"Into the wild" -the true story of the adventures of Chris McCandless

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
I just found out about this story recently, in typical fashion, about 20 years after it happened. Well, to my credit, less time has passed since the book and then the movie were created. I may comment more on this later, but I wanted to post this because I feel it is a remarkable story.

Boycott Amazon

Took all links to amazon off of my blog after they dumped the wikileaks website. I can't say that I'm familiar with the background of wikileaks or what they are doing. However, the charges against it's founder coming out right after he supposedly has a leak involving a big bank are really more than I care to bare at this point.

Profiling and stereotypes

These days it seems like the entire legislative and political processes have gone stark-raving mad. The same voters, I assume, that elected Bush Jr to a second term elected Obama and wait for change, only to get bad changes. The middle class continues to have to struggle to even get unemployment benefit extensions approved, while savers are punished with rising inflation due to government printing and bailouts to big bank cronies. Nothing "changed" on that front.

Once again, I digress. Today's topic is "profiling." It is a constant buzz-word, as constant issue is taken with various forms of "profiling" by groups from the hispanic community related to anti-illegal immigration to muslim/arab/middle eastern profiling at the TSA.

Guess what, we are all profiled and profile on a constant basis. When you get ID'd to buy cigarettes or alcohol, you have just been profiled. Some clerk at the counter is forming a subjective picture of what you "look like" and making certain assumptions as to your age. This is just one small, quite everyday example, of how profiling occurs everywhere already.

Granted, to live in a society we give up certain rights willingly. We agree to produce identification to the police when requested. People typically understand that the greater good requires their compliance. Except, it would seem, when really IMPORTANT issues like terrorism, rather than underage smoking, necessitates the profiling.

If you want to know my opinion, if you are in the USA, you implicitly agree to abide by the laws, assuming that the law is reasonable and just (perhaps there are better, more to the point terms than "reasonable and just" but I don't have the time to figure them out). I add this caveat to allow for the possibility of conscientous objections or civil disobedience should the law of the land become corrupted and unjust. However, removing one's shoes or burkah at the airport, even having to undergo a more thorough airport screening due to being "profiled" as being of middle eastern or arabic descent, to me is eminently reasonable in a post 9/11 world.

Granted, the anti-illegal immigration profiling fears are a bit more complex. I would guess we can thank our legislators for the fine mess we find ourselves in after decades of looking the other way to illegal immigration.

My main point is that profiling happens daily in many different ways, and I think that people in society generally are ok with it, as long as they understand that they are complying with requirements for the greater good of society (ie safety from terrorism). It is a delicate issue, and those doing the "profiling" need to be well trained and to know the reasons they are doing whatever it is they are doing, and the extent of what they need to know and are authorized to do. Profiling should never give anyone a blank check to violate a person's constitutional rights, but needs to be very specific. Whoever is doing the profiling also needs to be aware of their personal biases. In fact, in the case of security work, this is absolutely something they need to be aware of, lest the would be villans play the security forces for their very own stereotypes.

Forgive me if I am fed up with the constant debate and whining over vital measures for national security, while at the same time government aims to dig its hands even deeper into your life, from charging higher premiums to uninsured smokers, to requiring you to have health insurance, these are definitely topics for other posts. You shouldn't be upset about securing the borders or profiling at the airport. These are matters of national security. You should worry about laws that would require you to eat a certain diet, not smoke, wear your seatbelt, have health insurance, in short, make every decision you make a matter of government, and probably tax it to further divide the uber-rich from the poor, or to make Goldman Sachs quarterly profit tick up another few percent over analyst estimates.

The title of this post should have been back-assward, as that is quite what I think of the voting public.

Hunter S. Thompson

"It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die... all we know for sure is that Hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix--a clean well-lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except for the ones who know in their hearts what is missing...And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con Dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get..."

Thompson, Hunter S. Author's Note. Generation of Swine,Gonzo Papers
Volume 2, Tales of Shame and Degredation in the '80's.
By Thompson. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. 11. Print.

