Posts Tagged politics

Shame on America Sunday: Corporate Tunnel & Sports Lovers

October 26, 2008 at 4:58 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , ,


This week, the health care crisis really hit home. On Friday night, my dad left a message for me asking me to call him as soon as I could. I wasn’t able to return his call until Saturday afternoon, and before I could return his call, I had breakfast with the in-laws on Saturday morning.

During that breakfast, my mother-in-law relayed to me that she had recently received a bill for her “treatments,” a procedure she gets every month at the hospital. The bill was for $750, for two months worth of treatments; the bill was her 20% of the cost of the monthly treatments, which she says “keep her alive.”

After that breakfast, in the afternoon, when I called my dad back, I learned that he had just been diagnosed with, in his words, “corporate tunnel syndrome,” a development that he believed stemmed from a wrist injury he suffered at work and the physical therapy he’s been going through.

Both my mother-in-law and my dad asked me, specifically, to look into their situations because I’m a lawyer, and they were concerned; mother-in-law was concerned about how she and my father-in-law were going to afford to pay $375 per month, on top of their other bills, and thought that their insurance should be covering these charges. Dad was concerned about how he’d pay for his surgery to cure his “corporate tunnel” — try as I might, I couldn’t get him to call it carpal tunnel — if worker’s compensation didn’t cover it. He wanted to know whether I thought maybe he should be hiring a lawyer to make sure it was covered.

Why, in the richest, most powerful country in the world, do senior citizens think they have to hire a lawyer to force their insurers to pay for necessary medical care?

As I pondered that question this morning, I saw a clip of the McCain speech where he referenced Barack Obama’s ideas on health care and taxation and said they were redistribution of wealth, and I heard, as a senior citizen who doesn’t have to worry about things because he’s rich, as that man-wh0-married-into-inherited wealth spoke about helping the poor, I heard boos.

So before you answer my question — especially those of you who are about to scream “socialism,” especially those of you who booed or were inclined to boo yesterday when Out-of-Touch John McCain, when protect-the-wealthy John McCain, when further-destroy-America John McCain, said the words “redistribute money,” — before you answer my question, consider this:

Seats for the New York Mets new stadium, CitiField — you may recognize the cognomen “Citi” — it’s from Citigroup, a company that bought the naming rights to the stadium but which may continue losing money until 2010 and which either have been or will be bailed out using money that could have paid for health care — seats at CitiField will sell for as much as $495 per ticket per game. But it’s worth it, right, because they get the best sight lines and offer all-inclusive food and drink, so it’s not like you’re spending extra for your hot dogs, right?

Before you answer my original question, which was, again: Why, in the richest, most powerful country in the world, do senior citizens think they have to hire a lawyer to force their insurers to pay for necessary medical care? consider this:

To buy tickets at the Dallas Cowboys’ new stadium, football fans will have to first fork over $150,000 for a “personal seat license,” and then pay $340 per ticket per game.

To buy tickets to a Colts game, some people pay $235,000 to rent a “Super Suite,” the key feature of which is that each suite has a 50 inch plasma TV, along with an individual TV screen for each seat — so Colts fans pay $235,000 to go to the stadium and watch the game on TV.

To buy tickets to a Giants or Jets game in 2010, fans will pay $20,000 for a “personal seat license” giving them the right to buy a $700 ticket to the game.

To buy tickets to a baseball game in our nation’s capital, where Continue-To-Destroy-America John McCain has practically lived his life, some Nationals’ fans pay $400,000 per year to rent a “Washington Suite,” which features a porch with a TV and the best views of the park.

It’s not just the superrich, either. The average cost of a major league baseball ticket in 2008, was $25.40 across the league, according to ESPN, with teams averaging between $48.80 per ticket (the Red Sox) down to $15.96 per ticket for Arizona.

The Red Sox’ attendance this year was 3,048,250. So Red Sox fans spent at least $148,754,600 (I say “at least” because those numbers don’t include premium seating and corporate boxes) just on tickets. Just to get into Fenway Park and watch the game, Red Sox fans spent $148,754.600.

Arizona, the club with the lowest ticket price, drew 2,509,924 people this year. Arizona fans paid $40,058,387.04 just to get into their ballpark and watch their team play.


It may be worth it just to get in the door for some people — ballparks and stadiums are increasingly nice and increasingly pricey. Three new stadiums are scheduled to open in 2009 — CitiField, Cowboy Stadium, and Yankee Stadium. The combined cost of just those three new venues is $3.2 billion. Let’s spell that out:

$3,200,000,000 is the combined cost just to build three new sports complexes that will debut in 2009.

Some of the money is private, some is public — but wherever the money theoretically comes from, it actually comes from the pockets of sports fans, because none of those teams (the Mets, the Yankees, and the Cowboys) are losing money and none intend to lose money. If the money to build the stadium is public money (as it was for Miller Park in Milwaukee, where the poor paid a disproportionate share of building a ballpark they can’t afford to get into) it comes directly from you and me and everyone else; if the money is private, it comes indirectly from people who buy Romo jerseys and Yankee caps; corporations do not spend money or make money; they redistribute money from you as you buy products to people who run or own the corporation.

People will say that it is all right that we spend that money on sports, and they will say that because they’ll say it’s private money — people choosing to buy a Jeter jersey — or that the public money is well-spent because it creates jobs. (I’ll talk another day about the jobs such spending creates, but not today.)

But it’s not; it’s not okay, because at the same time as people are doing what they want with their money, they are selfishly hoarding more than they need and selfishly resisting using a tiny portion of their money for the common good. At the same time as people are spending $700 to see a stupid ball game, they are booing Barack Obama when he suggests that the rich could spare some money so that the poor can get health care. And that’s not okay. It’s not okay for any American to spend $700 on a ball game, or even $50 on a ball game, but not want to help the poor.

It’s not okay to have a country that thinks it’s great to spend billions on ballparks and might elect Continue America’s Destruction John McCain so that he can take away insurance coverage from people and which boos the proposition that the rich can help the poor. It’s not okay because we can do better.

I’m going to rephrase my question and ask it one more time:

Why, in the richest, most powerful country in the world, in a country where we can spent three billion dollars to make sure that people can watch a game comfortably, do senior citizens think they have to hire a lawyer to force their insurers to pay for necessary medical care?

Shame on you, America. Shame on you for booing the idea that the rich can help the poor, shame on you for making senior citizens worry about whether they can afford to live without pain, and shame on you for even considering voting for McCain.

The Fix: Increase the highest marginal tax rate to above 50% — the rich can afford it, and the odds are you’re not rich; when you get to be rich, you’ll have an obligation, like the rich are obliged now, to pay your fair share of taxes. Pass real health care reform by providing a national health insurance policy that anyone can buy, a policy that has no lifetime caps on payments, and that provides an increasing premium and copay as the policyholder’s income increases; those making at or near the poverty level would pay nothing; those who buy into the coverage but who earn more would pay more for it. In addition, require all insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions, which would help make insurance coverage more competitive by letting those with pre-existing conditions switch carriers.

What You Can Do Until The Fix Is In: Don’t vote for McCain. Seriously. Unless you are John McCain, or are extremely wealthy, voting for McCain is insanely against your interests. And if you are extremely wealthy, it’s still against your interests because what will you do when the economy falls apart further under a McCain/Palin administration? Also, everytime you buy sports memorabilia, sports gear, or go see a game in person, take a dollar and donate it to charity. Here are two to start with:

Christ House: Located in Washington D.C.– maybe even within site of the Nationals Park, but probably without the great sight lines available to season ticket holders– Christ House’s mission is to provide medical care to the homeless. Their administrator earns only $39,580 per year for salary, using the money it’s raised to help over 3,600 homeless people in its 23 years of existence. Learn more about Christ House and find out how to donate.

The Humanitarian Service Project raises money to help seniors and kids through the troubles that poverty causes. Their programs include the “Christmas Offering,” which gives four weeks of food to more than a hundred families every year — plus gives away 12 tons of Christmas gifts to poor families. They also have the “Senior Citizen Project,” which presently helps 115 senior citizens in need by delivering nutritious food each month, along with toiletries and other needed items, and helps them get “wish list” items like microwaves, TVs, and wheelchairs.

So how about that? You could buy that Romo jersey, and then send a couple of bucks to the Humanitarian Service Project so that a senior citizen could watch Romo play, too. And have a meal. Let’s not forget that. They could watch Romo play and get a meal.

