Over the Fiscal Cliff with the AssPress

On a day when the AP embarrassed itself beyond measure with a bogus graph designed to scare us about Iranian nukes, is it piling on to point out that Ohlemacher's latest drivel on the budget is drivel?

Not until I get more hits than he gets newspapers! So lets take it line by bleeding line:


WASHINGTON (AP) — It's not just about taxes. There's another big obstacle to overcome as Congress and President Barack Obama work to skirt the fiscal cliff: deep divisions among Senate Democrats over whether to consider cuts to popular benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
Much of the focus during negotiations seeking an alternative to $671 billion in automatic tax increases and spending cuts beginning in January has centered on whether Republicans would agree to raising taxes on the wealthy. Obama insists that tax increases on the wealthy must be part of any deal, even as White House officials concede that government benefit programs will have to be in the package too.

Move along, nothing to see here. A little dramatic language, but ho-hum.

But even if GOP lawmakers agree to raise taxes, there is no guarantee Democrats can come up with enough votes in the Senate to cut benefit programs — as Republicans are demanding.

Beep! This isn't about raising taxes - that's already law.  It's about whether to lower them. Reminder :THE FISCAL CLIFF IS A SET OF LAWS THAT REDUCE THE DEFICIT, THE PEOPLE MOST SCARED OF IT ARE THE SAME ONES THAT HAVE BEEN PLUGGING AUSTERITY. The second sentence makes no sense.  Let's continue. though leave out a few dull paragraphs because fair use, OK?

"Democrats like to pretend as though they're the great protectors of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "They make solemn pledges all the time about how they won't even entertain a discussion about reform. What they don't say is that ignoring these programs is the surest way to guarantee their collapse."

Shouldn't Stevorini mention whether McConnell was struck by a thunderbolt here? This is brazen hypocritical bushwah even by Senate Republican standards.For one thing - the Republicans have not proposed any Medicare changes for the Democrats to consider. When the Democrats have made cuts to giveaways to middlemen like Medicare C & D, or any other reforms, McConnell has screamed "The Democrats are cuttting Medicare!!"  But nope, Stevie lets it go.

There's a growing consensus among Senate Democrats and the White House that Social Security should be exempt from any deficit-reduction package. But some centrist Democrats in the Senate argue that fellow Democrats must be willing to consider cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in order to get concessions from Republicans on taxes.
"It has to be both — a significant revenue increase as well as spending cuts," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who is retiring as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said rising health care costs in Medicare and Medicaid are helping to drive future spending, making them an essential part of a long-term deficit-reduction package.

Mentioning that Baucus wife supports the family as a corporate lobbyist, which is where Conrad is about to cash in, might be a little more significant than the code word "centrist", no?

There follows a bunch of paragraphs designed to put a sleeper on anybody who's waded this deep, followed by Lady Macbeth, appearing as a hero:

"There hasn't been the slightest suggestion about what they're going to do about the real problems, and that's entitlements," said Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. "There's a certain cockiness that I've seen that is really astounding to me since we're basically in the same position we were before" the election.

Thunderbolts are too good for this clown. Does Ohlemacher mention Medicare Part D, or the Medicare surtax, or the simple fact that despite all the garbage Hatch has pushed, the Democrats have, in fact solidified the program, even as Hatch & McConnell undermined it?

Of course not. Once again, reading an Associated Press think piece leaves you significantly worse informed than if you'd left it alone.

The money it's about

Sportswriters like to remind their readers that when somebody says "It's not about the money", they're usually lying. Occasionally, a veteran hungry for a ring will sign for somewhat less than they could get elsewhere to have a shot/be with their friends/get away from some idiots, etc, but those cases are pretty rare.

Likewise, when you read about principles in legislative battles, you're getting the banal prolefeed.

Our go-to guy for banal prolefeed, Stephen Ohlemacher, has produced a characteristically useless roundup of what we're supposed to think is at stake in the current & endless budget struggles. No numbers, lots of conventional wisdom. Same old same old about Erskine-Bowles.

Lawmakers and the White House are working in a postelection session of Congress to reduce the sudden jolt of higher taxes and spending cuts and lay a framework for addressing the nation's long-term financial problems. But the two political parties are struggling to find common ground, especially on taxes and widely popular benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

So careful. So balanced. So useless. And this unspeakable tripe:

It's a familiar refrain — almost everyone acknowledges that money has to be cut, no one wants it to be theirs

There are a lot of reasons that coverage of budget issues is so bad. Innumerate reporters and editors. Owners and advertisers with thumbs on the scale. Class warfare so ugly that most people simply refuse to believe in it.

Another one is that economic discussion in the US is always about encouraging growth. For a lot of reasons I've talked myself blue about - energy, land, water, climate, developing nations taking sotheir share - growth is just about done. So we're down to fighting over shares. Between inequality, waste, and sheer deliberate cussedness, there's a huge amount of room in the US to make most people's life one heluva lot easier without growth. So that sort of thing is called SOCIALISM, and discussion - even about simple stuff, like drug prices, is verboten.

