Category: Uncategorized

The John Erwin Act of 2009

Based off the warm reception the recent AIG retention bonuses have received, I forsee no problem at all for Fannie and Freddie’s upcoming round of same.

Here’s what it’s going to take. First, enact the previous post. Up it to 200%, just to be sure, and include any corporation receiving bailout or TARP monies. Funny how the UAW had to reopen their contracts lest the world surely end, but the millionaires: not so much.

Second, an example needs to be made. Ceterum censeo AIG esse delendam. Starting immediately, AIG shall be taken into bankruptcy. The still very valuable and profitable insurance branch: sold off…on the condition that all its related executives must not be retained beyond six months. Their jobs are over. The dread CDS unit: what’s sellable is sold. As to the rest of it, the various counterparties will be approached, and workarounds “negotiated.” I’m pretty sure their attidues will soften once the default swap is going to yield a) something -or- b) zero (with the attendant and required revelation on the old balance sheet). What’s not unwindable or proves unsellable is held by a resolution trust-style operation and eventually sold. Everyone, and I mean everyone currently employed by AIG that makes above $100,000/yr: goes on the fucking breadline. You can safely fire everyone not in the insurance unit starting tomorrow. And you furthermore ensure that they are not legally employable by any company or proxy of said company that is receiving or received bailout or TARP funds.

Then we wait and see which CEO wants to start off the next round of bonuses for all the hard work and genius. Things have changed. Dramatically. These fucktards just refuse to accept it.

And, media, can we quit with all the “Masters of the Universe” crap? It was foolish and obviously quite sad when times were good. Now it’s just pathetic.

100%

Resolved: There shall be a 100% tax on all bonuses, remunerations, inducements, extras, fees, and any other income not classified as “regular” (tax code here) on all employees of AIG for fiscal years through and including 2010.
Resolved: Regular incomes in excess of $50,233.00 shall be taxed at 50% in each of those years for any employee of any institution receiving TARP funds. This shall include all meals, airline flights, club memberships, cars or car services, homes, and any other indirect income received as part of an overall “compensation package” by any individual so employed.

The fucking end. Are you listening, Congress?

Are we really meant to believe that retention bonuses for the very same fucking idiots that crushed the global markets are absolutely required to keep these same “best and brightest” around long enough to fix what they hath wrought? Unbelievable.

We were doing it before we had a name for it

One Kimber VanRy was ticketed to the tune of $25 for sipping a beer on his stoop (not a party, not a nuisance, just sitting out there quietly enjoying a beer in the great urban out-of-doors).

Clyde Haberman reports on the long-term outcome of that event while simultaneously showing us how serious journalism is done:

[VanRy was sitting on] the short stoop of the four-story co-op building on Sterling Place in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, in which he owns an apartment. The stoop is set well back from the curb, but does not lie behind a gate, as some other stoops on that block do.

There Mr. VanRy sat, on what was private property — minding his own business, working his BlackBerry and nursing a beer. For the curious, it was a 12-ounce bottle of Sierra Nevada.

Twist top or crown cap?

Anywho:

Last week, a judge tossed out the case on a technicality. The matter had dragged on too long, he said.

For Mr. VanRy, the victory was less than satisfying. Larger questions about stoop sitting and sipping were not addressed.

Agreed.

I can only assume editors cut out the explanation of Mr. VanRy’s fucked up last name capitalization schema. Perhaps he’s big into R (or perl, perhaps) and wanted his name to reflect a delightful air of utterly random and insanity-making camel-casing conventions. Haberman does mention:

Neighbors drinking beer on their front steps get these “quality of life” summonses, but not people sipping wine at New York Philharmonic concerts in Central Park or knocking back frozen daiquiris at summer movie screenings in Bryant Park.