Find out more about the Humanitarian Service Project, and how to help.

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Shame On America Sunday: Where Will We Ever Get The Money Edition

October 19, 2008 at 4:45 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , ,


This week, I got a little caught up on my magazine reading, and I was both concerned and given the idea for today’s Shame On America Sunday when I first read, in Newsweek, that the next president would have a big mess on his hands (true enough) because he would not have the money to pay for ambitious social programs (a lie, and a stupid one, at that.)

Then, I read in Entertainment Weekly, that there are currently six shows filming in one of the boroughs of New York City, and that it costs an average of $3 million dollars per episode to film in New York City. Those shows film there for various reasons, including (in the case of “Life on Mars,”) that Brooklyn can look like Boston but has wider streets, and including for realism.

Six shows. Most regular series have 22 episodes per year, so that means that the cost of filming those six television shows, alone, $396 million. It always looks more impressive with the zeroes, so here goes:

$396,000,000 is what the United States can afford to make Life on Mars and Ugly Betty more realistic.

I also like to break it down to the basic units, so here goes that:

We spend $1,084,931.50 per day to make sure that when Brooke Shields goes shopping on Lipstick Jungle, viewers will see real New York stores behind her.

We spend $45,205.47 per hour to make sure that Fringe‘s outlandish plots are adequately grounded in the gritty streets of New York City.

We spend $753 per minute in order to keep the Gossip Girls gossiping in stylish locations.

We spend $12 per second, every second of every minute of every hour of every day filming just six TV shows in New York City.

It took you two seconds to read that sentence. That’s $24 America just spent filming six tv shows.

That’s just the very tip of the iceberg. In years past, statistics suggested that it costs $1.3 million per episode, total, to film a sitcom — more if the stars are paid a lot. The book Entertainment Industry Economics by Harold L. Vogel said that the cheapest programs to produce were daytime soaps, at $125,000 per hour.

So that gives us costs of $125,000 per hour to $3,000,000 per hour, roughly speaking, for each new show on TV. Let’s use the $125,000 per hour figure just to give us an estimate. Let’s assume that each hour of new TV programming costs $125,000 per hour for daytime soaps and primetime TV.

If I leave out basic cable — for which people pay, so it’s not purely advertiser supported, which is important for reasons I’ll get to in a moment — and leave out reruns and assume 2 hours of daytime soaps per day on the ‘big 3’ networks, and if I assume no new programming in the 13 weeks of summer, it works out like this:

Daytime soaps: $250,000 per network per day, five days a week, 39 weeks per year = $48,750,000 per year on soap operas alone.

Nighttime TV: Three hours per night, four networks, equals $375,000 per night per network, or $1,500,000 per night for all networks. They spend that seven nights per week at a minimum cost of $10,500,000 per week, for 39 weeks, for a minimum of $409,500,000 per year on prime time TV programming.

In other words, using the most minimal estimates possible, we spend $458,250,000 per year on new TV shows. It’s probably more, but using the bare minimum America spends at least that on TV shows per year. (At the $3 million per episode cost, America spends $10,998,000,000 per year on TV shows.)

Now, here’s why I used only broadcast TV: Broadcast TV costs you nothing. It is entirely advertiser-supported. The networks spend at least $458 million per year on TV shows and they get zero dollars from you for that; it all comes from Charmin and Sonic and McCain ads and the rest of the commercials you (but not me) complain about.

So where do Charmin and Sonic and McCain get that money? From you. You buy Sonic burgers for the whole family, like I did on my last vacation, because you saw those cool Sonic ads on TV and so you made sure to go there on vacation. You can’t help squeezing the Charmin. You go see Beverly Hills Chihuahua because you saw an ad on TV, and you think that Barack Obama is an Arab because you saw an ad on TV.

If Charmin and Sonic and McCain were not getting money from you — and more money than they spent on advertising — they would not advertise and TV would not be free.

So you, America, spend at least $458,000,000 on new TV shows, each year. It’s probably more; it may be as much as twenty-four times that amount. But you spend at least $458,000,000 on new TV shows.

In light of that, let’s re-examine Newsweek’s contention that there simply won’t be money to pay for ambitious social programs, shall we? Let’s ask ourselves, as a country, why it’s okay for us to spend $458,000,000 watching Charlie Sheen make boob jokes but it’s simply unimaginable that we could spend $458,000,000 to fix the roads, or institute a health care policy that will actually provide coverage for people so that nobody needs to raise money to pay for an organ transplant, or to effectively police our food and drink so that we don’t have to have melamine in pet food and children’s candy, or to institute actual financial reform to have regulators oversee banks making risky loans and securitizing them to pass the losses onto the taxpayer?

What kind of country can spend at least $458,000,000 watching TV but is going to tell the next president there’s no money to do anything to improve the country? Shame on America for being willing to spend money watching fake privileged kids text each other, but not for spending money to make sure that real kids can go visit the doctor.

The Fix: As before, I’ve advocated a sales tax or consumption tax equal to 50% of the value of any goods that cost more than $500; and as before, I’m advocating increasing the highest marginal tax rate to 50% or more.

What you can do until the Fix is In: Every hour of TV you watch, take $5 and put it in a jar. Once a week, send it to a charity that does something valuable for society or a person who needs it more than you do. Here are three to begin with:

Ryan and Angie Shaw and their twins, McHale and Mateo: Insurance companies won’t pay for Mateo and McHale’s medical bills, because these twins who were given a 5% chance of survival at birth (and who are surviving quite well, thanks, at nearly 3) have had so many surgeries they’ve maxed out their coverage. Society decided that it would rather watch Survivor: Whereever they Are Now than let two little boys get medical care; you can fix that by sending tax-deductible donations to the trust fund that helps pay for their care; send them to the Mateo and McHale Shaw Irrevocable SNT, c/o Kohler Credit Union, 850 Woodlake Road, Kohler, WI 53044. (Find out more here; once on that page, type mateoandmchale into the box labeled “Visit a Caring Bridge Website.”)

Help a Kid Get His First Book: “Books For Kids” is a New York-tristate-area program that helps set up children’s libraries, promotes literacy, and gives away books — sometimes the first book a kid has ever owned. Local, state, and the federal government don’t make sure that kids read great books; you can, though, by donating money through their website.

Keep Some People Warm: Governmental policies have made fuel more expensive than ever. THAW: The Heat And Warmth Fund accepts donations to help low-income families in Michigan pay their heating bills in the winter; in addition, the group lobbies for longer-term relief through legislation.

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Shame On America Sunday (Saturday Edition): Grow Up About Taxes

October 11, 2008 at 2:23 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , ,


I don’t have very much time because I’m babysitting today and will be rooting on my brother in the Chicago Marathon on Sunday, so here’s a special edition of Shame on America Sunday — the Saturday Edition. I’ll make it quick:

Be a grown up about taxes, will you?

That means just shut up and pay them. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to pay more than your fair share. But, like getting up and going to work, like pretending to like green beans so the kids will eat them, like all the things adults do that they don’t really want to do but if adults don’t do them, who will, you have to pay taxes.

Here’s why: You like the stuff the government gives you. It’s that simple. You don’t gripe when the book store makes you pay for your books. You don’t try to weasel out of paying the tab when the bartender serves the mojitos. Nobody ever complains about the cost of an ice cream cone.

But everyone whines about taxes and tries to shift them off — let the corporations pay them — or avoid them by believing that politicians can hand you money and goodies for free.

Here is one thing you should know: Corporations don’t pay taxes. Never have. Never will. Not the small corporation I work for, not Microsoft, not any. I know they file corporate tax returns and those show that they’ve paid taxes, but those taxes get passed directly on to the person that buys the goods or services the corporation is selling. Sometimes they do it overtly, like when a plumber charged me $30 per hour plus a “fuel surcharge.” Sometimes they just charge you more for Windows Vista. So when you say tax the corporations you’re saying charge me more money for my mojitos.


Here’s another thing you should know: when the government gives you something, it has to pay for it with money from someone else. The government doesn’t earn anything. It lives on handouts — taxes you pay, or money from investors buying treasury bills. Those investors are increasingly foreign investors.

In 2007, according to this article which is easy to find and easier to want to ignore, foreigners owned 80% of the US Treasury notes payable in 3-to-10 years. That means that for the next few years, 80% of the money the US government pays back to investors goes to foreigners.

