I've been dealing with some awful news for a day now. Wasn't sure what to say about it, or even IF I should say anything about it on my blog.
A friend of mine died about 24 hours ago. He worked 3rd shift and died at work. His name was Jon McCall, was a husband and a father of 2 kids who aren't that different than my son in age.
I didn't know Jon that well until a couple of years ago. Once a year, my Dad goes all out and sponsors a trip to Disneyland for all of his kids and grandkids. Jon and I, primarily due to the fact that our boys like to ride the same rides, spent a lot of time together walking around the park, and it was the first time I got to really know him.
I really, really enjoyed his company.
This has been a pretty crappy year for me in a lot of ways. There were some bright spots to be sure: I really like my new Navy unit. My son made a travel baseball team and the season was a blast. An exhausting blast, but a blast nonetheless.
So, the year wasn't devoid of joy, but with the economy, and trying to captain the ship of my business away from the rocks in an increasingly turbulent economic sea, it's been a nerve-wracking year. It's absolutely drained me.
It's been going on for a year and a half now, and I have to admit, it's been wearing me down.
Things like Jon's passing, though? It puts things in perspective. My heart breaks for his two wonderful kids. They are absolutely a joy to be around. Well-behaved, happy, bright, athletic. I just love them to death. He had been married to his wife for almost two decades, and she, just like everybody else in the family, is a remarkable and wonderful person.
How small my trials and tribulations seem in comparison. Every day I live to try and keep moving forward is a gift that I shouldn't ever take for granted.
There was a time, when deployment was a lot more likely, that I couldn't help but think what it would be like for my boy if he were to be handed the folded flag. It was sad to think of. To think that he would grow up with a hole in his heart where my memory would reside. That all his memories of me, regardless of how happy, would be bittersweet in the remembering. I have no doubt that he would have grown up to be a fine, quality young man in my absence.
Even so, there's a sadness about losing your parent that simply can't be reasoned away.
I hate whining, even though I do way more than my share of it. No matter how self-pitying I am, I know that there are people with real difficulties they're dealing with. Life isn't fair, but it's especially unfair to the people who have to deal with losing a loved one.
I remember learning this lesson early in my life. That I needed to appreciate the people in my life while they were around. There's no upside to waiting to tell people how you feel about them. I'd like to say that I hugged my son extra tight after hearing the terrible news about Jon. That's not true, though. I've always hugged him extra tight.
Life is a gift and we should appreciate every moment of it, and every minute we spend with our fellow passengers in time.
In the mean time, there is absolutely nothing I can do or say to Jon's family that will lessen the severity of this blow. The futility of it all is so maddenning.
All I can do is think how fortunate I was, after not-knowing him for so long, to have had a chance to get to know him and to form a genuine friendship.
I'm not a person who thinks there's a silver lining to everything. I also don't think everything is part of God's plan, unless we believe in a god who believes in capriciously killing off his creations and cruelly makes them suffer through war and disease. Sometimes things are just bad, and there's no getting around that.
So, Jon's passing? No offense to anybody's beliefs, but I don't think there's anything good about that at all.
However, there was good in his life. So, that's what I'll try to remember. Godspeed, Jon. You left us too soon.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Friday... things have settled down...
It was like I got off the plane on Tuesday and stepped right into a storm of craptacular crappularity. Texas was so awesome this time around. When I got back, it was crisis after crisis for the next few days.
We got a few checks in, so we can breathe for a week or so. We'll repeat the entire process in a couple of weeks when the next payroll is due. Such are the joys of small business ownership in the great recession.
The weather is getting cold. It was in the 40s this morning when I woke up. In a way, that's a good sign. We need the bad weather to get us jump-started. In this business, our busy-season starts pretty much with the first hard freeze in December or January and ends whenever the thunderstorms end in the Summer.
Last year, we never had a hard freeze or big thunderstorms. Hence, we had a crappy year. I should be happy to see the seasons change and with it, perhaps, my fortunes.
I'm always sad to see the bad weather come, though. It's depressing here in the Winter. It's dark, cold, nothing much good is going on. Of course, ski season starts. I will be taking Logan to the slopes with his brand-new skis (a very late birthday present.) The ski shop still hasn't gotten them in, but they assure me that in late October, they should arrive. We'll probably get out on the slopes a half dozen times. So, that's nice.
As athletic and active as Logan is, it's good to get him one more sport he can do.
We have the pitching machine in the basement so we can work on his swing to get ready for baseball. I'll also be taking some stuff to the warehouse so I can work on pitching with him.
Next week, I think he's got tryouts for a somewhat competitive basketball team. We haven't worked on basketball at all. If he doesn't make it, we'll sign him up for rec. Tonight, I went in the back yard to watch him shoot some hoops and he did great. Couldn't say whether or not he'll make the team, but he seems pretty good to me.
Pretty soon, I'll start moving sports gear to the warehouse so Logan can work on pitching and shooting hoops indoors when the weather turns bad.
In a way, I guess I'm looking forward to the travel baseball season kicking off again. At that point, the weather will be starting to turn warm again. After next month, I'll have my June and July drills taken care of. So, I'll have those months off from the Navy. As long as I can get May off with my December drill, that pretty much takes care of the travel season.
My bud, Patrick, showed me a Tabata interval timer application for the droid. So, I tried my first tabata workouts. Did push-ups, sit-ups and knee bends. I also did some negatives on the chin-up bar. I need to do that routine once every 3 or 4 days, I think. It's a great way to stay in shape and it doesn't take much time. Of all things, the place where I feel it most are in my legs.
Last fitness test, my push-ups were not very good. Sit-ups (curl-ups for the Navy), were better than expected. The run was about what I would have figured. I also have a mountain of laundry at the house, so I think a rowing machine workout is in order.
My last Melancon guitar got a qualifying bid on e-bay. So, it will sell. They sold for more than I thought they would. My Gibson SG sold for less, really. All in all, I did okay selling off the 4 guitars. Things are going to be tight, financially, at least until January, I think.
I put up one of my guns for sale, and that's what's going, next. Seems like the market for guns is a little soft at the moment. I'll know more after the auction is complete.
Traded some more e-mails with the berthing coordinator and it appears that they will be able to give me a private room with shared bath because I'm flex-drilling. (That means I'm there for more than just the 2 days of a normal drill weekend.) So, that's nice. It's bad enough that I'm paying for airfare and car rental out of pocket. I don't need to be forking out for hotels, too.
Obviously, money wasn't and isn't my motivator when it comes to doing the Navy thing, but I do get about $400 after-tax for a weekend. When I double-up, I get $800 for 4 days work. Not a king's ransom, but nothing to ignore. Even with $300 in airfare and $12 in car rental, I still come out ahead.
I put an ad in the paper for a marketing person. I'm not paying much on this. I prefer to bring people in at a low wage and have them prove themselves to me. I considered doing this job myself, but it's something that really is best handled by an employee who can focus on it.
Football is tomorrow morning. Logan has just 2 games left, this week and next. After that, I will move the basketball hoop to the warehouse, so he can practice indoors in the Winter.
For some reason, I'm really feeling anxiety these days. We've had way too many close calls on payroll lately. Business will probably stay flat at least until mid-December. This has just been the year from hell.
It's hard not to get discouraged. I have no idea how I survived this long, and have no idea how I'll survive much longer if business doesn't pick up.
I really have no choice at this point but to hang on and hope that 2011 has normal weather patterns for a change.
This downturn came at such a bad time. I had started to establish savings and really had a sizeable rainy day fund. Thing is, things just never got better and after a year of this, I feel almost like I did during my first year. I have to re-build this business almost from scratch. Not totally, though. The employees I have left are awesome.
Let's hope we have awesome business in 2011. I've already written off 2010.
We got a few checks in, so we can breathe for a week or so. We'll repeat the entire process in a couple of weeks when the next payroll is due. Such are the joys of small business ownership in the great recession.
The weather is getting cold. It was in the 40s this morning when I woke up. In a way, that's a good sign. We need the bad weather to get us jump-started. In this business, our busy-season starts pretty much with the first hard freeze in December or January and ends whenever the thunderstorms end in the Summer.
Last year, we never had a hard freeze or big thunderstorms. Hence, we had a crappy year. I should be happy to see the seasons change and with it, perhaps, my fortunes.
I'm always sad to see the bad weather come, though. It's depressing here in the Winter. It's dark, cold, nothing much good is going on. Of course, ski season starts. I will be taking Logan to the slopes with his brand-new skis (a very late birthday present.) The ski shop still hasn't gotten them in, but they assure me that in late October, they should arrive. We'll probably get out on the slopes a half dozen times. So, that's nice.
As athletic and active as Logan is, it's good to get him one more sport he can do.
We have the pitching machine in the basement so we can work on his swing to get ready for baseball. I'll also be taking some stuff to the warehouse so I can work on pitching with him.
