I enjoyed the speech you gave recently in which you said there’s no question the administration’s economic recovery program is moving us in the right direction. In just the short time since the stimulus package was enacted, the country has gained nearly a half-million new government workers while jettisoning more than 2 million private-sector jobs. I hope we can continue this positive trend. I’ve said for years that the main problem with our economy is that it produces too many private-sector jobs and not enough government jobs.
Consider the compensation packages, for example. Our society has finally evolved to the point where the average salaries and benefits for government workers are nearly double what we find in the private sector. If we could just turn every job into a government job, those poor schmucks currently employed in the private sector would be a lot better off. Plus unemployment would become nothing more than a bad memory, since it’s impossible to dismiss government employees as long as they don’t open fire on their co-workers.
I am, however, a little concerned about the cost to the Treasury. I read in the newspaper that each job created or saved by the stimulus package so far has cost roughly $282,000. I’d consider that a bargain for life-long employment, but according to my somewhat limited understanding of economics, those jobs only exist because of the stimulus money and will continue to exist only if new stimulus money is spent to support them. I’m as willing as any other liberal to throw around a few trillion here and there to create federal jobs, but we may reach a point where the voters will refuse to foot the bill.
So I have an idea that may help. I recently spoke to a fellow programmer who was outraged to learn that his company spent a LOT of money on a badly-designed computer system, and is now paying someone $150,000 per year just to answer the phone and try to help people navigate the system. When he explained this to me, I smacked myself in the head and realized I’ve cost the country some jobs over the years. When I design software, I make sure it’s so intuitive, the users almost never need help. In retrospect, this was rather selfish on my part.
We can’t undo the past, but we can avoid making the same mistake in the future. So I propose that in addition to micro-managing the auto industry, the banking industry, the insurance industry, the health-care industry, the investment industry and the mortgage industry, the federal government should micro-manage the software industry. If a new federal department were created (lots of jobs there) to dictate the design and specifications for all future software projects, we could guarantee that all software will eventually be hopelessly confusing and difficult to navigate. I know IBM already attempted this strategy, but they faced competition from companies that were allowed to set their own standards. That’s what needs to change.
Once all software is ridiculously confusing, the administration can announce it’s going to solve the problem with a new Department of Software Support. Plenty of businesses will be happy to dump their help-desk costs on the taxpayers, and best of all, it will be a good deal for the federal government as well. If a private company is willing to pay someone $150,000 per year to answer the phone, I believe the federal government could fund the same job for as little as $200,000 per year, including benefits. That means you could create literally millions of new jobs, while saving $82,000 per year, per job, compared to the current stimulus.
These jobs would also be perfect for under-educated people with marginal skills. Training would consist of learning to say “Did you try re-booting the computer?” and then putting the caller on hold until he swears a few times and finally hangs up.
If this plan doesn’t create enough jobs to end unemployment and get the economy back on track, the administration could simply extend the concept elsewhere. I have an idea for that as well.
I recently saw that the federal government created 7,000 pages of new regulations in just the previous year. Added to all the existing regulations, the result is that most Americans commit at least a few crimes each month without knowing it. One poor fellow I saw interviewed on TV even went to prison for selling flowers he grew himself … something about an endangered species law.
Once again, the administration can ride to the rescue (and create millions of new jobs in the process) by establishing a federal “Am I Breaking The Law?” hotline. All citizens would be required to carry special cell phones that speed-dial a federal call center. The center would be manned by federal employees whose only job is to tell them whether or not they’re about to commit a crime.
Think of the benefits to the ordinary, hard-working Americans liberal politicians love. If only the flower-grower I mentioned above had been able to call someone and ask, “I’m about to sell some flowers I planted and grew here on my own property … is that against the law or anything?” his wife and kids wouldn’t have had to visit him in prison.
Given the huge number of regulations already on the books, the call center would of course require a gigantic computer system to enable employees to quickly find the regulation in question. That, naturally, ties in perfectly with my first suggestion: the federal government could micro-manage the development of the system, which would guarantee that when it goes online, we’ll need for several thousand help-desk employees to tell the users to try re-booting their computers. (I believe the term I’m looking for here is “synergy.”)
Anyway, those are my ideas. If you’d like me to brainstorm a little more, I’m willing to clear my schedule for the next year. All I’d need to get by is $282,000.
“Hi, honey. Sorry I was gone so long, but the PTA meeting went really long and– what the heck is THAT?!”
“That, my dear, is fifty-five inches of hi-definition TV heaven. Awesome, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah, it’s a gorgeous picture, but …”
“But?”
“But … Tom, we can’t afford this.”
“Sure we can! No problem.”
“Oh. So you paid cash for it?”
“Of course not. I don’t have that kind of money lying around.”
“You mean you charged this thing to a credit card? For Pete’s sake, we’re already paying interest on all the other stuff we bought for the house. This is going to blow up our budget.”
“No, no, no. I moved the TV debt to a category called off-book.”
“And what does that mean?”
“I don’t know, but the government does it all the time, so it’s got to work. I’m pretty sure it means we never have to pay for it.”
“Of course we have to pay for it!”
“Well, maybe, but we don’t have to count it, and that’s the important thing. Here, I re-worked our monthly budget, and as you can see, there’s no entry for big-screen TV payments.”
“Why on earth would you obligate us to make a big payment every month and then just leave it out of the budget?”