Is that more comforting than paying taxes? You’re still paying them, after all — the government gets the money to ship to foreign investors by taxing you (or by borrowing more money, but that’s for another day.) But the taxes you pay today are increasingly going to pay the money the government borrowed when you didn’t want to pay taxes 3 years ago or 7 years ago or 10 years ago.

Your attitude towards taxes, frankly, is this: I don’t want to pay for the mojito, so I’m going to ask the bartender to make someone else pay for it. And the next one. And the one after that. And eventually, I hope to be dead before I pay the tab and my kids can pay it.

Well, that’s a juvenile attitude. Expecting to get something for free, expecting to get things paid for by other people, postponing the day of reckoning, not dealing with issues, is a juvenile attitude and it is hurting the country. Americans have long passed the point where they could tolerate even the smallest discomfort for the good of the country. Americans don’t want to pay taxes and will resoundingly vote down anyone who does not promise to cut taxes. Forget tax increases; forget promising, as the good President Bush did, no new taxes. Today’s politicians have to promise to lower taxes — lower lower lower or they won’t get listened to at all.

That attitude: give me stuff for free, make someone else pay, postpone any trouble and don’t make me think about bad stuff, is not the attitude that built a cross-country railroad, united the country after the Civil War, fought and won two world wars, and landed a man on the moon.

It is, though, the attitude that demanded that Congress bailout a bunch of companies that probably deserved to go under, the attitude that made Congress borrow another trillion dollars that our kids will have to pay back because America was worried that the price of mojitos might have to be paid in cash, the attitude that just made things immeasurably worse in the future because America didn’t want things to be a little hard in the present.

A few weeks ago, Joe Biden pointed out that it’s a patriotic thing to do to pay taxes:

What happened? Newsweek told him to “shut up about the taxes.” Sarah You Betcha Palin said something in her debate pre-scripted lines about how she didn’t want to pay any more taxes.

Biden was, first of all, suggesting that people making over $250,000 pay more taxes. That would exclude over half the country since if you make over $250,000 you make more than the median income in every single city in the country; put another way, it means that no matter where you live, half the people or more make less than $250,000.

Biden was, second of all, right. Paying taxes is patriotic. Paying taxes is right up there with voting and serving in the armed services and the other duties that our country asks of us from time to time.

But Biden was criticized for being right, because Americans don’t have even the slightest tolerance for anything even remotely inconvenient or painful.

If we can’t bear to pay taxes to pay for the services we want, if we can’t bear to suffer through some economic downturns that are part of the natural cycle, if we can’t tolerate anything difficult or inconvenient or unpleasant, how are we going to win the War on Terror? How are we going to bring democracy to the world? How are we going to land a man on Mars?

It’s time to grow up, America. Adults pay their own bills.

The Fix, and What You Can Do Until The Fix Arrives: The next time you see a politician, tell him or her its okay not to promise cutting taxes. Ask him or her how they’re going to pay for the programs they promise. And tell Sarah Palin to shut the heck up.

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Shame On America Sunday: Four Questions to Ask When Someone Asks For Money

September 28, 2008 at 3:58 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , ,


NOTE: If you read all the way to the end, you will see my bailout plan that will not cost the taxpayers anything and will definitely work. But
you have to sit through some rhetoric, first.

Shame On America Sunday is about contrasts — about the comparing of two things that exist, side by side in America; the fact that those two things could exist, side-by-side, is why America, the richest greatest proudest country in the history of the world, should be ashamed of itself.

Today is no different. Well, today is a little different, because today, I’m starting with the little guy first. Usually, I begin where people’s attention is always focused: The rich, the powerful, the famous, the spoiled-brat-kids/Tonight Show hosts who waste money, the selfish greedionaires.

I’m going to reverse that today.
He owns a house:

Here’s Michael “J.B.” Schaffner of Nocona Texas. “J.B” is a trucker hauling for a small company. Back in May, “J.B.” was one of the organizers of a convoy to Washington D.C. to try to get Congress to do something about his ailing industry. “J.B.” at the time was fueling his truck in small amounts, trying not to spend too much at any one time. One day, in his words, “I woke up and said a prayer,” and began trying to do something to get some action about the high cost of fuel.

The trucking industry was in crisis before May, 2008; in the first quarter of 2008, nearly 1000 trucking companies went bankrupt.

Naturally, Congress went right to work, right? Of course they did: They introduced HR 6922, a bill to provide low-interest loans to companies hit hard by rising fuel costs.


They went straight to work on it, I said. They… introduced it to a committee where it sits to this day. HR 6922 is just a bill, sitting there on Capitol Hill — it went off to committee, where it sits there and waits.

So Congress leapt right to action, and then slept right back to inaction.

Nobody, in the end, paid attention to “J.B.” Did you hear about the convoy? Did you hear about HR 6922? Did Worst President Ever George Bush go on TV urging you to help the truckers?

No.

He owns two houses and is worth $700 million.
Here’s Henry Merritt Paulson, Jr. Odds are you’ve heard of him — but only in the past few days. The odds are that you know that Paulson is the current Secretary of the Treasury; he’s the guy that proposed the government give him $700 billion dollars with no strings attached and no oversight possible. When you propose someone give you $700 billion to do what you want with, that attracts attention.

Prior to that, Henry Merritt Paulson, Jr., attracted very little attention, which is odd because people usually pay at least some attention to the ultra-rich swank business leaders.

Paulson is ultra-rich. He was born in Palm Beach, Florida. He went to Ivy League school Dartmouth, and then Harvard Business School. He owns, at last report, two homes. (How many homes do you have? I have just the one.)

Henry Merritt Paulson, Jr., became a partner at Goldman Sachs in 1982. He had a leadership role of one sort or another at Goldman Sachs from 1982 through 2006; he ended his career at Goldman Sachs in 2006 when he came to join the Failed Bush Administration in its multiyear plan to destroy America.

Where else have you heard “Goldman Sachs” lately? You may be struggling to sort out all the financial news, so I’ll help you with some recent news quotes that feature “Goldman Sachs.”

From “The Economic Times.” Last Sunday marked the end of an era. That was the day Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last two of the original five big investment banks on Wall Street, became history.

From “The New York Times.” The beginning of the end is felt even in the halls of the white-shoe firm Goldman Sachs, which, among its Wall Street peers, epitomized and defined a high-risk, high-return culture.

Why are you smiling, Henry Merritt
Paulson, Jr.?
There are those who say that Goldman Sachs — whose employees earned an average of $600,000 per year in 2007 — will survive because of major changes it has made. Don’t connect those changes with Paulson, though. From that same NYTimes article:

GOLDMAN’S latest golden era can be traced to the rise of Mr. Blankfein, the Brooklyn-born trading genius who took the helm in June 2006, when Henry M. Paulson Jr., a veteran investment banker and adviser to many of the world’s biggest companies, left the bank to become the nation’s Treasury secretary.

Is it because your company helped create a
culture that led to this, while enriching you
to a ridiculous degree?

Blankfein took over because Henry Merritt Paulson, Jr., had moved to Washington, D.C., having earned $53.4 million in the previous two years as head of Goldman Sachs; with a net worth of over $700 million, Henry Merritt Paulson, Jr., could afford to take the pay cut from an average of $25 million per year to $191,300 per year — that’s what the Secretary of the Treasury is paid — and live off of savings.

Interestingly, I did a Google search to see if Henry Merritt Paulson, Jr.’s commitment to public service included not collecting some or all of his $191,300 per year government salary — he surely doesn’t need it– but found nothing to suggest that he returns that money back to the Treasury.

(By comparison, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, whose net worth is very low, routinely refuses pay increases, and his office routinely cuts pay and returns money to the U.S. Treasury. In 2002, Feingold had negative equity in his home in Middleton, Wisconsin, and yet refused a $9000 per year pay increase, accepting only the $136,700 that was in effect when he was elected. In 2008, he listed less than $350,000 in assets and a liability that included his second mortgage.)

Henry Merritt Paulson, Jr., clearly has the ear of Washington, unlike Michael “J.B.” Schaffner. When Henry Merritt Paulson, Jr., went to Congress and asked for $700 billion, Congress went into round-the-clock negotiations; John McCain briefly and hyperbolically suspended his campaign to address the problem (and duck a debate with Obama). Failed Worst President Ever George W. Bush went on TV to urge Americans to support the cause.