Alas, the macro that has been taught in the US since the first course has been about growth.  And still, there is complete denial of even the possibility that the party's over - Oooh! We'll make technological progress! Energy is most critical in transit. How is progress running in transportation? The last B-52 came off the line in 1962. The Air Force plans on retiring their B-52s by 2040.

And so, down to details of what's being fought over:

Medicare surtax - 3.8% on investment and 0.9% on earned income over $200,000 is about $20 billion a year, but hits a limited target, $40,000 or more on very rich people. If you're that rich, it isn't going to affect your consumption.

Social security privatization - This was the Great White Whale of financial advisors who can't do arithmetic. Get their hands on the biggest post of money, ever! Trouble was , when it got turned into legislation, there was one big mutual fund. Pretty soon it would control every corporation in the US. Tiger by the tail?

(Sure, it's absurdly literal, but any excuse to post Buck Owens is good enough for me)










So they content themselves with trying to steal the trust fund. Not getting far. In fact, with the payroll tax reduction in the last 2 years, general revenues have been transferred over to Social Security. Is that a good thing? It's over $90 billion a year, something like $1000/family over 90 million families, so that's been nice. Long term, though,it may increase the chance that Social Security gets thought of as a welfare program, which would make it vulnerable.

Medicare vouchers vs real insurance - the last 2 Republican budgets have had this trillion dollar elevation of theory over reality. The US, based on what we get & what we spend on health care, compared to what everybody else does, overspends by $1 trillion a year. It kills us on competitiveness as surely as it kills thousands of people every year.

The Democratic alternative takes a few steps in the right direction. The infamous $719 billion Medicare cuts are from the waste. Medical loss ratio minimums (which should get raised) are a pretty direct attack on the waste of insurance administration.
Preexisting conditions coverage, and dozens of other provisions of PPACA cut the fear factor. Do we hear about the real reasons for opposition?

Public education funding is another thing getting fought over. Not just university - now the scammers are moving in on secondary schools. Charter schools are big business, and truly scummy.



It's no accident that Charlie Pierce & Keith Olberman came out of sports reporting.

No lessons, no hugging (CRM,HPQ)

Soothsayers, mentalists and table knockeers have run the same scams for thousands of years, so maybe I should be less surprised that the exact same foolishness from the tech bubble is making a comeback.

To start with the one that everybody's already picking the bones of, Hewlett-Packard got suckered by a software firm called Autonomy. As John Hempton tells it, this one was pretty basic fraud:

There are lots of things to note - but I will limit myself to the simple (which I put in the Santangels presentation).

Sales were $870 million.

Receiveables were $330 million - which is four and a half months of receiveables.

Deferred revenue is $177 million - just over half of receiveables.

This is really perverse for a software company. Software companies sell stuff that is barely tangible - they sell it up front and for cash. They have very few receiveables.

They do however have an obligation to service that software for a long time after they sell it - so the unearned income is relatively large (usually a multiple of receiveables).

Autonomy was booking as income lots of cash it had not received (which is why the receiveables were large) and not booking any obligation to provide future services for that income.

 

One interesting thing about this is how many people missed:
HP Chief Executive Meg Whitman, who was a director at the company at the time of the deal, said the board had relied on accounting firm Deloitte for vetting Autonomy's financials and that KPMG was subsequently hired to audit Deloitte.
HP had many other advisers as well: boutique investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners to serve as its lead adviser, along with Barclays. The company's legal advisers included Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; Drinker Biddle & Reath; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which advised the board.
On Autonomy's side of the table were Frank Quattrone's Qatalyst Partners, which specializes in tech deals, as well as UBS, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. Slaughter & May and Morgan Lewis served as Autonomy's legal advisers on the deal.

& a little sting in the tail:

Multiple sources with knowledge of the HP-Autonomy transaction added that the big-name banks on Autonomy's side were brought in days before the final agreement was struck. These sources said the banks were brought on as favors for their long relationships with the companies, in a little-scrutinized Wall Street practice of crediting -- and paying -- investment banks that actually have little do with the deal.

So, moving along, we have a company called Salesforce.com. They have sales of $3 billion and a market cap of $22 billion. Their sales are increasing rapidly, margin high, so Cowabunga, right? Welllll - no. They actually lost money last year. Sales & marketing expense is rising even faster than revenue, and is now 52% of revenue. The company is picking & choosing expenses to claim profitability. I was ready to rant about that, but Tim Travis beat me to it:

Another big reason for the disconnect between GAAP and non-GAAP numbers is CRM's absurd accounting practices of eliminating stock compensation as an expense in the non-GAAP figures. This would be relevant for bond investors where the ability to pay off debt is all that matters, but for stock analysts, it is impossible to deny that stock compensation is an expense, and CRM's extremely liberal utilization of stock compensation is one of the worst examples that I have ever seen. Every quarter, shareholders are finding their ownership stakes reduced, and the reason why this doesn't cause outrage among the masses is that the stock has performed very well. Unimpressively, non-GAAP operating margins were 10% in the quarter, and while there were some charges that impacted results, CRM's farcical non-GAAP accounting doesn't even make the company look highly profitable on its "imaginary" basis.

