This woman is stalking me...

Here she is waiting outside my apartment, just waiting to pounce.  I'm scared.

This is Angie Hicks, of Angie's List fame.  Ever since I went to her website to check up on a local business, she won't leave me alone.  Of course they wanted me to buy into their service, which I didn't want to do.  First they sent me a few polite email "invitations" to join, which I ignored.  Then they called in the Big Gun, Angie herself.

It seems like every day Angie sends me a personal plea to come to her site.  (I think that's some sort of code word.)  She wants me, badly.  I told her I was married, and asked here to leave me alone.  She won't take no for an answer.  Listen to me Angie...."no" means NO!  I've moved on.  

I think she must have learned about perseverance from the Wall Street Journal.  If you've ever subscribed to the WSJ, then let your subscription lapse, you'll know what I'm talking about.  They hound you unmercifully.  They must have spent a small fortune sending me mailers.  

Then they resorted to calling me on the phone.  "Please.....PLEEEEEEEEEEASE come back" they begged.  I reminded them I'm on the no-call list, but they said we already had a "relationship"....thank God for that Evade and Escape book I found at the half-price used book store.

Now it's Professional Builder magazine.  It's nothing more that a book of ads, and I don't read it anymore.  When my subscription ran out (it was free to begin with) they fired up their email pleadings.  They send me half a dozen a day, really!  I've tried to unsubscribe, but they ignore my request.

What is it with these people?  Do they somehow think I have money?  Have they seen my penny jar?  Are they all Angie's kinfolks?  

I think I need to officially sign up with that witness protection program.  *Shhh....I'm not here*

S

 

It will all be OK....just take a deep breath. No wait, DON'T take a deep breath.

This is what Beijing, China has looked like for the past 7 days....smog so thick you can barely see across the street.  This is what China's 20-year unbridled growth spurt (tsunami?) has brought them.  And they say the average days aren't much better, either.  Yikes! 

Air pollution numbers registered this as 533 "Somethings" (my tech speak), with 20 Somethings being considered OK to breathe.  A reporter got on a train and traveled south from Beijing and it got even worse, topping out 480 miles down the line at 610 Somethings.  They had to travel over 900 miles south before it dropped to "only" 83 Somethings, still over 400% above the level deemed still healthy to breathe.

Where am I going with this?  We here in the West are worried to death about the rise of the Chinese Tiger.  Before long their economy will overtake ours experts say.  We already owe them over a Trillion dollars.  WE'RE DOOMED!

Or are we?  Wouldn't you imagine many of their 1.35 BILLION people will sooner rather later be dropping dead from breathing this soup?  I doubt that will be good for morale.  If I was the average Chinese guy I'd be sweating bullets, assuming I could somehow suck in enough oxygen for my brain to comprehend my dire predicament.

New topic:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the heyday of the automobile industry may be behind us.  Yes, right now our automakers are enjoying record sales, up to 16m sales from a low of just 10.4M at the depth of The Crooked Banker Depression of '08.  But a lot of this is just satisfying pent up demand from the past few years....it probably won't be a lasting boom.

The news reports in recent years have led us to believe that the Chinese auto market is insatiable, and that they will buy more than enough cars to keep the automakers afloat long term.  Really?  See above story.

Here's the scary part to me:  many young people don't even like cars anymore.  *GASP!*

When I was a kid it was a rite of passage to spend the pre-dawn hours of your 16th birthday camped out at the DMV, waiting to take your drivers test and get your license.  Today only 69.5% of 19-year-olds have even bothered getting a drivers license.

This is how kids spend their time today.  I'm not sure if this is a B&W picture or if the kid is really just that pale?

Listen up you little f__kers!  Turn off your computers....learn to drive....get a car.  'Cause if you don't buy 'em they won't have the R&D money to keep making cool cars for me, and I like cool cars!

Ummm....well, turn off your computers and go out and learn to drive after you finish reading my blog.  :)

S

The Dallas Morning News is a worthless piece of s__t!

