munky.org|v3.0

I’ve been slacking off here! Sorry I’ve been ignoring this site, but life has been busy. In-laws in town, redoing the backside of my house (unfortunately with little help), and dealing with life in general.

And my god, so much has happened over these last couple of weeks. Michael Jackson dies, his mom aks for temporary custody, his dad puts his foot in his mouth and shows once again what an ass he is, Madoff get’s 150 years in prison, a plane crashed straight down into the indian ocean, with the only survivor a 15 year old who can’t swim. Oh, almost forgot about Billy Mays, my favorite TV commercial pitchman, dying. Then Sarah Palin, a wonderful MILF yet a hapless politician, has announced she’s resigning.

And Michael Jackson. I’ve never been a huge fan, although I did like his stuff. But he did, in many ways, shape our current pop culture. Even though I still thought he was a pedophile, I hated to hear that he passed away. I will say I am shocked with the numerous suicides that have been committed because he died. People get a little too caught up in things. It’s truly amazing that we idolize people who have more issues than we do.

And Joe Jackson. I’m kind of waiting for the bolt of lightning to strike him: I’m surprised the Rev. Al Sharpton would be willing to stand so close! Using his son’s death as an opportunity to market new material. I always heard he was a dick, but man, I think they were being nice calling him that. A monster is a better term. And with Al Sharpton tagging along for his few words, it lowers my stock in him as well, and I didn’t care much for him in the first place.

And Sarah Palin. Hah! She figured that her lame duck status would just make it “politics as usual.” What a load of crap. Palin said she planned to make a “positive change outside government,” without elaborating. Maybe she’s about to go visit Hugh Hefner, and become the first Governor/almost Vice President centerfold the magazine has ever had. That may be about the only positive change she could make outside of government. And before you feminists start blasting, I have nothing against a woman as governor, vp, president, secretary of state, etc. etc. I have a problem with a woman who lives in Alaska and believes she can see Russia outside of her window being in power. Or someone who has more political flip-flops than my wife owns! How she’s “Drill, baby, drill!” yet has fought hard against the big oil companies, when they are the ones that are needed to make the plans successful. The same Sarah Palin who gave $500 million to a CANADIAN company to do a feasibility study of the proposed new pipeline. That’s 1/2 a billion to a non-American company just to let us know if we should build it. All the while, big oil was running their own studies, at fractions of the cost, and keeping the work for AMERICAN workers. Imagine if she had gotten to be VP?!

As for Madoff, I hope they keep his body there for the full 150 years. When he dies, preserve it, and put it for public display. A warning to anyone else who wants to play his game. We won’t even give you a proper burial till you’ve served your bloody sentence. Son of a bitch.

Well, that’s about it for now. I’m redoing the whole backside of my house (new sheating, rigid foam insulation, fiber cement siding, energy star windows and doors, rebuilding the chimney chase, etc.), so I’m whooped, and not sure when I may get a chance to post some more. But in the words of General Douglas MacAuthor, “I shall return.”

North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue attempts to bring teachers back to her camp. Too little, too late

My god, this is the most indecisive wretch in state history. One minute she’s a bloodsucking vampire, trying to suck the living out of teachers and school employees across the state. Now she’s kissing ass, siding with the teachers. What the hell?!

I had sent her an email a few weeks back, voicing my concerns about the potentially illegal methods to make the budget. I’m referring to the retroactive paycuts that were forced upon teachers and school employees statewide. Here was my response:

Dear Mr. Hamm:

Thank you for your recent e-mail regarding the flexible furlough program for all state employees.  I appreciate hearing from you on this important matter.

Due to the national economic crisis, our state faces a budget shortfall of nearly $5 billion next year, almost 20% of our entire budget.  In these very difficult times, we are making some very tough decisions to deal with the significant budget shortfall.  While I am constitutionally bound to balance the budget, I am considering each choice very carefully, and I am always aware of the consequences of my decisions.  I will keep your ideas in mind as we work to improve the quality of life in North Carolina.