I do have to admit they seem to have booked a proper amount of deferred revenue - so whatever is under the hood, it's not Autonomy. What is keeping it up? There are some hints about "institutional investors". There is certainly nothing obvious from the financials that would support the price. I'm going to file this away & keep a watch on. If anybody looks like they're going to acquire it....

The War on Christmas never ends

The war on Christmas has always been a cold one. This may be the year the shooting finally breaks out. Certainly, the pro-Christmas forces have become more militarized.

Like the Wild Bunch, but without the dynamite in their saddlebags ready to explode, they ride out destroying all in their path.

This year, not content with the usual Christmas stuffing, they're out to promote Luke 2, 21-38.

This stuff is pernicious.

Not Luke Russert pernicious, I'll grant you, but still:

21	¶ And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, Lev. 12.3 his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel Lk. 1.31 before he was conceived in the womb.
22	¶ And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord;
23	(as it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord; Ex. 13.2, 12 )
24	and to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons. Lev. 12.6-8
25	And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him.
26	And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ.
27	And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law,
28	then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said,
29	Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:
30	for mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
31	which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
32	a light to lighten the Gentiles, Is. 42.6 ; 49.6 and the glory of thy people Israel.
33	¶ And Joseph and his mother marveled at those things which were spoken of him.
34	And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against;
35	(yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also;) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.
36	¶ And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phan'u-el, of the tribe of Asher: she was of a great age, and had lived with a husband seven years from her virginity;
37	and she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.
38	And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem. Already, they're dragging in a  woman who's been a professional widow for 84 years? Going to get rough, I tell you true. Gird up for battle, minions!

Sheila Burgess shall

be gone from her job soon. Promoting highway safety while being a really, really bad driver *isn't the path to a long career.

I suppose this will be a lesson in the importance of safe habits, and get more publicity than she could manage to generate in years of doing her job normally, etc etc --- GOD, I'm boring myself.

Anyhow, that's life in the big city. In a way a good idea to have civilians involved in agencies they interact with from the other side. And it's certainly better than for people to take the path from administrator to miscreant - a Madoff or Corzine can do a lot more damage than an unempowered crook.

All in all, not a big job, and not a big deal. I went through the Globe comments, expecting to find at least some good jokes. Nada. C'mon - if you can't laugh about somebody screwing up big time - with nobody else getting hurt, when can you laugh?

Like the cop in The Onion Field who was so hammered that when he flipped his car they had to talk him into getting out of the upside down cruiser because he was still driving.

Or the old guy who gets a call from his wife : I heard there's a madman on I95 driving the wrong way. "No, Martha - there's hundreds!"

* My entire life is arranged to avoid having to drive. Clean record; no skills.

Update: She's already been reassigned. Looks like The Boston Driver's Handbook will still not be used at the RMV.

Whiskey Tears in the AssDeans Beer

Bloomberg had a pretty good story today about Admin Bloat at Purdue & a few other places. A little weak on the numbers, but awesome on the storytelling:

J. Paul Robinson, chairman of Purdue University’s faculty senate, strode through the halls of a 10- story concrete-and-glass administrative tower.

“I have no idea what these people do,” said Robinson, waving his hand across a row of offices, his voice rising.

 

It's great to finally see faculty Proxmiring* the bureaucrats. All I can do is salute, and skip down to the meat:

Purdue has a $313,000-a-year acting provost and six vice and associate vice provosts, including a $198,000 chief diversity officer. It employs 16 deans and 11 vice presidents, among them a $253,000 marketing officer and a $433,000 business school chief.

And of course, a link to the classic 2010 Goldwater Report , a quick tour of a few other colleges, and back to the land of Pete:

Professors also question Purdue’s brand spending, led by Teri Lucie Thompson, a former insurance executive who is the school’s $253,000-a-year vice president for marketing and media and chief marketing officer.

A recent campaign played with Purdue’s nickname of “boilermakers,” or factory workers who made steel boilers in the heartland. The marketing department came up with the slogan: “We are Purdue. Makers, all. What we make moves the world forward.”
The athletic department also tried to make over Purdue Pete, the school’s mascot, a muscle-bound, hard-hatted boilermaker with a hammer. Last year, football fans gave a chilly reception to a softer-looking Pete, produced at a cost of $25,000.
“He was booed off the field,” said Charles Bouman, a Purdue professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Not counting the Pete makeover, which was killed after two days, the rebranding campaign cost $500,000. That figure included $300,000 for broader brand research, which will be used for as long as a decade, said Chris Sigurdson, assistant vice president for external relations. Purdue said it uses donations, not tax or tuition money, for marketing.

