Fair Share

Thank you, Senator Baucus, for validating my many claims that "health care reform" (and most everything else our Dear Leader is up to) has nothing to do with actual health care. Oh, and also, thank you for validating every right-wing nut jobs claim that the Obama government is nothing more than American Socialism:

Too often, much of late, the last couple three years the mal-distribution of income in America is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind. Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America.

On a related note, I am getting fantastically weary of the census propaganda. Now, I have nothing against the census itself - at least in the sense of its original design (I filled out the first and only constitutional question, scribbled "none of your business" over the rest of the survey and happily mailed it back). That of counting people for the purpose of representation. A fundamental and primary, and really, the only legal reason for the census at all. But that is not what we are being hammered with in these ongoing and utterly non-stop ads. Just how many did they create? And at what cost?

Have you noticed how stupid they assume that American citizens are? "How we will you ever know if you need more buses in your town if We aren't able to send money to minorities and poor people?" The majority of the questions in my census survey dealt with race. Which is entirely irrelevant. Since when did we send representatives to congress based on racial distribution?

We don't. (Not yet.) No, instead the census has unmasked itself as a tool for "community organizers" to redistribute wealth – after all, the wealthy are just "way, way to wealthy" these days. Every ad I've seen has some regular joe proudly declaring with doe-eyed optimism and joy that "without the census we can't get our fair share of funding!"

Of course, in government-speak, I think we all know what "fair-share of funding" means. And if you ever do wonder, or forget, I'm certain Senator Baucus will be happy to clear that up for you.

This ad is especially annoying, pretentious and ridiculous. If some jack ass with a megaphone and in a bathrobe started spouting government propaganda out in front of my house, I'd be tempted to hit him across the face with a baseball bat. But then, what do I know? I need Washington to tell me where the nearest sporting goods store is, and they need Washington to tell them how many bats to buy. And by then, when I finally have my bat, the d-bag with the bathrobe and pedophile mustache is gone, no doubt enjoying a cushy desk job at the Center for American Progress.






P.S. I also would like to thank: Joe Biden (man, we are going to control the insurance companies) and John Dingell (control the people) for also helping validate everything I've been saying for the last 2 years.

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Uncommon Man

I do not choose to be a common man.
It is my right to be uncommon, if I can.
I seek opportunity, not security.
I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the
state look after me.

I want to take the calculated risk;
to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed.
I refuse to barter incentive for a dole.
I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence;
the thrill of fulfillment to the stale clam of utopia.

I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout.
I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat.
It is my hertiage to stand erect, proud, and unafraid;
to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefits of my creations
and face the world boldly and say: This I have done.

~Dean Alfange.

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It's Madness Baby!

I love the NCAA tournament. Love. It.

And not just for the bracketology and the upsets and the way that everyone looks the other way while normally productive adults glue themselves to radios and TVs (thank the maker for the internet!) during the opening weekend. But also because it represents the very essence of sport: competition. Aside from a little bit of punditry and snubbery, the tournament, I think most can agree on, largely represents the best 64 teams in the country. And while perhaps not necessarily the best 1-64, it gives those teams that win small conferences an opportunity to showcase themselves on a large scale. That is, the 64 best seasons (aside from those Conference tourney busters) are rewarded with a trip to the dance. The tournament is simply the most fun I have all year as a sports fan.

Which means I have been having fun using ESPNs tourney history database. Did you know that:

BYU is 11-27 in 24 NCAA tourney appearances.
Utah is 35-30 in 27 invites. (4 Final Fours)
Duke is 88-30 in 33 appearances - including 14 Final Fours. 3 Championships.
UNC is 102-39 in 41 trips to the dance. 18 times they reached the Final Four. 5 Titles
Kentucky is 100-45 in 50 trips. 13 Final Fours and 7 titles.
UCLA is 98-36. 43 trips. 18 Final Fours. 11 Titles.

The last time BYU won a tournament game was 1993. In fact, they've won only once since the Berlin wall came down. Yeah, democracy has had as many victories in the USSR than BYU has had in the modern Tourney era. Ouch. And playing a feisty, motivated Florida team this year does not bode well for a team notoriously bad at any kind of tournament play.

Bring out the paper sacks.

Of course, the real beauty of the tournament are the great upsets and Cinderella runs. Like Loyola Marymount in 1990. Or George Mason in 2006. Will a team in 2010 have such a run? Not likely. But one never knows. The field seems remarkably deep this year. Any one of several teams could win the entire tournament. And while that is always the case, it seems particularly difficult to divine such results this year.

And so,h ere's to spring. And to the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

(And yes, Bob, that image is just for you.)

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Money

Money is a curious thing. Actually to most people it is a boring subject, they just want more of it so they can buy stuff. To me, the subject is incredibly interesting and I find myself going back to it time and again. How can I take money that I have and make more money with it.

Up above you can see my current IRA allocation. I've designed a program in Excel that takes the daily stock prices, updates them, and builds a new graph for me so I can watch the allocations. This is totally a bad approach to take, as watching your stocks usually makes you do dumb things. However, even knowing this I feel compelled to watch because I'm addicted. I'm addicted to trying to squeeze out every available bit of alpha that I can get.

(Alpha is that extra bit of money that a smart money manager can make over what the market returns on average, it is the elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.)

So all this is my way of saying that I will be redirecting my posts. They will now take a much less political tone and focus more on monetary issues. Some of them will be broader (like I'm currently reading Too Big To Fail and it is incredible) and other times they will be more micro-focused. (Like how I'm currently evaluating Lending Club as a potential medium term investment vehicle)

So, all that said. Let me leave you with a quote to consider.

