One Hundred Twenty Six: AT&T, Tmobile

So ATT has failed in its attempted acquisition of TMO. The timing of all this was good for me. Last summer I migrated from ATT to TMO. The merger had nothing to do with my decision. Rather, the ATT cell coverage for calls was so bad in my area I would literally have 2 or 3 dropped calls per day. ATT eventually agreed to waive early termination fees as well as a few hundred dollars of past due monthly bills, which I had strategically stopped paying.

Now I see that ATT will be paying TMO $4 bilion. Boy, am I glad I'm not an ATT customer now. I'd be really pissed off if I knew I was paying part of that break up fee.

One Hundred Twenty Five: Charitable Solicitations

Few things irk me more than private, for-profit businesses that solicit my business or lecture me about charitable giving. "Buy a five dollar bottle of water and we'll give ten cents to starving children!" It is probably some moronic Harvard MBA who comes up with this baloney. Only this morning I received an email from my bank haranguing me to give them money, food, and clothing so the bank can distribute it to the "needy."

All these companies are making excellent returns on my business. Let them give away their own money. How are these companies able to be a better arbiter than I of who should get my donations?

These not-so-thinly-veiled self-serving scams only reinforce my long held position on charitable giving: I never give any money to anybody who asks me for it. Don't ask, and you've got a shot.

One Hundred Twenty Four: Bad People

What do Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jon Corzine all have in common? They have all been celebrated public figures in positions of authority and power, and generally esteemed by large sections of the public media before being exposed as scoundrels and louts. The other thing they all have in common, at least for me, is that their loutishness and dearth of decency was very blatantly apparent from the first time I ever set eyes on them in their public positions. Now I know I do not possess any special powers of observation, so the question is why these characters (and many others like them, especially most career politicians) are reverred for so long prior to their downfall? Why are their bad characters ignored and even glorified?

One Hundred Twenty Three: Illinois Regulation of Business

This past week I represented a corporate client (CC) in a hearing before the Illinois Department of Labor (IDOL). The hearing arose from an unpaid wage claim made against CC by a disgruntled agent of a former independent contractor to CC (the independent contractor was fired for stealing from CC). The claimant submitted no proof of employment, and could not meet the statutory definition of an "employee" under the Act, and admitted several times that he worked for someone other than CC. Nevertheless, the hearing officer (HO) found that the claimant was an employee because he had a tee shirt with the CC logo on it. I presented sworn affidavits from claimant's actual employer, which the HO seemed unable to comprehend. The HO was a classic incompetent and bumbling career bureaucrat of the worst sort. She was inclined to accept the claimant's position that he was an employee of CC because he had a tee shirt with the CC logo on it.

The worst part of this situation is that the Illinois legislature has now amended the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act to criminalize employers who defend their companies against these bogus claims. It should come as no surprise that businesses are running from Illinois in droves to avoid being squeezed by political extortion.

One Hundred Twenty Two: September 11, Ten Years On

It's interesting how dates and anniversaries come and go, are celebrated or marked, and just how time rolls on. Today is the ten year anniversary of the attacks of September 11, and I find myself, quite unintentionally, playing golf at the same location, and the same time, with one of the same people as ten years ago to the day. The weather appears to be the same. In many ways, I am the same, but of course older and hopefully wiser. On the lighter side, I know my golf game is better, having played probably 400 rounds in the interim.

A few of the important items for me in the past ten years:

I suffered a grand mal seizure and almost died.
My oldest son left college and enlisted in the Navy, where he has remained for the past seven years.
My youngest son and I went to Alaska, twice.
My wife had major back surgery, from which there has been limited recovery.
My father, mother-in-law, and two of my best AA friends have died.
A best friend's wife has beat cancer.
A best friend's sole surviving daughter died.
We have done major remodeling projects on both of our houses.
The media have created, described and benefited from countless crises.
The stock market has gone up and down.
Politicians have told innumerable self-serving lies.

It would interesting to know what others think has happened in my life during this same period. Probably not much.

One Hundred Twenty One: BO & The Debt Downgrade

As I watch the market freefall today, especially after BO put his mug on the boob tube and further enhanced his reputation as the dumbest president ever when it comes to understanding finance and the economy, I must say that anyone who votes for BO in November 2012 has to be either incredibly stupid or a government worker, and I realize that the former probably qualifies one to be the latter. There apparently is no one at work in BO administration who has ever balanced a checkbook or run a business. It is as though these children think they will all of a sudden wake up next year and everything will be all right. BO lectures the Republicans, the Tea Party, his own fellow Democrats, and worst of all, us, the American people. He thinks he is only person in the country who is blameless. He came into office preaching the virtues of "post-partisanship" and other platitudes. He then proceeded to impose his vision of socialism on what once was a free market economy. We really need a president who has had a real job.