Obama's healthcare address

I am watching the President's address on healthcare reform. As usual, the President gives a good speech, and the first half hour or so contains little to complain about. Anecdotes about insurance companies who (and they do) cut people's coverage off when they get diagnosed with cancer, deny people because of pre-existing conditions etc.. These stories speak for themselves, and the President does have a point when he says that there is no place for behavior like this in the USA. When you think of the kind of money that gets thrown around in this country, the size of executive bonuses, it's hard to dispute this point. It's hard to rationalize a woman with breast cancer being cut off insurance and having to haggle to get it back while the cancer spreads. It's hard to rationalize an insurance companies motive to "cherry-pick" it's customers, to actuarialize people like figures on a table, to better their bottom line, to show wall street that they were more profitable than the previous quarter. It's hard to rationalize the kids that die because they did not have access to medical care for dental problems (this also happens).

At any rate, I'm a good bit through the speech and my only major CONCERNS about this are as follows:

1. Will this whet the appetite for a socialistic minded administration to decide to make other things 'mandatory?' Healthcare coverage becoming mandatory like car insurance? Well if you don't want car insurance then don't buy a car, but if you don't want health insurance...then what? What's next? Will the administration come out and say that guns are bad and kill people and we all have to pay so let's suspend your constitutional right to bear arms? In other words, don't tread on our freedoms!

2. On a related note, what gives the government the right to dictate to insurance companies what they will do? They must cover people with pre-existing conditions, no annual or lifetime caps, must cover preventative care (makes sense though) etc.. I know the insurance industry is highly regulated anyway, and there is obviously a place for government to regulate, as I don't believe unbridled capitalism usually generates proper ethics (look at how globalization has caused a race for the bottom in wages and living standards, jobs go to China where working conditions for the employees are wretched)...but what effect will this have on business? How do we know that this won't reduce insurance companies, and limit the options? How do we know if a non-profit insurance company can run well? If it can, why don't we have any number of them?

One thing is for sure: We tend to get the best results when people act in their own best interest. As shocking as this seems, think about how likely you are to get what is true, what is fair, from a haystack of bureaucrats, some of them peeking their heads out of someones pocket? If you doubt this, look at how our government let the financial industry rape the taxpayer, and how the CEOs of so many companies collect million dollar payouts while their companies lose money (not to mention ruin this country, cause unemployment, general misery, suicides, abuse etc).

The Horatio Alger Myth

The Horatio Alger Myth (also mentions references in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger_myth
"In Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Horatio Alger is mentioned as what could be interpreted as a guide for the protagonist: "How would Horatio Alger handle this situation?" (70). The novel itself is focused around a week-long attempt to discover the American Dream through drugs, degeneracy, and honest curiosity. Thompson references Alger in other scenes, but is most profoundly referenced in the very last sentence of the novel: "I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger ... a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident."

Hopefully Thompson visualizes himself as a reincarnation of Horatio Alger due to the fact that in the novel he is in a drug induced manic frenzy. I prefer Miller's comment, below, from his book Moloch. The quoted phrase is in reference to a request by one of his bosses at Western Union requesting he write a Horatio Alger novel about the lowly Western Union Messengers Miller hired and fired at his job there.

Every day now the Horatio Alger myth grows more ironic. Or at least the way the myth is taken - in terms of the American Dream.



Reference from Henry Miller:
http://cosmotc.blogspot.com/search?q=horatio+alger
I will give you Horatio Alger, as he looks the day after the Apocalypse, when all the stink has cleared away”


Horatio Alger Wikipedia Entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger,_Jr.

The Illuminati and Simon Says

Simon says, "X is not for everyone."

Simon says:

• Home ownership is NFE
• College is NFE

Simon is entrenched and at the top of the hill. Simon's main job is to play king of the hill. Simon is the have vs the have-nots. Easy to stay on top with a large bankroll. You can survive the draw down and volatility and pay for utility bills and vacations by making 5% yields on your money.

Subprime clients and liar loans played a part in the crisis. Like putting unattended children before a bowl of candy. But the banks were entirely complicit. They took their fees and sold the mortgages off to Fannie and Freddie who were quasi-governmental entities. No need to worry about those bad loans once they are out of your pipeline. When the cat's away the mice will play. SEC is a joke. Likewise Fed, Treasury. No governmental regulation of the securitization of mortgages. Ratings companies not doing their jobs either.

The government may have had no business saying home ownership is for everyone, but Simon, you are showing your bare-naked ass when you proclaim things to be not for everyone.

The worker is worth his keep. And that includes putting the kids through school to get a better life, and keeping a roof over his family's head. A roof that isn't subject to rent increases, fraudulent keeping of deposit money, and the prospect of being homeless within 15-30 days, should the volatility (in employment, investments, costs) be too large for the meager bankroll of those of modest means.