“Because I was afraid if I included it, you’d be really mad.”
“I’m taking this thing back to the store.”
“You can’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because … uh … because it’s a health-care issue!”
“How can a new TV be a health-care issue?”
“Because football season starts in two weeks.”
“That has nothing do with–”
“Look, with that little TV, I have to sit two feet from the screen to enjoy a game. What if the Titans lose six in a row again and I have more convulsions? Remember those bruises on my forehead from colliding with the TV? Remember how I turned sort of stupid?”
“I assumed that was from watching too much football.”
“No, it was a serious medical condition related to small screen size. So if you think about it, this TV may seem outrageously expensive now, but it will actually save us money in the long run. Going to the doctor isn’t cheap, you know.”
“I still don’t see how that justifies–”
“Besides, I’m going to offset the cost by going through our cable bill every month and eliminating all the fraud and abuse.”
“Tell you what. Start eliminating the fraud and abuse right now, and put the savings in the bank. Then when you’ve saved up whatever this TV costs, you can buy it. In the meantime, it’s going back.”
“But it’s off-book! It doesn’t cost anything!”
“On-book, off-book, we’re still paying for it. And by the way, you reach retirement age in 14 years. Running up more debt now instead of saving for retirement isn’t a good idea.”
“Don’t worry about retirement. I put a huge chunk into our pension plan just last month.”
“You what? Where did you get the money to do that?”
“Well, I took a cash advance on the credit card, but–”
“And how are we supposed to pay for that?!”
“Out of our retirement income! Geez, you really don’t understand how any of this stuff works, do you?”
“Look, Tom, we sat down a year ago and wrote up a strict budget. We both agreed to it. You can’t just change it whenever you see something you want.”
“I can too!”
“Oh, really? And why is that?”
“Well … I see the budget as a living, breathing document. We couldn’t possibly have anticipated the situation we find ourselves in today, so we need to re-interpret the meaning of the budget to fit our present circumstances.”
“You CANNOT do that without my approval!”
“Sure, I can. I was wearing a very solemn-looking black robe when I did it.”
“You don’t even own a–”
“And while wearing the solemn-looking black robe, I solemnly declared that I have a right to a big-screen TV.”
“What the– how do you figure you have a right to a TV?”
“Because I really, really, really want one. That makes it part of the pursuit of happiness clause.”
“Riiiight. Excuse me for a moment. We’ll continue this after I make some tea.”
“You’re serving me tea?”
“No, but I think I’ll have a few people over for a tea party.”
(NOTE: I actually paid cash for the TV. But if the Titans lose six in a row, I might take it back anyway.)
My daughter picked up some books from the library a few weeks ago as part of her summer reading program. I was pleased to see she’d selected one book on the Revolutionary War and another on American history in general.
I was considerably less pleased when actually I took a peek at the American history book. That one included several Q & A sections, and one A to a Q nearly gave me a stroke:
Q: How did President Roosevelt put the people back to work during the Depression?
A: He created jobs for them.
AAAAAARRGGGHHH! Six years old, and my daughter is already being taught that 1) FDR saved the economy and 2) governments can create jobs. The book explained, in glowing terms, how FDR’s Works Progress Administration employed the unemployed. A few paragraphs later, the same book noted — without a trace of irony — that in spite of FDR’s jobs programs, unemployment remained high and the Depression lingered on for several years.
In spite of?! Try because of.
FDR was one of the biggest economic nincompoops ever to occupy the Oval Office — no surprise, since he knew nothing about business. He did poorly in business and economics classes at Harvard, then later proved how little he’d learned by starting or investing in several failed ventures. The job that kept him financially comfortable throughout his adulthood consisted of writing letters along the lines of “Dearest Mommy: I need more money in my accounts. Love, Franklin.”
So naturally, he decided he had the experience and know-how to fix the economy after the crash of 1929. What he promised on the campaign trail actually made sense: cut taxes and reduce federal spending. That is, after all, what lifted the country out of a nasty recession in 1920.
But once he was elected, Roosevelt made a huge mistake: he surrounded himself with egg-heads. They’d been itching to bring big-government socialism to the United States for decades, and the Depression gave them the opportunity they craved. (Echoes of Rahm Emanuel today: You never want a serious crisis to go waste.)
The egg-heads convinced FDR it was time for a “bold program of experimentation,” trying first this, then that, then something else. Roosevelt even bragged that he had no idea what they’d try next. Oddly enough, the business community interepreted this as “We have no idea what that @#$%ing idiot will do next,” and became skittish about investing in new equipment and hiring new employees.
As part of his bold experiments, Roosevelt ordered businesses to keep prices high — always a great way to bring in customers strapped for cash — and slapped sky-high taxes on “undistributed profits” … otherwise known as the money corporations might’ve used to employ more people in upcoming years. Then he was stunned and angry when unemployment refused to go down.
So by gosh, since the evil businesses wouldn’t hire anyone, FDR just created all those federal jobs out of thin air to fill the void. If only the WPA workers didn’t require taxpayer-funded paychecks, the plan might have worked, too. And if I could fill the left side of my bathtub by scooping in water from the right side, I’d have more water.
Roosevelt may have started out believing the WPA would prime the economic pump, but he wasn’t a stupid man and had to eventually realize it wasn’t working. No matter. The WPA became nothing more than a taxpayer-funded arm of the Democratic Party. Job applicants had their voter registrations checked. Registered Republicans were told to switch parties or look for work somewhere else. One WPA official in New Jersey with a sense of humor even answered his phone “Democratic Party Headquarters.”