Next week, I think he's got tryouts for a somewhat competitive basketball team. We haven't worked on basketball at all. If he doesn't make it, we'll sign him up for rec. Tonight, I went in the back yard to watch him shoot some hoops and he did great. Couldn't say whether or not he'll make the team, but he seems pretty good to me.
Pretty soon, I'll start moving sports gear to the warehouse so Logan can work on pitching and shooting hoops indoors when the weather turns bad.
In a way, I guess I'm looking forward to the travel baseball season kicking off again. At that point, the weather will be starting to turn warm again. After next month, I'll have my June and July drills taken care of. So, I'll have those months off from the Navy. As long as I can get May off with my December drill, that pretty much takes care of the travel season.
My bud, Patrick, showed me a Tabata interval timer application for the droid. So, I tried my first tabata workouts. Did push-ups, sit-ups and knee bends. I also did some negatives on the chin-up bar. I need to do that routine once every 3 or 4 days, I think. It's a great way to stay in shape and it doesn't take much time. Of all things, the place where I feel it most are in my legs.
Last fitness test, my push-ups were not very good. Sit-ups (curl-ups for the Navy), were better than expected. The run was about what I would have figured. I also have a mountain of laundry at the house, so I think a rowing machine workout is in order.
My last Melancon guitar got a qualifying bid on e-bay. So, it will sell. They sold for more than I thought they would. My Gibson SG sold for less, really. All in all, I did okay selling off the 4 guitars. Things are going to be tight, financially, at least until January, I think.
I put up one of my guns for sale, and that's what's going, next. Seems like the market for guns is a little soft at the moment. I'll know more after the auction is complete.
Traded some more e-mails with the berthing coordinator and it appears that they will be able to give me a private room with shared bath because I'm flex-drilling. (That means I'm there for more than just the 2 days of a normal drill weekend.) So, that's nice. It's bad enough that I'm paying for airfare and car rental out of pocket. I don't need to be forking out for hotels, too.
Obviously, money wasn't and isn't my motivator when it comes to doing the Navy thing, but I do get about $400 after-tax for a weekend. When I double-up, I get $800 for 4 days work. Not a king's ransom, but nothing to ignore. Even with $300 in airfare and $12 in car rental, I still come out ahead.
I put an ad in the paper for a marketing person. I'm not paying much on this. I prefer to bring people in at a low wage and have them prove themselves to me. I considered doing this job myself, but it's something that really is best handled by an employee who can focus on it.
Football is tomorrow morning. Logan has just 2 games left, this week and next. After that, I will move the basketball hoop to the warehouse, so he can practice indoors in the Winter.
For some reason, I'm really feeling anxiety these days. We've had way too many close calls on payroll lately. Business will probably stay flat at least until mid-December. This has just been the year from hell.
It's hard not to get discouraged. I have no idea how I survived this long, and have no idea how I'll survive much longer if business doesn't pick up.
I really have no choice at this point but to hang on and hope that 2011 has normal weather patterns for a change.
This downturn came at such a bad time. I had started to establish savings and really had a sizeable rainy day fund. Thing is, things just never got better and after a year of this, I feel almost like I did during my first year. I have to re-build this business almost from scratch. Not totally, though. The employees I have left are awesome.
Let's hope we have awesome business in 2011. I've already written off 2010.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Navy Berthing...
I'm lining up all my stuff for November, and it looks like it was sort of a lucky fluke that I got my own room the first time I drilled in Fort Worth. Getting a room is called "berthing" in Navy terminology. The berthing coordinator said that having a room-mate would be the norm. Getting a single room with a shared bathroom would be the exception.
I'm a total Sally about this sort of thing. There are a lot of things I want to see before I die. Like Nuno Bettencourt playing all the solos from the songs he played on with Extreme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jrfRp8Tshs&feature=fvw
Of all the things I want to see before I die, another man's hairy butt doesn't make the list. I suppose some folks might say that this makes me some sort of closeted homophobe or something. Personally, I think it just makes me a guy who doesn't want to see other naked guys.
This is one of those culture shock things coming from the Army to the Navy. Yes, in the Army you had communal living and a lack of privacy compared to civilian life, but for the most part, there was a thin semblance of privacy. I mean, yeah, you might have 4 room-mates at a training command. 2 room-mates once you got to your duty station.
Nothing like the Air Force, where pretty much every Airman has his own room.
But also, nothing like the Navy where you are in a berthing area with row after row of bunks 3 deep, or the Marines where they still believe in living in open-bay barracks.
Their seagoing heritage means that they're used to living in areas that most people would consider too small to be a walk-in closet. (One of my favorite quotes about the Navy is that when designing housing, never ask a Navy man what he considers an acceptable amount of personal living space.)
So, to have one room-mate? That's living high on the hog by Navy standards.
The Navy does see the problem with this, though. Mainly that when you treat people worse than you have to, and worse than society at large does, with no good justification for it, they tend to think the job you're giving them is crappy.
In fact, they have launched an initiative that will provide private rooms for various ranks, but it won't apply to junior officers until fiscal year 2012, I think. So, relief is on the way. It just won't happen for another year.
In the mean time, these drill weekends are utterly exhausting, as it is. Starting with my fly-out date, I'm up at about 5:00 a.m. every day and sometimes earlier. With trying to catch up with old friends in Fort Worth, I am usually out until 10:00 or 11:00 every night.
Folks who know me know I'm a very light sleeper. The last thing I need is to have what little sleep I'm getting interrupted by somebody snoring or coming in late. Also, time is at a premium for showering, etc. I just don't want the hassle.
I'm still trading e-mails with the very patient and forebearing berthing coordinator. It looks like, at this point, that I will stay on-post during the weekdays. At that point, demand should be down considerably. It's mostly Friday and Saturday nights where folks need rooms.
I can use the last of my Marriott Rewards points to stay at a hotel in Bedford, TX this weekend. Not ideal, but it works.
I used to think the Army treated it's soldiers really badly when it came to single soldier housing. The Department of Defense has guidelines on the minimum amount of space that each servicemember should get. The Army would then simply declare a "housing emergency" and make itself exempt from all DoD standards. Near as I can figure, the housing emergency on most Army Forts and Bases started in World War II and has continued for the last 70 years.
The Air Force, on this issue and most others, is way out in front. Part of it is that they have a ridiculous amount of money relative to their needs. Contrary to popular belief, the services don't really get money based on what they need. For the past several decades, it basically gets divided 1/3 to the Army, 1/3 to the Air Force, and 1/3 to the Navy.
They try to claim that it's need-based and zero-budget based, but that's a complete fabrication.
This 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 division is meant to keep the services from fighting among themselves for funding.
http://www.slate.com/id/2187616/
The end result is that the Air Force, which has a very small mission, has way more money than it needs. Always has. Probably always will.
The Army, which has to pay the largest number of people, is pretty much properly funded, though the fact that they shoulder the biggest burden in our two wars puts a strain on them from time to time.
The Navy? When you think about it, the Navy has it's own air-force, with all the aircraft and pilots it has. It has its own army because the Marine Corps gets their money from the Department of the Navy. It has ... well... a Navy, too, with ships and seaborne weapons systems.
So, packing people into a room isn't just based on tradition. It's based on lack of money, too. It's not just because of mean-spiritedness that the Navy has, for years, made lower enlisted people live on ship when the ship is in port. They have a lot to do and only a limited amount of money to do it with. They have to be very careful with the funding they have.
The Navy is releasing more funding for this in coming years, but it won't happen overnight. In the mean time, I think it's ridiculous that officers are required to have room-mates. When I went to MEPS for my entrance physical, I got my own room just because I was an officer candidate. When I went to the hotel while reporting for my first drill, and the desk-clerk told me I had a room-mate, I thought this had to be some sort of mistake.
It's not. It's how the Navy does things. Bad as it was that I had a room-mate, imagine how my room-mate must have felt. He was an O-5 (a senior officer) and they were still sticking him with a room-mate.
During a bad economy like this, it's not such a big deal. The military services can and do abuse their people in any way they deem fit when retention is high and applicants exceed available open slots.
However, once the economy improves, people who feel they're mistreated will leave. They always have. The fact that when I was a Sergeant in the Army, I had living conditions that were substantially worse than those in a typical college freshman dorm, played no small part in my decision to get out and seek my fortunes elsewhere.
Right now, the reserves are doing pretty well. Folks need the money in an uncertain economy. Patriotism is still running on a post 9/11 high.
However, things won't stay this way forever, and the Navy is wise to stop treating it's people like cattle when possible.
In the mean time, if I have absolutely no other choice, like if I'm deployed or on orders on a military base, I'll do whatever I have to do, including putting up with a room mate.
Otherwise, though, I'll be doing something else. Actually, weekend hotel rates tend to be pretty good, too. That's generally when hotels are at their emptiest. So, if I can get on-base berthing on the weekdays and go out of pocket on the weekends, that won't be so bad.