Rest assured, these people will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Insect Authority and 9/11

Has there been any greater boon to / more effective accelerant thrown upon the eternal flame of Insect Authority than that of the pervasive fear, uncertainty, and doubt that 9.11 implanted and Bush et al. carefully husbanded and amplified? Today’s example comes from the New York Times, where a fellow was (legally) photographing the subway in action at a particularly godforsaken stop somewhere in the Bronx:

“[…]According to the rules of conduct, we are allowed to take pictures,’ ” Mr. Taylor said. “I showed him the rules — they’re bookmarked on my BlackBerry.”

Rule 1050.9 © of the state code says, “Photography, filming or video recording in any facility or conveyance is permitted except that ancillary equipment such as lights, reflectors or tripods may not be used.”

Then a police sergeant arrived.

“He tells me that their rules and the transit rules are different,” Mr. Taylor said. “I tell him, ‘If you feel I’m wrong, give me a summons and I’ll see everyone in court.’ The sergeant told them to arrest me.”

[…I’ve found the quickest way to an arrest is pointing out a policeman’s error in this way; but anyway…]

[Taylor] got a batch of summonses.

The first was for “taking photos from the s/b plat of incoming outgoing trains without authority to do so,” abbreviating “southbound platform.” It cited Rule 1050.9 ©.

The second was for disorderly conduct, which consisted of addressing the officers in an “unreasonable voice.”

And the third was for “impeding traffic” — on a platform that is about 10,000 square feet. “I don’t know if you can impede traffic with 15 people per hour coming on the station,” Mr. Taylor said.

(Emphasis added.)

So, the man here is illegally arrested and held, charged with a bunch of nonsense entirely designed to prevent him from ever asking a question again (nothing here is meant to see to the public safety or even the grudging enforcement of some law that everyone involved in the situation might agree is outdated or silly; this is pure intimidation, and was premeditated intimidation at that: guy asks too many questions, guy goes to jail and subsequently has to appear in court as many times as possible. That all these charges will likely be dropped is immaterial to the officer; the entire punishment is the combination of intimidation and inconvenience.).
And just how many people get arrested for “impeding traffic” or some variant of same every year? Millions? I personally know several in vaguely similar circumstances: police can’t actually charge them with anything, and the soon-to-be-arrested know it and have used that knowledge against The Authorities, so they’re going downtown for, uh, impeding traffic! Six weeks later, the charge is dropped by a dumbfounded judge, probably at a cost not too far off the $1,500/minute quoted in the piece.

This same pattern extends everywhere, it would seem. I’ve been questioned by security for looking at a building. From the outside (but on their property, by God, which, to their mind, more than likely extends several feet into the street as well). It seems no structure is sufficiently innocuous to avoid Fort Knox level security measures and potential deportation to Gunatanamo for anyone so much as even slightly stepping out of line. Only when we all decide to start fighting each and every one of these incidents like Mr. Taylor did here will we ever make any progress.

Decline and Fall

We can see a lot of the decline and fall of the MSM at the hands of those damnable innertube world wide web log, or “blog” startups what with their cursing and pajamas and whatnot in last night’s press conference.

First, we have the Huffington Post’s Stein:

“Today, Senator Patrick Leahy announced that he wants to set up a truth and reconciliation committee to investigate the misdeeds of the Bush administration. He said that before you turn the page, you have to read the page first. Do you agree with such a proposal? And are you willing to rule out right here and now any prosecution of Bush administration officials?”

Of interest for being the first non-plant blogger called on at one of these thing. Let’s compare and contrast to the performance of the MSM, in this case the Washington Post’s Michael Fletcher asked:

“What’s your reaction to Alex Rodriguez’s admission that he used steroids as a member of the Texas Rangers?”

I think we can all agree that that’s pretty much exactly what anyone given one question would ask the sitting President. At least it failed to include the traditional four-paragraph lead-in. Been nice knowing you, MSM.

The Year We Make Contact


Interesting results from the folks over to Gallup. Turns out that, despite major (and continuing) assistance from the MSM, ‘Merica is seeing right through this shit.

Seemingly forgetting the downright ruly 2-million person mob at their doorstep on Inauguration Day, seemingly forgetting that, in many cases, Obama carried their own districts by large, double-digit figures, seemingly forgetting that, you know, the economy is in freefall and that most everyone in America places blame squarely at the doorstep of the GOP; most of all, seemingly forgetting 2010.