Let's face it - dropping a shot in a beer is just nasty. The Marquette Margaritas have a much easier branding issue. As far as marketing?

Every time a Dean, Provost or VP slot is eliminated, a kitten gets its wings.

 



 

*For the kidz, Proxmire was a senator who liked to cut research funds by picking out studies with funny titles and waving them around in public.

Fun with the IRS. Also, Playmate Twins.

Anyone with minimal brain function and a pulse is aware that there are a lot of things in life that are all hat & no cattle. One of the latest arrivals in the long parade is the idea of nonprofits that will buy up debt - Cheap! & forgive it. The description of the plan in Nick Summers decent but credulous writeup should be enough to give away the game:

The group says it’s a 501(c)(4) organization, buying anonymous accounts that are bundled together, with little information about their owners.

OK. So they buy bundles of crap. Who benefits? Predatory collectors who've sifted through this and reduced it to people who are either dead or pretty convincingly don't really owe anything. Or banks, who couldn't otherwise dump it. And then, the purchasers ...  do nothing! Yes, it's a lot of noise & no teeth.

Megan McArdle followed on with a big bag of nothing. Felix Salmon raised the issue of : Just call it a gift. Which is sort of OK, except that gifts are personal, plus, if the "giver" only paid a nickel, how can they give a buck? (and of course, it ignores the fact that the whole thing is a sham.)

The real meat of What is a gift? is US vs Harris.

0

An old man gave about $1,000,000 to twin mistressses. (Yes, the girls shown above.
80s hair has not aged well. What can I say?)
2 cases where the IRS tried to tax them got combined and went all the way
to the Supremes before they said :OK, it's a gift. This precedent has a lot more application than you might think.

Tax law after the fold

Yes, this thing is still on

Busy week. Nothing to say that 65 million people haven't already said.

So, Newton & the Counterfeiter

Be back soon enough.

Endless Reserves of Gullibility

Last week, I quoted a pasage that mentions Divination. It was part of 1 Samuel 15, basically a throwaway line condemning thought as a substitute for obedience. Didn't make too much sense, so I hunted down an explanation. Beyond the simple definition - any path to supernatural knowledge other than what GOD says, it got weird. After a screamingly bogus tale of a disturbed boy & a fortune teller doing a con that's older than the pyramids, Bob DeWaay skipped past the obvious & went straight to the absurd:

One might ask, “How can it be that this worked”? The answer is that Satan has good reasons to make it work. The spirits tormenting the child were doing what evil spirits delight to do. The fortune-teller is connected to real spiritual knowledge.
 

One might more reasonably ask : How could Bob DeWaay be such a sucker?

Turns out the answer is : He probably wasn't. He wrote that stuff with the usual coping mechanism of hack writers - real spirits.

Fifteen to twenty years ago, when New Age wackiness looked to be gaining a foothold, I was a regular reader of the Skeptical Inquirer. It was always pleasant to sit down in the library & read about the latest in scams. For some reason, Therapeutic Touch seemed especially egregious.

Between The Amazing Randi, the internet, & various other things, the secular scammers seem to be in retreat. Now, though, I'm finally seeing what should have been obvious : Big time religion & the small time scammers need each other. In the days of pagans, when every nation could have their own gods, it could be pretty relaxed. But once the One True God became the notion, there had to be an explanation for why That Other God had so many followers. Sure, most followers will happily & quietly go along without thinking about that problem, but there's usually a few who start thinking about it. So, the role of the Deceiver is cast.

Anyhow, I've been more interested in politics than psychics lately. Which leads back to the same place everyone else has gone lately : Romneyland, a dark lagoon on the backside of Fantasy Island.

Smiles, everyone... smiles!

Single Bars & Single Women

We all remember what the missions of this blog are, right? To stop the growth of tuition, and to solve the onrushing resource depletion crises that are set to make the 21st century worse than the 14th. Pay attention, people! OK, so it's time for a break from that. Let's give you what you came here for.

Looking at the stats, what was that? In the last day:


kate beckinsale ass 11
archie bunkers place porn gifs 3
va declaration of rights 3
encyclopedia brown solves them all 2
fighting against the tax collectors 2
her.double.anal.drilling.xxx 2
hot college kids 2 kate beckinsale butt picture 2
legion of substitute heroes 2 letha weapons dp 2

Okayyyyy.....

Most of you were probably a bit disappointed. Maybe time to try something else. It's not like I have a lot to say about pubic hair removal. And the intersection of sex & Archie Bunker's place? Not going there, ever. Soooo...

