So here is my dilemma: I am a pretty healthy guy, bulging waistline notwithstanding. There are aspects of my general physical health that are very dependable. Regular, you might say. The result of this. . . regularity is that I find myself leaving my office virtually daily at or very close to 10:00am. I take a short stroll down the hall, past the secretaries, turn right at the corner, go through the double doors, and then enter the large, echoing, tile-floored room on the right.
There is nothing extraordinary about this by itself. Quite natural, and a welcome respite from the work day. Not the most pleasant of respites, but that is not to be avoided. However, recently something extraordinary has been happening to me during these excursions.
Here is the scenario: I enter the little boy's room, and take care of my -ahem- business. While I am in there, as compromised as I tend to ever be on a daily basis, I have been startled to find that someone else in the building is, well, digesting on the same schedule as me. It plays out like this - I enter the stall, yadda-yadda-yadda, then, mid-business, a mystery person enters the stall next to me, and starts his own business. The thing is, it is always the same guy!
I mean, having a stall neighbor is never comfortable. It is not exactly a social activity I am engaged in. That discomfort is compounded exponentially when it is the same guy over and over. All I know about this man is that he wears brown wing tip shoes, and is on the same digestive plan as me. Suffice it to say, when he enters, I hastily make my exit.
But what is the socially appropriate thing to do? How many times do I have this encounter before I break the ice, and start up conversation? And what would I possibly say? "So, brown-wing-tip guy. I am black-slip-on man. Did you have Cheerios for breakfast, too?"
No, I don't think there is any way to make this not awkward. The only saving grace is that I haven't met brown-wing-tip man outside of the stalls. If I did, I might not feel comfortable shaking his hands. After all, I do know where he has been.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Too Broken to Save
I know I have commented a lot about this topic, and you may be getting tired of it, but I feel a lot of steam about this one, and I need to vent.
First - an announcement: YOUR GOVERNMENT WASTED BILLIONS OF DOLLARS ON THE AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY. That is right, wasted. GM and Chrysler, both of whom got enormous bailouts from the American tax payers, have come back to Washington, begging for more money, since the first astronomical sum was not enough.
You know what they call this sort of thing in the banking/investment industry? Throwing good money after bad. It is not a good idea. Not good for you, not good for your family, not good for your business, and certainly not good for the United States of America. GM is a dying animal. Why are we feeding it more and more? Why on earth do the politicians who hold this country's purse strings believe it is a good idea to give even more money to a company that is obviously incapable of making sound financial decisions? I mean, sure: GM is in a tight spot, and that tight spot is very complicated. Unions, legacy costs, poor quality, bad reputation, blah, blah, blah. It seems to me that those exact same items make a good argument AGAINST investing tax payer dollars in GM.
Now I know this sounds heartless, and I know that hundreds of thousands of jobs are on the line, but GM has got to be allowed to die. It is never wise to let a cancer grow, and that is what GM has become. A cancer. A malignant, deadly tumor that has wrapped itself around several major organs of the American economy. The good news is, the economy can survive a GMectomy. It will be painful, but we can do it. This whole argument about companies being too big to fail is a false premise. I don't buy it. If they are too big to fail, then they wouldn't fail. So, since GM is failing, it is obviously not too big to fail. More correctly, it is too broken to rescue.
But instead, our wise and benevolent leaders in Washington don't see the trouble in feeding this tumor. They don't worry about the sickening effect on the nation of maintaining the existence of such a fundamentally unsound mega-corporation. They are too worried about keeping their jobs to make the hard decisions that need to be made. And then, to add ultimate insult to injury - they are spending some of the taxpayers billions on expensive lobbyists, who go to Washington in silk suits to lean on the legislature to keep their disease alive and thriving to sicken the economy for another few months.
Let's just do what every farmer worth his salt already understands to do: if one of your animals gets too sick to work, you have to shoot it. Otherwise, it eats the feed and drinks the water needed to keep the other animals strong and working. GM, you need to die. I will miss you. Especially the Corvette. But you have outlived your usefulness, and have now become a disease.
First - an announcement: YOUR GOVERNMENT WASTED BILLIONS OF DOLLARS ON THE AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY. That is right, wasted. GM and Chrysler, both of whom got enormous bailouts from the American tax payers, have come back to Washington, begging for more money, since the first astronomical sum was not enough.
