When I was 17,
I read a quote that went something like:
“If you live each day as if it was your last,
someday you’ll most certainly be right.”
It made an impression on me,
and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself:
“If today were the last day of my life,
would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row,
I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered
to help me make the big choices in life.
Because almost everything
— all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure —
these things just fall away in the face of death,
leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap
of thinking you have something to lose.
You are already naked.
There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Steve Jobs
I Feel Another Rant Coming On...
From NPR:
The U.S. economy grew at a 2.4 percent annual rate in the first quarter [adjusted down from initial 2.5% estimate], the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday morning. It's clear that growth did not hit the 3.2 percent rate that economists had once expected. But BNP Paribas SA economist Yelena Shulyatyeva tells Bloomberg News that "the economy is still okay." She expects it will "pick up in the second half as the sequestration effect fades." By that, she's referring to automatic federal spending cuts that appear to have been holding growth back.First, let's recall the deficit "surprise". From CNN:
The annual deficit has fallen 32% over the first seven months of this fiscal year compared with same period last year, according to Congressional Budget Office figures released Tuesday. A major reason: A big jump in tax revenue. Tax collections rose by $220 billion -- or 16% -- between the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1 through April 30. Individual and payroll taxes accounted for $184 billion of that increase.By some estimates the "payroll tax holiday"--2 points off the employee half of FICA, added about $125B/year to the deficit. But only about a third of that was collected through April of FY2013. And this area of the budget won't increase beyond job growth in the longer term. And a lot of the increase was higher-worth individuals pushing asset sales into the last quarter of last year to take advantage of lower investment taxes; this is more like borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Accelerated asset sales are not sustainable and occur at the expense of higher tax rates. Generally speaking, projections of higher tax rate revenues tend to fall short of estimates because the tax base is reduced.
What I'm particularly scornful is the bogeyman of sequestration. The CNN source shows that spending has decreased by less than 2% through the first 7 months of the fiscal year. I don't hear a word about the economic drag of class warfare tax hikes taking money out of the private sector--but we have less than $100B in cuts from a $3.7T budget; this government has doubled spending since the Clinton Administration--with little to show for all that stimulus than the slowest job and economic growth since the Depression. And we are borrowing 40 cents on the federal dollar from future generations which also will have their own fair share of government costs to bear. Businesses all across the country cut, streamline and re-engineer processes to reduce costs, and we don't hear of macroeconomic effects. This is a $15T economy; we are not even talking about a penny on the dollar in the overall economy. There is vast waste in government, and stuff like paying maintenance on unoccupied property, not to mention badly managed, abandoned projects, is just the tip of the iceberg.
You want to talk drag on the economy? Let's talk about nearly $2T in regulation/compliance This President still hasn't moved on simplifying and lowering globally noncompetitive tax rates.
Koch Brothers Buyout of the LA Times?
Personally I don't get why the Koch brothers want to buy into a dying newspaper industry. [Disclosure: I have a sibling whom works for a Koch subsidiary; it's really odd: my sibling is more likely to quote the Gray Lady, while I'm more likely to cite more libertarian sites that the Koches have sponsored for decades.] Familiar readers know that I have a personal ax to grind against the Koch brothers. I had been submitted by an agency to work on a Kansas ERP upgrade project; the Chicago market was challenging at the time, and we had negotiated a very good rate for the client, a fraction of what Oracle Consulting would have charged for my services, a win-win situation. A lot of agencies are paranoid of revealing the client, afraid candidates will approach the client directly and cut out the middleman. (I've never done that, but this policy sometimes results in multiple submissions, which clients immediately rule out from considering, not wanting to get caught in the middle--and the unknowing candidate pays the price.) At any rate, the position seems to be a lock to the extent I'm making travel plans. The staffing agent discloses it's a Koch business unit and I need to make travel arrangements to Wichita. I contact my sibling with the idea of visiting with my sibling's family instead of flying home that first weekend. My sibling freaks out and starts rambling on about the Koch nepotism policy. (Apparently it's okay for Koch siblings to work in the same conglomerate, but not the Guillemette siblings.) I had ZERO interest in a full-time position at Koch and would not even be working in the same business unit for the duration of the project; I had not found out about the subcontract through the sibling but a third party and the agency recruited me, which if it knew the Koch policy applied to temps never told me or raised the issue. Shortly thereafter, my connection with the agency went completely dead. Calls and emails were unacknowledged, but it was clear what had happened, given my sibling's reaction. I didn't have a fallback position, and it took time to find another gig.
A few years later, my sibling contacted me to let me know that the Koch conglomerate had reformed its nepotism policy if I was still interested, and my response was, and continues to be, "[Expletive deleted] the Koch brothers!" I would mop floors for a living rather than work for those guys. I had to cancel travel plans without the professional courtesy of a status update.
But to be honest, I've never understood why the Left Wing has demonized the Koch brothers. Libertarians have been severe critics of GOP spending and foreign policy; none of the recent Republican nominees for President have been even remotely libertarian. There are only a handful of legislators in either chamber of Congress whom are libertarian. Actually there is a decent libertarian paper in the area--the Orange County Register. Of course, progressives are hypocritically intolerant of alternative points of view because they want a monopoly on local editorial content. Look, how are those policies working in the People's Republic of California? But of course, these hypocrites don't have a clue what's on the Cato Institute or Reason websites--which hardly are the proxy for GOP policy. If the Koch brothers haven't changed those portals, I think the worries over a Koch takeover are exaggerated. They are businessmen; they need to know the market, and it doesn't make any business sense to impose a failing business model on an acquisition. I suspect they might push for a broader editorial perspective, but only hypocrites would object to that. By the way, the Chicago Tribune has usually been more conservative,but under the same owners.
