It’s time to start drinking heavily.

For a long time, I had a reputation of being a “chicken little”, warning of what I saw as dangerous instability in the world’s financial systems, and outright delusional behavior by the American electorate/consumer. It was vaguely reassuring to see a recognized expert downplay my concerns, even if the answers sometimes seemed a little optimistic.

Three years ago, I predicted a 15% downturn in nationwide real estate prices, with more severe impact in regions populated by boomers watching too much Mortgage Porn.

Sadly, I was underestimating the impact of the over-leveraged consumer, and not nearly cynical enough about the absolute fraud in the world financial system. Where I expected marginal value, I’ve instead found outright theft and classic Ponzi schemes.

Today, George Soros glumly noted that the state of our finances is worse than the great depression, and should more accurately be compared to the complete collapse of the USSR.

(I don’t follow the talk radio types, so if Rush Limbaugh has denounced Soros, I apologize in advance. Limbaugh’s show makes a lot of money running ads from various get-rich-quick schemes and commodity-trading boiler rooms, so clearly he’s an expert.)

Then there’s Paul Volcker, quoted as saying

“I don’t remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world”

Speaking as someone who pored over the stats in the Wall St. Journal, and did very nicely in the dot-com runup, that’s fucking terrifying.

America’s largest brokerage houses have been effectively shut down, and our banks are referred to as “zombies”, a term last used on a few Japanese banks that were insolvent, but had their public identity maintained through cash infusions, to avoid a national panic.

This strategy worked in Japan – somewhat – because the country had a large, profitable manufacturing base, a high personal savings rate, an educated workforce, and virtually no military or foreign obligations.

In comparison, the US is coming off a spending binge to make the “roaring 20’s” blush with embarrassment, our manufacturing base is near collapse, and we’re committed to military expenditures comparable to D-Day. We all know that almost 5,000 young Americans have been killed in Mission Accomplished, but the terrifying figure is the number of injured, disabled, and mentally traumatized. Many of these people will not only be unable to support themselves, they will require complex and expensive care for decades.

Our spending on education lags behind many other third-world countries, with occasional surges to pay religious law specialists to make sure none of that evolution nonsense gets into poor Britney’s head.

This is usually the point in my rant where I lighten up and point to the bright side of the story.

There isn’t a bright side.

We’ve emptied our wallets, our bank accounts, and cashed in the blue-chips for tulip bulbs. A lot of people who were expecting a decade of polo shirts and golf are in for a few years of squalor and thrift-shop used clothing.

In short, we’re fucked. Might as well drink up.

Resolved: Fark needs a “Texas” tag.

A writer in the Houston Chronicle’s editorial page states what millions have been reluctant to consider:

Texas is the stupidest state in the United States of America.

I JUST read about the University of Texas poll that says that 23 percent of Texans amazingly still believe that Obama is a Muslim. I laughed and laughed. I live in Flori-DUH. We formerly carried the title of stupidest state. On behalf of all Floridians, we are relieved to now hand that title to Texas, home of George Bush and Tom DeLay. You can even take our former motto, and use it as your own: “Texas — Stuck On Stupid.” You may want to use another one: “Texans — Dumb As Dirt.”

Thank you Texas. Flori-DUH is no longer the dumbest of the dumb.

BILL NATHANSON Coral Springs, Fla.

Full disclosure: I am a resident of Texas. I call Texas my home, and I will likely be buried here – T-boned by some chain-smoking soccer-mom who ran a red light while trying to find the number for the church/bank on her cellphone.

While I was not born here, I moved here eagerly and willingly, drawn by the robust economy, the reasonable cost of living, and the unique character that defines the Lone Star State.

One of the most populous states, Texas reflects a broad cross-section of the nation. In the north, it lies between the rolling plains of Oklahoma and the rocky terrain of New Mexico. In the west there are mountains capped with snow almost year-round, and in the east lies the humid piney bayou of the gulf coast, home to fishing, oil, and Klan meetings. Finally, to the south lies a surprisingly lush farmland, and several million dark-skinned people with whom we have a rather awkward history.