You know what they call this sort of thing in the banking/investment industry? Throwing good money after bad. It is not a good idea. Not good for you, not good for your family, not good for your business, and certainly not good for the United States of America. GM is a dying animal. Why are we feeding it more and more? Why on earth do the politicians who hold this country's purse strings believe it is a good idea to give even more money to a company that is obviously incapable of making sound financial decisions? I mean, sure: GM is in a tight spot, and that tight spot is very complicated. Unions, legacy costs, poor quality, bad reputation, blah, blah, blah. It seems to me that those exact same items make a good argument AGAINST investing tax payer dollars in GM.
Now I know this sounds heartless, and I know that hundreds of thousands of jobs are on the line, but GM has got to be allowed to die. It is never wise to let a cancer grow, and that is what GM has become. A cancer. A malignant, deadly tumor that has wrapped itself around several major organs of the American economy. The good news is, the economy can survive a GMectomy. It will be painful, but we can do it. This whole argument about companies being too big to fail is a false premise. I don't buy it. If they are too big to fail, then they wouldn't fail. So, since GM is failing, it is obviously not too big to fail. More correctly, it is too broken to rescue.
But instead, our wise and benevolent leaders in Washington don't see the trouble in feeding this tumor. They don't worry about the sickening effect on the nation of maintaining the existence of such a fundamentally unsound mega-corporation. They are too worried about keeping their jobs to make the hard decisions that need to be made. And then, to add ultimate insult to injury - they are spending some of the taxpayers billions on expensive lobbyists, who go to Washington in silk suits to lean on the legislature to keep their disease alive and thriving to sicken the economy for another few months.
Let's just do what every farmer worth his salt already understands to do: if one of your animals gets too sick to work, you have to shoot it. Otherwise, it eats the feed and drinks the water needed to keep the other animals strong and working. GM, you need to die. I will miss you. Especially the Corvette. But you have outlived your usefulness, and have now become a disease.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The United Corporation of America
OK, so I have to unload something. Buckle up, because this one has been building up steam for a while now, so I can't predict where it will go or what it will do. Got your safety goggles on? Good, then here 'goes.
Since when did America become a nation of the people for the corporations? When did that happen? How did it become suddenly appropriate for the private, self interested corporations of this country to take assistance from the public coffers as if they were entitled to it? This whole idea of "too big to fail" has a very nasty under-belly, and that under-belly is called "too big to be responsible."
OK, to provide a little context to this rant - this morning I was watching the news as I usually do, and they ran a story about Wells Fargo, which just so happens to by my own bank. Well, it seems that Wells Fargo got into a bit of trouble when folks in Washington found out that the bank was planning a snooty, high priced retreat for some hundreds of its employees to Las Vegas, where they had booked rooms in Vegas' most expensive hotel. Now this would all be hardly news-worthy, except the money that was going to send this heartless greed-balls to Vegas was taken from the American tax payer. Yeah, Wells Fargo got a few hundred million dollars from the federal government out of the TARP program, and then tried to turn around and spend some of that money to pat themselves on the back. If not for some diligent auditor in Washington, my grandma and countless thousands of other fixed-income tax payers would have been conned into paying for some extravagant, wasteful and entirely unjustified corporate orgy. How on earth can these schmucks sleep at night? They are little more than petty thieves if they try to pull this crap.
Don't you just wanna puke at this stuff? Here is another part of it that blows my mind: what on earth are they congratulating themselves for? What could they possibly have to celebrate? I imagine the reasoning at a lot of banks in America is something like this:
"Our poor decisions, wreckless policies and complete disregard for the long-term interests of both our customers and share holders, as well as our whole-sale failure to practice prudent lending and fiscal policy have resulted in the near bankruptcy of our corporation. Our actions, which have partially caused a global recession of epic proportions, have forced us to seek the assistance of the American government, relying on the financial support of the tax paying public. At times such as these, it has become necessary to lay of thousands of employees and make drastic changes in policy and practices. However, since we are too big to fail, and we hold the average tax payer in the most extreem contempt, we have found it prudent to reward ourselves lavishly for our success in getting the poor suckers to bail us out in the first place."