One Hundred Twenty: Debt Ceiling Debate

I think the Republicans misidentified the prime objective in the debt ceiling debate. Rather than focusing on no additional taxes and a balanced budget amendment, they should have insisted on the short term extension. Personally, I would like to see this debate happen every freaking week until the idiot voters in this country realize that these lam brains in Washington are the real "fat cats." It is BO and his Democrat cronies who want to bury this issue. Of course they will sell out their own party members just to NOT have to debate the issue of spending within our means prior to the 2012 election. Every household and business in the United States has had to put the clamps on spending for the past three years. Only Washington has allowed the tap run as though the well will never run dry. Just look at real estate prices in DC. It looks like the hey day of 2006, only better. Where do people think this money is coming from?

Anyone who votes for Obama or Durbin or Reid or Pelosi is, of course, dumber than a post. But that's what happens in a democracy - you get lots and lots of real stupid decision makers.

One Hundred Nineteen: US Debt Default

What's the difference between the US defaulting on its obligations now, or later? Default is coming is some form or fashion. Just like consumer borrowing in the run up to the 2008 recession, a reckoning on US government debt is also a certainty. Prior to the recent recession, US households borrowed against assets rising in price to support spending that exceeded household income. Ultimately, the asset prices became untenable, borrowing was impossible, and the bubble burst. Likewise, the US government is borrowing to support spending which exceeds income (tax revenue and other forms of government income, such as fees on everything under the sun). At some point, the ability of the taxpayer to cough up the giant sums necessary to both pay for government spending as well as paying for debt service will be exhausted. This will probably occur simultaneously with the diminished attraction of lenders to US debt, which will drive up the cost of US debt and fuel the spiral of economic pressure on the US taxpayer. This is inevitable. The only question is how to position oneself for this situation. Will cash be worth anything? Will it be better to be fully leveraged, or debt free? My guess is that the ability of lenders to collect on outstanding debt will severely curtailed, and will make the current mortgage foreclosure disaster look tame.

One Hundred Eighteen: Masters 2011

What a joy to watch young Mr. Schwartzel perform on the Augusta National stage. Even the relentless media anti-hero worship of Woods could not unnerve the South African.

Anyone who has played the game of golf for an extended period knows, or should know, that golf teaches more than physical skills. It helps a person grow in humility, maturation, understanding, and friendship. All the true champions of the game exhibit these qualities in increasing amounts, which is why I do NOT count Woods as a true champion.

Woods is to golf as Jimmy Swaggart is to the clergy. The game will be better when he is gone from the scene.

One Hundred Seventeen: Durbin's Recession

In a speech at the Union League Club in Chicago on January 21, Senator Dick Durbin advocated delaying spending cuts by the government until the recession is over. The exact quote was: "If we don't get out of this recession, we are not ever going to be able to have serious deficit reduction." Dick's ignorance of economics is appalling and profound. First, all of the credible organizations which track and analyze recessions and growth in the US economy acknowledge that the recession which began in late 2007 ended in June of 2009. Second, Dick does not understand that the recessions are a natural part of economic cycles, and are caused in large part by excessive spending and risk-taking. When people and governments spend more than they take in and produce, there will eventually be a day of reckoning. The 2007-2009 recession was caused by government sponsored and supported inflation in the real estate market. Consumers were encouraged to use their perceived equity in real estate, and to a lesser extent, stocks, to augment income. Money center banks were complicit in this economic insanity. These large financial institutions, again encouraged by Dick and his buddies, were falling over each other to make loans to people who could never pay the loans back, secured by assets which were valued to keep rising indefinitely in a straight line, contrary to all economic history and laws.

Now, Dick says we must keep spending money we don't have, so that we can eventually pay back loans we should never have taken out. This kind of thinking can only come from politicians who produce nothing of value, and see the rest of us as a bottomless source tax revenue.

One Hundred Sixteen: My Two Cents on Tucson

It's a tragedy. Enough said, and enough already with the shallow, meaningless, self-serving blather from talking heads and political welfare recipients. There have been countless innocent victims of tragic violence in this country, and none of them have received the outpouring of media empathy which Tucson has inspired. Obviously the reason for treating Tucson differently is that a Congressperson was shot. Why a Congressperson deserves this level of attention and a faceless office worker does not is a question which none of the talking heads will ask.

It's a tragedy. Leave it at that.