I'm a total Sally about this sort of thing. There are a lot of things I want to see before I die. Like Nuno Bettencourt playing all the solos from the songs he played on with Extreme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jrfRp8Tshs&feature=fvw
Of all the things I want to see before I die, another man's hairy butt doesn't make the list. I suppose some folks might say that this makes me some sort of closeted homophobe or something. Personally, I think it just makes me a guy who doesn't want to see other naked guys.
This is one of those culture shock things coming from the Army to the Navy. Yes, in the Army you had communal living and a lack of privacy compared to civilian life, but for the most part, there was a thin semblance of privacy. I mean, yeah, you might have 4 room-mates at a training command. 2 room-mates once you got to your duty station.
Nothing like the Air Force, where pretty much every Airman has his own room.
But also, nothing like the Navy where you are in a berthing area with row after row of bunks 3 deep, or the Marines where they still believe in living in open-bay barracks.
Their seagoing heritage means that they're used to living in areas that most people would consider too small to be a walk-in closet. (One of my favorite quotes about the Navy is that when designing housing, never ask a Navy man what he considers an acceptable amount of personal living space.)
So, to have one room-mate? That's living high on the hog by Navy standards.
The Navy does see the problem with this, though. Mainly that when you treat people worse than you have to, and worse than society at large does, with no good justification for it, they tend to think the job you're giving them is crappy.
In fact, they have launched an initiative that will provide private rooms for various ranks, but it won't apply to junior officers until fiscal year 2012, I think. So, relief is on the way. It just won't happen for another year.
In the mean time, these drill weekends are utterly exhausting, as it is. Starting with my fly-out date, I'm up at about 5:00 a.m. every day and sometimes earlier. With trying to catch up with old friends in Fort Worth, I am usually out until 10:00 or 11:00 every night.
Folks who know me know I'm a very light sleeper. The last thing I need is to have what little sleep I'm getting interrupted by somebody snoring or coming in late. Also, time is at a premium for showering, etc. I just don't want the hassle.
I'm still trading e-mails with the very patient and forebearing berthing coordinator. It looks like, at this point, that I will stay on-post during the weekdays. At that point, demand should be down considerably. It's mostly Friday and Saturday nights where folks need rooms.
I can use the last of my Marriott Rewards points to stay at a hotel in Bedford, TX this weekend. Not ideal, but it works.
I used to think the Army treated it's soldiers really badly when it came to single soldier housing. The Department of Defense has guidelines on the minimum amount of space that each servicemember should get. The Army would then simply declare a "housing emergency" and make itself exempt from all DoD standards. Near as I can figure, the housing emergency on most Army Forts and Bases started in World War II and has continued for the last 70 years.
The Air Force, on this issue and most others, is way out in front. Part of it is that they have a ridiculous amount of money relative to their needs. Contrary to popular belief, the services don't really get money based on what they need. For the past several decades, it basically gets divided 1/3 to the Army, 1/3 to the Air Force, and 1/3 to the Navy.
They try to claim that it's need-based and zero-budget based, but that's a complete fabrication.
This 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 division is meant to keep the services from fighting among themselves for funding.
http://www.slate.com/id/2187616/
The end result is that the Air Force, which has a very small mission, has way more money than it needs. Always has. Probably always will.
The Army, which has to pay the largest number of people, is pretty much properly funded, though the fact that they shoulder the biggest burden in our two wars puts a strain on them from time to time.
The Navy? When you think about it, the Navy has it's own air-force, with all the aircraft and pilots it has. It has its own army because the Marine Corps gets their money from the Department of the Navy. It has ... well... a Navy, too, with ships and seaborne weapons systems.
So, packing people into a room isn't just based on tradition. It's based on lack of money, too. It's not just because of mean-spiritedness that the Navy has, for years, made lower enlisted people live on ship when the ship is in port. They have a lot to do and only a limited amount of money to do it with. They have to be very careful with the funding they have.
The Navy is releasing more funding for this in coming years, but it won't happen overnight. In the mean time, I think it's ridiculous that officers are required to have room-mates. When I went to MEPS for my entrance physical, I got my own room just because I was an officer candidate. When I went to the hotel while reporting for my first drill, and the desk-clerk told me I had a room-mate, I thought this had to be some sort of mistake.
It's not. It's how the Navy does things. Bad as it was that I had a room-mate, imagine how my room-mate must have felt. He was an O-5 (a senior officer) and they were still sticking him with a room-mate.
During a bad economy like this, it's not such a big deal. The military services can and do abuse their people in any way they deem fit when retention is high and applicants exceed available open slots.
However, once the economy improves, people who feel they're mistreated will leave. They always have. The fact that when I was a Sergeant in the Army, I had living conditions that were substantially worse than those in a typical college freshman dorm, played no small part in my decision to get out and seek my fortunes elsewhere.
Right now, the reserves are doing pretty well. Folks need the money in an uncertain economy. Patriotism is still running on a post 9/11 high.
However, things won't stay this way forever, and the Navy is wise to stop treating it's people like cattle when possible.
In the mean time, if I have absolutely no other choice, like if I'm deployed or on orders on a military base, I'll do whatever I have to do, including putting up with a room mate.
Otherwise, though, I'll be doing something else. Actually, weekend hotel rates tend to be pretty good, too. That's generally when hotels are at their emptiest. So, if I can get on-base berthing on the weekdays and go out of pocket on the weekends, that won't be so bad.
Back to Ohio...
Got back from Texas yesterday morning and jumped right back into things up here.
Texas was so nice, it makes me wonder why I came back.
I've always said that I don't like vacations and this is a good illustration why.
Vacations fall into two camps for me. The first, which is the largest sample group, is the vacation where I can't get my mind off of projects and issues back home. So, all the angst, none of the ability to do anything about it.
The other kind, which is really, really rare, is the vacation where I escape my issues for a little while. Then, I come back home and they hit me full-force. I've been busy as all get-out for the past two days. I feel like if I miss a day at work, it sets me back about a week.
My job is pretty awesome, but that's because once all the balls are in the air, it doesn't take that much effort to keep juggling. Stops and starts, though, are murder.
Payroll is tight again this week. So, I was scrambling yesterday. After some number crunching today, we should be okay. Folks owe us money, but nobody is paying these days. Makes life a little tough. For some reason, the guys I pay bills to don't seem to be as flexible and forgiving. Go figure.
We have still never made a late payment or missed a payroll, but the nail-biting is a lot more frequent these days. In years past, we might have one week where things are a little tight. These days, it's a more regular occurrance.
Part of me feels fortunate that I still have a business, and thus, a way to earn a living in this economy. I know people out there are really sufferring. I've seen it on a small scale all my life: a person loses a job, burns through every penny they had saved for retirement. Usually, sometime down the line, they find another gig and are able to get back to a normal life.
These days, I can't imagine how horrible it must be to try and find a job. Granted, if things don't improve, I may need to find one. I also have one potential position open in my business, which could be part-time until the end of this year, and then possibly a full-time position next year.
I was leaning towards doing the job myself for a few months, but I may try to bring in somebody and train them up so they can hit the ground running when/if business picks up in December. It'd just be an entry level marketing trainee job, but the last good person we had in the position worked their way up to a pretty good salary. Perfect position for a person who needs flexible hours and only wants to work 20 or so hours a week. It can also be a full-time job if the business climate improves.
If I had to get a job, the one that makes the most sense is for me to mobilize. Just got a notification of very few mobilization opportunities in 2011. For a while, there have been rumors that unemployed guys are snapping up these mobilizations. Hey, it's a crappy job in a bad part of the world, but it's pretty good pay, especially for officers, and you get a combat zone tax exclusion from federal taxes.
The recent mob list included an actual warning that if a person is interested, they need to start making calls now because the mob opportunities are going fast. Go figure.
Sort of a downer these days. The biz is challenging. Also, the weather is changing. Although this was truly the cruelest Summer so far for me, business-wise, I hated to see it go. Now, the bad weather comes and we won't have relief until maybe April.
Texas was so nice, it makes me wonder why I came back.
I've always said that I don't like vacations and this is a good illustration why.
Vacations fall into two camps for me. The first, which is the largest sample group, is the vacation where I can't get my mind off of projects and issues back home. So, all the angst, none of the ability to do anything about it.
The other kind, which is really, really rare, is the vacation where I escape my issues for a little while. Then, I come back home and they hit me full-force. I've been busy as all get-out for the past two days. I feel like if I miss a day at work, it sets me back about a week.
My job is pretty awesome, but that's because once all the balls are in the air, it doesn't take that much effort to keep juggling. Stops and starts, though, are murder.
Payroll is tight again this week. So, I was scrambling yesterday. After some number crunching today, we should be okay. Folks owe us money, but nobody is paying these days. Makes life a little tough. For some reason, the guys I pay bills to don't seem to be as flexible and forgiving. Go figure.
We have still never made a late payment or missed a payroll, but the nail-biting is a lot more frequent these days. In years past, we might have one week where things are a little tight. These days, it's a more regular occurrance.