Researchers who’ve tracked where the WPA money was spent found that local unemployment rates had nothing to do with it. Roosevelt spent little in the solidly-Democratic South, for example, despite high unemployment. He likewise spent little in solidly Republican districts. But he was a big ol’ Santa Claus in swing states and in districts where the Democrats hoped to pick up seats in upcoming elections.
As a means of forcing taxpayers to essentially provide campaign funds for Democrats, the WPA was a smashing success. As an engine for jobs and economic growth, it was a dismal failure. In 1938, after six years of “bold experimentation,” unemployment in the U.S. jumped to 19%.
But hey, it was a worldwide phenomenon and the U.S. was just caught up in it, right? Not exactly. In 1929, the United States ranked #1 in employment — the lowest unemployment rate in the industrial world. By 1938, we’d slipped to #13. Twelve countries had surpassed us. Some were even experiencing economic expansions as the U.S. slipped into a deeper Depression.
You can read to your heart’s content about the failure of FDR’s economic programs in books like New Deal or Raw Deal or The Forgotten Man. The point is, FDR didn’t “create” jobs. If anything, his punitive regulations and taxes destroyed them. And if you don’t want to believe me, you can take it from FDR’s own Treasury Secretary, Henry Morganthau, who said this to a group of Democrats in 1939:
We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot.
For some reason, that startling admission by a New Deal architect never makes it into the textbooks. So now, much sooner than I’d hoped, I have to start explaining to my daughter that not everything she reads in library books or is taught in school is necessarily true. I have to explain to her that authors have their own agendas and sometimes they finagle or misinterpret the facts.
Yes, yes, yes … we’re talking about ancient history as far as she’s concerned. But it matters. It matters because someday she’ll be old enough to vote. It matters because we had millions of voters in 2008 who weren’t horrified when politicians responded to the government-induced economic crash by suggesting it was time for a “New New Deal.” After all, we were all taught in school that the original New Deal put the country back to work.
And decades from now, after energetic American capitalists have once again pulled us out of the current mess (providing the federal government doesn’t stop them), I don’t want my granddaughter opening a library book and reading about how Barack Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus plan saved the economy.
A web site chewed me out and insulted me a few days ago. I was surfing through reviews of hi-def TVs, happily reading away, when I clicked a link that brought me to a page with this message at the top:
This is an interactive site with a lot of graphics and video. But you wouldn’t know that because you’re still using Internet Explorer, so some of the graphic areas will appear blank. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I’m supposed to include ALT graphics for older browsers. Well, guess what? I’m not going to design my site twice just because you insist on using ancient technology. Get your head out of your ass and download a REAL browser.
As you might’ve guessed, this site wasn’t selling any products. I’ll admit to quietly gritting my teeth while dealing with computer-illiterate customers, but I’ve never invited them to remove their heads from their colons. Seems like a bad marketing strategy.
I was more amused than insulted, but it occurred to me that among the young-hip-and-digital crowd, Internet Explorer is apparently becoming the Buick of Browsers: sure, it was okay for your parents, but nobody cool would drive one of those things now. (I mean, if you had to borrow Mom’s old Dell to get to Facebook on a Friday night, maybe … but you know.)
The Buick of Browsers was once considered the Unstoppable Behemoth, which led to one of the most idiotic lawsuits ever filed by the Justice Department: United States vs. Microsoft. As you probably recall, Janet Reno’s prosecutors claimed that Microsoft was abusing its “monopoly” in operating systems by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows and therefore (eeeeek!) giving it away for free — thus harming the sales of Netscape Navigator. In addition to the feds, twenty state attorneys general carefully considered the evidence, came to the legal opinion that they could suck a few billion dollars from Microsoft into their state’s coffers, and joined the lawsuit.
It was a classic case of the federal government trying to regulate an industry that doesn’t need regulating. When I first read in the newspaper that Microsoft had a monopoly on operating systems, I immediately ran to the local Apple store to see which business had taken its place. But wouldn’t you know it … it was still there, selling Macs. There was no monopoly.
Yes, pretty much every PC in the world runs Windows now, but that’s the result of consumer choice. My first PC ran something called CP/M. At various times in the 1970s and 1980s, consumers and businesses could buy hardware and operating systems from Wang, Atari, Commodore, Amiga, Digital Equipment Corporation and, of course, IBM — which tried like hell to dethrone Windows with IBM OS/2.
IBM’s OS/2 fiasco is an example of why the industry doesn’t need regulating. When I was a kid, IBM was the behemoth: a supposed monopoly, controlling both the hardware and the software, too big and too powerful to be stopped, able to dictate prices and crush all competitors, lions and tigers and bears oh my. The evil HAL computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey was named as a reference to IBM. (Each letter occurs one place earlier in the alphabet.) IBM was going to run the world … and beyond.
Then a young nerdy guy named Bill Gates came along. IBM offered him $1 million for the exclusive rights to his DOS operating system, but Gates insisted IBM could license it for $1 per copy, as long he retained ownership. Behind his back, the IBM bigwigs — who couldn’t imagine anything close to a million PCs ever being sold — snickered at his foolishness. Then the young nerdy guy spent the next several years kicking their blue-bottomed butts out of the software business. After a joint IBM-Microsoft venture to develop an operating system fell apart, IBM executives began referring to Gates as “The Bastard From Redmond.” The once-unstoppable behemoth tried to crush Windows. They couldn’t.