Remember TV movies? Nowadays, that mostly means something arty on premium cable or a SyFy crapfest about a 2 headed shark.

Back in the days of 3 networks, there was always something in the disease of the week school, or with one of the holy trinity : Elizabeth Montgomery, Barbara Eden or Robert Vaughn. None of them were in the greatest TV movie ever

Single Bars & Single Women was released in 1984, when the networks were in the early stages of decline. As Keith Laumer would tell you (endlessly), decline can be a fun, fun time. What made the movie great? Sure, there was the music.

Mostly there was Shelley Hack

 

Also, the ever mediocre Tony Danza & Paul Michael GLaser. Christine Lahti, just because.

And, above all, there was Shelley's leather coat. I can't find a picture!  Bleg, bleg, bleg?

A Story Told by White People

(Revised 10/28 to be less of an asshole)

It's way past time to air out & beat like a rug the central myth of the 2012 election : The Welfare King. It's the story, created by plutocrats and spread, openly & through back channels, down the pathways of darkness, that gives body to all the old ugliness & fake nobility to the rankest tribalism of white America. It's not directly racism, but that's the fertilizer.

In its basic form, the myth is that Obama is King of the Hobos, out to build a coalition of dependency while Noble Sir Willard will unbind the Galtian Heroes that the rest of us are holding back.
.

 

 

In the form I first heard it:
Obama: "I'm going to give you free insurance. Free food. Free housing and jobs!"
Crowd: "Why do we need jobs?"


From Romney, this is expressed in the "free stuff" speech about Obama & the NAACP, the 47% nonsense, and the endlessy repeated lies about repealing the welfare work requirement.

Of course, nothing like this is found in any actual speeches or policies of the last 4 years. So it's easy to look at the people who spout it as outliers, deluded souls. But the thing to remember is that most of them are aware that it's not literally true. It's a unifying myth, expressing something that most of us have felt at one time or another. The point is to make the followers feel that they are the chosen, and the Others are worthless.

There are some people in the world who are naturally good & decent. Many, like me, are prone to resentments (no matter how many second chances and undeserved blessings we've had). With all the history & diversity of the US, especially for those of us who were here a long time ago, there are easy, evil paths for this to emerge. We grew up surrounded by the detritus of race, class, homophobia, ancient wrongs, empire, heroism, mistakes, and all that a self-invented nation produced and smashed on its way up in the world. Mostly, when some unresolved garbage comes bubbling up, we have enough restraint to face it down, look at the origin, and Get Over It.

So, when those of us not pure of heart see the Beast not confronted, but unleashed as Virtue, it's a very scary thing.

It needs to be confronted directly in it's falseness & hatefulness. Then we can chill out & dance a bit.

Our text this weekend is a meditation on initiative from 1Samuel 15:

Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”
⁴ Then Saul summoned the people and ^[c]numbered them in Telaim, 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 men of Judah. ⁵ Saul came to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the valley. ⁶ Saul said to the Kenites, “Go, depart, go down from among the Amalekites, so that I do not destroy you with them; for you showed kindness to all the sons of Israel when they came up from Egypt.” So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites. ⁷ So Saul ^[d]defeated the Amalekites, from Havilah as you go to Shur, which is ^[e]east of Egypt. ⁸ He captured Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. ⁹ But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were not willing to destroy them utterly; but everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed.

¹⁰ Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying, ¹¹ “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from ^[f]following Me and has not carried out My commands.” And Samuel was distressed and cried out to the Lord all night. ¹² Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul; and it was told Samuel, saying, “Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself, then turned and proceeded on ^[g]down to Gilgal.” ¹³ Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed are you of the Lord! I have carried out the command of the Lord.” ¹⁴ But Samuel said, “What then is this ^[h]bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the ^[i]lowing of the oxen which I hear?” ¹⁵ Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and oxen, to sacrifice to the Lord your God; but the rest we have utterly destroyed.” ¹⁶ Then Samuel said to Saul, “Wait, and let me tell you what the Lord said to me last night.” And he said to him, “Speak!”

¹⁷ Samuel said, “Is it not true, though you were little in your own eyes, you were made the head of the tribes of Israel? And the Lord anointed you king over Israel, ¹⁸ and the Lord sent you on a ^[j]mission, and said, ‘Go and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are exterminated.’ ¹⁹ Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord, but rushed upon the spoil and did what was evil in the sight of the Lord?”

²⁰ Then Saul said to Samuel, “I did obey the voice of the Lord, and went on the ^[k]mission on which the Lord sent me, and have brought back Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. ²¹ But the people took some of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the choicest of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God at Gilgal.” ²² Samuel said,

“Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
As in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
And to heed than the fat of rams.
²³ “For rebellion is as the sin of divination,
And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
He has also rejected you from being king.”

 

Remember kids : Bible is wack. Ain't enough you kill all the babies, you can't wait to dinner time to slaughter the sheep.