Part of me feels fortunate that I still have a business, and thus, a way to earn a living in this economy. I know people out there are really sufferring. I've seen it on a small scale all my life: a person loses a job, burns through every penny they had saved for retirement. Usually, sometime down the line, they find another gig and are able to get back to a normal life.
These days, I can't imagine how horrible it must be to try and find a job. Granted, if things don't improve, I may need to find one. I also have one potential position open in my business, which could be part-time until the end of this year, and then possibly a full-time position next year.
I was leaning towards doing the job myself for a few months, but I may try to bring in somebody and train them up so they can hit the ground running when/if business picks up in December. It'd just be an entry level marketing trainee job, but the last good person we had in the position worked their way up to a pretty good salary. Perfect position for a person who needs flexible hours and only wants to work 20 or so hours a week. It can also be a full-time job if the business climate improves.
If I had to get a job, the one that makes the most sense is for me to mobilize. Just got a notification of very few mobilization opportunities in 2011. For a while, there have been rumors that unemployed guys are snapping up these mobilizations. Hey, it's a crappy job in a bad part of the world, but it's pretty good pay, especially for officers, and you get a combat zone tax exclusion from federal taxes.
The recent mob list included an actual warning that if a person is interested, they need to start making calls now because the mob opportunities are going fast. Go figure.
Sort of a downer these days. The biz is challenging. Also, the weather is changing. Although this was truly the cruelest Summer so far for me, business-wise, I hated to see it go. Now, the bad weather comes and we won't have relief until maybe April.
Monday, October 4, 2010
A little more positivity
It dawned on me the other day that although this is my worst year, financially, in the last 4, that I stand a shot at making as much money as my best earnings year when I was an employee. I wasn't the highest paid guy around, when I worked for Parker, but I considered my compensation to be adequate, bordering on comfortable.
So, even if things didn't improve in the business, I really should feel pretty good, all things considered. A lot of folks are really sufferring right now. I'm fortunate that I'm not one of them. Folks who know me might mistakenly think that I don't like my franchisor: Servpro. I have my issues with the franchise system, but I am thankful all the time that I bought into this franchise system. They've really done well by me. On balance, the relationship is overwhelmingly positive.
It's not all peaches and light in my life. I've got some things on the personal front that are pretty trying right now, but even the bad stuff in my life could be a lot worse. I'm a fortunate guy.
This week, I head down to Fort Worth for another visit. Jamie Basler is hosting a get-together Saturday night again. I knew her in college and we took some classes together. It never ceases to amaze me how generous some people are. Jamie is a peach for letting us invade her home once a month for the past 2 months.
In a sort of interesting twist, one of my biggest pet-peeves about the Navy reserve is going to be resolved in a couple of months. The Navy, due to its history and heritage, has this bad habit of thinking that everybody could and should live with a minimal amount of living space, and no privacy, usually with room-mates, and if you're lucky and conditions permit, just one. Fortunately, we drill at an old Air Force base. So, the officer bachelor's quarters aren't doubled-up.
In Fiscal year 2012, though, all E-7 and above will be entitled to a private room while at drill. So, that's one pet peeve off the list. Really, that's my biggest pet-peeve and one of very few with the Navy reserve. It's such a significant pet-peeve that I used to pay for my own hotel rooms in downtown Cleveland or stay an hour away with relatives, rather than deal with a room-mate. In fact, on this trip to Fort Worth, I'll be using my Marriott Rewards points to stay at a Courtyard, rather than double up because of a shortage of housing availability.
I can't say often enough what a positive experience the Navy Reserve has been. I look forward to drilling and enjoy each drill. The people are great, and it feels good to serve again. I also got a great benefit when they decided to let reservists buy military health insurance. That benefit, alone, probably saves me at least $500 a month.
Arabic is going well. We have a quiz tomorrow and I think I'll do fine. I don't know if it's open book or not. I'll be studying. It's to the point now where we're memorizing vocabulary. I continue to be impressed and relieved that Arabic is such an orderly language. It is much easy to read and write than English, and although I'm not into the grammar very deep, it seems no worse than English in that regard.
The biggest value of the class, though is that it has opened my mind about the Arabic people and the Arabic culture. Although I try to be fair-minded, in the years since 9/11, I have accepted some stereotypes and views regarding Islam and the Arabic nations that I'm not particularly proud of today. This broadening of my perspective is worth every penny of tuition money and then some.
The changing of the weather has me sort of depressed. This Summer was a good one, with Logan's travel baseball and all. I am in no hurry for this kid to grow up and leave the house. I know I have a long time to worry about that, but I just wish I could make time stand still a little longer. I want to spend more time with my boy. So many things I envisioned doing, but now, life is what it is, not necessarily what I envisioned.
Not that things are bad, but I just thought raising a kid would mean a lot more time with them. For the first 6 years or so of Logan's life, he and I were inseperable, but he's at an age, now, where he doesn't dislike being with his Dad, but he enjoys relating to kids his own age so much more.
An interesting note. As folks who know me know, I'm a big believer in nature over nurture. I honestly believe that most of what we become is predestined genetically, and that the bulk of what isn't genetic is probably determined in the first few years of life.
Recent studies have shown that how thrifty a person is can be determined genetically and that attempts to modify this proclivity, behaviorally, are difficult and with mediocre results at best. The reason I say this is that I recently e-bayed off all of Logan's old baseball bats. I bought a lot of them last year in the search for the perfect bat.
He's outgrown them all, now. He'll probably outgrow yet another one before the next season.
He lost his DSi. I think it happened when we were at a tournament in Columbus. I felt bad for him, but didn't have the money to replace it.
My rule, with his bank account, is that I match everything he puts in, dollar for dollar. So, for instance, if he puts in $50 worth of birthday money, I match it with another $50.
With the $100 I got from selling his bats, I told him I would match the money and that he could use it either to buy a new DSi, or if he didn't want to, the money could go into his bank account for something he might want to buy later.
His decision? Save the money. The kid is a saver and that's a good thing. If ever a kid displayed virtuous character, it'd be my boy. He's honest, conscientious, and apparently also thrifty.
Like any parent, all I really want is to feel secure that when my son leaves my sphere of influence, that he will be able to make his way in the world, be happy and make good decisions.
He's only 9 years old, but every passing day gives me confidence that when the day comes that I can't protect him and provide for him anymore, that he will do just fine with things.
In the category of making good memories and having good experiences with him, it is now October. In November, we do the annual trip to Disneyland, which I look forward to all year. Also, the ski shop should have his skis in. I want to try and find another family to ski with us, though, or at least one other kid.
Skiing is expensive and a little bit dangerous. We took one of his friends last year, and it turned out very badly. The kid didn't know how to ski, and was learning, but couldn't really hang out with Logan all that much. Plus, I have hammered some of the safety aspects of skiing into Logan. The main one being to always ski in control and be able to stop. His friend didn't really subscribe to either of those theories.
Between rental and lift ticket, it's a $75 afternoon for a friend, and throw in meals and snacks and it's probably closer to $100.
So, I'm hoping that we can find one other family with a kid about Logan's age that we can do our day-trips up to Brighton with. There's one other kid on his baseball team who skis. I mentioned it to his Dad, but they don't like Brighton. In any event, if we have to, we'll go ski, just the two of us. However, I hate to admit it: Logan has more fun when there's other kids to interact with.
This is going to be a busy week. I have a full schedule. I hate to admit it, but although I often fantasize about returning to school, I really shouldn't. It's expensive and I will be better served to focus on my business and try to make it grow.
There are a lot of things that are interesting to me, but in the long run, my life ended up with me doing exactly what I should be doing: leading a small business. I have the Navy as my somewhat interesting part-time distraction. Other than that, I just need to focus on being a father.
If the economy picks up, or the weather starts cooperating, I'll be trying to expand the business, again, by diversifying into an unrelated enterprise.
Until then, I need to farm the farm. The grass is no different anywhere else. I need to just water the grass where I am.
So, even if things didn't improve in the business, I really should feel pretty good, all things considered. A lot of folks are really sufferring right now. I'm fortunate that I'm not one of them. Folks who know me might mistakenly think that I don't like my franchisor: Servpro. I have my issues with the franchise system, but I am thankful all the time that I bought into this franchise system. They've really done well by me. On balance, the relationship is overwhelmingly positive.
It's not all peaches and light in my life. I've got some things on the personal front that are pretty trying right now, but even the bad stuff in my life could be a lot worse. I'm a fortunate guy.
This week, I head down to Fort Worth for another visit. Jamie Basler is hosting a get-together Saturday night again. I knew her in college and we took some classes together. It never ceases to amaze me how generous some people are. Jamie is a peach for letting us invade her home once a month for the past 2 months.
In a sort of interesting twist, one of my biggest pet-peeves about the Navy reserve is going to be resolved in a couple of months. The Navy, due to its history and heritage, has this bad habit of thinking that everybody could and should live with a minimal amount of living space, and no privacy, usually with room-mates, and if you're lucky and conditions permit, just one. Fortunately, we drill at an old Air Force base. So, the officer bachelor's quarters aren't doubled-up.
