else.

It was a bit of a rash overstatement on my part to say that capping fuel efficiency would achieve "every single one of his objectives". The thrust of my criticism was towards, I guess really the only legitimate objective - dampening congestion (ignoring its supercilious presentation). Since every commenter has ignored his cockamamie suggestions that a higher gasoline tax would pacify the Mid-East, pay down the budget, grow the economy, etc., I was not alone in centering my initial criticism on the congestion angle.

Gasoline is by its very essence, a tax on driving (and the economy).

Automotive fuel efficiency is therefore a TAX LOOPHOLE.

So what really causes global warming? Is it the little car or the 6mpg recycling truck?

Just about every thing on this planet has negative externalities but if you listened to denizens of the ivory tower, they'd have you believe that only SUVs had them.

Incredibly, positive externalities only get mentioned when these guys are talking about themselves.

Boston Without Alcohol

From my Boston and Alcohol post last year,

I could go on considerably longer about the Pilgrim-esque alcohol policies up here such as how anal they are with booze at wedding receptions, the paucity of liquor licenses stunting new restaurant development, etc. Remember, Bostonians don’t believe in personal responsibility. It is always someone else’s fault, the bartender’s, the liquor store’s,... Beer, like oil, guns, and SUVs, is a favorite scapegoat.

First off, I don't make a habit out of reading the Boston Globe but the cover story caught my eye this morning.

Liquor licensing spawns a clash of political wills

Prices on liquor licenses in Boston have more than doubled a year after the city ran up against a state limit on the number of licenses it can issue.

With a growing pool of would-be restaurateurs and club owners trying to outbid one another for the few licenses coming available as establishments go out of business, the amounts being fetched have soared into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Those prices are well out of reach for many small operators, and some industry observers fear that restaurateurs will give up or bypass Boston to open new establishments in the suburbs.

Beacon Hill has regulated the number of liquor licenses Boston can hand out since 1906, when a Yankee-controlled Legislature, distrusting Boston's Irish elected officials and fueled by Puritan beliefs about alcohol, limited licenses in Boston and required an amendment of state law to change it. Elsewhere in the state, the number of licenses is tied to population growth, triggering automatic increases.

Alright I was slightly off, I said Pilgrim-esque instead of Puritan. What a wonderfully progressive city that has 100 year old liquor laws. Now I think liquor is a dubious target of regulation in the first place, but c'mon update the law already.

The article also has a funny part about a feud between the mayor and a Naysaying councilman.

Since January, when Menino first floated a proposal for 60 new beer and wine licenses but no all-alcohol licenses at the Legislature, the city has rewritten its proposal several times. Each time, officials say, Morrissey has rebuffed them. Things turned particularly ugly after a meeting at the State House in April, several city officials who attended said, when Morrissey was late and spoke condescendingly to the mayor.

Menino says only that he hopes to work with Morrissey to reach a compromise.

Morrissey says he's always late to meetings and doesn't remember being condescending. He concedes that he harbors some anger toward the mayor, who instituted new fees last year for suburban boat owners who want to use city docks. Morrissey is a boat owner and counts many boat owners among his constituents, but he said that has nothing to do with his stance on liquor licenses.



Haha. You taxed my boat so all of Boston must suffer with fewer restaurant choices and pricier alcohol.

Now I want to highlight a stock Moron debating tactic. In arguing for the century-old, unprogressive, economic retarding status quo, the pissed-off boat owner trots out,

"Don't you think Legal Sea Foods would be a little [angry]?" Morrissey said. "They played by the rules and what did it get them? $240,000 in start-up costs."

Now, do you think that a fossilized hack Councilman from Quincy, Massachusetts really is pro-business? He clearly is not. This is just a deflection. He is anti-new businesses trying to get liquor licenses. He is anti-Legal Seafoods as well. Legal Seafoods would rather have paid say $100,000 for that license whose cost pols like Morrissey drove up in the first place.