We ended up with one dominant operating system for PCs because it makes economic sense, not because Microsoft is Darth Vader. A business world with multiple operating systems is about as efficient as a train system with multiple track sizes. I worked in an office back when various businesses were still running CP/M, Windows, DOS, or OS/2 – not to mention Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, WordStar, or WordPro. Sending documents back and forth was a nightmare. We had to constantly run them through conversion programs. Features such as tables and footnotes rarely came through without serious injuries.
Microsoft won the PC-software wars because they sold the best products. Everyone then gravitated to the victor because standardization made sense. But to Janet Reno’s Justice Department, that made Microsoft an evil monopoly that had to be punished, especially when they dared to bundle a free browser into Windows. By gosh, that sneaky move would guarantee the Evil Empire would own the browser market forever.
Except it hasn’t exactly worked out that way. In 2002, Internet Explorer accounted for 95% of the browsers in use. Today it’s at 60% and falling. That means consumers are taking the time to download other browsers … exactly what the Justice Department said wouldn’t happen. It’s a bummer for Netscape that they can’t sell their product anymore, but Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome have all managed to make money while giving away their products for free. (Firefox earned $80 million in 2008.) Free markets and competition did what the Justice Department couldn’t do and shouldn’t have tried.
In a book I read on American history and economics, the author pointed out that depending on who’s running the federal government, these are the risks businesses face when setting prices:
Charge more than everyone else: prosecuted for monopoly pricing
Charge less than everyone else: prosecuted for predatory pricing (or during FDR’s reign, for ignoring NRA regulations).
Charge the same as everyone else: prosecuted for colluding on prices.
In United States vs. Microsoft, it was considered predatory to give away software for free. Which makes me wonder: why isn’t the Justice Department going after Firefox and Google? And why the heck didn’t they prosecute Linux in 1998 along with Microsoft? By offering a free operating system that became wildly popular for web servers, Linux undoubtedly squashed some other company’s market share.
Anti-trust laws are supposed to protect consumers. (I’m not saying they do, but that’s the rationale.) If companies that give me free software are causing me harm, I sure can’t spot the damage. It must be something at the cellular level.
Last week, I wrote about being a self-taught programmer. Here’s how much you’d have to spend on software to become one as well:
$0.00
Yup, zero … because Darth Vader Microsoft gives away Express editions of their programming languages for free. You can download Visual Basic Express, C# Express, SQL Server Express and Visual Web Developer without spending a dime. They don’t have all the bells and whistles of the Professional series, but you can build real applications with them — I recently built one with Visual Web Developer myself. I design SQL Server databases, but I’ve never bought a copy of SQL Server. The Express edition is fine for development.
You can also watch tutorials on the Microsoft site, read documents full of step-by-step written instructions, and download a ton of examples. Toss in a few books, or a membership to Virtual Training Company ($30 per month for online access to thousands of video tutorials), and you can become an entry-level programmer for less than you’d spend on three pairs of shoes. Just add elbow grease and intellect.
Yes, Microsoft does all this in hopes that budding programmers will learn their development tools and continue to prefer them over everything else. So what? They’re not harming me. I’ll happily take that deal. In fact, I did take that deal. That’s how I learned my trade.
I’m just glad the Justice Department didn’t stop me.
To: Mr. George DiPaolo
Director, Studio I.T.
Walt Disney Pictures & Television
Burbank, CA
From: Tom Naughton
Franklin, TN
Dear George –
I regret to inform you that after some serious soul-searching, I no longer feel it would be ethical for me to continue writing software for Walt Disney Pictures & Television, or for any other company. I know I recently reported being about 75% finished with the updated version of the DVD Trailer Management System, which was true (actually, it’s closer to 85% as of today), but for the good of the company, you should delete all my code files from the SourceSafe database and hire a real programmer to begin the project from scratch. You should also get rid of all the other systems I’ve programmed for Disney over the years, as it’s highly unlikely any of them actually work.
Bear in mind, I’m not quitting in reaction to anything you’ve done. You’re a fine project manager. The soul-searching began after several people posted notes on my Fat Head blog and YouTube channel, pointing out that I’m “just a comedian” without a degree in nutrition or any other health science, and therefore I have no business critiquing studies or challenging conventional health and dietary guidelines — especially any nutrition advice handed down by doctors, who spend several years learning to prescribe drugs.
Obviously, these critics are correct. For several decades now, I’ve made the mistake of thinking that since my college education consisted of reading books and academic papers and listening to lectures, I could become educated in other fields by reading books and academic papers and listening to lectures. So once I started doing research for Fat Head and became fascinated with nutrition science, I began reading like crazy. I ordered dozens of books and downloaded more articles and research papers than I can count. I listened to online lectures by MDs and PhDs, and sometimes even attended in person.
But it was all for nothing. As one of my critics informed me, reading books and research papers on my own doesn’t count as an education since I wasn’t supervised by professors who could correct the errors in my thinking. I must admit I see the point, even though I had a few professors in college whose errors in thinking were so profound, some of us wondered how they’d made it through graduate school. But they did, and that’s what really matters.