It makes me ill. Seriosly ill. I can't let myself think about it for too long, or I start to punch things. But lets just take a look at the complete disconnect from reason that our government is practicing: Lets take GM for example. They make a series of ridiculous and self-damaging decisions, produce sub-standard cars for several decades, and are unresponsive to the oil and energy crisis. Their cars are over-priced, poorly built, and uninspired. In short - the have proven time and time again that they are poorly run, and that the people at the helm make piss-poor decisions and have 0 foresight and vision. Is this really the kind of company the American tax payer should be forced to throw their money at? And what on earth makes us think that GM is capable of doing anything other than what they have done thus far? Don't you think that if they were capable of correction that they would have already corrected themselves? But no. We don't want them to fail for their failures. We want to keep them on life support so it takes them forever to finally die, so that meanwhile they can remain sick and continue their failed practices.
And here is a little fun math for you. TARP is somewhere around 700 billion dollars. The United States of America contains somewhere around 300 million people. The same money that is being given to corporations that have already proven themselves to be flacid, ineffectual and greedy beyond rational explanation would work itself out to be somewhere around $12,000 per American family of 5. How is that money doing more good in the hands of wreckless and irresponsible corporations than it would be doing in the hands of the average American?
If I had an extra $12,000 bones to spend, you know what I would do? Probably use the money to make payments on my mortgage, or to pay for half of a new car. I certainly could buy myself a kickin' home theater system, for sure. Too bad our banks and car makers and home electronic stores don't need any help, huh?
Since when did America become a nation of the people for the corporations? When did that happen? How did it become suddenly appropriate for the private, self interested corporations of this country to take assistance from the public coffers as if they were entitled to it? This whole idea of "too big to fail" has a very nasty under-belly, and that under-belly is called "too big to be responsible."
OK, to provide a little context to this rant - this morning I was watching the news as I usually do, and they ran a story about Wells Fargo, which just so happens to by my own bank. Well, it seems that Wells Fargo got into a bit of trouble when folks in Washington found out that the bank was planning a snooty, high priced retreat for some hundreds of its employees to Las Vegas, where they had booked rooms in Vegas' most expensive hotel. Now this would all be hardly news-worthy, except the money that was going to send this heartless greed-balls to Vegas was taken from the American tax payer. Yeah, Wells Fargo got a few hundred million dollars from the federal government out of the TARP program, and then tried to turn around and spend some of that money to pat themselves on the back. If not for some diligent auditor in Washington, my grandma and countless thousands of other fixed-income tax payers would have been conned into paying for some extravagant, wasteful and entirely unjustified corporate orgy. How on earth can these schmucks sleep at night? They are little more than petty thieves if they try to pull this crap.
Don't you just wanna puke at this stuff? Here is another part of it that blows my mind: what on earth are they congratulating themselves for? What could they possibly have to celebrate? I imagine the reasoning at a lot of banks in America is something like this:
"Our poor decisions, wreckless policies and complete disregard for the long-term interests of both our customers and share holders, as well as our whole-sale failure to practice prudent lending and fiscal policy have resulted in the near bankruptcy of our corporation. Our actions, which have partially caused a global recession of epic proportions, have forced us to seek the assistance of the American government, relying on the financial support of the tax paying public. At times such as these, it has become necessary to lay of thousands of employees and make drastic changes in policy and practices. However, since we are too big to fail, and we hold the average tax payer in the most extreem contempt, we have found it prudent to reward ourselves lavishly for our success in getting the poor suckers to bail us out in the first place."
It makes me ill. Seriosly ill. I can't let myself think about it for too long, or I start to punch things. But lets just take a look at the complete disconnect from reason that our government is practicing: Lets take GM for example. They make a series of ridiculous and self-damaging decisions, produce sub-standard cars for several decades, and are unresponsive to the oil and energy crisis. Their cars are over-priced, poorly built, and uninspired. In short - the have proven time and time again that they are poorly run, and that the people at the helm make piss-poor decisions and have 0 foresight and vision. Is this really the kind of company the American tax payer should be forced to throw their money at? And what on earth makes us think that GM is capable of doing anything other than what they have done thus far? Don't you think that if they were capable of correction that they would have already corrected themselves? But no. We don't want them to fail for their failures. We want to keep them on life support so it takes them forever to finally die, so that meanwhile they can remain sick and continue their failed practices.