I realize that during these difficult times, this may present a hardship for many. Please know that I considered this choice and its consequences very carefully.  I made this decision keeping in mind the ultimate goal of protecting jobs and ensuring a strong future for North Carolina.

If you have additional questions please visit the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s (DPI) website at: http://www.ncpublicschools.org/fbs/.  They have developed a “question and answer” section you may wish to review. For immediate assistance, you may contact Allison XXXXXXXX at DPI by dialing 919-XXX-XXXX.

Again, thank you for writing.

Office of Governor Bev Perdue

It never really answered my question (as I presumed). I wanted to know where the state has the power to disregard its own statutes. I have talked to some lawyers, many of who are unclear if the state could legally enact a retroactive paycut, even though the governor is constitutionally bound to balance the budget. I did a little more digging on it, and found this little bit about discretion.

Discretion is the power or right to make official decisions using reason and judgment to choose from among acceptable alternatives.

Legislatures, the president and the governors of the various states, trial and appellate judges, and administrative agencies are among the public officers and offices charged with making discretionary decisions in the discharge of public duties. All discretionary decisions made are subject to some kind of review and are also subject to reversal or modification if there has been an Abuse of Discretion.

An abuse of discretion occurs when a decision is not an acceptable alternative. The decision may be unacceptable because it is logically unsound, because it is Arbitrary and clearly not supported by the facts at hand, or because it is explicitly prohibited by a statute or Rule of Law.

We’ll see. This move clearly is prohibited by a statute. Too bad it is going to be held up in the courts for years, although it may end up being a landmark decision one of these days.

Back to the topic at hand. As you can see, Perdue is clearly behind the pay cuts. But wait a second, she’s now standing behind the teachers? That’s more akin to letting sexual predators hang out at schools. Here’s a quote from one of her emails

“I applaud the General Assembly for their work to put a budget together. But – and that’s a big word – in North Carolina we must act boldly to protect the classroom. … We cannot and must not cripple education. Cutting education means cutting short our economic future. … That’s why I call on the General Assembly to make smart, tough cuts in the budget and to raise the revenue necessary to protect North Carolina’s classrooms. … We will cut deep. We will do more with less. But as state leaders we cannot increase class size, we cannot lay off teachers and we cannot sacrifice our economic future.”

That’s nice, but I fear it is yet a double edged sword. Do I see more illegal pay cuts in the future? Or what will it be next, cutting more law enforcement funds. Highways, who needs those?! Those bridges don’t need repair, I don’t care if the inspector says they are only standing because that is the only thing they can remember to do! Parks, why should we have those.

Bev Perdue has been a burden for our state since day one. She came in off a highly inaccurate smear campaign against Mayor Pat McCrory. She rode the wave of democratic straight tickets. Just about anybody you ask refuses to admit to voting for her, although some I’m sure have. She has plagued this state and will continue to cripple it with her barbaric and uneffective measures. She is intent on policies that will destroys many things we hold sacred. She talked a talked and rubbed her lucky rabbit foot to get in, yet now that she is here, she doesn’t know how to walk the walk. She is setting up this state for failure, and then she will blame the general assembly for it.

Can somebody please impeach this woman?

Our "elected" governor, Bev Purdue, plans her next move to desecrate our state

It’s funny how we depend on the government to ensure our laws are upheld. Then they go ahead and do something that breaks their own laws. Aggravating.

So here’s the deal. Anyone in North Carolina has to have heard that they are doing a statewide .5% pay cut for teachers. In Charlotte – the only place I can speak of – they are lowering every one’s wage by .5%, due to state and local decreases. So even if the money for your job doesn’t come out of the particular coffers affected, you still take a pay cut, in order to be more “equitable.” Hah.

Now cutting teachers salary is not illegal. Maybe not the brightest thing, given that NC teachers are some of the lowest paid in the country to begin with, but definitely not illegal. What IS illegal is the pay cut is RETROACTIVE. So whatever an employee earned for the ENTIRE school year, they will have to pay back the .5% overage.

This isn’t a “whoops, we realized that an accounting error.” And I dig a little bit of digging too, and snagged this right off the NC Department of Labor website. 