Why would Washington, D.C., listen to Henry Merritt Paulson, Jr., so avidly, but pay no real attention to Michael “J.B.” Schaffner?

Why is the government prepared only to lend money, at low interest rates to struggling trucker firms but will hand money over to giant investment banks? The truckers did not make poor investment decisions trying to “epitomize[] a high-risk, high-return culture.” They weren’t creating poorly-understood financial packages that created money from nothing, like so many real-life Sherman McCoys; they were driving around the food and materials we need, and were hit hard by events beyond their own control — the high gas prices.

I don’t know, for sure, why DC listens to rich men but not truckers — but I suspect that it’s because the rich men contribute to campaigns and can give lucrative jobs to people once they leave public office — and that makes me suspect that the “bailout” is nothing of the sort, but instead a payoff or a bribe. If a bailout was a good idea, I suspect that Congress would have bailed out the trucking companies; or at the least would have voted on the idea in the past four months.

The haste with which the richest, best, greatest nation ever is bending over backwards to help millionaires stay millionaires, when contrasted with the way the richest, best, greatest nation ever has ignored for four months the poor struggling truckers, tells me that Congress is concerned less with helping businesses or the economy and more with helping itself get re-elected or land a cushy job. If you were hoping to stay employed and keep your house, would you rather have Henry Merritt Paulson, Jr., owe you a favor, or “J.B.?” No offense, “J.B.” — you’re probably a nice guy, but Congress would rather suck up to Henry Merritt Paulson, Jr., and the investment bankers.

So on that bailout: Every single time the government tells you that a business is too big to fail; ever single time the government tells you that intervention in the marketplace is necessary, every single time the government says we need to do this, why not call your congressperson and ask them which trucking companies were “too big to fail?” Why not ask them why trucking companies are allowed to go bankrupt but investment banks aren’t? Why not ask them why it costs more to get your children’s cereal to the store, making you pay more for your children’s breakfast, while the government is subsidizing Wall Street bankers who averaged $600,000 per year?

Ask them why their plan is to use your money to help out people who earn, on average, $600,000 per year, people who gambled that money — and why your money isn’t used to help out businesses like “J.B.’s” trucking company?

I suspect Congress’ plan won’t work, and I suspect that Congress is instituting the plan for its own gain rather than the country’s gain, because not only is Congress disingenuously insisting that the government must help businesses, insisting that about the business of millionaires while ignoring the business of common folk — not only that, but also because Congress has not yet stopped to ask the four questions it must ask.
On the foreclosure block: People’s houses.
The Fix: Whenever someone asks me for money, I ask them four questions: How much do you need? What is it for? How’d you end up here? And how can I make sure you don’t come back next week?

Those four questions are not being asked. Specifically, the last two are not being asked. The banks are failing because they engaged in two basic, flawed practices, and then engaged in a third.

Not on the foreclosure block: the Goldman Sachs Building.
Banks began subprime lending as the housing market exploded, fueled by cheap money from low interest rates. “Subprime” lending means lending to people who were not good credit risks. That is, banks took more risks with their money; in roulette terms, instead of betting on “red,” they bet on “Red 23.” At the same time, banks began “securitizing” loans. “Securitization” is a complicated process, but it amounts to this: No one bank owns your mortgage loan. Instead, a variety of investors and banks hold pieces of your loan; they all make money based on various factors that have very little direct connection with whether or not you pay your loan.

That led to two problems: First, people defaulting on their loans — not unexpectedly, given that they were poor credit risks in the first place. To qualify some debtors, loans began with deceptively low payments, payments that didn’t even cover the accruing interest, which meant that every single day, these homeowners owed more on their loan than they did the day before.

At the same time, the housing market became saturated; how many homes do you think people can buy? After a time, a slump will always occur, as everyone who wanted to or could buy a house did, and you have to wait for another upturn.

So it began: People began defaulting, and housing prices slumped. At the same time, too, there was nobody on the other end of the mortgage who could make responsible choices. When people defaulted on their loans, there was nobody on the other end of the line who could cut a new deal, try to cut their losses, or otherwise deal responsibly with it. Mortgage servicers and lawyers were turned loose with one direction: Foreclose.

All those foreclosed houses end up on the market, an already depressed market, creating a housing glut, and further cutting into the bank’s profits.

If you loaned money to someone, and they came back and said I can’t pay you in full, you’d have a couple of choices: Forgive the debt. Enforce the debt. Or modify the debt. You could say “Tough, I want all my money now” and sue and try to get it all, running the risk that you get nothing and increase your expenses. Or you could say Well, pay me what you can and we’ll see if things don’t get better. You could say If you pay me 60% of what you owe me, we’ll call it even, so that you get money today without further risk or expense.

All of those might be viable choices depending on your circumstances and the particular deal. But you would be able to make those choices and determine which is best.

Securitized loans don’t have that. Lenders sell the loan and there’s nobody out there, no one person, who can make or not make a deal, in almost every case.

That’s a longwinded way of introducing my own bailout plan, because I had to answer those two questions that nobody is asking: How’d you end up here? And how can I make sure you don’t come back next week? Those are the two most important questions.

We ended up here because of securitization of loans and bad loans. We can make sure they don’t come back next week by addressing those loans.

So here is my bailout, which costs the government next to nothing; some parts of this were suggested to me by people and I liked them, so I’m taking their ideas:

1. Tell states that to get federal highway funds in 2009 and 2010, they must institute an immediate 12-month moratorium on foreclosures. This costs no government or taxpayer anything; the federal highway funds will be paid or not, regardless, and states gain or lose nothing from stopping foreclosures. No state ever bucks the federal highway money threat. By doing this, the housing market depression is stalled, and mortgages that are or would soon be in foreclosure are frozen — giving lenders a powerful incentive to begin working on some other package. (Thanks to Bill Clinton and A Guy At Work for this suggestion.)

2. Allow any person to receive a government guarantee on their loan, in an amount up to the median value of homes in that county, by converting the loan to a nondischargeable, fixed-rate lower-interest obligation. This program would work like the guaranteed student-loan program; borrowers would agree that their loan would be a personal obligation and nondischargeable in bankruptcy, as student loans are, and in exchange for that, the government would guarantee payment to the lender, but the interest rate would be reduced to just above the current prime rate. Borrowers who owe more than the median value of homes in their area would not qualify; only primary residences would qualify. The government might take a short-term hit as they pay off banks on defaulted loans, but would be able to collect against the borrowers in the long run. Banks would lose some income by trading sky-high adjustables for lower fixed-rate mortgage — but would avoid defaults and have a guaranteed income stream. (Thanks to A Gal At Work for this suggestion.)

3. Encourage investment in troubled banks on a long-term basis by eliminating taxes on certain investments. The government would encourage wealthy individuals — like Warren Buffett, who just took a huge stake in Goldman Sachs, and like the Forbes 400 — to bailout the companies using private money; this encouragement would be given by first developing a list of troubled companies that need a bailout — including unglamorous trucking companies. The goverment would then announce that anyone who purchases stock in a company on the list would receive all dividends from that stock, if any, tax-free for 10 years, provided they held the stock for 10 years. In addition, any capital gain on the stock, if held for 10 years, would be tax-free. Any tax deductible loss after 10 years would be doubled, if the stock was held for 10 years. The government could do the same things for bonds issued by those companies: allow the companies to issue 10-year or longer bonds, bonds that are not tradeable but must be held, and make the interest earned on those bonds tax-free. (Thanks to ME for this suggestion.)

That prong, if the companies do well, costs the government nothing; it must forego EXTRA tax revenue on the income earned, but does not spend any additional money. If the companies do not do well, the government, in 10 years, will suffer some reduced tax revenues from the doubled deduction for losses.

Simple: Three Steps, and it stops the problem. The housing market can rebound; people who bought affordable homes will be protected, while people who borrowed, or lent, money foolishly will have a year to try to resolve the problem and then will be left in their own boat; and private money will solve private companies’ problems, with some government encouragement.

What you can do until the Fix is in: Contact Your Congress Person! Tell them No Public Money for Private Companies! Urge them to ask those four questions and adopt my plan — or suggest a plan of your own.

Clicking on this link will take you to a map of the US; click your state and get easy access to your congressperson and senators. I’m going to email this link to mine; you can do the same.

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Worst Presidency Ever: A Closer Look At Shame On America Sunday: $18 per second.