Legal Seafoods, like most other businesses would like to expand and pay much less for their next license.

Presumably, all Bostonians would like more, cheap restaurants.

What's amazing is that piss-poor arguments like "It's unfair to Legal Seafoods" don't get duly shredded.

A few weeks ago I played golf with a group of very successful professionals. These were level-headed, intelligent folk. The subject of taxi costs came up. These guys simply could not believe that a cab from my house to Logan Airport, a mere 10 mile trip, costs $50. I calmly explained why and gave my prescription of "floating more medallions and lowering the legal rates and tolls" and there were no absolutely no respondents save one. He said to me,

"If they float more medallions, it wouldn't be fair to those that currently own them..."

No sh*t Sherlock. Apparently he thought it fair that consumers spend $50 on short cab trips.

I have alluded to this concept before. Specifically how economically illiterate Morons can usually only see intended or surface-level consequences but they fail to realize wider, long-term effects.



Every issue, idea, or proposal theoretically speaking, has two columns. Costs and Benefits. Positives and Negatives. Pro and Cons...... However you want to dichotomize them.

Most Morons can only see the column of their choosing.

For example. Somebody I know is a real global warming worrywart. Out of the blue I said to him,

"What are the arguments against human-induced climate change".

Let's just say that I didn't get much of an answer. So I prodded further,

"Don't you think you should at least be aware of what the counter-arguments are?"

Boston is a tough town to live in.

It's even tougher to take sober and hungry.

Back From Naples

Alright, I am fresh back from my annual golf trip to Naples, Florida. Listen to how bad real estate is down there.

One of my golf buddies is a member at the Island Country Club on Marco Island. Last year, due to the frothy real estate market no doubt, his club had 22 people on the wait list to get in. Because of which, they raised the membership fee from $70,000 to $90,000. But one year later the situation reversed with now 12 people on the waitlist to GET OUT of the club. (When someone leaves, they get a percentage of their fee back, but not until someone else joins to take their spot.)

My friend actually lives on the Hammock Bay development. The golf course there is down to a mere 70 members – which really sucks when those not infrequent assessments get handed down. Incidentally, my buddy has been trying to sell his condo for 8 months; it’s not moving despite being “the cheapest one in the development” (675k for 2000 square feet).

Is this just a mere downtick in the Florida real estate market? After all, they say that 1,000 people move to the Sunshine state each day. I doubt it simply because they are still building everywhere you look. On the Classic Course at Lely it seemed like they were just getting started on a couple hundred more new homes. There’s also a massive new mall going in near the airport that’s really just under way. And just about every development that I saw was still advertising a “Phase 4” extension. Existing homes in most parts of Florida will be competing with new construction for a very long time. Good luck to anyone that buys now.



What ever happened to all of those ominous hurricane predictions for 2006 anyway?

William Gray, noted storm forecaster said earlier this year,

At the beginning of the 2006 season, the Colorado State team predicted there would be 17 tropical storms and said nine would turn into hurricanes with sustained winds of 74 miles per hour (119 km per hour) or more.

It said five would be "major" hurricanes, which are Category 3 or higher on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale with sustained winds of at least 111 mph (179 kph) and capable of causing some structural damage to buildings. Only two of this year's hurricanes have reached Category 3 status and none of the five hit the United States.

But yesterday, he had the stones to predict: Atlantic Hurricane Season Over.

The season is "over? Thanks for the value-added, Willy. What next, is he going to predict yesterday's high temperature?

Speaking of alarmist weather predictions, Al Gore recently said that cigarette smoking is a "significant" contributor to global warming. No, I am not kidding. Next up, he's going to indict human flatulence as an assault on Mother Nature's constant temperature. My old man will, without question, be number one on that chopping block!

That article concludes with this noteworthy claim.

NewsMax requested from UNTV an audio copy of Gore's address.

At first, NewsMax was told a copy would be provided by the U.N. audio library.

