I'm Pissed

I also find references to Network quite tired, so don't get your hopes up.

Edit: I admit it... I have no idea how to use trackbacks. I'm gonna figure this thing out...

A favorite economist of mine posts his thoughts here with a link through to an op-ed he wrote. Read it; its good and he sounds like he could use the encouragement :-)

This health-care boondoggle will be a disaster for this country. I'm not going to rehash the reasons here; they're well documented elsewhere. I would like to add one additional goal to Dr. Kling's list:

• Eliminate deferred compensation for elected officials
• Eliminate health benefits for elected officials

I'm not sure the deferred compensation (pensions, etc.) for elected officials is quite as lavish as many think, though I have no doubt it provides a comfortable existence. I suggest eliminating it to provide a strong disincentive for career politicians. This will force those who would deem themselves the "ruling class" to get REAL jobs, work for a living, and save enough for their own future before they go off to City Hall/Columbus (insert state capital here)/Washington D.C. and force their will over our lives. The change in incentives will be shocking.

To my second goal, the only way that the amount of money spent on medical care will be reduced will be if individuals are responsible for paying a greater share of the expense. Elected officials should be forced to take personal responsibility for these costs where it involves themselves and their families.
Also, by forcing elected officials into the individual market they will be confronted directly with the reasons WHY individual insurance is so expensive (coverage mandates, community rating, state limits of suppliers).

Notice the phrase I used above, "amount of money spent on medical care." I didn't call it "health care costs," "price of health care," or "health expenses." Those three things are all determined by market forces; none of them accurately identifies the "problem" that our Federal government is trying to "solve." In fact, when phrased accurately the "problem" looks a little ridiculous. Individuals spending money on a service is an individual choice; it only becomes a problem when tax dollars are in play. Maybe the real problem is spending tax dollars on something individuals should be responsible to purchase on their own.

Here Comes Wealth Confiscation

Welcome to the return of American despotism. This time there's not even a war to hide behind. Late last night the House of Representatives passed something they call "Health Care Reform." It is a lie. There is no reform; the status quo is ossified by this bill. Either you keep the health insurance you have right now forever (that means if there's some new treatment that isn't covered today your plan can't ever cover it), or you get the government plan. But, they say, this is NOT a single-payer plan. Lies.

Here's a line in the sand: any one who supports this bill is an enemy of liberty. Weather they know everything in it and agree or are ignorant is irrelevant, as ignorance merely makes you a useful idiot. I have no doubt every liberal douche out there is celebrating. They're fools.

Now as to the topic of my post, I'll spell it out. There is absolutely no way this bill is "deficit neutral." If you believe that, I'd like to offer you some ocean-front property in Nevada as well as options on parcels on the Moon. This bill comes along with a boat-load of additional taxes to steal what is yours (and more importantly mine!) and still won't cover the expense in the end.

To everyone who thinks that the "rich" can pay for it all. First, you're a selfish asshole; get off your ass and work. Second, the "rich" will not be impacted by this. Taxes are based on income, not wealth (yet, there's also a millionaire tax in this bill) so only those that are becoming wealthy (that is, they have high incomes) will be taxed. Those who are already wealthy can very easily lower their incomes (or at least make it look that way on paper) without dramatic impact on their lifestyle.

So, good going America. You voted for the Democratic Party and screwed up everything.

Fry Polanski

I think that pretty well captures my opinion. As with many others, I'm sickened by Roman Polanski's defenders in Hollywood. A good insiders perspective can be found here. Fortunately Hollywood was kind enough to provide us a list of perv defenders. Here's a link with the list of signers for the "Free Polanski" petition.

I'm now seriously considering a boycott of everyone on this list for at least a year. I'll post back when I have a final decision.

No you can't pay me back redux

I had a more personal experience with paying off some debt this week that I must now vent. In 2007 we took out a loan to replace a car that I totaled in an accident (ask me later). With that loan we purchased our current car, a Toyota Matrix. Great car. Up until this week we've been very happy with the loan holder, originally RoadLoans.com which appears to have been later spun off by Triad Financial. When we got the loan I made sure that there were no prepayment penalties, because those are just plain evil.

Every month since the loan was started we have paid the minimum or more, some times much more. So much more, in fact, that our last statement had a due date of November 24, 2011. This is why I was very puzzled when my wife, Emily, received a phone call from Triad telling us we had $24.73 past due. It is simply impossible.

Emily spoke with the customer service representative trying to understand what she was talking about. She threw around several numbers, neither of which made sense. This customer service representative can only be described as "incoherent." At the end of the call Emily informed her that we had already sent in our final pay-off. To this, the CSR responded "Then what's the problem?" I don't know: YOU CALLED ME!