That said, we present our qualifications:

Wikipedia defines stupidity as:

“low intelligence or poor learning abilities. Stupidity is distinct from irrationality because stupidity denotes an incapability or unwillingness to properly consider the relevant information”

I believe Texas exceeds Florida safely in every aspect.

1. Low intelligence

Texas has historically been handicapped by the presence of several prominent institutions of higher learning. Among these are Rice University – site of President Kennedy’s iconic “we choose to go to the moon” address, and the University of Texas – a well-recognized medical and business school.

While even Texas knows it is difficult to “un-educate” people, we have worked hard to prevent the education of our citizens. To wit, Texas A&M University. This college is most known for it’s football team, of course, but it has also worked hard to preserve traditional relationships between the races, as well as a widely-accepted leadership in hatred and fear of non-christians.

Our elementary and secondary schools regularly work into the night to ensure that dangerous books and ideas are diverted into proper channels: Hiring lawyers to defend religion in school (as long as it’s the “right” religion) and prevent the teaching of science.

Summary: Our children are still not the stupidest, but we get an “A” for effort.

2. Irrationality vs. Stupidity

Many would point to the religiosity of a state as an indicator of irrationality, but I believe this to be an oversimplification. Indeed, many of our most respected hospitals and schoole are the product of studious faiths and people. Columbia-Presbyterian. Mount Sinai hospital. Notre Dame. All founded by people who have conflicting faiths. But these people are driven by their faith to explore, to teach, to heal, and to build. I’ve had dinner alongside a rabbi and a jesuit preist. Both had intellects and wit which would impress any Harvard professor or TV comedian. (especially since one of them was a department chair at Princeton, and the other, a popular entertainer)

In Texas, though, a church is not a place to be enlightened. They are places (or palaces) of the Fox News or Rush Limbagh mindset: Tell me exactly what I already think is true. Tell me the rest of the world is out to get me. And then sell me a sticker to put on my car to proclaim my ignorance!

My evidence: Lakewood Church, now located in what was until recently the home of the Houston Rockets basketball team. It can seat 16,000 people, and has indoor parking facilities to allow the faithful to avoid any contact with non-believers on their way from their SUV to the “church”.

Other churches may have bigger auditoriums, or more dreadful preachers. But only Lakewood Church has turned the dreary experience of church into a multimedia entertainment experience and self-help seminar by the best-selling author of … oh, God, I’m going to throw up.

Victoria Osteen exemplifies Texas: Removed from a plane for assaulting a (black) flight attendant who didn’t clean her first-class seat fast enough, Texans swiftly protected her. The local paper, normally occupied with complaints about some suspicious arabs on a plane, was swamped with letters putting the “stewardess” in her place for being so uppity. Moral: Security risks are, by definition, caused by darker-skinned people, i.e. in Fox News’ “Attractive Woman In Danger” banners.

Summary: Irrationality implies consistency. Stupidity does not. Texas wins.

3. Refusal to accept relevant or proper information, or context.

This is a state where a Real Man will dress up like a cowboy, get in his Cummins Power Turbo Penis Stroke Fire Chief King Ranch Texas Edition pickup truck (with the imitation-chrome badging!), and sit in traffic for an hour, to go to his job as an assistant manager of expense accounting. Getting 7mpg, with an “I SUPPORT THE TROOPS”, and “ONE NATION, UNDER GOD” magnetic stick-ons (made in the People’s Republic of China). These guys would make the butchest daddies at the NYC Eagle look less uptight.

Evidence:

Florida, by virtue of a public that votes on something more than “it’s the party my daddy voted for” requires candidates to pay attention to the electorate, deliver services, and be accountable – or be replaced. Texas, on the other hand, is visited only by presidential candidates seeking contributions from the energy lobby.

Florida might like to point to the 2000 elections as a trump card, but, really, you can only have a botched election if people vote in the first place.