In Fiscal year 2012, though, all E-7 and above will be entitled to a private room while at drill. So, that's one pet peeve off the list. Really, that's my biggest pet-peeve and one of very few with the Navy reserve. It's such a significant pet-peeve that I used to pay for my own hotel rooms in downtown Cleveland or stay an hour away with relatives, rather than deal with a room-mate. In fact, on this trip to Fort Worth, I'll be using my Marriott Rewards points to stay at a Courtyard, rather than double up because of a shortage of housing availability.
I can't say often enough what a positive experience the Navy Reserve has been. I look forward to drilling and enjoy each drill. The people are great, and it feels good to serve again. I also got a great benefit when they decided to let reservists buy military health insurance. That benefit, alone, probably saves me at least $500 a month.
Arabic is going well. We have a quiz tomorrow and I think I'll do fine. I don't know if it's open book or not. I'll be studying. It's to the point now where we're memorizing vocabulary. I continue to be impressed and relieved that Arabic is such an orderly language. It is much easy to read and write than English, and although I'm not into the grammar very deep, it seems no worse than English in that regard.
The biggest value of the class, though is that it has opened my mind about the Arabic people and the Arabic culture. Although I try to be fair-minded, in the years since 9/11, I have accepted some stereotypes and views regarding Islam and the Arabic nations that I'm not particularly proud of today. This broadening of my perspective is worth every penny of tuition money and then some.
The changing of the weather has me sort of depressed. This Summer was a good one, with Logan's travel baseball and all. I am in no hurry for this kid to grow up and leave the house. I know I have a long time to worry about that, but I just wish I could make time stand still a little longer. I want to spend more time with my boy. So many things I envisioned doing, but now, life is what it is, not necessarily what I envisioned.
Not that things are bad, but I just thought raising a kid would mean a lot more time with them. For the first 6 years or so of Logan's life, he and I were inseperable, but he's at an age, now, where he doesn't dislike being with his Dad, but he enjoys relating to kids his own age so much more.
An interesting note. As folks who know me know, I'm a big believer in nature over nurture. I honestly believe that most of what we become is predestined genetically, and that the bulk of what isn't genetic is probably determined in the first few years of life.
Recent studies have shown that how thrifty a person is can be determined genetically and that attempts to modify this proclivity, behaviorally, are difficult and with mediocre results at best. The reason I say this is that I recently e-bayed off all of Logan's old baseball bats. I bought a lot of them last year in the search for the perfect bat.
He's outgrown them all, now. He'll probably outgrow yet another one before the next season.
He lost his DSi. I think it happened when we were at a tournament in Columbus. I felt bad for him, but didn't have the money to replace it.
My rule, with his bank account, is that I match everything he puts in, dollar for dollar. So, for instance, if he puts in $50 worth of birthday money, I match it with another $50.
With the $100 I got from selling his bats, I told him I would match the money and that he could use it either to buy a new DSi, or if he didn't want to, the money could go into his bank account for something he might want to buy later.
His decision? Save the money. The kid is a saver and that's a good thing. If ever a kid displayed virtuous character, it'd be my boy. He's honest, conscientious, and apparently also thrifty.
Like any parent, all I really want is to feel secure that when my son leaves my sphere of influence, that he will be able to make his way in the world, be happy and make good decisions.
He's only 9 years old, but every passing day gives me confidence that when the day comes that I can't protect him and provide for him anymore, that he will do just fine with things.
In the category of making good memories and having good experiences with him, it is now October. In November, we do the annual trip to Disneyland, which I look forward to all year. Also, the ski shop should have his skis in. I want to try and find another family to ski with us, though, or at least one other kid.
Skiing is expensive and a little bit dangerous. We took one of his friends last year, and it turned out very badly. The kid didn't know how to ski, and was learning, but couldn't really hang out with Logan all that much. Plus, I have hammered some of the safety aspects of skiing into Logan. The main one being to always ski in control and be able to stop. His friend didn't really subscribe to either of those theories.
Between rental and lift ticket, it's a $75 afternoon for a friend, and throw in meals and snacks and it's probably closer to $100.
So, I'm hoping that we can find one other family with a kid about Logan's age that we can do our day-trips up to Brighton with. There's one other kid on his baseball team who skis. I mentioned it to his Dad, but they don't like Brighton. In any event, if we have to, we'll go ski, just the two of us. However, I hate to admit it: Logan has more fun when there's other kids to interact with.
This is going to be a busy week. I have a full schedule. I hate to admit it, but although I often fantasize about returning to school, I really shouldn't. It's expensive and I will be better served to focus on my business and try to make it grow.
There are a lot of things that are interesting to me, but in the long run, my life ended up with me doing exactly what I should be doing: leading a small business. I have the Navy as my somewhat interesting part-time distraction. Other than that, I just need to focus on being a father.
If the economy picks up, or the weather starts cooperating, I'll be trying to expand the business, again, by diversifying into an unrelated enterprise.
Until then, I need to farm the farm. The grass is no different anywhere else. I need to just water the grass where I am.
The Betrayal of the Bailouts
This will probably be my last post on TARP and the various bailouts. To me, this is a personal issue. I figured I should take a few minutes to explain why.
I have been a capitalist for as far back as I can remember. Where some people study and practice music, and are therefore musicians, I am a businessperson.
My two degrees are in business. I served my 13 years in Fortune 500 companies. I even took my life savings and hung out my shingle and now am one of the fortunate individuals who actually owns a profitable business.
As most folks who know me can attest, my belief in capitalism borders on the religious. I'm not the only one. For as far back as I can remember, others have espoused that the pain and excesses of capitalism, though distasteful, sometimes heart-breaking, and occassionally cruel, in the end resulted in a better world for everyone.
During the cold war, next to human rights, this belief in capitalism, more than our military differences, defined us as different from the Soviets. The Soviets had an economy that was run by a few talented minds. We had an economy that was run by millions and millions of minds.
In the end, it wasn't a contest. Our economy grew and prospered. Theirs died. It wasn't tanks in Europe that won the war. It was businesspeople like me.
TARP? It is rumored that one nameless congresswoman, on the day TARP passed, said, "I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say this may be the day America died."
I agree. The day TARP passed, it became clear that we were not a free-market society, run by millions of businesspeople. Instead, we are a command economy, like the Soviets, where regardless of merit, politically connected people prosper and the rest of the country suffers.
Those who think TARP was a good thing are basically in agreement with Tim Geithner when he says it was "deeply unfair", but that it was absolutely necessary.
To this, I have so many thoughts, but the main one is this: to embrace this school of thought, you have to believe in the following:
1. That the end justifies the means.
2. That the rights of people are not as important as the goals of the state.
3. That some companies which are big, well-connected and chock full of cash, should not have to bear the consequences of their actions.
Number 1 and 2 are straight out of my 8th grade civics book on the differences between us and the communists during the cold war. The biggest difference between us and them was supposed to be that we had rules. We followed them. Everybody had to follow them.
Even the rich and powerful had to follow them.
In communist countries? Individuals were inconsequential and only the state mattered. And that meant that the state could do anything it wanted, at any time, if it felt it would advance its goals.
That TARP was morally wrong is not even debatable. Even its most ardent supporters tip their hat to this fact, though they prefer to use terms like "unfair". However, the basic premise of unfairness is that it is wrong.
There isn't a person in America who defends TARP on moral grounds.
Problem #1: TARP was morally wrong.
So, the supporters of TARP then go on to say it was necessary. They said that without it, unemployment would rise over 8% and bank lending would stop. They turned out to be totally wrong on both those counts.
We passed TARP, unemployment shot up to 10% and businesses have a harder time than ever getting loans. In addition, it was supposed to stop mortgage foreclosures and it has been an outright failure at doing that.
The end result is that TARP saved the bankers and nobody else.
Would things have been worse without TARP? I'm not sure they would. How can I make such an extreme statement? Let me ask you this: Lehman brothers failed. Would things be better today if they were still around? of course not. In an economy this size, Lehman's collapse basically didn't matter in the long-term.
It caused a short-term shock, but frankly, it SHOULD have caused a short-term shock. It should have caused the kind of reaction that caused Wall Street banks to agree to reasonable regulation and change their irresponsible ways.
So, would ALL Wall Street banks have failed? No. Most of them weren't in that much danger. When TARP money was distributed, they literally gathered the CEOs of the largest banks in a room at the White House and told them they had to take the money.
What about the guys who didn't want or need the money? They were forced to take it so as not to stigmatize those who DID want and need the money.
A few more would have failed, but the majority of them were accessing other sources of capital to get them over a short-term hump. (See Warren Buffet and Bear Sterns for an example.) The strong would have survived. The weak would have failed. You know: capitalism.