Friday morning I called to find out what the problem was. I think I spoke with the same lady, or someone equally idiotic, because she told me the same things Emily described to me. I calmly explained that there was no way we could have an amount past due because we had paid far more than expected at this point in the loan. This is when the CSR started talking about how the payments apply to the loan. Her words were "lump sums are broken up into payments." This contradicts what I'm seeing on my statement, which records my lump sum as all having been applied to the principal. Of course this still doesn't explain why there would be an amount past due.

Next, the CSR explained that the amount paid didn't carve out into even payments. This means that the last payment into which my large lump sum was sliced was incomplete and therefore there is an amount "past due." Clearly Triad Financial uses an alternative definition for "past due." I explained this several times to the CSR. She was dense as a lead vest. Eventually her "supervisor" broke into the call.

I'll take a side-bar here to explain why "supervisor" is quoted. For my first year out of college I worked in IT at a debt collection/investment company called Unifund. If you've heard of them you should probably be more careful to pay your credit cards. It was a small company and pretty much everyone was on friendly terms, so I spoke to folks in the customer service department frequently. There was an overall supervisor, but no one ever spoke to him. When you spoke with a "supervisor," you were simply transferred to another CSR. There's a good chance this happened with Triad.

Anyhow, this "supervisor" insisted on sending me a print-out of how my payments were being applied. She insisted that everything would make sense if I saw this print-out. I explained to her that I had with me right at that very moment every statement I had received from them. On each statement it explained what portion of my last payment was applied to the principal of the loan. Based on that I knew exactly how my payments were applied. Then she told me that the statement didn't tell me how THEY applied the payments.

Huh?

The "supervisor" explained that when a sum larger than the expected balance is applied it IS applied to the principal, but if a payment is skipped the next payment is taken from the lump sum. This, however, contradicts what Emily was told during her incoherent conversation the previous day. She was told that payments "didn't advance" and that a payment needed to be made every month. This statement is consistent with the wording of the disclosure form when we first started the loan, which indicated that payment was expected monthly. Of course, THIS statement is contradicted every month by the very statements we receive which, after we started paying amounts greater than the minimum, indicated payment due dates far in the future.

So which is it? But more importantly, HOW THE HELL DO I HAVE ANYTHING PAST DUE?

After extrapolating all this in my head, because I'm not sure either of the women in that conversation could actually understand the above paragraph, I stated, "So I don't actually have a past due balance but it looks like I do because of the way the payments are sliced up?" To which the "supervisor" replied, "Yes." Lovely. So why did we receive a call?

I never got a satisfactory answer to this. The original CSR was clueless and the "supervisor" gave me some line about the computer system using an autodialer based on some internal criteria of my large sum payment not slicing up evenly into expected payments.

Her explanation does not mesh with reality. This is the first call we have ever received from Triad Financial. For over a year now we have been paying more than the minimum payment and those payments never would have equaled a full minimum payment. Why were we not called previously? And since she eventually admitted that we did not, in fact, have an amount that was actually past due why were we called and told we did? And why did their website show that we did? None of this makes sense.

The sinister explanation is that they're attempting to bilk us out of more money. I don't know, but I expect had our response been passive the CSR would have happily allowed us to pay over the phone, thus squeezing a few more dollars out of us prior to our payment in full. This seems a little far-fetched.

The more charitable explanation is that they have a terrible defect in their software. The explanation that they use an autodialer is probably true. When I worked in telemarketing we used such a system. The autodialer system generated a pool of numbers and each station was given them as the user became available. The breakdown here seems to be in building the pool of numbers to call. If they are doing a first-notice phone call of everyone who has a past-due payment then their criteria for finding these numbers is faulty, possibly due to the way they are counting the payments. This would be consistent with their website's presentation of an amount past due (also false).

We'll see in a week or so which explanation is closer to the truth. If the title for the car does not arrive I suspect sinister shenanigans. If it does arrive, I'll know they have defective software.

No you can't pay me back...

... then you wouldn't be my slave.

The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower {becomes} the lender's slave.
-- Proverbs 22:7, NASB

In the Wall Street Journal, Stuart Varney opines about the possible reasons behind the Obama administrations refusal of TARP repayment from a large and prominent bank. My comment, and that passage from Proverbs, sum up the article fairly well.

Since this whole TARP mess began there have been rumblings about the Treasury forcing (at the point of a figurative gun) banks to accept this bailout money. We now start to see the inevitable ex post facto strings being attached to these funds and many banks want out. This is fine for small banks, apparently, but not for large banks. Varney explains why in the article.