Texas likes to pride itself on being a “rootin’ tootin, gun-slingin’ state!”, and we are the source of many of the weapons used to kill thousands of cops and civilians in Mexico, as payment for the drugs we import. But did you know that until 1994, it was easier to get a “carry permit” in New York, Massachusets, and even Connecticut, than in Texas? Yes, really.

Vermont, home to the only self-proclaimed socialist in the United States Senate, doesn’t even require a carry permit, but here in Texas, we take it to another level: If you catch a pre-teen stealing a twinkie, you can beat him, kick him, and then shoot him in the back of his head while he’s kneeling and begging for mercy. Not only that, but we’ll write angry letters to the D.A. for even having the nerve to question your rights.

Summary: Unless you show me a “Florida Edition” pickup truck, we win.

4. Mitigating factors

Florida has clung to it’s tag while simultaneously marketing a tropical mosquito swamp as “the happiest place on earth”, and one of the world’s most popular tourist destination. Every day, it wastes thousands of opportunities to punch out a foreign-sounding visitor. With a climate possibly more horrible than Houston, TX, Orlando has become a lucrative enterprise.

Texas, on the other hand, has worked hard to piss off everyone. You know the “Six Flags” theme parks? Right. The name is “Six Flags over Texas”, named for the national flags that have flown over this state in little over 150 years. In some Boston neighborhoods, 150 years is considered “recent construction”. In Texas, that is enough time for a genocide, civil war, revolution, border skirmishes too numerous to count, and lest those crazy Alaskans think they’re seccessionist, we are the only state that still keeps the right to fly our state flag alongside the U.S. flag – just so everyone knows who to blame.

• We tell the Mexicans to “go home” – ignoring that we kind of invaded and kicked them out to start with.
• We take our “law and order” mentality so strongly here, that we’re the only state to not have a legal aid department for indigent defendants. (instead, we contract the work out to private law firms at a much higher price. But we make it up on the volume!)
• We had Enron. C’mon, Florida, can you do better than that? I didn’t think so.
• We had Enron 10 years after we had the S&L crisis.
• We execute more prisoners than anyone else, and executions are inversely proportional to education.
• And as my final argument, I have only one name: George W. Bush.

I rest my case and await the rebuttal, should the respected opposition feel the need to make even a token effort.

And the snark-o-meter hits 11!

I have a sharp tongue (and yes, I’ve cut myself with it more than once) but Roger Simon seems to be in good form today:

ST. PAUL, Minn. — On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry.

On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry.

We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked.

We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

(link)

McAbramoff?

You’d kind of think McCain would know better than to let his name appear within 10 feet of Jack Abramoff, but, you’d be wrong. Hell, there’s so many links between John McCain and Jack Abramoff that I could cause a dire html shortage at wordpress just trying to keep up with all of them.

McCain accused Obama of being “filled with ambition to be president“. Is McCain simply too disgusted with himself, and has decided to just “throw in the towel”, by making it this easy? C’mon, John. You can do better than this.

Sen. McCain: GROW UP

*sigh* if only I could say it as well myself!

Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment.

Home Warranties, Part 2: You got taken, now what?

In an earlier post, we found out some of the common scams that American Home Shield uses to deny claims. If you’ve had an expensive appliance break, you’re probably been through this part: They’ll fix your problem, except for (insert 15 expensive problems totaling up to about the normal retail cost to fix the problem on your own.)

Here’s your decision point: Can you live without this appliance for several weeks? If the item is your heating or hot water system, the answer is probably “no”. If it is something like a lavatory sink or an infrequently-used cooktop, maybe you can. Don’t waste time if it’s the former; you don’t want to damage your house to save $50. You have a legal duty to mitigate your damages, and that includes knowing when you’ve been ripped off and not expecting the con artist to behave better the second time around.

1. Dispute

Whatever the original contractor tells you, immediately call AHS and dispute their findings. Do not offer your own diagnosis, simply refuse the one that has been offered. You’re going to have to cough up another $55 for the second opinion, but there’s a good chance you’ll get it back. How?

Chances are good AHS will already have told the “second opinion” guy what diagnosis he’s supposed to make and perhaps even how to write it. Do. Not. Help.