Finally....a legitimate use for The Dallas Morning News.

If I had a bird, I wouldn't insult it by lining its cage with the Dallas Morning News.  

Many years ago Dallas had two daily newspapers, the Morning News and the (afternoon) Dallas Times Herald.  The Times Herald eventually closed its doors and the very next day (as I recall) classified advertising rates in the Morning News nearly doubled.  Bastards!

With the increasing popularity of internet news, most print newspapers have seen nothing but financial losses in recent years.  When the Dallas Morning News let go most of their writers to save a buck, the size of the paper was nearly cut in half....there wasn't much left worth reading.  AND the price shot up.  AND they lost 20% of their subscribers the next year.  Including ME!

I suspect they're staying afloat these days by being the local print and delivery source for a few national papers such as The New York Times and (I believe) The Wall Street Journal.  Trouble is, they can't reliably deliver them.  Literally half the time K has to call the paper and tell them they missed our delivery.  It's an ongoing battle.  

I quit!  Today we switched our national newspaper subscription to a digital online version only.  As I see it, though, I didn't fire the Dallas Morning News.  They fired themselves.  Good riddance.

S

A little of this, a little of that....

The news hodge-podge clogging my radar today:

On a scale of 1-12, I read that the pollen count in Dallas today is 11.4.  That explains a lot. *cough, gasp, wheeze*

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The Wall Street Journal reports the newest "exciting field of academic inquiry is 'boredom studies'."  Yeah, I had to read it twice, too.  Technically it's referred to as the Study of Monotony.  It boggles my mind to think that college professors (tenured, no doubt) can make a living studying boredom.  

And Canada seems to be the hotbed of boredom studies.  Wow!... that's something to be proud of!  There's even a "Boring Conference" in East London with power point presentations on topics like "toast".  Jeez.  Talk about....wait for it....a boring conference!

This reminds me of when I was a college senior looking for a slam-dunk grade-point-enhancing course that would get me a diploma. I found it in the "Sociology of Leisure".  The professor was a tie-dyed T-shirt, beads, and sandals wearing kinda guy.  As the Vietnam War was in full bloom, the prof told us we would all pass, guaranteed, as he wouldn't want it on his conscience that he flunked someone who was then drafted and later killed in Vietnam.  In the spirit of the subject, I cut his class most of the rest of the semester.  Absolutely true story.

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I read on Yahoo news that a recent study found that in every major US city except one the average family income wasn't enough to buy the average priced new car.  It seems that after allowing for inflation the average family income has been essentially flat for the past 30 or so years while new car prices have increased dramatically.

What to make of this?  First, our system of economic rewards is broken.  The system is rigged with favorable tax and deduction and exemption rules and even subsidies for some, at the expense of the majority.  We need a new tax system that is fair across the board. If we can do that everything else should fall into place.

Second, cars are too damn expensive!  All these electronic systems and government mandated features cost a lot of money.  

But to me the main thing I took away was....guess which major city in the study had the highest average family income?  Washington DC, due to all the extremely well-paying government jobs there.  What we pay our "civil servants" is absurd!  Go to "federal government employment opportunities" and see the wages they are (WE are) paying.  IMO these paper-pushin' water cooler queens need to have their pay and benefits slapped down in line with what similar jobs in the private sector are paying and no more.  The dog is tired of being wagged by the tail!  Maybe our budget crunch will fix that.

Come to think of it....a lot of my Sociology of Leisure classmates went on to careers in government employment. It was a perfect fit! 

That's all I have.  Bye.  ;)

S

Are we being played for chumps?

The "fiscal cliff" is apparently the only news out there these days.  That's all I hear...fiscal cliff...fiscal cliff...blah...blah...blah.  Both sides agree spending will have to be cut.  The devil will be in the details, I understand, but at least it's a start.  The sticking point is taxing the rich.  The Democrats say it will bring in a gazillion dollars and help reduce the deficit.  The Republicans say it will cripple job creation.

Here is my question:  How will raising taxes on the rich, the "job creators", hinder hiring?