Which brings me back to the programming work: honestly, George, what the hell were you thinking when you hired me as a software contractor? Programming large, complicated database systems with dozens of end-users (or hundreds, in the case of the DVD Trailer sytem) requires an awful lot of high-level skill and knowledge. And yet you gave me those assignments in spite of the fact that I made it perfectly clear I never took a single programming class. If you’ll recall our first interview, you asked me specifically about my education in computer science, and I replied that I’d bought some books and taught myself how to write software programs.
So while I apologize for my role in all of this, you’re the one who works for Disney, and you’re the one who kept calling me every other year or so with another big assignment. You’re the one who let me program two of those systems in languages I’d never seen before, telling me to just order some books and get up to speed. (God only knows how messed up those programs are.) And you’re the one who offered to set me up with a remote computer at the studio so I could continue taking on assignments after moving to Tenneessee. So now that we know my programming work is illegitimate, you have to accept your share of the blame.
If it’s any consolation, you’re by no means the only one paying the price for my lack of formal training. I need to notify at least 25 law firms that they must immediately cease using my trademark and patent tracking software. Worse, several pharmaceutical companies must now replace the hugely expensive clinical-trial management system sold to them by a company that hired me to build it. Man, were they fooled … they told me I was the fourth programmer they hired, but the only one they kept. One of the owners even said, “I don’t get it. The last guy had a degree in computer science and every Microsoft certification you can name, but he didn’t have a @#$%ing clue how to build a decent system.” I have no choice now except to urge that company to dump my work, re-hire the guy with the degree, and rebuild the whole thing.
The really frustrating part of all this for me is that I’m not even “just a comedian” now. I never took a class in standup comedy either, so I can’t even go back to working the clubs and cruise ships. Since my degree is in journalism, I’m stuck with hoping a newspaper or magazine somewhere is interested in hiring a 51-year-old rookie reporter.
Anyway, I’m sorry for the inconvenience. I was really looking forward to showing you the new features I added to the DVD Trailer Management System.
Best,
Tom
p.s. – If there are any electric light bulbs in your office, I suggest getting rid of them before they explode and start a fire. Thomas Edison only attended school for four months, and his instructor described him as “addled.”
About an hour ago, I was sitting in the TV room, scanning through the on-screen guide, when my six-year-old came in to chat. After a moment, she looked up toward the top of a window and said, “Daddy, what kind of bug is that walking around on the glass?”
I followed her eyes, then answered, “Well, Sara, that looks a … HOLY @#$%!!”
I try not to teach her four-letter words, but the shock overcame my inhibitions. I hustled her out of the room and exchanged my shorts and tee-shirt for what is apparently becoming my official wasp-hunting gear: jeans, a shirt, a sweatshirt with a hood, a windbreaker with a hood, and winter gloves.
I went to the laundry room, picked up the can of Raid, and was dismayed to find it felt nearly empty. I gave it one little test squirt … okay, it wasn’t empty, but I hate going into battle with a flying demon short on chemical ammunition.
The window goes all the way to the ceiling, so of course that’s where the wasp was when I returned: right up by the ceiling, still prancing around on the glass. I climbed up on the sofa near the window and balanced one foot on an arm, another on the back. I extended my weapon slooowwwly until I was sure I close enough to guarantee a direct hit.
PFFFFFFFFFFFT!!
The wasp fell, and I was sure for a moment it would wind up behind the sofa, leaving me with no option but to get back there and look for it … thus assuring myself of an ambush by one very pissed-off wasp. Fortunately, the wasp landed on a window sill, rolled onto its back, and kicked its legs for awhile, calling me a mother@#$%*! the whole time.
It’s in the garbage can outside now. I would’ve written about this earlier, but my hands just stopped shaking a minute ago.
I watched an NBC news story tonight on the “historic” financial reform bill. In a nutshell, the bill gives the federal government the power to regulate darned near everything having to do with financial transactions. The bill even gives the feds the power to ensure that people who apply for home mortgages are qualified.
Think about that one for a moment. If you want to borrow money to buy a home, it’s not enough anymore that the bank believes you’re qualified. Now the federal government has to agree. I’m really looking forward to bribing my congressman when I buy my next house.
The excuse for this monstrosity is that the federal government needs to ensure that banks no longer make the kinds of risky loans that led to the financial meltdown. Just one little problem: it was the federal government that encouraged (and sometimes ordered) banks to make those loans in the first place.
As I’ve recounted before, when my best friend applied for home loan 25 years ago, he was turned down — in spite of having a 10% down payment and a job as an attorney with a major law firm in Nashville. The bank told him he’d have to come up with a 20% down payment. That’s how “greedy” bankers protected themselves in those days … by minimizing risk.
Fast-forward to 2003. People were obtaining mortgages with zero percent down. People without jobs were obtaining mortgages. Illegal immigrants were obtaining mortgages. People who would clearly end up spending 50% of their take-home pay on house payments were obtaining mortgages.
What the heck were those greedy bankers thinking?
Their greed didn’t change. Their incentives did, courtesy of the federal government. “Progressive” politicians decided bankers weren’t lending enough money to people with lower credit scores and ordered them to change their lending policies. Janet Reno threatened the banks that resisted with federal lawsuits. “Progressive” attorneys — including one named Barack Obama — sued banks to force them to make risky loans.
Of course, the banks were happy to be in the game once Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started snapping up those risky loans. Now the banks could get their money up front. Anxious to see still more people buy homes, Andrew Cuomo, as head of HUD, told Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy up even more risky loans.