On behalf of the mob

Ezra opines on the scene:

This is, in other words, no time for moderation. And on the Mall today, you could believe it. The press was seated directly before the podium – I had a second-row seat to history, you might say – and behind us stretched the long lawn. And all we could do was gape. It was a sea of people. Millions of people. A mass of moving, yelling, dancing, joyous humanity, filling every patch of green and surrounding the Washington Monument. The image richly recalled the iconic photographs of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington. And the assembled politicians knew it. Up on the podium, you could see senators snapping pictures on their digital cameras, pointing at the crowd, shaking their heads in disbelief. They weren’t pretending to be blase about the scene. This was different. This was dramatic. It was a screaming, laughing, cheering rejoinder to those who would constrain the scale of Obama’s ambitions, or question his political assets.

And, as somebody out there moving, yelling, dancing, and actively being humanity: I agree on all points. You’d think the members of both the “loyal” Democrats as well as both the vigorous/healthy and the lunatic, nothing-will-move opposition from the GOP side would look out and have exactly the same moment…and, upon hearing Obama’s own “the ground has shifted beneath them” line would combine the two streams of information and move out accordingly in the coming days and months. Instead, Jay Boehner gives us this:

I’m not sure that anyone knows exactly what [Obama] was trying to say.

Indeed, the meaning of the various threads at work on the day were quite muddy. I guess we know what we have to look forward to.

Stanford and Son

You can understand a lot about the iPhone and the iPod Nano (which cost more to produce yet still replaced (at the same price point) the most popular iPod ever, the “mini”) from this quote from Steve Jobs, re: Macintosh 25th anniversary

“I don’t think about that,” he said. “When I got back here in 1997, I was looking for more room, and I found an archive of old Macs and other stuff. I said, ‘Get it away!’ and I shipped all that shit off to Stanford. If you look backward in this business, you’ll be crushed. You have to look forward.”

Then consider this, from the then-titan of the industry:

“I’d shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
–Michael Dell, 1997.

And, perhaps even more telling, this notorious quote from Jobs himself, to Fortune magazine in 1996:

“If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth – and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”

Which is basically exactly what he did the next year. At any rate, worth considering the state of Dell today, run to the whim of Wall Street analysts, and the then-doomed Apple (Wired circa 1997: Silence grips Apple Deathwatch). One commoditized, the other innovated. This despite the fact that even Macworld magazine had inexplicably begun running Windows NT tips. And in every major instance, Apple’s moves were greeted with derision and a fall in stock value (iMac, iPod, Apple Stores, iPhone were all (wrongly) crowned as the last gasp of a desperate company; after all, even might Dell couldn’t figure out how to do bricks and mortar. My stars!).

This is ultimately Steve Jobs value to Apple. The actual products aren’t nearly important as the corporate daring, the brass balls that are necessary to tack hard against the wind and discontinue your best seller in favor of something even better. Or to say “fuck it, we will put no floppy drive in there.” And etc… Very few other companies of size do the same. Hell, very few Mom and Pops will make moves like that. Worth considering.

Simple Solutions to Simple Problems

John Glenn, first American man to orbit the Earth, on the upcoming interregnum in America’s spacefaring capacity:

“I never thought I would see the day when the world’s richest, most powerful, most accomplished spacefaring nation would have to buy tickets from Russia to get up to our station,”

Umkay. I hear that India is in the Space Station market. Just give them the damned thing. That’ll leave them significantly less money for ongoing nuclear development…

I’m all for teh Space Science and all, but that thing is a free-fall to nowhere in particular and costs ~$1bn per shuttle launch (setting aside for the moment the 1 in 50 potential for the death of seven, count ‘em, SEVEN astronauts) to even get a refrigerator up there.
I say we go robotic and do all of our ant farms studies on the good Earth until the next ride arrives. We did the same throughout most of the 70s and the Republic is still here.