I'd never heard of Bob Meister

Now he's my hero. He's the Presiddant ot the Council of UC Faculty Associations & did an analysis of the University of California systems bond issues. Turns out, they built a lot of expensive stuff, pledged tuition reveue to cover it, and then started hiking tuition.

So now we finally have open warfare between faculty & Regents. Part 3 gets downright mean;

On October 20, UC issued a press release[1] (10/20/09) in which VP’s Taylor and Lenz respond to my Open Letter to Students: “They Pledged Your Tuition.” The UC press release confirms two major points I made:
1. It admits that all student tuition (including the education fee) is now pledged as part of the collateral for UC construction bonds.
2. It assumes that it would be wrong to use the Education Fee to pay for construction, or to service construction debt.
I say it assumes this because VP Taylor did not in any way qualify his categorical statement to the press on 10/20 that “educational fees are not used to pay debt service.”

I think I've mentioned that out of state tuition at USC is higher than tuition at Harvard. One problem about overbuilding? Tuition gets so high, enrollment declines, buildings go unused.

And the battle goes on.   Bady & Konczal in Dissent have a lot of history, & some rather damning info on the Regents:

UC Regent Richard Blum, for example, is not only the largest shareholder in two for-profit universities, Career Education Corporation and ITT Educational Services, but also, as Peter Byrne reported in a 2010 exposé, oversaw investments for the UC’s $63 billion portfolio at a time when the UC invested in the very same two for-profits.
 

 (found via a somewhat disappointing Crooked Timber post)

Meanwhile, back at the sinkhole

A while back, a sinkhole opened in Louisiana. Little sinkhole grew into a mighty pond. Now it's getting ugly:

Bubbling gasses & swirling oil. Still no clear word on what all is going on underground, where there are many holes & much strange stuff in storage.

Details are important in energy. Get them wrong, and you've got a $5,000,000 dry hole, or a major disaster. Which is why the Associated Press had Jonathan Fahey write its latest survey of the energy picture. Fahey is pretty close to clueless, (I'm pretty sure he has no idea what the differences are between hydrocarbons and carbohydrates, or shale oil & oil shale) but unlike some AP reporters, seems willing to listen to people who know better. He updated his story to fix an error in prior peak, although there is still a huge comparability problem, and he still doesn't know what a hydrocarbon is. On the whole though, it's a reasonably decent look at the absolute basics of where we are. Not so good on where we will be in 8 years, but the future is usually a lot cloudier, isn't it? A few years ago, people were still promoting cellulosic ethanol (which now looks like a loser) while underestimating the tight oil potential. Now, I think he's underestimating the problems that are about to his corn ethanol, and overestimating the duration of tight oil - but that's more or less the area of opinion. Neither of us are in the top 1000 experts on where liquid fuels are headed, which brings us to the main point. (YES! A main point, for once)

(Pause to anticipate Hurricane Sandy, and remember Isaac, yet another trouble visited on Louisiana exacerbated by all that's been dumped on that state)

The whole model of journalism as reporters calling people and writing stuff down is failing. In energy, for a while, Matt Simmons had broken through it, and was bringing expertise directly to the public. Then he died, and it went back to some reporter with a communications degree and a tape recorder. Nowadays, what with the industry clearly dying and all, they aren't  loading up on new talent. My dream - that people who actually know what's what will inform the public directly, is still, far away. Probaby the worst case is climate change. How many people are even aware that September 2012 was the warmest September on record? Yet long debunked calumnies against climate scientists still circulate freely. I dream of the day that something ike the Dover case - where Intelligent Design scammers were forced to defend their rubbish in court, and failed miserably, will happen in oh so many more fields.

Throw in a strange DeathCult called the Republican Party, and the modern system of journalism became worse than useless very quickly. If you assume that there are 2, and only 2 sides, to everything, what happens when one side decides that reality is irrelevant? Exactly what has happened in the last 10 years.

 

 (Hence, the Romney approach : Media friendly! Like midwestern weather : If you don't like Romney's policies, wait 15 minutes. (The reality, of course, is that the fascist* advisor's will set policy) In a world where media still had a function I wouldn't have lost my breakfast this morning. Asked what they like about Romney voters cited  - Honesty.

Honestly, I canna take it no more.

*Aware that Fascist is a loaded term, but have to go with accuracy.

U R. what U R & U ain't what U ain't

One of the greatest jobs in the world is advice columnist "Ask Wendy" for the Santa Royale Gazette. To get in the mood for my audition column,

As it happens, Megan McArdle is also trying to break into this business. I shall leave it to your judgement whether this is something I should worry about, or just another sign of the collapse of Western Civilization.

On to some letters!

Wendy;

I've always been GTG, and my boyfriend too. Last night, I forgot the safe word after a Cleveland Steamer, and left him for 3 hours with a ball gag. Now he's angry with me about the spinach stains and breath issues. Should I distract him with anal?