The list goes on and on. You can learn what really caused the mortgage mess by reading Meltdown, Housing Boom and Bust, or Architects of Ruin. (I’ve read all three.) If you do, you’ll learn that two of the politicians who led the charge for more “affordable housing” policies were Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd. As much as any two people on earth, they helped create the financial mess we find ourselves in today. They not only encouraged risky loans, they slapped down efforts to apply the brakes to Fannie and Freddie.
So imagine my surprise when I learned that the “historic” legislation signed today by President Obama is known as the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Bill. Yup, two of the morons who helped cause the meltdown are now the champions of financial reform. They ought to name this bill the Stop Doing What We Ordered You To Do Act.
In the spirit of the age, I’m going to suggest names for bills Congress might want to pass in the future:
The Bernie Madoff Ethical Investing Bill
The Osama bin Laden-Khalid Shiek Mohammed Anti-Terrorism Bill
The George W. Bush Grammar Education Bill
The Bush-Obama Balanced Budget Act
The Bonds-McGwire-Canseco Anti-Steroid Act
The Ted Kennedy Safe Driving Bill
The Ted Kennedy-Lindsay Lohan Responsible Drinking Act
The Mel Gibson-Louis Farrakhan Anti-Defamation Bill
The Mel Gibson-O.J. Simpson Anti-Domestic Violence Act
Feel free to send me your own suggestions, and I’ll put them a future post.
Here’s Barney, who refuses to admit any responsibility whatsoever for his actions, lying about his push for more home ownership:
As you’ve no doubt heard by now, the NAACP adopted a resolution yesterday condemning racism within the Tea Party movement and calling upon Tea Party leaders to repudiate the racists in their ranks. Anxious to avoid having this cheap, shameless political ploy come across as a cheap, shameless political ploy, mainstream media outlets were quick to point out that a few members of the Tea Party reportedly shouted racial epithets at a black lawmaker back in March.
I see … so if there are a handful of racists in a movement with tens of thousands of members, we’re allowed to demand that the movement’s leaders repudiate racism. Let’s see how that works out if we apply the same principle elsewhere.
Barack Obama received 96% of black vote in 2008. So if I can prove there are racists among his most black vocal supporters, then I’m entitled to call upon black leaders and pretty much everyone else who voted for Obama to repudiate them.
Exterminate the white people, kill the cracker babies … sure sounds like racism to me. And by the way, Obama not only failed to repudiate that second guy, Obama’s Justice Department dropped a voter-intimidation case against him — a case the FBI said was solid.
During my traveling standup days, performing in dives on long road trips, I met plenty of labor-union Democrats who were flat-out racists. One, after sharing his political wisdom with me, asked where I was from. When I replied “Chicago,” he told me he could never live there. When I asked why, he explained, “Too many ni##*$.” His racists buddies agreed. To that, I replied, “Yeah, we’ve got a lot ni##*$, like Walter Payton, Andre Dawson, and Mike Singletary. And then there’s Michael Jordan. That son of bitch breaks into my car at least once a week.”
At that point, while the racist was busy trying to hide his confusion behind a dumb grin, the other comedian pulled me outside and suggested we leave before the racist and his racist buddies pooled their brain power and figured out I’d just insulted them.
I’ve also met Republican racists, of course. And if I searched far and wide, I could probably even find a libertarian racist, although I’ve never actually met one. The point is, any large movement is going to have a few racists in the ranks. It’s not the fault of the leaders, and unless racism is actually part of the program, it says nothing about the movement itself.
According to news reports, the NAACP’s final resolution was slightly tamer than an earlier draft. The earlier draft said the NAACP would “repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties” and stand against the movement’s attempt to “push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.”
So people who favor limited government are racists, eh? Let’s check that one against history.
In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower (Republican) proposed and signed the first significant civil-rights bill since Reconstruction. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came up for a vote, the Democrats were still mostly FDR’s party — the New Deal party. The Republicans were still mostly the small-government party — the party that opposed the New Deal. (Although after FDR managed to buy off a huge chunk of the electorate in the 1930s, the Republicans rarely put up a significant fight.)
Here’s the percentage of each party that voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964:
House Republicans - 80%
House Democrats - 63%
Senate Republicans - 82%
Senate Democrats - 68%
Anyone care to look at those numbers and explain the connection between racism and favoring lower taxes and smaller government?
Republicans were tagged as being against civil rights partly because Barry Goldwater, their presidential nominee in 1964, voted against the 1964 act. But Goldwater was hardly a racist. He joined the NAACP in the 1950s — long before it was fashionable for white people to do so — gave money to the NAACP, desegregated the Arizona National Guard while he was the state’s governor, and fought to desegregate the public schools in Phoenix.
Goldwater opposed the 1964 act because he feared it would become the legal basis for a quota system. Hubert Humphrey, a sponsor of the bill, replied that if such a thing ever happened, he’d stand on the capitol steps and eat every page of it. So naturally, some left-wing judges later did what left-wing judges are supposed to do: suffer massive hallucinations while reading laws. Despite what Humphrey himself said, they decided the bill called for quotas.
Most Republicans opposed quotas, thus maintaining the same position the party had held for 100 years: people should be treated equally, regardless of race. For that, they were labeled racists. Today, you don’t even have to oppose quotas to be labeled a racist … you can join that club merely by believing in the Constitution and opposing a big-government leftist who happens to be black.