There are certain things that cannot be adequately explained to a virgin either by words or pictures. Nor can any description that I might offer here even approximate what it feels like to lose a real chunk of money that you used to own.

That came from The Investor's Manifesto, I recommend everyone to read it right away.

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A Defector's Thoughts on Education Reform

I came across Diane Ravitch's opinion piece in the Journal today and was intrigued. She was the Assistance Secretary of Education to Bush Sr. and an ardent supporter of Bush Jr.'s education initiatives while working for private non-profit education think-tanks and such.

Basically, she was a former imbiber of the accountability, charter school kool-aid and is getting on the wagon to liberate herself from said kool-aid, citing some of the following as reasons:

• No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is flawed for two principle reasons: It allows states to define their own levels of "proficiencies" which pale compared to federal standards, and it focuses on reading and math at the expense of other important subjects.
• Regarding charter schools, they now serve 3% of the nation's children, 17% of which do better than public schools, 46% do no differently, and 37% do worse.
• Culture of teacher accountability, while important in principle, is creating a punitive culture not conducive to actual teaching improvement.

Ms. Ravitch brings no new ideas for reform to the table, but finds it sufficient to announce her defection. Fair enough. I've got some thoughts of my own and your takes are welcome.

First, it's got to be understood that what you send your child to school with is vastly more important than what you expect them to get while there. Ms. Ravitch rightly points out that, again and again, poverty is the best indicator of child performance in schools. Parents in poverty-stricken homes are often raising their children alone or have two parents both working in low-paying jobs indicative of the poverty in which they in turn were raised. In either case, this is not an environment where kids are engaged after school in discussion of what was learned, encouraged in their homework or even assisted in it, or given opportunities to learn through the summer while not in class or after school in things like music lessons, trips to zoos and museums, concerts, etc.

Second, even in higher-income family situations, not having a parent at home when the kids are done with school has to have an effect that I don't believe has been adequately documented. Again, it's the parent at home, who's not stressed out about working at a crappy job, who's focused 100% on nurturing the children, who has time to be involved in parent-teacher conferences and parent-teacher organizations, who can have a much bigger impact on their kids' education than anything we do in school.

It's not PC to talk this way, and I'd happily be a stay-at-home dad if the situation called for it, but two full-time incomes, a phenomenon being called "necessary" more and more these days, comes at a non-monetary cost paid by the children more than anyone.

Taking these principles into application, there's got to be a way we can take a load off of single-parent families a bit and on families with children:

1. Is there a way that trips to museums, zoos, concerts, purchases of books, vacations to national or state parks, etc. can be deductible or that some sort of tax credit can be given as in-home education expenses? Maybe that kind of deductible/credit can only be available below a certain income, but then again, a lot of these poverty-or-close-to-it families don't pay taxes anyway.
2. Can we say that at a certain income level above poverty but still not amazingly high, that single-parent families or families with children just straight pay no federal income tax? Take the stress off a bit?
3. What about a huge tax break for single-income families? It would have to be big enough to tip the scales for two-income families, already debating whether it's worth it as the second paycheck gets dumped into day care or nannying, can have a real financial incentive to ditch the second income.
4. Unrelated to the principles I mentioned, the only way we can really expect better performance and heightened accountability in public teachers is to jack up their income. I can imagine how frustrating it must be to be a teacher accused of being a slacker having been paid like one your whole career. Those of you who've been to IN-N-OUT outside of Utah (they're still rookies) have hopefully noted that apart from a different quality of food, the service is better. They require a different level of service from their employees than other fast-food burger joints, and it's simply because their cashiers make as much as competitors' managers. The bottom line is the bottom line sometimes.
5. Rather than hold teachers accountable for their performance in class (or perhaps in addition to it), hold accountable the administrators of state and federal funding at the district and school level. If an administrator is not able to show results in student performance by some metric (TBD by people smarter than me), that's the administrator mis-managing and not knowing how to get an ROI. That's their problem, not the teacher's. A solution I have is to keep administrators in the classroom. I know they're busy, but make them teach a class a day or something--maybe a 1st period class or sub part of the day in elementary schools (probably just let them do whatever they did before they got promoted) so they can keep their feet wet and stay close to the ground. It'll take a load off the teachers and help generate some empathy.

So yeah, that's what I got. I'm starting to stress about this as our first home purchase will have as much to do with the local school district as it does the home itself.

What do you guys think?

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96 Team Tourny?

My feelings about March Madness have been well-documented (I can't find the link, but the bottom line is I'm one of the weird ones who prefers the NBA and doesn't get all that excited about putbacks and slash-and-kicks this time of year), but any accusations of partiality need be cast aside when I tell you that I think a 96 team tournament is ridiculous.

It's already a pretty big field where the lowest-seeds rarely make much noise outside the first round (though I'll admit it's fun when they do). You're not making room for better competition since 65-06 aren't exactly great teams. You're prolonging the madness and making more money, and that's it. So let's just lay aside any justifications of inclusiveness and call it what it i$--all about the Benjamins.

Since I know my brother authors and readers tend to like March Madness, I'd love to hear of anyone out there who thinks expanding to 96 teams is a good idea.

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Caption This

Ready.....go!



Photo courtesy Associated Press

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Drinker in Chief?

President Obama is still smoking (another broken campaign promise). Which, I suppose other than being symbolically unbecoming, is his right and prerogative. And probably also explains why Michelle Obama has not started a full frontal assault on tobacco the way she has on obesity. At least, not yet.

However, in a public statement about the health of the president, there is a curious bit of information: "The doctors also recommended 'moderation of alcohol intake'.


Wait. What? Is that a nice way of telling us that Obama drinks too much?

The more we know about him, the more he is just like George W. Bush.

No, really, he is.

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