While 'Cherokee Lizzie' Warren Wants Taxpayers to Subsidize College Loans Even More....
This is from a relevant Chapman post:
In the 21st century, we have U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s “Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act,” which would set the interest rate on student loans at the rate at which banks borrow from the Federal Reserve. The justification — if you can call it that — is that if the Federal Reserve lends money to banks at less than 1 percent, the federal government shouldn’t charge students more than that....The Federal Reserve’s discount rate is lower than the rate charged on student loans because banks, unlike students, provide collateral for loans.This is sheer madness--from a clueless progressive from the same party that threatened to prosecute banks not making enough mortgage loans to lower-income/little collateral applicants. We all know how that story played out. Ms. Lizzie wants to grant sociology, drama and French literature majors loans BELOW the current inflation rate, i.e., a negative real interest rate. For the non-economist, this means you're actually losing money on the loan from day one--never mind taking on loan processing costs, and that anthropology major may have trouble landing a good enough job to pay off that 6-figure Ivy League loan... Not to mention not every college loan student makes it to graduation, only half the jobs being taken by recent graduates require a college degree, etc....
Now consider this note from the Economic Collapse Blog:
37 million Americans currently have outstanding student loans, and the delinquency rate on those student loans has now reached a level never seen before. According to a new report that was just released by the U.S. Department of Education, 11 percent of all student loans are at least 90 days delinquent. That is a brand new record high, and it is almost double the rate of a decade ago.Finally, let me comment on this well-delivered response from Skoble via Learn Liberty. As someone with a rare philosophy degree, to a large part he's preaching to the choir. I think that the critical thinking and communication skills one develops in any rigorous philosophy program are very well suited to an IT career. That being said, I never got a job interview based on that degree. I got my big break primarily because of my background in mathematics and a particular computing language--the odd thing is one of my co-workers in the timesharing industry also held a philosophy degree. That being said, I haven't had much of a voice in hiring young graduates, but I would place a philosophy major in a position like a system analyst or project manager in a heartbeat, even over my former MIS students. There are at least a couple of things to Skoble: (1) pick your minor or second major well, like in a business or technical discipline; and (2) some disciplines are more rigorous than others, e.g., pre-med, engineering, actuarial sciences, accounting, math and sciences. One of my undergrad friends at UH, Matt, was a chem-e major whom couldn't find a suitable job at graduation and decided to pursue a PhD in math. I have a younger brother, a chemical engineer (I think he also transitioned to an environmental engineer during his career). I still would prefer to hire an engineer, even if I didn't have a position for his specialty, because of the multiple skill sets, the attrition rate in more rigorous disciplines, etc. I have a couple of brilliant nephew engineers graduated from UT/Austin whom would succeed in any number of positions.
Skoble hasn't seen the same problems I've seen. For example, at UWM, we didn't have an IBM mainframe on campus. The business school concentrated on its own IBM PC network in the hope of attracting business recruiter interest for its graduates. When I joined the faculty, being an undergrad MIS major required just 9 hours (3 courses) in the major discipline. We faculty members realized that wasn't competitive and sought to double the number of major hours/courses. Students screamed bloody murder, insisted on grandfather clauses; I so wanted to recruit "Moonstruck" Cher to slap them silly. Listen, you guys, UW-Whitewater requires 21 hours, and their students can work on IBM mainframes; recruiters are jumping all over their graduates. Nine hours is a joke; you're not fooling anyone, except yourselves. Yes, it's easier to earn your degree, but it's penny-wise, pound-foolish, because you won't be competitive looking for a job.
Tornado Relief Performance
America's Top 40 (Stats Under Obama)
Selected entries from the Economic Collapse Blog: (Heck of a job you're doing, Barry...):
#6 Back in 1970, the total amount of debt in the United States (government debt + business debt + consumer debt, etc.) was less than 2 trillion dollars. Today it is over 56 trillion dollars...
#8 The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.
#9 According to The Economist, the United States was the best place in the world to be born into back in 1988. Today, the United States is only tied for 16th place.
#19 Small business is rapidly dying in America. At this point, only about 7 percent of all non-farm workers in the United States are self-employed. That is an all-time record low.
#25 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that receives direct monetary benefits from the federal government. Back in 1983, less than a third of all Americans lived in a home that received direct monetary benefits from the federal government.
#26 Overall, the federal government runs nearly 80 different "means-tested welfare programs", and at this point more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one of them.
#35 The homeownership rate in America is now at its lowest level in nearly 18 years.
#38 Today, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. This is the first time that has ever happened in our history.
#39 When Barack Obama first entered the White House, about 32 million Americans were on food stamps. Now, more than 47 million Americans are on food stamps.Still More Military Family Reunion Clips
I relate to the first couple in particular: I have 4 beautiful sisters whom love their Daddy, and I come from a large family.
From the video notes:
"When my husband left on his deployment, our 6-year-old son could not walk on his own. He has cerebral palsy. Doctors originally said that he would never walk or do much of anything. While daddy was away, he learned to walk. For his homecoming, we set it up for Michael to walk to his daddy for the first time ever! We kept the fact that he could walk a secret the whole time his dad was gone!"
Political Cartoon
You can't see me; my time is now.
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| Courtesy of Henry Payne and Townhall |
Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, "Secret Garden". I prefer the movie edit version with key movie dialogue spliced into the soundtrack below. How Jerry could look into those doe-like eyes of Dorothy and not be forever smitten is beyond me.