There have been some (I won't name names) with whom I've discussed this who when faced pronounced the forcing of TARP money to be bunk. Their smug response to this was, "Well, if they don't want it they can just give it back." The fact that there were no news reports about this confirmed that these banks really did need the money, and were therefore not forced to take it. Well, if you're reading, you're wrong. At least one prominent bank did not want the TARP money, was forced to accept it, and is not now permitted to return it even with interest.

Neither Varney nor Napolitano (see the article) are willing to reveal the name of the bank. This is wise, as this bank would likely face political retribution from the White House and Congress. I suspect it is Wells Fargo, but I don't know enough about the banking industry to have any real idea.

It's time to call this what it is: fascism. The state, without taking ownership of capital, is dictating its uses. We see this with TARP and with this auto bailout nonsense. This won't be the first American experiment in fascism, but I hope there is enough popular outrage to stop this one in its tracks.

Many of you know that I twice voted for George W. Bush. I don't regret either vote, considering the alternatives, but I was deeply disappointed by this bailout nonsense. Of course George W. Bush was no free-market fundamentalist, as he has been labeled by the ignorant media. President Bush's campaign in 2000 was "compassionate conservatism." This is, and always has been code for "big-government conservatism." Big government is antithetical to a free-market (and liberty, for that matter). I have recognized for a number of years that where George W. Bush departed from free-market and small-government principles he was acting exactly as he said he would during his campaigns. He in no way deceived anyone; he, along with Congress, abandoned the principles of the base of the Republican party, told us what they were doing, and got elected. Then they went and did what they said they would, and now we're mad at them.

All of that is to say this: for eight years there have been very few viable candidates to represent those who want less government. We've had to settle for those who want a government to grow a little slower. Its time for the people to pick up where Reagan left off and either find or build a party that will commit to shrinking the government. Even Newt Gingrich is speculating about a third party.

In four years we'll be luck if we have any liberty remaining. We've already seen ex post facto laws proposed to confiscate income (not to mention the fact that it was also a writ of attainder). Remember: wealth confiscation. We're keep hearing about the return of the "fairness doctrine" with explicit references to taking shows like Rush Limbaugh's off the air. And we have the Deputy Solicitor General arguing that, under McCain-Feingold, the Federal government has the authority to censor any book or movie it likes. Remember: suppression of dissent.

Time is running out, and I hope we're not too late already.

Not Realistic At All

Most who know me know that I have rather strong opinions about... well anything about which I have an opinion. When Briston Palin was quoted as saying the abstinence was unrealistic, this touched on one of my more strongly held opinions. To be fair to her, I'll quote her more fully: "everyone should be abstinent... but it's not realistic at all." She doesn't really give a detailed explanation as to why just that something is more accepted. She is not clear as to whether it is teen pregnancy or premarital sex that is accepted, but both are true. Whatever she happened to mean, her reasoning is faulty. I am of the (audacious) opinion that premarital abstinence is certainly realistic, and that those who insist it is not are either ignorant or evil.

I don't typically get this personal in blogging, but I'll state this: before getting married I did not have sex. Ever. Neither did my wife. Ever. I can state unequivocally that it is possible to abstain from sex until marriage because I did it. I made choices in high school and college with the intent of first having sex with my wife on our wedding night. And, hey! It happened! Do not tell me that abstinence is unrealistic because I know otherwise.

It has been my experience that the attitude of those of the "not realistic" opinion tend to think that "they're going to do it anyway" no matter what they are told. I find this insulting for two reasons:

1. I didn't
2. It treats todays youth as animals unable to withstand the force of their hormones.

Adolescents are not animals. Given the tools and opportunity, they can control the urges of their body. It seems, however, many would rather just teach them how to have sex without getting pregnant. I find that attitude very puzzling. Pop culture says that telling kids to not have sex doesn't work, and that it is better to teach them about various means of birth control. Of course, telling kids to not have sex only fails because these kids don't listen. What makes proponents of "comprehensive sex education" think that these same kids will listen when told about using birth control?

Perhaps the quality of "abstinence-only sex education" is problematic. I don't really know; I elected not to take a "sex education" course in high school. However, I know that other (specifically Christian) organizations actually give students strategies to avoid having sex. Its really not that difficult, and I can summarize them very briefly: avoid situations where people commonly have sex. How is that unrealistic?

Quick Predictions

My two predictions for the Obama administration:

1. Supression of dissent
2. Wealth confiscation

That's all for now.