The reality is that TARP was relatively small in impact relative to other actions by the government to prop up the banks, many of which are happening still, today.
So, the argument that it was necessary? I'd say SOMETHING was necessary, but TARP wasn't.
It asked for no sacrifices on the part of banks. It imposed no new regulations or safeguards (and only the true kool-aid drinkers are dense enough to think that Obama's Wall Street reform bill was written by anybody other than Wall Street). It was, frankly, a rushed piece of legislation that didn't accomplish its stated goals, but simply gave cheap cash to a few banks, many of which didn't want or need the cash.
This is like saying that a kid has fallen off their bike. They need some neosporin and a bandage. So, instead, they get skin grafts and 5 months in the ICU and the doctor harvests their kidney to pay the medical bills. Did something need to be done? Yes. Did what was done "work"... yes, in a manner of speaking. But was it the right thing to do?
Just like TARP, a well-intentioned, morally evil solution that solves the immediate problem is not the right thing to do. Not just from a moral standpoint, but from a practical standpoint as well.
Point #2: TARP was so badly executed and the desired results could have been obtained far better by many, many other solutions, that to say it was "necessary" is giving too much credit to a very, very bad solution.
Lastly, now the TARPoids are trying to say that TARP won't end up costing us anything in the long run. From a pure dollars and cents standpoint, that is probably true. Part of this is that the public's outrage over TARP was so obvious that they only spent half the money. They didn't dare spend the other half. As Bankers cashed their gozillion dollar bonuses, the voters became furious and everybody associated with TARP started to try and distance themselves from the outrageous behavior of the folks on Wall Street.
If left to their own devices, they'd have spent the other half. Democracy worked. They didn't spend the money.
So, did it cost us? You can say "no" only if you believe that there's no problem with a society where hard-working people are thrown out on the street while the millionaires and billionaires who caused the problem continue to rake in millions and billions.
So, to bring it back full-circle, from a social justice standpoint, TARP was a complete betrayal of America. It truly was the day America died.
It cost us. It cost us dearly. It laid naked the fact that the government exists only for the benefit of bankers and other politically connected types. It made all too obvious the fact that the government won't help an individual citizen, because an individual's rights simply don't matter in America. Only money matters, and only if the money can be counted in the hundreds of millions or preferrably billions.
I will vote out anybody who voted for TARP. I hope everybody else does the same.
I have been a capitalist for as far back as I can remember. Where some people study and practice music, and are therefore musicians, I am a businessperson.
My two degrees are in business. I served my 13 years in Fortune 500 companies. I even took my life savings and hung out my shingle and now am one of the fortunate individuals who actually owns a profitable business.
As most folks who know me can attest, my belief in capitalism borders on the religious. I'm not the only one. For as far back as I can remember, others have espoused that the pain and excesses of capitalism, though distasteful, sometimes heart-breaking, and occassionally cruel, in the end resulted in a better world for everyone.
During the cold war, next to human rights, this belief in capitalism, more than our military differences, defined us as different from the Soviets. The Soviets had an economy that was run by a few talented minds. We had an economy that was run by millions and millions of minds.
In the end, it wasn't a contest. Our economy grew and prospered. Theirs died. It wasn't tanks in Europe that won the war. It was businesspeople like me.
TARP? It is rumored that one nameless congresswoman, on the day TARP passed, said, "I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say this may be the day America died."
I agree. The day TARP passed, it became clear that we were not a free-market society, run by millions of businesspeople. Instead, we are a command economy, like the Soviets, where regardless of merit, politically connected people prosper and the rest of the country suffers.
Those who think TARP was a good thing are basically in agreement with Tim Geithner when he says it was "deeply unfair", but that it was absolutely necessary.
To this, I have so many thoughts, but the main one is this: to embrace this school of thought, you have to believe in the following:
1. That the end justifies the means.
2. That the rights of people are not as important as the goals of the state.
3. That some companies which are big, well-connected and chock full of cash, should not have to bear the consequences of their actions.
Number 1 and 2 are straight out of my 8th grade civics book on the differences between us and the communists during the cold war. The biggest difference between us and them was supposed to be that we had rules. We followed them. Everybody had to follow them.
Even the rich and powerful had to follow them.
In communist countries? Individuals were inconsequential and only the state mattered. And that meant that the state could do anything it wanted, at any time, if it felt it would advance its goals.
That TARP was morally wrong is not even debatable. Even its most ardent supporters tip their hat to this fact, though they prefer to use terms like "unfair". However, the basic premise of unfairness is that it is wrong.
There isn't a person in America who defends TARP on moral grounds.
Problem #1: TARP was morally wrong.
So, the supporters of TARP then go on to say it was necessary. They said that without it, unemployment would rise over 8% and bank lending would stop. They turned out to be totally wrong on both those counts.
We passed TARP, unemployment shot up to 10% and businesses have a harder time than ever getting loans. In addition, it was supposed to stop mortgage foreclosures and it has been an outright failure at doing that.
The end result is that TARP saved the bankers and nobody else.
Would things have been worse without TARP? I'm not sure they would. How can I make such an extreme statement? Let me ask you this: Lehman brothers failed. Would things be better today if they were still around? of course not. In an economy this size, Lehman's collapse basically didn't matter in the long-term.
It caused a short-term shock, but frankly, it SHOULD have caused a short-term shock. It should have caused the kind of reaction that caused Wall Street banks to agree to reasonable regulation and change their irresponsible ways.
So, would ALL Wall Street banks have failed? No. Most of them weren't in that much danger. When TARP money was distributed, they literally gathered the CEOs of the largest banks in a room at the White House and told them they had to take the money.
What about the guys who didn't want or need the money? They were forced to take it so as not to stigmatize those who DID want and need the money.
A few more would have failed, but the majority of them were accessing other sources of capital to get them over a short-term hump. (See Warren Buffet and Bear Sterns for an example.) The strong would have survived. The weak would have failed. You know: capitalism.
The reality is that TARP was relatively small in impact relative to other actions by the government to prop up the banks, many of which are happening still, today.
So, the argument that it was necessary? I'd say SOMETHING was necessary, but TARP wasn't.
It asked for no sacrifices on the part of banks. It imposed no new regulations or safeguards (and only the true kool-aid drinkers are dense enough to think that Obama's Wall Street reform bill was written by anybody other than Wall Street). It was, frankly, a rushed piece of legislation that didn't accomplish its stated goals, but simply gave cheap cash to a few banks, many of which didn't want or need the cash.
This is like saying that a kid has fallen off their bike. They need some neosporin and a bandage. So, instead, they get skin grafts and 5 months in the ICU and the doctor harvests their kidney to pay the medical bills. Did something need to be done? Yes. Did what was done "work"... yes, in a manner of speaking. But was it the right thing to do?
Just like TARP, a well-intentioned, morally evil solution that solves the immediate problem is not the right thing to do. Not just from a moral standpoint, but from a practical standpoint as well.
Point #2: TARP was so badly executed and the desired results could have been obtained far better by many, many other solutions, that to say it was "necessary" is giving too much credit to a very, very bad solution.
Lastly, now the TARPoids are trying to say that TARP won't end up costing us anything in the long run. From a pure dollars and cents standpoint, that is probably true. Part of this is that the public's outrage over TARP was so obvious that they only spent half the money. They didn't dare spend the other half. As Bankers cashed their gozillion dollar bonuses, the voters became furious and everybody associated with TARP started to try and distance themselves from the outrageous behavior of the folks on Wall Street.
If left to their own devices, they'd have spent the other half. Democracy worked. They didn't spend the money.
So, did it cost us? You can say "no" only if you believe that there's no problem with a society where hard-working people are thrown out on the street while the millionaires and billionaires who caused the problem continue to rake in millions and billions.
So, to bring it back full-circle, from a social justice standpoint, TARP was a complete betrayal of America. It truly was the day America died.
It cost us. It cost us dearly. It laid naked the fact that the government exists only for the benefit of bankers and other politically connected types. It made all too obvious the fact that the government won't help an individual citizen, because an individual's rights simply don't matter in America. Only money matters, and only if the money can be counted in the hundreds of millions or preferrably billions.
I will vote out anybody who voted for TARP. I hope everybody else does the same.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
The Right Answer on Two Current Topics...
1. The Rutgers student who killed himself? Honestly, I don't see all the fuss about it. It would be one thing if he had been killed during a hate-crime. That's something that probably warrants nationwide coverage. However, let's be serious, here, he killed himself.
I'm not condoning the actions of his douchebag room-mate. What he did was beyond the pale. There are federal and state laws that cover this sort of thing and the guy deserves to go to jail for a few years. He probably will, especially given the amount of publicity surrounding this case.
What I don't understand is how this is being blasted across all media as a sort of gay-rights martyr event. I think this young man deserved the same rights as any other person. Clearly, he felt humiliated because of his jerkwad room-mate's actions.