Linda,

Davis,CA

Linda;

In this life, we are confronted with choices. Who can say that there is a single way, other that those who do say so? But is their way your way? We cannot know what tomorrow will bring. Is reduction of suffering an increase of pleasure? Is pleasure selfisness, when it is both given and received? All we know is that there is or is not a plan, and that the pathway to forgiveness may be lubricated with pain..

Wendy

Signed,

Committed

Dear Wendy:

I am starting to think my girlfriend might not ba a virgin. It's something about the way she dresses. Should I ask her? I have included a picture:

Yours,

Tagg

Tagg:

Ask her children, or the guy in your office with the huge classic porn collection.

Wendy

Wendy;

I just think you're special, and think this song expresses that:

PS : What are you wearing?

Committed

Dear Committed:

A blue dress & pearl earrings, as always.
Yours,
Wendy

Wendy:

Why is there suffering in the world? I do all I can, but it just gets to be too much. I am on Terra putting into place a psychohistorical plan to deliver the most powerful government into the hands of a lunatic cult, Suddenly, the 60% chance that this will result in global thermonuclear war seems like a bad thing. Is there a way to override my progamming?

R. Daneel Olivaw
Belmont, MA

Daneel;

Belmont, MA? I see the Yale Lacrosse team was in your area last month. Don't think you New Haven boys can put anything by me.

So, that's the audition. Job is Mine, idnit?

& if you have any problems - downpup at yahoo.com will solve them, at wholesale or slightly above.

3 Schools of Thoughtless

A question running through this blog is : What does a University President have to do to get fired? In the 3 track system that more or less exists today (Public, Private,Profit), which one is the quickest to react?

Call it the Graham Spanier derby.

Having your entire inner circle facing felony charges & the school getting whacked with $50 million in fines & damages is apparently still a deal-breaker. That seems a given, but what sort of lower level screwing up is enough?


Good old Linda Katehi still has her job at  UC Davis. Having dragged her school's name into the mud, and ensured that no sensible teenager will want to go anywhere near there, she has been haded her punishment : Send every kid that was assaulted a personal apology. (21 letters to be taped up over 21 toilets) The school has paid $1 million or so in legal fees, and another million or so in damages so far, but, Linda still has her job. And an award.

I don't like to think or write about for-profit schools, but The U of Phoenix (aka The Apollo Group) was in the news this week. They're closing down 25 "Campuses" & 90 smaller centers. Enrollment has fallen from 475,000 to 328,000 in 2 years. The whole industry, whose current share is 11% of students, will most likely implode once Uncle Sugar cuts off the loan money. It's really hard for a for-profit to compete with a non-profit in general. In most businesses, the for-profits are protected by the IRS Unrelated Business income tax rules, but education is a listed function for 501(c)3 protection. DeVry is not likely to have a Nobel Laureate teaching physics. There was always a hope that having the for-profits around might lead to other schools getting a bit more efficient, a bit more useful to a wider public. There has been a bit of outreach, free & open courses, but efficiency? Can we even dream?

We do salute all the kids working their way through college, even if the degree they eventually get will be worth a letter of apology from Linda Katehi.








Kings College is the little school that was foolish enough to hire Dinesh D'Souza at One Million Dollars a year as president. So, at last a new standard : Bring infamy & ridicule on your school while not bothering to show up for work. Even at a small (about 400 students, although they hide this by using lots of percentages and almost no numbers) religious school, there's going to be somebody who takes the mission seriously, despite the students tendency to bail after one or 2 years & 50% graduation rate.

I'm stockpiling tomatoes for the next college president to go down in flames.

Swindletop Forever!

In the early days of the oil industry, if you popped a gusher the fools would rush in with money. Drill a mess of ever poorer wells, to ever greater costs and descending returns.

Not all that much has changed. The cowboy spirit still rules.

Oh, sure, there's proper spacing, much better underground mapping, much higher costs, bigger stakes - - -OK, a lot has changed. But not the dynamic of people so anxious to get in they - well lets consider WHX . Whiting set up this trust as to raise some money by selling a definite amount of future production from a field to investors. They've been quite careful to always explain the terms of the deal in quarterly reporting. The dividend is now about $2.76/share. In 3 years or so, the contracted amount runs out, and the dividend stops. It's trading at $7.23 right now, which seems reasonable.

In Mid-July it was selling for $18. People were buying it to get a 12% yield - not even looking at the BIG BOLD PRINT that said when it would run out. A chap named Shane Blackmon blew the whistle. Pop! Shall we see how Shane was thanked?

FAST MONEY Comments (7)

The sole INTENT of this story is to create fear/panic selling, causing the stock price to COLLAPSE, allowing the author and anyone else who is in on this SCAM, to profit handsomely. This is at least the 3rd such article on WHX in the past 1.5 years, always 1 month before the stock goes ex-div. This author is DEVOID of integrity! This is sheer price MANIPULATION!