When the second opinion guy comes out, give them access to the broken item, offer conversation, and a few little questions – “I guess they told you about the problem?” – things like that.

If the second opinion doesn’t match with the first, they have to pay for anywhere that the two opinions DO NOT OVERLAP. So if the first guy says your A/C broke because a dog pissed on the compressor, and the second guy says canadian termites burned up the evaporator coil, they’re on the hook for the entire repair, even if your dog is pissing on the coil during the repair.

2. Report

Chances are that if the contractor doesn’t want to do the repair (very likely, considering the fixed-rate repairs that AHS does) and they’ll often clumsily make up “code violations”. You know the drill.

Report their sorry asses to every regulatory body you can. Start with the BBB (not regulatory, but still will chew up time), then on to any licensing authority, state, county, and/or municipal. It can be something as simple as not having their licensee number painted on their vehicle. Report it. Licenses get revoked.

Open a complaint against AHS with the Iowa BBB (they’ve got thousands on file, but yours counts). Also open a complaint with your state’s real estate and/or insurance commissioner. Don’t exaggerate, but be factual. The enforcement people for these agencies have gotten screwed themselves, and are all too happy to help.

3. Cancel.

A home warranty is a bad deal. When something breaks, you lose control over how and when it’s fixed. Do you really think you’re going to wait three weeks to get your AC fixed in August, or your heating fixed in December? Hell, no. But with AHS, you’re stuck using whatever contractor they feel like sending, and completely at their mercy for whatever add-ons they feel like hitting you with. If it’s july and you’ve got no cold air, you better believe the list is going to be long and expensive. Gold-plated code upgrades for you, pal.

Call AHS to cancel your agreement. Don’t say “I’ll cancel, unless..”. Just tell them you want to cancel it. There’s a good chance they’ll offer something – it might only be half or a third of the repair costs. Take it. Cash the check. And cancel.

This is not the time to argue, either. They’ll likely offer you a free coupon for your next service call – because the last one was so much fun! Just say “I’d like to cancel, and I’m in a hurry, could you do it right now please?”

4. Follow up.

If you got screwed on a fairly major repair, you would be doing your neighbors (and the general public) a service by following up on complaints. I’ve already gotten my cash out of AHS and out of one of their contractors. The other one is facing the loss of their license, and a lesson: Don’t lie to someone and be rude about it.

So, how’d that work out for you?

Ah, the good old days. The Contract with America. The Values Voters. Turning back the Gay Agenda. Overturning Roe v. Wade. Putting Jes^H^H^HGod back into the classroom. Oh – and just a little fiscal fine-tuning to protect American workers – just a tiny bit.

So, how’d that whole thing work out?

I’ll admit, when the whole thing started in the early ’90s, I was a fence-sitter. I had my qualms about “gay rights” – understandable if you don’t actually know a lot of openly gay people, perhaps. Saving children? who could be against that, right? And for gods sake, how could anyone NOT want some tort reform, what with the billion-dollar verdicts for anyone who got a drop of coffee on their panties**. America, Fuck yeah!

So let’s look back, the better part of a generation into that whole Gingrich Revolution and the return of the Citizen Legislator.

1. The Contract With America

What a fucking miserable goatfuck. We did the electoral equivalent of getting date-raped in the hopes that the roofie might help us get to sleep better.

2. Gay Rights

I felt some empathy with those who felt some discomfort of adding a whole new “protected class” to what looked like an out-of-control entitlement system, back then. Now, not so much. I have openly gay friends and co-workers, and they’re *gasp* pretty much just like anyone else. I trust them with my car, with my insurance, with my teeth, and with my children. If they want to shoulder the responsibility of marriage as well as the growing pool of straight friends and co-workers who are on their second and third marriages, who am I to talk them out of it?

Verdict: Jesus 1, Gay Americans 1, Cletus Fuckhat 0.