People are portraying this as a call to action. I'm just having trouble understanding what, particularly, the action is supposed to be. I mean, if the message here is that you shouldn't film people having sex without their knowledge, I'm all for that. In fact, so is society. It's actually a crime, punishable by genuine jail time.
If the message is that you shouldn't harass gay people, I'm okay with that, too. I have a special loathing for people who are so busybody that they think they have the right to run around telling other consenting adults how to live their lives.
If the message is that you shouldn't text people and say hateful things, I'm on board with that as well. The kid was a private citizen, not a public figure. I really think the law is behind the curve when it comes to cyber-bullying. We live in an age where a handful of miscreants can publicly humiliate pretty much anybody they want to. We just don't know how to deal with it.
However, turning this into a gay issue? I take exception to that. I don't believe that people should be segmented into little sub-groups with different rights. I believe that human rights should be universal. Making this a gay issue contributes to the problem, in my opinion. Why? Because doing so treats gay people as a subset of the population that is separate and distinct from the rest of society. Considering gay people different is the source of the problem.
People have a reasonable right to have their private conduct, especially their sexual lives, kept private. (With a handful of commonsense caveats, mainly that the conduct is between two consenting adults.)
It's not the fact that gay sex was broadcast on the internet that is the cause for outrage. Gay sex deserves no more rights or protections than any other form of sex.
However, it deserves no less protection, either. I would be just as outraged if somebody took secret footage of their room-mate having heterosexual sex and posted it on the internet. Doing that would also be humiliating to the people involved.
Would it be humiliating in the same way? To the same degree? Why even enter that debate? It's bad, unacceptable behavior to violate a person's privacy that way. Why would we start a game of, "oh, but this one is worse!" It's simply unacceptable no matter who it is happening to.
Saying one is more unacceptable than the other divides the population and reduces the chance for common ground. Very few people want to be shown on the internet having sex. So, let's keep this where it belongs: a privacy issue that applies to nearly everybody. Let's not run off down a rabbit hole of trying to make it a gay-rights issue.
Even the straightest, most fundamentalist Christian or Muslim who is having sex within their own marriage doesn't want somebody to take secret footage and post it on the internet.
It's a human right, and a human expectation of privacy. It should be treated as such. By doing so, it protects not just gay people, but every person.
So, yeah, I'm sad for this young man. I think it must be hard to be gay, sometimes, even in 2010. However, it's hard to be a lot of things in life. I wish he hadn't killed himself, but by doing so, he reacted very, very badly to a very bad situation.
That's not tragedy. That's pathos.
This is something that would have blown over eventually, and with society's enlightenment on the issue of gay rights, it would have been a non-issue in no time. So, I don't think this kid is a martyr. His room-mate is a total cad, and deserves to go to jail. However, he didn't kill anybody.
2. We're now at about the 2 year mark on the huge financial crisis and the government's response to it. I am still of the opinion that the politicians involved need to be punished severely.
The consensus is that the various myriad bailouts did actually have a positive impact on the economy. This is what the politicians envisioned when they voted for the bailouts in their various forms. It is illustrative to remember that when the congress voted down the first TARP vote, the dow dropped 700 points in a single day.
I think the government needed to get involved. Where I have a problem is that they got involved only for a few companies. Wall street banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG and GM and Chrysler. The rest of the economy? The bottom line is that the government didn't consider the rest of the economy worth any effort at all. Their view was that by saving the monied and politically connected interests, that the effects would trickle through the rest of the economy.
The end result? A huge, positive impact for those companies who received direct government asisstance. The rest of the economy? Not so much. We're still surviving, but unlike Wall Street, we aren't getting record profits and windfalls.
So, why do I think we need to punish the politicians if they can show that they did, indeed, help the economy?
Because what they did was so absolutely utterly bad. We departed completely from property-rights-based capitalism, and went straight into command-economy communism. The government picked the winners and losers. It rewarded those who were connected, and left everybody else to rot.
If the government was going to do this, they needed to do it in such a way that the reality was reflected for everybody concerned. The banks needed the government in order to survive. The government needed to demand conditions and concessions.
For instance, I think they should have demanded concessions such as everybody working for a bailed out bank only gets paid 1/3 of their normal salary.
Lots of ideas like this were floated during the entire history of the many, many bailouts. However, government officials, starting with Hank Paulson and going all the way through to Tim Geithner held the line that no conditions, whatsoever, should be placed on banks.
Basically, that the government should simply mortgage everybody in the United States up to their eyeballs, and the banks shouldn't have to do anything in order to receive this charity.
We could have had a bigger net economic impact if, for instance, we had actually demanded that banks need to conduct small-business lending as a condition of receiving the bailouts. We wouldn't have had to deal with social-justice outrage if we had demanded that the employees of these banks, who should have been unemployed because their banks were bankrupt, were paid something more closely aligned with a reasonable wage, instead of six, seven, and in a few publicized cases, eight-figure bonuses.
Right now, the Wall Street bankers are particularly infuriating because they're crowing that the government will get most (not all) of the bailout money back. There are a few problems with this.
The first is that it's an outrageous lie. We may get (most, but not nearly all of) the TARP funds back, but the government has the banks hooked up to so many forms of welfare right now, it's a joke. Banks basically don't lend money anymore. They don't have to. How are they racking up profits?
They're just stealing their money from the taxpayer, still, every single day. How? One way is that they're borrowing money from the fed's discount window at essentially 0% interest. Then, they're turning around and buying t-bills with the money.
Basically, they're borrowing money from the government for free, then loaning the money back to the government at interest. How can they do this? They own politicians. You don't. Which means, right now, the Wall Street banks are forcing YOU to loan them money, almost interest-free, and then forcing YOU to pay them interest when they loan that money back to you.
To call Wall Street bankers scum would be to do a terrible disservice to scum. They're worse than crackwhores because at least crackwhores are doing something for their money.
The second reason why it's infuriating to see Wall Street patting itself on the back is that... hey... other companies weren't given giant rescue packages.
A company like mine has never gotten government assistance. Not an SBA loan, not a bailout. Nothing. So, in my opinion, any company that got bailout money should have to wait behind every company that never got bailout money.
It's a simply situation of both economic and moral injustice that competent businesspeople, such as me, had to support incompetent businesspeople at a time when we, ourselves, were struggling.
Basically, the government's message was this: "I know you're having a hard time, but we're going to borrow a mountain of money, which you and your kids will be responsible, forever, in order to make sure this Wall Street banker will get a bonus bigger than what your profitable company will pay you over the next 40 years."
Wall Street is partying. Hard. They had bigger bonuses than ever in 2009. They'll be even bigger in 2010. The government forced you to pay for it. We're sufferring, and they expect us to think nothing is wrong.
Things like this are why the conclusion that the bailouts were morally wrong is inescapable. For perpetuating this evil, the politicans who approved it need to be voted out of office.
The Democrats are facing a severe thrashing. Frankly, they deserve it. They've controlled congress for 4 years and the White House for 2. Their main argument appears to be that yes, they're a bunch of incompetent, ineffective, corrupt jerks, but the Republicans are worse.
I have to admit, there's some merit to that argument. However, I think we need to throw the Democrats out. If the Republicans show up and they're the same idiots as we had in 2005, we should throw them out, too. We should keep throwing incumbents out until we get some politicians who understand that you can't just spit in the face of the American people and expect to keep your job.
So, Wall Street? Scumbags and thieves. There's no other way to describe them. The banking industry used to be necessary in order to aggregate capital, assume risk and spur industry. Now, it doesn't exist to do that at all. They exist to steal money from the American people, and to invent new "products" that add no value, whatsoever, to anything, but which scrape a micropenny from a ton of transactions.
They're worthless and letting them fail was the right thing to do. I hope we have another banking crisis, soon.
As a personal editorial note, I can't believe we're facing the biggest economic crisis of the past 80 years, and the two ass-clowns who we picked to handle it were an idiot and a wussy. Is it too much to ask for a strong leader who isn't a moron? I mean, Ronald Reagan would be nice. Bill Clinton would be nice. Heck, even George Bush the Greater, would be nice.
As for Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson? They both belong in the communist Hall of Fame.
By the way, I want to throw a shout-out to Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup. Although initially, he was probably more dense and irresponsible than most in the face of this crisis, he has finally woken up, at least, to the political reality of what's happened. For the second year in a row, he's done his job for a salary of $1.
I would like to hope that he is doing so as a sign of solidary and contrition for all the little people whose lives his company's conduct has ruined. So, despite the fact that I think most Wall Street bankers are thieves and moral degenerates who belong in prison, I still hold out hope that some of them are vaguely human. Pandit is doing a good thing and deserves a pat on the back for it.
Now, if only he could convince some of his amoral and utterly despicable minions and peers to do the same.
I'm not condoning the actions of his douchebag room-mate. What he did was beyond the pale. There are federal and state laws that cover this sort of thing and the guy deserves to go to jail for a few years. He probably will, especially given the amount of publicity surrounding this case.