18 Jul, 11:56 AMReply

 

But most people came around pretty quickly.

That's the kind of silliness that can happen when the promoter is being honest? So when a company actively sets out to deceive?

I'm surprised there hasn't been more oil related scamming at the low level, but that may just show how enforcement is done these days. In the big picture, there is a constant flood of disinformation about energy independence, drilling on federal land, 3,000,000 new oilfield jobs, going back to being the worlds #1 producer, smiting the Saracens, and just about any other bogus claim that somebody finds it convenient to make. Chill, & visit theoildrum.com
 

My Name is Nobody

A day when the Sooners went down to Texas & ran amuck is a day for Westerns. When the genre was played out in the US the Italians & Spaniards produced some fabulous silliness. Our text today is a 1973 classic.

or to go to the center of things, the saloon scene:

For all the lucky skunks in the world, there are lots more unlucky. Upside down pistols, bad medicine. Is  there a point to any of this?

Not so's you'd notice. If you want to save Jane from hanging, you know what needs to be done. In any event, you can count on the chorus.  T-t-that's all, folks!

Fox News, Springfield

One of the best excuses for avoiding elections is that nothing much changes that will personally affect you. For most of US history, that's been more or less true for most* people. The ascension of C+ Augustus was pretty unfortunate if you were a Reservist suddenly dropped into 2 tours of Iraq**, or lost your job, house and/or pension in the gutting of the US economy, but that stuff was unintentional damage.***

Keeping the effects of policy away from the main run of Americans was deliberate, of course. Maybe put some of the social issues in the platform to rouse the base, but don't push drop them on the rest of the public which moved into the 21st century even while the platform retreated into the 17th.

This years platform takes the War on People directly at us. With the True Believers having taken charge, there's no more time for denial.

They want to stop abortion, even though Willard bankrolled a contract where he might have to pay for one.

They want to restrict contraception. Starting with insurance plans, noving on to drugstores.

Medicare.  This one is personal for those of us in our early 50s, but EVERYONE will be paying for abandoning cost controls.

Taxing those with nothing. Their tax plan doesn't add up, at the most basic level. It's a 20% cut! It's not a cut! Yes, we did a more or less revenue neutral cut in marginal rates in 1986. Which means it's done. All the doable benefit cuts were done 26 years ago. What's the real plan? Buying it sight unseen is insane. If you listen to the background rhetoric, they clearly are planning some new non-income tax.

If you're gay, black, female or under 55, I don't have to tell you any of this, do I?

They're going to take away our porn, and the rest of the Bill of Rights, except the 2nd amednment.


Court packing, unaccountable vote counting and restricting who can vote are intended to lock in the loonies, no matter how badly their  schemes screw the rest of us.



*Did I miss any qualifying modifiers?
**Much worse if you were an Iraqi, but then you had no say in the matter
***Not to forget that the Romney program doubles down on all that. I've covered it.

The Brigadier & the Golf Widow

John Cheever, in the days of missile crises, wrote a story about people expecting society wide doom as a cover for their collapsing personal situations.  This is something that all us Prophets of Doom have to watch out for, but

this is not the time or the place. It's also a trap to not see the societal level issues that can be behind your personal difficulties. Really, really, easy in a society where hiding the social truth in a veneer of individualism is a recession proof industry. (Hi, Megan McArdle!)

The kings of delusion have long been airline pilots. Before deregulation, these guys were trained by the government then moved into very highly paid sinecures with union protection in an industry where routes & fares were doled out.

Of course, they considered themselves rugged individualists, self made men. Then, inch by inch, step by step slowly it turned. Suddenly, airlines were collapsing, pensions disappearing, wages getting squeezed. Now it's reached the point of farce. Bankruptcy can somehow be filed with the managers who file it getting richer instead of losing their jobs.  American Airlines is currently a disaster. Should we support the pilots? Damn straight But we're allowed to laugh. (Although not about the baggage handlers getting crushed down to minimum wage) Just like we could laugh a bit at the referees lockout in the NFL. Since refs are part timers, many spend their off season busting unions.

An uglier, more traditional version of class warfare is going down at Progressive Gourmet.
On the morning of July 16, workers at Progressive Gourmet were told they had to reapply for their jobs through a temporary employment agency that would not provide health insurance and other benefits they received as employees of the Wilmington specialty food-distribution company.
Those who refused to agree by 9 a.m. the next day were let go. In all, more than 70 about one-third of the company’s workforce lost their jobs.

This stuff could not happen if we maintained a functioning culture. The creation of an auto-centric, suburban culture with an absurdly high drinking age may not have been intended to separate people from their traditions, but it certainly has worked out that way.

Ah well.

You storm the Bastille with the mob that erupts, not the pony you wished for.