Single family homes and Profiteering

I know one of the things that makes capitalism work, market economies, in the Grand old land of opportunity is the profit motive.

I am ok with people speculating, flipping, and causing chaos in downtown markets, in areas like Hawaii, San Diego, NYC etc. I draw the line with profiteering single family homes in the suburbs, where the thankless workers who fuel the whole system of wealth for others, are forced to reside in the few hours they have away from the ball and chain they call their job.

In the most recent article in Barrons, an article gets into detail about the workings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, well, how they used to work anyway, before the US government took them over in conservatorship.

Well, apparently in an effort to realize huge gains for shareholders, and increase their market share, they took on a lot of crappy paper that they shouldn't have. This means loans that wouldn't be paid back.

Fannie and Freddie buy mortgages to take them off the banks books so they can make new loans, and sold some of them away as securities - apparently guaranteeing them against default at least part of the time.

The article makes an interesting comparison. Utility companies are regulated, and I happen to know, from reading Security Analysis by the father of value investing, Benjamin Graham, that the oversight (ie Corporation Commission) sets limits on rate increases, and generally limits the companies/investor return to what is deemed reasonable - typically around 6% return on investment.

Why should scalpers be let loose in residential real estate, in the suburbs, to inflate home values to 2-3-4 times what median incomes can support? Why should our State, City governments depend upon nothing but the continual increase of housing values and employment from housing related acitivities for income?

This country needs Economic leadership - we need a national vision - we need to have a common goal. I think it could be something like a united effort to lead the way in curing diseases and alleviating human suffering. Something, for God's sake, more meaningfull than ever-expanding suburbs, with ever increasing values (not really), needing cheap, exploitable immigrant labor (funny how the immigrant labor managed to swarm in when it was needed, even in this post 9/11 world - can you say border security?)

Stop playing roulette with housing, you political jerks. Get a vision.

The Housing Bubble

Reviewing some real estate listings recently, I was surprised at just how many were short sale or lender owned properties. Then again, I usually had a hunch that they were when looking through the pictures you see pictures of a fully-furnished home, often with little chairs, toys and obvious miscellania showing that young children live(d) there.

We are a country of hard workers, there can be no doubt about that. The American work ethic is legendary. Most of us don't want handouts, we work for what we get.

When the stock market went crazy back in 2000 and then finally collapsed, some investors lost money. When Greenspan and the US government brought interest rates down near zero and spurred the housing bubble to inflate, they planted the seed for much chaos and suffering down the road.

Without so much as even giving an eye to the consequences, for who among us did not realize that prices were way out of hand? Does anyone actually smoke enough dope to think that prices can be maintained at a level 2-3 times more than average monthly incomes? Guess what, when the rate resets from the teaser rate, people get screwed every time.

The list goes on and on. Stated income loans.

What has been allowed to happen - the huge rise and fall in housing prices, has dealt a serious blow to many American households. As far as I know, there has been no scrambling efforts by the government to take care of the citizens who have been disenfranchised by this debacle. The scrambling efforts to save companies, Bear Sterns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, continues.

The sheer stupidity, I mean, to even think that the US government and regulators did not see this coming...well that sheer stupidity has caused some people to think the government has let this happen on purpose for some secret reason.

My point is, they have fouled the American Dream, have dealt an unwelcome blow, a slap in the face to the middle class. People who do nothing but go to work every day and try to scratch out a living and a better life for themselves and their children. Now they're taking away their homes. Disrupting lives. Causing divorces, suicides, murders, abuse, mental breakdowns.

Blame my silence on Windows XP

Had a major screw up with my computer - spent probably 16 hours this weekend between re-installing everything, running Virus scan and spyware searches (found nothing).

I've done a complete overhaul and even upgraded my memory and installed backups. I have the feeling there are some nasty malware circulating, probably exploiting Windows vulnerabilities. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not the only one having a computer meltdown.

One way to look at it: It certainly forces one to spend some money at the old computer store doesn't it?

Makes you think...maybe Norton and McAfee create viruses, maybe new startup spyware programs create terrible spyware. Maybe someone crashes Windows so you'll buy Apple.

Tightening the Screws on us

Here's a bonus post of some rants I've come up with through the years.

Lie #1: We must globalize or get left behind. Eventually, globalization will be complete and we will have the benefit of lower priced goods etc. Any arguments to this concept (and the offshoring of jobs) and we will label you as a dirty protectionist. You are interfering with the free market, and basically socialist.