Later, NewsMax was told that copies of the Gore speech would not be available.

"We destroyed all copies of the speech, except for one master which cannot be released," explained one audio librarian.

Dujarric added: "The Gore speech was copyrighted and therefore we cannot release any copies of it."

The formerly "open" address, has now been reclassifed in the UN files as "a closed meeting."

First of all, the UN is not a sovereign entity. It is funded mostly by American tax dollars. How the heck can it be immune from public accountability? These people are fascists.

Gore was an 8 year vice president. If he misspoke, he should clarify what he meant. At least that's the theoretical tack of civilized adults. Having your compadres withold the record is indeed fascist.

Often times, nutjobs and elitist scumbags slip up and tell us what they really think - and a full-press cover-up ensues. Here's another example that I recently gleaned from John Gatto's Underground History of Education.

Along the way to this milestone, important way stations were reached beyond the scope of this book to list. The strand I’ve shown is only one of many in the tapestry. The psychological goals of this project and the quality of mind in back of them are caught fairly in the keynote address to the 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar in Boulder, Colorado, delivered by Harvard psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce. This quote appears to have been edited out of printed transcripts of the talk, but was reported by newspapers in actual attendance:

Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well—by creating the international child of the future.

Anyone else want to throw up? Remember this was a keynote at a major education conference. Instead of taking a route of disavowal or clarification, they opted to expunge the record.



When my wife’s firm confoundingly moved operations to Boston, all of the high level executives moved to the tony town of Wellesley. We laughed at them for such egregious herd-like behavior but later on realized why they did so. Apparently Wellesley is the only town around here that is not chockfull of socialists. So how good is this oasis? Listen to this recent conversation between my wife and a new Wellesley resident.

Executive – That’s it...We are leaving here soon.

C-Nut’s Wife – Why? I thought you liked where you lived?

Executive – Once my son is done school, I am quitting and moving. Supposedly we live in the most conservative, capitalistic town....I just found out that my son’s high school is sponsoring a “Transgendered Awareness Day”!!!

These multi-culturalists are really out of control. It just gets to be too much to fight with them and good wholesome people simply move – far away at that. Something like 2 million kids are homeschooled now.



Let me go back to my Naples trip for a second.

It’s always nice to get out of Boston and be amongst real people. For one thing, though a very happily married man, it’s great to see the infinitely more attractive women from the rest of the country at the airports and whatnot. Remember from a prior post I railed against the barely androgynous women of Beantown with their short hair, jeans, baseball caps, and the dearth of makeup and jewelry. (Believe me, there’s NO compensation in the personality department either!)

One of my buddies told me about CNBC that he’d “never seen so many negative young people as constituted by the cast of CNBC” and that, “the market would rally 2,000 points if CNBC were pulled off the air”. I laughed, having long sung this refrain. I am not quite sure about the “2,000 points” but I told him to do what I did and turn the channel off for his own personal chi.

Another guy down there complained to me about CNN. He said, “Man, they are obsessed with Hurricane Katrina...” From incidental glimpses at said channel, I handily saw his gripe – though I haven’t regularly watched CNN in at least 15 years.

What struck me is that neither of these complainers understands why CNBC and CNN utilize these dour tacks. (Hint: they are socialist organs who seek to create, foment, and sustain discontent and for good measure their agitprop indicts socialism’s enemies, you know, those capitalist pigs.)

One of my golf buddies used to work for the now defunct US Airways. He was a baggage handler, making 85k to throw suitcases on a ramp. Asked how much his coworkers stole from luggage he explained,

“Years ago, they took everything. My guys thought there were entitled to whatever they wanted. For instance, when the Celtics once flew with us, I turned around and saw one guy wearing Larry Bird’s game shirt, another was wearing McHale’s. They worked all day in them and then took them home”.

Any wonder why US Airways went under?