3. Abortion.

Nobody likes abortion. I hope my daughter will never have one. I do my best to educate her and give her the self-confidence to drop-kick any horny guy right in the nuts and use his face for soccer practice. But should the worst happen, through rape or bad judgement, I want to help her get the best possible medical care – not the leering preachers driving their tax-exempt Navigators.

Verdict: Women 1, Parents 1, Cletus Fuckhat 0.

4. Tort Reform.

We all remember the billionaire plaintiffs, don’t we? The people who were getting millions for frivolous claims every day of the week? Right? No, we don’t. Never fucking happened. **The infamous McDonalds coffee case involved a woman who received third-degree burns over much of her pelvis. The same kind of burns you’d expect if someone poured lighter fluid on your pants and dropped a lit match in your crotch, for a minute or two. The verdict was overturned and litigated for years – proving, if anything, that even the most egregious case of liability still affords large corporations multiple layers of legal protection against the excesses of even multiple juries.

Verdict: Lawyers 1, General Public 0, CEO’s 1.

5. Tort Reform, Part 2.

While they were busy protecting small businesspeople from the ravages of wild-eyed plaintiffs at the gates, they took care of a much more worrisome problem: YOU. A good friend who was always a lifelong Republican got royally screwed by a homebuilder. This isn’t a case of coulda/woulda, it’s a case where you have a photo of a square pipe sledgehammered into a round hole, essentially – meaning he’s on the hook for thousands of dollars to correct the problem. Builder flips him the bird. The look in his eyes when I reminded him of mandatory arbitration was what you’d expect to see on a hung-over cheerleader waking up sans robe’ on the pool table in a frat house: “Why does my ass hurt so much?”

6. Tort Reform, Part 3

Since the New American Prosperity was causing so many bankruptcies*, more reform was needed: Mom-and-pop credit card issuers and Family-Owned hedge funds needed protection against dishonest homeowners and malingering kids with asthma who simply didn’t feel like paying their bills. Fucking bastards.

*this might seem nonsensical. To correct this, smash your skull against the desk a few times, and it will become clear.

Here’s to you, Mrs. lazy slob

Here’s to you, hard-working Houston suburbanite, showing just how much you care about your state, your neighborhood, and your digestive tract.

(with apologies to Right Said Fred…)

Apparently American Home Shield has done this before

So the tech didn’t quite understand me when I spoke to him on the phone, and thought I was the dispatcher at American Home Shield. He made it really clear that he wrote exactly what he was told to on the diagnosis.

Looking around the web today, I see I’m not the first person to run into AHS writing the second opinion for themselves.

I noticed nothing out of the ordinary about anything falling into the bottom of the dishwasher since we’ve had the home and I am always rather specific in how the dishwasher is loaded and dishes get handwashed first before being placed into the dishwasher. For them to make an accusation that there was obvious negligence which is an opinion and there was no negligence. When disputing the denial, I was granted a second opinion from another one of their listed contractors. I called the contractor to set up an appointment and he mentioned that he also received “quite a history” about the dishwasher from AHS (in his exact words). Basically telling me that AHS gave them their findings and conclusion from the first contractor. This does not make the 2nd opinion an unbiased one – the whole purpose of a 2nd opinion was to determine if AHS was responsible for replacing the dishwasher under the warranty and I don’t believe they have a legal right to give this information to the second contractor who is supposed to write his own diagnosis independent of what was found by another company.

If you decide to let AHS get a “second opinion” do a little checking, and think about what the servicer would have to know – or could not know independently – before letting them into your house.

Or you could save a lot of money just by not calling American Home Shield in the first place.

Regarding whether AHS is in the clear for “fixing” the second opinion, my feeling is that there is no specific statute forbidding it, but:

• Make American Home Shield document what the second opinion process is when asking for one.
• Make them state for the record that the servicer will not be given the history of the call.
• Make a record of this. Do not be coy about it.
• Make them state, again, unambigously, what information the tech will have. Don’t be pushy, just be organized and methodical.
• Ask open-ended questions of the technician. Be friendly and cheerful. He’s the world-class expert in his field, and you are a mere mortal seeking his valuable insights. People talk more when they feel flattered.
• When the call is done, ask again – “did you see what the authorization guys told you to look for?”
• Get. It. In. Writing. Feign a poor memory or poor hearing.
• Don’t sign anything you don’t understand top to bottom. There’s no law saying you have to. Your signature is to cover their ass, not yours. Say you need to ask your husband/wife/other about it. Be amicable but firm and ask if there is anything else they need before they leave.
• Don’t get angry or confrontational. That only confirms the assumption that you’re stuck with whatever answer they give you.