But of course, the NAACP’s resolution isn’t really about racism — it’s about changing the subject. The Tea Party members are angry about runaway federal spending and skyrocketing federal debts. The trillion-dollar “stimulus” package has fattened the wallets of groups loyal to the Democrats, but it hasn’t stimulated much of anything else. The Democrats’ solution to the high cost of health care is to spend another trillion dollars of the taxpayers’ money — for starters, anyway. Reality is setting in, and messiah-worship among swing voters is wearing off.
So the NAACP, worried that Obama may receive the kind of shellacking in the upcoming congressional elections that Bill Clinton received in 1994, simply called a favorite play from the left’s official playbook: if you can’t defeat your opponent in the arena of ideas, call him a racist instead. It’s a page right out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals: attack, attack, attack, make it personal, and remember that in a political fight, the ends always justify the means.
Below, I’ve pasted some YouTube clips featuring two of my favorite authors, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams. Both were professors of economics, both have been highly critical of Obama, and both happen to be black. Watch these clips, and if you disagree with their positions, please post a comment with your most logical, persuasive arguments against them.
Then I’ll ignore those arguments and call you a racist instead. It’s so much easier than debating the actual issues.
(By the way, in searching for videos of Thomas Sowell, I found references to him as “Uncle Tom Sowell.” Dangit, when are people going stand up and demand that the left repudiate all the racists in their movement?!)
When I was a wee lad in Iowa, schoolkids trafficked in Black Cat firecrackers the way some sell drugs today. It wasn’t legal for kids to have firecrackers, of course, but everyone knew a supplier. (The suppliers, now that I think about it, were usually tough kids who didn’t do well in school. )
Weeks before the Fourth of July rolled around, we’d stop wasting our allowances on marbles, candies and other worthless junk, and start saving up for a personal supply of explosives. If you saved enough, you could even stroll up to a supplier and proudly announce, “I need a brick.”
A “brick” was the real deal: an entire package, all wrapped up in waxy paper, complete with a logo of a snarling black cat. When we tore open a brick, there they’d be … dozens and dozens of firecrackers, with the fuses twisted together. We learned right away to un-twist the fuses delicately, or they’d snap off.
But of course, we weren’t about to let the fuse-less firecrackers go to waste. We’d tape those to the firecrackers we could actually ignite and explode them together. That was also the preferred method for making use of a dud. By the end of the day, the fields near our house would smell like gunpowder and be full of little bits of firecracker confetti.
The paper that wrapped each brick included clear instructions on how to enjoy the firecrackers. PLACE FIRECRACKER ON THE GROUND. LIGHT THE FUSE AND MOVE TO A SAFE DISTANCE.
Yeah, right. In all my childhood years, I never saw anyone set a firecracker on the ground and move a safe distance away. In fact, we considered it a test of our manhood to hold a lit firecracker until the last possible second, then could toss it in the air just before the explosion. Our timing was generally pretty good … but unfortunately, quality control at the Black Cat factory wasn’t perfect, and some fuses burned more quickly than others. I went home after one firecracker expedition with my right hand in my pocket, hoping my parents wouldn’t notice I had two black fingernails.
But there was no hiding the splatter of ink on my shirt. No longer content to merely toss Black Cats in the air, my friends and I had started experimenting with more creative explosions. We blew up anthills, dirt clods, and empty soda cans. (The cans didn’t exactly explode, but they jumped a bit, and there was a satisfying WHOMP when the Black Cat went off inside.)
Then one of my friends had the bright idea of attaching a firecracker to a Bic pen with a rubber band. I had the bright idea of volunteering to hold the pen-bomb while he lit the fuse. The fuse had the bright idea of burning all the way down in a couple of milliseconds. I realized what was happening just soon enough to say a bad word and make a panicky attempt to toss the firecracker, then POP! - black fingers and a forerunner to the tie-dye shirt.
Mom wasn’t happy, especially since she made many of our shirts back then, including the ink-stained one I wore home. After confronting me with some rather damning evidence (the burnt gunpowder smell, in particular, was hard to explain) and eliciting a confession that I’d been playing with firecrackers, Mom stuck my fingers in glass of ice water, then gave me a lecture about a boy who blew off three of his fingers with a cherry bomb.
In comparing notes with different kids in different towns over the years, I eventually concluded that every mom in America knew a boy who had blown off three of his fingers with a cherry bomb. Strangely, none of us kids had ever actually met a boy with three missing fingers. None of us even knew anyone who knew anyone with three missing fingers. I could only guess that the missing-finger kid spent his life moving from town to town and introducing himself to all the local mothers.
I don’t play with firecrackers anymore, but my girls spent part of today delighting themselves by tossing little exploding caps against the sidewalk. Tomorrow evening, we’ll head to downtown Franklin for a free concert on the town square, followed by fireworks. I have fond childhood memories of the Fourth of July, and I hope they will too. I also want them to understand what the Fourth of July means. I’ve already told them about the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, and how the fireworks represent the battles that freed us from British rule.
And when they’re older, I’ll make sure my wife tells them about a kid who blew off three of his fingers with a cherry bomb.