A funny from profootballtalk.com,

BIG BEN NEEDS MORE COW BELLSteelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is recovered from his appendectomy of 15 days ago, but Michelle Tafoya of ESPN reports that Roethlisberger now has a fever (she actually said he has a "temperature" -- but we all do, honey).

Imagine if a sportscaster called someone "honey" on television or radio? Political correctness is certainly a self-inflicted burden on Big Media.



Have you heard the hullabaloo over this season’s Survivor? They divided the strandees into 4 ethnic groups: White, Asian, Latino, and Black. Many race baiting activists got mad and demanded boycotts of the show because it is divisive.

Unfortunately, that can't salvage a trick that is offensive on its face. Survivor has embraced the very essence of discrimination: treating people not as individuals but as members of an ethnically defined group. And the fact that Survivor finally, for the first time, has enough members of those groups to make discrimination viable is hardly a defense.

I think there was a black group, a Latino group, and an Asian group in Manhattan that collaborated to make the loudest (or initial) stink about Survivor’s format. Curiously enough, groups whose entire mission is to segregate themselves apparently see offense in the practice when undertaken by others. Imagine the outcry if someone started a “white-only” political group!!!

The producer of Survivor fired back, claiming that this format would mitigate charges of discrimination because Asians would vote off Asians, Latinos would vote off Latinos, etc. Rather than the possibility of everyone ganging up on one specific person who may be a minority.

Heck when I was at UPenn, I witnessed racial self-segregation at its zenith. Racially themed housing pervaded almost all campus social life. The Chinese didn’t interact with the Japanese (the Koreans hated everybody). Practicing Jews self-segregated at the Hillel House and its functions. Indians separated themselves into castes (seriously) and fought at parties along those lines. One Christian Indian friend felt he had to tuck his cross adorned chain under his shirt at Indian parties. The lily-white Latinos from Puerto Rico and the rest of the Caribeean distanced themselves from "Los Negros" – Latinos with any black blood. And the blacks holed themselves up in the W.E.B. DeBois House – which was derisively referred to as "Da Boyz" house by everyone else.

Who isn’t sick of this divisive multicultural crap by now?

Boohbah is a stupid kid show that my son watches on Sprout. Two characters on it are “Brother” and “Sister”. One is Hispanic and the other is Asian. What is that? I have been on the planet for 32 years and conscious for most of the time, but I have never come across a family that had Hispanic and Asian kids. I am sure some exist, but Boohbah is deliberately pushing the idea to children that siblings don’t have to look alike. Kids can't read, write, entertain themselves, tell time on non-digital clocks, or tie shoes without velcro, but at least they have some exposure to an anomalous mixed race family. Well done PBS!!!

Anytime you hear someone say that “diversity is what made us great”, tell them to shut the bleep up. Economic freedom and the rule of law is what made this country what it is today.

Diverse people from all over the globe came here because of our economics liberties – not the other way around or any other such distortion thereof.

Deval Patrick, Massachusetts Democrat nominee for Governor is dead-set against the public voting on gay marriage. His sophistical reason,

“...never let majorities determine the rights of minorities...”

So what Deval, should minorities then have more say than majorities? Seems to be quite a salient into the heart of democracy, no?

Note: Deval (nice name by the way, very Old Testament) needs a majority to elect him Governor before he can start expropriating its rights.

I recently anted up for some high end video editing software. Right away I have been having all sorts of problems with it. I was in a chat help session on Friday and look what the idiot said to me (in an electronic chat session - not over the phone):

ESL Tech Support: are you in front of your own computer right now?

CaptiousNut: how else would i be talking to you?

I burst out laughing at this uber-Moron. It harkened back to a few other incidents fresh in my memory.

I used to work at a golf course in Philadelphia. We advertised and sold "9 inch pizzas" - as the signs explicitly read. Three separate times, I had customers ask me,

Moron - "How big is a 9 inch pizza?"

Once I said it is "about 10 inches", once I said, "8 inches", and once I said it was "approximately 9 inches".