Next up, some tips on how to handle the complaint, escalation, and resolution process.

Net Neutrality = Diet Soda, Part 4: the wrap-up

What the hell does this have to do with diet soda?

If you waded through all of that, you deserve an answer.

“Net Neutrality” sounds great. Democratic and fair. Who could be against it?

Full and final disclosure: I do not work for an ISP and will be quite happy to go to my grave never working for one again. You work like a dog, the compensation isn’t that great. The skill level required is very high (at least at the core; there are only a few hundred people in the US qualified to do it). Businesswise, your costs can change wildly, you’ve got a big bulls-eye on your back with dozens of people aiming at it:

• The family-values creeps who often are making money leasing you land, (especially in areas where churches have significant holdings). With a terabyte of netflow logs and the ability to correlate IP blocks to location, I could have written a PhD thesis on the level sexual deviance correlated with church membership, and a statistically-significant favoring of various sexual paraphilias as related to specific branches of various denominations.
• The mpaa/riaa/publishers who see ISP’s as basically a bunch of bored people who stand around passing out copies of Shrek IV: The Search For Happy Meal Tie-ins
• Municipalities, which might just decide that you only get that one extra foot of right-of-way for fiber if you’ll wire Mayor McFarkwad’s school with fiber. Not that he’s twisting your arm.
• Other regulatory costs. This cost has gone up since, oh, roughly October of 2001. It’s difficult to quantify these costs or recover them, and on a macro-economic level it seems overall like a piss-poor investment, but that’s just my opinion.
• Other ISP’s. Us techies might all like each other, but everybody wants job security. If I can figure a way to undercut another company, steal their customers, and have their car repo’ed at the same time…

Diet soda came on the market decades ago as consumers decided they liked soda, and wanted to drink more, but didn’t want to get fatter. The companies considered the possibility of saying “well gee, how about you just drink less?”, decided against it, and an entire industry was saved. The psychology of it is fascinating; how you can charge more per serving for a product with the same cost, by putting it in, say, an 8-pack instead of 12. there’s also significant evidence that the nature of the product itself leads to obesity. So while it sounds great and there’s a documented advantage to that one single can, overall it’s a pretty crappy deal for the buyer. (but don’t try telling ‘em that: they have a brand loyalty second only to cigarette smokers)

Network neutrality is the same crap. Even the most published study of it, ironically, pointed out that the carriers are, quite truly, content-agnostic. Far from being interested in censorship, or promoting a viewpoint, or silencing dissent, it’s just some basic traffic management.

• Bandwidth costs money.
• Customers don’t like tiered pricing. They like a fixed price, and they’ll happily give up features they don’t use.
• Customers want to be able to download something quickly.
• Some customers are a liability. A few customers are a major liability.
• If you can saddle your competitors with more liabilities than yourself, you win. (to the point that if I were in the business I’d personally pay for ads for my competitor on a few selected sites *chuckle*)

The irony of free-speech advocates demanding government monitoring of ISP traffic to ensure compliance with legislation is simply mind-blowing, face-palming, forehead-smacking stuff, proof that if you package it right, you truly can sell a refrigerator to an eskimo – with a service contract, no doubt.

Corporate customers won’t be affected. We’re used to paying a premium for higher uptime and guaranteed throughput. Residential users just want something cheap. First ISP to figure out (and successfully market) a “Casual Broadband” package is going to make some good money.

Screaming censorship every time someone asks you to be quiet in a movie tends to dilute the seriousness of the accusation. Let’s try and save it for the times – and they clearly exist – when it’s real.