September 25, 2008 at 2:52 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , ,


Just this past Sunday, I pointed out that Bill Gates can spend $18 per second for 100 years, and have money left over. I also pointed out that if you took all but $1 billion away from each person on the Forbes 400 list this year, you’d have $1.1 trillion to do some good with — and each person on that list would still have $1,000,000,000 dollars.

Little did I know that the $1.1 trillion figure would become even bigger news this week, as the government continues robbing the poor to pay the rich. The Bush Administration, which has officially become the Worst Presidency Ever — seriously, if Bush had set out to deliberately destroy this country, and I’m not so sure he didn’t, he could not have possibly damaged the country more — the Worst Presidency Ever proposes to write a check for $1 trillion– that’s $1,000,000,000,000 — and give it to the Bush Administration to hand to investment bankers.

Now, first of all, that will do nothing for average people. Nothing nothing nothing nothing. If you do not work for an investment bank, mortgage security house, or other high-finance institution, then this proposal will not help you in the slightest. So if you are in favor of the Worst Presidency Ever’s proposal and you do not work for an investment bank, mortgage security house, or other high-finance institution, then you are a fool. The proposal being talked about so far would not give struggling homeowners any money; it would simply buy up ‘securities,’ meaning that the government would hold your mortgage. You would keep paying.

But second of all, the plan will be financed not by money we have now and not by taxes to raise that money; it will be financed by borrowing. Borrowing money means issuing government savings bonds, and that means paying interest on those government savings bonds, and that means that borrowing $700 million now (the initial price tag) requires paying back much much more than that over time.

The current interest rate on a 30-year treasury bond is 4.36 percent. I’m not even going to do the math. You do it. Figure out what 4.36% interest on $700,000,000,000 is.

That money will be paid back, if at all, by taxes. It will have to be paid back by taxes. Taxes that you and I will not pay. Those are taxes that our kids will pay, taxes they will pay on top of the taxes they are already paying.

Take the income tax you paid last year, and then add to that the amount equal to pay back $700,000,000,000 plus 4.36% interest for 30 years.

Run to Canada, boys — then the Worst Presidency
ever can’t pickpocket you.
Then go hug your children and tell that you’re sorry we’re going to do that to them, and you’re ashamed of America, too.

The Fix: Either (a) let the companies weather the storm, which would encourage banks to deal realistically with the problem they’ve created by reworking problematic mortgages and reducing exorbitant interest rates, and would avoid this trouble in the future by punishing not only the people who took out mortgages they should not have but also punishing the banks that should have refused to lend the money, or (b) institute a one-time luxury tax on all holdings over $1 billion and use that to fund the bailout; the bailout money will be paid to companies in which the billionaires hold stakes, anyway, so the government is in effect using the billionaires’ money to pay off the billionaires’ mistakes.

Oh, and (c) rue the day we elected George W. Bush. At least I never voted for him. I don’t have to apologize to my kids for that.

What you can do until the fix is in? Contact your congressperson and tell them that you are AGAINST using your children’s money to bailout corporations. You can do it easily, and here’s how: This link will take you to a map of the US. Click your state and you’ll see a list of your congressional representatives– emails and phone numbers. Call and email them now and tell them:

I don’t want my children’s money used to bail out billionaires.

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Shame On America Sunday: 18 bucks a second

September 21, 2008 at 10:30 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , ,

I hope that all of the people who decry me as a socialist are frantically writing to any elected officials they can, and saying For God’s sake, I am opposed to socialism of the type that I decry when The Trouble With Roy espouses it, so please, Mr. Government Official, do not in any way interfere in the marketplace by, for example, bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and AIG. I’m willing to let all my insurance premiums be for naught because I’m opposed to socialism!

All the “you’re nothing but a socialist” types, you’re doing that, right? Or are you NOT, because you think government intervention in the marketplace is okay when you want them to do that? If so, then line up with the people who tell me It’s their money and that I shouldn’t tell people what to do with their money … yes, yes, over under the sign that reads “Hypocrites.”

If you’re going to disagree with me about what I write, in Shame On America Sunday or anything else, you should at least make sure you’re being consistent. Don’t say “It’s their money, they can do what they want with it” unless you are also intending to say “it’s okay to buy and sell human beings,” because if it’s their money to do what they want with, then there are no limits. That’s what you’re saying. if, on the other hand, there are limits, then I’m free to say that those limits should include not wearing a $313,000 outfit and you can’t respond that it’s their money because we agree that there’s limits.

I bring those two points up in advance because I’m going to hear a lot of that today as we look at people who have more money than the law should allow them to have.

The Forbes 400 list came out this week; the big story about that was that for the first time ever, if you have only $1 billion, you are not among the 400 richest people in America.

Only $1 billion. There are 400 people who have more than One billion dollars. That’s one of the main stories about the list. There were a lot of stories, but that was one that got the most attention.

A lot of attention was paid to this list, and I followed that attention, and not once did I hear anyone even remotely approach the notion that it is disgusting, it is contemptible, for people to have that much money.

It is contemptible, moreover, regardless of how much the greedy rich person gives to charity.

I’m comfortable saying that, and here’s why: Just as there can be limits on how much money you spend on something, there should also be a limit on how much money you need in a lifetime.

Now all the hackles just went up again, as people get ready to tell me You can’t just take away their money and they give a lot to charity.

I can, though, just take away their money. Well, I can’t. But politicians can, and they should do so. They should do so for the same reason they already do so — they should take away the money because the greedy billionaires do not need it, and other people do.

The government already takes the money it figures you do not need, and gives it to the people and institutions it thinks do need that money; that’s what taxes are. People, too, take money that they do not need, and give it to institutions and people that do need it; that’s called charity.

The government should take away most of the Forbes 400’s money, and give it to people who need it.

It should do that even though those people may already pay a lot in taxes and may give a lot to charity. They have more than they will ever need, more than they should have, and it does not matter how much they give to charity; it’s greedy of them to keep the amounts they have.

The Forbes 400 multibillionaires, regardless of how much they give to charity, are hoarding wealth, hoarding wealth and using it for selfish purposes — and doing so when it cannot possibly gain them any more in terms of luxury, comfort, or material gains.

In other words, they’re keeping money they will never have any need for and cannot use now — while keeping that money from people who could use it. That’s why I say they’re greedy, and that’s why the government should take it away from them, as much as the government can.

And, as I said, I don’t care how much they give to charity. They still have too much. Most people will disagree with that, but I’m right. People will think they can’t have too much because it’s money. But they can have too much, because they have more than they could ever use and are keeping it from those who could use it. Keeping something that you have no need for, keeping it and keeping others from using it, is greedy and selfish and hoarding.

Let me give you an analogy. Suppose I’m talking about food. Suppose I stockpile enough food in a warehouse for me to eat for my entire lifetime; food enough that I would never be hungry, even if I lived to be 150 years old.

At that point, I don’t need more food, do I? I don’t need more food stockpiled.

But suppose that I’m the nervous type. Suppose I say what if my needs change, and I suddenly require double the calories each day? Or what if my first food supply gets nuked? So I decide to be safe. I stockpile enough food for three lifetimes, in different locations.

At that point, I don’t need more food, do I? Shouldn’t I quit stockpiling food?

If I keep stockpiling food, despite having enough for three lifetimes, then that is only justifiable if everyone else everywhere has enough food, too — because otherwise, I’ve got three lifetimes worth of food that I will never eat, while people are starving.

Suppose, then, that I keep my three lifetimes worth of food, and keep stockpiling more — but now I take 1/2 of all the new food I gather up, and give that away. So after a few years, I’ve given away a lifetime’s worth of food, but I have four lifetimes worth of food stockpiled, and there are still people starving.

What do you think of me now? Is it right that I have four lifetimes’ worth of food, food I’ll never ever eat, while people starve? Is it right even though I gave away a whole lifetime worth of food?

Of course it’s not.

That’s why it’s wrong that the people on the Forbes 400 list have that much money. That’s why it’s greedy and selfish of them. That’s why our country should not countenance that. I’m not against people being rich — even though nobody anywhere needs to earn more than $200,000 per adult in their household– but I am against people hoarding resources (money is a resource) and using resources foolishly while others go without.

Let’s take the top person on the list. Bill Gates is worth $59 billion dollars. I’m not sure that anyone can really take in the scope of $59 billion dollars, and writing it like that doesn’t help.