Back when I worked on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, after some office relocating, I realized that I couldn't retrieve my voicemail. So I asked our tech/admin guy, a bumbling geriatric named Artie, if he could get me my new voicemail code. A week later, without a response I tracked Artie down,

CaptiousNut - Artie, did you ever get around to looking up my new voicemail key.

Artie - I sure did. I got the code, called you, and left it on your voicemail.

Now I don't want to sound like one of these clueless idiots that actually complains about the service at McDonalds, but consider my last example.

One of my brokerage firms actually has a stutterer working phone desk support. For anyone unaware, entering stock orders is an extremely time sensitive business. You simply can't have someone choking on every single syllable.

What next? Have the blind direct traffic? The deaf conduct orchestras symphonies? Have the dumb teach at Harvard? There are only a few jobs stutterers absolutely CAN'T DO, and one of them happens to be handling stock orders over the phone.



The end of my wife's maternity leave (and more precisely, our second child) forced us to break down and hire a babysitter. I kid you not when I say that babysitters here in Chestnut Hill want $15 an hour (some much more). Doing some quick math, that annualizes to $30,000 per year. Now consider that sitters get paid cash, so the tax avoidance pushes $15 an hour to more like a $37,500 per year job. That's what my wife pays her new hires AFTER they (or someone else) have paid 150k on college. There's no way I am paying that for someone to change diapers and play with my son. Now, if they are going to teach him advanced number theory and Latin...then that's another story. As it would be if they cooked and cleaned....

But most of them do not. One friend has a nanny and the nanny actually demands that she hire a separate cleaning lady because the exalted nanny doesn't want to work in an unkempt house. My not-so-bright friend acquiesces.

We ended up hiring an undergrad from Boston College. She's an education major and has tons of experience with little incorrigible brats. My son will certainly test the integrity of her resume. We pay her $10 an hour, nonetheless she still drives a car much nicer than either of ours.



Speaking of my offspring. We just baptized my daughter and were granted this semi-appalling story. Though I wore a suit and tie everyday for four years in high school, since then I have been clad like a slob. There was really no dress code on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (jeans and sneakers) and working for myself later on hasn't behooved my wardrobe. It's really tough to get me to dress up - even for my daughter's baptism. It was a warm day and we were serving 30 people food and drink prior to the sacrament. I just didn't feel like getting in a suit and working up a sweat, so I went casual to the church - khaki's, a nice golf shirt, and a blue blazer. As underdressed as I was, consider that a mother (was a group baptism) there actually wore flip flops AND a new godfather there donned jeans and A NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS JERSEY.

This is a typical Boston church; people actually blow you off during the peace offerings. I am not kidding. They act like they don't see you. This is church for crying out loud.

My church also has two collections, EVERY SINGLE WEEK. Talk about Taxachusetts!!!

This week the second collection was for "rising energy costs". I felt like putting my hand up and asking, "But haven't oil and gas just cratered in price?"



About a month ago, I mentioned off-handedly that gasoline prices would soon dip within earshot of one of my mother's friends. Now I don't even remember this specifically, but a few weeks later my mother said to me,

C-Nut's Mother - Betsy was extremely impressed that you knew gas prices would drop.

Did I know gas prices would drop a dollar per gallon? No way. Oil had dropped about $5-$7 off its high and anyone with a three digit IQ could auger a mild price drop at the pump. So why would anyone be shocked and awed by such elementary prescience?

Because they are not only economically-illiterate, but also thoroughly uninformed. I sincerely doubt my mother's friend follows the global price of oil - or even knows that it is a global commodity whose price is set by market factors NOT INCLUDING a devious cabal of Texas Bush cronies.

It is a resoundingly sad indictment of the public that gasoline prices dominate political sentiment.

If only we could somehow illuminate, say the price of public education, the cost of Medicare, or a countdown to Social Security's insolvency on big signs of busy intersections...

As of yet, no one seems to have flinched at this sign.



Obviously more than one is needed.