The argument seems to be that if taxes go up on the rich (actually if the Bush tax cuts aren't extended to the rich), they won't have the capital (money) to finance new entrepreneurs or fund business expansion, therefore no new jobs.  

Here's the fly in that ointment....the rich already have TRILLIONS of dollars (the Wall Street Journal estimates $1-2 Trillion) sitting on the sidelines not currently invested.  Our economy isn't strong enough to support all these new businesses the Republicans envision, and there isn't any place in China or Europe to invest this money either.  (China is slowing and Europe is a basket case.)  It just sits.

The money to invest in new job creation is there NOW.  How will any MORE money in the pockets of the wealthy create any new jobs?  This money has been in their pockets for a DECADE, since the GW Bush administration.  So where are the jobs?

Somebody please (honest question) explain in terms I can understand how tax cuts to the rich will somehow create new jobs while the money sitting there right now can't?

The wealthy seem to like the sound of the term "job creators" and have made it their justification for existing, and their Republican puppets in Congress happily spout it every chance they get without ever explaining it.

In fairness, let me admit right now I think an entirely different set of special interests are pulling the strings on their (Democratic) puppets in Congress, too.  It's a pretty sleazy game they play in Washington and you and I are the big losers.  If you'll just follow the money trail you'll see who the big winners are.

S

Where has all the common sense gone?

For the life of me I just can't figure out Mitt Romney's economic logic.  I've enjoyed a pretty good formal education and nearly 40 years of business experience, but more than anything I am most proud of my common sense.  Mitt is a brilliant man, no doubt, but his plan to create jobs and grow the economy just defies (my) common sense.

He says he wants to cut taxes for the rich, or at least include them in the extension of the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts, and that they (the rich) will then use this increased wealth to create jobs.  But from all I've read, including in the Wall Street Journal (hardly a leftist rag), there is somewhere between one and two TRILLION dollars in capital sitting on the sidelines waiting to be invested long-term.  What's missing is consumer demand to buy more of the stuff these new businesses/jobs would produce.  If there's no demand, why produce it?

Because of their vast numbers, estimated to be 50% of all Americans, the middle class drives our consumer-based economy.  The poor can't buy enough to create jobs because they, by definition, have no money.  The rich have plenty of money, but there aren't enough of them to buy in the mass quantities needed to drive industry.  That leaves the middle class to "spend, baby, spend".

When the middle class has enough money (and is confident enough to part with some of it), then demand will increase, businesses will produce more goods and services to satisfy the demand, and jobs will be created, in that order.  To think you can create jobs and THEN wait for demand to catch up defies common sense.  No business is going to pay employees to just sit around and wait.

I'm sick of hearing about how the rich need more money.  I'm not saying they shouldn't have more money.  What I am saying is what we ALL need right now is for the MIDDLE CLASS to have more money, for it is they, not the rich, who will return us to prosperity.  That's just common sense.

S

THIS is why there are protests in the streets!

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Eugene Isenberg is retiring as CEO of Nabors Industries (oil and gas) and is taking with him $100 million in retirement pay.  One hundred million dollars!  The report noted that the company was contracturally obligated to pay him the $100 million even if he was fired.  What kind of dumb-ass Board of Directors would agree to that?  Oh, and for the record, his company's stock is down 20% for the year, a performance well below the industry average.  


Earlier this year 57% of Nabors' stockholders who voted opposed the compensation package being offered to their executives.  But of course it was non-binding, so the Board of Directors gave 'em the money anyway.  And if you're curious....I looked it up....Nabors' directors (in 2009) each received $213,440 in compensation and stock.  (Directors usually work only a few hours a month.)  Sounds like a pretty sweet "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" deal, huh?


I'm all for our best and brightest people making lots of money for doing exceptional work, but where is the line between "lots of money" and "rip off"?  To me, $100,000,000 for turning out the lights and closing the door is too much.  This is a rip off!  If I was a Nabors' stockholder I'd be out the door, too.


S