An employer can change its wage agreement with an employee at any time, regardless of what the original wage agreement was and without the employee’s permission. There are certain requirements that an employer must meet pursuant to the N.C. Wage and Hour Act (WHA) to make changes in its wage agreements, including the reduction of an employee’s pay or wage benefits:

1) An employer must notify its employees in writing at least 24 hours prior to any changes in its wage agreements that result in the reduction in pay or wage benefits, pursuant to N.C.G.S. §95-25.13(3).

2) An employer cannot make changes in pay or wage benefits that result in the retroactive reduction of wages or wage benefits that are already earned. In other words, the reduction in wages cannot take away pay or wage benefits that have already been earned up to the time of the notification. Any reduction in pay or wage benefits must be prospective from the time of notification. An employer may, however, retroactively increase an employee’s pay or wage benefits without prior notification.

And for good measure, I read through the North Carolina Wage and Hour Act, and the only exemptions not applicable to this issue. But what’s frightening even more, it states that for teachers, who only have one more pay period, that everything over will be taken out for that period. Have a nice summer, don’t let the door hit you on the way out! And for those who will owe more than they make that period? Hah, even more due negligence. If the amount is negative, depending on what factors made that be, then you will either owe them nothing, or will owe the difference. What I like is they will garnish your wage to zero, which that too is against the law (can’t garnish once it goes below minimum wage level, can’t garnish for any overtime pay as well).

What a lovely state we live in. We get tight on money, so instead of tightening up the funds of those bastards in Raleigh, they have big expensive lunches to discuss how to save money, and they decide to do it on the backs of North Carolina’s already underpaid teachers. I’m beginning to think Bev Perdue hates children, even though I was shocked to learn she has a couple of her own, although I think they are a bit grown now. We got ourselves a woman governor who doesn’t think like a woman. What’s the appeal in that. Say hello to Mike Easley Jr., we just call him “Bev” for short.

The Belk Theatre, adjacent to the BofA Corporate Center, and location of the 2009 shareholder's meeting on April 29th, 2009

I have elected to vote my shares in-person this year at the Bank of America shareholder meeting this Wednesday. I have already voted the bulk of my shares, and needless to say, the dissident holders won’t like me. Either way, nothing like free tickets to a suit-and-tie cage fight between Finger and others against Ken Lewis and the board.

I’m not inclined to agree with their arguments that Ken Lewis didn’t do his job by protecting the shareholders. I think he provided them far more protection than they want, plus a long value gem in Merrill Lynch.

With the upper echelons of the money side of the government stomping on his feet, many claim he was only protecting himself and the jobs of the board members. But consider this. Had Paulson and Bernanke done what they claimed they were going to do, what was not to say that they could have used that position to tear apart the bank at the expense of the shareholders. Plus if they had done that, the bank stock would’ve plummeted anyway.

If Merrill had not been purchased, consider what effects that would’ve had on the economy, especially the banking system. When Lehman and Bear died, panicked investors rushed out to sell who they thought was the next to go. Although BoA may not have felt the worst of that pain, the banking sector, and potentially other markets, would’ve crashed. We have not seen another major bank outright fail since WaMu, and if my memory serves me correctly, Wachovia was the closest we came after that. If BoA backed out of Merrill there in December, the nasty cycle would’ve been unleashed again. Who in the hell would want to buy Merrill when one of the largest banks, that is still relatively healthy, doesn’t want it.

Finally, BoA got some long term value out of that acquisition, but the only way we are going to be able to extract that is via a smooth transition. I can vouch first hand for the abilities of BoA to make solid transitions, after being a part of two of them myself (US Trust and LaSalle bank). You can knit-pick micro issues at the execution phase, but overall they do a tremendous job of eliminating overlap, streamlining systems, integrating products, etc. into the new combined units. Countrywide, which I wasn’t a part of, has been a tremendous success, especially with the current refinance market. Many chastised Lewis for this deal too, but it is already paying its dividends, albeit to the government.