Truth: We have surrendered our quality of life - that was earned on the backs of hardworking American labor and the service men and women since the birth of the nation. We have simply handed our quality of life over to other countries, to allow them to industrialize and gain rates of consumption which have already been shown to be unsustainable globally. (Think about the price of oil lately).

If the government wanted to globalize and take away all of our jobs, I say fine. Jobs suck anyway. Take a page from Kyosaki and turn us all into business owners. Charge a tariff for all the goods and services that are no longer produced here, and then send every United States citizen a monthly check. No this would not be entitlement, buddy. This would be smart business, earned income. Let someone else do all the dirty manufacturing, I'll sit around and write my blog all day and go cash the check that I earned by moving the production to a place where the unit labor costs are dirt cheap.

Lie #2: Technology will lead to massive productivity gains. The future is limitless. Every man, woman, and child, will eventually have so much free time on their hands that this may well cause its own crisis - therefore we must be prepared to create recreation plans for this coming wave of ennui.

Truth: Like regular productivity, gains from which are supposed to allow business to increase wages without causing inflation, productivity gains from technology have been skimmed like fat off the surface of a crock pot. The American worker sees no significant wage gain - definitely not enough to keep their hard-earned pennies in the bank or in their wallet from shrinking in purchasing power due to inflation of the money supply by the US Treasury.

If anything, this globalization and increase in technology has actually made our lives far less worth living. We are forced to buy ever cheaper (and more dangerous) products, and household goods from third world countries. Look at the country of origin on the next "USA" t-shirt you buy. Mine was made in El Salvador. The toothpaste will kill you, if the tomatoes and the jalapenos don't do the trick first.

Electronics are made on assembly lines, and it is pretty well known that a good portion of them will be lemons - that is - will be defective shortly after you bring them home. Most of the products we buy are significantly lower quality than they used to be when they were made in the USA and providing jobs to Americans. This is yet another way that we are screwed by inflation (as if this transfer tax had not taken enough of a bite out of our savings and earnings).

And to really smear our faces in our own...the US government has the gaul to use our tax dollars to bail out the banks and finance industry, who they were supposed to be overseeing, after they did absolutely nothing to stop the gigantic real estate bubble now busted, which is ruining the lives of countless people. Goldman Sachs runs this country. Paulson just got permission to basically use a blank check to bailout Fannie and Freddie, even to buy their common stock. Then they decide to start enforcing laws against naked short selling on certain financial companies.

*I wish the government would compensate me for my stock losses in the Tech bust.
*I wish the government would step in when a stock I own was going down the tubes.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, if this isn't protectionism, then I guess I don't know what the hell is. Haven' t had much of a chance to look into this new housing relief bill, but the concept that was floated around before of trying to make the lenders refinance underwater mortgages would invalidate contract law and be very bad for business.

But, I guess it doesn't matter. There will be plenty of jobs for us and our children serving coffee to our land barons in the future.

I'm Damned Aggravated and Howlin Wolf

So Aggravated...

For starters my POS computer CPU light is on all the time and can't seem to handle doing anything more than Microsoft Calculator before it's starts acting like a complete POS.

They make better comptuers, and then Microsoft, RealPlayer, Spysweeper, Norton, McAfee, Winzip, and every other vendor juices up there software so we're back at square one in terms of efficiency and speed.

Sorry, that was just the last straw.

*******************

Some times the only thing that keeps me sane is the Bluesman Howlin' Wolf.

I just bought another CD at the used CD store. I can tell you that in my part of the country Blues is not really popular.

So I am listening to the Wolf minister to me with lyrics like:

"I have had my fun if I never get well no more,"

and

"I didn't mean to do you no harm."

Wolf, you never did me no harm.

The best buy I ever made was a Howlin Wolf Remastered Gold CD (which I bought for about $8, now they go for around $100). Some of the tunes on this, loaded with harmonica, guitar, bass, and of course, the Wolf, are in such perfect synchrony that, to me, I smile and suddenly I feel like I am somewhere in the sweltering Southern Delta listening to this band, which has now melded into a set of lungs pumping air through the vocal chord of SOUL. The guitar groans and I feel like I can feel the years of senseless toil, heartbreak, discontent, weariness, untiring weariness. But more than just the expression of these, it is a catharsis - a release of all these things that drag a man down, letting them roll off of your nose like a drop of sweat.

Sing it Wolf