I’m up to my ears in a big ol’ data conversion for a prospective software client, but I’m taking a quick break here to post some odds and ends:
Wasp stories
Okay, y’all succeeded … after reading your own wasp stories in the comments, I’m even more afraid of the little demons than before. I will never again take a bite of a baseball-stadium hot dog without giving it a careful look first. When I take the empty bottles and cans to the garage, I open the door slowly and look for wasps and hornets before descending the stairs. Same thing when I walk out the front door. But the most important precaution of all: I give the toilet careful scrutiny, including the underside of the seat, before reading the sports section. Some wasp stings could kill you … if not from the toxin, then from the shock.
Back on the cell phone
Some weeks ago I wrote about giving up my cell phone and returning to the dark ages of the 1990s. Honestly, I haven’t missed it a bit. I like being unreachable when I leave the house, and I feel no urge to call people 15 minutes before I arrive for a visit to tell them I’m almost there. I figure when I arrive, they can probably deduce that 15 minutes earlier, I was about 15 minutes away. And I still haven’t seen any statistics to convince me that thousands of people used to die on the nation’s highways for lack of a portable phone.
But alas, I’ll be out of town for a week (heading to Chicago to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, thus returning to the scene of the crime), and since I’m running a growing software business now, I can’t be unreachable. So it’s back to being a cell-phone owner.
Somebody suggested in a comment that I try Virgin Mobile. Good idea, thanks. For $25 per month, I get 300 minutes with no roaming charges. That’s more minutes than I’ll need, and the web surfing, texting and emailing are all free … although after trying those services, I doubt I’ll use them. I can’t stand browsing on that little screen, and I don’t have the patience to peck away on the tiny keyboard.
The only hitch was getting my phone activated. The first phone I took home apparently wanted to be in a different line of work and refused to activate. I called Virgin Mobile’s tech support somewhere in India five times, and each time a technician walked me through the steps, then assured me the phone would activate within three hours. Never happened.
Unlike many Americans, I don’t resent people in India acquiring jobs — I want people all over the world to become prosperous, which, by the way, often turns them into customers for American-made products. For example, I’ll soon be selling my software to a firm in India for a nice sum, if testing goes well. (And it has so far.) Poor people don’t buy my software.
But I have to admit, the language barrier was a bit annoying at times. I had conversations like this:
“Okay, sir, you must now need to enter the following code: Enm, too, tree–”
“Sorry, did you say N or M for that first part?”
“Enm. As in Nmiddy.”
“Niddy?”
“No, sir. Nmiddy.”
“Niddy? With an N? Like my last name?”
“No, sir, it says here your last name is Nog-ton, with an Emn. You need to type an Enm, as in Nmiddy. Like the name.”
“Uh … sorry … ”
“Nmiddy. Like Nmiddy, Nmiddy, quite contriddy.”
“Oh, you mean M as in Mary!”
“Yes, sir. Nmiddy.”
Despite their best attempts, every time I tried to use the phone, a friendly voice informed me it wasn’t activated. After two days, I gave up and exchanged it for a duplicate. Bingo … activated on the first try. No help from Nmiddy required.
My Favorite Fat Head Review
I receive Google alerts when new references to my documentary Fat Head appear on the web. The good news is that there are lots of references. The bad news is that many of them are on illegal download sites in foreign countries. If only my international distributor could achieve that kind of market penetration.
Some of the illegal download sites even include reviews cribbed from legitimate retail sites … the better to entice people to steal my work. Other sites list the movie — legally, as far as I can tell — simply to get their tiny commission if the reader clicks through to Amazon or Netflix. Those sites also crib reviews.
I saw one of those borrowed reviews today. I recognized it from Amazon, but it has apparently been translated into some foreign language and then back into English again. It’s now my favorite review:
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“Rotund Head” is simultaneously a send-up of Morgan Spurlock’s “Supersize Me” and an expose’ on the place of nutrition “science”. Using humor and Pythonesque cartoons, Tom Naughton does a generous job of tipping many sacred cows on the topic of nutrition, showing how the government, media, and special interests combined to yield the modern situation: people are eating what’s supposedly “healthy”, yet are developing metabolic diseases like diabetes at an alarming and increasing rate.
(Buy, Download or Stream Fat Head! Click here!)
The core premise of the movie is to revisit “Supersize Me”, where Spurlock supposedly showed the evils of speedily food by eating nothing but McDonald’s for a month. Spurlock gained 25 pounds, was issued a variety of dire health warnings by his doctor, etc. Naughton turns this concept on it’s head: he also ate only rapidly food for a month, but ragged his “functioning brain”. Rather than impartial blindly eating whatever was available, he avoided those foods which science has shown contribute to metabolic problems like obesity, including sodas, french fries, too worthy bread, etc. The result? Eating nothing but double Expansive Macs and the like, he lost over 12 pounds in 28 days and his cholesterol went down. The expression on his doctor’s face alone is worth the label of the DVD.
“Pudgy Head” is very comical and discusses the science of paunchy collect and loss in an manner which is easily understood. My kids (8 and 4) watched it with me, and they “got it”. Regain a copy and fragment it with your friends and family.
This movie is humorous and piquant and amazingly informative. It has so many pieces of useful advice that it’s hard to secure them all. Furthermore, it passes along this information in a map that got my wife’s attention in a device that I hadn’t been able to.
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Hey, if I can help a guy finally get his wife’s attention in a device — after many failed efforts, apparently – I’m a happy man. And for the record, I don’t miss the too-worthy bread one bit.
Time to rag my functioning brain back into some data conversion …
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