Pulling out Lewis and the other senior management at this time would be a grave mistake on the part of these shareholders. If they want to extract the most value of their ownership, then don’t pull away the leaders during mid-transition. Believe it or not, Lewis has earned a tremendous amount of respect within the bank itself. Many employees, many of whom are also shareholders, have an understanding of why they stuck to the deal, and this was even before anything came out about it (many theorized it, based upon the morals of Mr. Lewis).

And I guess, finally, I’m tired of hearing about Lewis being chastised for being an outstanding corporate citizen. By sticking with the deal with his feet pinned, he did a great deal to help our economy out, and in the end, provide a good day for many of the investors such as myself who found new opportunity to own some equity of BoA. This is an outstanding corporation that will continue to churn out profits for many more years to come.

So for all of you BoA shareholders out there, vote against these dissident views. They are held by frantic tunnel-visioned companies, activists by their own name, yet history proves that activist investors are rarely the people we need making decisions.

The ears are shut in the capital

Before I begin, I must note that I personally received my North Carolina State refund after about 5 weeks by in March. My parents though are a different story.

They submitted their tax returns back in mid to late February… Almost eight weeks later, and all the North Carolina Department of Revenue can say is that it has been received and is in process. When they contact a real person, they send them to the website, which gives them the same answer they get on the phone.

All year long we pay taxes. Most of us allow the government to hold on to more than their fair share, since having the IRS wanting to collect in April makes no one happy. When the IRS is due, they can make your life a living hell by garnishing your wages, levying tax liens, putting you behind bars. Who wants that?

But who can we turn to when the IRS owes us money? Apparently no one, unless you can afford a very good lawyer, and in the middle of this recession, half the lawyers I’ve ever met couldn’t even afford to hire themselves. We try to make a lot of noise, but inside Raleigh, no one is listening. They are too busy trying to slice up budgets, force teachers out of schools, redirecting lottery funds from education to the general budget. Bev Perdue promised change in the state seat. Guess what, we got it. Things have changed for the worse. At least I can say I didn’t vote for her.

Some may argue that there shouldn’t be a huge rush for the refunds to come through. Some people may be able to swing it waiting longer. I didn’t sweat 5 weeks, I was employed and could go by a while without it. But what about my parents. My dad’s retired, living off his retirement and social security, and is unable to work. He spent 30 years in protection of this county, and upholding the laws of this state. My mom is a bus driver, who is scared to even note down her overtime with the lay-off slicing all around her. And with the prospect of no summer-school, this will be the first summer in years she will have to find some way of earning money for those 3 months. After many good years, now they can barely afford to even get by.

So how did honest, hard-working American’s, who had nothing to do with causing the recession or the budget deficit, get shafted. All they are doing is asking for their hard-earned money to be returned to them in a timely manner, so that they too can afford to pay their bills. Yet the state can’t even give them a straight answer as to why they haven’t received it.

If the tables were turned, the IRS would already be assessing interest and penalties, along with garnishing wages. Why can’t we get a two way street here. Maybe we can send them a bill every month, for the total amount of 1% interest and additional penalties? Like that would happen.

One World Trade Center - formerly the "Freedom Tower" - as of February, 209

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have announced that the Freedom Tower – the new building to be erected over “Ground Zero” – will instead be named One World Trade Center. They are claiming that for commercial and leasing reasons, the new name is more marketable. They also announced that Vantone Industrial Co. has signed a 20.75 year lease  ”that will create the China Center, a 190,810-square-foot business and cultural facility, to be on portions of the 64th floor and the entire 65th through 69th floors of One World Trade Center.”

I understand the practical business concerns, yet it is still a shot in the patriotic gut. This building is to be a sign of America’s triumph over terrorism, although honestly we have yet to triumph. We can maybe say that it is America’s response to the threat of terrorism, that we won’t back down and we will emerge stronger (and more beautiful) than before. I’m sure most of us can still see in our mind’s the moments when the U.S. stopped on 9/11. I can still remember walking into Family Dollar to buy a new lighter, first hearing on the radio as the second plane crashed into the towers. I asked the girl at the counter if that was some sort of sick joke, and she was hoping so. I walked back out to the car dazed, telling my friends “I think we’re under attack.”