And here is a little fun math for you. TARP is somewhere around 700 billion dollars. The United States of America contains somewhere around 300 million people. The same money that is being given to corporations that have already proven themselves to be flacid, ineffectual and greedy beyond rational explanation would work itself out to be somewhere around $12,000 per American family of 5. How is that money doing more good in the hands of wreckless and irresponsible corporations than it would be doing in the hands of the average American?
If I had an extra $12,000 bones to spend, you know what I would do? Probably use the money to make payments on my mortgage, or to pay for half of a new car. I certainly could buy myself a kickin' home theater system, for sure. Too bad our banks and car makers and home electronic stores don't need any help, huh?
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Blogger Therapy
I just wanted to get something off of my chest. Dana and I have decided, after 6 years of trying more or less intensively to get pregnant, to adopt a child. If you have ever had to make a similar decision, then you know how horrible and painful infertility is, and how hard the decision to adopt can be. Even though adoption is a wonderful thing, it is still a very hard choice to be forced to make, and one that is usually made only after all the other options have failed.
Dana always says that she wants little kids who look like I looked as a boy, with curly blonde hair and rosy cheeks. With adoption, we have a chance to be parents, but it comes at the cost of never seeing a little version of yourself running around. It is a high price, and is particularly hard for Dana to pay.
But the dream of parenthood is stronger than the regret, so we are proceeding this year with our adoption plans. However, we have already run into our first hurdle. You might think that, since I work for an adoption agency, we would have an advantage over other adopting parents, but you would be wrong.
It turns out that Colorado has a fairly strict conflict of interest law that prohibits us from adopting through an agency for which either of us works. I have tried several different interpretations of the statute, and have asked just about everyone I can think to ask, but I have not been able to find a legal way of staying with LDSFS and adopting through them. It looks like we may have to adopt through a private agency, which is the height of irony.
I help people in the adoption process every day, but I am not allowed to help my own family grow. Get outta here. I understand the reason behind conflict of interest laws, but this one seems extraneous in the extreme. It is not like I am going to go pay someone to give us their baby, or force someone to pick us. We would just be another normal adoptive couple on the books, like everyone else. It just seems like we should be able to sign some kind of affidavit that we have not used undue influence in the process. Grrrrr.
Anyway, we now are looking at adopting through a private agency. The only problem is that a private agency is going to charge us 2 to 4 times more than LDSFS would. Of course we are willing to pay whatever in order to become parents, but a higher fee means a longer time saving up the money, which means more waiting before we can be parents. Which of course just aggravates the already-extant frustration of infertility.
Other people have babies left and right, without wanting them or being capable of raising them, and those children are paid for by Medicaid or other social funds. We, who are both desiring and capable, also have to save up a large sum of money before we can even hope to be parents. Fair doesn't even come into it.
Dana always says that she wants little kids who look like I looked as a boy, with curly blonde hair and rosy cheeks. With adoption, we have a chance to be parents, but it comes at the cost of never seeing a little version of yourself running around. It is a high price, and is particularly hard for Dana to pay.
But the dream of parenthood is stronger than the regret, so we are proceeding this year with our adoption plans. However, we have already run into our first hurdle. You might think that, since I work for an adoption agency, we would have an advantage over other adopting parents, but you would be wrong.
It turns out that Colorado has a fairly strict conflict of interest law that prohibits us from adopting through an agency for which either of us works. I have tried several different interpretations of the statute, and have asked just about everyone I can think to ask, but I have not been able to find a legal way of staying with LDSFS and adopting through them. It looks like we may have to adopt through a private agency, which is the height of irony.
I help people in the adoption process every day, but I am not allowed to help my own family grow. Get outta here. I understand the reason behind conflict of interest laws, but this one seems extraneous in the extreme. It is not like I am going to go pay someone to give us their baby, or force someone to pick us. We would just be another normal adoptive couple on the books, like everyone else. It just seems like we should be able to sign some kind of affidavit that we have not used undue influence in the process. Grrrrr.
Anyway, we now are looking at adopting through a private agency. The only problem is that a private agency is going to charge us 2 to 4 times more than LDSFS would. Of course we are willing to pay whatever in order to become parents, but a higher fee means a longer time saving up the money, which means more waiting before we can be parents. Which of course just aggravates the already-extant frustration of infertility.
Other people have babies left and right, without wanting them or being capable of raising them, and those children are paid for by Medicaid or other social funds. We, who are both desiring and capable, also have to save up a large sum of money before we can even hope to be parents. Fair doesn't even come into it.
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