Here’s $59 billion dollars in numeric form: $59,000,000,000. Looks like a lot more there, doesn’t it?

Here’s how $59 billion dollars measures out over a human lifespan. If a person lives to be 100, he or she could spend $589,999,900 every year he was alive, and still die with $10,000 leftover to cover funeral expenses.

That $589,999,900 per year breaks down like this: That selfish billionaire could spend $1,616,438.08 per day, each and every day of his life from the moment he’s born until the day he dies — and still have $10,000 left over.

That person — Bill Gates — could spent $67,351.58 per hour of his existence, living to be 100, and still have $10,000 left over. That’s $1,122.52 per minute, with money left over.

$18 per second. That’s what $59 billion is, over 100 years of existence, a person with $59 billion can spend $18 per second; $18 per heartbeat… and never run out of money.

In other words, Bill Gates cannot spend all of his money. If he set about trying to do just that… short of giving it away… Bill Gates could not spend all of his money — and if he even came close, he would either be vastly overpaying for the things he bought, or he would simply be accumulating wealth and things he does not need and should not be allowed to own (like private islands — which I’ll get to someday, but not today)

I don’t mean to pick on Bill Gates alone; his hoarding of $59 million is the tops on the list of the Forbes 400, but by no means the only example of a rich, greedy person withholding resources from people when he himself cannot use those resources.

The top 10 people on that list of people who should be ashamed of themselves, and who should hope that the population of the U.S. doesn’t listen to me and realize that they could simply vote to take away that money, have together a net worth of $271.2 billion. In numeric notation, that’s:

$271,200,000,000.

That’s just the top 10. The entire list of 400 is worth $1.54 trillion; and again, it looks less evil to write it that way, so I’ll write it out numerically:

$1,540,000,000,000.

Supposing– just supposing, that each greedy billionaire on the list were to simply give away all of their assets except $1 billion. Suppose they gave it all away, but each of those 400 people kept $1 billion for themselves.

That would leave each billionaire with $1,000,000,000. Is that enough to live on? Again, do the math. If you lived 100 years and had $1,000,000,000, you could spend $10,000,000 per year, or $27,397 per day, each and every day of your life.

I think they’d make do. I think a billion dollars would manage to help them muddle through.

Doing that — having them give it away, or taking it from them, would keep $400 billion in the ranks of the Forbes 400, but would free up … $1,140,000,000,000.

Over 100 years, the money that would be taken from them would allow the US to spend $11,400,000,000 per year.

Assuming that we didn’t invest that money and get some interest, of course. I wonder how much better a place to live the US would be with an additional $11 billion dollars per year for schools and social programs and roads?

Bill Gates has net worth of $59 billion dollars; reducing that to $1 billion dollars would not in any way change his lifestyle, but would help countless people in the United States achieve something a little more than they thought they could. It could, for example, help someone pay for, say, a kidney transplant.

That’s what Jay Menhennet III is trying to do. Jay is getting his second kidney transplant, from a kidney donated by his sister. Jay’s body rejected the first one; he’s struggled all his life with diabetes and has had part of his right leg amputated.

A kidney transplant costs $250,000 (So Bill Gates could buy himself 236,000 kidney transplants! Or he could buy himself a new kidney every four hours for the next 100 years!), and there are additional costs beyond that, costs that are not always covered by insurance. The medications cost $2,000-$5,000 per month (so the average selfish billionaire on the list could use about 3 minutes’ worth of his money to pay for a month’s worth of medications!)

Jay, and his family and his friends don’t have $59 billion dollars. They can’t spend $18 per second every second of their lives for a 100 years. Because of that, they have to find a different way to pay for a kidney for Jay. They are trying to raise money to defray those costs; they’re having a pasta dinner pretty soon, and they’re asking people to pay $6 per ticket (or 1/3 of a second worth of Bill Gates’ existence; Bill Gates could treat 9 billion of his friends and have money left over!) to try to help cover the costs, and they’ve also set up a fund to help, and they’ve listed him on the website for the National Foundation for Transplants.

They have to rely on donations, you know. Donations for money and time and even for an organ. But luckily for Jay, not everyone is like the Forbes 400; not everyone takes resources that are precious and keeps them from other who need them. There are, instead, people like Jay’s sister, who realized that she only needs one kidney, so she’s giving Jay her other one. Even one of Jay’s nieces offered her kidney.

Total number of kidneys offered by the Forbes 400 to help Jay? Zero. Total number of kidneys offered by people who can’t spend $18 per second? Three.

But, then, hoarders don’t give up anything valuable, do they? So we can’t expect that the Forbes 400, who are so intent on keeping resources they could never need or use in their lifetime, to give up anything they’ve hoarded.

Lucky for Jay, he’s not relying on the goodness of the Forbes 400; he’s relying on people like me and you. We may not have $18 bucks a second, but we do have some spare kidneys, and we do like pasta.

You can donate money to Jay — it’s a tax deduction just like the selfish billionaires get — by sending it to: NFT Ohio Kidney Fund, 5350 Poplar Ave., Suite 430, Memphis, Tenn. 38119.

Read more about Jay by clicking this link.

The Fix: The highest marginal level of income tax should be raised to 60% of annual income over $1 million dollars; there should be a federal property tax leveled on property and assets held above $1 million dollars. Those, plus the remedies I advised to keep celebrities from owning 160 cars, would help.

What You Can Do Until The Fix Is Done: (1) Make sure your license okays you to be re an organ donor — you certainly can’t use them after you’re dead, and (2) make a contribution to The National Foundation For Transplants to help someone like Jay afford the basic necessities of life (Yes, I’m counting “a functioning kidney” as a basic necessity of life; if that makes me a socialist, I’m okay with that) until such time as voters get their act together and start voting for politicians who understand that it’s okay to tax the rich because the rich will have more than enough left over, and (3) voters, get your act together and start voting for politicians who understand that it’s okay to tax the rich because the rich will have more than enough left over– and demand that they do so!

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Shame On America Sunday: Celebrity Cars

September 14, 2008 at 9:13 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , ,


Each time I post one of these, each time I point out that somewhere in America, some rich person who is selfish and doesn’t care about others is spending money frivolously, money that could be used to help others — and should be used to help others, I get, out of the many comments and emails, at least five of each of these responses:

First, someone (or someones) will say But they do a lot for charity.

Then, someone (or someones) will say It’s their money to do what they want with.

Let me address those both briefly, taking the second one first:

What do you mean, it’s their money to do what they want with? What do you mean by that? do you mean that whatever they choose to do, it’s okay? If it’s their money, it’s okay no matter what they do?

Here’s how to point out the flaws in an argument like that : take it to extremes; by doing that, the flaws in an argument will be exposed. So let’s do that with it’s their money to do what they want with. Let’s expose how dumb that argument is.

Suppose, instead of pointing out that Cindy McCain shows disdain for human beings by wearing a $313,000 outfit, prompting people to say it’s her money to do what she wants with, suppose instead of that I said Cindy McCain spent $313,000 paying surgeons to extract kidneys from kittens so that she could turn them into her own personal anti-wrinkle cream.

Then, I’m sure, everyone — even those it’s-their-money people, would say that’s horrible. Even the it’s-their-money people suddenly say well, we can’t let her do that. Suddenly, even the it’s their money people are with me: let’s limit what can be spent.

So we can agree, then, that there is a limit on what people can and should do with their own money. If we all agree that Cindy McCain should not be allowed to buy kitten kidneys, then we all agree that it is perfectly acceptable for society to draw a line on what people can spend money on, even if it’s their money. We just disagree on where that line should be drawn. (And while my argument was absurd, it’s also true: we already as a society tell people there’s limits to what they can buy. You can’t buy human beings, or parts of human beings. You can’t buy endangered species. So don’t give me it’s their money unless you are out lobbying Congress to allow people to traffic in endangered species and organs, in which case I’d just as soon not hear from you at all.)

So don’t say it’s their money. If you feel it’s okay for Cindy McCain to wear an outfit worth six years of your hard-earned pay and show how little regard she has for human beings, then just say that. Say I and Cindy McCain feel it is appropriate to rub people’s noses in how little they have and how much SHE has.

On the other, harder question, I have the same response. To people who say well, they do a lot for charity, let’s take the same argument. If Cindy McCain’s charity does a lot for people, then is it all right if Cindy McCain uses what’s left of her money to buy kitten kidneys?