What I don't understand is how this is being blasted across all media as a sort of gay-rights martyr event. I think this young man deserved the same rights as any other person. Clearly, he felt humiliated because of his jerkwad room-mate's actions.
People are portraying this as a call to action. I'm just having trouble understanding what, particularly, the action is supposed to be. I mean, if the message here is that you shouldn't film people having sex without their knowledge, I'm all for that. In fact, so is society. It's actually a crime, punishable by genuine jail time.
If the message is that you shouldn't harass gay people, I'm okay with that, too. I have a special loathing for people who are so busybody that they think they have the right to run around telling other consenting adults how to live their lives.
If the message is that you shouldn't text people and say hateful things, I'm on board with that as well. The kid was a private citizen, not a public figure. I really think the law is behind the curve when it comes to cyber-bullying. We live in an age where a handful of miscreants can publicly humiliate pretty much anybody they want to. We just don't know how to deal with it.
However, turning this into a gay issue? I take exception to that. I don't believe that people should be segmented into little sub-groups with different rights. I believe that human rights should be universal. Making this a gay issue contributes to the problem, in my opinion. Why? Because doing so treats gay people as a subset of the population that is separate and distinct from the rest of society. Considering gay people different is the source of the problem.
People have a reasonable right to have their private conduct, especially their sexual lives, kept private. (With a handful of commonsense caveats, mainly that the conduct is between two consenting adults.)
It's not the fact that gay sex was broadcast on the internet that is the cause for outrage. Gay sex deserves no more rights or protections than any other form of sex.
However, it deserves no less protection, either. I would be just as outraged if somebody took secret footage of their room-mate having heterosexual sex and posted it on the internet. Doing that would also be humiliating to the people involved.
Would it be humiliating in the same way? To the same degree? Why even enter that debate? It's bad, unacceptable behavior to violate a person's privacy that way. Why would we start a game of, "oh, but this one is worse!" It's simply unacceptable no matter who it is happening to.
Saying one is more unacceptable than the other divides the population and reduces the chance for common ground. Very few people want to be shown on the internet having sex. So, let's keep this where it belongs: a privacy issue that applies to nearly everybody. Let's not run off down a rabbit hole of trying to make it a gay-rights issue.
Even the straightest, most fundamentalist Christian or Muslim who is having sex within their own marriage doesn't want somebody to take secret footage and post it on the internet.
It's a human right, and a human expectation of privacy. It should be treated as such. By doing so, it protects not just gay people, but every person.
So, yeah, I'm sad for this young man. I think it must be hard to be gay, sometimes, even in 2010. However, it's hard to be a lot of things in life. I wish he hadn't killed himself, but by doing so, he reacted very, very badly to a very bad situation.
That's not tragedy. That's pathos.
This is something that would have blown over eventually, and with society's enlightenment on the issue of gay rights, it would have been a non-issue in no time. So, I don't think this kid is a martyr. His room-mate is a total cad, and deserves to go to jail. However, he didn't kill anybody.
2. We're now at about the 2 year mark on the huge financial crisis and the government's response to it. I am still of the opinion that the politicians involved need to be punished severely.
The consensus is that the various myriad bailouts did actually have a positive impact on the economy. This is what the politicians envisioned when they voted for the bailouts in their various forms. It is illustrative to remember that when the congress voted down the first TARP vote, the dow dropped 700 points in a single day.
I think the government needed to get involved. Where I have a problem is that they got involved only for a few companies. Wall street banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG and GM and Chrysler. The rest of the economy? The bottom line is that the government didn't consider the rest of the economy worth any effort at all. Their view was that by saving the monied and politically connected interests, that the effects would trickle through the rest of the economy.
The end result? A huge, positive impact for those companies who received direct government asisstance. The rest of the economy? Not so much. We're still surviving, but unlike Wall Street, we aren't getting record profits and windfalls.
So, why do I think we need to punish the politicians if they can show that they did, indeed, help the economy?
Because what they did was so absolutely utterly bad. We departed completely from property-rights-based capitalism, and went straight into command-economy communism. The government picked the winners and losers. It rewarded those who were connected, and left everybody else to rot.
If the government was going to do this, they needed to do it in such a way that the reality was reflected for everybody concerned. The banks needed the government in order to survive. The government needed to demand conditions and concessions.
For instance, I think they should have demanded concessions such as everybody working for a bailed out bank only gets paid 1/3 of their normal salary.
Lots of ideas like this were floated during the entire history of the many, many bailouts. However, government officials, starting with Hank Paulson and going all the way through to Tim Geithner held the line that no conditions, whatsoever, should be placed on banks.
Basically, that the government should simply mortgage everybody in the United States up to their eyeballs, and the banks shouldn't have to do anything in order to receive this charity.
We could have had a bigger net economic impact if, for instance, we had actually demanded that banks need to conduct small-business lending as a condition of receiving the bailouts. We wouldn't have had to deal with social-justice outrage if we had demanded that the employees of these banks, who should have been unemployed because their banks were bankrupt, were paid something more closely aligned with a reasonable wage, instead of six, seven, and in a few publicized cases, eight-figure bonuses.
Right now, the Wall Street bankers are particularly infuriating because they're crowing that the government will get most (not all) of the bailout money back. There are a few problems with this.
The first is that it's an outrageous lie. We may get (most, but not nearly all of) the TARP funds back, but the government has the banks hooked up to so many forms of welfare right now, it's a joke. Banks basically don't lend money anymore. They don't have to. How are they racking up profits?
They're just stealing their money from the taxpayer, still, every single day. How? One way is that they're borrowing money from the fed's discount window at essentially 0% interest. Then, they're turning around and buying t-bills with the money.
Basically, they're borrowing money from the government for free, then loaning the money back to the government at interest. How can they do this? They own politicians. You don't. Which means, right now, the Wall Street banks are forcing YOU to loan them money, almost interest-free, and then forcing YOU to pay them interest when they loan that money back to you.
To call Wall Street bankers scum would be to do a terrible disservice to scum. They're worse than crackwhores because at least crackwhores are doing something for their money.
The second reason why it's infuriating to see Wall Street patting itself on the back is that... hey... other companies weren't given giant rescue packages.
A company like mine has never gotten government assistance. Not an SBA loan, not a bailout. Nothing. So, in my opinion, any company that got bailout money should have to wait behind every company that never got bailout money.
It's a simply situation of both economic and moral injustice that competent businesspeople, such as me, had to support incompetent businesspeople at a time when we, ourselves, were struggling.
Basically, the government's message was this: "I know you're having a hard time, but we're going to borrow a mountain of money, which you and your kids will be responsible, forever, in order to make sure this Wall Street banker will get a bonus bigger than what your profitable company will pay you over the next 40 years."
Wall Street is partying. Hard. They had bigger bonuses than ever in 2009. They'll be even bigger in 2010. The government forced you to pay for it. We're sufferring, and they expect us to think nothing is wrong.
Things like this are why the conclusion that the bailouts were morally wrong is inescapable. For perpetuating this evil, the politicans who approved it need to be voted out of office.
The Democrats are facing a severe thrashing. Frankly, they deserve it. They've controlled congress for 4 years and the White House for 2. Their main argument appears to be that yes, they're a bunch of incompetent, ineffective, corrupt jerks, but the Republicans are worse.
I have to admit, there's some merit to that argument. However, I think we need to throw the Democrats out. If the Republicans show up and they're the same idiots as we had in 2005, we should throw them out, too. We should keep throwing incumbents out until we get some politicians who understand that you can't just spit in the face of the American people and expect to keep your job.
So, Wall Street? Scumbags and thieves. There's no other way to describe them. The banking industry used to be necessary in order to aggregate capital, assume risk and spur industry. Now, it doesn't exist to do that at all. They exist to steal money from the American people, and to invent new "products" that add no value, whatsoever, to anything, but which scrape a micropenny from a ton of transactions.
They're worthless and letting them fail was the right thing to do. I hope we have another banking crisis, soon.
As a personal editorial note, I can't believe we're facing the biggest economic crisis of the past 80 years, and the two ass-clowns who we picked to handle it were an idiot and a wussy. Is it too much to ask for a strong leader who isn't a moron? I mean, Ronald Reagan would be nice. Bill Clinton would be nice. Heck, even George Bush the Greater, would be nice.
As for Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson? They both belong in the communist Hall of Fame.
By the way, I want to throw a shout-out to Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup. Although initially, he was probably more dense and irresponsible than most in the face of this crisis, he has finally woken up, at least, to the political reality of what's happened. For the second year in a row, he's done his job for a salary of $1.
I would like to hope that he is doing so as a sign of solidary and contrition for all the little people whose lives his company's conduct has ruined. So, despite the fact that I think most Wall Street bankers are thieves and moral degenerates who belong in prison, I still hold out hope that some of them are vaguely human. Pandit is doing a good thing and deserves a pat on the back for it.
Now, if only he could convince some of his amoral and utterly despicable minions and peers to do the same.
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