I can still remember turning on the radio, changing it to every station I knew, just to hear the same results. We went back to my house and watched as it all unfolded, the news of the Pentagon, the news of the plane that crashed in Shanksville, PA. I remember thinking to myself that the south tower – the second one hit –  was probably going to collapse. The hijacker drove that plane into the center of the building, and I just knew all of that heat and structural damage was going to make it go. I was just praying that the first one wouldn’t fall too.

I was one of the lucky ones who had no family or friends who were there. However, I had many friends who lost some family members or friends, and in some cases, an entire branch of a family tree was wiped out. I remember feeling the sadness for everyone, and the anger at those responsible. Feelings that solidified when we invaded Afghanistan and nearly eliminated the Taliban. Feelings that were warped to entrust us with the wisdom of invading Iraq.

This building and other memorials were to be our reminder of the strength we have as a people and a nation. A strength that screams that we refuse to give up but instead carry on stronger than we were before. A strength to make sure those who follow who will remember the willing sacrafice the heroes made, the victims who had no choice, and as a stark reminder that there are people out there who unmercifully kill because their priorities are not aligned with reality.

The Freedom Tower also reminded me of the poem I wrote shortly after the attack.

 

 

The day the Lady cried

She’s stood in pride 

Our tears she’s cried

Through her eyes

She watched the demise

From the planes we fly

That ended their lives

Yet she still stands there

Without any fear

Keeping our love near

Our hope she hears

On this Fourth of July

We put forth our cry

And show them our pride

That our freedom will never die

For anyone who needs any reminders of what happened that day, there is a great write up of it on Wikipedia.

We got we wanted against the AIG bonus recipients. Now what?

Be careful what you wish for: it may come true. For the last couple of weeks, the public has been in an outrage over the AIG bonuses. Things have calmed down slightly, and now we get to have a good look at what we’ve done.

These bonuses were retention bonuses, signed legally and in ink, continually promised to the employees who stayed. Why else should they stay? They are literally working themselves out of a job, their only job to piece apart and sell AIG, then the last guy out gets to turn off the lights.

Sure, we can scream, “Hey, they got us in this mess!” Well, most of those guys aren’t around anymore, so we are blaming the wrong people. These people have a very important job, one that the taxpayer owners should be grateful for. They turned down more stable positions (because of the retention bonus) to stick around and extract every potential dollar out of AIG.

Now a number of them are leaving. We’ve demonized them, stripped them of their promised bonus, and put them in a precarious situation. When they had opportunities to go elsewhere they didn’t,  but since this has hit the fan, well. We take the chance of shooting ourselves in the foot now.

How? Consider this. Now these people are leaving, taking key skills with them. Sure there are loads of unemployed bankers, but seriously, who wants to go work for next to nothing working 80 weeks (being overtime exempt), no bonus, and if you are lucky, you get to be the one to turn off the lights on the last day. There isn’t a lot of appeal there.

Plus a lot of the work done is very complex and requires extremely specialized skills – I can’t just grab the recently unemployed trader and get him to work on this. There are applications running things that they don’t even teach in college anymore.

So now how do we screw ourselves? Simple. Intelligent, specialize people are needed for the task of taking apart AIG. Without these skills, AIG may be parted out for way less than possible. Just remember we’ve dumped $180 or so billion into this company, and the only way we are going to ever see any of that back is if AIG does an excellent job. Scaring away talented employees and potential employees is just plain stupid.

So you can scream all you want, but when your company takes a nosedive and they offer you enough of a bonus to stay around till the end, you do you job then get villianized for doing you job, you’ll think differently.

When it comes down too it, as I said before, the government is not in the business of running business. It may be just one of the worst things a government can do. Sure, they won out on the populist rhetoric over the bonuses, but in the end, we’re the ones who are going to get hurt.