No, of course it’s not. Doing something good doesn’t then make it okay to do something bad. It just means that you’ve done something good and something bad. Giving money to charity is good; but it doesn’t make it okay to then go spend $313,000 on an outfit. That’s wrong, no matter how much money you give to charity. It’s wrong for Bill Gates to own an island and I don’t care how much money his foundation gives to charity. It’s still wrong for him to own an island.

Celebrities, though, are almost revered for owning things; instead of our society properly pointing to celebrities owning foolish things because they have so much money they don’t know what to do with it, and because it’s beyond them to think Instead of spending it foolishly, I should help someone. So instead of helping someone, they spend it foolishly. Like on cars.

Celebrities love their cars, and most of America loves celebrities for it. We smile and nod approvingly when Miley Cyrus does what all 15-year-olds wish they could do and buys herself a car, and only I wince when it’s reported that the car she bought cost more than $75,000.

Why does anyone, celebrity or not, need a $75,000 car? How much nicer is a $75,000 car than the Saturn Vue ($13,995 used) I drive? Do CDs sound better in a $75,000 car? Does the exhaust smell like chocolate chip cookies?

I guess the only reason you’d want a $75,000 car is so that it wouldn’t look out of place among the 20 cars– all Porsches, apparently — you park in your $1.39 million carpeted garage, isn’t that right, Jerry Seinfeld? Or should I say: what’s the deal with people who park their cars on cement? Don’t they know luxury cars are meant to be pampered? Pampered, it seems, at the expense of neighbors, who had to have jackhammers going for a year in their building so that Jerry’s cars could have a luxury garage, complete with kitchenette.

It is apparent to me that once one becomes rich, one also loses the ability to ever be more than 10 feet from a kitchen. I look forward to winning the lottery and then creating the first mobile kitchen (with 24-hour staff) so that I, too, can be constantly within rich of some Brie cheese.

But 20 cars isn’t all that much, when you stop to think about it. Why, you couldn’t even drive a different one every day for more than 3 weeks. Jerry can’t — one of his cars, one worth $700,000, can’t even be driven on the street (because it can’t be emissions and crash-tested; Porsche wouldn’t release any for testing, so they created a whole line of cars costing $700,000 each that can’t be used.)

You certainly couldn’t, if you only had 20 cars, feature them on a website that allows us, the commoners, to marvel at your collection, like we can with Jay Leno’s car collection, which Jay Leno (America’s buddy!) helpfully features on its own website, which I’m not going to link to because he doesn’t need the help.

Something that just jumps right out at me, though, as I look around that website and think what kind of a jerk needs this many cars AND a website to show them off? — something that jumps out at me besides the fact that it is a really awful kind of jerk who can’t just collect cars but who has to also show them off– what jumps out at me is the “Community” link. What community is Jay talking about, I wonder. The community of superwealthy losers who can’t conceive of helping people and who instead have to show off how superwealthy they are? The community of people who would, if they could, engineer their cars to run on kitten kidneys simply because they can afford to do so?

It can’t be our community, I think, can it? It can’t possibly be a link to our community, the community of people who don’t collect cars because to us a car is a major purchase, one that will probably be the second- or third-most expensive thing we’ll buy in our life. So I click on it…

And it’s not! I wasn’t wrong. Jay isn’t thinking about our community — he’s linking to ways you can tell him he’s more awesome. You could, if you want, share a photo of your car. I thought about sending in a photo of “Bluey,” the car we let the kids drive. It’s a 1997 Ford Taurus with about 115,000 miles. It’s been in the shop twice this year. It has no hubcaps and the license plate is held on by screws we got from my toolbox. The power locks have stopped working but in our house, we only repair those car parts that are necessary to keep it running — which is why my Saturn Vue glove compartment is held closed by duct tape. I thought about sending in a picture of Bluey; I bet Jay has a car just like it.

In fact, I could even ask him. I could ask Jay a car-related question! and check back soon for his answers!

So I did; I submitted a question. Here’s what I asked Jay, verbatim:

Jay, how can you justify owning all of these cars and wasting all of this money when there are people in the world who have to scrimp and save simply to get bus fare so they can get to work each day? Don’t you think it would be better if you would donate all of these cars to a worthy charity, like the Rawhide Boys Ranch, which you can find at http://www.rawhide.org/? Sorry– that was actually two questions. But I’ll check back soon for your answer!

Let’s keep tabs on what Jay says, okay?

It’s hard to understand why Miley Cyrus needs a $75,000 car. It’s hard to understand why Jerry Seinfeld needs 20 pampered Porches. It’s hard to understand why Jay Leno needs God-only-knows how many cars. (According to the most recent report I found, it’s 80 cars, 80 motorcycles, and a fire truck — for “the kid in him,” Jay Leno jokes.)(And isn’t it great that Jay Leno has a funny little quip about how he owns a fire truck for the kid in him? Doesn’t that show how compassionate Jay Leno is?) It’s hard to understand why celebrities need these fleets of vehicles.

It’s not hard, though, to understand why the Rawhide Boys Ranch needs cars, though. The Rawhide Boys Ranch is a ranch in central Wisconsin that serves as a residential care facility for troubled boys. It’s been around for 40 years, and is supported by Bart Starr, among others. It gets in funds, in large part, through donations, and one of the donations suggested is cars and other motor vehicles; at the Ranch, they have the boys work on these cars and refurbish them, then the cars are sold to help provide funds for the Ranch.

The cars donated can be written off as a tax deduction, so in addition to getting a good feeling about helping others, you could actually save a little on your taxes by helping others. And only 16% of the funds Rawhide takes in are used for operating expenses; the remaining 84% goes to the programs.

Imagine, if you will, how well Rawhide could be doing if, say Miley Cyrus had bought just a $30,000 car, and donated $45,000 to Rawhide. Or if Jerry Seinfeld donated, say, 13 of his Pampered Porsches. Or if Jay Leno gave up all but seven of his classic cars and motorcycles. Would their lives be different in any meaningful way? Would they be suffering, driving a car that is only worth $30,000? Or having only one car per day of the week?

Imagine how much good could be done if Rawhide could sell off 153 cars and motorcycles, a fire truck, and 13 Porsches!

I guess we’ll never know, though. Nor should we care, I guess. I guess we shouldn’t care that there is a massive amount of money, money that could be helping people, instead being used to store cars in carpeted garages for childish billionaires (at least Miley has an excuse for being childish) who want us to laugh at them but who appear to be laughing at us. I guess we should care, because it’s their money, right?

The Fix: There should be a tax credit for charitable donations, a credit that increases inversely compared to your income. That is, if you earn less than $100,000 gross income per year, charitable donations should earn you a $3 income tax credit for each $1 you donate. At $100,001-$500,000, it should be 2-1. From $500,000-$1,000,000, it should be 1-1, and then dropping correspondingly above that to a low of 1-4. At the same time, the marginal income tax rate should be increased to a high of at least 50%; estate taxes should be significantly increased, as well; estate taxes could be offset by a 2-1 credit for charitable contributions that the contributor chooses to make and defer — that is, Jay Leno could make a $100,000 charitable contribution now, but opt to defer it to use it as a 2-1 credit against estate taxes instead of taking a reduced credit now.

What you can do until it’s fixed: Refuse to buy any product created by or endorsed by a celebrity who spends money foolishly. You’ll save a lot. And donate money or goods to the Rawhide Ranch for Boys; click this link to find out how.

The Trouble With Roy firmly believes that no adult should be allowed to earn more than $200,000 per year, that health care is a basic right that should not be denied anyone, that celebrities are grotesquely overpaid, and that America can do better.

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Shame On America Sunday: Housing Edition.

August 30, 2008 at 8:54 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , ,

As I said last week, I don’t like to get too serious or too political on my blogs. But the people who are supposed to be serious and political and take on weighty issues are too busy debating… nothing. Fiddling while Rome burns. So until America lives up to its promise and takes care of everyone and makes sure that everyone enjoys basic human dignity and comfort, I am devoting every Sunday to Shame On America Sunday.

I may have erred slightly in taking on Barack Obama in the first Shame On America Sunday, as people thought it was a political attack.

It was not; it was an attack on a rich man who was using money to do rich man things while poor people suffered. My point about Same Ol’ Obama is that he spent millions to have a fancy party for his supporters, while people like the Shaws have to pay for medical care for their kids out of their own pockets.

I stand by that; if Same Ol’ Obama really wanted to make a difference, he’d have invited Ryan and Angie Shaw onto that stage, and promised the world that they and everyone like them, within four years, would never ever have to wonder whether they should take their babies to the doctor or buy them groceries.

But it was not a political attack; Obama at least has a plan to provide health insurance — necessary to secure health care, which is a basic human right on par with “life” and “liberty”– to the country. We’ll see if he can do it. I hope he can.

In the meanwhile, Shame On America Sunday will continue my mission to point out the awful inequities of American life, where for some reason most people (not me) celebrate the rich and enjoy the way the rich waste money while the rest of us must struggle to pay school fees and put food on the table. America is the richest, best country in the history of the world, but it is failing and people are letting it fail, and that should not be.

We should not allow people to have more than they ever need in their life. We should not allow people to thoughtlessly squander, on excessive boorish luxuries, money, spending on one tiny item enough money to support someone for their whole life.

We should, in short, not allow someone like David Saperstein or Susan Saperstein to behave the way David Saperstein and Susan Saperstein do.

David and Susan Saperstein are rich people who want you to know who rich they are; they are rich people who will waste more money in a day than I will make in a year.

Let’s take Susan first: Susan Saperstein was described once, by Vanity Fair — and if you read Vanity Fair you are part of the problem I’m trying to fight — as “probably the world’s No 1 consumer of haute couture and 18th century furniture.” (Source)

As though that were a good thing. For those of you wondering what haute couture is, it means “things that cost more than most people make in a year and which will be worn once, if at all, by a foolish and selfish person.”

Susan Saperstein married a rich man. She didn’t do anything to help him earn that wealth, but she sure knew how to spend it: while they were married Susan (whose name is spelled Suzanne in some reports) owned several horses and would fly to Europe on the couple’s private jet for “shows and fittings.” (Source.) She flew a private jet to Europe to try on clothing.

It seems fitting that she was served with divorce papers on that private jet. It didn’t matter; when she was divorced, she got a staggering sum of money — including an obscenely gauche house that is an insult to anyone who goes to work every day, a house that she put on the market for $125,000,000.

David Saperstein is no better: when he was still living in the $125,000,000 house with his then-wife and the nanny he left her for (according to some reports), he said he and his family were just like anyone else, trying to put bread on the table. That’s not just disingenous; that’s rude to people who really do try to put bread on the table. David Saperstein started out with not much and grew it to a great deal. That’s to his credit. He then not only forgot what he came from, he decided to actively insult the type of people he used to be by claiming that, as someone with a $125,000,000 house, he was “trying” to put bread on the table.

The table that David Saperstein was trying to put bread on was a table located in a 45,000 square foot house. That is roughly twenty times the size of the average house in my community. David Saperstein is so (self) important that he needs 20 times the space you or I do.

That’s a lot of space, you’re thinking, and you’re right. But he needs more, because the $125,000,000 house is not his only house; he also built the “Hummingbird Nest Ranch,” which has 140 acres of extreme disdain for other people and excessive displays of wealth spread across the Simi Valley.

Want to know more about the kinds of tables David Saperstein was just trying to put bread on? I’d like to tell you, but there’s precious little information on the kinds of tables the Sapersteins bought as a furniture-based substitute for just spitting on people; buying furniture is a good substitute for spitting on people because society would frown on them if they actually thumbed their noses at us, but applauds them for garish displays of excess that are the functional equivalent of that. Remember that: physically spitting on people = bad. Metaphorically spitting on people by spending obscene amounts of money = good.


So while we don’t know much about the tables, there are other details you can get about the Sapersteins’ life and how they metaphorically are spitting on you.

One blog describes the $125,000,000 home, incorrectly, as “extravagant” and “sumptuous.” The actual words you are looking for, blogger, is “insulting” and “wasteful.” (We would also have accepted “deserving of a special circle of Hell, if there is justice in the universe.”)

Here are those details:

It has Italian marble walls, Saperstein_mansionFrench limestone floors, gold-embossed leather wall coverings, and gold-leaf crowned moldings, according to the property listing. Rooms include a ballroom with ceiling frescoes, a library with a first-edition book collection, two kitchens and a screening room with seating for 50. A pool house has a full kitchen, a massage room and a gym. Also on the property: a three-bedroom manager’s house, staff quarters for 10, a nine-car garage and a ¾-mile jogging track…
(Source.)

I am glad to know that the Sapersteins, whose disdain for the rest of us knows no bounds, did not have to actually walk all the way from their pool house to the main house to get a meal. I would wonder how I survived without a kitchen in my pool house, except that I don’t have a pool house. If I want to swim, I have to go to the community pool or the one at my health club. We take one of the cars from our two-car garage. Sometimes we also drive them to the library, where I check out books. I’m not sure if they are first edition books; I take them to read them, not to flaunt them in people’s faces like the Sapersteins.

Flaunt they do. Do you know why you have marble imported from Italy? So you can say “That marble is imported from Italy.” So that you can be a smug, overspending loser with no concept of value. Marble is marble. Nobody even knows it’s marble, let alone that it’s from Italy, until you tell them, right, David Saperstein? And you do tell them, don’t you, David Saperstein. Jerk.

One person who won’t be touring David Saperstein’s monument to his own lack of concern or compassion about the human race is Debbie Aurelio. Debbie Aurelio lives in Hawaii, a state that I usually use as a synonym for paradise. It’s not paradise for Debbie Aurelio, though. Debbie was trying to refinance her house and got taken by a scam artist. She learned, too late, that she no longer owned her own home.

Debbie’s home shares something in common with David Sapersteins: both houses have a carport. Debbie doesn’t have a massage room, which is too bad because she could probably use a break from the stress of trying to fight to save her house. After realizing that she’d been bamboozled and no longer owned her house, that con artists had the title to her house and her equity, Debbie tried to hire a lawyer.

And failed.

Debbie couldn’t come up with the thousands that lawyers wanted to represent her to try to save their house.

She finally had to turn to her local Legal Aid Society for help; they were able to represent her and have so far kept her from being evicted. They’re suing, but Legal Aid Societies are stretched thin because they rely on funding from the government — the government that is made up of the people, the government of the people, by the people, and for the people— and the government of the people doesn’t give the people much help.

The Legal Aid Society helping Debbie gets annual funding of $810,000 — down 47% since 1992 — from the State. Funding has dropped by more than 1/2 since 1980. So as wealth increases and profits increase and the Gross Domestic Product increases, we the people reduce legal aid to poor people like Debbie.

That $810,000 had to go to handle more than 8000 cases in a single year. That means Legal Aid gets about a hundred bucks a case to handle each claim.

The Sapersteins main house was marketed for $125,000,000. Let’s do some math here. Since nobody should ever have a home worth more than $500,000 (I’ll adjust that for inflation as time goes on) that means the Sapersteins had $124,500,000 in excess money tied up in their home. They were squandering $124,500,000 in money, just sitting on it with their Italian marble and theater and kitchen in their pool house. Sitting on it and believing they were better than you or me, or anyone else.

Debbie had equity of $160,000 in her house at the time of the scam. That means the Sapersteins, had they bought a $500,000 house, could have bought Debbie Aurelio her entire house and given it to her, as a gift, and left themselves with $124,340,000.

They would never have missed the $160,000.

They in fact could have bought themselves a $500,000 house, and then bought $160,000 houses for 778 Debbie Aurelios. Seven hundred and seventy eight families could have had houses, leaving the Sapersteins living in a house worth a half-million, and with money left over.

The Sapersteins, of course, did not buy 778 families a house. They bought themselves several houses, instead, houses with Italian marble and kitchens in the pool house and guest quarters to invite all their wealthy friends over to enjoy the finer things in life, people they would no doubt invite over and say “See that? It’s Italian marble.”

Debbie Aurelio’s family, in their far more modest house, likes to have people over, too. They had a party for her youngest son to celebrate his first birthday. One of the people who showed up wasn’t invited. He was a sheriff, serving them an eviction notice.

Shame on you, Sapersteins, and Shame on America, for letting you live in a $125,000,000 house while Debbie Saperstein has to take time out from baking a cake for her son on his birthday to be handed an eviction notice. Shame on you.

The Trouble With Roy firmly believes that no adult should be allowed to earn more than $200,000 per year; that a $500,000 house is more than enough for anyone, and that health care is a basic human right. And if you believe otherwise, you are part of the problem.

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