If the administration has its way, these soldiers may have to use private insurance to pay for treatment of war related injuries after being discharged

One of the things I most hate to hear is when veterans of the U.S. military get screwed by the government. There was once a time when the military provided everything when you served, and when you got out you were taken care of. After someone has intentionally put themselves in harms way for the protection of this country, it seems like such a small thing to do.

Yet recently we’ve been hit with newsbreak after newsbreak of vets getting the short end of the stick. I remember watching to 60 minute special after the Walter Reed news broke. Sickening. I remember hearing about a kid – just 19 years old – who had been sent off to Iraq and within a couple of months had his leg blown off. He was given a medical discharge and sent to the hospital to get a prosthetic and go through therapy. Then the army comes and wants their $20,000 bonus back because he didn’t serve his full term. Are you serious? The Army should have changed its campaign posters to “Join the Army, where it’ll only cost you an arm and a leg. Or a leg and $20,000.” It was sickening.

Now we hear about the lack of basic cleaning of equipment has put numerous veterans at risk for dangerous infections, including hepatitis and HIV. Appalling.

But it gets worse. The Obama administration has found a way to fully fund the VA medical system – charge the vets. That’s right, even for battle related wounds, the VA system would charge veterans’ insurance for medical care, putting veterans at the mercy of their insurance benefits. Something isn’t right there.

Obama is trying to fill a $540 million budget gap, so he plugs it with the money of the veterans. Wow. I guess their blood in the battlefields wasn’t good enough, now we need their money too.

Our government needs to take a step back and take in everything. What all is this and other recent policies (I.E. 90% retroactive taxation on bonuses) doing? It is eroding the public’s trust in the government. Including the trust of the men and women who risked so much to keep us around. It is a shame, truly a shame, that we have sunk so far.

Some propose that making all illegal drugs legal and taxable

This has been a constantly debated subject for quite sometime, and I’m still not sure where to stand on it.

In one corner, legalizing drugs would solve a lot of problems. No more war on drugs. Drug dealers and cartels would find themselves in a difficult position. Instead of the money going into the hands of these guys, the tax revenues would be coming into the government. Like when prohibition ended, the black market dried up to become just a handful of backwoods shiners. Ahh, nothing better than some good backwoods moonshine.

On the other hand, there are the problems that drug use creates. This stuff alters moods, creates hallucinations, lowers inhibitions, etc. etc. The effects of drug use are as bad or worse than alcohol use. A number of drugs will still have to be imported as well, so a lot of the crookery from the supply system will still exist. Plus if the drugs are legal here but not from the country of origin, then the government is promoting law-breaking as well.

What got me thinking about this? A commentary on CNN, where Jeffrey Miron made a good case for legalizing drugs. His reasoning deserves a strong amount of merit.

To sum it up, prohibition creates a black market. Black markets create corruption and violence, and lavishly rewards those who control it. The underground nature of drug use also leads to risky behavior, such as sharing needles, a major cause of the spread of HIV in this country.

Prohibition also creates a disrespect for the law, at a great expense to taxpayers for upholding these laws (last year the total was about $44 billion, or in other words, a Citigroup bailout). Law enforcement tactics also have to change, leading to lessened constitutional protections and enabling racial profiling. It further reduces protections because you can’t sue your drug dealer (usually, it has happened though), and if your distributor isn’t paying the bill, the supplier can’t fire him and have him charged with a crime: the supplier kills him.

Ending prohibition on drugs may be the right thing to do. Yet winning over enough votes may be too lofty of a goal. After careful thought I might (depending on how it was legalized), yet I’m a moderate willing to look at both sides. Too many others can’t see that side, because they only know the other half to drugs. I personally don’t use, and don’t keep friends around that step up beyond that mary jane. I’ve seen loved ones throw their lives’ away. I have an ex-girlfriend in the ground because of drugs. I’ve known people who died because they did little more than smoke a bowl then run to the store for some munchies, then die on the way to the store because their reaction time was way off the mark.

So tell me what you think. Should we legalize it or not?

Prohibition also puts money in the hands of terrorists and crooked cartels.